Why Your "Digital Shabbat" Will Fail

I’ve always thought that “rest” was a rather misleading shorthand for the purpose of the day because when people hear it, they think of “relaxing,” which isn’t exactly correct. ... Instead, I think of Shabbat as more like exercise: It can feel daunting to carve out time for it, you don’t always instantaneously achieve a meditative flow state, but y... See more

Put another way, a major reason everyone is so exhausted is because we have been taught to always strive for better, even if we have only the vaguest notion of what that “better” would look like, and even if it means viewing everything in our world as raw material that could potentially be utilized toward that end. But obedience to something outsid... See more

If Shabbat is framed as something you are doing for yourself, ...  It loses its transcendent target, which means it doesn’t provide the true release that actual submission gives, and submission is the very thing that allows us to reap all those ancillary benefits. Put another way, a major reason everyone is so exhausted is because we have been... See more

“Rest” also implies that decompression is the ultimate purpose of Shabbat, like a spiritually inflected massage. But if your own personal unwinding is the goal, you are less likely to stick to your commandment to keep Shabbat on days when you feel it’s just too hard, or you’re already centered enough that your prefrontal cortex can stand the dopami... See more

Put another way, a major reason everyone is so exhausted is because we have been taught to always strive for better, even if we have only the vaguest notion of what that “better” would look like, and even if it means viewing everything in our world as raw material that could potentially be utilized toward that end. But obedience to something outsid... See more