ACUTE ANGLES: Trump’s Historic Shabbat Proclamation
Rabbi Ingram, shalom. President Trump’s proclamation endorsing Shabbat appears to have divided the Jewish community in the USA. How can there be Jews against Shabbat? What’s your view? Yours. Tony G.
Dear Tony,
From what I have read, while the Orthodox community in the USA has warmly applauded the Trump Shabbat initiative, American Reform, Reconstructionist and even most Conservative congregations have demurred, publicly arguing that President Trump’s historic and unprecedented endorsement of the observance of a semiquincentennial “national Shabbat …from sundown on May 15 to nightfall on May 16” blurred the lines between religion and state.
This stance is entirely in keeping with these cohorts’ prioritisation of “Americanism” above Judaism. But in any event, they are mischievously misinterpreting the First Amendment. The relevant clause states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This is generally interpreted to mean that the US government may not create a national religion, endorse a specific faith or treat one religion better than another.
All Trump has done is taken one single religious concept which, while bestowed to humanity by Judaism, has also been adopted in very different forms by the Christian and Muslim worlds (and therefore cannot be said to be endorsing a specific faith), and recommended – not ordered – that it be embraced on one specific weekend.
It is a wonder these ultra-sensitive liberal Jews have not protested the printing of “In G-D We Trust” on US coins and paper currency! Or perhaps they are just pursuing an anti-Trump agenda.
It is fascinating that in his proclamation, Trump has identified the halachic temporal parameters of our Shabbat not only to encourage “Jewish Americans” to observe Shabbat but also so that, within this same Jewish timeframe, “friends, families and communities of all backgrounds may come together in gratitude for our great Nation.” And he concludes: “This day will recognise the sacred Jewish tradition of setting aside time for rest, reflection and gratitude to the Alm-ghty.”
I detect Chabad influence in this very cleverly crafted statement! (I believe Rabbi Levi Shemtov of Chabad, Washington, DC, has much benign influence in the White House.) The Jewish timeframe of “from sundown … to nightfall” reinforces the fact that Judaism gave the concept of the Sabbath to the world; but clearly non-Jewish Americans aren’t being asked to “observe Shabbat” in the Jewish, i.e halachic sense, nor should they, nor would they want to (far too “legalistic” for Christian and Western tastes) but only to “come together in gratitude”.
You ask for my view. My view is that the extraordinary times in which we live get more remarkable week by week!
Last week in our shuls, we once again declaimed the Aseret haDibrot as the centrepiece of the Shavuot Torah reading.
Shabbat is unique among the Ten Commandments. The first three affirm our duties to G-D (bein adam la-Makom). The fifth affirms our duties to parents who are partners with G-D in our creation. And the final five lay out our responsibilities to our fellow and to society (bein adam la-chaveiro). But Shabbat, the Fourth Commandment, while rooted in our emulation of G-D – who rested on the first Shabbat in history – and in our appreciation that the world belongs to G-D, is also the most precious gift bestowed upon us by our Creator for our benefit and our joy. “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews” (Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsburg, 1856-1927). It is what our musar and Chasidic masters would term bein adam le-atsmo, a mitsva “between a person and his own soul.”
Blurring the lines between religion and state? Humbug! Truth to tell, the left-wing Jewish opposition stems mainly from its embarrassment over the fact that Shabbat, despite its rejuvenative qualities, is honored more in the breach than in the observance in those circles!
We are surely inhabiting a peri-messianic universe (see Sota 9:15) when a non-Jewish leader exhorts all Jews to observe Shabbat and Jews resist!