by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman

February 28, 2008

Science and religion should complement each other. Galileo, after all, called nature “God’s second book,” the Bible being the first. L’didei (as the Talmud would put it), “according to him,” the order of nature and the text of the Bible boast the same divine author. L’didan, “from our point of view,” one need be neither creationist nor literalist to see the hand of God behind the laws that determine evolution, both natural and textual. Yes, Darwinian selection explains the species, physical laws decide planetary orbits, and human ingenuity brought the Bible into being. But religionists should view them all with Heschel’s “radical awe.” The fact that they occur is miracle enough; that natural law governs their occurrence only enhances our astonishment — it is their very naturalness that makes the miracle.

Why shouldn’t science (which studies nature) only confirm the great lessons of Judaism (which proclaims miracles)?

That is certainly the case with this week’s commandment to do no work on Shabbat. The rabbis find 39 such types of work, derived from the kinds of labor that went into the sanctuary. But readers find the list puzzling. As the Mishna puts it, “The main categories of labor [that are prohibited on Shabbat] are 40 less one.” The list is long and onerous, but worth wading through, for what we can say about it later. I have divided it into four parts:

1. sowing, plowing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, sorting, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking;
2. shearing wool, washing it, beating it, dyeing it, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying, loosening, sewing two stitches, tearing in order to sew two stitches;
3. trapping a deer, slaughtering it, skinning it, salting it, curing its hide, scraping it, cutting it up, writing two letters, erasing in order to write two letters;
4. building, tearing down, putting out a fire, kindling a fire, striking with a hammer, carrying from one domain into another.

How is one to make sense of this set of seemingly random acts, not all of which even look like labor? Sure, it was hard once upon a time to erase writing from parchment, but how laborious is it to rub out pencil markings on paper? Why should the rule against work still apply even to things that entail no exertion?

Tradition derives the list from the discrete acts of work that went into the tabernacle. But perhaps there is some more spiritual explanation that works even better for our time.

Here is where science comes in. Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss believed that cultures impose a map of binary opposites on everything humans do: things are good or bad, up or down, here or there, male or female, and so on. The most basic opposition is the way we differentiate nature in the raw from the way we shape it for our use — what Levi-Strauss called “raw or cooked.” We humans delight in preparing dinners, constructing edifices, and devising ways to communicate across time and space.

It is what makes us human: our human project.

It turns out that the four-fold list is easily categorized as:

1. baking bread (for the priestly bread)
2. preparing fabric (for the tabernacle’s curtains and embroidery)
3. preparing a scroll (for writing)
4. building (the tabernacle itself)

The Mishna apparently anticipated anthropology in recognizing the human project. As the species with culture, we humans depend on 1) cooking raw produce; 2) creating fabric (for personal need and artistic enjoyment); 3) recording data for complex manipulation (mathematics) and thought (the lessons of history and culture, fiction, and biography); and 4) constructing things (homes and roads, museums and skyscrapers) for living, working, visiting, and just plain admiring.

The Torah’s seemingly enigmatic categories of work are rabbinic shorthand for the ongoing and eternal human project: making cultural sense of what nature provides, rendering life easier and more beautiful, providing permanence in space and connectedness through time. “Work” is not just flexing our muscles, and Shabbat is not merely avoiding manual labor. It is the distinctively human task of constructing culture and society. And Shabbat is a reminder that at least once a week, we take a break from that task.

Creativity is satisfying, it is necessary and fun, and it is probably genetically hardwired into our human makeup. But wisdom suggests we take time to live with what we have, without creating more, time to enjoy nature in the raw, and time to sit back and reinvigorate ourselves for ever new and even more satisfying bouts of creative endeavor when we are done.

We Jews call that “Shabbat.” Shabbat Shalom.

Lawrence A. Hoffman, an author and speaker on Jewish ritual, prayer, and spirituality, is a professor of liturgy at the Hebrew Union College in Manhattan.

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