The Atlantic gives the National Day of Unplugging a plug in its article: “People of the E-Book? Observant Jews Struggle With Sabbath in a Digital Age.”
The migration of print media to the web and digital devices has stirred society to ponder many Big Questions: Is Google making us stupid? Has technology short-circuited our children’s attention spans? Are we frittering away our lives gaping at smartphone screens? All this while the most obvious question goes unanswered: what will Jews read on the Sabbath?
Many observant Jews do not operate lights, computers, mobile phones, or other electrical appliances from sundown on Friday until three stars appear in the night sky on Saturday. They abstain from these activities because, over the last century, rabbinic authorities have compared electricity use to various forms of work prohibited on the Sabbath by the Bible and post-biblical rabbinic literature, including lighting a fire and building. The difficulty of interpreting the Bible’s original intent and applying it to modern technology has rendered electricity use on the Sabbath one of the more contentious topics in Jewish law.
E-readers are problematic not only because they are electronic but also because some rabbis consider turning pages on the device – which causes words to dissolve and then resurface – an act of writing, also forbidden on the Sabbath.
…This past March, Reboot, a New York-based nonprofit led by Jewish artistic types, launched its first annual National Day of Unplugging to underscore the group’s “Sabbath Manifesto,” an attempt to recast the ancient Jewish day of rest for the modern age. Jews of various backgrounds joined non-Jews in experimenting with the Manifesto’s principles, the first of which declared, “Avoid Technology.”
Read the full article here.