Last Saturday morning, as a blizzard sputtered out its last squalls over Passaic, N.J., Chaya Leah Smolen sent her husband and several children off to synagogue. She issued the children a message that might seem to contradict the essence of winter motherhood: do not carry any tissues.
To that admonition, she added others. The children shouldn’t take their toys or candies, the diversions that usually make Sabbath service easier. Later, after the worshipers had returned, there was a serious theological discussion about whether it was permissible to make snowballs.
What Mrs. Smolen experienced has been shared by a religious niche in the Northeast during this epically snowy season. From Washington to New York State, a series of “snowmageddons” have wreaked a particular form of havoc for Orthodox Jews.
The storms have knocked down portions of the ritual boundary known as an eruv in Jewish communities in Silver Spring, Md., Center City Philadelphia, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Monsey in suburban New York, and Teaneck and Passaic in New Jersey.
Almost literally invisible even to observant Jews, the wire or string of an eruv, connected from pole to pole, allows the outdoors to be considered an extension of the home. Which means, under Judaic law, that one can carry things on the Sabbath, an act that is otherwise forbidden outside the house.
This is sounds so bad you’d almost believe it is a parody of the burden of the law from which the gospel frees us, rather than a real situation.
[url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+14:4-6&version=NIV]Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath[/url]
You do get that they don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah, yes? So, they are under the burden of the law -it’s their deal.
And yet they recognize that the Sabbath is different from any other day which many Christians fail to do (the children play their sports on Sunday don’t you know). We are so free that we don’t need a day Holy to the Lord. I think we can learn a thing or two from our Jewish brothers and sisters.
It is important to note that our Lord did not argue that doing good or important things on the Sabbath was [i]above[/i] the Law, but that God would rather we did good and would hold the Sabbath and His Law in our hearts at all times.
4, true, but we can’t, and so we hold no day Holy to the Lord. We forget the value of a discipline. We go to Church on Sunday and we don’t allow the children to engage in athletic competitions because we make an intentional effort to set aside one day Holy to the Lord right?, but in actual fact we do not. Sunday is simply another day in the week.