A Rabbinic Controversy About Fashion and Ferocity

The written Torah teaches us that God refrained from creative activity, melakhah, on the first Shabbat. So too we — God’s creations — must refrain from acting as creators each Shabbat (Genesis 2:1-3 and Exodus 20).

The mishnah lists thirty-nine archetypal melakhah activities that are forbidden to us on Shabbat (Tractate Shabbat 7:2). Each of these was performed in building the Holy Temple, the paradigm of creative human activity to bring God’s holy presence into the world. The last melakhah listed there is carrying:

…one who carries out an object from one domain to another domain.

Technically, this last type of work is not creative activity; it doesn’t involve transforming one thing into another, by building or destroying. Likely, it was included in the list because a construction project requires constant movement of building materials from place to place.  

Carrying in public is therefore an integral part of creative and productive work from which we refrain on Shabbat.

The mishnahA collection of rabbinic teachings edited in Israel around 225 CE. Organized in six sedaraim by subject matter and dealing with both ritual and civil law. Both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud are expansive discussions of the Mishnah. Read more seeks to make Shabbat prohibitions livable, so that Shabbat is a joy rather than a burden. It distinguishes between objects that one should not “go out with” in public, and others, such as clothing and jewelry, which one may wear in public on Shabbat. These things beautify us in honor of the holy day, and they are technically parts of our dress, not objects which we carry. 

So what about weapons?

The rabbis of the mishnah discussed in fine detail the differences between carrying an object and wearing an object. Tractate Shabbat 6:4 records an interesting argument about this which begins with a prohibition against men wearing (“going out with…”) weaponry on Shabbat:

A man may neither go out on Shabbat with a sword, nor with a bow, nor with a triangular shield, nor with a circular shield, nor with a spear…

Because the mishnah is more a record of differing legal opinions than a law code, one of the rabbis then expresses disagreement with this prohibition:

Rabbi Eliezer says: These weapons are ornaments for him…

For Rabbi Eliezer, a sword is like a necklace: some weapons are part of a man’s dress code. Nonetheless, the majority ruling forbids a man from wearing his weapons on Shabbat — even, presumably, if they are ornamental — and for a very meaningful reason:

And the rabbis say: They [weapons] are nothing other than reprehensible (and in the future they will be eliminated,) as it is written: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).

In this famous verse, the prophet Isaiah dreams of a world in which not only human beings, but even their weaponry, will experience a radical transformation from violence to peace. Implements of death will be repurposed as farming tools for gathering food and helping trees to grow, thus increasing life. Nations will no longer need weapons, because war will cease entirely.  

The prophet’s vision of this perfected world of peace becomes the oblique, theological basis for the rabbis’ halakhic (legal) Shabbat prohibition on wearing weapons. 

In Roman culture, upper-class men wore their weapons ornamentally to project their ideal of the “manly man” who is always prepared to fight. Rabbi Eliezer came from the upper class of Jewish society in Roman-ruled Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel), and may have been influenced by these extreme, militaristic Roman perspectives. (See the Hebrew work Mishnat Eretz Yisrael on Mishnah Shabbat 6:4.) 

His colleagues may have agreed with his technical argument, but nevertheless they ruled more strictly.  Weapons are g’nai, reprehensible aspects of the world’s ugly reality, whether they are technically adornments or not. Wearing them during the weekday might be a statement about fashion and manliness, and even a necessity of self-defense, but it is still a concession to the world as it is. To wear them on Shabbat, as Rabbi Eliezer permits, is to send a most reprehensible message that glorifies war and its implements. Shabbat is mei-ein ha-olam ha-ba, a taste of the world to come in line with Isaiah’s vision. On Shabbat we focus on the world as it should be: Free of weapons and war.