The Invention of the Seven-Day Week
This course covers two main themes based on a forthcoming book by Ezra Zuckerman Sivan: 1) the Torah as heralding the invention of the seven-day week, and secondarily 2) the social scientific question of how and why the seven-day week was invented. Each lecture is focused on a specific puzzle that gains its significance once we shake off our erroneous intuition that the seven-day week is built into the natural world. The key sources used in each session will be biblical, augmented by insights from rabbinic texts.
Session 1: If the seven-day week is artificial, why does the Torah in the first creation story seem to present it as a feature of the natural world?
Session 2: Why does each version of the Ten Commandments present such different (and seemingly contradictory) accounts of the historical basis for Shabbat?
Session 3: How does the Torah’s description of the first Shabbat observed by Israel fit in the larger narrative of the Exodus and the theological doubts that Israel expresses?
Session 4: If Shabbat, and the week generally, is sustained today on the basis of love, why does the Torah seem to think it requires a very harsh enforcement regime (including capital punishment)?
Session 5: Why does the Torah claim that Shabbat observance furnishes us with knowledge of God? Can the week prove that we’re not alone?
