Evergreen

The rabbis of antiquity deduced that all labors necessary for constructing a sanctuary and its appurtenances should serve as the blueprint for Shabbat prohibitions.

In connecting the two, the Torah makes Shabbat a symbol of compassion and humane treatment for those in need of liberation.

The school of Shammai constructed its version of the Sabbath laws on the basis of the notion that Shabbat is a foretaste of life in the perfect world, yet to come.

The Bible itself is the source of the notion that Shabbat is a foretaste of the perfected world that is yet to come.

Rabbinic literature and medieval Kabbalah describe the day as a foretaste of life in the perfected "world to come" that traditional Judaism anticipates.

The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals, the Jewish equivalent of sacred architecture.

Heschel draws out the implications of the idea that we rest in memory/imitation of God's primeval rest at the end of Creation.

Modern Jewish thinkers explore new dimensions of what Shabbat observance can mean.

The Bible has no problem giving both cosmic and social reasons for Shabbat. Creation and liberation are tightly connected.

Writing Hebrew literature in the 19th century was no simple matter, and those who did were the elite of the elite.