"Can I Do Things I Love on the Sabbath?" – Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (March 14, 2006)

On March 14th, 2006, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014) was interviewed at Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder, Colorado by Sadieh Zaman.

Transcript:

The Jewish Sabbath is so restrictive, and doesn’t allow me to be myself; what is it good for, and how can I make it relevant for me?

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: Imagine if I had to make a living as a potter. I would have to toil a whole day, and late into the night, to make pots and pots and pots [all week]! And then comes the Sabbath. To make a pot on the Sabbath would be 'breaking the Sabbath,' so it is not something that I should be doing, to produce more pots.
Now, at this point, imagine I am working at a brokerage. [By the end of the week] I am sick and tired of numbers and of papers, and of all these things. And now comes the day, [the Sabbath,] and I can really be myself. So I take out a potter's wheel, and I throw a pot, and I live completely in that thing! Am I breaking the [rule of work on] Sabbath or not?

Are you saying that people should be allowed to throw pots on the Sabbath if they want to?

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: I am not saying this; I am saying that the person who does it in this way, as I described it... I can't say that that person broke the Sabbath. There is a difference between that. I am not saying, "Everybody! Don't go to the synagogue! Throw pots [instead]!"
But it is the same thing with gardening, and so on [on the Sabbath]. We would consider gardening to be breaking the Sabbath if I had to do this for a living. But it is not that I want to hire a gardener [in this case]. I'm not speaking for myself; but I can speak for other people, whom I feel would say, "I don't want to hire anyone to do [my gardening]; I want to get my own hands dirty!"

Many Jews consider the traditional view of the Sabbath to be the ‘glue’ of their faith, and have problems with the understanding you propose; what do you say to that?

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: Well, that's true. And I have a problem with what other people do, also. If I were to say, "What does the Sabbath tell me to do?" It tells me to move out of 'production' and into 'being.' Okay? And I know that a lot of 'production' is happening on the Sabbath: going to the synagogue and having classes, and doing this and doing that. All of these are good, holy things. But when a person says, "I worked the whole week, and now I want to be in God's presence without doing anything!" [That, too, is important Sabbath observance.]
So I have a sense that the 'inner' — I don't wanna say 'spirit' — the 'inner essence' of it, what it's all about, is more 'fulfilled' by the person who can do that. So while I would not say that people should go ahead and do gardening on Shabbes — I want them to come to the synagogue, and I want them to celebrate and to pray, and to worship, to learn how to do that right, so they don't spin their wheels [spiritually] — that is very important, because if I were to look at churches and synagogues today, I would see people coming, and they don't know what to do, but are doing it out of a certain obligation. And then what are you going away with? I would like them to have something to go away with; so that's important [too]!
But as you are raising the question about basic things, I would not want to say that people should eat anything that is not kosher. We keep our home very kosher. We don't answer the telephone on Shabbes. I do a lot with my computers, but not on Shabbes.

Aren’t you just picking and choosing the things that work for you within your life? The Jewish law is absolute, isn’t it?

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: Who says so? I have a feeling that if you study it, you will see that, way, way back, there were two opinions: there was Hillel’s, and there was Shammai’s. There were some people who were more strict, and some people who were less strict. And there is a whole continuum in between. I know that when people come from a heteronomic point-of-view, saying, "I don't know what the rules are; someone else tells me and I trust what that person is going to say. And if he says, 'No,' then I won't do it!" And you know what, that's a very good way for people who are learning in the beginning. And the more I learn about the Sources, and the more I know, that tells me how to discriminate, I don't want to give up serving God, and I don't believe that the revelation doesn't carry truth... So I 'buy' the truth from the revelation, and I want to serve God, but from a point-of-view that is balanced for today. I think that is where Jewish Renewal differs from Orthodoxy.

This video was filmed by Michael Kosacoff, edited by Alec Arshavsky and Netanel Miles-Yépez, and produced by the Yesod Foundation

(www.yesodfoundation.org)
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