Narratives of Enlightenment 115
bizemaneinu), even though they clearly and openly perform acts of forbidden labor on Shabbat , ought to be classified under the halakhic category of mehalel Shabbat befarhesya. The problem, as he sees it, is that the non-observant Jews of modernity are completely unaware that they are transgressing against the Torah. “On account of our many sins,” he writes,“the infection(i.e., of non-observance and Judaic ignorance— MW) has spread to the majority of the population, so that most of them think that acts that violate the Sabbath are in fact permissible.” The Jewish legal category that fits them more accurately is that of the omer mutar, the person who mistakenly believes that a forbidden thing or action is permitted. Such a person, unlike the Talmud ’s mehalel Shabbat befarhesya, cannot be considered an“apostate,” since he or she has not intentionally decided to sin.”
There is, moreover, an even deeper reason why today’s
Some of these Jews attend Shabbat services, recite the kiddush, and then perform labors forbidden under Toraitic or Rabbinic law. Now the halakhah regards the Sabbath violator as an apostate only because the one who denies the existence of Shabbat also denies the act of creation and existence of the Creator. Yet this does not apply to one who acknowledges the Creator and the creation through prayer and kiddush.
The connection between the observance of Shabbat and the belief in God as Creator of the universe is an old theme in Jewish doctrinal writing. The commentators and theologians cite this connection to explain why, out of all possible sins, it is the violation of the Sabbath that is equated with the worship of other gods and that tenders an individual“an apostate against the entire Torah ”: to deny Shabbat is to deny the reality of divine creation, which is to say the