Shabbat – Time to Unplug From A Fake World

Editor’s note: The writer is a Yeshiva High-School student in Jerusalem

Before I start to explain who I am, let me just say that you and I are alike… I don’t want to talk with you about what you need to be or do, I just want to share with you something that I feel when I’m observing Shabbat… 

To begin, it’s very hard for me too, to leave the tablet and the phone, you feel so bored and the most critical point is that you do not really understand why you should do it. To the unobservant eye it can seem like a stupid orthodox custom which has a deep spiritual reason that not everyone really understands.

I think for me it feels like the most difficult thing in the Jewish religion. I know that the Jewish people who live in France or America don’t have the majority of Jewish people keeping the Torah. This is why they prefer to stay far away from the real religion and it is a great challenge for our generation. People who understand the deepness of the religion, often times don’t want to practice it with a happy heart or a smile on their face. So the rest of us are put off, especially those new to it altogether. The thing that really blocks it, is the Shabbat. 

All day long, they see people who are not Jews or not practicing the religion and they think that they are so happy with what they have. They do not need to work on Saturday or Sunday, they can go anywhere with the car and use their phone on Shabbat …… it “seems” like the best life ever…  They don’t need to wake up early every day for prayer and they can wear all the clothes they want without having problems of modesty (especially for the girls).

At the same time my father always said that with the technology of today, we can use it to help us understand the Shabbat. It’s the deepness of stopping all the activities, take a break from the fake world of whatsapp, Facebook and all the applications which make you live like a robot and to share your feelings with people just according to a screen of a phone!!!!!! 

The Shabbat is given especially for this!!! It’s to give you one day that you can eat and spend with friends (not according to a screen), to share real feelings with them and not just to write “ha ha ha” in a text. A day that you can sit on the sofa with a clean head without having this stress of “maybe I have a new message….” To be disconnected from the fake world of technology and to remember what is the real life. You also have a free mind to pray a little more better than you do on a regular day.

Ask yourself the question: when do we have time to sit around the table with all the family and eat the royal food your mother cooked? …..  This is the real taste of the life and the present that G-d gave us. This is why my father says that you can feel the good side of the Shabbat today more than a long time ago in the generation of the “Exodus from Egypt”…..Think about it!! Its right!!

You can see popular videos on the internet saying “we are prisoners of technology!! Try to spend just one day without touching the phone and tablet and you will feel the real fun of the life. This is what Hashem knows and wants us to do. But this is the problem of the non-religious person, he doesn’t get the opportunity to take one day break and they are slowly starting to wake-up and understand that they are suffering because of that!!

Man, you are Jewish and get this present every week, this opportunity, use it and you are going to be happier and more peaceful than you ever have been before!!

Please after you read this, just try to do one Shabbat like a real Jew and I can promise you that you won’t be disappointed about it if you understood what I wrote.

I myself feel that today I’m spending Shabbat like I never spent it before. Now I’m understanding the deepness of Shabbat and this is an amazing point in being a religious Jew with a full heart. It helps me understand and trust many other things in the religion.

I’m sure that it’s gonna be the same for you (I very much hope so).

24 hours without touching technology is not going to hurt you on the contrary it’s just going to help you.

Please take it to your attention and try it at home, It’s not dangerous.

Your religious brother:

Arie Sebbah

Yeshiva: Chedvat HaTorah

arie.sebb@gmail.com