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A Mountain Hung by a Thread
Shabbat is like a mountain hung by a thread: it has many laws, but few scriptural verses from which they hang.
(Mishnah Hagigah 1:8)
Categories of Forbidden Work
The categories of forbidden work on Shabbat are forty-minus-one [thirty nine]:
Sowing seeds, plowing a field, harvesting crops, bundling stalks of grain, loosening the wheat from the chaff (threshing), separating the wheat from the chaff (winnowing), cleansing crops, grinding grain into flour, sifting flour, kneading flour into dough, baking;
Shearing wool off a sheep, washing wool, combing wool, dyeing wool, spinning wool into thread, setting up a loom, weaving thread through a loom, tightening thread on a loom, removing thread from a loom, tying a knot, loosening a knot, sewing, tearing in order to sew;
Hunting an animal, slaughtering an animal, skinning an animal, salting an animal hide to dry it out, curing an animal hide to keep it soft, scraping an animal hide clean, cutting an animal hide;
Drawing a blueprint, erasing in order to draw a blueprint, building up, tearing down, putting out a fire, lighting a fire, striking with a hammer;
Carrying an object from one area to another.
These are the classes of forbidden work on Shabbat work: forty-minus-one.
(Mishnah Shabbat 7:2)
Playing with Reality
Shabbat is the temporary anti-reality of perfection. For approximately twenty-five hours, all things are seen through the eyes of love, as if all of nature were perfect, in harmony with itself and with humanity. Naturally, all the world conspires to persuade people that great opportunities are being missed, that catastrophe looms. For a day, Jews, dreaming, hear none of this. On Shabbat, it is not really that one is forbidden to work, it is that all is perfect, there is nothing to do. … Is this perfect day a fugue? An escape from reality? The world is flawed and full of suffering. To enter into the Shabbat spirit wholeheartedly, then, one must play with reality. Shabbat is a day of imaginary boundaries. On this day, the dream is so real that the world becomes the deviation.
(Yitz Greenberg, The Jewish Way, p. 131)
Like a Dream
Shir ha-ma’alot
B’shuv Adonai
Et shivat Tziyon
Hayinu k’cholmim
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שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת
בְּשׁוּב יְהוָה
אֶת שִׁיבַת צִיּוֹן
הָיִינוּ כְּחֹלְמִים
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“A song of ascents: When God returns the captives of Zion, it will seem like a dream.”
(Psalm 126:1)