Electricity / Electronics / Electric Cars (2) – The Meaning of Shabbat

In my previous post, I introduced this series of posts on driving electric cars on Shabbat. Before delving into the halakhic sources – want to first reflect on the meaning of Shabbat itself.

Shabbat is one of the foundations of our faith. The idea appears in the first chapter of Genesis as the pinnacle of God’s creation of the world. It is one of the Ten Commandments, given to the children of Israel as part of the revelation on Mount Sinai. It is repeated in fourteen separate passages in the Torah and in every one of its books. It occupies an entire tractate in the Mishnah and the Talmud. It is hard to imagine a life of mitzvot that doesn’t have the idea of the seventh day dedicated as a day of rest at its heart.

Shabbat is first and foremost a day of rest. The earliest Rabbis elaborated on the idea of Shabbat, drawing from subtle references in the Torah and developing a great number of halakhot they described as ‘mountains suspended by hairs’ from the all-but-hidden clues they found in the Torah.  As we shall see, our Sages defined Shabbat-proscribed labours with pronounced detail. From the details they created narratives of work and rest that allowed them to develop and refine the day and make it a time for the elevation of the human spirit. This subtle point—Shabbat as a time to raise up the human heart—long remained an implicit understanding of Shabbat. 

The understanding of Shabbat as a counterbalance to technology is deeply embedded in the thinking of the Conservative Movement (and the wider Jewish community) through the writings of our revered teacher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Technology is one of the key features of modern life.

Technical civilization stems primarily from the desire of man to subdue and manage the forces of nature. The manufacture of tools, the art of spinning and farm­ing, the building of houses, the craft of sailing—all this goes on in man’s spatial surroundings. The mind’s preoccupation with things of space affects, to this day, all activities of man.

(Heschel, The Sabbath. pg. 3-4)

Shabbat is a time to put technology to the side and to focus on spiritual life, on our relationship with God and with each other.

The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath, we try to become attuned to holiness in time. it is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

(pg. 10)

This is the task of men: to conquer space and sanc­tify time.

We must conquer space in order to sanctify time. All week long we are called upon to sanctify life through employing things of space. On the Sabbath, it is given us to share in the holiness that is in the heart of time. Even when the soul is seared, even when no prayer can come out of our tightened throats, the clean, silent rest of the Sabbath leads us to a realm of endless peace, or to the beginning of an awareness of what eternity means. There are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of the Sabbath. Aeons hence, when of many of our cher­ished theories only shreds will remain, that cosmic tapestry will continue to shine. 

(pg. 101)

It is from this perspective we will consider the place of electric vehicles in our Shabbat observance in the coming posts.

Based on: A New Responsum on the Sabbath. Rabbi Mordecai Schwartz and Rabbi Chaim Weiner.