Mus­sar is a 1,100-year-old Jew­ish tra­di­tion of Jew­ish ethics. Imag­ine it syn­the­sized into eight prac­tices to deep­en our spir­i­tu­al and reli­gious expe­ri­ence of Shab­bat. Now take those eight prac­tices and bring them into the rest of the week to enhance how you live. This is what Alan Mori­nis describes in his lat­est book, The Shab­bat Effect: Jew­ish Wis­dom for Growth and Trans­for­ma­tion. The author incor­po­rates ancient com­men­tary and mod­ern sto­ry­telling, which is fit­ting giv­en he is an anthro­pol­o­gist, a film­mak­er, and — as the founder of the Mus­sar Insti­tute — a promi­nent fig­ure in the Mus­sar move­ment today. His the­sis is com­pelling in the fast-paced, mod­ern world.

The Shab­bat Effect is an acces­si­ble guide­book, as Mori­nis writes his intro­duc­tion: ​“The cen­tral mes­sage of this book is that tak­ing on a struc­tured prac­tice with a spir­i­tu­al core can bring about a trans­for­ma­tion of a key set of inner traits, not just every sev­enth day, but with an effect that extends through every day of your life.” To prac­ti­cal­ly achieve this, he lays his the­sis out through eight con­cepts, one per chap­ter: aware­ness, rest, enough­ness, joy, peace and har­mo­ny, silence, trust, and holi­ness. In each of the chap­ters, he weaves ancient text and com­men­tary togeth­er with mod­ern sto­ry­telling in order to cre­ate a com­pelling nar­ra­tive. At the con­clu­sion of each chap­ter, Mori­nis sug­gests sev­er­al prompts — action items, if you will — to help read­ers bring the focus on the chap­ter into their lives. A whole­heart­ed believ­er in jour­nal­ing, he encour­ages the read­er to write about what they’ve learned and/​or expe­ri­enced when fol­low­ing each of the prompts. 

Much like oth­er mind­ful­ness prac­tices, like med­i­ta­tion or yoga, the suc­cess of a Shab­bat prac­tice that incor­po­rates these eight prin­ci­ples starts with the impor­tance of inten­tion: approach­ing Shab­bat with inten­tion cre­ates an envi­ron­ment that will allow one to lean into and embrace any one of these traits. Morini’s res­o­nant exam­ple is the use of phones. We are not focused when we are on our phones; we are dis­tract­ed and lose the abil­i­ty to act with inten­tion. Ear­ly in The Shab­bat Effect, Mori­nis writes that to ful­ly com­mit to Shab­bat, to expe­ri­ence the joy and pres­ence, we need to put our (prover­bial) phones down. I did that as I read this book, and I felt so much bet­ter for it.

So whether you fin­ish the whole book in one sit­ting — a great plan for a Shab­bat after­noon — or you read a chap­ter here or there and try the prompts at the end, The Shab­bat Effect will leave you feel­ing more ground­ed and present just for hav­ing read it. More impor­tant­ly, not only will the prac­tices it leaves you with cre­ate a more mean­ing­ful Shab­bat, but also their effects will radi­ate out into the oth­er days of your life.