Shabbat as a radical act of self-care in 2020

By Hannah Jannol

This Gregorian calendar year of 2020, I am resolving to keep Shabbat. 

My relationship with this holy day of rest has shifted immensely over the years. When I was little, Shabbat was a list of “no”s: no tv, no video games, no iPod, no driving to the park or the mall. Unfortunately, many people do not develop their view of Shabbat beyond this perspective. 

As I got into the heavy workload of high school, I began to recognize the value of rest. But my critical eye got in the way of appreciating Shabbat for how radical it is. Just a year or two ago, I would have said that sure, Shabbat is great, but it is a luxury few can afford. As someone who has worked from a young age, I saw the ability to take a day off as a huge privilege that in an age of socioeconomic stratification was reserved only for those who either had enough money to be able to put off work for 25 hours or had the type of job that gave them an uncommon level of control over their schedule. 

But now I see Shabbat as a radical act of self-care that is necessary for everyone to keep, even if it is in a limited form. 

One of the reasons it is so important is that leisure time has been distorted in the social media age. The fundamental purpose of Shabbat, according to all my rabbis since birth, is to rest. The problem today is that much of what constitutes “rest” for people my age (19) are activities that break the codes of Shabbat. Ask most of my friends what they do before bed to relax and they’ll tell you that they take one final swipe through their Instagram feeds, watch one last Youtube video, or send a Snapchat out to their streaks. This makes the commandment to rest, ironically enough, stressful for me and my peers, who know of few ways to rest besides watching vlogs or reading Youtube comments. The distress caused by the obligation to rest is of course contradictory, and if dread is the one emotion a person feels toward Shabbat, then it cannot possibly be a day of rest.

This has led many to throw their hands up and give up on Shabbat, casting it as an archaic practice which is no longer in touch with the times, a tradition that is in conflict with their perceptions of rest. But going on Instagram, as any psychologist can tell you, is indeed not restful. Social media triggers hits of dopamine that are not conducive to the serenity that should be a part of a regimen of relaxation. Even literal screens themselves have an impact on the eyes and the brain which keep people up, so it is surprising that so many teenagers use them as a method of relaxation. Relaxation and reflection require time away from sensory stimuli, and we all -- even and maybe especially teens -- benefit from moments of genuine relief from the constant bombardment of inputs that have become increasingly prevalent in modern life.

A related issue is that rest should be separate from economic activity and from work. But time spent online implicitly participates in capitalism and the making of money -- if not for yourself, then for others -- which is itself a breach of Shabbat tenets. The media scholar McKenzie Wark writes in her new book about the information age, Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse?,  that after labor movements succeeded in gaining more time off for workers, “Capital was forced to compromise, but it found a way to commodify leisure time as well as work time.” When I relax by checking Instagram, I am participating in elaborate marketing, advertising, and money-making business activities, at least as much as I would be if I were watching ad-supported television. This is economic activity and forbidden on Shabbat for good reasons. 

Forget about all the technical rules of Shabbat that make it unhalachic (not allowed under Jewish law) to go on your phone. Just think for a moment about the common defense that going on one’s phone is a form of rest. How can it be considered rest when scrolling means being barraged with advertisements, a sense of missing out, and most importantly, a pressure to perform. Wark continues in her critique of “leisurely” use of social media that “the culture industries...don’t even bother to provide any entertainment. We have to entertain each other, while they collect the rent, and they collect it on all social media time, public or private, work or leisure...” In effect, going on social media even for a mindless scroll is working for the platform. 

Anytime you see a meme or interesting article and think to share it with your followers via a Story repost, you’re working as an entertainer and online persona. You’re assisting Instagram in making its bottom line, and you’re participating in labor that you don’t even really benefit from. 

Instead of convincing myself that going on Facebook is restful this year, I am going to read a book, take a walk, spend time with a friend in the real world, or participate in something beyond the confines of technology. 

Shabbat can also be seen as a radical political act in an age when people feel increasing pressure to work more and more to satisfy employers or meet their own goals for personal achievement. In an article entitled “The Religion of Workism is Making Americans Miserable,” The Atlantic author Derek Thompson writes that ‘workism’ is “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work” and it is a new religion ruining the lives of young people, especially the college-educated.

I constantly experience burnout as a result of my own practice of workism when I should perhaps be practicing Judaism, at least once a week anyway. At a time when people are expected to not only work at all hours, with no time truly free from the intrusion of a work-related email or task, but also expected to feel fulfilled for doing so, taking a day to do nothing is a radical act of self-care. The term “self-care” was coined by the civil rights activist and feminist Audre Lorde and it was meant to describe a political act -- a fact it is easy to forget when the term is more often employed these days in advertising for nail polish and expensive face masks. 

Self-care is not “me time” or a face mask. It is a purposeful effort to take care of oneself in a way that radically and tenaciously opposes the political or economic forces seeking to destroy the working class. Lorde wrote that, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” In today’s world, taking a day to tend to one’s mental health and rest is an act of resistance against the capitalist class which benefits from overworking and burning out the lower and middle classes. 

Here, it is important to note that the laws of Shabbat come from a time of intensive labor among the Jewish people. These laws are known as the 39 melachot, the 39 things people are commanded to not do on Shabbat. Among them are lighting fires, carrying, writing, touching money, and several other things prohibited in an effort to prevent -- and keep the Jewish people free from any obligation to perform -- any and all work. These 39 laws stem from a time when Jewish people were working exhaustingly -- not unlike some young people today, although perhaps in a more physically taxing ways -- to build a massive temple. 

Shabbat has always been about labor, and its separation from contemporary discussions about class, socioeconomic stratification, and the overworked and underpaid majority contributes to why so many feel a sense of dissociation toward the holiday. Really, if the virtue of rest that Shabbat promotes is taken seriously, it is evident that this weekly holiday is mandating something that in today’s world is revolutionary: stopping all work. Shabbat is a weekly strike with no demands and no negotiation. There is no bargaining table to sit at, just a dining table; no concessions to be extracted. It gives workers a moment in which they are in charge, at least of their own lives. It gives everyone a chance to recognize a higher purpose than work and a higher good than swelling someone else’s profits.

Nor are the arguments in favor of Shabbat limited to the personal, the professional, and the political. At a time when discussions about sustainability of the planet are coming to the fore, the benefits of a day off from using energy and gasoline cannot be ignored. The Hebrew Bible professor Marvin Sweeney wrote in an essay on Genesis that “Shabbat calls for a day of rest for all creation so that creation might rejuvenate itself and thereby better ensure its viability or sustainability. Such a principle of rejuvenation applies to land, animals, and human beings in the world of creation.” Everything requires rest. So many of the environmental ills of today have been caused by a never-ending use of harmful products and pursuit of destructive activities. Imagine if for one day out of the week, no one drove or took a plane, no one used electricity or hot water, and no one consumed or sold. 

For all these reasons and more, I plan on keeping Shabbat this year. It won’t be easy, but I think this is an important step in the right direction against the forces of technology, exploitation, time theft under capitalism, and workaholism. 

I admit that one obstacle to the observation of Shabbat in the modern day is that some people -- especially those in service industries -- sometimes need to work on Saturday. To that end, I would encourage anyone with this dilemma to carve out a day, or even half a day or a few hours, as their Shabbat even if it’s not always on Saturday. 

And I don’t expect to adhere strictly to Shabbat at first. When I read, I might use a pencil to annotate a chapter, because for me reading without annotating is more stressful than not. I might drive to a nearby hiking spot or friend’s house. I might play music to chill or meditate. But I will not work, and I won’t go on social media. I won’t shop and I won’t sell. I will constantly strive to rest. I admit that part of the commandment of Shabbat to rest sounds paradoxical. How can this holiday be one of rest when one must strive and make an active effort to relax? Is the point of rest not to completely blank and think about nothing, isn’t the point of rest to not try?  

Yes, and part of Shabbat is working to find ways to rest, which is oxymoronic. But we live in a time where work is so dominant and automatic that our only and highest option is to spend just a little more time working in order to participate in the sanctified act of not working at all.