Shabbat as a utopian ideal

The Jewish Chronicle - Shabbat as a utopian ideal:

The gift Judaism has given the world with regard to Shabbat and the Sabbatical year is, therefore, the idea that from time to time — weekly and every few years — we owe ourselves and one another the privilege of stepping outside the regular patterns that have come to define our work lives, wherein our days buzz with activity and are too often defined only by what we pursue each for our own benefit.  

But writing in “The Sabbath World,” Judith Shulevitz, opines, “[Shabbat] is not just a holy day of rest.  It is also a utopian idea about a more sociable, purer world.”  If so for a weekly respite, how much the more so for the Sabbatical and Jubilee Years! Perhaps, irrespective of where we may be in our calendar, it is time for our community to heed the two Torah portions we read this week.  Imagine, they instruct, what it could mean were we to decide to approach a day in the week ahead as Shabbat, and the year upcoming as a sabbatical from our regular routines.  Consider the rewards, our Torah enjoins, were we to determine to do what we do differently in the days and year ahead.  How much the better might our land and people might be were we willing to imagine our work and its rewards differently. 

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