 | Recently our community honored "National Day of Unplugging," an idea that emerged from a book entitled "The Sabbath Manifesto." Our conversation explored Shabbat as a mitzvah, a commandment, and as a choice – a purposeful making space – shaped by centuries of collective experience and wisdom about good living. For some of us, the notion of commandedness –being obligated – rubs the wrong way. For some of us, commandedness evokes a traditionalism we don't buy and a power we don't accept. It's a subject worth our focus, because at stake is nothing less than life itself. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Vayakhel 5786 (2026)
Why do we "do Jewish"? Answers are as diverse as we are. We might "do Jewish" because of community, culture, values or social justice. We might "do Jewish" to make meaning in our lives, structure our lives, cultivate character, engage in lifelong learning, open ourselves to spiritual experience, or seek comfort in a topsy-turvy world.
Shabbat, at heart, is about all of these. Even more, Shabbat is about knocking us alive.
Our community explored this purpose at Shabbat last week for National Day of Unplugging.
The idea hails from The Sabbath Manifesto, a project to mine, in modern ways, the wisdom that Shabbat has encoded for the Jewish people. (As Rav Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Israel famously put it, "More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.")
The Sabbath Manifesto likens itself to the Slow Movement (e.g. slow food, slow living). It's the work of artists, writers, filmmakers, and media moguls "who, while not particularly religious, felt a collective need to fight back against our increasingly fast-paced way of living."
Why? Because constant activity and distraction can raise our baseline anxiety and hook us on the momentum of needing more. How often do we scroll our phones? How much do we keep busy not in productive ways but to keep from fully feeling and being?
Our whole society seems geared for it. Certainly these times conspire to immerse us in it.
That's why I distributed Shir Ami-themed organic cloth "National Day of Unplugging" bags for our phones (we have more if you want one): to interrupt the anxiety-stoking automaticity that can keep us from being fully present, which can keep us from fully feeling and being
That's what Shabbat is about: making space for fully feeling and being, for being fully alive.
Yet many of us learned that Shabbat's "rules" and "restrictions," anchored in another era, either don't make sense now or aren't ones we'd choose – so we don't. "Commandedness," including the mitzvot of Shabbat, don't fit the God we believe in – or don't believe in.
"Do not work on Shabbat," says Torah. And in this week's portion, as our desert-wandering began building the Mishkan (our first holy place, where God dwelled amidst us), Torah spoke those words with a coda that easily can send most of us running (Exodus 35:2-3):
Vayakhel 5786 (2026)
Why do we "do Jewish"? Answers are as diverse as we are. We might "do Jewish" because of community, culture, values or social justice. We might "do Jewish" to make meaning in our lives, structure our lives, cultivate character, engage in lifelong learning, open ourselves to spiritual experience, or seek comfort in a topsy-turvy world.
Shabbat, at heart, is about all of these. Even more, Shabbat is about knocking us alive.
Our community explored this purpose at Shabbat last week for National Day of Unplugging.
The idea hails from The Sabbath Manifesto, a project to mine, in modern ways, the wisdom that Shabbat has encoded for the Jewish people. (As Rav Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Israel famously put it, "More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.")
The Sabbath Manifesto likens itself to the Slow Movement (e.g. slow food, slow living). It's the work of artists, writers, filmmakers, and media moguls "who, while not particularly religious, felt a collective need to fight back against our increasingly fast-paced way of living."
Why? Because constant activity and distraction can raise our baseline anxiety and hook us on the momentum of needing more. How often do we scroll our phones? How much do we keep busy not in productive ways but to keep from fully feeling and being?
Our whole society seems geared for it. Certainly these times conspire to immerse us in it.
That's why I distributed Shir Ami-themed organic cloth "National Day of Unplugging" bags for our phones (we have more if you want one): to interrupt the anxiety-stoking automaticity that can keep us from being fully present, which can keep us from fully feeling and being
That's what Shabbat is about: making space for fully feeling and being, for being fully alive.
Yet many of us learned that Shabbat's "rules" and "restrictions," anchored in another era, either don't make sense now or aren't ones we'd choose – so we don't. "Commandedness," including the mitzvot of Shabbat, don't fit the God we believe in – or don't believe in.
"Do not work on Shabbat," says Torah. And in this week's portion, as our desert-wandering began building the Mishkan (our first holy place, where God dwelled amidst us), Torah spoke those words with a coda that easily can send most of us running (Exodus 35:2-3):
| שֵׁ֣שֶׁת יָמִים֮ תֵּעָשֶׂ֣ה מְלָאכָה֒ וּבַיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֗י יִהְיֶ֨ה לָכֶ֥ם קֹ֛דֶשׁ שַׁבַּ֥ת שַׁבָּת֖וֹן לַיהו׳׳ה כָּל־הָעֹשֶׂ֥ה ב֛וֹ מְלָאכָ֖ה יוּמָֽת׃ | Six days work may be done, but the seventh day will be for you a complete Shabbat to YHVH. All who do work on it "yumat." |
Yumat – "will be deaded." If we read this word as a death penalty, as some translations do, we easily can be put off entirely. On ethical grounds, we can lose Torah's modern relevance, and with it Shabbat and the Source of it all.
But the Hebrew isn't "killed": It's really "deaded," elegantly expressing a profound truth. If we treat every day the same, if we let work, errands and routine consume us, if we let anxiety and automaticity control us, if we let them immerse us in distraction and insatiable momentum that subconsciously craves more, then we become emotionally and spiritually muted.
We become less than fully alive.
And nothing – not even building the Mishkan – was worth that. Shabbat, being fully alive, is more important than the Mishkan and anything humanity can create. This kind of Shabbat, if we let it, can be a profound healing for the soul, for love, for friendships, for community, and even for the world.
What happens if we let Shabbat knock us alive?
But the Hebrew isn't "killed": It's really "deaded," elegantly expressing a profound truth. If we treat every day the same, if we let work, errands and routine consume us, if we let anxiety and automaticity control us, if we let them immerse us in distraction and insatiable momentum that subconsciously craves more, then we become emotionally and spiritually muted.
We become less than fully alive.
And nothing – not even building the Mishkan – was worth that. Shabbat, being fully alive, is more important than the Mishkan and anything humanity can create. This kind of Shabbat, if we let it, can be a profound healing for the soul, for love, for friendships, for community, and even for the world.
What happens if we let Shabbat knock us alive?
RSS Feed