Best Of: Sabbath and the Art of Rest
The Ezra Klein Show27 Joulu 2024

Best Of: Sabbath and the Art of Rest

I have a tendency to end the year feeling pretty worn out. And that’s partly because I struggle to rest properly throughout the year, to build rest into a routine and stick to it.

That’s how I was feeling at the end of 2022, when we originally taped this episode. And it’s certainly how I’m feeling at the end of this year, so this felt like a valuable episode to revisit.

Judith Shulevitz’s wonderful book, “The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time,” draws out lessons from the Jewish ritual of the Sabbath that everyone can benefit from, regardless of whether you’re Jewish or religious at all. The Sabbath, as commonly practiced, involves taking a day a week off from work, turning off your phone and spending a lot of time with family and your community. To Shulevitz, there’s a radicalism in this ritual — a stinging critique of the speed at which we live our lives, the ways we choose to spend our time and how we think about the idea of rest itself. She sees the Sabbath as more than just taking a break from the world, but also as an act of creating a different one. I left the conversation feeling awed by how such an ancient practice can contain wisdom that feels so urgent right now. I hope you enjoy — and that at the end of this year, you find time for some true rest.

Mentioned:

The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel

I and Thou by Martin Buber

Book Recommendations:

Adam Bede by George Eliot

The Seven Day Circle by Eviatar Zerubavel

On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger

Thoughts? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones and Aman Sahota. The show’s production time also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jaksot(480)

Mark Bittman Cooked Everything. Now He Wants to Change Everything.

Mark Bittman Cooked Everything. Now He Wants to Change Everything.

Mark Bittman taught me to cook. I read his New York Times cooking column, “The Minimalist,” religiously. I bought “How to Cook Everything,” that red brick of a cookbook, and then, when I gave up meat,...

16 Maalis 202148min

How America’s Covid-19 Nightmare Ends

How America’s Covid-19 Nightmare Ends

On Jan. 28, I published a column that began like this: “I hope, in the end, that this article reads as alarmism. I hope that a year from now it’s a piece people point to as an overreaction.”Today, tha...

12 Maalis 20211h 1min

What Does Toxic Stress Do to Children?

What Does Toxic Stress Do to Children?

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris’s pioneering work on how childhood trauma shapes adult outcomes led to her being named the first surgeon general of California. That was in 2019. And then, of course, the novel...

9 Maalis 20211h 6min

Stop. Breathe. We Can’t Keep Working Like This.

Stop. Breathe. We Can’t Keep Working Like This.

We were promised, with the internet, a productivity revolution. We were told that we’d get more done, in less time, with less stress. Instead, we got always-on communication, the dissolution of the bo...

5 Maalis 202154min

What a More Responsible Republican Party Would Look Like

What a More Responsible Republican Party Would Look Like

If you watched this past weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, you heard a lot of debunked election conspiracies, dire warnings about “cancel culture” and unwavering fealty to Donald Tru...

2 Maalis 202158min

How the Texas Crisis Could Become Everyone's Crisis

How the Texas Crisis Could Become Everyone's Crisis

Last week, freezing temperatures overwhelmed the Texas power grid, setting off rolling blackouts that left millions without power during an intense winter storm. But this story is a lot bigger than Te...

26 Helmi 20211h 20min

A Radical Proposal for True Democracy

A Radical Proposal for True Democracy

One thing I want to do on this show is give space to truly radical ideas, to expand the boundaries of our political and moral imaginations. And Hélène Landemore, a political scientist at Yale, has one...

23 Helmi 202144min

What It Means to be Kind in a Cruel World

What It Means to be Kind in a Cruel World

George Saunders is one of America’s greatest living writers. He’s the author of dozens of critically acclaimed short stories, including his 2013 collection, “Tenth of December”; his debut novel, “Linc...

19 Helmi 20211h 15min

Suosittua kategoriassa Politiikka ja uutiset

aikalisa
rss-ootsa-kuullut-tasta
tervo-halme
ootsa-kuullut-tasta-2
politiikan-puskaradio
viisupodi
rss-podme-livebox
et-sa-noin-voi-sanoo-esittaa
rss-asiastudio
otetaan-yhdet
rss-vaalirankkurit-podcast
the-ulkopolitist
linda-maria
rikosmyytit
rss-mina-ukkola
rss-kaikki-uusiksi
rss-merja-mahkan-rahat
radio-antro
rss-polikulaari-humanisti-vastaa-ja-muut-ts-podcastit
rss-raha-talous-ja-politiikka