In the 4th Century CE Emperor Constantine, the ruler over the Roman Empire made Christianity the State religion of his massive empire. Soon after he decided that the Christian calendar should no longer be relegated to follow that of the Jewish one when determining Christian holidays, as it had been since the 1st Century CE. He then had the newly forming Roman Catholic Church begin to develop its own criteria as to when on the calendar the holidays relating to the new State religion would follow. In order to do this the Jewish calendar, which was the gold standard, had to be downplayed, or as we would say today, "Be De-platformed."
Constantine was successful in his task. However, the why for the need to denigrate the observance of the Shabbat or Sabbath became of particular interest to the "Church" to diminish Shabbat observance within its ranks is seldom addressed.
Rabbi Blumenthal takes a look at some of those reasons the attack on the observance of Shabbat is worthy of Christianity's attention for the past two millennia.
