The Sabbath

Sacred space and sacred time come to us dovetailed, jointly braided in the fabric of being.

When time has disappeared and space is a comfortless ripple of white sand, should you imagine yourself inside the skin of the first man or inside the mind of God? The Talmud gives an answer to this question. It is, the mind of God. To save yourself, you re-create the world.

when catastrophe shattered the vision, Jews spent their lives renewing it. The question is: From where can these people draw the strength to renew their dream again and again? The answer of Jewish tradition is: Give people just a foretaste of the fulfillment, and they will never give it up. The Shabbat is that taste.

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.