Being Shabbat

Vayakhel-Pekudei 5778 / 10 March 2018

I had the privilege of spending Presidents’ Weekend outside Santa Cruz, California, at the On Being Gathering. Since my return, the Gathering has proven difficult to describe: On Being is a weekly hour-long interview, hosted by Krista Tippet, that airs on public radio early on weekend mornings and is also available by podcast; guests run the gamut from religious figures, including rabbis such as David Hartman and Sharon Brous, to scientists, poets, journalists, and tech innovators; and the conversations, which cover nearly every area of human existence, are hard to characterize. Based on the conversations I had the first night, I wasn’t the only person struggling to wrap my head around what the Gathering was. Participants came from all over North America, and a few people from overseas, but the only obvious thing we had in common was our listening to the same radio show — in different places, at different times, often entirely by ourselves. Back at home, each time I share about the Gathering, I feel like whoever I am talking to is thinking, “You went to a conference for people who listen to a radio show?”

Reading parashat Vayakhel this week has helped clarify some of what was so powerful in my experience of the Gathering. This morning’s Torah reading contains the final construction of the Mishkan, the Israelites’ portable wilderness shrine, but it opens with yet another declaration of Shabbat: שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תֵּֽעָשֶׂה מְלָאכָה וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי יִהְיֶה לָכֶם קֹדֶשׁ שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן לַֽה’, “Six days work shall be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to Adonai.”^[1] The importance Shabbat has been a recurring theme throughout the Mishkan’s construction, and it turns out that Shabbat plays an integral role in all מלאכה, creative labor. The term מלאכה, which we hear most often in describing the work we don’t do on Shabbat, is the same word used to depict the work God did in creating the universe. I love the midrash that looks at the verse, וַיְכַ֤ל אֱלֹהִים֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י מְלַאכְתּ֖וֹ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֑ה וַיִּשְׁבֹּת֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔י, “And on the seventh day God finished the work that [God] had done, and rested on the seventh day,”^[2] and interprets it to mean that God did in fact create something on the seventh day: on that day God created rest itself.^[3] In the creation story, Shabbat does not mark the end of creation; it forms the culmination of the work, part and parcel of the overall project.

We find a similar dynamic at play in our parshah. Shabbat is not limited to resting on that seventh day. The instruction begins, שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תֵּֽעָשֶׂה מְלָאכָה, “Six days work shall be done.”^[4] We are expected to engage with the world to the same extent that we must rest on Shabbat — one commentary goes so far as to claim that the holiness of Shabbat depends on our working diligently and effectively on the other days.^[5] Here, too, מלאכה describes not only the prohibitions of Shabbat but also the daily work building the Mishkan. This morning’s opening passage comes at a critical juncture, right when the Israelites are ready to begin construction. Placed here, before the construction, it emphasizes that all work, even the sacred tasks of building God’s sanctuary, must stop for a day.^[6] For just one day, everything must remain as it is. Anyone with unfinished business — and, to be honest, that’s most of us — it will just have to wait.

There’s more than enough research about how the internet’s ever-present availability, with its million years of video and limitless pages to browse, as well as the constant flow of social media, draws us away from interaction with others. At the On Being Gathering, I shared Friday night dinner with filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, who frequently shares her family’s practice of “Technology Shabbat.” “We’re Jewish but not orthodox,” she proudly says, and starting on Friday night they shut down all of their electronic devices and live slow for a day, focusing on spending time together and with close friends and family.

Still, it’s too easy to blame smartphones when the problem, I think, actually lies within us. Withdrawing from technology — not just the internet, but anything we might use to alter the world to better suit our needs — feels decidedly unnatural to me. Our ability to make complex tools is arguably one of the most important adaptive advantages that humans enjoy, and we are right to want them. We now have tools that are vastly more powerful, complex, and all-encompassing than our ancestors could have imagined^[7] — but only the scale, not the substance, of the problem has changed. God rested on the seventh day, but for us it’s always been a weekly struggle.

Shabbat comes up a lot in the Torah, but the funny thing is the Torah never actually tells us how to observe Shabbat. We know we’re not supposed to do מלאכה, creative labor, but what does that entail? The Torah never gives us a list, but our Sages of Blessed Memory — recognizing that the same term, מלאכה, is also used to describe building the Mishkan — derive the details of what is prohibited on Shabbat from the processes employed in making the Mishkan.^[8] Even beyond the compelling linguistic juxtaposition of Shabbat, מלאכה, and the Mishkan, their inference makes sense on a deeper level. The Mishkan was the Jewish people’s greatest moment of cultural and material achievement up until this point, and maybe for all time. With their own hands, they are making something vital and important. They started out as slaves, building against their will structures that were employed to further oppress them — and now they voluntarily work to build a sanctuary for God and a communal center for themselves.^[9] And now, right at this moment, Moses reinforces Shabbat; here sits the basis for all our halakhot and customs of Shabbat.

I started imagining what this actually would have looked like: a whole nation, tough and tan from months in the desert, working together, day and night, to build the Mishkan; and then boom, Friday afternoon rolls around, and everyone packs up and heads home to prepare for Shabbat. Sunday morning, back to work; Friday again, everything shuts down. I’ve often wondered what it would have felt like to walk into the Mishkan’s elegant shrine, but now I’m thinking about those Shabbatot — what would that feel like, friends and family together, a whole society basking in the satisfaction of a week’s work? Needing to stop working on the Mishkan for Shabbat teaches us that holy time overrides even holy space; for a day, the life of the spirit surpasses the material world.

The On Being Gathering started with Shabbat, but I decided that I would leave my phone in my room, turned off, for the following three days as well. I go without my phone every week on Shabbat, and it’s not that big of a deal any more, but I knew that come Sunday if I had it in my pocket I would inevitably pull it out, absentmindedly scrolling through something instead of staying present with whatever else was going on. I knew that I could always go back to the room to call my family, but anything less important than that — and honestly, what else on my phone is all that important? — could wait until the conference was over. I was pleasantly surprised to find I was far from the only one to make that choice; many people around campus were device-free, writing in journals, talking with new friends, walking the trails through redwood forests.

Community is key. When I imagine those ancient Shabbatot, building the Mishkan, what stands out in my mind is the image of the entire Jewish people taking a collective break. We need the support — pulling away from the working world is hard, it cuts against our instincts. When Courtney Martin, an On Being columnist and one of the presenters at the Gathering, examines modern reinventions of Shabbat, she emphasizes the need for “group agreement,” a social circle that will reinforce whatever boundaries we draw around our Shabbat. “It’s simply too hard,” she writes, “At least for most of us, to effect such a shift on our own.”^[10] The hardest three Shabbatot of my life were my first three weeks of college — before I had made other Shabbat-observant friends, before I figured out my place at Hillel, before I had a community. To sustain Shabbat, we need a hevre, a crew that will share the time and support one another in staying present for the day.

A few weeks ago, when Rabbi Stone and I were learning in his office, we circled around to the problem of mitzvot as obligations — how do we relate to this detail of Jewish life in our day and age? Shabbat is a prime example: The benefits may be clear, but why do we need all the little details? I don’t claim to have a comprehensive answer for that question, but I would like to suggest that at least for Shabbat, at least in part, the halakhot and other structures provide a common foundation and help coalesce the “group agreement” necessary to make Shabbat work. Like basically anything else, Shabbat works much better when we do it consistently. Whatever your Shabbat practice, you will expereince it very differently if you live it consistently rather than once in a while. In theory, any day would work, but actually we need to agree on the same day so that we’re all in it together. If I told myself I could squeeze in an extra day of work and then have a make-up Shabbat later in the week, would I really follow up and take that other day?

Our community encompasses many different understandings of what Shabbat means, but on the deepest level we share the common need to be together on Shabbat. Stepping away from making, doing, building, creating, is a deeply counter-cultural act; it pushes back against tendencies that are inherent to being human. Shabbat depends on the accountability that comes when we do it deliberately, thoughtfully, all together, at the same time. Here is the gift we offer one another — and ourselves. Each of you, by showing up this morning and every time you come, support everyone else in taking Shabbat. I am deeply grateful for each and every one of you, and for the gift of Shabbat you bring us all each week.

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