Dvar Torah on Parshat Mishpatim

In this week's parsha, Mishpatim,the Torah repeats - with the wording somewhat changed - the admonition to rest on Shabbat which was in the Ten Commandments, which appeared in last week's parsha, Yitro:

"Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so  that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the slave born in your household, and the stranger as well, may be refreshed."

The Talmud, in Tractate Yevamot, page  48b, says that the slave and the stranger ("ger" in Hebrew) referred to here are non-Jews. The word "ger" could, and in other instances does, mean a convert to Judaism, and there are Jewish slaves, but the Talmud insists that in this version of the commandment, we are expanding the range of those who benefit from the Shabbat beyond what other verses may be referring to, beyond the members of  the Jewish community, to include our non-Jewish slaves and the gentile citizens in our midst. These people, who are not usually the target of the Torah's commandments, must rest as well.

If this is the right reading, and we are referring to non-Jews here, a question arises: the verse seems to make these people the whole point of the Shabbat, the focus of the entire exercise, as we are told to not work on the seventh day "so that" ("l'ma'an" in Hebrew) these non-Jews, as well as our animals, can rest. Surely this is wrong. We keep the Shabbat so that we can rest (and remember the creator of the universe, and do other important Jewish activities on our day off). The fact that the non-Jews within our community rest as well must only be a fringe benefit. After all, the Mitzvot of the Torah are for the Jewish people: Jews eat matza on Pessach, sit in the Sukkah, and keep kosher, not non-Jews. And yet, this verse clearly says that we rest on the Sabbath so that they can rest - they are the point here. In addition, the Torah seems to be telling us this strange law in an unnecessarily complicated fashion. If, for some reason, it wants these non-Jews to rest, why not just say so? Why say that we have to rest so they they can? Just say that non-Jewish slaves of Jews and non-Jews living in a Jewish society have to rest on Shabbat. Actually, that would make a lot of sense: how are we going to get any peace and quiet on Shabbat if these people are busy working all around us? Surely, the Torah should tell them to rest so that we can, not the other way around.

To understand what is really happening here, we need to look back a few verses, and put this Mitzvah in context. It goes like this: first the Torah says "Do not oppress a stranger; you yourselves know how it feels to be strangers, because you were strangers in Egypt." Then, the Torah, in what looks like a change of topic, starts a section about the calendar, beginning with the seven-year Sabbatical cycle, and then moving on to our verse on Shabbat:

"For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unploughed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave. Do the same with your vineyard and your olivegrove."

And then, after that, the Torah gives us our verse on the Shabbat: "Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the slave born in your household,and the stranger as well, may be refreshed."

Looked at in context, the point of our verse now becomes clear. Just as the law of not working your land during the Sabbatical year is presented here, after the law of not oppressing the stranger, as  social action ("the poor among your people may get food from it"), so, too, the law about Shabbat, which immediately follows, is about a Shabbat of social action as well, part of our ongoing  attempt to learn from our bitter experience in Egypt and treat the stranger well. Though it does want them to rest, the Torah does not tell non-Jews to not work on Saturdays- they are, after all, not members of the Covenant. The Torah does, however, want us to take responsibility for the non-Jews in our society, and arrange it so that they can, unlike the Jewish slaves in Egypt, be free, and have at least one day a week to themselves. From this perspective, we see that we rest on Shabbat not so that we can get the day off - as members of the sovereign Jewish nation to whom this verse is addressed, we can take off any day we want. Rather, the Torah is telling us that there is an aspect of Shabbat that is not for us, not about us and our well-being. It is, rather, about running a decent, humane society, in which everyone, even the slave, even the stranger, has some measure of freedom and autonomy. The only way to do that, to not treat the weakest elements in our society like slaves, is to structure our society in such a way that people must get a day off. If we don't work on Saturday, if we are all in shul, if we are all taking a Shabbat nap, studying Torah, and eating all that Shabbat food, there is no one to make our non-Jewish minority work on that day. They will, no matter what, get a day off.

The Shabbat in this verse is neither an expression of our covenantal relationship with God, nor a day of rest for our sake; it is not about us. It is a demand that we organize our society "so that" even those whom the Torah does not address, but whom the Torah clearly cares about, get this particular benefit - the freedom, denied us in Egypt, to not be a slave, but to be free, autonomous, at least once a week.

For this reason, I am pretty hard-core about Shabbat in Israel. If stores are open, so that middle class people can shop on Shabbat, someone will have to work the cash registers (guess who that's going to be. I'll give you a hint: will it be someone rich? Who can afford to take Tuesday off, if he likes, and is choosing to work on Shabbat because it suits her (and it is so often a her)? Or is it someone who probably needs to work all seven days a week, like a slave,  to make ends meet? Go on, take a guess.) If buses are running, someone will have to drive them. If movie theaters operate, someone will have to take the tickets, sell the popcorn. And these people, invariably the poorest in society, will not ever experience the benefits of a mandated universal day of rest, when their children have no school, and their spouses are off as well. Only by enforcing a universal day off for the people who run the country, so that no one will have to work for them, can we guarantee a day off for all. Only by "sacrificing" our malls, movies, and mobility, can we truly end the oppression of the slave and the stranger, the weakest, most marginalized among us.  

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Shimon Felix