Note 803 — Chapter VIII · THE HEBREW SABBATH

Ibid., xvi, 23. The rules forbidding the lighting of fires and cooking on the Sabbath were very strictly observed by the Essenes (Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, ii, 8). In the Mishna (Shabbāth, iv, 1) the prohibition to bake and boil on the Sabbath is interpreted to mean that food may be kept hot on the Sabbath, provided its existing heat is not increased, which would be “boiling.” Hence the food must be put only into such substances as would maintain but not increase the heat. The prohibition to kindle a fire on the Sabbath was naturally extended to one of extinguishing a fire, as well as lights and lamps (ibid., xvi, 6). In mediæval times Rabbi Solomon ben Adret had a lock affixed to his stove, and kept the key over the Sabbath to prevent his too-considerate housemaid from lighting a fire on Saturdays (I. Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, London, 1896, p. 83). On the modern Jewish custom of kindling lights at the arrival and departure of the Sabbath see M. Friedmann, “The Sabbath Light,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 1891, iii, 707-721.