Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

On the Sabbath it is not permitted to carry from inside the home to the outside of the home, or from the outside of the home to the inside of the home, without setting an “eruv”, a boundary set before Shabbat that allows one to carry within its domain. In keeping with this restriction, the Talmudic sage Rav Hananya comes to teach that a person must feel their clothing (beged) on the eve of the Sabbath in order to make certain that they are not carrying anything in their pockets. One Rav Yosef adds, “This is an important law for the Sabbath”. (BT Shabbat 12a)

What can this law say to the modern Jew, who perhaps wants to honor the Sabbath but is not punctilious about whether or not he or she carries things on Shabbat? The Slonimer Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Noach Berezovsky (d. 2000) notes the similarity between the word for clothing (beged) and the word for faithlessness, disloyalty or deceit. (bagad). He suggests that we should worry about what we are carrying as we enter Shabbat, not only in our pockets but, perhaps more importantly, in our minds! We should check to see if we are carrying any grievances around with us as we enter the Sabbath. Have we been untrue to ourselves, deceitful with others? The eve of the Sabbath is a time to examine ourselves and our dealings with our colleagues, our friends, and our families. It is a time to do a “tikun”, to right ourselves and to repair our relationships which may have been damaged in the previous week. This is one of the ways we can prepare ourselves to enter into the Holiness of Shabbat.

And that is “an important law for the Sabbath”, indeed.

Shabbat Shalom

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