Five years ago, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. This has changed many things about my life: how I calculate risk, how I engage – or no longer engage – with activities I love, how I care for my daughter, how I study, how I lead, how I work and how I care for others. But most importantly, it has shifted my relationship with my body. The likelihood of my seizures increases when I do not allow myself adequate rest. This means that I am constantly tuning into my body: How are my energy levels? Is it time to go on an hour-long run? Or is it time for a nap? Have I taken on a right-sized level of responsibilities? Or have I bitten off more than I can chew? Is what I’m doing giving me energy? Or is it draining me? This has also made me much more attuned to this in others. People in my community may have heard me ask: “Are you sure you haven’t taken on too much?” “Are there other people who might be able to support you with that?”
In Parashat Mishpatim, God teaches us about Shabbat – the Day of Rest:
Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labour, in order that your ox and your ass may rest, and that your home-born slave and the stranger may be refreshed.
This is not the only moment in which God commands us to observe Shabbat; the Torah repeats this commandment multiple times. Elsewhere, the Torah offers three main theological reasons that we must observe Shabbat. Number one: we rest to emulate God, because God rested on the seventh day of Creation. Number two: we rest as a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt. Rest is a sign of our freedom, and a reminder not to treat others the way we were treated when we were enslaved. Number three: rest is a sign of our covenant with God. But here, in Parashat Mishpatim, we are not given any theological justification for Shabbat. Rest is lishma – for its own sake. We don’t need a reason to rest other than that we need to rest.
In a fast-paced culture that values busy-ness, productivity, and stretching ourselves past capacity, perhaps this is the most powerful reason of all.
Kathryn Nicolai, who creates the sleep-aid podcast “Nothing Much Happens,” sometimes reminds her listeners, like myself, that rest is like water. It’s something our bodies need in order to survive. We don’t feel guilty when we need to drink water. So why should we feel guilty when we need to rest? And yet, so often, we do. In part, this is the fault of ableism. In the words of Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, theologian and disability justice activist, “Ableism is a complex system, one that works in myriad ways to deny disabled people access, agency, resources and self-determination… One of the ways ableism operates? It fashions speed and stamina as a threshold condition for basic belonging. Ableist values intertwine with capitalist pressures to laud those who work at a punishing pace. One of the lies ableism tells us? You only matter if you can keep up.” But few, if any of us, can. Nor should we.
Rest is critical for many people with disabilities, like me; it is key to our continued wellbeing. However, may I be so bold as to say that this is true for all humanity and all living beings, even those who do not identify as disabled. Rest is necessary for our survival and our thriving. God commands us to care for our bodies and for the bodies of others. God commands us to care for our minds and the minds of others. God commands us to care for our spirits and the spirits of others. And, moreover, in Parashat Mishpatim, in the same breath as God commands us to observe Shabbat, God also commands us to care for the land upon which we live. In the verse before the commandment to observe Shabbat, God also commands us to observe the Sabbatical Year, a year of rest for the land:
Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield;
but in the seventh you shall let it rest and lie fallow.
This suggests that care for each of us is inextricably linked to caring for the Earth that is our home. In fact, argues Rabbi Elliot Kukla, “The future is one of unconditional love and care, of systems based on care as opposed to profit. The systems we have now are not human. I do believe that if there were ways to care for us as humans, that would also care for the planet.” Rest is not a mere self-indulgence, it is also a call for the healing of our species, our society and the Earth.
This Shabbat, I invite all of us into the practice of rest as a political act, a rebellion against our society’s assumption that we must stretch ourselves to capacity and beyond, in order to be of value. May we know that we have inherent value. And may that knowledge liberate us to refresh ourselves. To rest, simply for its own sake. We don’t need a reason.
Kohenet Yael Tischler, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.