창세기 2:1의 Halakhah

Whosoever prays on Sabbath eve and recites "And the heavens and the earth were completed" (Genesis 2:1) is accounted by Scripture as if he became a partner to the Holy One, blessed be He, in the work of creation.

In the Amida on Shabbat night we recite Va-yekhulu, the three verses at the end of account of creation (Bereishit 2:1-3) that introduce the idea of Shabbat.

In his first responsum Iggerot Mosheh dismisses the statement of the father, not because he was a heretic, but because he was a Sabbathdesecrator. The principle formulated by the Gemara, Eruvin 69b, is that public desecration of the Sabbath is tantamount to heresy. That principle is predicated upon the premise that open and notorious desecration of the Sabbath is evidence that the transgressor denies that God created the universe over a period of six days and rested on the seventh. That talmudic presumption went unchallenged until the mid-nineteenth century. R. Jacob Ettlinger, Teshuvot Binyan Ẓion ha-Hadashot, no. 23, reports a socioreligious phenomenon, novel in nineteenth-century Germany but all too familiar in twentieth-century America, viz., the existence of countless numbers of Jews who offered Sabbath prayers and recited kiddush each Sabbath eve but then proceeded to desecrate the Sabbath by engaging in all manner of forbidden activity. Is it logical, queries Binyan Ẓion, for a person who denies creation to devoutly recite "And the heaven and earth and all their hosts were complete. And on the seventh day God completed the world which He made and He rested on the seventh day…." (Genesis 2:1-2). The notion of a believing Sabbath-desecrator might have been an oxymoron in a bygone age but in the modern world, argues Binyan Ẓion, it is a new reality. In the modern age, whether because of financial duress or other factors, that phenomenon is all too real. Others, who are raised in irreligious homes, know no better and have the status of "a child who was held in captivity among pagans." Accordingly, in light of the changed realia, rules Binyan Ẓion, the talmudic presumption of heresy does not attach itself to such persons.