The Sabbath

A lot of really beautiful, poetic things in here, but sometimes it gets kind of nebulous and hard to grasp.

I almost couldn't put it down - finished it across 2 slow days. It is well structured and the theology is very thought provoking. I can see why it was recommended by the BEMA podcast on their Genesis chapter 1 episode - I took a massive number of highlights from the book considering it's size.

I had been meaning to read this ever since I heard The Distraction Addiction's author, Alex Pang, on the (now sadly defunct) Buddhist Geeks podcast, talking about a really good book about the Sabbath, written by Rabbi Abraham Heschel.

Inspired by Pang's book, I've been experimenting with taking ‘digital sabbaths' for the past year or so: it usually means a full day of no screens (including the Kindle!). Driven by the panic that The Machine Stops induced, I try to aim for 2x a month: actually EXPERIENCING DIRECT, UNMEDIATED REALITY. Mostly this means finally reading through the giant pile of unread (physical) books on my shelves, and realizing that I have no idea how to get anywhere without Google maps and don't know how to get dressed without my weather app.

I read Heschel's book, then, on one such digital sabbath, and it was a perfect companion. I don't practice Judaism, but I don't think you need to be Jewish to appreciate its very powerful wisdom: he writes poetically, accessibly, and makes profound points. For example: humanity has conquered space - physical space - but we're slaves to time. We forget how precious it is, we waste it on YouTube cat videos or on race-to-the-finish ambition (“Next year, I'll get an MBA; then I'll do X, then I'll...”). Rabbi Heschel argues about the Sabbath being a “palace of time”: we should build cathedrals to eternity by pausing regularly in the whirling stream of onward time. On this day, all conflicts are paused - it is the ultimate time-out, the temporary truce in EVERYTHING. I remember one digital sabbath felt, for me, like I was on a vacation from my life: I could just - do nothing.

He talks about the joyous preparations of the Sabbath, and the importance of breaking enslavement to the material world. He directly links it to paradise/Heaven/immortality - that Sabbath was given by the Lord to us (unto us?) as a taste of eternity. Again, I'm not Jewish - I'm Buddhist and nontheist and don't spend too much time thinking about an afterlife (apart from the cold, dead, nothingness kind) - but I found even that point touching, even mystical. (It also got me thinking about Einsteinian time-space as a dimension, and how time travel isn't physically impossible, but I digress.)

So yeah, definitely a book I'll be coming back to, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in building an “architecture of time” for themselves.