Who’s Calling?

The human soul has a deep longing for the holy. We live in such debased and sullied times, however, that the urge finds no outlet. In its place, we turn to false and unsatisfying substitutes, like technology, social media, money, sports, politics and fantasy, searching for the ultimate and not finding it.

The first step is to recognize that the inner emptiness is calling to be filled by holiness, not by food or celebrities or internet “friends.”

The second step is to prepare a space in your life where holiness can come to rest. This is the essence of Shabbat. When the Torah says that God sanctified Shabbat, I understand that to mean that the seventh day is designated as a place in time where the divine dimension in life comes to the fore.

God created the seventh day, and “then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” We are called upon to repeat that consecration every week. In the Kiddush blessing that we make over wine, we recite the verses that tell of the creation of the seventh day and its sanctification and in so doing, we align ourselves with that original consecration.

It’s not like we are casting a spell. We are stating an intention to guard and keep the holiness of the day in our thought, speech and deed. Practical actions are the only way to create the vessel that might hold the holiness.

Most of the things that are traditionally prohibited on Shabbat are the types of activities that will spring leaks in the time-vessel for holiness. In our generation, there is no bigger culprit than the cell phone.

Even when what is coming in through your phone is not completely defiled and abhorrent (ok, that takes care of 50% of the content), it draws your attention to the coarse here-and-now world and when you are looking that way, you are not looking toward the subtle realm of the holy.

Holiness requires a vessel and that container needs to have strong boundaries or else the holiness will leak away, and cell phones are boundary busters.

I wrote about that in a previous blog post, and when I did, I received an email from someone who protested because she said she had recently saved the life of a neighbour who called her in medical distress and since she answered her phone on Shabbat, she was able to call 911 and the person survived.

On the surface, that sounds compelling. Jewish law certainly prioritizes saving a life above all else, and there is no question that Shabbat observance is (as the rabbis say) “pushed off” when a life is at stake.

There is even a notion of a chasid shoteh, a pious fool. That’s the term given to someone who gets their priorities so wrong that they fail to save a life because they are so busy being religiously observant. The example in the Talmud is of a man who sees a woman drowning in the river and he does not jump in to save her because that will mean making physical contact with a strange woman. A pious fool, the rabbis say!

(The Orthodox Union categorizes someone who does not vaccinate their children for “religious reasons” as another variant on the chasid shoteh.)

I challenged myself to think through how she could have acted on her laudable good intentions to serve (and maybe save) her neighbour, but do so without using her cell phone on Shabbat. My first thought was that if she planned to shut off her phone, she would have to coach her neighbour in advance that in case of an emergency, she should call 911 directly.

That thought made me realize that even without taking Shabbat into account, that would have been a good thing to do. In a life-threatening situation, seconds can make all the difference and calling her rather than directly to 911 wasted precious time. If her neighbour was able to call her, then she obviously had the ability to call 911 and it would have been most helpful to have coached her in advance to do that, Shabbat or no.

That’s how Shabbat works. It doesn’t just happen; it requires preparation. And its effect is to teach us the benefit of preparation.

Clearing the space for the holy requires that you take steps in advance to prepare. “On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, etc.” (Exodus 16:5). The verse is not talking only about preparing cooked dishes for enjoying on Shabbat, it is talking about the need to think through and to take steps to prepare in advance so nothing will breach the vessel for holiness we are able to create for ourselves on Shabbat. In this case, had she taken those preparatory steps, it would have served both her Shabbat and her neighbour’s life.

One of the major inner traits that a Shabbat practice requires – and, in turn, cultivates – is trust in God [bitachon]. There is a whole chapter on that trait in my book, The Shabbat Effect. Am I so important that the world needs me to be on-call 24/7 to solve everyone’s problems? Or is there healthy humility in taking preparatory steps to be responsible, and then turning away from the screen on the device, and toward the radiance that is only visible when we draw open the curtains that hide it in our regular lives.

If you do not (yet!) shut off your phone on Shabbat, for what reasons do you feel you need it?