Susannah Heschel describes her father's 1951 book as "reflect[ing] some of the political concerns and language of the day; the themes of freedom and liberty recur in the book. He writes that we need the Sabbath in order to survive civilization: 'Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man [i.e., humankind] must fight for inner liberty' to remain independent of enslavement of the material world. 'Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as 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'" (page xiii; she is quoting from page 89).
Now, in the prologue to Rabbi Heschel's 1951 book The Sabbath (pages 1-10), he delineates the time/space contrast in striking ways that are worth quoting at length here:
"Technical civilization is man's [humankind's] conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.
"To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time. There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things in space, becomes our sole concern" (page 4).
Rabbi Heschel here stakes out territory of thought that certain other authors have also explored. For example, the French convert to Catholicism Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) explores similar concerns in his book Being and Having, translated by Katharine Farrer (Beacon Press, 1951; orig. French ed., 1949), and the German-born-and-educated American atheist Erich Fromm (1900-1980; Ph.D. in sociology, University of Heidelberg, 1922) explores similar themes in his book To Have or to Be? (1976).
Now, Rabbi Heschel says that "in biblical Hebrew" the word 'davar' means "speech; word; message; report; tidings; advice; request; promise; decision; sentence; theme; story; saying, utterance; business, occupation; acts; good deeds; events; way, manner, reason, cause; but never 'thing'" (page 7).
The following passage from Rabbi Heschel's 1951 book shows that he is well aware of cyclic time in connection with the seasons versus historic time: "One of the most important facts in the history of religion was the transformation of agricultural festivals into commemorations of historical events. The festivals of ancient peoples were intimately linked with nature's seasons. They celebrated what happened in the life of nature in the respective seasons. Thus the value of the festive day was determined by the things nature did or did not bring forth. In Judaism, Passover, originally a spring festival, became a celebration of the exodus from Egypt; the Feast of Weeks, an old harvest festival at the end of the wheat harvest (hag hakazir, Exodus 23:16; 34:22), became the celebration of the day on which the Torah was given at Sinai; the Feast of Booths, an old festival of vintage (hag haasif, Ex. 23:16), commemorates the dwelling of the Israelites in booths during the sojourn in the wilderness (Leviticus 23:42f). To Israel the unique events of historic time were spiritually more significant than the repetitive processes in the cycle of nature, even though physical sustenance depended on the latter. While the deities of other peoples were associated with places or things, the God of Israel was the God of events: the Redeemer from slavery, the Revealer of the Torah, manifesting Himself in events in history rather than in things or places. Thus the faith in the unembodied, in the unimaginable was born" (pages 7-8).
In connection with the cyclic/linear contrast, see Mircea Eliade's books The Myth of the Eternal Return, translated from the French by Willard R. Trask (Pantheon Books, 1954; orig. French ed., 1949) and Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed (Sheed and Ward, 1958; orig. ed., 1949). Eliade (1907-1986; Ph.D., 1933) was a Romanian scholar in the history of religions at the University of Chicago from 1964 onward.
In addition, Rabbi Heschel says, "He [or she] who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He [or she] must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his [or her] own life. He [or she] must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man [humankind]. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self" (page 13).
For all practical purposes, Rabbi Heschel's central theme in his 1951 book The Sabbath is the experience of what Eliade refers to as the sacred. Rabbi Heschel says, "To Jewish piety the ultimate human dichotomy is not that of mind and matter but that of the sacred and the profane" (page 75).
See Eliade's most widely known book is The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated from the French by Willard R. Trask (Harcourt, Brace, 1959; orig. ed., 1957).
Now, Rabbi Heschel says, "Time is the presence of God in the world of space, and it is within time that we are able to sense the unity of all beings" (page 100).
Rabbi Heschel says, "Creation, we are taught, is not an act that happened once upon a time, once and for ever. The act of bringing the world into existence is a continuous process. God called the world into being, and that call goes on. There is this present moment because God is present. Every instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of Beginning. Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation. Time is God's gift to the world of space" (page 100).
Rabbi Heschel says, "To witness the perpetual marvel of the world's coming into being is to sense the presence of the Giver in the given, to realize that the source of time is eternity, that the secret of being is the eternal within time" (page 101).
Rabbi Heschel says, "To men [and women] alone time is elusive; to men [and women] with God time is eternity in disguise" (page 101).
CONCLUSION
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