May 2005 The Gift That Keeps Giving By Rabbi Alvin Kass This month we will celebrate Israel's 57th birthday, an occasion marking the magnificent opportunity of the Jewish people to enjoy political freedom in their own land. That is a priceless gift from Almighty God for which we ought to be eternally grateful. Freedom, however, not only has political dimensions, but spiritual ones as well. Here too God has been very kind in giving to us the gift of the Sabbath which is in truth a gift that keeps giving. I must confess that I once feared that the advent of the so-called "age of leisure" would make the Sabbath obsolete. After all, isn't the main purpose of the Sabbath to protect the spiritual and physical health of human beings by ensuring that they will rest from their labor at least one day a week? But now that we have a five-day work week, with many jobs requiring even less than forty hours per week, one would think that the danger to physical and spiritual health of overwork would have disappeared. A whole industry has been created to cater to man's leisure hours - traveling, fishing, skiing, bowling, needlepoint, "do-it-yourself" books, etc. The thought was that modern technology had removed the sweat and tediousness from human labor enabling all of us to rest more, to cultivate our minds, and to ennoble our spirits. But what has actually happened? In truth, most people work harder today than ever before. It is rare to find a household in which the wife is not also holding an outside income-producing job. The man of the house, instead of using his shorter work week as an opportunity for self-development, takes a moonlighting position to fill in his free hours with the result that he is now probably putting in more hours (in some cases twice as many) than he did previously. Thus, a shorter work week seems to produce a man who ends up with a longer work week. The modern pension system also produced a similarly ironic and self-defeating effect. Pension systems were introduced to enable a human being to retire from work at a younger age so that he could devote more of his life to doing what he wants to do instead of what he has to do. What happens in many instances, however, is that early retirement from one job, rather than leading to a leisurely enjoyment of life's pleasures and opportunities, eventuates in a person taking another job involving the same kind of arduous toil, self-discipline and effort as the first. But if all we're going to do after retirement from one job is to take another, why retire from the first altogether, especially if you enjoy what you're doing? Yet, this unending toil, as partisans of the Sabbath understood, is not good for us. It drains us of our energy, our creativity, and our efficiency. Many doctors have regarded work exhaustion as a major cause of heart problems and ulcers, particularly where the job entails excessive tensions. The Sabbath, it would appear, still serves an essential purpose by emphasizing the indispensability of regular periodic rest. Without it, one cannot think, act, or respond as a mature individual. Sabbath observance, whether in Israel or the Diaspora, remains our best hope for restoring dignity and sensitivity to human life!