This month we will continue in our two-part series exploring a deceptively simple question: what are our Jewish texts actually trying to do? Not just what they say, but why they exist, how they relate to one another, and what each stage of our tradition is trying to accomplish.

To do this, we’ll trace one idea across the early layers of Jewish text. We’ll look at our halakhic literature and modern responsa to see how the idea of Shabbat continues to develop allowing us to zoom out to see the big picture of how Jewish law and meaning begin to take shape.