Shabbat is our Refuge

“Shabbat is our refuge from what has become, in the late capitalist economies, a consumer culture. Consumerism has become the new religion. Its cathedrals are shopping centres, its most heinous sin is not having this year’s model, and it promises “retail therapy,” salvation by shopping, and remission of sins by credit card. Shabbat is precisely the opposite: the one day in seven on which we live by the truth of Ben Zoma’s aphorism, “Who is rich? One who rejoices in what he has.””

Covenant and Conversation: Exodus, pp. 261-262