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Why We Observe the Sabbath
00:04:19
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| Science argues for a creator, but this hour is not to convince you that religion is true or that God exists even. | |
| It is to convince you to lead a religious life even if you have doubts about God or doubts about the religion. | |
| To find good people to have a weekly community with. | |
| I have an essay in my book of essays called Think a Second Time. | |
| There are 44 essays in that book on 44 subjects. | |
| It's quite varied. | |
| Can you believe in God after the Holocaust? | |
| Can a good man go to a strip show? | |
| I mean it's about all of life. | |
| And I have an essay in there on what happened to me at the age of 21 in Finland. | |
| I've been to 130 countries. | |
| I started my world travels at a very early age. | |
| So I went from the Arctic in Finland down to Helsinki. | |
| And I arrived at the Helsinki railway station at around midnight. | |
| And a very, very deep thing happened to me. | |
| I realized it was Friday night, the traditional night of the Sabbath in Judaism. | |
| And I, all of a sudden, having been raised with it, but now not observing it, it occurred to me that it's Friday night and there's nothing special in my life going on. | |
| This special day is absent. | |
| And I thought, I don't want Friday and Saturday to be just like Thursday and Wednesday and Tuesday and Monday and Sunday and so on. | |
| I didn't want that. | |
| I wanted a break each week. | |
| It gave the other six days more meaning to have this meaningful break in the routine to do other things than work. | |
| Or whatever else one does on a daily basis. | |
| And that's when I decided I was going to observe the Sabbath. | |
| There's a huge article in the Wall Street Journal on the Sabbath just a couple of weeks ago. | |
| Huge article. | |
| Maybe there will be a... | |
| What was the word for the... | |
| Reaffirmation of religion in American life in the 19th century. | |
| The Great Awakening. | |
| Maybe there will be another awakening in this country. | |
| If the Wall Street Journal has a featured article on the significance of the Sabbath, and the loss it entails in people's lives, it is worth doing. | |
| Again, the subject, whatever you believe or don't, it is worth leading a religious life. | |
| Lewis in Jerusalem, Israel. | |
| Hello, Lewis. | |
| Hi, I was going to say Rabbi Prager. | |
| Sorry. | |
| Yeah, I think the letter of the law could be a very good framework to make good decisions. | |
| That will make it likely that you can get to a good re-understanding, maybe of your particular religion, of God. | |
| But ultimately, you have to go from the letter of the law, and it has to be the Spirit there. | |
| That's my basic thing. | |
| I live in Jerusalem, and I can't avoid the Sabbath. | |
| Yes, that's certainly true. | |