the Shabbat is a day of truce in the human battle with the world. Even tearing up a blade of grass is looked upon as a breach of this harmony, as is lighting a match. Neither must social change occur. It is for this reason that carrying anything on the street is forbidden (even if it weighs as little as a handkerchief), while carrying a heavy load

Jews have endeavored to realize the transformation that Shabbos effects on the soul, to cultivate and ripen their appreciation of the gift each week, and to pass on their practices and their realizations to coming generations with openness to ever deeper insight to appear in the future.

Shabbos permits us to live in spacious, expansive time, not in a static eternity but in a mindfully unfolding landscape that welcomes broadly smiling human faces.

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.