Shabbes Book

By Shane, Dr. Paul G.
The International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, 1998, Booklet, 92 pp.

This book is an attempt to set out some information about the development of Shabbes and its history of meaning and observance.

It will be found that observances have changed and varied over the years, in different communities and circumstances. It can only be extrapolated what it meant and means from what it does.

Rabbi Sherwin Wine and many of our recent fore-bearers considered it a day of restriction, of oppression. They remember the prohibitions which seemed to stifle life. Others considered it a day of freedom and joy. Some believed that it was a revolutionary development in human civilization. They see that it was instituted for all, rich and poor, men and women, free and slave, strangers and neighbors. It was mandated in an era when most people worked all the time except for occasional orgiastic explosions of release and some never worked, just lived off the work of all the others.

In Western societies the concept of Sabbath is totally assimilated. At the end of the 20th Century there are still large parts of humankind, which are guides of these notions of rest and recuperations.

The book is a combination of materials, which can be used directly and a guide to some sources for further materials and resources. There has been no attempt to make this an exhaustive compendium of materials. Some of the traditional materials, secular and religious have been altered, some by the author and some by others, to more closely reflect the universalistic and humanistic concepts which guide our movement. From the introduction