When I lived on campus last summer, I had an overwhelming amount of free time on the weekends. On Friday nights, I would go to Shabbat dinners hosted by Jewish friends. We would pack into sweltering un-air-conditioned living rooms and share potluck dinners and wine. On Sunday afternoons, I would go to church with my friends and spend the rest of the day with them playing cards and making dumplings. It was good. During these serene summer weekends, I realized that what I was doing was much deeper than just relaxing: I was observing a version of the Sabbath, a tradition that we could all benefit from.
The Sabbath is an ancient Judeo-Christian ritual. According to the book of Genesis, the Sabbath’s significance is cosmic, for it was created alongside the universe itself. God made the world in six days, and on the seventh, he rested — not because he was tired, but because he intended to set an example for humanity.
To observe the Sabbath day is one of the Ten Commandments. However, in my experience, it’s the one commandment that Christians, myself included, don’t even make an effort to keep. We live in a culture that prizes the hustle and devalues rest. That’s why the Jewish community’s commitment to observe the Sabbath is an inspiration to me — and maybe it should be for us all. I believe the ritual of the Sabbath, whether observed in a religious or secular sense, is for everyone. A weekly day of rest that is communal and enforced lets us escape the false promises of workaholism and become closer to those around us.
Since high school, I’ve been infected with what writer Oliver Burkeman describes as “productivity debt” — the lurking feeling that I need to be constantly delivering to justify my own existence, that I can’t feel good about myself until my to-do list is clear. I’m sure many of us can relate. Despite Brown’s reputation as the “happy Ivy,” we still feel a constant pressure to perform.
Now, I could tell you that you should keep the Sabbath because it would make you more productive. There’s a slew of literature on the internet extolling the productivity benefits of rest: less is more, you’ll have more energy, you’ll focus more, yadda, yadda. Often, I hear people say “I need to recharge this weekend” in hopes of bouncing back better than ever. But this is the wrong way to think about rest.
The purpose of the Sabbath is not to improve productivity but to eschew it. In his seminal work titled simply “The Sabbath,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that “The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work.” Expunge the word “recharge” from your vocabulary, for you are not a machine. Living life as a cycle of weekends and weekdays, devoid of deeper meaning, is a recipe for burnout.
Healthy rest is a time to enjoy the fruits of your labor, cherishing what you’ve earned. Just as God rested after creating the world, the Sabbath is a time to admire the world around you and savor its goodness. This is a skill that must be practiced.
When it comes to resting, I think Jewish tradition has two practical lessons that are useful for all of us: The Sabbath must be enforced, and it must be communal.
Forced rest might seem like an oxymoron, but just like exercise or study, rest is something that should be done regularly, even when it isn’t convenient. Put it on your Google Calendar. A 24-hour day of rest is ideal — my Sabbath is noon on Saturday to noon on Sunday — but if you can’t do that, take 12 hours. Take three hours.
Like any commitment, the Sabbath entails sacrifice. I don’t think I could ever sacrifice as much as observant Jews do for the Sabbath, as I like cooking, biking and listening to music too much. But when I ride my bike past an Orthodox Jewish family walking to synagogue on a hot July Saturday morning, I consider that if they can say no to technology, surely I can say no to a few work commitments. Likewise, you will need to get in the habit of defending your Sabbath time.
This segues nicely to the next lesson: Do it together. Judith Shulevitz, author of “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time,” has a four-step program for a communal Sabbath: “limit work time, make sure the schedules are coordinated, make it a regular habit so that it becomes a regular norm — and the fourth is really the most important — make it festive. Make it fun. Fill it with things.” What kinds of things? Not empty pleasures or bedrotting, but quality time with close friends that makes your soul sing.
Try it this weekend. I promise that those glowing devices will grow strangely dim in the sunlight of the Sabbath.
Evan Tao ’27 can be reached at evan_tao@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
