Shabbat Sukkot - 5784

Shabbat Sukkot - 5784

Rabbi Hal Miller God spoke to Moshe saying, "Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, God's appointed festivals which you shall designate as callings of holiness, these are My appointed festivals. For a six-day period labor may be done and the seventh day is a day of complete rest, a calling of holiness, you shall not do any work. It is a Shabbat for God in all your settled places. These are the appointed festivals of God, the callings of holiness, which you shall designate in their appropriate time. [Vayikra 23:1-4] Why is Shabbat placed in the middle of the description of the list of holidays that the Jewish people are to designate? There is an obvious difference in that Shabbat will always occur on the same day of every week, but the other festivals may fall on any day, depending on the Sanhedrin's designation of new moons and intercalation of any leap month each year, as Rashi notes. Ramban has an interesting approach. He divides the designation as an appointed festival from the designation at their appropriate times. He says that Shabbat is also, like the others, for us to designate as a holy festival, but that per verse 4, it is separate from the others that we are to "designate in their appropriate time" thus is properly included in the first part of our verses, but excluded from the second part and is therefore treated first of all the festivals. Rav Soloveitchik sees it from a different angle based on Yerushalmi [Pesachim 10:2 ] that the end of Shabbat kiddush should read "who sanctifies Israel and the Shabbat day", adding the last part. Thus Israel has a role such as Ramban mentioned in the designation of Shabbat. There is therefore a double sanctification of Shabbat, once by God and once by Israel. Without the latter, we would have no basis for the rule that allows us to extend Shabbat early at the beginning and late at the end. The simple answer to our question then is that Shabbat belongs on the list based on verses 1-2. Verse 4 is in fact a separate list for a second purpose, and it does not include Shabbat. It is not an insertion into the middle of a single list, rather the head of the first of two lists with different purposes.