Fenced In Like a Rose

The Question in the Heart It is a simple question, but it can nag at you. If the Sabbath is a day of rest, why is it packed with so many prohibitions? There are thirty-nine kinds of work we may not do. There are decrees on top of decrees, fences and safeguards. Doesn’t all this go against the whole idea? In our everyday language, rest means freedom. To breathe. To let go. Instead, the holy day arrives with a long list of “do not.” A fine young married man once asked me: “Rabbi, if the Sabbath is meant to be a delight and a rest, why can’t I rest my own way? I’ll sit on the couch and rest the way I understand rest.” I understood him. It is an honest question. And there is an answer to it. The Rose and Its Thorns “Fenced in like a rose, sons and daughters will rest in it.” So we sing in one of the Sabbath songs, “How Beloved Is Your Rest.” The Sabbath is fenced in like a rose. Stop on these words for a moment. A rose is beautiful. It is delicate. Its scent has filled rooms and hearts since ancient times. Even the Bible’s Song of Songs sings of it: “Like a rose among the thorns.” But the rose grows with thorns. They are sharp thorns, unpleasant to touch. They look like a rough outer shell that does not fit the flower’s gentle beauty. So why are they there? Not to scare off the one who loves the rose. They are there to protect the flower from those who do not love it: from the animals grazing in the field, which would eat it in a moment if it had no shield. The thorns are the garden’s guards, not the flower’s enemies. Without them there is no rose, only a flower that has been eaten and is gone. The Lesson: Who Are the Animals? The Sabbath is the rose. It is a day of the highest delight, of true rest for the soul, of an inner quiet that no weekday can buy. The holy Zohar, the book of Jewish mysticism, calls the Sabbath “the Queen,” Hashem’s own presence. It is a day that is completely different. The bans on work are the thorns: the thirty-nine kinds of work, the fences, the safeguards. But who are the animals they protect us from? They are the distractions of our everyday world. The noise outside: the news, the screens, the business, the ping of a message waiting for a reply. At their root they are the animal soul within us. This is the part of us that is always drawn toward the ordinary and the material. It does not want a day of “no,” because “no” means there is something higher than itself. If the Sabbath were not surrounded by fences, it would be swallowed up. Not all at once, but little by little. First comes “my kind of rest” on the couch with the phone. Then a little more. And then: on Sunday I have a meeting, and I need to prepare. If everything is allowed, what is the difference between the Sabbath and every other day? Holiness is not wiped out in one stroke. It gets eaten away. “Fenced in like a rose.” The fence is part of what the Sabbath is. It is not a price we pay for the rose. The fence is what makes it a rose, and not a wildflower in an open field that belongs to no one. Not a Burden, but Gardening There are two very different ways of guarding something. One is guarding out of duty: a guard who stands at a distance, watching and checking. The other is guarding out of love: the gardener who goes down to the garden every morning to water, to weed and to fence it in. In his holy letters, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, explains that the commandments of “do not” and the commandments of “do” have the same root. They both come from one single word spoken from on high. There is no clash between them. They are two faces of the same will of Hashem. In the Ten Commandments the Sabbath appears once as “Remember” and once as “Keep,” and our Sages teach: “Remember” and “Keep” were spoken in a single word. Keeping away from what is forbidden and remembering the day’s holiness both come from one source. When you keep the Sabbath bans, you are not “obeying rules.” You are tending a garden. You are building a fence around your rose. You are telling the animals outside you and inside you: “Not today. Today there is holiness here, and I am guarding it.”