JANUARY 25 • 2024 | 43
J
N

T

he first translation of the 
Torah into another lan-
guage — Greek — took 
place in around the second cen-
tury BCE, in Egypt during the 
reign of Ptolemy II. It is known 
as the Septuagint, in Hebrew 
HaShivim, because it was done 
by a team of 70 scholars. The 
Talmud, however, 
says that at various 
points the Sages at 
work on the proj-
ect deliberately 
mistranslated cer-
tain texts because 
they believed that 
a literal translation 
would simply be unintelligible to 
a Greek readership. One of these 
texts was the phrase, “On the 
seventh day God finished all the 
work He had made.
” Instead, the 
translators wrote, “On the sixth 
day God finished.
” 
What was it that they thought 
the Greeks would not under-
stand? How did the idea that 
God made the universe in six 
days make more sense than that 
He did so in seven? It seems puz-
zling, yet the answer is simple. 
The Greeks could not under-
stand the seventh day, Shabbat, 

as itself part of the work of 
Creation. What is creative about 
resting? What do we achieve 
by not making, not working, not 
inventing? The idea seems to 
make no sense at all.
Indeed, we have the inde-
pendent testimony of the Greek 
writers of that period, that one 
of the things they ridiculed in 
Judaism was Shabbat. One day 
in seven Jews do not work, they 
said, because they are lazy. The 
idea that the day itself might 
have independent value was 
apparently beyond their compre-
hension. Oddly enough, within 
a very short period of time the 
empire of Alexander the Great 
began to crumble, just as had the 
earlier city state of Athens that 
gave rise to some of the greatest 
thinkers and writers in history. 
Civilizations, like individuals, 
can suffer from burnout. It’s what 
happens when you don’t have 
a day of rest written into your 
schedule. As Ahad HaAm said: 
“More than the Jewish people 
has kept Shabbat, Shabbat has 
kept the Jewish people.
”
Rest one day in seven and you 
won’t burn out.
Shabbat, which we encoun-

ter for the first time in this 
week’s parshah, is one of the 
greatest institutions the world 
has ever known. It changed the 
way the world thought about 
time. Prior to Judaism, people 
measured time either by the 
sun — the solar calendar of 365 
days aligning us with the seasons 
— or by the moon, that is, by 
months (“month” comes from 
the word “moon”) of roughly 30 
days. The idea of the seven-day 
week — which has no counter-
part in nature — was born in the 
Torah and spread throughout the 
world via Christianity and Islam, 
both of which borrowed it from 
Judaism, marking the difference 
simply by having it on a different 
day. We have years because of 
the sun, months because of the 
moon, and weeks because of the 
Jews.

SHABBAT = FREEDOM
What Shabbat gave — and 
still gives — is the unique 
opportunity to create space 
within our lives, and within 
society as a whole, in which 
we are truly free. Free from the 
pressures of work; free from the 
demands of ruthless employers; 

free from the siren calls of a 
consumer society urging us to 
spend our way to happiness; free 
to be ourselves in the company 
of those we love. 
 Somehow this one day 
has renewed its meaning in 
generation after generation, 
despite the most profound 
economic and industrial change. 
In Moses’ day it meant freedom 
from slavery to Pharaoh. In the 
19th and early 20th century, it 
meant freedom from sweatshop 
working conditions of long 
hours for little pay. In ours, it 
means freedom from emails, 
smartphones and the demands of 
24/7 availability.
What our parshah tells us 
is that Shabbat was among the 
first commands the Israelites 
received on leaving Egypt. 
Having complained about the 
lack of food, God told them that 
He would send them manna 
from heaven, but they were not 
to gather it on the seventh day. 
Instead, a double portion would 
fall on the sixth. That is why to 
this day we have two challot on 
Shabbat, in memory of that time.
Not only was Shabbat 
culturally unprecedented, 
conceptually, it was so as well. 
Throughout history people have 
dreamed of an ideal world. We 
call such visions utopias, from 
the Greek ou meaning “no” 
and topos meaning “place.
” They 
are called that because no such 
dream has ever come true, except 
in one instance, namely Shabbat. 
Shabbat is “utopia now,
” because 
on it we create, for 25 hours a 
week, a world in which there are 
no hierarchies, no employers and 
employees, no buyers and sellers, 
no inequalities of wealth or 
power, no production, no traffic, 
no din of the factory or clamor 
of the marketplace. 
It is “the still point of the 
turning world,
” a pause between 
symphonic movements, a break 
between the chapters of our 
days, an equivalent in time of 

continued on page 44

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Renewable Energy

