Fourth and Long: Presenting (and Resenting) the Sabbath

Abstract

Harvey Cox. Common Prayers: Faith, Famdy, and Chruitian \i Journey through Jewiih Year. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Pp. x +305.Alan Dundes. The Shabbat Elevator ant) Other Sabbath Subterfuge: An Unorthodox Eitjay on Circumventing CM torn ant) Jewuih Character. Lanham, JVId.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Pp. xiii + 199.Francine Klagsbrun. The Fourth Commandment: Remember Sabbath Day. New York: Harmony Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 269.Herold Weiss. A Day Gladn&u: The Sabbath among Jew J and ChrLitiano in Antiquity. Columbia: University South Carolina Press, 2003. Pp. ? + 262.IN 1836 JOHN LLOYD STEPHENS, who was later to achieve fame primarily his pioneering exploration JVlayan ruins in Central America, found himself in Jerusalem Jewish Sabbath, he prayed among feeble remnant mighty people in synagogue near JVlount Zion. Since having left Kurope several months earlier, New Jersey native, who was then just over thirty, had not been anywhere where women sat with their faces uncovered, and so during inscrutable Saturday morning sermon it was not altogether unnatural (as he later -wrote in his highly popular Incidenti Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Petraea and HoLy Land) to turn his gaze rough-bearded sons Abraham to smooth faces their wives and daughters. In women's section synagogue, Stephens spied many dark-eyed Jewess 'who appeared well worthy his gaze, and he boastfully reported that many Hebrew maiden turned her black orbs upon him as well. Although he had already enjoyed hospitality Jews Hebron, with whom he talked of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as old and mutual friends, this was apparently young Columbia graduate's first taste Jewish Sabbath.Stephens was invited lunch to home native Gibraltar who had two wives and who described himself as -wealthiest Jew in Jerusalem. Noticing that observance Sabbath in his host's home was so strict that it was not allowable to extinguish lamp which had been lighted night before and was now burning in broad daylight over our table Stephens began to experience some uneasiness about what to expect dinner. He -was pleased to learn, however, the admirable his host had (allegedly) invented for reconciling appetite and duty - an oven, heated night before to such degree that process cooking -was continued during night and dishes were ready when wanted next day.1 Stephens' host's claim to being -wealthiest Jew in Jerusalem may indeed have been accurate, but Gibraltar native -was certainly not first to invent contrivance that allowed process cooking to continue from Friday afternoon until Saturday afternoon - after all, third chapter talmudic tractate Shahhat takes its name (Kirah) from such contrivance.At around same time that Stephens -was in Jerusalem, his countryman and contemporary \Villiam McClure Thomson, -who had been sent to Middle East by American Board Commissioners Foreign Missions, spent Sabbath on outskirts Safed, to -which he came from Beirut and whose Jews - a strange assemblage from most nations Europe, as he noted in The Lanci and Book (first published m 1858) - constituted more than half town's population. Thomson, who had been born in Ohio in 1806 and had earned his B. A. at Aliami University before studying at Princeton's (Presbyterian) Theological Seminary, referred in his learned yet enormously popular book to absurd superstitions Safed Jews, as -well as their intense fanaticism . . . Pharisaic self- righteousness and Sadducean licentiousness. As prime specimen puerilities enjoined and enforced by their learned rabbis, Thomson pointed to subterfuge, as Alan Dundes -would call it, eruv, which he had evidently first seen in Safed during 1830s. …