46 | MAY 4 • 2023
observe the Sabbath day.
” (Deut. 5:11–14)
Here there is no reference to creation.
Instead, the Torah speaks about a historical
event: the Exodus. We keep Shabbat not
because God rested on the seventh day but
because He took our ancestors out of Egypt,
from slavery to freedom. Therefore, Shabbat
is a day of freedom even for servants, and
even for domestic animals. One day in seven,
no one is a slave.
Of course, both are true, and we integrate
both accounts into the text of the Kiddush
we make on Friday night. We call Shabbat a
remembrance of creation (zikaron lemaaseh
bereishit) as well as a reminder of the Exodus
(zekher liyetziat Mitzrayim). However, once
we set the Leviticus account in the context of
these other two, a richer pattern emerges.
If we play close attention, we can hear
three primary voices in the Torah: those of
Kingship, Priesthood and Prophecy. These
are the three fundamental leadership roles,
and they have distinctive modes of knowl-
edge.
Priests, Prophets and the governing elite
(the wise, the Elders, Kings and their courts)
each have their own ways of thinking and
speaking. Kings and courts use the language
of chochmah, “wisdom.
” Priests teach Torah,
the word of God for all time. Prophets have
visions. They have “the word” of God not
for all time but for this time. Prophecy is
about history as the interaction between God
and humanity.
THREE VOICES
Is it merely accidental that there happen to
be three voices, when there could have been
four, or two or one? The answer is no. There
are three voices because, axiomatic to Jewish
faith is the belief that God is encountered
in three ways: in creation, revelation and
redemption.
Wisdom is the ability to see God in cre-
ation, in the intricate complexity of the nat-
ural universe and the human mind. In con-
temporary terms, chochmah is a combination
of the sciences and humanities: all that allows
us to see the universe as the work of God
and human beings as the image of God. It is
summed up in a verse from Psalms (104:24),
“How many are Your works, O Lord; You
have made them all in wisdom.
”
Revelation, Torah, the specialty of the
Priest, is the ability to hear God in the form
of the commanding voice, most character-
istically in the form of law: “
And God said,
”
“
And God spoke,
” “
And God commanded.
”
Revelation is a matter not of seeing but of
listening, in the deep sense of hearing and
heeding, attending and responding. Wisdom
tells us how things are. Revelation tells us
how we should live.
Prophetic consciousness is always focused
on redemption, the long and winding road
toward a society based on justice and com-
passion, love and forgiveness, peace and
human dignity. The prophet knows where
we came from and where we are going to,
what stage we have reached in the journey
and what dangers lie ahead. The prophetic
word is always related to history, to the pres-
ent in relation to the past and the future: not
history as a mere succession of events, but as
an approach to or digression from the good
society, the Promised Land and the Messianic
Age.
Creation, revelation and redemption
represent the three basic relationships with-
in which Judaism and human life are set.
Creation is God’s relationship to the world.
Revelation is God’s relationship with us.
When we apply revelation to creation, the
result is redemption: the world in which
God’s will and ours coincide.
THREE ACCOUNTS
We now understand why the Torah con-
tains three distinct accounts of Shabbat.
The account in the first version of the Ten
Commandments, “For in six days the Lord
made the heavens and the Earth,
” is the
Shabbat of creation.
The account in the second version,
“Remember that you were slaves in Egypt
and that the Lord, your God, brought you
out,
” is the Shabbat of redemption. The
Parshat Emor account, spoken in the Priestly
voice, is the Shabbat of revelation.
In revelation, God calls to humankind.
That is why the middle book of the Torah
(that more than any other represents Torat
Kohanim, “the law of the Priests,
”) begins
with the word Vayikra, “and He called.
” It is
also why Shabbat is, uniquely here, included
in the days “which you shall proclaim (tikre’u)
as sacred convocations (mikra’ei kodesh),
”
with the double emphasis on the verb k-r-a,
“to call, proclaim, convoke.
” Shabbat is the
day in which, in the stasis of rest and the
silence of the soul, we hear the Call of God.
Hence too, the word mo’ed, which in gen-
eral means “appointed times,
” but here means
“meeting.
” Judah Halevi, the 11th-century
poet and philosopher, said that on Shabbat,
it is as if God had personally invited us to
be dinner guests at His table. The Shabbat
of revelation does not look back to the birth
of the universe or forwards to the future
redemption. It celebrates the present moment
as our private time with God. It represents
“the power of now.
”
Not only is this threefold structure set out
in the Torah, it is embodied in the prayers
of Shabbat itself. Shabbat is the only day of
the year in which the evening, morning and
afternoon prayers are different from one
another. In the Friday night Amidah, we
refer to the Shabbat of creation: “You sanc-
tified the seventh day for Your name’s sake
as the culmination of the creation of heaven
and Earth.
” On Shabbat morning we speak
about the supreme moment of revelation:
“Moses rejoiced at the gift of his portion …
He brought down in his hands two tablets of
stone on which was engraved the observance
of the Sabbath.
” On Shabbat afternoon, we
look forward to the ultimate redemption,
when all humanity will acknowledge that
“You are One, Your name is One, and who
is like Your people Israel, a nation one on
Earth.
”
Creation, revelation and redemption form
the basic triad of the Jewish faith. They are
also the most fundamental structuring prin-
ciple of Jewish prayer. Nowhere is this clear-
er than in the way the Torah understands
Shabbat: one day with three dimensions,
experienced successively in the experiences
of evening, morning and afternoon.
What is fragmented in secular culture into
science, religion and political ideology is here
united in the transforming experience of
God who created the universe, whose
presence fills our homes with light, and who
will one day lead us to a world of freedom,
justice and peace.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020) was a global
religious leader, philosopher, the author of more than
25 books, and moral voice for our time. He served as
Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of
the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. His series of
essays on the weekly Torah portion, entitled “Covenant
& Conversation”, continue to be shared and distributed
around the world.
continued from page 45
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH