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‘... for that was a Great Sabbath. ‘ —John 19:31
The Sabbath that immediately precedes Pesah (Passover) is called Shabbat ha-Gadol, the Great Sabbath. It is this day that is commemorated in the Christian calendar as Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It is a day whose mystical significance has not, perhaps, been sufficiently drawn to our attention.
Holy Saturday is in every way a Nothing Day. There is no liturgical celebration. The churches are empty. The altars are stripped. The tabernacles have been vacated and their doors stand ajar. Nothing whatever is happening. What does this mean?
It is the Great Sabbath—the Great Silence, the Great Nothing that precedes the Feast of Redemption, of liberation from slavery, of entry into the New Life of freedom.
To begin to appreciate it, to experience and savour it, we need to study the significance of the Sabbath in general. It is, no doubt, an endless study, for not only have scholars thought about it for thousands of years, but worshippers commit themselves to live it and experience it deeper and deeper throughout their lives.
‘Sabbath’ comes from the Hebrew shavat = ‘to rest’. It recalls the Creation and God’s rest when it was completed. It is characterised by cessation of creative physical activity.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And the seventh day God finished his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation. —Gen. 2: 2—3.
1 Fromm, Erich, The Forgotten Language. New York: Grove, 1957. p. 244Google Scholar.
2 Fromm, Erich, You Shall Be as Gods. Greenwich, CN: Fawcett, 1969. p. 156Google Scholar.
3 Patai, Raphael, The Hebrew Goddess. New York: Avon, 1978. ch. 8Google Scholar.
4 The Union Prayerbook for Jewish Worship, Part I (New York: Central Conference of American Rabbis), p. 27.
5 Cf. Scholem, Gershom, Kabbalah. New York: New American Library, 1974. pp. 194fGoogle Scholar.
6 De Opif. Mundi 100 (Loeb i. p. 79)
7 Patai, op. cit. p. 237.
8 Scholem, op. cit. p. 46.
9 ibid, pp 88f.
10 ibid. pp. 94f.
11 Scholem, Gershom ed., Zohar: The Book of Splendor. New York: Schocken, 1963. p. 85Google Scholar.
12 Shabbat 118a.
13 Fromm, You Shall be as Gods, p. 155.
14 Man's Quest for God. New York: Scribner's, 1954. p. 151.Google Scholar
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