The Sabbath world : glimpses of a different order of time /

IT is the Fourth Commandment of the time-honored Ten. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. And remember it I do. How could I forget? For decades, I was a strict Sabbath observer. As a working mother with a long commute, my day of rest required maniacal activity, especially in the winter months, when the sun sets early. The Jewish calendar, listing the minute for lighting the Sabbath candles, hung on the wall beside the stove, its imperious ukase whipping me into a frenzy to complete the cooking and baking by the appointed moment. At winter's bleakest, this arrived as early as 4:03. 4:03! The laws of the day decreed that after that instant there could be no food changed from its raw state to cooked, no fire kindled and, by extension, no electricity turned on or off. By the time the minute hand moved into place, three challahs had to have been baked, a multicourse dinner prepared for the evening repast and festive food for the next day cooked as well. The children had to be bathed and dressed - and me, too, since to beautify oneself for the Sabbath is a requirement. The prohibitions of the day itself played havoc with the rest of my week as well. Writing is forbidden on the Sabbath. Reading is allowed, but I could take no notes. Unable even to underline, I devised a system of using hairpins to mark important places in the text (I didn't dare ask the rabbi for his permission) and cultivated my memory. So when I remember the Sabbath day, it is with an abiding sense of relief that I no longer observe it - an attitude that would seem to make me an unsympathetic reader of "The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time." Judith Shulevitz and I approach the Sabbath from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. Where I am grateful to have finally escaped it - all that rest was killing me - she testifies to a lifelong yearning to enter into it. "If only I'd been raised in a fully traditional home, instead of my half-godless one! If only I had been trained to follow rules, rather than having been spoiled by the modern disrespect for them!" But if you imagine a cynical expression distorting my face while I read such wistful counterfactuals, you would be wrong. Ideally situated to treat Sabbath-envy with a severely arched eyebrow, I found this hybrid of a book - part spiritual memoir, part religious history and sociological analysis and literary exegesis and philosophical musing - mostly irresistible. For one thing, Shulevitz is nothing if not ambivalent, and ambivalence is a sign of an interesting mind. Yes, she romanticizes the religious life, especially when it is Jewish, but a robust intellect keeps her from too much schmaltz. I enjoyed watching her critical intelligence charging in at crucial moments. Discussing the 17th-century kabbalists of Safed, with their theurgical script for sex on Friday night - designed so that the holy orgasms of man and wife will reverberate on high and prompt divine couplings between the godhead's masculine and feminine aspects - she writes, "Anyone watching these proceedings who was not familiar with their mythological depths would surely have thought himself in the company of madmen." So far, so good. But then comes the "but": "But I can't help envying the kabbalists. They found a way to overcome the alienation that chills our sensation of holy - its way of reminding us how far from God we really are." There is little of the skeptic in that passage, as if just describing the hot certitude of these mystics pulled the author closer to their charged cosmogony. But then again, here she is further on in the book, her equivocation restored and offering a notion of God elastic enough to accommodate itself to almost anyone's world view: "Anyway, I still like the idea of the fully observed Sabbath more than I like observing it," she writes. "I like the idea of being commanded, too, in the same ambivalent way, because I believe that I am. Being commanded strikes me as a succinct way of saying 'being born into the world.' Being commanded means that customs come upon us from the outside, like the language that we learn from our parents, and from the inside, like the still small voice of conscience. What others call God, I call ritual. . . . God, then, is the ungovernable reality commemorated by ritual." Shulevitz uses her divided fascination to range over all things Sabbath: what it is in practice and theory, in history, in literature, in metaphor, in the very metaphysics of time. True to the tradition she loves, she displays a reassuring double-mindedness toward almost everything except erudition. And so, flirting with, but never submitting to, the law-ladenness of the Jewish Sabbath, she plunges into the study of those laws in the Talmud (no easy matter) and gives a superb explanation of how Talmudic disputation bypasses the doctrinal discourse of the Christian mode and instead "embeds its values deep within unexpected places: in rituals, in legends, in arcane legal and ethical discussions," adding: "When you first encounter what passes for law and theology in the Talmud, it's likely to strike you as scattershot and shockingly concrete (the anti-Semitic terms are nitpicky and hairsplitting)." Although it is around the Jewish Sabbath that her mixed emotions swirl, Shulevitz examines the Christian Sabbath with equal depth, using their relationship as a revealing window into Christian uneasiness toward the mother religion. Christian Sabbatarians, drawing too close for comfort to Judaism, were often branded heretics. Shulevitz writes of the Transylvanian Szombatosok, or "Saturday people," who in the 17th century numbered between 15,000 and 20,000 and included many of the nobility. Who knew? Closer to home were the Puritans who settled New England, including one Thomas Shepard, who became a founder of Harvard College and whose "Theses Sabbaaticae," Shulevitz writes, was "one of the great Sabbatarian tracts of the New World, and the philosophical cornerstone of the American Sunday." Shulevitz uses her own Sabbath longings to tentatively prescribe a mitigated Sabbath for us all. She bases her prescription on her diagnosis of our collective "time illness," induced by the unceasing electronic contacts that keep us always on the grid, eroding our sense of free time. Though confessing to a sympathy for blue laws, she does not propose that governments bring them back. What she hankers after is a day that society at large will mark off as a spiritual preserve, and here she loses me. I have only to remember my own Sabbath to know that one person's spiritual fantasy can cause another to flee screaming. Shulevitz "remembers the Sabbath" not by obeying its laws but by drawing on her autobiography to explain why the subject engages her. Harnessing her personal ambivalences and quirks, she has written a book of richness and depth. I suspect that I am not the only reader who will find her enlarged vision of the Sabbath as an idyll "wherein my spirit could safely wander" to be both riveting and moving - as long as no one forces it on me. Shulevitz diagnoses our collective 'time illness,' induced by unceasing electronic communication. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's latest book is "36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction."

Journalist Shulevitz presents a sometimes intriguing, sometimes tortured, exposition on the idea of the Sabbath, from both Jewish and Christian perspectives. Though the idea of a day of rest seems simple enough, the author reveals layers of complexity that make the Sabbath a formidable topic of study, including history, social structures, economics and the idea of time as something people measure in increments. For instance, in simply trying to define the Sabbath, the author points out that it is social, legal, cultural, political and holy in character. Perhaps in part because of its complexity, the concept is at its most effective in promoting social solidarity, and indeed has been a rallying point within communities for centuries. Nevertheless, the Sabbath is also a troublesome reality for those exposed to it, a tradition "designed to make life as inconvenient as possible." Shulevitz goes to great lengths to describe her lifelong struggle with the Sabbathand perhaps with faith itselfin a narrative that demonstrates how living with the Sabbath is often difficult. Never quite at home among observant Jews"I was a fraud, an imposter, a clich"the author nonetheless felt drawn to the tradition of the Sabbath and what it represents in a world that often forgets to slow down. Too often Shulevitz crosses the line by indulging in her own story at the expense of her topic, but she presents a welcome introduction to the idea of Sabbath. Most readers will be challenged to rethink what Saturday or Sunday really means to them. A worthwhile discussion of a day we take for granted. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.