Ellen Davis, addressing the temptation to promote Shabbos merely as a hedge against overwork and burnout, notes that “Exodus enjoins Sabbath observance on theological, not pastoral, grounds.” She writes that keeping the day holy enables us to “consider what it is to be the creatures of God, living among other creatures in a world that God has made.

Shabbos is a time of genuine availability to ourselves and others, a shelter of compassionate spirit. Yet here too we must not place the pragmatic motivation first and foremost. As a spiritual practice, we should think of Shabbos as a gift from God to us and an offering from ourselves to God. Overemphasis on utilitarian considerations tends to unde

that rest is an achievement, that the Sabbath is Judaism’s stillness at the heart of the turning world, and that it was this that God created on the seventh day. “After six days,” said Judaism’s sages, “what did the world lack? It lacked rest. So when the seventh day came, rest came, and the universe was complete.”26

« Le week-end n’est que la moitié du sabbat. Dieu a aussi prescrit aux Juifs de prendre un congé tous les sept ans, durant lequel ils cessent de cultiver la terre, annulent leurs dettes et libèrent leurs esclaves. Le XXIe siècle pourrait inscrire l’année sabbatique parmi les droits de l’homme. [...] Maintenant que l’espérance de vie a doublé, on ne