by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

Recently, a friend of mine told me the following story: Two observant Jews were both really enjoying Shabbos. One turned to the other and asked, ‘I wonder, if we were to act as if it were Shabbos on a Tuesday, would we feel the same way?’ In other words, was their feeling for the kedusha (holiness) of Shabbos due to its intrinsic, God-given quality; or was it merely a product of the their behavior in the form of refraining from work, wearing their best clothing, attending synagogue, eating challah, singing Shabbos songs, and so on? Apparently, they were not questioning the status of Shabbos day observance as a Divine commandment, only their own experience of it. Were they in touch with the real thing, or just a facsimile thereof?

As the story goes, they picked an ordinary weekday, and decided to observe Shabbos on that day, as if it were Shabbos. At the end of their experiment, they agreed that it did, indeed, feel just like a real Shabbos! Did this mean that their perceptions of Shabbos had all along been a delusion? They decided to ask their rabbi. He smiled and assured them that they should not wonder at their experience, for what they had succeeded in doing was to “bring down,” or draw upon, the spirit of Shabbos, usually accessible only on Shabbos, on another day.

My friend recalled that, when he heard the story as a boy many years ago, he was unhappy with it, the rabbi’s answer in particular. However, just recently, he noticed in the writings of the Sefas Emes, the second rebbe of the chassidic Ger dynasty, there are many references to the “dimension” of Shabbos outside of its seventh-day context. That’s probably what the rabbi had in mind, too, he said, and declared that he was no longer troubled by the story.

After listening to this, I began fretting over it. First, it should be pointed out that according to tradition, the effects of Shabbos are felt throughout the rest of the week.The latter half of the week—Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—bears the imprint of the forthcoming Shabbos. The first three days of the week following Shabbos are characterized by its after-effects, a kind of spillover. That is why someone who has not recited Havdalah, the ritual marking the conclusion of Shabbos, may do so until Tuesday. But this refers to the influence of a real Shabbos, not a mock observance, like the one in the story.

In the Talmud (Shabbos 69b), there is a discussion that I thought might shed some light on the question. The Sages there state that a person on a journey in the wilderness or at sea who has lost track of the calendar days and does not know which day is Shabbos, should pick a day arbitrarily and act as if it were Shabbos.

At first glance, this could be taken as a proof that one can indeed summon the kedusha of Shabbos on a weekday. But if we consider that the Talmud then permits him to work all seven days (observance of his chosen “Shabbos” day consists of reciting Kiddush and Havdalah), it becomes clear that it has no bearing on our question. This wandering Jew’s “Shabbos” would bear almost no resemblance to the real thing. Furthermore, Rashi explains that the purpose of selecting one day out of seven is merely as a zecher, a remembrance, so that the person, if his ordeal should be prolonged, should not “forget” Shabbos. The implication being that it is an artificial means of maintaining his link to the kedusha of Shabbos, but not that this is in any sense the real thing.

As for the Sfas Emes, I am not expert enough in his writings to comment, except to say that he was not referring to anything like the experiment related in the story, and one would have to extrapolate.

But all this is really beside the point. For in my opinion, the story is apocryphal. Not only does it seems far-fetched that anyone would try such an experiment, but practically speaking, it’s not possible to replicate Shabbos on a weekday. Many of the people who turn up in synagogue on Shabbos are not there on a weekday; there’s no public reading of the full Torah portion; the prayers are different; people are dressed differently; and so on. Anyone who would feel the same on a mock Shabbos like the one in the story as he does on a real Shabbos is certainly not someone who is able to feel the kedusha of a real Shabbos.

The Torah itself seems to say that such experimentation is not advisable. As it’s written: “Six days shall you perform all your labor, and the seventh day is a Shabbos unto the Lord your God…” On the six weekdays you should work, not pretend it’s Shabbos.

Shabbos is a day dedicated to making known the as-yet contested proposition that God created the world in six days and then rested. By refraining from work (and keeping all its other laws) on the seventh day we bear testimony to that belief. It is, in that sense, a day unto God, for Him; and our personal enjoyment is beside the point. Whether what we feel on Shabbos is “the real thing” or not is a moot point, not subject to proof, one way or the other. Perhaps it is just another symptom of the self-centeredness of the times we live in that such a story is even told.

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