CxD #277: The art of rest + hypocrisy
I would like to stop working all the time, or at least most of the time.
I’m lazy at heart, so this aspiration should be easy to achieve in theory.
But in practice, I seem to be always clackety-clacking at some project or other, for self-improvement or for work.
Recently I discovered I’m 11% Ashkenazi Jewish.
And have been slowly poking around Jewish history and culture and discovered that Judaism encourages a weekly ritual called shabbat.
A dear friend helped me understand this resting-relaxing-religious-heritage by forwarding the following conversation between Ezra Klein and Jewish scholar Judith Shulevitz.
I’ve gifted you all access to the full article here.
A preview:
Do we know how to truly rest? Who would we be if we did?
I’ve been wrestling with these questions since I read Abraham Joshua Heschel’s stunning book “The Sabbath” in college. The ancient Jewish ritual of the Sabbath reserves a full day per week for rest. As it’s commonly practiced, that means about 25 hours every week of no work, very little technology and plenty of in-person gathering.
But the Sabbath is a much more radical approach to rest than a simple respite from work and technology. Implicit in the practice of the Sabbath is a stinging critique of the speed at which we live our lives, the ways we choose to spend our time and how we think about the idea of rest itself. That, at least, is a central argument of Judith Shulevitz’s wonderful book, “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time.”
[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]
Shulevitz is a longtime culture critic and currently a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Her book isn’t just about the Sabbath itself, it’s about the world the Sabbath tries to create: one with an entirely different conception of time, morality, rest and community. It’s the kind of world that is wholly different from our own, and one whose wisdom is urgently needed.
So, to kick off the new year, I invited Shulevitz on the show to explore what the Sabbath is, the value system embedded within it and what lessons it holds for our lives. I left the conversation feeling awed by how such an ancient practice can feel simultaneously so radical and yet so incredibly urgent.
Last night I went to my first shabbat dinner with this very same dear friend.
The evening ending with a belly full of delicious food and five new friends.
I might have broken one of the rules of shabbat regarding the use of technology, but did so only to take the following picture.
I hear from practitioners that adjudicating and negotiating a stringent or less stringent adherence to the rules are part of the journey— keeping in mind that rituals and traditions that have been around for thousands of years seem to have very good reasons behind their methods.
Community. Conversation. Connection. Nourishment. Rest.
We done a lot of living
We working overtime
Don't need another million
You got that goldmine
I love the way you're livin'
'Cause you so genuine
You got that something special
Didn't you know?
I just need you, you, you
(Thanks for this boppin’ tune, Jessica!)
This Saturday all I’m allowing myself to do:
Gentle run to move my body, breathe, be outside, take ‘er easy.
Walk bunk.
Continue reading my book of the week, These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore.
In These Truths, I found the following passage from Lincoln’s notebooks:
I have a sense that hypocrisy is the most toxic character trait I know of, in both myself and in others.
The number of times I’ve succumbed to hypocrisy is shameful.
The number of times I’ve realized my errors and changed my ways gives me hope that the art and craft of character is always difficult but never impossible.
May we all name our own principles with clarity and have the courage to follow them.