Rosh Hashana on Shabbat: Rest is an essential part of creativity

Nature rests through its own sabbaticals. Consider how trees go dormant in the winter, a process necessary for fruit-bearing in the spring. If dormancy is prevented, the species will eventually die. This biological model of imposed fallowness occurs to nourish and replenish. It is one deeply suggestive of our own necessity to find some kind of rest to cultivate our inner lives.

From Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath to Newton’s apple, history is filled with brilliance conceived in a moment of pause. Think of how many good ideas come to us in the shower. Perhaps that is because it can be the only quiet time we find in a day filled with notifications and obligations.

Shabbat is so much more than a day off. It is a system of meaning. It gives us a way to make sense of our strivings. On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the creation of the world. We pause on our entrance to this new year, reflect and look at what we have created in the past year. We examine our mistakes and plan adjustments for the year to come. We learn that pausing is productive. Our tradition teaches emphatically and unequivocally that rest is part of the creation story. On the seventh day God rests and contemplates creation. Rest is an essential part of our own creativity as we build the world as we hope it can be.

Shabbat is not about what we cannot do. It is about making what we can do count. Prohibitions are the least of it. Shabbat is about finding tranquility and calmness.

Even the technology that hinders our rest teaches us about this pause. What do we do when our devices are not working as they should? The first troubleshooting advice is always … turn it off and unplug it. Shabbat is that reset of our own glitches.

The idea of the sabbath is collective. In the Jewish tradition, Shabbat is not to be made alone if we can help it; it is the connections to friends, family and community that set this day apart as holy. Sociologist Emile Durkheim coined the phrase “collective effervescence.” It is his way to describe the joy and connectivity people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose. Our ancient rabbis discovered this concept centuries before and they called it oneg. Oneg is more than the babka and cookies we share after services. It describes the specific joy in being together on a day when we have no other place we need to rush off to be.

It is within this sacred construct that we find the space to be our best selves. Shabbat is a day to reclaim our own humanity so that we may fully see that of others.

We live in a culture that pushes us to calendar ever more activities into our busy lives. When we hold up action and accomplishment as the only goal, we lose out on knowing one another and the delight in simple quiet moments.

We struggle to put down our phones, to not react to social media, return emails, answer texts. Shabbat reminds us to stop being control freaks. To step away from our work and let it be. As one scholar teaches, “God rested on the seventh day. God didn’t show up to do more. God absented God's self from the office. God did not come and check on creation in anxiety to make sure it was all working.” Shabbat brings with it humility in its reminders that what we do is not that important after all. Who we are and how we treat one another counts more. Few of us do such important work that we can’t pause for a day.

For pausing is where we reclaim our humanity. Without it, we run the risk of doing real harm to our neshama, our souls. We can make Shabbat by allowing ourselves to let go of our schedules for one day and instead allowing ourselves quietude and dormancy, to regenerate and continue. A time to stop purchasing and producing, and to embrace being.

Read any opinion page in the newspaper of your choice and you will see article after article about burnout and loneliness. The struggle is real. Shabbat is an ancient remedy for modern problems. One wise teacher writes that “Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms.”

Shabbat exists to teach us how we can be our best selves and in so doing build the world as we dream it can be. This Rosh Hashanah, we begin with Shabbat. Let us find menucha, a true repose of body and spirit. Let us find oneg, communal joy; and let it transform us and the world in this new year.

SARAH MACK is the senior rabbi at Temple Beth-El in Providence.