Emor
The Lord spoke to
Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite
people and say to them: These are My fixed times, the fixed times of the Lord, which you shall
proclaim as sacred occasions.
23:1-2
The word for festival used here is “Mo’ed,” which can also mean a fixed time of place. The connection is evident: festivals fix they
yearly cycle and set the rhythm of our lives…People celebrate holidays in
different ways. For some, the essence of
a holiday is the special prayer, for some it is the special food, for others it
is the family times. The divergent
descriptions suggest that there are several dimensions to celebrating a
festival. There is scope for each of us
to find a personally meaningful way.
Leon Sterling (Contemporary)
The meaning of “sacred occasions” is that all
people should come together on that day and be assembled to sanctify it, for it
is a commandment upon Israel to be gathered together in God’s House on the
festival day to hallow it publicly with prayer and praise to God, and with clean
garments, and to make it a day of feasting…our Rabbis…said…the nature of these
festival days should not be to you like that of other days, but instead you
should make them occasions of holiness, changing them by food and dress from
the common to the holy.
Ramban (13th Century)
The Torah describes the Shabbat here as “an eternal
statute for your generations in all your dwellings,” as the wording would have implied that
the work-prohibition on the Shabbat would apply universally in every location
for all times. Under the circumstances,
the wording suggests that the work-prohibition applies only in your
dwellings, not in the
Bachya
ben Asher (13th Century)
The function of the holy days (not the Shabbat) is
to train and educate the individual to be a Jew, through the correspondence
between the historical experience and the consciousness of God that finds
expression in the holy days. These
holidays clarify to us God’s role in the history of the nation (Passover,
Shavuot and Sukkot), the connection between the individual and God (Rosh
Hashanah, Yom Kippur) and the place of Divine Providence in the ecological life
of the soil (spring, harvest time).
Shraga
Mendlovitz (20th Century)
The Shabbat is not about forbidding work; it is an
affirmative commandment that we cease from work…the main thing is to declare
the Shabbat as a testimony...
Joseph Soloveitchik (20th
Century)
In addition to mitzvah (person) and sanctuary
(space), there is the third dimension, first to be mentioned in the Bible; the
dimension of time, about which we read in the detailed guidelines for a life of
holiness…As a religion of ethical monotheism, Judaism possesses “principles of
faith” and a code of ethics – but pointing only to those two when asked “what
is Judaism?” would be wrong. “The
calendar,” said the famous 19th century Jewish thinker S.R. Hirsch,
“is the catechism of Judaism.” Faith and
ethics in Judaism do not stand by themselves, but are expressed through
life…The festivals are focal points of collective memories, ideas and dreams,
glimpses of eternity communicated via temporal celebrations….The Jewish
festivals are set according to the lunar calendar. The authority to decide when a new month
begins rests solely with the court in
Pinchas
Peli (20th Century)