We'll Need Shabbat

On the sabbath day, it has been the tradition for millennia to refrain from work. There are 39 categories, or melakhot, of prohibited work.

The restriction on work is not merely for rest. I mean, no surprise. It’s halacha, Jewish law, nothing can ever mean only one thing.

A surface-level read would suggest that you put down your implements of work and rest. And, yes, good enough. But there’s more. Abraham Joshua Heschel described Shabbat as a palace in time. I’ve always loved that imagery. Let me blend some Jewish wisdom together. Within that palace, we are to act as there is not even work to do.

Do you feel the difference between rest and acting that there is not even work to do?

Shabbat is not to cease from your work. Shabbat is to imagine that work does not exist. Shabbat is a foretaste of a perfect world; one-sixth of the world to come, olam haba. For one day each week, you leave the world that is, olam ha-zeh, you enter a palace in time, you act as though there is no work to do at all, and you get a foretaste of the perfect world.

Or that’s the idea, anyway, or a modern take on the idea. I haven’t lived in 6th century BCE Babylonia.

It’s pretty cool, right?

Now, I don’t really do any of that.

I don’t keep shabbat, is what I should say.

But I’m always mindful that it is Shabbat when it is Shabbat. Whatever the family is all doing, one of the kids on VR, somebody else in their bedroom, my wife reading, usually I’m getting ready to make dinner, or I’ve just put it on the table, the entire family sort of wishes each other Shabbat Shalom! I’ll kiss Whitney on the head and tell her softly, then I’ll holler it through the closed door of our thirteen year old’s room. Gideon won’t hear me when I try to tell him. He’s the one on VR. Noah, the most bull-in-a-china-shop long, curly-haired sweet child with anxiety and ADHD is always bouncing around the house on this huge inflatable ball he won at Dave and Buster’s. This kid’s amazing. I’ll start the melody from somewhere in the house, “Shabbat shalom,” and wherever Noah is, he’ll yell, “Hey!” That’s all it takes, and we’re both going, “Shabbat Shalom! Hey! Shabbat Shalom! Hey! Shabbat, shabbat, shabbat shalom!”

Sometimes we do candles, but not as much lately. I try to record a video for social media to put a shabbat shalom out there to the world. And I always end up writing on Shabbat. That is right now, Friday January 24, 2025, 8:22 p.m. EST.

What a week.

Friends, I think we’re going to need Shabbat.

And this, coming from a guy who doesn’t even keep it!

Let me get us back to the top. To enter a palace in time and to act as though the work did not exist.

All the work you have been doing following news, tuning into Jamelle Bouie and V, Under the Desk. Getting fired up with Pearlmania. Scrolling bluesky. Connecting with the organizers on Discord. Scrolling Substack, and are we all moving to Substack, or does Substack still have the nazi problem? I left because of that, but now I’m back, but I’m mad as ever at nazis right now.

It’s a lot.

Checking in on your friends from vulnerable communities. Breathing through the frustration and hurt of mean-spirited internet comments and watching people in your personal life who you have loved and trusted betray you with their words and actions. The heavy emotional work of seeing a Hitler salute given from behind the Presidential Seal.

All the work we have been doing, and only since the 20th.

Oy.

All this work does not exist on Shabbat.

And the work does not exist because we ignore it.

The work does not exist because, on Shabbat, the work is completed.

The work of expanding rights, the work of reparatory justice, the work of welcoming the stranger, the work of feeding and housing, the work of achieving the dignity of all persons, all of this work does not exist because, on Shabbat, all of the work is completed.

Friends, I think we’re going to need Shabbat.

If this week has been an example, our bruised bodies and weary minds will get very little rest in the coming weeks. I don’t feel like I’ve rested. Maybe I’ve slept, but I haven’t gotten much rest.

So while I don’t expect to be constructing an eruv line, putting on chollent, or learning havdalah blessings anytime soon, I do think I’ll be more intentional about holding myself to the commitment that I’m always mindful that it is Shabbat when it is Shabbat.

To give myself one day when I act as though the work of justice is complete. I think maybe we could all use that.