Beyond that, however, I think it is important to understand two points: where the Torah is coming from in advancing this rule, and why it is not our place to judge

the Torah.

I would suggest that the Sabbath, being one of the “Ten Commandments” and being the model of God’s rest from the work of Creation, is our best example of how we can imitate our Father in Heaven. He created for six days, and rested on the seventh. In this sense, neglecting the Sabbath serves as a denial of His role in creating the universe. A Jewish person who snubs God’s existence in this way is like a person who smugly rebels against a king in his own court, at the king’s celebration of his kingdom. [I understand people do not feel this way – but this is a very simple argument of where the Torah may be coming from.]

I don’t feel we can judge the Torah as being immoral for suggesting a capital punishment for this offense, because morality is defined differently in every generation. This point was articulated brilliantly by Rabbi Norman Lamm in a sermon he delivered on March 21, 1970, entitled “In Defense of Samuel.”

Addressing Shmuel the Prophet’s right to kill Agag, king of Amalek in Samuel I 15:33, Rabbi Lamm suggested there are absolute moral principles, but there are also “moral insights that develop slowly in the history of the human family as a result of various individual insights, until by consensus…they are recognized as binding moral judgments.”

In his homiletical elaboration, he raises historical developments of the practices of polygamy and slavery of old, as well as the draft board (this was during the Vietnam War) and the penal system of our society today, the former two having been defined in more modern times as being morally reprehensible, and the latter two are subject to scrutiny in our evolving society. Are we to, therefore, judge great, otherwise moral, people of ages past for having practiced these activities in a time and place when our contemporary moral sensitivity did not yet exist, and when the common consensus was that these activities were moral?