Shabbat and Liberty

“Our Shabbat is a religious institution, a memorial to creation, the day on which God Himself rested. But it is also and essentially a political institution. Shabbat is the greatest tutorial in liberty ever devised.”

“Pesach tells us how the Israelites won their freedom. Shabbat tells us how they kept it. One day in seven, Jews create a Messianic society. It is the day on which everyone, master and slave, employer and employee, even animals, experience unconditional freedom. We neither work nor get others to work, manipulate nor allow ourselves to be manipulated. We may neither buy nor be bought.”

“It is the day on which all hierarchies, all relationships of power are suspended.”

A Letter in the Scroll, p. 130