Writ­ing Shab­bat. A Day to Cre­ate Your­self was a unique expe­ri­ence for me.

With oth­er books I’ve writ­ten, I’ve known the direc­tion the book would take from the begin­ning. From there, it was a mat­ter of crys­tal­liz­ing those thoughts and ideas into the writ­ten word – not a sim­ple process. 

The jour­ney of writ­ing Shab­bat. A Day to Cre­ate Your­self took its own path.. Rather than a cal­cu­lat­ed, delib­er­a­tive process, the idea for the book emerged from my sense of won­der at the way in which the Shab­bat Project took off, first in South Africa, and then across the world.

The Shab­bat Project is a call for Jews every­where, of all back­grounds, to join togeth­er to keep one Shab­bat. It began in South Africa in 2013, before spread­ing to hun­dreds of cities world­wide. Today, it is cel­e­brat­ed in more than 1,500 cities and over 100 coun­tries, dri­ven by thou­sands of vol­un­teer part­ners on the ground.

Wit­ness­ing this glob­al grass­roots move­ment take shape had a pro­found impact on me. I was faced with many ques­tions. How does Shab­bat inspire and bring togeth­er Jews of all lev­els of obser­vance? What is the secret pow­er and beau­ty of this day that has cap­ti­vat­ed Jews for gen­er­a­tions? What makes Shab­bat so com­pelling for us today?

And so, I began delv­ing into sources, try­ing to puz­zle out the mean­ing of Shab­bat, in order to under­stand the Shab­bat Project phe­nom­e­non for myself. It became a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery, and grad­u­al­ly, a book emerged from these explorations. 

You’ll see in the bib­li­og­ra­phy that there are more than 200 books which have informed my per­son­al jour­ney, bring­ing to light dimen­sions of Shab­bat I nev­er knew exist­ed. I say that as a rab­bi who has stud­ied and taught the laws of Shab­bat for many years. But Shab­bat. A Day to Cre­ate Your­self  is about under­stand­ing the deep­er sig­nif­i­cance of Shab­bat — the spir­it, vision, and val­ues of Shab­bat which are inter­twined with these laws and emerge from them. 

In time, I began to see Shab­bat from a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. I learned that the Divine gift of Shab­bat goes beyond the sim­ple kind­ness of God grant­i­ng us a day of com­plete rest from the demands of dai­ly life,although that gift can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed, espe­cial­ly in today’s fren­zied times.

I dis­cov­ered big­ger, grander ideas – how Shab­bat can unleash per­son­al and soci­etal renew­al; how it offers us a Divine recipe for hap­pi­ness in an increas­ing­ly com­plex world; how Shab­bat gives us the tools to cre­ate the best ver­sion of our­selves and our world, remind­ing us that our most impor­tant accom­plish­ments in life can­not be measured .

The title refers to one over­ar­ch­ing idea: dur­ing the week we cre­ate the world around us, dur­ing Shab­bat we cre­ate our­selves.

This idea – that Shab­bat can be a cat­a­lyst for self-trans­for­ma­tion – is, I believe, a fresh way of look­ing at Shab­bat, and yet it’s deeply root­ed in our ancient sources.

The style of Shab­bat. A Day to Cre­ate Your­self is also total­ly dif­fer­ent to my oth­er books. The ideas are encap­su­lat­ed in short, easy-to-digest chap­ters, with the source ref­er­ences appear­ing as end­notes to each chap­ter, so that the read­er can enjoy the text first and then delve into the sources if they wish. In gen­er­al, rather than some­thing you sim­ply read and put back on the shelf when you’re done, the book lends itself to dis­cus­sion and con­tem­pla­tion. It’s a book that spurs action and that sparks pub­lic discussion.

It is for this rea­son that Shab­bat. A Day to Cre­ate Your­self is being accom­pa­nied by new book clubs, most of which have been set up by Shab­bat Project vol­un­teer part­ners around the world (the book has been trans­lat­ed into three lan­guages, with a glob­al dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work to mir­ror the Shab­bat Project network).

These book clubs involve groups of peo­ple from all back­grounds meet­ing up on a reg­u­lar basis to read and dis­cuss the book, exchange insights and ideas, and share their Shab­bat experiences.

In my home coun­try of South Africa, there are busi­ness­es that have set up Fri­day after­noon learn­ing groups, and young moth­ers and daugh­ters who have under­tak­en to read the book togeth­er after can­dle-light­ing every Fri­day evening.

The goal is to start a pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion about Shab­bat–to demon­strate that it has answers to our great­est chal­lenges, and can pave the way to a bright Jew­ish future.

This has been the dri­ving vision of the Shab­bat Project and its thou­sands of vol­un­teers in com­mu­ni­ties across the Jew­ish world – and it is the dri­ving vision of this book.

Ulti­mate­ly, I hope you will find Shab­bat. A Day to Cre­ate Your­self as eye-open­ing to read as it was for me to write – and that it enhances your enjoy­ment and appre­ci­a­tion of the pre­cious gift deliv­ered with Divine love at sun­set every Friday. 

To set up a A Day to Cre­ate Your­self book club email Robin@​chiefrabbi.​co.​za.