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Lisa J. Grushkow 37
The principle that fences must be built around the law, which has led to the enactment of countless precautionary regulations, is a principle that we today must boldly reject in the interest of a saner observance of the Sabbath. Instead, we should reaffirm and employ as our constant guide the more important and fruitful Rabbinic principle: That the Sabbath has been placed in our control, and that we are not under the control of the Sabbath(Yoma 85b). Taking our stand on this principle, we shall, of course, continue to stress the twofold nature of our Sabbath, namely, that it is our Jewish day of rest, and that, moreover, it is a day dedicated to the delights of the soul. But we shall not seek, in the name of Judaism , to deny men the freedom to perform such necessary acts and to engage in such additional delights as they have learned to associate with their periods of rest. In an age like ours, when we have come to view sports and games of all sorts as proper forms of relaxation on rest days; to hark back to the puritanic rigors of the Rabbinic Sabbath is to call in question the relevancy of religion to modern life.
At the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, then, the Reform position on Shabbat observance— as expressed by Bettan — was to emphasize the need to move away from the traditional system of Shabbat restrictions. The traditional categories of work were all determined by the occupations of Jews in the Biblical and Rabbinic periods, with additional restrictions built on the precautionary basis of fences around the law.
To be relevant, Judaism had to abandon these“puritanic rigors,” and expand its notion of rest(rather than work) to allow for new definitions.