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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 296
EAN num: 9780374529758
ISBN number: 0374529752
Label: Farrar Straus Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar Straus Giroux
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 126
Printing Date: August 17, 2005
Publishing house: Farrar Straus Giroux
Release Date: July 28, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 6084
Studio: Farrar Straus Giroux
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Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication-and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life. In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the idea of an 'architecture of holiness' that appears not in space but in time Judaism, he argues, is a religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that 'the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.'
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Rated by buyers 
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A good book. Short and sweet, but you may have to read it twice if you want to get the deeper meaning. There's a lot to think about.
Rated by buyers 
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I liked this book, for several reasons.
First, Heschel's a good writer and he put some things into words about the sabbath more beautifully than I've ever read before.
Second, it helps me understand Jewish spirituality -- not biblical Judaism, mind you, but mystical Judaism. Interestingly enough, Heschel plays at the edges of intimacy -- not with God, but with the sabbath. There is no such intimacy within Judaism proper, but there is within Christianity.
Third, it underscores for me once again why Jesus came to die, what he came to free us from.
So I'm very glad I read it.
Rated by buyers -
Beautifully written, great for Shabbat reading. I read a section of the book every Shabbat to remind myself just what it's about.
Rated by buyers -
Abraham Heschel is one of the most respected Jewish scholars of the 20th century and of an orthodox view friendly to Christian belief. He was an active participant in the Civil Rights movement and wrote a seminal study called The Prophets and a number of works of reflective and broad scholarship.
In this slender and reknowned volume, Heschel sets forth an explanation of the Sabbath tradition among the Jews. In my faulty way I would like to recall here to mind some of the things that I have learned, the questions that it raised and the contingent reflections I have had in relation to it.
One thing that stands out is the cogency of Heschel's explanation of the Sabbath as a spiritually fitting rhythm of life. He speaks of the rest, the menuha, of the Sabbath not in the negative sense of merely ceasing labor.
"Menuha which we usually render with `rest' means here much more than withdrawal from labor and exertion, more than freedom from toil and strain or activity of any kind. Menuha is not a negative concept but something real and intrinsically positive." p.. 22-23
Like Aristotle and other ancient Greeks' conception of leisure, the conception of the Sabbath rest is positive in nature, and is viewed as the purpose and culmination of labor. Work in the mundane realities is to culminate in rest and contemplation from which we may cease from the hustle and bustle and attend in quietness and rest to the Lord. As it is says in Isaiah, "In quietness and rest is your strength..."
It seems to me that perhaps a great enduring strength in the religious culture of the Jewish people lies centrally in the keeping of the Sabbath. In so doing, they fulfill that of which the verse I quoted above speaks. I counterpoise this in my mind with the ambition to control and conquer space in Descartes' schematic. This brings me to a major point of the book. Heschel finds a distinction between the Jewish religion and other religions in that in others' religions, grand temples and cathedrals are built as sacred space, but that in the Jewish religion a cathedral in time is built to God, the cathedral of the Sabbath. He notes the distinction between this and for instance Spinoza's propensity for supposing the geometrico sufficient for explanation of all, an extension of Descartes, and in some sense the paradigm of the modern, and especially of science.
"The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments", Heschel writes. This reminds me of the experiences related of Jacob in the Bible. There is one in particular, perhaps a more obscure one, but one which struck me by its nature as conveying indeed a real historical experience, a sacred moment, which moved Jacob to purify his household. Judaism, and Christianity after it, are distinct in being irreducibly historical in their accounts which are punctuated by pivotal sacred moments, and which also imply sacred moments in the life of every believer. If these sacred moments in the Bible are mythologized in their entirety, as for instance, it seems to me, the philosopher Eric Voegelin does, then they are completely devalued. They are no longer the Faith.
Part of the cogency of Sabbath-keeping seems to me to lie in the nature of the self and our relation to God. We live a fractured and distracted existence. The fractured paintings of Picasso for instance seem to capture some of the fractured-ness of self in the modern world. Resting and ceasing allows us to remember what it is all for, to renew our bearing and orientation to the ultimate and in so doing helps to fulfill the ultimate of our being or existence. The shalom, the peaceful fullness of living, is attained only in this beholding relationship. But it is not all about self and certainly not about "self-help". I think of the over-extendedness of Descartes who made the leap to supposing mathematics valid for all realms of human inquiry, and the motivated definition of the self that is inherited markedly from him which leaves no place of honor and recognition to the infinite and the to the I and Thou. Contrast this with the Sabbath which recognizes a limitedness to man, but not merely a limitedness but a purpose and a directedness of man's aspirations, which establishes an end to man's grasping control and allows for a beholding and a composition of the self to the whole.
This reminds me of Martin Buber in that the Sabbath is such that it is to help us to rise beyond the I-and-It to the wholeness of our being in the I and Thou. When this is learnt through living wisely, then even in the "chrysalis state of the It," the I and Thou is still intact. In the same way the Sabbath principle of orientating toward the eternity in our hearts, when kept wisely, becomes something that persists through the days of labor.
It seems to me too that the Sabbath is very much related to the ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
Heschel wrote this book for us all. His metaphorical descriptions of the Holy Day are vivid and tangible. This book is more entry level than others he has written. Though most of his philosophy is comprehensible, in this book he allowed his readers to relish the simple harmony of the weekly convocation. A wonderful read. I have given away several copies to friends.
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