Have you tried unplugging and plugging yourself back in again?

I know there is a phenomenon of “technology fasts,” but it's a lot harder to do if it’s not supported by a community that is doing the same thing. In that way, one of the things that makes Shabbat very interesting is that it exists not just within the context of law, but also within the context of community.

I worry about people being able to trust the kinds of material that they see online as emanating from human beings, and what it means to spend most of your day in an environment in which you’re never sure whether you’re surrounded by people or bots.

So there is a way in which Shabbat is more philosophically important now than it has been in previous centuries. And of course, there’s also the secondary element, around 100 years old, of Shabbat being defined by the kinds of technologies that we do not engage in on that day, which was not something that Shabbat was designed for. Shabbat took on t... See more