Antiquitopia

Because I read a lot on the Sabbath, I am largely drawn to places in literature and poetry where the Sabbath pops up. It shows up, for example, in a few Paul Celan poems. It is rumored that toward the end of his life, he kept a copy of Abraham Joshua Heschel's amazing meditation on the Sabbath on his nightstand. I just ran across a Dickinson poem that also speaks of the Sabbath, differentiating between the Sabbath of church and the Sabbath of creation/nature (or perhaps N ature): Some keep the Sabbath going to church; I keep it staying at home, With a bobolink for a chorister, And an orchard for a dome. Some keep the Sabbath in surplice; I just wear my wings, And instead of tolling the bell for church, Our little sexton sings. God preaches,-a noted clergyman,- And the sermon is never long; So instead of getting to heaven at last, I'm going all along! She presents this nature's Sabbath as a more direct link to God (God is, indeed, the clergyman!) than to any organized re...

Strange question, yes? I guess we often do not think of angelic genitals, much like in the movie Dogma . But there is a rather difficult passage in Jubilees that may just raise this issue: This law is for all the eternal generations and there is no circumcising of days and there is no passing a single day beyond eight days because it is an eternal ordinance ordained and written in the heavenly tablets. And anyone who is born whose own flesh is not circumcised on the eighth day is not from the sons of the covenant which the LORD made for Abraham since (he is) from the children of destruction. And there is therefore no sign upon him so that he might belong to the LORD because (he is destined) to be destroyed and annihilated from the earth and to be uprooted from the earth because he has broken the covenant of the LORD our God. Because the nature of all the angels of the presence and all the angels of sanctification was thus from the day of their creation. And in the presence of the...

Since I study the intersections of sacred space (Sanctuary) and sacred time (Sabbath) in ancient Jewish and Christian literature, I am often attracted to their invocations in modern literature as well. Paul Celan, for example, often talks about the Sabbath in his poetry. Here is a meditation by W.H. Auden: The Sabbath Waking on the Seventh Day of Creation, They cautiously sniffed the air: The most fastidious nostril among them admitted That fellow was no longer there. Herbivore, parasite, predator scouted, Migrants flew fast and far-- Not a trace of his presence: holes in the earth, Beaches covered with tar, Ruins and metallic rubbish in plenty Were all that was left of him Whose birth on the Sixth had made of that day An unnecessary interim. Well, that fellow had never really smelled Like a creature who would survive: No grace, address or faculty like those Born on the First Five. Back, then, at last on a natural economy, Now His Impudence was gone, Looki...

For those of you who do not know, my research right now primarily investigates the various ways ancient Jews and Christians bring together holy space and holy time, particularly the Sanctuary and the Sabbath, focusing on priestly traditions or traditions that reflect upon or respond to such traditions (particularly P, H, and Ezekiel; Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice; and Epistle to the Hebrews). Nonetheless, I was struck by the passage in Is. 56:1-8, which, although evincing some general conceptual similarities to P, H, and Ezekiel, takes a different tack in articulating how the Sabbath relates to the Sanctuary by universalizing the relationship. In the priestly framework in the Priestly source of the Pentateuch (including the Holiness Code) and Ezekiel, improper reverence of the Sanctuary and lack of observance of the Sabbath, or their profanation, leads to being cut off from the community. The inverse corollary to this is that proper observance and reverence of the Sabbath and the S...

את־שבתתי תשמרו ומקדשי תיראו אני יהוה (Lev. 19:30; 26:2) For you non-Hebrew readers, this says, "Observe my Sabbaths and venerate my Sanctuary. I am YHWH." Both quotations come from a part of the Pentateuch called the Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26). Some distinctive elements of the Holiness School (which produced the Holiness Code) is God's self assertions, as in this passage: "I am YHWH." And the first-person singular possessive: " my Sabbaths" and " my sanctuary." Moreover, HS tends to give quite an increased reverence for the Sabbath. Taking a look at this passage, as well as how the Sabbath is interwoven in the instructions to build the Tabernacle and the actual building of the Tabernacle (Exod. 31:12-17; 35:1-3; the entire instructions are Exodus 25-31; 35-40), the question arises: "What does the Sabbath have to do with the Sanctuary?" Why bring them together, and, in this case, even seem to privilege the Sabbath over th...

In case any of you did not know, part of my research includes Sabbath traditions, and starting Wednesday evening at sundown is the sabbatical year. That's right--beginning with Rosh Hashanah, for an entire year, according the the biblical and rabbinic mitzvah (commandment), one should leave one's field fallow for an entire year. According to a newspaper article from the Alton Telegraph (that's Alton, Illinois, for you bi-coastal people) sent to me by my mother, this is causing some concern among Israelis about bankruptcy. Since, for most farmers, a profit margin is rather minimal, an entire year without any crops could put many, especially farmers and kibbutzes with small amounts of land, too far in the red to recover. Interestingly enough, more moderate Israeli Rabbis have created a loophole: Jewish Israelis can sell their fields and orchards to non-Jews for the duration of the year. According to the article, "Under this arrangement, farmers can keep working the ...