NARRATOR: In part one of Sabbath.

NORMAN WIRZBA: There's a good reason why historians are saying that post-World War II we entered the period called the "Great Acceleration."

RANDY ROBERTS: I think our culture right now is profoundly burned out.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: There's a lot of talk about unplugging and there's an unplugging movement.

AMMIEL HIRSCH: Shabbat is a revolutionary concept.

It actually changed human history.

MANIS FRIEDMAN: It's like the whole week is hectic and then all of a sudden you light the Shabbos candles and you're in a different world.

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: As a Christian, I don't think we take the Sabbath seriously enough.

ROBERT BARRON: But when Jesus says in regard to himself that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, that's one of the most extraordinary claims he ever makes about himself.

MICHAEL MICKENS: Sabbath was the one day that they experienced some dimension or element of freedom.

J. DANA TRENT: We realized that time is our only nonrenewable resource.

NATHAN STUCKY: If Sabbath rest was going to flourish and live in their lives, something else was going to have to die.

(gentle music over title).

NARRATOR: Major funding for this program was provided by Lilly Endowment.

Additional funding provided by the Fetzer Institute, helping build a spiritual foundation for a loving world.

Danny and Elissa Kido, The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and Skip and Fran Minakowski.

(pensive music).

ROBERT BARRON: Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

JEFFREY JOHNSON: But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it, you shall not do any work.

J. DANA TRENT: You, your son or your daughter, not your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigners residing in your towns... (reads in Hebrew).

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: And the sea and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day.

SIMEON LEIVA-MERIKAKIS: That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

(mysterious & urgent sounding music).

DR. GHEBREYESUS: W.H.O.

has been in full response mode since we were notified of the first cases.

We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.

HODA KOTB: As the crisis sweeps the nation, the toll is growing by the hour.

RANDY ROBERTS: I can still remember the week we heard that this thing called COVID was about to hit us and we were going to have to shut church down.

I went out into our courtyard here and I taped an announcement for our people and I said, "We'll get back to you next week because maybe we'll just miss a week."

(laughs).

It shows you the utter naivete.

CHARLIE ECHEVERRY: There was a time when every parish, for the first time in American history, every parish was closed at some point during COVID, which had never happened before.

J. DANA TRENT: The abrupt ceasing of our labors, our work, our school, the stay at home orders was in and of itself a Sabbath, right?

We had to step out of mundane, ordinary time in order to step into something totally different that we didn't even have the language for yet.

MICHAEL FISHBANE: What COVID did was impact both the weekly prayer routine in which people also prayed in community, but particularly the Sabbath.

The isolation of COVID became an isolation of each person's spiritual life.

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: I think that the COVID-19 pandemic was a real clarion call for churches that we could not take for granted the things that we had always taken for granted.

And we had to very, very quickly reinvent ourselves.

ROBERT BARRON: Catholic worship is very communitarian, it's very Eucharistic, and it involves the community coming together to eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus.

And that can't be done through a camera.

TRICIA BRUCE: We do, of course, have the role of technology in social media in ways that we probably never anticipated before, uh, and, and, some would say that that builds and fosters a particular kind of community.

And I think that there's evidence for that.

But other sociologists have called that essentially a form of being alone together.

JEFFREY JOHNSON: Somebody said that you can sit around and cry over this technology or you can adjust to it and learn how to use it.

TRICIA BRUCE: But in other forms of being together too, like weddings and funerals, you know, suddenly we take away our ability to mourn together, to celebrate together, and we create new norms around that.

CHARLIE ECHEVERRY: You know, the data, unfortunately, uh, indicate that a lot of people are either not going to come back or going to come back less often.

JEFFREY JOHNSON: I believe people are going to come back to church.

I believe that...and people are starting to come back to it.

And I believe that it is going to be that hybrid moving forward.

J. DANA TRENT: And I think in many ways, the pandemic was an invitation to examine our lives, and to review and reflect on whether or not we were actually living before the pandemic.

Were we living an authentic life, or were we just crazy busy running from one thing to the next to the next to the next, taking our time and our health and our gatherings and our Sabbath practices all for granted?

(peaceful music).

♪ Gustate et videte ♪ ♪ Quoniam ♪ ♪ Suavis ♪ NARRATOR: Saint Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, is home to a community of Trappist monks who gather seven times a day for communal prayer.

Their daily life is guided by the rule of Saint Benedict, the sixth century saint, whose rule has provided direction and a rhythm for monastic life for 1500 years.

(Gregorian chanting by monks).

SIMEON LEIVA-MERIKAKIS: The, the life rests on three pillars.

And those three pillars are: uh, prayer, work and reading.

Begins at 3:30 in the morning and it goes through 8:00 at night.

(Gregorian chanting).

EMMANUEL MORINELLI: The chant that we now call Gregorian was developed between the 9th and 11th centuries in Europe, in monasteries throughout Europe.

All the chants originally were sung by memory, and that originated with the synagogues.

The early Christians went to the synagogue naturally, so they, they knew the music, the hymns, the Psalms brought that into the Christian liturgy.

NARRATOR: And foundational to daily life is the Benedictine expression handed down through the ages, ora et labora, pray and work.

Here, prayer takes priority and all work has value.

EMMANUEL MORINELLI: The monastery depends on the labor of the monks for its daily running, for its... for its upkeep.

So monks cook, clean, do the laundry, grow vegetables.

That's all part of our daily life.

SIMEON LEIVA-MERIKAKIS: Ora et labora, which kind of sums up the Benedictine ideal.

What's important is in what spirit do you embrace that work?

You see, that's where the spiritual connects with the practical, with the necessary.

All work is important.

If it is a service done for your brothers and sisters.

So, there's nothing too sublime and there's nothing too menial.

VINCENT ROGERS: Certainly the Trappist themselves, were totally agricultural for such a long time.

I would say it's only become like in the last 30 years where you find the monasteries shifting significantly to um, mechanized operations.

NARRATOR: All Benedictine monasteries strive to be self-sufficient, to live by their works.

This community supports itself primarily on small industry.

The making of incense, the creation of clergy vestments, and since the 1950s, the production of their own brand of Trappist preserves.

(bell ringing).

NARRATOR: Yet all work stops when the bells call the brothers to prayer.

(bell continues ringing).

VINCENT ROGERS: So, we have this automatic re-adjust.

If you can follow it, it's a very good discipline.

(monks singing).

(sound of organ playing).

NARRATOR: Even with a discipline that calls the brothers to pray throughout the day, Sunday Sabbath is special.

TIMOTHY SCOTT: For us, Sunday begins and Saturday evening in a ritual way with vespers.

And it all points to this being a special day.

(monks singing).

SIMEON LEIVA-MERIKAKIS: In the Christian tradition, the Jewish Sabbath of rest and repose kind of merges with the day of resurrection.

You arise earlier to meet the risen Christ and to praise God in the risen Christ.

That's an essential part of the Christian Sabbath.

NARRATOR: For Catholics, Sunday is centered around the celebration of the mass.

(monks singing).

EMMANUEL MORINELLI: We're not in a rush.

(laughs).

We really take our time with the liturgy.

I usually tell the people "we don't have any place to go."

(chuckles).

"This is where we are, where I live.

This is our life here and we have the time to enjoy it."

ISAAC KEELEY: So, what really helps for the communal celebration of Sabbath when you're living a cenobitic or communal life is that the energy level and rhythm and the collateral noise of the place really goes down.

And so you can hear that it's the Sabbath.

(monks singing fades).

SIMEON LEIVA-MERIKAKIS: We don't make an explicit statement.

You know, we come here so that we can keep Sabbath better together.

No, but that's understood, because the whole way of life is kind of sabbatical.

VINCENT ROGERS: Actually, Saint Benedict gets very detailed.

He says between these hours and these hours, we want the brothers to be occupied in what we call lectio divina, which is reading of spiritual texts.

(monks chanting).

SIMEON LEIVA-MERIKAKIS: We're talking sixth century St. Benedict, the rule.

Most people were illiterate.

Why were monks not illiterate?

And we know from just reading history that monasteries become centers of learning and all that.

I mean, we all know that.

But why?

So that they could read the Scripture.

So that in fact, the Sabbath prescription and Benedict, that they may devote themselves more wholeheartedly to sacred reading.

It requires learning how to read, and it creates a culture of the Bible and therefore of letters and the activity of reading and meditating and prayer, praying, which is the heart of the Christian observance of the Sabbath.

VINCENT ROGERS: So, every Sunday, the community gathers to listen to the Abbot.

The Abbot is the spiritual father of the community.

Sunday, I think, is the moment for us to return to the essentials of our life.

TIMOTHY SCOTT: I always think of Saint Augustine saying from the Confessions that I cannot rest Lord, unless I rest in you.

VINCENT ROGERS: Seems to me that God is calling us to deepen our appreciation of this Sunday rest.

(monks chant and sing).

ISAAC KEELEY: And so the Sabbath is really the day that we remember who we are and remember who God is.

It's the day to renew both our humanity and our purpose and our relation to the whole creation.

(monks singing fades).

NARRATOR: In the 1970s, a psychology professor from Princeton University and a Ph.D. student from Princeton Seminary devised their own experiment in human behavior that would come to be known as "The Good Samaritan Project."

NATHAN STUCKY: And they managed to divide a group of Princeton seminary students into three groups, and they gave them a task uh, across campus.

And they knew that all of these students were familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

And so theoretically, they would be predisposed to helping somebody in need.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: They gave them all personality tests, and then they split them into three groups.

They said to one group, "you've plenty of time to get there.

Don't worry.

It's an... it's an an hour."

And they said to another group, "Ah, you know, it's pretty soon, get a move on.

You're okay.

You're going to make it."

And they said to another group, "You're late.

Get over there right away."

NATHAN STUCKY: The real test was that these researchers had positioned an actor along the way who was uh, kind of in this alleyway, appeared to be having a medical situation.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: They wanted to know how many people from each group would stop and help this man or at least ask what was wrong.

NATHAN STUCKY: And they tested for personality.

They tested for their familiarity with this parable.

Uh, but the only predictor of whether they stopped to help this person was whether or not they were in a hurry.

And the more they were in a hurry, the less likely they were to stop and help the person.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: So, they concluded from that that um, being in a hurry undermines your altruism, your sense, your ethical sense.

NATHAN STUCKY: And.. and it's difficult to care for things that we're just zooming by and... and you know, to bring it back to the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is like, wait, stop.

Let this impact your pace of life.

NARRATOR: He would spark our imagination by describing Sabbath as "a cathedral in time".

That depiction comes from the acclaimed writer Abraham Joshua Heschel in his classic work, The Sabbath.

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: I think the emphasis is on the word "time."

That is, my father spoke about the extraordinary cathedrals built all over Europe by the church.

Beautiful, beautiful buildings.

Jews don't have that.

We didn't build cathedrals, buildings.

Instead, we built a cathedral out of time.

Shabbat is our cathedral.

MANIS FRIEDMAN: Now time became sacred long before space became sacred.

Like, for example, in the days of Noah and the days of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

There was no holy place.

No place was holy.

Time was.

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: Why did my father write The Sabbath?

Because he came to America and he saw the Jews had abandoned the Sabbath, and they didn't even realize what it was they had abandoned, what they had lost in their lives.

RICHARD RICE: Well, I would attribute to Heschel's influence a transition in the thinking of many Adventists from Sabbath keeping to the Sabbath experience.

I think Heschel's contribution to our thinking on the Sabbath was to enhance the sense that this is a day to live life at its fullest.

NARRATOR: And part of living to the fullest means living without those things some believe only distract.

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: We didn't use electricity and we didn't cook.

We didn't use the phone.

Certainly didn't listen to the radio or television.

We didn't go to the store, of course, or use money.

It's hard for me to actually identify what, what it was that we didn't do because it was so much a part of the natural rhythm.

On Shabbat, we didn't talk about politics.

We didn't talk about things that were divisive, were depressing, horrifying.

We didn't talk about the atrocities in Vietnam.

We didn't talk about the Holocaust.

Those were not compatible with the atmosphere of Shabbat.

So instead, we talked about happy things.

WALTER BRUEGGEMANN: I heard Heschel only a time or two, but I heard him say that Sabbath was the day he didn't need to prove that he was a good rabbi.

Isn't that a wonderful statement?

(laughs).

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: The book was not particularly popular at the time.

Keep in mind that most Jews in those days after World War II in America, most Jews assumed that Jewish religious observance was over.

No one expected what we have today, which is an enormous flourishing of Orthodox Judaism.

(Violin music).

MICHAEL FISHBANE: In traditional terms, people wouldn't say, are you Orthodox or are you observant?

When a traditional person wants to know if a person is observant, they say, "Are you a shomer Shabbos Jew?"

That means that you observe the Sabbath.

That becomes the defining term of whether that person is trustworthy or observant in traditional terms.

So, it's a defining quality of what is that person is a Sabbath person.

MANIS FRIEDMAN: There's a famous saying more than Jews have kept the Shabbos, the Shabbos has kept the Jews.

MAYER FRIEDMAN: So, Shabbat is more of the modern Hebrew way of saying it.

And Shabbos is the ancient Hebrew way of saying it.

(noisy street sounds).

I lived here in Crown Heights my whole life.

I studied abroad a little bit, but always coming back home to Crown Heights and growing up in that environment where everyone is family, practically, as in everyone is there for each other.

So, prayer is the way that we start off our day; every day in the morning, start off with a morning prayer.

And the best way to do that, the optimal way to doing that, is in the synagogue with a group of ten men that would make up the minyan.

And that's a time of reconnecting to God.

NARRATOR: The Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, is home to one of the largest communities of Hasidic Orthodox Jews in the world.

770 Eastern Parkway is the headquarters and synagogue for a movement within the Hasidic tradition known as Chabad Lubavitch.

MANIS FRIEDMAN: The people at the prayer are the entire community: the lawyers, the doctors, the businessmen, the blue collar workers.

They're all there.

MAYER FRIEDMAN: A lot of them are students that are here to pray.

A lot of them are all walks like this is the central synagogue, where people just keep on coming constantly to come and pray.

(young boy reads in Hebrew).

NARRATOR: This daily prayer service offers a sense of the Saturday Shabbos service because according to conservative and Orthodox traditions, no filming can take place on Shabbos.

MAYER FRIEDMAN: Shabbos looks very similar to the weekday in the type of setup that you have and even during the weekday we don't use microphones, so that would be the same on Shabbos and on the weekday.

On Shabbos, just people wouldn't be wearing tefillin because tefillin is supposed to help you remember God and to be a sign on your arm and on your head and on Shabbos, you don't need that extra reminder.

You don't need that sign.

Shabbos itself is that sign.

(man prays in Hebrew).

MANIS FRIEDMAN: You want to show the observance of Shabbat on film, but we're not allowed to film on Shabbat.

See that's how, that's how personal the Shabbat has to be.

It's now I'm focused on what is needed from me.

No intrusion on that.

No cameras, no, no media, no electronics, no machinery.

So you might even say Shabbat is a day for intimacy.

Whereas during the six days of the week, public time.

NARRATOR: About 10% of American Jews identify as Orthodox, and studies show they're attracting a younger demographic.

(men singing in Hebrew).

MAYER FRIEDMAN: Orthodox Jews are Jews that are following the laws of the Torah and not deviating or changing those laws.

They're staying true to the original laws, the original text.

But there are a lot of laws to being an Orthodox Jew.

So, the Hasidic movement came to help bring you to the table, bring your personality along.

A classic piece of Hasidic Judaism is excitement and joy, because when you're in a relationship with God, that's very exciting.

MANIS FRIEDMAN: The essence of Shabbos is, for six days of the week, I worry about what needs to be taken care of.

I have to survive.

I have to exist.

I have to improve my existence.

But for 24 hours of Shabbos, my existence is not important.

It's not a concern.

Now you focus on why you're alive, not how you're alive.

So, the essential word for Shabbat is not rest.

It's a poor definition, a poor translation.

The real word is contentment.

If you're really experiencing Shabbos, you're experiencing a true contentment.

NARRATOR: On weekday afternoons, the same space becomes a busy, vibrant study hall.

MAYER FRIEDMAN: During the study times when everyone sitting and studying and arguing and debating between each other.

Here in 770, there's a seven year cycle of different things that we learn every year, a different tractates of the Talmud.

And this year happened to be the track of Shabbat, of Shabbos.

And you can see everyone whose books are open.

They're studying Shabbos, all the laws of Shabbos from their original source, from the text in the Talmud.

The way that we study is with a chavrusa, it's called, which means a study partner or a friend, where you sit across, everyone sitting across from each other, studying together, and the two minds together work with each other and challenge each other to better understand and to challenge each other on what one opinion is.

So, for example, they'll be studying an argument of the sages from 2000 years ago in the Talmud, and each one of the rabbis has a differing opinion.

And then as you're studying it, you have an opinion of what you think it means and your partner has an opinion of what you think that means.

And you guys are arguing.

So you're arguing over what they were arguing about 2000 years ago.

NARRATOR: What seems beyond any argument here is that Shabbos is more than a wise health practice.

MANIS FRIEDMAN: The idea of rest can be very selfish.

I need a day off.

I need a break.

I'm not changing really.

For six days, I do what I need to make money.

On the seventh day, I do what I need to, to relax, to recuperate.

It's still just me and my needs.

MAYER FRIEDMAN: I don't want to use the word stress because then it makes it sound like Shabbos is a time to fix your stress problem.

Shabbos is not a time to fix your stress problem.

Stress is for the six days of the week.

Shabbos is a day where stress shouldn't exist.

(street sounds, sirens).

(sounds of birds).

(light "Romantic" guitar music).

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: There is also what I call the romantic Sabbath.

So, there were romantic writers like Rousseau, Wordsworth, who began to write about the beauty and importance of unstructured time, of time outside time.

And that was not a religious concept.

It was a poetic and romantic concept.

So, it was moving away in the 19th century from this Puritan idea of a Sabbath in which biblical notions are put into practice and you are close to God, uh, to something that was cultural, personal.

The writer who to me best captures the romantic Sabbath, is actually not considered one of the romantic writers.

But D.H. Lawrence, his heroine, whose name is "Ursula Brangwen," sadly contemplates the disappearance of what she calls the "old duality of life."

"Even at its stormiest, Sunday was a blessed day.

Ursula awoke to it with a feeling of immense relief.

She wondered why her heart was so light.

Then she remembered it was Sunday.

A gladness seemed to burst out around her, a feeling of great freedom.

The whole world was for 24 hours revoked, put back.

Only the Sunday world existed."

(music fades).

RANDY ROBERTS: When I was growing up.

Some of the don't do's really didn't make sense.

For example, we could go hiking on Sabbath but not swimming.

We could wade but not get in fully into the water.

Uh, we could climb trees, but we couldn't do too much running too fast.

It was it was common, in fact, after Sabbath lunch, we'd have people over friends, kids our age.

We'd get done eating quick and we'd push away from the table, want to go outside.

And there was always this statement: "Kids, remember it's Sabbath."

And you're like, "Okay, what does that mean?

We run half as fast, swing half as high, laugh half as loud?"

RICHARD RICE: My experience as the Sabbath keeper throughout my life has been a preoccupation with what it is not appropriate to do on a Sabbath can be a distraction from the possibility of the day as a day of personal fulfillment.

(people chatting).

NARRATOR: Randy Roberts is senior pastor at Loma Linda University Church, a Seventh Day Adventist community about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

The church is at the center of a large hospital and medical campus.

Adventists are Christians, and as a church, they are committed to Saturday Sabbath keeping, believing the Bible calls them to honor the seventh day of the week, not the first.

That weekly day of Sabbath rest, along with a focus on a healthy diet and exercise, all contribute to why Adventists are considered some of the healthiest people in America.

RANDY ROBERTS: Fairly early in our history, Adventists became interested in, concerned about health.

Our physical lives matter, and so we ought to care for them.

So early on, that became an emphasis and it has continued to be, and at least according to different studies, it indicates that it has paid off.

(Organ music).

I think Sabbath contributes profoundly to that.

SIGVE TONSTAD: Of course, the Sabbath is a way to orchestrate time in a way and make us work in step at least one day a week where we might function as a community and might meet each other as a community.

RANDY ROBERTS: Are you a person of peace?

It's an important question for us to wrestle with.

It's not just something we put on at will.

It's something that Paul says the Holy Spirit weaves into the fabric of our lives.

I think what Paul is saying is whatever circumstances you face, you can make choices to be glad, to be gracious, to be grateful.

And when you do that, he says, you will have a peace that no one can explain.

NARRATOR: Just across the courtyard from Loma Linda's main sanctuary is an example of a significant shift in American church practice.

In addition to the traditional Sabbath worship, they offer a more contemporary experience to reach a different, hopefully younger audience.

♪ Oh, God, the battle belongs to you ♪ RANDY ROBERTS: Well, we're doing this just because culture has shifted.

Culture has changed, and our conviction is if we're going to be able to speak into a new culture, we have to speak in different ways and different forms, different uh, styles.

NARRATOR: While the setting is very different, the message preached remains the same.

RANDY ROBERTS: Are you a person of peace?

♪ We are the church, stepping out ♪ ♪ We are these walls, tear them down ♪ ♪ We are the fight and we're bringing it out ♪ ♪ Moving like no tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...♪ RANDY ROBERTS: The group of us here are reading a book right now by a leader down at Fuller Seminary named Scott Cormode and his premise is the church is calibrated for a world that no longer exists.

And if we don't recalibrate and make changes, we will disappear.

NARRATOR: Providing an experience where young people feel comfortable seems more than appropriate.

It seems vital.

Sabbath offers a clear reminder of how people often tend to gather within their own groupings, whether by race, culture or age.

TRICIA BRUCE: And so this sort of inclination that many Americans have to be together with others like themselves uh, certainly is helpful in the sense of, of building bonds of of community and familiarity.

But it also has some potentially really negative effects, which effectively means that we are filtering our experience of reality and of each other.

And we are essentially building communities that look like mirrors.

NARRATOR: And here in this community are Sabbath practices that extend well beyond the worship service.

RICHARD RICE: And I'm interested in now a day of devotion and not just a couple hours at church and then come home and take care of my other responsibilities, but a whole day to do that.

So, there's been a revival, we might say, or a regeneration of interest on the part of Christians in a whole day.

NORMAN WIRZBA: Why shouldn't the preparation of a meal be an expression of worship?

Does that not honor God when we make a good meal?

WOMAN: We thank you so much for everything that you've given us.

We are so, so blessed.

WOMAN 2: We're so grateful to come out and be able to celebrate your Sabbath together here.

NARRATOR: For many in this greater Loma Linda community, the Sabbath practice continues after worship with gatherings at home, with family and friends.

SHEILA HODGKIN: We do this every Sabbath, you know, whether it's just our immediate family or our extended family.

It's not unusual if we have 30 or more.

In fact, that's kind of little.

Everyone brings a dish.

It's almost like it's Thanksgiving every Sabbath.

CHRIS TSAI: Sabbath with our family was always with other families.

And so what you see today with all of our other friends, that's what our parents did and that's what we saw as kids.

That's what we hope our kids see also.

SAVANNAH HODGKIN: Saturday to me, is the best day off.

I get to take a break, just spend time away from studies.

(sounds of busy college campus).

NARRATOR: University of California at Berkeley is one of the more academically competitive environments in the country.

For students raised practicing a weekly Sabbath, a full day away from study now presents a challenge.

MIA KARIMABADI: One thing that's really changed about my experience is kind of balancing the real world um, with the Sabbath that I traditionally knew growing up.

Since coming to Berkeley, it became a lot more personal, so I had to find out what I was doing individually rather than kind of being carried along by my family.

And I would say it actually grew stronger because I was doing things because I was searching for them rather than just kind of knowing and accepting that it was the way I believe things should be.

STEPHEN SONG: When I was, um, still back at my parents place, um, the environment I was in was very um, focused on Saturday.

My school itself had events on Fridays that we would go to and then Saturday we'd go to church.

But since coming up here and being independent, I don't really have to have that requirement.

I'll come to church here, but other times I'll just take a day off for myself and either go into the woods and, you know, just relax a little bit.

Because for me, Sabbath is a lot more about rest.

I would like to continue to observing if possible.

The key word is "if possible."

So, I'm sure God understands if I have a test or something.

NARRATOR: Life Adventist Church is adjacent to the university and many who attend the church are students.

Ron Pickell has been pastor here for more than 20 years.

RON PICKELL: The spiritual challenge for students um, on a campus like this is well, for one thing, they're away from home, you know.

Kind of make decisions pretty quickly.

Was this just my parents faith?

They either like uh, really go deeper in their faith because they start to own it as their own or they walk away.

NARRATOR: For many of these students, this is the time to make their own discoveries and decisions about Sabbath.

MIA KARIMABADI: More than it being a 24 hour period from sunset to sunset, I just think it's like this intentional moment.

I try my best to avoid doing homework on Sabbath, but since coming here, that's sometimes just not an option.

That was a big change from my life growing up to here.

Never, ever did homework on Saturdays.

And then I came here and I was like, I don't have that opportunity any more.

I got to get some things done, but to the best of my ability, I do just try to take a step back, have a relaxed day.

RON PICKELL: Sabbath begins for us on a Friday evening.

Not, not a lot of ritual or liturgy with that.

They have like, a meal together and then like a Bible study or discussion time.

That's an opportunity for, for their world on campus to kind of connect with their faith.

STUDENT: I knew that the Sabbath is a special time because of the way that my parents structured their like, life and career around it.

STUDENT 2: I think God's sort of resting on the 7th day is... is part of that conversation of saying like, I could keep creating forever.

But at some point, sometimes you just have to stop.

JOHN VAN PATTEN: Earlier on in my Ph.D., there was some pressure to like do things on Friday nights or Saturdays, but I mean, I decided to draw that line.

Some people got upset, but I mean, that's just my personal value.

Sabbath is important.

I like my rest.

I like my time to go to church and spend time with community, with the friends um, that I've grown to love these past six years.

NARRATOR: Not far from the church is People's Park, a site for Berkeley's growing homeless.

Part of the Sabbath practice is to prepare a warm meal for them.

DRIELLY MARTINS: We came here on Sabbath because we really feel that Saturday should be a day that we take apart from the usual worries of the week, where we tend to focus really on ourselves, during the Sabbath, we should remove that and focus on other people and then also spend time among nature as we are here in this beautiful park.

Hello, sir.

Would you care for a meal?

For me, personally, I consider myself a very energetic person, so my rest is kind of just refocusing my energy from my schoolwork, from my job.

Just make sure that you are taking on that peace that Sabbath is supposed to, to be all about.

MAN: Allahu akbar.

Allahu akbar.

NARRATOR: Muslims do not speak in terms of Sabbath, or a day of rest for themselves or for God.

But the Friday Jummah prayer has many similarities.

KHALID LATIF: In the Quran, there's a command that tells practitioners of Islam that when the call to Jummah is made the day of Friday, and here it's in specific speaking about the Friday prayer, that you should hasten to answer that call, leaving behind even your work in order to respond to it.

The word "Jummah" is rooted in an Arabic root that means to bring people together.

USMAN LIAQAT: Friday has been chosen by God uh, for a specific reason, because according to the tradition of the Prophet sallallahu salam, he says that Fridays is the day... is the best day that the sun has risen.

It is the day that Adam was created.

It is a day that Adam was exiled from paradise, and it is the day that he died, and the day of resurrection will be established on no other day except Friday.

KHALID LATIF: The day of Jummah is meant to be an opportunity now for people to traditionally leave everything that they have, their workplaces that are quite often segmented, the marketplace that is very much divided on social class, aspects of society that are heavily stratified, and you walk into a place.

Nobody is given specific designation because of their level of affluence, the amount of wealth that they have.

Contentment does not attach to being in a space where you own many things around you.

(speaks Arabic).

The true richness is not having an abundance of things of the earth, but true richness is having a richness of your soul.

YOUSEF EL AMARI: Being an NYU student, uh, you kind of have a lot of responsibilities.

Every day, every week.

You see, we have a bunch of backpacks kind of all over on the corner, right?

You quite literally take off the baggage from the week, put it off into the corner.

Right?

And kind of use this hour, hour 15, hour and a half for me to speak with God.

KHALID LATIF: What is the act of beauty that's going to come from me today?

Who am I going to be a source of light for?

How am I going to replenish and rejuvenate myself?

Do acts of charity?

Be a reason that people have hope in this world.

Not the reason that people dread it?

(middle Eastern inspired music).

What you would find in many communities in the 14th century lived tradition of Islam, was smaller mosques that people would pray their daily prayers in, and you'd have typically in a locale, a much larger mosque that was now the Friday mosque.

So, people would leave their villages, they'd leave, you know, their home cities, and they'd come to frequent here.

Everybody coming from all corners of the space to pray in this one larger gathering.

SORAYA MUHAMUD: How we prepare ourselves for Jummah, there's like a whole ritual where we make wudu, like do ablution.

We come in like our best clothes, or come in like, our cleanest clothes and come into the space and prepare ourselves, like reciting scripture, and then afterwards students go out and do like, community service based projects.

Some students go back to their communities.

KHALID LATIF: Jummah has the potential of being for a lot of people, a moment to just pause and reflect.

May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and upon all those who choose to tread in his path until the last day.

We have a verse in the Quran that says, indeed, in the remembrance of God, do hearts find rest.

Give us hearts that feel joy whenever any one of us succeeds and the love and hope needed to celebrate that achievement.

Give us hearts that are not lost in the pursuit of this world.

SORAYA MUHAMUD: It's a moment of celebration and rest, but also it's a moment of clarity and reflection, because a lot of the times, especially like living here and in the city, um, it can get really overwhelming.

KHALID LATIF: And when you don't sit down to rest, you don't have like a wellness strategy that tells you that it's okay to take a pause and to breathe, it's going to start catching up to you and you're going to now see the world and process reality through the prism of that exhaustion.

DAVID SEIDENBERG: The essence of the Sabbath is not what we get out of it, but how we treat the world differently.

All the things that you're not supposed to do on the Sabbath, according to Jewish ritual law are things that are creative acts that transform the world around us in some way.

And so, we're letting the world rest.

The world has to rest from us.

It's not just us resting from ourselves.

The world has to rest from us.

SIGVE TONSTAD: The Sabbath is a weekly thing, every seventh day.

But in the Old Testament, there is also a Sabbath year.

Every seventh year the land will rest.

There will be a retreat from intervening in the earth, in the land.

(chatter of voices).

NARRATOR: It's spring clean-up day at Abundance Farm in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Abundance is a creative farming project supported by Congregation B'nai Israel, with help from the Lander Grinspoon Jewish Academy and the Northampton Survival Center, that serves those in the area who struggle with food insecurity.

ROSE CHERNEFF: Spring Work Day is our yearly like big Community Work Day event.

We mulch the entire prayer space, the entire playground, our herb garden.

So, it's a chance to kind of spruce up the farm and get ready for the season ahead.

NARRATOR: Here at Abundance Farm, they're bearing witness to one of the most important and challenging dimensions of the Sabbath story.

This is the year of shmita, the once every seven year call to release and to rest.

(singing in Hebrew).

DAVID SEIDENBERG: Shmita is Grand Sabbath.

It's called Shabbat Shabbaton, a Sabbath of Sabbaths.

So, it's a full year of Sabbath, the seventh year in a seven year cycle.

But we don't refrain from all kinds of work the entire year, but we refrain from traditionally, according to the religious law, is agricultural work.

And that includes not just things that you do to farm the land, but any kind of thing you would do to store and hoard food so that you can sell it.

It's forbidden to sell the produce of the shmita year.

♪ For six years we've been busting our butts ♪ ♪ Digging them holes and filling them up ♪ ♪ Now we're gonna rest, release renew ♪ ♪ Come on share that shuffle with you ♪ ♪ Come on down to a little piece of heaven ♪ ♪ Been working six years and going on seven ♪ ♪ Now we're gonna rest, release, renew ♪ ♪ Do a little singing and dancing too ♪ ROSE CHERNEFF: We've made a commitment to start putting certain beds into a full year of cover crop, a perennial cover crop that lets the land rest.

A cover crop is any plant that you're not trying to harvest anything from.

It's a very shmita concept where you're planting certain plants in order to improve the soil as opposed to gain benefit through harvest from them.

NILI SIMHAI: The other thing we focus on a lot this year is the planting of perennials and the distribution of perennials as much as possible to the community, because a shmita-based agricultural society is one that is heavily dependent on perennials.

So there's, you know, food that kind of gives of itself in the seventh year without you needing to till the land, without you needing to plow and work and plant.

JACOB FINE: Technically, from the standpoint of the tradition, most of the agricultural laws only apply in the land of Israel.

But certainly we and many other Jewish farms in North America feel that these are such compelling core traditions that, you know, whether or not we feel like there's a technical obligation, we can't imagine not putting them into practice in some ways.

DAVID SEIDENBERG: So, there's been several movements of farming in the diaspora Jewish world, but the current one that we're in, which is so much motivated by ecology and this sense of responsibility to the earth is really pretty new.

NILI SIMHAI: The values of a sabbatical year are baked into Abundance Farm um, for all six years in a different way as well, in that um, one of the values that undergirds Abundance Farm is this idea that the land is hefker, meaning it's ownerless, which is a value or an understanding of land that traditionally only applies in the sabbatical year.

But we've sort of expanded it to all seven years of the cycle here at Abundance Farm.

DAVID SEIDENBERG: The halakhic law, the law about how humans are supposed to interact on the sabbatical year is that we should treat all people equally so that anyone can go into anyone's field, rich, poor.

It doesn't matter where you come from.

Jewish, not Jewish.

You go into anyone's field and take whatever you want because nobody owns anything.

NILI SIMHAI: So, all of our contributions to Survival Center clients happen through our pick-your-own program, um, twice a week.

Anyone who wants can come through and pick from our fresh herbs, berries, vegetables, however much they want.

DAVID SEIDENBERG: And part of that is living in a kind of trust in relation to God, in relation to the world around you, in relation to each other, more importantly.

Because if we can't hoard food, then we're entirely dependent on how we interact with each other and what we share and creating equality between people.

JACOB FINE: The shmita you can see as really as a blueprint for society.

It's not a vision for a seventh year, it's a vision for civilization.

In order to truly observe it in the way in which it's envisioned, you construct a society that operates six years in order so that you can actually observe the seventh year.

You have to build a sharing economy such that you can't learn these things when you're in it.

NARRATOR: At the end of the shmita year, there is still one more challenge.

DAVID SEIDENBERG: In the day of Shabbat, one is living in potentially radical equality with the people around you and sharing with the people around you.

And in the shmita year, one is doing that even to a greater degree.

You're not allowed to hoard food, you're not allowed to sell it, you have to share it.

But at the end of the shmita year, there's also the rule that all debts are forgiven.

NARRATOR: This idea of forgiving debts has always been seen as one of the most challenging dimensions of the Sabbath and shmita teaching.

JACOB FINE: Thousands of years ago, in the context of the Torah, this was already the most radical teaching.

And I would assert that all the more so today.

(soft guitar music).

NARRATOR: For Jewish children, summer camp not only offers an outdoor experience, but its own rite of passage.

At Camp Ramah Darom, about two hours outside Atlanta, kids experience Shabbat in a way that may be very different from in their home congregations.

ANNA SERVIANSKY: Ramah Darom, darom means "south," and our region of campers come from Florida all the way up to the Carolinas and Tennessee, all the way west to Oklahoma and down south to Texas and everything in between.

We're connected with the conservative movement so we do have campers who are members of conservative synagogues at home, but we also have many campers who are associated with modern Orthodox synagogues, reform congregations, or no congregation at all.

MILI CATTAN: My experience growing up, going to camp was definitely the most formative part of my childhood experience.

I can definitely say I'm the person I am today because I came to this camp.

ROBYN DIAMOND: While kids are having fun and they think that's just what's happening, is everything has a, another purpose, a deeper meaning.

Judaism and education are literally woven into the fabric of everything we do here.

ANNA SERVIANSKY: Because you're learning about Judaism by practicing, you're learning about Shabbat by experiencing Shabbat.

Most of our campers, by and large, do not observe Shabbat at home in the halakhic, the Jewish legal way, that we do here in camp.

CAMP LEADER: Ramah Darom!

CAMPERS: Shabbat shalom!

JAKE BENGELSDORF: There's just a general sense of excitement when Shabbat comes around.

We get to connect with our campers, with the community.

We get to connect in song.

Um, it's definitely the day that everyone looks forward to the most.

A lot of the Shabbat days at camp consist of praying, tefillah, and it's a very communal special experience.

The campers at camp will actually lead this tefillah so it's incredibly special for them.

(campers singing in Hebrew).

MILI CATTAN: The amphitheater is just like soaring with music and it's really, really coming from everyone's heart.

You can feel like everyone's souls like going up.

(more singing and clapping, pounding of drums).

NARRATOR: With the lighting of the candles, Shabbat has arrived.

LUIZ GALDEMAN: During Shabbat, I usually take the time to go on a trail or to the waterfall or something of that sort.

ARI GORDON: We are in like the most beautiful place at Ramah and I feel like a huge part of Shabbat is taking time to appreciate like our world.

NARRATOR: After a less structured day that allows for prayer, communal gatherings and the chance to experience nature, sunset approaches.

Shabbat is drawing to a close.

Everyone gathers at the theater for the ancient rite of havdallah, meaning separation, where spices, wine and the braided candle are meant to pique the senses and mark a moment of transition.

When the braided candle is extinguished in the wine, Shabbat is over and a new week is welcomed in with anticipation and celebration.

(Energetic dance music).

(campers scream with excitement).

JAKE BENGELSDORF: They live in very small, southern, isolated Jewish communities, so just giving them a place to have that experience, which is Ramah Darom, lets them just see like the magic of Shabbat.

(geese honking).

(soft guitar music).

NATHAN STUCKY: The garden keeps going even when we're not here.

The life on the farm demonstrates, among other things, that life and death are always interconnected.

EMMA LIETZ BILECKY: I think of Sabbath more as like what's happening in the garden in the winter, a time of rest when there's less sunlight, um, plants slow down and we get to slow down as well, as farmers.

NARRATOR: The Farminary project at Princeton Theological Seminary is now in its seventh year.

With each cycle, the yield gets a little better and the farmers a little wiser.

NATHAN STUCKY: The vast majority of the produce goes into homes throughout the community.

Ah, it's folks who have learned about what we're doing here, who have bought into it.

All right.

Have you had this variety yet?

WOMAN: I have not.

NATHAN STUCKY: Try that.

They come once a week to the farm to receive what we have harvested.

EMMA LIETZ BILECKY: As a farmer who's learning how to cooperate with these cycles, I'm learning about how like Sabbath is sort of something that exceeds even my kind of like narrow, narrow understanding of Sabbath as something that happens only on Sundays.

NATHAN STUCKY: But the question of limits, I think, is an inherently theological question, and it's raising this question of, to what kind of life does God call us?

Does God call us to a life without limits?

That's where the Sabbath puts in a hard stop and says, "No, that's not the life to which we're called."

The long, slow hunch here is that if we're going to have those conversations, perhaps the land itself should participate in those conversations.

At the end of the day, for me, Sabbath is a practice in receiving life through death.

The young people I spoke with sensed this.

They got this, that if Sabbath rest was going to flourish and live in their lives, something else was going to have to pass away.

Something else was going to have to die.

The Sabbath invites us to die to lesser identities.

Lesser gods.

(gentle piano music).

NORMAN WIRZBA: I would argue that we're living in a profoundly anti Sabbath culture.

DAVID SEIDENBERG: Our ancestors, they understood that a civilization that didn't stop would destroy itself.

And we see the evidence of that all around us.

JUDITH SHULEVITZ: Another link to God that Shabbat brought into my life was this notion that I was being connected to practices that my ancestors had practiced.

KHALID LATIF: It's hard to reflect positively when you're constantly running on empty.

ANNA SERVIANSKY: And it's really that element of stopping and realizing that we're part of something greater than ourselves, which I think we see in the community.

TRICIA BRUCE: And so congregations have a way to offer rest, have a way to build a home and comfort uh, in an otherwise very chaotic life.

NORMAN WIRZBA: So, the real target, I think, of Sabbath rest is not just stopping, but figuring out what to do with the restlessness.

J. DANA TRENT: When we rest together, when we worship together, we are equipped then to go out into the world and do the work together.

DAVID SEIDENBERG: The Sabbath is made to teach humanity something.

It's made to teach us how we need to live in the world so that the world lives and thrives.

JUDY FENTRESS-WILLIAMS: Was the establishment of the Sabbath for God or for us?

In other words, by God setting an example of resting is God saying, "This is what it means to be a part of creation."

(gentle piano music).

NARRATOR: For more information about this film or the practice of Sabbath, visit journeyfilms.com.

(gentle music over credits).

Major funding for this program was provided by Lilly Endowment.

Additional funding provided by the Fetzer Institute, helping build a spiritual foundation for a loving world.

Danny and Elissa Kido.

The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and Skip and Fran Minakowski.