In regard to external gifts,
to outward possessions,
there is only one proper attitude –
to have them and to be able to do without them.
On the Sabbath we live,
as it were, independent of technical civilization:
we abstain primarily from any activity
that aims at remaking or reshaping the things of space.
Man’s royal privilege to conquer nature
is suspended on the seventh day.

[Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath ]

We open our exploration of Shabbat with a brief,
but poignant, text from the great twentieth-century
theologian and social activist,
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)
about our relationship to space and time