Compendium for Continuity
On Parshas Vayakhel and the controversy around the work Shemirath Shabbos K'hilchasa
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
On the day after Yom Kippur, when Moshe came down from Sinai with the second set of luchos, he gathered the Jewish People together.
וַיַּקְהֵל מֹשֶׁה אֶת־כׇּל־עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם אֵלֶּה הַדְּבָרִים אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּה ה’ לַעֲשֹׂת אֹתָם׃
After gathering the Jewish People, Moshe reintroduced the laws of Shabbos before giving instructions for the building of the Mishkan.
The Jewish People, of course, were already familiar with the laws of Shabbos—they are included within the first and second set of luchos. This time, however, Moshe wanted to emphasize the juxtaposition between Shabbos and the building of the Mishkan. As Rashi explains, Moshe wanted to remind the Jewish People that the building of the Mishkan does not override the laws of Shabbos.
Why, however, does Moshe first need to gather the Jewish People to tell them this information?
Ramban explains that the Jewish People were gathered to remind everyone that God’s collective love still resided within each of them. Although they had sinned with the Golden Calf, it was a reminder that everyone’s donation and effort were necessary for the rebuilding of the Mishkan because everyone was included in the new covenant of God’s love. As Ramban writes:
ואמר לכולם ענין המשכן אשר נצטוה בו מתחלה קודם שבור הלוחות, כי כיון שנתרצה להם הקב"ה ונתן לו הלוחות שניות וכרת עמו ברית חדשה שילך השם בקרבם, הנה חזרו לקדמותם ולאהבת כלולותם, ובידוע שתהיה שכינתו בתוכם
I am still with all of you, God tells the Jewish People.
Still, this approach does not explain why it was necessary to gather the Jewish People to reiterate the laws of Shabbos. No other mitzvah in the Torah is introduced this way, by gathering the Jewish People. The Ramban’s approach is powerful but it does not fully explain why the Jewish People needed to be gathered for the laws of Shabbos.
To understand the uniqueness of this presentation of the laws of Shabbos, let’s explore some of the controversy surrounding one of the most famous contemporary compendiums of the laws of Shabbos, the work Shemirath Shabbos K’Hilchasa by Rav Yehoshua Neuwirth (1927-2013)
Thank you so much to my dearest friend and chavrusa, Rabbi Jake (Yaakov) Sasson for his instrumental role in the development of this essay.
Rav Yehoshua Neuwirth published his classic work on the laws of Shabbos, Shemirath Shabbos K’Hilchasa in 1965. But the work actually began more than 20 years prior with a promise.
Rav Ahron Neuwirth, Rav Yehoshua’s father, was an esteemed Torah scholar in his own right. A graduate of the Hildesheimer Seminary, he wrote his own work on Shabbos and corresponded with Rav Kook. When Hitler rose to power, the Neuwirth family was living in Berlin. Following Kristallnacht in 1938, Rav Ahron sent his young son Yehoshua, who was not yet Bar Mitzvah, on the Kindertransport to escape to Belgium. Rav Yehoshua celebrated his Bar Mitzvah with his adoptive family in Belgium without his parents, who were only reunited with him the following year. The family soon left Belgium for Amsterdam, where they remained during the war years.
As Rav Neuwirth later described in an interview, the only seforim they had access to while in hiding was Tractate Kesubos and the third volume of Mishnah Berurah, which covers the laws of Shabbos. The family remained throughout the war, hidden in Amsterdam, quietly praying and studying as they awaited some salvation.
Rav Neuwirth always remained hopeful that he would make it to Israel but even following the war, travel between countries was extremely limited. In 1946, settling in Israel became a real possibility. A group of students, disguised as American soldiers, hatched a circuitous travel plan that would finally allow them to reach Israel. On the journey, they landed in Marseilles, France. From there a boat would finally bring them to Israel. There was only one problem. They needed to board the boat on Shabbos.
As Rav Neuwirth explained in an interview (and also recounts in the introduction to the third edition of Shemirath Shabbos K’Hilchasa):
When the ship arrived we were ordered to board on Shabbos. This distressed me greatly. After succeeding in keeping mitzvos as best we could—especially Shabbos—throughout the war, how could we desecrate Shabbos now, when we were finally free? I was very upset, but it seemed to be sakanas nefashos (danger to life) to remain alone in a strange place with no money, food or belongings. I had nowhere else to go and having no choice, I boarded the ship. I felt remorseful about this for many years, especially since I learned a short while later that the whole Shabbos-boarding arrangement was a setup by Shabbos desecrators who wanted the religious group to desecrate Shabbos.
So, Rav Neuwirth boarded the boat on Shabbos. But he made a promise. “When I had to get on that ship on Shabbos,” Rav Neuwirth explained, “I pledged that when Hashem would grant me the privilege of reaching a peaceful land, I would do something for Shabbos.”
It was that promise that eventually led to the work Shemirath Shabbos K’Hilchasa, a work that revolutionized not only the study of the laws of Shabbos but, as we will explore, contemporary halachic study in general.
The boat ride was harrowing. Rav Neuwirth recalls members of the ship dying at sea—they had to lower their bodies into the ocean to avoid the spread of disease. But they finally made it to Israel, then still Mandate Palestine under British control. He enrolled in Yeshivas Kol Torah, the famed yeshiva where Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach served as Rosh Yeshiva. Rav Shlomo Zalman, as he is affectionately known, served as Rav Neuwirth’s lifelong rebbe and mentor.
The first edition of Shemirath Shabbos K’Hilchasa was published in 1965. It was a revolutionary work at the time, one that is harder to appreciate today now that accessible halachic compendiums have become so commonplace.
And as with many revolutions, criticism and concern soon followed from many different directions.
Following the publication of Shemirath Shabbos K’Hilchasa, Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Kanievsky (1899-1985), popularly known as The Steipler, penned a searing critique of this halachic compendium in his work Chaye Olam (Vol. 2, Ch. 8). While acknowledging that some halachic digests have been accepted, such as Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi’s Shulchan Aruch HaRav, Rabbi Avraham Danzig’s Chayei Adam, or Rabbi Yisroel Kagan’s Mishnah Berurah, questions that have not been clearly resolved in those works need to be considered in consultation with a proper halachic authority. Shemirath Shabbos K’Hilchasa, in the estimation of Rabbi Kanievsky, was treading into halachic discussions that a modern digest work was not equipped to handle. Rabbi Kanievsky presents a startling analogy to those who would use such a work to resolve their Shabbos-related queries:
Imagine for a moment if you were completely certain that one who desecrates Shabbos, whether biblically or rabbinically, would immediately develop cancer—how scared would such a person be?! They would not rely at all on just anyone who comes along with a to tell you something is permissible.
While jarring, it is a moving testimony of the sincerity with which the Haredi community viewed Shabbos observance. Rabbi Kanievsky, while the most notable, was not alone in his criticism. Rabbi Dov Landau (1930-), Rosh Yeshiva of Slabodka Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, wrote a ten-page pamphlet detailing issues and concerns he had with Rabbi Neuwith’s halachic methodology and conclusions. The pamphlet, entitled Birur Devarim (Clarification of Matters), concludes by wondering aloud: If so many concerns were found in his cursory reading, how could anyone rely on this work?
Rabbi Neuwirth never explicitly responded to his critics. In 1979, he published a second edition, in which he writes in the introduction that “beloved seekers of truth and pursuers of justice” pointed out several issues with his first edition. In the second edition, some of his language is modified and some leniencies tempered, particularly regarding the use of water heaters on Shabbos. Given that the book has three editions (the third edition published in 2010), and has been reprinted numerous times, it seems that despite some very notable and serious concerns, the work has been embraced throughout the Jewish community.
In America as well, the book has received widespread acceptance. First translated in 1984 by Rabbi Grangewood and published by Feldheim, the work has become the first authority on many issues related to modern-day Shabbos observance. It would not be uncommon to hear in a Jewish home, before using some modern-day technological convenience of Shabbos, “Does the Shemirath Shabbos discuss this?” Colloquially, the work is now referred to abbreviated as “Shemirath Shabbos” making Shabbos observance and this work nearly synonymous in many homes.
It was not only Israeli Haredi Rabbis, however, who were hesitant about Rabbi Neuwirth’s halachic work. Dr. Haym Soloveitchik, in his famed essay “Rupture and Reconstruction” laments the changes in halachic observance following the Holocaust. Whereas before World War II, most halachic observance was preserved through a mimetic tradition, increasingly halachic observance has become a text-based tradition that has displaced much of the intuitive familial practice cultivated for centuries. In a footnote (no. 55), Dr. Soloveitchik highlights the proliferation of topical halakhic compendiums as an indication of this phenomenon. Referencing another popular English work on the laws of Shabbos, he writes:
The first large-scale, serious halakhic presentation in English was, to the best of my knowledge, that of Shimon D. Eider The Halachos of Shabbos, 2 vols. (Lakewood, New Jersey: S. D. Eider, 1970) which went through five printings in as many years. This, however, might yet be understood as an attempt to grapple with halakhic status and permissibility on Sabbath of the hundreds of new products of the moderm consumer market, parallel to the groundbreaking work of Y. Y. Neuwirth, Shemirat Shabbat ke-Hilkhatah which had appeared in Jerusalem some five years earlier. Whatever its nature at the time of publication, in retrospect it was clearly a harbinger.
And a harbinger it was. As Dr. Soloveitchik persuasively develops, the shift from a mimetic tradition to a text-based tradition has repercussions far outside of the world of halachic observance. As the immediacy of God’s presence becomes obscured in the modern world, we are forced to turn to text-based halachic analysis to rediscover the majesty we once knew in our quotidian lives. As Soloveitchik wonders about our New World:
To what extent is there an ongoing experience of His natural involvement in the mundane and of everyday affairs? Put differently, the issue is not the accuracy of my youthful assessment, but whether the cosmology of Bnei Brak and Borough Park differs from that of the shtetl, and if so, whether such a shift has engendered a change in the sensed intimacy with God and the felt immediacy of His presence?
Absent a visceral mimetic tradition for God’s intimacy, we are left with the details of halachic observance with which we hope to find Godliness in the crevices of our lives.
Shemirath Shabbos K’Hilchasa began with a promise that Rav Neuwirth made as he was fleeing an old world and beginning in a new world—the modern State of Israel. It is a fitting context from which this book emerged. A personal promise in the aftermath of Shabbos desecration, while fleeing to a new world. For his contemporary readers, that initial motivation remains the same. On any given shelf that houses Rabbi Neuwith’s work, the work continues to fulfill a promise of preservation of a certain kind, ensuring worlds Old and New continue to endure together.
The introduction to Shemirath Shabbath K’Hilchata begins with a medrash at the opening of our parsha, Vayakhel:
ויקהל משה. רבותינו בעלי אגדה אומרים מתחלת התורה ועד סופה אין בה פרשה שנאמר בראשה ויקהל אלא זאת בלבד אמר הקב"ה עשה לך קהלות גדולות ודרוש לפניהם ברבים הלכות שבת כדי שילמדו ממך דורות הבאים להקהיל קהלות בכל שבת ושבת ולכנוס בבתי מדרשות ללמד ולהורות לישראל דברי תורה איסור והיתר כדי שיהא שמי הגדול מתקלס בין בני.
Nowhere in the entire Torah, from the opening words of Bereishis, until the closing words of the Torah, “l’eini kol Yisroel,” the medrash writes, is the word ויקהל, to gather, used to preface a mitzvah in the Torah.
And, as opposed to the Ramban cited earlier, the gathering was specifically for the mitzvah of Shabbos. In many ways, the preservation of Shabbos and the cultivation of a connection to Shabbos is a communal endeavor. Without community, as many have experienced, Shabbos can even feel isolating and lonely. And each generation needs leaders, like Rav Neuwirth, to rearticulate the Torah of Shabbos—both its laws and experiences to a new generation. Without communal participation and mediation of Shabbos, Shabbos itself, can chas v’shalom, God-forbid, be lost.
Above all, Shabbos is our mikdash, our communal gathering place, built not with physical materials but with time itself. It is why the very 39 melachos, creative actions, that were used to build the mishkan are what we abstain from on Shabbos. Shabbos is our communal mishkan built in time and continued throughout each generation. In that sense, Shabbos is the ultimate preservative for community and community is the ultimate preservative for Shabbos.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
Introduction to Shemiras Shabbos K’Hilchasa, Yehoshua Neuwirth
Shemirath Shabbath Kehilchatah, David Bashevkin
The Book ‘Shemirat Shabbat Ke’Hilchata’ and the Controversy it Provoked, Eliezer Melamed
The Forced Desecration that Led to Shmiras Shabbos, Tuvia Freund
Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy, Haym Soloveitchik
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