from the heart of jerusalem: rabbi binny freedman

Shabbat’s Shabbat, even if it’s just another day

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The radio squawked with commands. I took out my pen and pad out to write down a list of code words for map locations that I would need to translate into coordinates for our impromptu mission. This was a procedure that was part of being a combat officer in the field and was really not a big deal. If anything, relative to some of the pressures we would likely face later that evening, it was a moment most soldiers, especially in Lebanon in 1985, would not think twice about.

But for me it was a watershed moment. Because I was being asked to write down a list of coordinates on Shabbat, and I had never, in my entire life, ever lifted up a pen to write on the Sabbath. It’s usually not the big events that stop you in your tracks, because you’ve had time to think about them; life gives you pause in the little details.

As a religious solider I knew what I had signed up for, and had given much thought to the fact that I would be protecting Jewish lives and would need to drive and use the radio on Shabbat, and it was for me not the violation of a religious principle, but the upholding of one. But I was still caught unprepared when I realized I would need to write in a pad, with the pen in my pocket, on Shabbat.

A list of questions and doubts unexpectedly assailed me. I had no doubt that, halachically speaking, it was permissible to transgress the Shabbat while on active duty and with even the possibility that what I was doing was protecting lives. Rabbi Shimon, in the tractate of Shabbat, suggests clearly that it is best to transgress one Shabbat in order to preserve a life and with it the ability to fulfill many more Shabbatot in the future.

What I was more worried about was how it might affect my desire to continue celebrating Shabbat in the future. If Shabbat was suddenly the same as any other day, and if on Shabbat I was driving, using the radio, writing down coordinates, and so, what would be left of Shabbat for me after a year or more on active combat duty? It suddenly hit me that in Lebanon, Shabbat was like any other day; the terrorists and the Syrians don’t allow you to stop on Shabbat. What would become of my Shabbat, and with it my Jewish journey, in the process?

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