If G-d's work can be set aside for a day of rest, how can we believe that our own work is too important to set aside temporarily? We also emulate the divine example, by refraining from work on the seventh day, as G-d did. In Exodus 20:11, after Fourth Commandment is first instituted, G-d explains, 'because for six days, the L-rd made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and on the seventh day, he rested therefore, the L-rd blessed the Shabbat day and sanctified it.' By resting on the seventh day and sanctifying it, we remember and acknowledge that G-d is the creator of heaven and earth and all living things. It also means to remember the significance of Shabbat, both as a commemoration of creation and as a commemoration of our freedom from slavery in Egypt. We are commanded to remember Shabbat but remembering means much more than merely not forgetting to observe Shabbat. The Greeks thought Jews were lazy because we insisted on having a 'holiday' every seventh day. In addition, the very idea of rest each week was unimaginable. In ancient times, leisure was for the wealthy and the ruling classes only, never for the serving or laboring classes. The weekly day of rest has no parallel in any other ancient civilization. In modern America, we take the five-day work-week so much for granted that we forget what a radical concept a day of rest was in ancient times. The same can be said of prayer on Shabbat. To say that Shabbat is a day of prayer is no more accurate than to say that Shabbat is a day of feasting: we eat every day, but on Shabbat, we eat more elaborately and in a more leisurely fashion. Observant Jews pray every day, three times a day. Although substantial time is usually spent in synagogue praying, prayer is not what distinguishes Shabbat from the rest of the week. Shabbat is not specifically a day of prayer. It is also the most important special day, even more so than Yom Kippur. Shabbat is the most important ritual observance in Judaism and is the only ritual observance instituted in the Ten Commandments. The word 'Shabbat' comes from the root Shin-Bet-Tav, meaning to cease, to end, or to rest. It is said 'more than Israel has kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept Israel.' Shabbat is primarily a day of rest and spiritual enrichment. In Jewish literature, poetry and music, Shabbat is described as a bride or queen, as in the popular Shabbat hymn Lecha Dodi. But to those who observe Shabbat, it is a day of great joy eagerly awaited throughout the week, a time when we can set aside all of our weekday concerns and devote ourselves to higher pursuits. People who do not generally observe the stringincies of the day think of it as a day filled with stifling restrictions, or as a day of prayer like the Christian Shabbat. The Shabbat is one of the best known and least understood of all Jewish observances. The Shabbat is then called a sign of both God's consecration of Israel and of His six-day creation. God's instructions for building the Tabernacle begins with an admonition to keep the Shabbat, indicating its precedence even over the duty of building the Sanctuary.

The Book of Deuteronomy's version embodies this humanitarian motive in its divergent rationale of the Shabbat rest - Israel is to keep the Shabbat so that its slaves might rest, and because God so commanded. Thus they learned that the seventh day was 'a Shabbat of the Lord,' which they must honor by desisting from their daily food-gathering labor.Īccording to the Book of Exodus, work is to cease on the seventh day in order to give slaves and draft animals rest, a statute that must be observed even during the critical plowing and harvest seasons. Correspondingly, the Israelites were commanded not to go out at all but to remain at home on the seventh day. God supplied each day's need of manna for five days on the sixth, a double portion was provided to last through the seventh day, on which no manna appeared. The special status of this seventh day - and its name - were disclosed to the Israelite people in the episode of the manna. The etiology of Shabbat is given in the first two chapters of the Book of Bereishit (Genesis), although the name of the day does not actually appear there: God worked six days at creating the world on the seventh he ceased working ( shavat mi-kol melaʾkhto), blessed the day, and declared it holy. Shabbat involves two interrelated commandments: to remember ( zachor) and to observe ( shamor).

Shabbat (שַׁבָּת related to Hebrew verb 'cease, rest') is the seventh day of the Jewish week and is the day of rest and abstention from work as commanded by God.

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