In the twenty-five minutes that passed between the time I made the havdalah and the time I updated my status, I had a lot of thoughts running through my mind. I replayed over and over what had happened a few hours earlier, wondering if it was really important to cause a little commotion and make it public, or if I should just keep quiet forever.
What ultimately decided it was next year. In other words, this year they already desecrated Shabbat during the preparations for the Yad Labanim Memorial Day ceremony, but what will happen the next time Memorial Day falls close to Shabbat? What will make the organizers of this ceremony, and in general event organizers across the country, think twice before treating Shabbat like Tuesday? In the end, I wrote this:
""Saturday at noon. A neighbor tells me he saw trucks unloading equipment at the Yad Labanim home in Jerusalem. Tomorrow afternoon there is a big ceremony there in memory of the fallen of wars and terrorist attacks, with the Prime Minister and other dignitaries, and they are already working there.
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This doesn't make sense to me, I tell my neighbor. After all, Memorial Day, and therefore Independence Day, were postponed by a whole day so as not to desecrate Shabbat. The 5th of Iyar becomes the 1st of Iyar precisely to prevent such preparations for ceremonies during the holy day.
I walk there on foot and see workers unloading equipment and starting to take care of it. And in the background, more and more vehicles arrive and people give orders: 'Bring me electricity here,' 'Pick this up,' 'Bring ladders.' I'm not the only one who is bothered by this. Almost everyone who passes by is delayed. One neighbor says to them: 'Have you no shame?! Tomorrow, bereaved families will come to the ceremony, some of whom observe Shabbat. They don't want you working here like this now. Think of the soldiers, their sons...'. Another neighbor who passes by, on his way to the Mincha prayer, says to her and them: 'Excuse me, this is not just a religious matter. Shabbat is not your private day, in your own home you can do whatever you want, but here it is a state ceremony, what is going on here?'.
A sour atmosphere in the air. Like, unpleasant, we're not the kind to shout 'Shabbat,' but we really can't understand why it has to be like this. The director of the entire operation approaches the gathering. I remember his full name. He claims to be from the Shin Bet, but I get the impression that this is a private events company, probably a Shin Bet franchise. He tries to explain that these are security considerations, and that they have to unload the mirror machines and magnometers right now. Not on Friday afternoon or Saturday night, just a few more hours. He doesn't sound convincing, not even to himself, so he tries a different direction: 'Look, we set up the tents here before Shabbat.'.
I walk away thoughtfully, but his last sentence makes it clear to me that he's really not the bad guy in the story, he's a victim of the system: 'Wait, what do you think? I want to work on Shabbat? I don't want to be home now? I have no choice.'".
That evening I could hardly get the children to sleep because of the many phone calls and text messages from reporters asking for more details about the event. How strange to be a wanted "eyewitness" ("Suddenly I heard a tremendous desecration"). This news reached all the sectoral websites, the radio, and several newspapers within minutes. Deputy Minister of Education Avi Wortzman even announced that he would ask for answers and explanations from the organizers so that such incidents would not happen again in the future. It seems to me that in this specific place, at this specific ceremony, it may really not happen again.
But the sour taste described above stayed with me all week, and only grew stronger. Over and over again, I recalled those moments, when I and a few neighbors stood there in front of the group of workers who just wanted to unload equipment. Who were we representing there? Ourselves? I mean, is this our private interest? Is this hurting our personal feelings, as Sabbath-observing neighbors? If we hadn't passed by, would it have been okay? Is this religious coercion to tell them to stop? Or is it secular coercion, to lay the foundation for a state ceremony in the midst of the Sabbath?
And that's perhaps what irritated me the most, when I tried to analyze my embarrassment in depth – how in God's name did Shabbat itself become a subject of quarrels? I understand arguments about conscription, about conversion, about housing, about whatever you want. But how did the weekly day of rest also become an issue that divides the Jewish people? It sounds like a joke about these Jews: "I have a good gift in my treasury – and Shabbat is there," God announces to the people of Israel, and they answer him: "You will not force it on me!".
A few years ago, a producer of a new Jewish-satire show by Gil Koptash called me and asked me to participate in a survey they were conducting. The question in the survey was: "Which mitzvah would you abolish?" Once, these wild antics of Koptash almost brought down a government, today they are already broadcast as religion and tradition programs.
Well, I didn't have much of an intelligent answer, or an answer at all. Just before I wanted to answer her with humor that I would be happy if they lifted the prohibition that burdens my life so much as a Torah-observant Jew - not to eat any animal organ! - she tried to help me, quite seriously, to remember the burdensome mitzvah: "This whole Shabbat thing must be really burdensome for you, right? You have children too, right? You would surely be happy to take them to the beach or just do whatever you want on Shabbat, without all these restrictions of not lighting a fire or traveling.".
I don't usually use the phrase "I couldn't believe my ears," but I couldn't believe my ears. "Are you serious?" I said to her, "Shabbat? Not only is it not the first thing I would want to abolish, it's not the last. I mean, it seems to me that even if they suddenly abolished all the commandments, I would personally beg to be allowed to continue observing Shabbat. Just don't take that away from me. I already drive six days a week, thank you very much. And I also make phone calls and text messages and heat in the microwave and type and answer producers' strange questions on the phone. Why would I want to do all of this another day of the week? Or rather: how could I not want one day of rest from all this, a day of something else?".
Maybe I should have spoken on a higher level. Explaining how sublime and holy Shabbat is, connecting the Knesset of Israel with its aunt, but it seems to me that even before we are required to study "Reza Dashabbat" in depth, the secret of this day is simple, clear, and fun. "I don't understand you," I continued my speech, "Circumcision - everyone does it. Fasting on Yom Kippur - the same. And not Shabbat? It's precisely the cherry on the cake that we give up on in 2013? For what good, returning to another unanswered conversation? Standing in traffic jams in Shafiyim and Gaash? Getting angry at the leftist Abramovich in Ulpan Shishi?".
But if you think about it deeply, the story is not at all about me versus the producer, that is, not religious versus secular. The struggle over the image of the Sabbath is connected to countless traditional Israelis who are trampled in the middle. Sabbath lovers who are forced to desecrate it.
For years, it has been jarring to me that in Israeli discourse, people talk about keeping Shabbat as something they do to "not hurt the feelings of the religious public." Sorry, but the Shabbat of the religious public is being kept and will be kept. There is nothing to fear. Even if all the stores in Tel Aviv were to open, God forbid, the personal Shabbat of the city's dosis would not be affected. That is, it probably wouldn't make them happy and add to the Shabbat atmosphere, but by and large they would continue to make kiddush, go to synagogue, sing zemirot, and ask their children the 252 questions that the kindergarten teacher sent about this week's parashah. The difficult question is what will happen to the Shabbat of thousands and thousands who are not exactly religious but not exactly secular. Here are some very sad and very true stories for example.
A few years ago, I was sitting in a kosher branch of 'Café Hillel' in Gush Dan. Suddenly, a waiter approached me and instead of asking as usual, every three minutes, "Is everything okay? Do you like it? Can I leave? Is everything okay?", he leaned over to me as if wanting to sweeten a secret. He whispered that the place was about to start opening its doors on Shabbat, and that he wanted me to talk to his boss, because he didn't want to work shifts on Shabbat. He asked me to convince him that kosher-observing customers would abandon him en masse, and that this step was not financially viable. And why does he care so much? Because on Shabbat, he's at his grandmother's, having a family meal, even though they offer him 150% in wages on weekends. That waiter wasn't wearing a kippah. For a waiter who wears a kippah, this wasn't a dilemma. I talked to the boss, but that didn't help. He claimed that he couldn't give up his Friday-Shabbat profits. During our conversation, at the entrance counter, he repeatedly pointed to the cash register with a smile, as if to say: It decides. Money defeated Shabbat. I hope that waiter at least defeated money.
Some time later, I was a guest on a program about Jewish music, on Friday afternoon, on the Music Channel. When the broadcast ended and I got up to leave, one of the photographers approached me: "Hey, Your Honor, wait a minute." He looked me in the eyes and said the following chilling sentence: "I have a personal request: when you make kiddush tonight, think of me." The photographer sounded, I'm not exaggerating, like the captive Jonathan Pollard who had to leave an empty chair at a meal: "I'll be here in the studio, unfortunately, tonight too. What can I do, Shabbat shift. We have to. But at least you'll think of me.".
At that very time, I heard from my wife the story of the makeup artist who works on Friday night prime time. "I cook for Shabbat every Friday afternoon," she described, "and then I leave the meal ready on the grill for the family, light Shabbat candles and go out on shift to do the makeup for the talents. I'm not religious, I'm traditional. But how happy I would be not to work on Shabbat and be with my family.".
The waiter, the photographer, and the makeup artist are Israeli forced laborers. If they keep Shabbat, they will be fired. If they come to work, they will receive a higher salary than on weekdays. These sound like stories about poor Jews in exile, not in the Jewish state. None of them really wants to be there, but processes of capitalism and privatization on the one hand, and processes of turning Shabbat into a matter-of-fact affair on the other, have turned them into slave workers on Shabbat. And after all, it has already been said in our sources: "Who loves Shabbat? Me, you, and you. Almost the whole world. So why not every Shabbat?" (Chanhala and the Shabbat Dress, Chapter 3, Verse 1).
Before we ask Abbas to recognize a Jewish state, and before we enact national laws with pompous declarations, let's make sure that one of the most basic Jewish hallmarks – the Sabbath – is something we allow everyone here to observe. Shabbat Shalom.
• Yedidia Meir's column is published in the newspaper 'Besheva'.
