This is why you can't swim on Shabbat?!?

A relatively green baal teshuva friend of mine told me the other day that he had asked his rabbi if he could swim in the ocean on Shabbat.  The answer was, effectively, no. 

This made me sad.  And confused.  And angry.


It would be easy, wouldn't it, if I could just say screw the rabbis.  Certain laws of shomer shabbat are so old, so convoluted, so nonsensical that it makes me wonder how any rational-thinking Jew would even consider following them.  I recognize that things are more complicated, but it nevertheless leaves me scratching my head:

As I understand it, you can't swim in the ocean not because swimming itself is a problem but because it might put you in a situation where you would, indirectly, violate a Shabbat prohibition.  My BT friend's rabbi said getting one's self or bathing suit wet might cause you to "carry" water, which, in the absence of an eruv, is forbidden.  (Does that mean you can't go out in the rain without an eruv?  The mind reels...)  AskMoses.com offers an even sillier answer:  "The sages prohibited swimming in a river or lake on Shabbat since it could lead to repairing a raft (which would fall under the forbidden labor of  "Makeh B'Patish" “administering the final hammer blow."  This can't be serious.  You can't do something on shabbat if doing it might theoretically put you in a situation where you might have to violate the laws of Shabbat?  They go on to add "This prohibition extends to all situations, even in a scenario where there is no likelihood of repairing a raft, since rabbinic ordinances generally apply even when the original considerations and reasons for the prohibition are no longer applicable."

Please, please someone tell me that the reason you can't swim on Shabbat isn't that two thousand years ago doing so might have put you in a situation where you might have to repair a raft.  Please. 

So this friend of mine, on vacation at a lovely beach destination, needs to spend Shabbat looking at -- but not going in -- the ocean because of this (kosher) baloney.  I pushed him on this, and basically the answer I got was:  Jews don't always get to do what they want, and by not doing certain things together -- by taking extra care to go the extra mile to make sure that the letter of the laws are observed  -- Jews collectively fulfill God's will. 

This is what makes me sad, angry, and confused all at once.  The idea that Jews should differentiate ourselves in certain, traditional ways as a means of bringing us together as a people as well as to praise God, I can understand and get on board with.  The Torah, it seems to me, is pretty fair about this:  It says cease all your work on Shabbat.  Fine.  But leave it to Jews to ask "What is work?" and answer it by coming up with 39 categories of forbidden activities, each of which, over the centuries, has been further elaborated into hundreds of additional things you can't do. 

To be honest, I'm kind of in awe of anyone who can entirely avoid forbidden activities and still get out of bed on Saturday morning.  (ow can one even remember all the required things without going mental?)  In that sense, I do see something noble about my friend's not going swimming on Shabbat.  He's taking his commitment to shomer shabbat seriously, which means taking the time to know what you can and can't do, and following through with it.  It must take serious willpower to consciously make the choice to observe mitzvot that you weren't born and raised to follow, and I respect it.  And I must confess, by extention it made me a little sad to think that (a) I don't know that I have that kind of willpower; (b) I don't know if I want to have that kind of willpower; (c) even if I did have that willpower, I don't think I'd keep out of the ocean on Shabbat; and (d) putting (a), (b) and (c) together makes me a bad Jew. 

But then I start to think, where does it end?  At what point does the pursuit of rest on Shabbat become so burdensome that it becomes something to dread rather than enjoy?  At what point does attention to the infinitely subdivided categories of the forbidden overwhelm the point of the exercise in the first place, to remove one's self from worldly concerns in order to remember and celebrate God's resting after the creation?  Must one literally and entirely remove one's self from the world in order to observe Shabbat?  This is where I start to get angry:  That rabbis who lived centuries ago would know more than I do about what it takes for me to reflect on the key themes of Shabbat is both ridiculous and disturbing.  Claming that Oral Torah was also revealed at Sinai may be a convenient way of brushing these concerns under the carpet (if this is what God wants me to do, who cares what I want do to), but that's something I'm not willing to even entertain.  I approach this from the perspective of a number of really brilliant rabbis discussed these things centuries ago, but their judgment on certain kinds of things simply cannot be assumed to be absolutely true and binding for all time. 

But then I start to get sad again:  Because I do see the logic of conserving laws and traditions regardless of where they come from.  I do realize that if all of us in every age came up with our own personal ways of observing Shabbat, collectively we would lose something.  And I do believe that part of what makes the Jewish people worth being a part of is our common traditions, history, language and practices. 

But then I get mad, because I look at the insular, backwards-looking, impenetrable, fundamentalist, non-logical Jewish authorities who are "empowered" to tell us what to do and not to do; I look at that world of which I am not a part and never want to be a part; and I feel as if the more I look and and learn what little bits of Jewish law I know, the more I realize how little I know, and the more I feel inadequate.  I reject the authority of others to tell me who I am and what I should do, but I also feel wrong turning away from and rejecting them. 

How can I live a meaningful, authentic Jewish life while acknowledging that that there are certain aspects of my faith that I cannot -- and probably will never -- do?