Click and Clack and the Shabbat Project

I was very surprised and saddened a few weeks back to hear that Tom Magliozzi passed away at the age of 77. Tom and his brother Ray were the hosts of the long-running show “Car Talk” on NPR. For the benefit of those who were not familiar with the show, it was ostensibly about car repair - people called in to ask questions about their cars - Tom and Ray were expert mechanics, both alumni of MIT who had opted to work in car repair rather than the corporate world. But inevitably the advice that was dispensed, in their humorous, irreverent, Boston-inflected style was more often about the relationship issues of the callers than about the cars themselves. Car Talk was really only a pretext to get to the really important stuff.

Tom had a warm, inviting, and frankly quite infectious laugh, and for every hour-long episode of Car Talk, the listener would probably have heard Tom laughing for a good 20-plus minutes in aggregate. That laugh just sucked you in. It simply grabbed you by the ears and pulled you into the conversation. Everybody listening to Car Talk, whether or not they had any interest in cars or car repair, felt like they were a part of the conversation.

The ability to welcome callers and listeners into a conversation about people and their relationships using the “bait” of car problems is really a very clever idea. And really, it’s a nice model for how a synagogue should function. Let me illustrate this in the context of a recent community-wide success, the Great Neck Shabbat Project.

Ostensibly, the major goal of the Shabbat Project was to involve as many members of the community into a Shabbat experience. We did that. By providing a full complement of activities, targeted to a wide range of people and interests, by personally inviting everybody to participate through various means, including direct, individual outreach, we welcomed many more people into our midst than would ordinarily participate on an average Shabbat. There were close to 1,000 people (women and men!) at the challah workshop at Leonard’s on Thursday evening. There were 600 people at Shabbat dinner at Temple Israel on Friday night. There were more than 150 at the Camp Shabbat service for 5th and 6th graders and their families on Shabbat morning. There were 200 people for se’udah shelisheet, the third Shabbat meal on Saturday afternoon. And hundreds attended the concert Saturday night, preceded by a havdalah service led by rabbis and laypeople from across the ideological and ethnic spectrum of Jewish Great Neck. And there was even more.

 

But the real accomplishment was not the very impressive numbers. The actual intent of the Shabbat Project, as it is with everything we do at Temple Israel, was to create and nurture relationships among members of the community, and between us and God. And we did that, too - by providing multiple forums for people representing different subsets of our community to rub elbows; by creating an environment in which many were sharing Shabbat together openly, and on a grand scale; by hosting discussions on parenting and being a Jewish college student and our own personal journeys within Judaism.

So while we did not have Tom Magliozzi’s inviting laughter, we did have members of our community reaching out directly to others to raise the Shabbat bar, and although we did not talk about cars, we did talk about Shabbat as a platform to deepen our relationships. The results were tremendous in terms of community building and social capital. Kol hakavod to all who made it happen! (And may Tom’s memory be for a blessing.)

~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, November 20, 2014.)

The Two Keys to the Jewish Future: S + T = J (Bemidbar 5774)

I cannot look at the beginning of Bemidbar / Numbers, with its census figures of the twelve tribes, and not think about where we are as a people. I cannot help but think of the lot of demographic studies of Jews in the New York Area and nationwide of the past several years, most of which reveal shifts in measures of engagement, affiliation, and intermarriage that do not bode well for the future of Judaism in America, particularly non-Orthodox Judaism. I cannot help but wring my hands, as we have collectively done as a people for a long time.

I ask myself, “What will maintain us as a people? What will preserve our fundamental distinctiveness?” Many of you know that this is the question that keeps me up at night.

And when you read the numbers in the opening chapters of the book of Numbers, you see that we have been obsessed with the quantitative measures of our nation from its very inception. An extended family of 70 people went down into Egypt; two million emerged from slavery as a people, Am Yisrael. A million of our number were expelled from Spain in 1492, and perhaps as many remained as New Christians; six million died in the Shoah; the State of Israel was established by half a million mandate-era residents of Palestine. There are roughly five million of us here in America today.

We are captivated with counting ourselves, and the demographic bug afflicted us heavily when it emerged in the late 19th century as an outgrowth of the Zionist movement in Russia, and in particular the work of the great Jewish historian Shimon Dubnow, who established the Jewish Historical Ethnographical Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia in 1892.

We are not only fascinated with documenting and counting ourselves, but we are also continually convinced that we are on the verge of disappearing. (I noticed with interest this week that the Mashadi community, not by any stretch of the imagination in danger of evaporating, issued a taqqanah about not allowing converts to be a part of their community, similar to that issued by the Syrian Jews in Brooklyn in 1935.)

The Zionist philosopher and historian Shimon Rawidowicz labeled us “the Ever-Dying People,” and published a book by that name in 1948. (Rawidowicz, BTW, was also the editor of a collection of Dubnow’s essays and letters.). He wrote:

“The world makes many images of Israel, but Israel makes only one image of itself: that of a being constantly on the verge of ceasing to be, of disappearing.”

These ideas are built into our liturgy and our theology. On weekdays, when we recite the words of tahanun (“supplication”), we chant somewhat mournfully:  

“Shomer Yisrael, shemor she’erit Yisrael. Guardian of Israel, protect the remnant of Israel.”

It is no wonder that even today we obsess about our nascent disappearance; we are hard-wired to do so.

A Talmud professor of mine at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Dr. David Kraemer, once enlivened our class with a sidebar discussion about Jews and their attachment to Judaism. He noted that there have been times in our history when we have been more committed and engaged to living a religiously-Jewish life, and times of lesser commitment. We have survived periods of oppression, war, intermarriage, conversion away and assimilation and really all the the same issues that we face today. There is really nothing new under the sun, suggested Dr. Kraemer, and so why should we worry? “Should our children be permitted to celebrate Halloween?” we wondered. “Why not?” offered Dr. Kraemer. We rebutted with, “What about Christmas?” He gave us a wry smile, and quietly said (something like), “We already do.”

He was not talking about modern Jews adopting Christmas from their Christian neighbors, but that Hanukkah, like Christmas, is an echo of the festivals adjacent to the winter solstice that many ancient agrarian societies celebrated. Yes, our rabbis gave it a new name, a new backstory, and so forth, but fundamentally it is the same holiday.

Dr. Kraemer’s point was that we have always managed to maintain our peoplehood and traditions, whatever the outside world has thrown at us.

So what is it, then, that has worked about Judaism? Why are there still 14 million or so Jews in the world, when we could have disappeared many times over?

It can only be the strength of our heritage, the value of our teachings, the compelling nature of our rituals.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a rich, varied, and powerful tradition, one that speaks to people even in these vastly secular, disinterested times.

We have to overcome our fears regarding assimilation, and live Jewish lives of quiet confidence and commitment. And how do we do that? By focusing on our core of active participants, by strengthening the core of our community, and by creating a communal experience that is so compelling that it will draw more people in. And I think we can do so by invoking three essential concepts in Jewish tradition, the themes of the Shema section of Shaharit, which we recited this morning (as we do every morning). Those essential themes are: Creation,  Revelation, and Redemption.

Creation is, of course, about the traditional week, the six days in which God metaphorically created the world, followed by Shabbat. It’s about not only the natural environment that we inhabit, but also the rhythm of the Jewish week.

Revelation is an intimidating (and, let’s face it, goyish-sounding) word referring to our receiving of the Torah (which we will commemorate in a mere 11 days on Shavuot). It’s our national story, the basis for our rich textual heritage.

The classic sense of redemption is that God took us out of Egypt, setting us free from slavery.  However, when we talk about that ancient redemption, we are also hinting at a coming redemption. And we make that connection every morning in Shaharit.

Ladies and gentlemen, those three concepts are not just a series. They can also be read as an equation (and here is where Numbers creeps back into the discussion):

Creation + Revelation = Redemption

In an effort to make this easier to remember, I’m going to abbreviate it as follows:

S = Shabbat, i.e. Creation

T = Torah, i.e. Revelation

J = the Jewish future, i.e. Redemption

Hence, 

S + T = J

That’s it, ladies and gentlemen. Let me explain what I mean.

I took a couple of journeys within the last two weeks; the first was to the convention of the Rabbinical Assembly in Dallas, where I learned a whole lot of Torah, reconnected with colleagues, and reminisced about the five years I spent living in Texas. Talmud Torah, engaging with the words of our ancient tradition, is not only the greatest mitzvah among the 613 (see Mishnah Peah 1:1); it is also refreshing. We recited this morning in Pesuqei Dezimrah this morning (Psalm 19:8) “Torat Adonai temimah, meshivat nafesh.” God’s Torah is perfect, restoring the soul.

Torah, revelation, is not just refreshing to me; it is in fact what has sustained us through centuries of dispersion, oppression, and destruction. If it were not for the Torah, we might have evaporated after the First and Second Temples were destroyed. The Torah contains not only the mitzvot, but also our national story, our heritage, and our secret to everlasting peoplehood. It is greater than the sum of its parts.

But the other half of the equation is Creation, and that speaks to the second journey I took. Right after returning from Texas, my family and I drove up to Camp Ramah in the Berkshires for the second annual Vav Class Family Retreat, where Danny Mishkin and Rabbi Roth and I facilitated a phenomenal Shabbat experience for thirteen member families. What has made this program work so well now for two years running is, primarily, the simplicity of Shabbat. In camp, we observe Shabbat traditionally, including tefillot, festive meals, games, learning, discussion, and other Shabbat-friendly activities. We discourage the use of electronic devices, and of course there is nowhere to travel to and nothing to spend money on. The results are truly beautiful and inspiring.

What makes Shabbat work is that it is a great “reset”-button. It is a chance to reconnect with family, friends, and Creation. And what better place to do that than in camp? And, as if to heighten that experience, all of our tefillah experiences were held outdoors. Synagogue buildings can of course be inspiring places to communicate with God, but davening outside brings a heightened kavvanah.

For minhah on Shabbat afternoon, we first read Torah, as is traditional. Then, after the Torah was returned to the ark, we took a walk out into camp to sensitize ourselves to the beauty of Creation found all around us. We completed minhah by reciting the Amidah in a field, standing far apart from one another to recite the words of tefillah alone with God and nature. Some of us found it very moving.

Shabbat brings us back to Creation. And, moving forward, this will be an essential part of our work here on Earth. At the ordination/investiture ceremony for new rabbis and cantors at the Jewish Theological Seminary this past week, Dr. Arnold Eisen, the Chancellor, made the following remarks:

“I strongly suspect that the mitzvah on which our ultimate worth and future turns—yours and mine—may well be that of preserving God's creation. ’Tending the garden’ means something different than it ever has before, now that the survival of the planet is in question.”

Shabbat and Creation go together. And Creation + Revelation = Redemption. S + T = J.

So what is this redemption? It is that we will merit an infinite future on this planet, which God has created.

   

Ladies and gentlemen, Jews and Judaism have existed on this planet for millennia, and we will continue to exist. Our redemption is our continuation. We have outlasted the Babylonians, the Romans, and a host of other civilizations. All we have to do is keep the ideas of Creation and Revelation in front of us, and the future will glisten with the power of Torah, of Shabbat, and of a healthy planet to sustain us.

Shabbat Shalom.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 5/24/2014.)

Old Wine, New Flask: Shabbat Dinner Online

In Pirqei Avot / Teachings of the Fathers, we read the following (5:27):

Rabbi Meir used to say: Do not look at the flask but at what is in it; there may be a new flask that is full of old wine and an old flask that does not even have new wine in it.

A piquant piece from the Huffington Post crossed my desk late Friday afternoon on January 18. I wouldn’t necessarily call this news, but it is Jewishly relevant. Posted on Craigslist, this ad received replies from all over the world:

Shalom! We are five handsome and two not so handsome single men. And, yes, we are Jewish. Bound by tradition and emboldened by wit, we are hosting an epic Shabbat dinner -- a little challah, a little wine, and a lot of gefilte fish -- in downtown Washington, DC on Friday, January 18, 2013. In a nod to our orgiastic traditions, we are inviting seven lucky ladies to feast with us. Echoing the State of Israel's Declaration of Independence, we will consider you, "irrespective of religion or race," as long as you "bring your own lactaid pills." 

To be considered, please submit a picture of yourself. We'd also like to hear more about you!

Please answer two of the following questions with another question: What's your favorite Shabbos activity? Which biblical forefather do you admire most and why? What would you establish as the 11th Commandment? What's your favorite episode of Seinfeld? Curb Your Enthusiasm? Which character from Girls speaks most to your personality? What is your favorite double mitzvah? Why would you answer a Craigslist ad about a Shabbat dinner?

You must also answer two of the following, not in question form. Where do you go to get your hair straightened? Are you a self-hating Jew? Have you read Portnoy's Complaint? Explain why a two-state solution would or would not work? How do you feel about the Shoah? What is your favorite yiddish word and farvus? Zach Braff: Dreamy, or in your dreams? Do you appreciate hairy backs?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, what year did you go on Birthright?

If you are one of the seven chosen people, you will receive additional information regarding the time and location. We look forward to reading your reply and gawking at your picture.

If I were grading this as a school project, I would give it a B for effort (how hard is it to post an ad on Craigslist, after all?) and a B+ for creativity. I'm a tough grader.

But for finding a new way to honor Shabbat, a fundamental feature of Jewish life? A+ all the way.

As our 24/7 culture sails forward into infinite connectedness, never powering down, it’s good to see enterprising Jews using technology to find ways to reconnect for Shabbat; that is what Shabbat is all about: restoring the 24/6 week and rejoicing on the seventh day. The flask may be new, but the wine is properly aged. 

Shabbat shalom!

UPDATE (2/7/2013): One of the female participants was interviewed anonymously by the website Jewcy.com. Click here to read about her Shabbat dinner experience.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Friday morning in a bomb shelter

Rockets fell last night in several places in southern Israel. Two Facebook posts from my friend and colleague, Rabbi Leor Sinai, were especially unnervingץ He is currently in Beersheva:

"Sirens at 5:51am. Grab kids and run into bomb shelter, again. Hear two booms."

"We are fine. & your prayers are felt here in Be'er Sheva. Just haven't figured out how to explain to Akiva (almost 6) when he asks: aba why are we in the closet room?"

What can you possibly say to a six-year-old? I have not yet even found away to talk about something like this with my son, who is ten and also lives in Israel.

Shabbat has already descended upon Israel; let's hope that this day of rest brings some peace and quiet to those within range of rocket fire.

Turning off for Shabbat

Jennifer Bleyer, freelance journalist and founder / former editor of Heeb Magazine, writes in the current issue of Tablet about powering down for Shabbat, and how her and devoutly secular husband learned to love the holiness of the seventh day.

Her tale echos the experience that I spoke about this past Yom Kippur, referring to Judith Shulevitz's book, The Sabbath World, and The Sabbath Manifesto as well. Enjoy!

Shavua tov.

Thursday Morning Kavvanah, 12/30/2010 - Eat dinner with your family

We all need to talk to each other, and recent studies have shown that children who eat dinner with their families several times a week are much more likely to do well in school and life.

But all the more so, modern living makes this quite challenging. Adults are working more hours than ever, and children today are so tightly programmed and they have quantities of homework that far outweight what I had as a child. How does one bring everybody together?

One such evening can be Friday night. Everybody should have Shabbat dinner together with the family. But one night a week is surely not enough. Make time for family dinners - your children need you.

Yom Kippur 5771 - Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop In

(Originally delivered on September 18, 2010.)

Do you own an iPod (or other mp3 player)? Seemingly miraculous, deeply personal, and fundamentally impulse-driven, the iPod is the quintessential device of today.

Judaism, however, and particularly Conservative Judaism, faces numerous challenges in the age of the iPod. To wit:

1. Everything on your iPod is instantly available. On the other hand, being actively Jewish, requires years of study and learning and commitment to Jewish life.

2. Everything on your iPod can be deleted just as easily as it was acquired. As such, we have infinite control over our devices, making them exactly what we want. Hence the “I”. But Judaism, even modern, progressive, non-Orthodox Judaism, has rules, principles, and customs which cannot be simply “deleted.”

As we become more and more integrated into this instant-access, infinitely changeable digital world, the challenge is this: How will we ensure that we have Jewish great-grandchildren? What makes us Jewish, and what will keep us Jewish?

On Rosh Hashanah I spoke about being actively Jewish, as opposed to being Jewish by default, and I highlighted Temple Israel’s Youth House as a place where active Jews are made.

Today I will speak primarily about what will keep us Jewish.

At the end of the Musaf service on the 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah, which fell on Friday, I mentioned that the next day, Saturday, was the “2nd holiest day of the year.” As I was shaking hands on the way out, I was asked by more than one person, “Rabbi, what’s tomorrow? Is it really the 2nd holiest day of the year?”

So I need to clarify: the holiest day of the Jewish year is Yom Kippur. It’s today. In second place, there is a 52-way tie: the second holiest day of the year is Shabbat, which, fortunately for us, comes up every 7 days.

The German-Israeli religious philosopher and educator Ernst Simon used to tell a story of his teacher, the pre-eminent modern Jewish thinker Martin Buber. Simon was shomer Shabbat, meaning that he kept all of the Shabbat traditions – not cooking, not spending money, going to the synagogue, and so forth. Buber, like many Reform Jews, thought that the more arcane aspects of halakhah (Jewish law) were unnecessary, and would make fun of Simon for keeping these rules.

It happened once that Simon had guests for Friday night dinner, and the phone rang. Now, he ordinarily would not answer the phone on Shabbat, but it keeps ringing and ringing. Thinking it must be an emergency, he finally picks up the phone. He hears a taunting voice say, “Shabbes!” and *click*.

Simon returns to the Shabbat table. His guests ask him if everything is OK, and who was on the phone? Simon says, “Oh, that was just Buber.”

One good answer to the question, “What will keep us Jewish” may be found in the words of Ahad ha-Am, the early Zionist thinker who was an advocate of Israel as the cultural homeland of the Jews: “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”

Now you might be afraid that I am going to lecture you now on all the things that you should do or not do on the Shabbat, the 39 categories of prohibited types of work identified by the rabbis in the Mishnah. But I am not going to do that. Rather, I am going to advocate for something a little less daunting.

Who here has ever felt lost without a cellphone?

Who here gets nervous without Internet access?

Do you get the shakes if you don’t know where your electronic gadgets are?

Who here has found themselves searching desperately for a WiFi signal, and been frustrated by somebody's well-meaning, but clearly misguided security code?

I must confess that all of the above has happened to me. Like many of us, I am a slave to technology - the devices run my life; they sometimes feel like disconnected limbs of my body, or perhaps an external lobe of my cerebral cortex.

We are living in the age of connection, a time when being off the grid is next to impossible. Our friends, relatives, and, most perniciously, our workplaces expect us to be available 24-7 - constantly connected, constantly ready to hit reply.

Well, you know what? This cannot be good for us. Is this the end of personal time? Will we ever be truly “alone” again? Will we ever have moments of uninterrupted reflection?

Now, there are some of us that thrive on this. Who here knows their Myers-Briggs type? This is a basic psychological evaluation that gives you a score on four basic scales of personality traits. Statistically speaking, about half of us are Extroverts (or perhaps more, since we ARE Jewish!); that is, we thrive on interaction and get our energy from spending time with and talking with others. When Extroverts are alone, they tend to pull out their cellphone and see who they can reach. As for the Introverts among us, well, we may like staying in touch, but we are more likely to read the newspaper or fire up our iPod and read the updates on our NYTimes app than make phone calls.

But whether you like being connected or not, new research is pointing to the fact that our infinite connectivity is not good for us. There has been a series of articles in the New York Times regarding technology’s effects on us, and the results are not good.

For example, the director of the National Institute for Drug Abuse reports that “Technology is rewiring our brains.” Constantly checking our email, for example, causes regular squirts of dopamine in our brains, and this naturally-occurring brain stimulant can be addictive, making us want to keep checking that email or Twitter or Facebook updates.

Multitasking, while thought by some to be a more efficient way of working, is actually causing us to lose the ability to focus, and shut out irrelevant information. And the constant distractions of text messages, mobile phone calls, and email is producing more stress.

So that’s the bad news. And here is the good news: we have the ability to turn them off. And especially as Jews - we even have a day that pops up every seventh day on which it makes special, holy sense to disconnect, a day so set-aside from the rest of the week (and the rest of the year) that it is only eclipsed by Yom Kippur in its special-ness.

There is a debate in the Talmud about the following: if you are alone in a desert and you have lost track of the day of the week (and you have no mobile phone), when should you celebrate Shabbat? One rabbi proposes that you should start counting off days, and when you get to seven you should observe the Shabbat. A second opinion says that you should assume the current day is Friday and observe the Shabbat on the next day. Why should you wait?

The fourth commandment of the “Top Ten” is the longest of them all “Zakhor et yom haShabbat lekaddesho.” Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And then it goes on for a while. And you know why? Because it is the most important social innovation in the Torah. The ancient Israelites pioneered a concept that no society before it had developed: a day off. Yes, yes, it’s also important not to murder and to honor your parents, but other societies already knew that. The Shabbat, at the time that it was given to us, was apparently unique.

In his critique of contemporary Judaism and Jewish institutions called Nothing Sacred, author Douglas Rushkoff points to the Shabbat as the natural response of an enslaved people who had been set free. Think of it this way: the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They gain their freedom. They know that they still have to work, but on more reasonable terms. So they negotiate themselves one day off out of every seven. Not bad, right?

It is the most revolutionary concept of the ancient world, and holds sway over much of the Earth’s population today: the idea of sanctifying time by setting it apart from the rest of the week. God gives the Israelites a weekly vacation. The Apostle Paul, who fashions Christianity, and Muhammad, who creates Islam, dispose of many parts of the Jewish template that they draw on, but they keep the Shabbat. It is progressive, humanistic, and difficult to argue against.

I was asked recently, as a corollary to the ongoing flap about the Muslim JCC that is planned for Lower Manhattan, if Judaism considers Ground Zero a holy site. I answered no, because with only one possible exception, we do not really have holy sites. We only have holy times. In his classic work, The Sabbath, a slim volume very much worth reading, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says, (slow and loud!) “We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to the moment; it is the moment that lends significance to the thing.”

In other words, Rosh Hashanah makes the shofar holy, not the other way around. Yom Kippur, Shabbat, and even weekday mornings make the synagogue a holy place when we come to it to pray. Not vice versa. And so forth.

Elsewhere in the book, Heschel describes the Shabbat as a “palace in time.” That is what has made Judaism so portable, so resilient, so able to continue in far-flung lands and under oppressive rule, and in good times and bad. When our Beit Miqdash, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed for the second and final time by the Romans in the year 70 CE, our people were exiled. And since they could no longer sacrifice in the place designated by the Torah, they took their holiness with them wherever they went. Judaism became, by necessity, portable. Shabbat travels well - you can observe it as easily in Baghdad as in Cordoba, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Tehran, and Jerusalem. The Jewish palace in time is in every place and no place.

And so this biblical revolution, this palace in time, this portable holy wonder, continued to be observed for centuries and millennia. Ahad ha-Am got it right; Shabbat has kept the Jews Jewish.

And here we are in the modern world, beset by electronic enemies and creeping digital invaders at every turn.

In 1950, the Conservative movement faced a new development in American society: suburbanization. Leaving their close-knit, inner-city Jewish neighborhoods (like the Lower East Side in New York or Dorchester in Boston, where my father grew up), Jews were moving to the ‘burbs, where kosher food was hard to come by, where they were more likely to live next to non-Jews, and where they had to drive to get to their synagogue.

Newly-suburbanized Conservative rabbis, who always lived next door to the synagogue, noticed that many of their congregants would have to violate several of the 39 rabbinically-defined categories of prohibited work on Shabbat in order to drive to the synagogue. So the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, the central body of the Conservative movement that still to this day makes decisions about halakhic questions, issued a teshuvah, a rabbinic answer to the question of observance of the Sabbath in modern times. They declared that if one lived too far away to walk, then it was better to drive to the synagogue than not to come at all.

As a part of the same teshuvah, they also said that the use of electrical appliances, like lights and telephones, is not forbidden on Shabbat. Electricity, which was unknown to our ancestors, does not fall under the rabbinic category of fire, and using it for appropriate purposes was just fine, provided it was in keeping with the spirit of Shabbat.

Well, my friends, times have changed. It has only been sixty years, but you all know that even during the last decade the rate at which technologies have continued to improve and grow more complex and more, well, pervasive is staggering. In 1950, nobody could have known about just how much electronic devices would invade our personal space, and how much we would be enslaved to them.

So I am about to propose something really radical, and at the same time quite contemporary.

Yes, it is true that the Conservative movement endorses a fairly stringent set of observances for the Shabbat. You might have noticed that on Shabbat in this building there is no cooking, no turning electrical appliances on and off, no writing, no spending money, and so forth. We try to discourage the use of cellular devices by people in the building on Shabbat and holidays as well. And this is the way that I and my family and some Conservative Jews observe Shabbat.

However, I would like to suggest something that is just so crazy it might work. (On television, whenever somebody says that, it always DOES work.)

What if we were to re-imagine what it means to have a “day off?”
What if we were to unite the principle of Shabbat with our need for freedom from the continuous stimuli of our electronic devices? What if, from Friday evening at sundown until Saturday night we were to turn off, tune out, and drop in?

Some of you might remember a variation on this phrase from the 1960s, coined by famed counter-cultural psychologist Timothy Leary: Turn on, tune in, drop out. (Of course, they say that if you remember the ‘60s, you weren’t really there...)

I am suggesting a contemporary Jewish take on a radical idea. To wit:

Turn off
This is the easy part. All of our devices power down (mostly). Find your power button, and turn it off on Friday evening before sunset. Turn it back on on Saturday night.

Tune out
This will require much more willpower. Letting go of the mundane matters of the week, the the things that vie for our attention nonstop, is no simple matter. We live in an impatient world, and we are not accustomed to putting aside our digital connections in favor of ourselves and our families.

To tune out is to seek the Zen state of patience and acceptance, understanding that your email will still be waiting there for you tomorrow. It’s not so easy, but the reward is great. Once you manage to do it successfully, you will find that it is not actually that difficult, and it is also liberating.

Drop in
And here is the best part: come to Temple Israel. These are your people, and this is where you might be able to have a dialogue with the Divine, in words, in song, or in the silent meditations of your own heart, and also to enjoy some real-time dialogue before and after with each other.

I am not alone in recommending turning off for Shabbat. There are two public initiatives going on right now that you should be aware of. The first one is called “Offlining.” Has anybody here heard of this? Raise your hand.

Offlining is a project put together by a pair of not particularly traditional guys who work in marketing, Eric Yaverbaum, who is Jewish, and Mark DiMassimo, who is not. Through various media, they are encouraging people to pledge to have 10 device-free dinners between now and Thanksgiving. As of this past week, nearly 11,000 people have taken this pledge. They targeted their first “No-Device Day” as today, Yom Kippur, and produced creative posters to promote it.

The other initiative is similar, although a little bit more far-reaching. This one comes from a Jewish organization called Reboot, which seeks to connect young adults with Judaism. Their concept is called “The Sabbath Manifesto.”

Reading from their website:

“The Sabbath Manifesto is a creative project designed to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic world. We’ve created 10 core principles completely open for your unique interpretation. We welcome you to join us as we carve a weekly timeout into our lives.”

So the Sabbath Manifesto’s goal is to avoid shaking a finger and lecturing about the 39 categories of prohibited work, but rather to suggest 10 simple things that you can do to help enjoy the Shabbat as it should be enjoyed. Here they are:

1. Avoid technology. (Note: it does not say, “don’t touch anything that beeps or flashes”)
2. Connect with loved ones.
3. Nurture your health.
4. Get outside.
5. Avoid commerce.
6. Light candles.
7. Drink wine.
8. Eat bread.
9. Find silence.
10. Give back.


I like the simplicity of this approach, because I think it successfully unites tradition with modernity, something that we are always seeking to do in the Conservative world. And by making mostly positive statements rather than negative ones, it makes the Shabbat feel like a day of doing something good for yourself and the world rather than a day on which everything is forbidden.

As an added encouragement, particularly to #1 (avoiding technology), on the Sabbath Manifesto website you can buy a little sleeping bag for your cell phone. It’s adorable.

Now, of course, the traditionalists among us might say, “Well, turning off your cell phone and computer is a good idea. But there is ever so much more to Shabbat.”

Yes, there is ever so much more. But sometimes less is more. For all those of us who are committed to a high level of Shabbat observance, that is wonderful.

For those of us that are not, I suggest that you take this day to consider the ways in which the rest of your life has invaded your free time, and that we as Jews have a special day set aside for being free. We are slaves to technology, and the Shabbat can set us free from that slavery, just as God redeemed us from Egypt. Shabbat is our opportunity to step off the hamster wheel, and to rediscover simplicity. You might get a headache from dopamine withdrawal, but it will be worth it.

Author Judith Shulevitz, in her new book, The Sabbath World, describes Shabbat as God's claim on our time. You get six days. God gets one. I don't think that's such a bad trade. But you can also think of it this way: your work and your digital connections get six days. You get one. That’s a pretty good deal, too.

And, admittedly, it is not so easy to turn off and tune out. Author A.J. Jacobs, who wrote the smart and funny book, The Year of Living Biblically, in which he documents his attempts to live in a way that is as close to what the Tanakh describes, confesses his own failure to avoid checking his email on Shabbat. He would make it an hour or two, and then give up.

Until one day, when he accidentally locks himself in the bathroom of his Upper West Side apartment (the doorknob is broken), and has to wait until his wife comes home to let him out, several hours later. After a certain amount of panic, he relaxes into the isolation.

“I'm OK with it,” he says. I've reached an unexpected level of acceptance. For once, I'm savoring the present. I'm admiring what I have, even if it's thirty-two square feet of fake marble and an angled electrical outlet. I start to pray. And, perhaps for the first time, I pray in true peace and silence – without glancing at the clock, without my brain hopscotching from topic to topic.

“This is what the Sabbath should feel like. A pause. Not just a minor pause, but a major pause. Not just a lowering of the volume, but a muting,” says Jacobs.

As I have already stated, we sanctify time. That's what a holiday is. Days are holier than any space or thing, more holy than even the Torah scroll. Yes, we treat a Torah scroll with respect, and nobody would question that. But do we treat the seventh day with the same respect?

More importantly, do we treat ourselves with sufficient respect? Yes, God has staked a claim on your time. But what about you? You need the time. You need the break. You need the opportunity to disconnect, to detach yourself from your electronic leash, from all the things that trouble you all week long.

So consider making the rest of this Yom Kippur a No-Device Day. And then try turning off, tuning out, and dropping in on Shabbat.