Give It A Rest! A Guide For Sacred Slacking.

Shabbat is the first established Sacred time observance. Occurring every 7 days--no exceptions, no shifting--Shabbat is the heartbeat of Jewish cultural, spiritual, and religious time. It invites humanity, not just the Jewish people, to set aside a day to let go of their worldly concerns and instead spend a full night and day in a state of observance, rather than action. Special foods, songs, and cultural practices help to give Shabbat a unique flavor, sound, and mood. On a spiritual level it challenges us to practice living as if the world had already been perfected--to enter a state of acceptance and contentment--even in an obviously imperfect world. For surely, if we don't start training ourselves to receive every blessing and pleasure now, we will not be ready to live into it when the time comes. Correspondingly, and somewhat paradoxically, it is taught that when every Jew observes the full 25 hours of Shabbat simultaneously, we will signal that we are ready, and Moshiach will come. Which is to say, if enough of us live into creating the world we want to be, that is what the world will become. Here are some important scriptural and textual citations regarding Shabbat:

Vayachulu--aka Genesis 2:1-3, which becomes scriptural liturgy as the introduction to the Shabbat Kiddush: