Stop Look Listen — Celebrating Shabbos through a Spiritual Lens
Nehemia Polen
Maggid, £22.99

You’ll often hear Shabbat championed these days as an opportunity for “digital detox”, when we can switch off the electronic devices that hold us captive for the rest of the week and enjoy the company of family and friends.

The social and mental health benefits of a release from the “tyranny of technology” may be good as far as they go, argues Nehemia Polen, but we need more than a utilitarian motive to keep the Seventh Day.

Instead, the ultimate purpose of Shabbat — or Shabbos, as he calls it — is to bring us to a zone of enhanced spiritual awareness in which we celebrate the day “as a gift from God to us and an offering from ourselves to God”.

The threefold imperative of the title refers to the three phases of the day, Friday evening, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon, each with its distinct mood.

Stop, Look, Listen cover image

Stop Look Listen

Shabbat is the “core devotional practice of Judaism”, defining the rhythm of the week. To call it a “day of rest” can be misleading, for it is a day that “calls for maximum alertness” (although he commends the virtue of the afternoon shluff).

He takes a look at the biblical passages relating to Shabbat, the liturgy of the day and the various rites — from candle-lighting to niggunim, the melodies we sing in synagogue or around the table — to explore their spiritual depth.

And in particular he draws on the insights of the Chasidic masters. He is best known for his book, The Holy Fire, on the extraordinary Piaseczner Rebbe, Kalonymus Kalmish Shapiro, who provided spiritual leadership in the Warsaw Ghetto.

He writes at times with controlled rapture about the day the rabbis saw as “a foretaste of the world to come”. In the special atmosphere of Shabbat, he counsels: “Become increasingly aware of a gentle, restful, enveloping Presence in your life that is tangible, as real and comforting as the caress of a lover or the safe hug of a parent.”

Now professor of Jewish thought at the non-denominational Hebrew College, he grew up in an observant home that made one concession to modernity; the television was not switched off on Friday so the children could watch the cartoons the next morning.

But he came to realise that this was not compatible with the spirt of the day — and Bugs Bunny had to be sacrificed to get to shul earlier.