Keep the Sabbath

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Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the foreigner who is within your gates. For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.
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Exodus 20:8-11

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Be careful to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy as the Lord your God has commanded you. You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or donkey, any of your livestock, or the foreigner who lives within your gates, so that your male and female slaves may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.
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Deuteronomy 5:12-15


I do physical exercise twice a week to stay in shape.  Without this exercise, I would be a physical mess.  My work involves mental exercise that keeps my mind active.  Anything that we want to maintain or strengthen about ourselves requires exercise.  Morality is no different.  The key strength that we need for morality is self-discipline.  We must practice adhering to rules so that we are strong enough to adhere to moral rules when they are needed.  The main purpose of the Sabbath is provide this exercise, to adhere to a simple weekly rule that forces us to organize our time and respect rules that we impose on ourselves.

Consider the following.  Your trash is almost full and it is the afternoon before the Sabbath.  Do you take it out?  If you don't, then the trash may fill up during the Sabbath.  At this point you may be tempted to take out the trash during the Sabbath by arguing to yourself that the full trash is making you miserable and is ruining your restful Sabbath.  But this would be a mistake.  Instead, you should simply suffer from the full trash and have a miserable Sabbath as a way of teaching yourself that you should do better next time.  The lesson to be learned here is to be responsible, to complete those tasks that need to be completed on time, or suffer the consequences.  Being responsible and completing things on time is an excellent self-discipline that the Sabbath teaches.  And the reward is clear, one can only truly rest if one is responsible and takes care of everything beforehand.  Otherwise your rest will be interrupted.

What I just described isn't theoretical.  Visit the home of any family that keeps the Sabbath on the afternoon before the Sabbath begins and you will see a flurry of activity as the family works to complete everything needed before the Sabbath begins.  This includes the children who greatly benefit from learning to organize their time and get things done on time.

While teaching self-discipline is the most important benefit of the Sabbath, the rest itself also has value.  People need rest.  When you try to work all the time, you are simply deceiving yourself as to what you are capable of.  By resting regularly, you are making sure that you get enough rest to be functional the rest of the week.  The flip side of this is that during the week, you may feel lazy and want to rest.  But if you know that the Sabbath is coming and you will be able rest then, then you can push yourself not to be lazy during the week.  The evidence of no loss of productivity from keeping the Sabbath can be seen from history.  Those people who kept the Sabbath have been the most productive people in history.

But the Sabbath isn't just about rest, it is also meant to be kept holy.  I interpret "holy" to mean a time for spirituality, morality, and general self-improvement.  It is a time to read books about meaningful things and a time to reflect.  It is time out of the rat-race when you can think about basic question about life.  Gaining depth requires time for introspection.

The Sabbath commandment not only commands that you rest, but also that you give rest to:

"your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or donkey, any of your livestock, or the foreigner who lives within your gates, so that your male and female slaves may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm."

The point here is equality and respect for all life.  The Israelites were forced to work all the time as slaves in Egypt.  But the Sabbath requires that you do not act with the same inconsideration as the Egyptian slave-masters, or as many corporate bosses in modern times.  You should never require any other person to work all week without a day off.  This is a humane aspect of the Sabbath commandment.

So how well has the Sabbath worked in practice?  The answer is remarkably well.  Those societies that maintained the Sabbath also maintained morality.  A prime example is early America which was one of the most Sabbath-keeping societies in history.  As Alexis de Tocqueville reported in the mid-1800s:

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In the United States, on the seventh day of every week, the trading and working life of the nation seems suspended; all noises cease; a deep tranquility, say rather the solemn calm of meditation, succeeds the turmoil of the week, and the soul resumes possession and contemplation of itself. Upon this day the marts of traffic are deserted; every member of the community, accompanied by his children, goes to church, where he listens to strange language which would seem unsuited to his ear. He is told of the countless evils caused by pride and covetousness: he is reminded of the necessity of checking his desires, of the finer pleasures which belong to virtue alone, and of the true happiness which attends it. On his return home, he does not turn to the ledgers of his calling, but he opens the book of Holy Scripture; there he meets with sublime or affecting descriptions of the greatness and goodness of the Creator, of the infinite magnificence of the handiwork of God, of the lofty destinies of man, of his duties, and of his immortal privileges. Thus it is that the American at times steals an hour from himself; and laying aside for a while the petty passions which agitate his life, and the ephemeral interests which engross it, he strays at once into an ideal world, where all is great, eternal, and pure.
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http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/tocqueville/alexis/democracy/book2.2.html#book2.2.15

When Christians kept the Sabbath, they were moral.  When Christians stopped keeping the Sabbath, they became immoral.  This well illustrates the moral importance of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is the most important commandment in Judaism.  History teaches that those Jews who keep the Sabbath remain Jews, while those Jews who do not keep the Sabbath get absorbed into an alien culture.  This makes sense because the Sabbath is the only one of the Ten Commandments that is a regular practice, a weekly reminder of one's religion.

Anyone who does not keep the Sabbath cannot be considered to be following the Bible, and so cannot be considered a Biblic Jew.  But the details of how you keep the Sabbath depend on your interpretation of the Bible.  Here is one Karaite interpretation of the Sabbath.