Shabbat Parashat Emor - 5783

Shabbat Parashat Emor - 5783

Rabbi Hal Miller

For a six-day period labor may be done, and the seventh day is a day of complete

rest, a holy convocation, you shall not do any work, it is a Shabbat for God in all

your settled places. [Vayikra 23:3]

This most interesting verse leads to many questions, such as why it uses the phrase,

"shabbat shabbaton", translated here as "a day of complete rest". In most places,

the Torah uses one or the other words, not both together. Why does it use both here?

Most of the time when the Torah uses a double word like this, it intends to amplify

something, thus "complete rest", and most commentators use that definition here.

But there are a few, Saadiah Gaon, Radak, and Netziv for example, who read it as a

limitation, that there is something lesser about this "shabbat" usage.

The most notable other places we see this doubled word is in regard to Yom Kippur

and Shemittah, so there must be some connection between the day described here

and the day of atonement and year of a rest for the land, something not shared by

other places where "shabbat" is used, such as the festivals that are the subject of

this chapter.

One point that these three (Shabbat, Yom Kippur, Shemittah) have in common is the

number seven. Shabbat is the seventh day of the week, Yom Kippur is the seventh

of the named holidays listed, and Shemittah is the seventh year in a cycle. All of the

other "shabbats", holidays, do not have this attribute. To understand this connection

further would require delving into Kabbalah.

The Concordance defines "shabbat shabbaton" as "menuchah sheleimah me'avodah",

complete rest from work. Either word alone (shabbat or shabbaton) refers to a day of

rest from work, but the "completeness" is not there. Rashi, based on Torat Kohanim,

explains that the difference applies only to food preparation, and that otherwise, all of

the festival days are the same. We do not do food preparation work on Shabbat or Yom

Kippur, and we do not do any food growing during Shemittah. R'Israel Drazin notes that

the other holidays are days of celebration, where the three mentioned here are

specifically days of rest, thus the repeated word referring to complete rest.

Rav Yosef Soloveitchik asks about the order of this section, where the Torah introduces

it as an explanation of festivals, but begins with Shabbat. He says that the Jewish

people are given the role of sanctifying all the holidays, except for these three. God

sanctified Shabbat before there were people around to do so, and it comes around

every seventh day, whether we count days or not. Shemittah comes around every

seventh year that we are in the land, whether we count years or not. Yom Kippur is not

sanctified by the people, rather by the Kohen Gadol. The Rav says that Shabbat has

to come first here to set up the rules for all the other holidays, even though they have

this one relaxation to allow for celebration.

Sforno sees the difference from the Gemora [Pesachim 68] that Shabbat, Yom Kippur

and Shemittah are times for us to dedicate totally to God, but the other holidays are

"half for God and half for you", meaning both sanctified and celebratory. Lest one

think though that festivals are not serious, Rashi points out that the placement of our

verse in this chapter is to teach that one who desecrates the holidays is the same as

one who desecrates the Shabbat. It is only the food issue that differentiates them.