Thou Shalt Covet
The holiness of the chosen day is not something at which to stare and from which we must humbly stay away. It is holy not away from us. It is holy unto us. “Ye shall keep the Sabbath therefore, for it is holy unto you” (Exodus 31:14). “The Sabbath adds holiness to Israel.”1
What the Sabbath imparts to man is something real, almost open to perception, a light, as it were, that shines from within, that glows out of his face. “God blessed the seventh day” (Genesis 2:3): “He blessed it with the light of a man’s face: The light of a man’s face during the week is not the same as it is on the Sabbath.”2 That is an observation made by Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai.3
Something happens to a man on the Sabbath day. On the eve of the Sabbath the Lord gives man neshamah yeterah, and at the conclusion of the Sabbath He takes it away from him, says Rabbi Shimeon ben Laqish.4
Neshamah yeterah means additional spirit. It is usually translated “additional soul.” But what is the strict significance of the term?
Some thinkers took the term neshamah yeterah as a figurative expression for increased spirituality or ease and comfort.5 Others believed that an actual spiritual entity, a second soul, becomes embodied in man on the seventh day. “Man is given on this day an additional, a supernal soul, a soul which is all perfection, according to the pattern of the world to come.”6 It is “the holy spirit that rests upon man and adorns him with a crown like the crown of angels,” and is given to every individual according to his attainments.7
It is for a spiritual purpose, the Zohar implies, that supernal souls leave their heavenly sphere to enter for a day the lives of mortal men. At every conclusion of the Sabbath day when the supernal souls return to their sphere, they all assemble before the presence of the Holy King. The Holy One, then, asks all the souls: what new insight into the wisdom of the Torah have ye attained while present in the lower world? Happy is the soul that is able to relate in the presence of God an insight attained by man during the seventh day.8 Indeed, how embarrassed must be the soul which appearing before the presence of God remains mute, having nothing to relate.
According to an ancient legend, the light created at the very beginning of creation was not the same as the light emitted by the sun, the moon, and the stars. The light of the first day was of a sort that would have enabled man to see the world at a glance from one end to the other. Since man was unworthy to enjoy the blessing of such light, God concealed it; but in the world to come it will appear to the pious in all its pristine glory. Something of that light rests upon saints and men of righteous deeds on the seventh day, and that light is called the additional soul.9
Legend relates that Rabbi Loew of Prague (died 1609) was called “the Tall Rabbi Loew,” because on the Sabbath he looked as if he were a head taller than during the six days of the week.10 Whoever looked on the Sabbath at Rabbi Hayim of Tshernovitz (died 1813), the story goes, could see a rose on his cheek. The same Rabbi Hayim writes: “We have seen with our own eyes the tremendous change that the holiness of the Sabbath brings about in the life of a saint. The light of holiness blazes in his heart like tongues of fire, and he is overcome with rapture and yearning to serve God … all night and all day” … As soon as his preparations in honor of the Sabbath are completed “an effulgence of Sabbath-holiness illumines his face. So resplendent is his countenance that one almost hesitates to come close to him.”11
But the Sabbath as experienced by man cannot survive in exile, a lonely stranger among days of profanity. It needs the companionship of all other days. All days of the week must be spiritually consistent with the Day of Days. All our life should be a pilgrimage to the seventh day; the thought and appreciation of what this day may bring to us should be ever present in our minds. For the Sabbath is the counterpoint of living; the melody sustained throughout all agitations and vicissitudes which menace our conscience; our awareness of God’s presence in the world.
What we are depends on what the Sabbath is to us. The law of the Sabbath day is in the life of the spirit what the law of gravitation is in nature.
Nothing is as hard to suppress as the will to be a slave to one’s own pettiness. Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty. Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem—how to live with people and remain free, how to live with things and remain independent.
In a moment of eternity, while the taste of redemption was still fresh to the former slaves, the people of Israel were given the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments. In its beginning and end, the Decalogue deals with the liberty of man. The first Word—I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage—reminds him that his outer liberty was given to him by God, and the tenth Word—Thou shalt not covet!—reminds him that he himself must achieve his inner liberty.
When today we wish to bring a word into special prominence we either underline it or print it in italics. In ancient literature, emphasis is expressed through direct repetition (epizeuxis), by repeating a word without any intervening words.12 The Bible, for example, says: “Justice, Justice shalt thou follow” (Deuteronomy 16:20); “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people” (Isaiah 40:1). Of all the Ten Commandments, only one is proclaimed twice, the last one: “Thou shalt not covet … Thou shalt not covet.” Clearly it was reiterated in order to stress its extraordinary importance. Man is told not to covet “thy neighbor’s house,” “thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man-servant nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing belonging to thy neighbor.”
We know that passion cannot be vanquished by decree. The tenth injunction would, therefore, be practically futile, were it not for the “commandment” regarding the Sabbath day to which about a third of the text of the Decalogue is devoted, and which is an epitome of all other commandments. We must seek to find a relation between the two “commandments.” Do not covet anything belonging to thy neighbor; I have given thee something that belongs to Me. What is that something? A day.
Judaism tries to foster the vision of life as a pilgrimage to the seventh day; the longing for the Sabbath all days of the week which is a form of longing for the eternal Sabbath all the days of our lives.13 It seeks to displace the coveting of things in space for coveting the things in time, teaching man to covet the seventh day all days of the week. God himself coveted that day, He called it Hemdat Yamim, a day to be coveted.14 It is as if the command: Do not covet things of space, were correlated with the unspoken word: Do covet things of time.