Seeking Sabbath

At the top floor of the two family home where I spent the very beginning of my life in, the landlord’s family were orthodox Jews. They didn’t work on Saturdays, nor did they turn on lights or even drive. It seemed draconian to me, a punishment for believing in a deity who has demands.

My mother kept her own rituals, taking my sister and me to see her father in Stuyvesant Town on the East River, either 20 minutes or 3 hours away from Brooklyn, depending on traffic. 

Our ritual involved my grandfather and his elderly cousin, a man who’d lost his legs to diabetes way before I met him. They chose to pool their resources and live out the rest of their lives together, a creaky ship sailing into the horizon, helmed by my intrepid mother. We came back week after week. My sister and I got to watch Saturday morning cartoons and eat deli meats, some of which have not withstood the tastebuds of time no matter how much my grandfather and I loved them. Like sliced beef tongue. 

That was my first experience of proscribed rest in the same manner, weekly—Sabbath with its own rules.

In school I met people who had Friday night dinner with family, or those who did it on Sunday, but it was always the same theme—a break, likely punctuated by a meal or a visit. Every religion has one. As a sucker for tradition I bent towards it, trying to cull meaning.

I made the hard sell when I started to have a family of my own. I was determined.

I began to cook a special dinner at the end of each week. We ate in the dining room on actual dishes. Together we’d light candles, eat challah my husband brought home from New York and sip prayed over grape juice. In the very beginning, before the phone became a limb, I settled for a shut down of the television. 

My mother made the drive out to our house on Long Island each Friday. The kids and dog sat at the bay window waiting for her to pull up. It was an hour from Brooklyn, or four, depending on the traffic. She spent the night, and for one precious morning in my week, she took the early shift with the kids. A worthy Sabbath, indeed.

When the progressive march of Alzheimer’s gripped her, we turned Sundays into Nana days and joined a synagogue instead—a poor substitute, I know, but something that offered me great solace.

Phones and sports filled our lives like noise in a crowded stadium. My sons were growing away from me too quickly and I wanted to hold onto them for just a bit once a  week. 

“Let’s shut it down. Sundown Friday — sundown Saturday. No electronics. No television.”

My older son never really minded. Or, he was quieter about his cheating. My younger son sat on the couch watching the sun travel across the sky, aching for me to declare his long nightmare over. 

“Now? Now?” He ran into a corner of the bookshelf. “How about we reread this book? I just found it.”

I was wondering where that went. Panic rose in my throat. It was the one with the history of dirty words! I grabbed it, but it was too late.

“Mommy, what’s a c__beep__t?”

The moment he was Bar Mitzvah’d, his thirteen year old voice cracked at me. “Religiously, I’m a man. I don’t wanna. Give me my phone,” he demanded with an outstretched hand.

After a few Shabbats he made sure weren’t restful, I sighed. He wasn’t wrong. 

Friday night dinner continued, though we all retreated to devices or plans with friends. Don’t tell them, but I was relieved. There are only so many board games we can talk about playing but still manage never to get to.

Recently though, I’ve felt the ache to put the phone down, to quiet the screaming, to embrace the fact that there are no amount of social media posts, history lessons, or outrages that need me available around the clock. It took months for me to embrace this privilege. The news I’m following is littered with victims. The outreach I do, the outreach you do, none of it needs my 24 hour attention.

“What about Bill Maher?” my husband asked when I suggested returning to what we’d done with the kids.

I shook my head, having come to a revelation in my evolution. One bad night, where I’d been trying to come to terms with this new reality I’m living in, my mind went to a very dark place. If only they understood, echoed and resounded in my brain.

Then, I stumbled onto a video. It was a chicken with wild hair, clucking away, just another angry voice amid the maddening crowd. Suddenly, a puppy stumbled and crawled out from beneath one wing! And one more came out from her other! Instantly, I was smiling from ear to ear. Then I watched some bullshit about (fill-in-the________) and I was furious yet again. It makes me feel like a puppet.

“Let’s try,” I said to him, finally coming to see that at my soul’s buffet, I get to choose what shows up on my plate. “What do we have to lose?”

That Friday night we went to synagogue and enjoyed dinner with close friends. Saturday, we stepped away from the phones. We read on the couch, we napped like the old people we are. We took the dogs for a walk. 

As a person attached to their phone for quite some time now, I didn’t think I’d manage it, but remembered what I’d come to look forward to all those years ago. By the end of my Sabbath I was ready to face the horrible news again, only this time, having taken some space, I gained more perspective. 

This week I took the dogs for their favorite walk—two miles around cornfields, through woods and next to rivers. We’d just started. A large bird soared above me. I reached for my phone and realized it was in the car. I debated going back, but the dogs were already far ahead. Instead, I watched that white tailed hawk through its entire flight, sun lighting up its wings during its midair swoop. All of which I might have missed fumbling to capture the shot.

I was able to separate that walk from the rest of my day as if it were Shabbat. I thought about this story and what I wanted to say. My ears perked up at the rustle of the dogs while they wove in and out of the woods, drinking from the river swollen with snow melt. There was laughter from children somewhere and the happy barking of dogs meeting and making new friends. No pictures or podcasts necessary.

Anyone can and should have one ritual of rest. Staying out of the scroll on Saturdays has proven to me that my echo chamber armchair outraged activism helps few. Watching people distort my present or history neither convinces me nor offers me solace. Not all the time anyway. This is the point. 

There is more room to think within the quiet, when I can loosen the icy grip of whatever it is I’m ruminating on. I wish you, my dear readers, in whatever way works, a fervent and fond, peaceful Sabbath, wherever you may find it.