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The Sabbath as a day of abstaining from work is not a depreciation but an affirmation of labor, a divine exaltation of its dignity. Thou shall abstain from labor on the seventh day is a sequel to the command: Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work...The duty to work for six days is just as much a part of God's covenant with man as the duty to abstain from work on the seventh day.
In regard to external gifts, to outward possessions, there is only one proper attitude--to have them and to be able to do without them. On the Sabbath we live, as it were, independent of technical civilization: we abstain primarily from any activity that aims at remaking or reshaping the things of space. Man's royal privilege to conquer nature is suspended on the seventh day...The Sabbath itself is a sanctuary which we build, a sanctuary in time.
The seventh day is the exodus from tension, the liberation of man from his own muddiness, the installation of man as a sovereign in the world of time.
--From The Sabbath (1951)
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