The gift of Shabbat to one’s spiritual life assumes a wider, political profile
Would I observe Shabbat?
That was the first major test of my faith, some four decades ago, soon after I had joined the ranks of the baalei teshuvah, newcomers to an Orthodox lifestyle.
Thor Heyerdahl, the famed Norwegian explorer and writer, who had been my favorite author since I, in high school, had read his best-selling “Kon-Tiki” seafaring memoir, was coming to town. For the first time in my life. I could finally see, and maybe meet, the man I so admired.
Heyerdahl was to speak at the local Museum of Science. On a Friday. When Yom Kippur began.
I checked the schedule in the newspaper. Maybe, if the speech began early enough, I could catch part of it, then drive home before sundown in time for davening. No such mazel! Heyerdahl’s speech was to start at 6:30 p.m., b’davka Kol Nidrei time. Shortly before Shabbat began. No way I could hear Heyerdahl – instead of going to the Museum, I went to shul.
I kept Shabbat. (And I never got to see Heyerdahl, who died in 2002, in person.)
This memory came to mind recently, when the role of religion in public life, and the related subject of Sabbath observance – and the possible sacrifices it entails, and the way it enriches your life, and how it can influence the tenor of a nation’s behavior – was in the news.
A White House-backed, nine-hour-long “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” celebration of religious values, featuring music and speeches, drew thousands of participants on a Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, to the National Mall in Washington in a “rededication” of the USA as a country established as “One Nation Under God.”
The ceremony was initiated as an early part of the country’s year-long 250th semiquincentennial celebration, which will culminate on July 4.
“Rededicate 250” had a like-minded Jewish component.
As part of this government recognition of the value of a day of rest, President Trump, in a proclamation, called on Jews, as well as members “of all backgrounds,” to take part in “Shabbat 250,” a National Shabbat, a nationwide observance, from sundown on Friday, May 15 to nightfall on Saturday, May 16 – Parshat BaMidbar– in order to “come together in gratitude for our great Nation,” recognizing “the sacred Jewish tradition of setting aside time for rest, reflection, and gratitude to the Almighty.”
(In a tone-deaf move, the White House scheduled a reception, marking concurrent American Jewish Heritage Month, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, to mark the start of Shabbat 250, late on Friday afternoon, which effectively excluded the participation of Sabbath-observant Jews.)
Many spokesmen for Jewish organizations, particularly in the Orthodox community, praised the National Shabbat idea. Agudath Israel of America’s Rabbi A.D. Motzen called the presidential suggestion, the first such ecumenical one by the Commander-in-Chief, “Shabbos 250.” “A unique moment in history,” said South African Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, founder of his country’s 2013 Shabbos Project, which have grown into a worldwide outreach activity that encouragedmembers of the Jewish community to incorporate some measures of Shabbat observance into their lives.
Who can criticize an effort to urge people to keep Shabbat, in their own particular religious or secular way? Efforts to stay away from using electronics, to bolster our psychological health and increase our face-to-face interaction with friends and family, have gained support in recent years.
Shomer Shabbat Jews already know this. I can’t imagine my life during the last 40 years without the weekly break from work and commerce. I gladly set aside my laptop computer and reporter’s notebook.
But that’s my choice. Should Shabbat be a tool of politicians, instead of theologians?
Today, the answer is not clear.
Judaism, and the two monotheistic religions that grew out of it, Christianity and Islam, advocate observance of the Sabbath in different ways and on different days – Sunday and Friday, respectively. For religious Christians, Sabbath observance largely means time set aside for prayer, Bible study, and cessation of unnecessary, business-related labor; for religious Muslims, Sabbath (Jumu’ah) observance typically means communal prayer at noon, usually listening to a sermon (khutbah) while dressed in house-of-worship-respectful clothing.
Neither mainstream Christianity nor Islam feature Judaism’s corpus of laws that many outsiders regard as restrictions.
The most famous practitioner – in US political history – of a traditional Jewish Sabbath was arguably the late Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut). He wrote, with co-author David Klinghoffer, “The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath” (Howard Books, 2012), which extolled the Sabbath as a means to recharge one’s spiritual batteries. Honoring this premise, the Senator was known to walk miles from his home if he had to deliver a vote on Shabbat.
Lieberman’s personal piety – he called his Shabbat observance “a foundation and point of order and purpose” – earned bi-partisan respect. A rarity today.
Like most events in our current, heavily politicized era, the gathering on the National Mall drew a share of criticism – while many people praised a message of fostering the nation’s religious life and faith in a higher power, “Rededicate 250” came under fire for its largely evangelical Christian character: the religious life that the speakers clearly advocated, loosely citing alleged Christian convictions of the USA’s Founding Fathers, was Christianity. Particularly a rightwing, exclusionist, conservative Christian nationalist brand of Protestantism. Jews, Muslims, liberal Christians, traditional Catholics, and members of other faith groups need not apply!
Concerns about the constitutional separation between Church and State, and about the First Amendment’s rejection of the establishment of a sanctioned state religion or favoring of one religion over another (the expression about the “separation of church and state” did not appear until 1802, in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson), seemed to be absent from the Mall.
While the men who helped found and guide the US in its early years – many of them with a Deist there-is-a-God-but-He-does-not-get-involved-in-the-daily-lives of-human-beings orientation – often parted from a stringent, Christian-influenced observance of behavior on the Sabbath, subsequent Chief Executives were stricter – Franklin Pierce conducted no business on the “Lord’s Day” and would not allow mail to be opened then; and Theodore Roosevelt, an avid environmentalist and outdoorsman, refused to hunt or fish on Sundays for religious reasons.
Many contemporary politicians have sought to translate individual people’s personal convictions into sweeping political policy.
Such as the recent “Rededicate 250” on the National Mall.
Speakers at the gathering included Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, all of them professing Christians.
The most-noted participant in the event was Trump, who, quoting 2 Chronicles 7, urged people to “humble themselves.”
The president, many media reports pointed out, delivered his remarks in an old, pre-taped speech from his White House office – during the Sunday event, Trump was in Virginia, playing golf at one of his courses. (Fundamentalist Christians, it should be noted, do not engage in sports on the Christian Sabbath.)
There is a precedent for a prominent political leader sending a pre-recorded message to a prestigious gathering instead of attending in person.
In 1988, Lieberman, who then was attorney general of Connecticut, was campaigning for his state’s Democratic Party nomination for US Senator. He did not deliver his possibly-career-changing speech himself at the party’s Convention – he appeared on a large screen, giving a speech he had taped a few days earlier.
The speech obviously was effective; Lieberman secured the Convention’s nomination, won his senatorial race against his Republican opponent, served 24 years in the Senate, and in 2000 made Jewish-and-political history as Al Gore’s “24/6” running mate on the Democrats’ presidential ticket.
Lieberman did not attend the session of the state party’s Convention in 1988 for a good reason – because it was held on a Friday night. He was home with his family.
He was observing Shabbat.
