Modern-Day Sabbath as Cure for Modern Life

Well, my new found Jewishness has got me thinking about what it is about Judaism that I've always found tertiarily appealing. One of the things that first came to mind was the idea of the Sabbath. The core of it is that you reserve one day a week on which no work is done, to be spent in study and reflection. The basic rules of the traditional Jewish Sabbath are

154.	Sabbath Rest
8	Remember the Sabbath day and keep it sacred.
9	You shall labor for six days and do all your work.
10	But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. no work is to be done then, either by you or by your son or daughter, or by your male or female servants, or by your work animal, or by a foreigner in your settlement.
11	In six days the LORD made skies and earth, the sea and everything in them, but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it sacred.
	--- Hebrew Bible, Exodus20:8-11

155.	Covenanters' Sabbath Rules
17	...And on the Sabbath day no man shall speak
18	a foolish and empty word. He shall lend nothing to his comrade. He shall make no plan concerning wealth and profit.
19	He shall speak no word in matters of business or work to be done the next day.
20	No man shall walk in a field to do services for himself
21	on the Sabbath. He shall not walk more than a thousand cubits[= 500 yards] from his town.
22	No man shall eat on the Sabbath day except what was already prepared. Nor from what was lost
23	in a field. And he shall not eat and drink except in the camp...
	--- Dead Sea Scrolls, Damascus Covenant10.17-23

Source Here (note: when googling for 'Sabbath rules' be sure to exclude references to the band Black Sabbath and how much they rule) Below these basic ones are a lot of specifics about not helping an animal give birth and how to harvest crops, stuff that is of course obsolete and not central to my idea for a modern-day equivalent. The important parts are those about not pursuing financial business on your day of rest. It would be similar to the annual Buy Nothing Day, only it would be once a week, and would take you out of not just the consumption cycle but the production side of our modern world as well.

But unlike 'buy nothing day' which is essentially destructive and negative, a weekly day of removal from the modern world could be very positive and constructive. When it becomes a habit you would start looking forward to it, instead of doing more shopping the day before Buy Nothing Day to last you through it, and then treating it as an exercise in self-discipline to make an essentially negative statement, you would become accustomed to simply slowing down for one day and re-adjusting your normal rhythms.

I'm thinking about starting a sort-of Sabbath as a way of rescuing my sanity. One day a week of no computers, no Internet, no working, no shopping, just quiet relaxation and reading perhaps. I might make an exception for music, I don't put much value in absolute ascetism for its own sake.

The traditional Sabbath also involved not going out to eat or cooking. But I don't think this is necessary. That was taking the assumption that everyone in a community would be observing the Sabbath on the same day, whereas in my mind it is a personal thing, and not everyone who does it needs to take the same day, so while I have my day on a Saturday, a person who works at a restaurant can have theirs on another day.

One of my current favourite authors and graphic novel creators, Douglas Rushkoff (blog) has done a lot of writing on the place of Judaism in today's world (good introductory article here), and has argued that many of the rituals that the institutional establishment cling to are woefully obsolete and get in the way of the core of Judaism which he believes still has a lot to offer people in modern times. He boils down the basic beliefs as abstract monotheism, iconoclasm and a belief in social justice. This is a lot more relevant than strict rituals and other trappings of established institutional religions. He's even taken it so far as to create a project he calls Open Source Judaism in which people come together to discuss and interpret Jewish teachings in a modern context.

... And wouldn't you know it, he's written an article on the modern day Sabbath, and even ties it into the same themes as were explored in The Corporation. The article is here.

The irony here is that religion might actually serve as a last line of defense against this branded cultural imperialism. Adbusters' annual "Buy Nothing Day" used to occur once a week as a long-forgotten ritual called "Sabbath." Once every seven days, the Judeo-Christian founders concluded a few millennia ago, people should take a break from the cycle of consumption and production.

Imagine trying to practice Sabbath today. What's left to do that doesn't involve paying for admission? Are there any public spaces left other than the mall? Though the Sabbath was widely celebrated even 10 years ago, it now falls outside the imaginable for the market fascists: wouldn't it throw the economy into a recession?

Perhaps, but it would also give us 24 hours each week to restore a bit of autonomy into our own affairs. The hard right has claimed the spiritual high ground (as a way of promoting market values) but it may actually belong to us. It's our way of disengaging from the corporate machine, unplugging from the matrix, and considering whether we would rather have a communal barbecue pit at the end of the block. It's not time off; it's time "on." It's a sacred space for the living. We might even use it to have sex.