Rabbi Eve Posen

This is the sermon I delivered on Rosh Hashanah at Congregation Neveh Shalom on September 12, 2026.

Last month, something monumental happened in Oakland, California, and I’m guessing you heard about it. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, was being sued by a consortium of states. At the end of August, Meta agreed to a settlement of $17 billion. That may sound like a lot of money. It’s not. Last quarter alone, Meta made a net profit of $16 billion. But it’s enough to send a message, and enough for Meta to make some changes to how their social media platforms operate. 

Without getting too much into the weeds, the states alleged that Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to children, knew the risks those platforms posed, and hid that information from the public. Meta denied the allegations, but as part of the settlement, agreed to changes including time limits and nighttime blocks for minors. In other words, the company is forcing its customers to stop, because apparently we aren’t very good at doing that ourselves. We’ll come back to this. 

I’ve spent a lot of my life in services, both pre- and post-ordination. Between the sermons I’ve heard and the ones I’ve delivered, they probably number in the thousands. There are two that have really stuck with me. The first was from Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer when I was in rabbinical school. She spoke about spending the High Holidays at her childhood synagogue counting the lightbulbs on the enormous chandelier that used to hang in this very sanctuary. Very relatable. Little did I know I would one day work here. 

The other was from Rabbi David Glickman, then at Shearith Israel in Dallas, who began a High Holiday sermon by thanking his congregation for the 54 days of sabbatical he had experienced that year. He took naps, learned, stayed present. We all loved that for him, until we remembered: he hadn’t taken a sabbatical. What was he talking about? 

There’s also a story told about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, walking slowly home late on a Friday afternoon. A student hurried past him, anxious about everything still to be done before Shabbat. “Rabbi, why aren’t you rushing? There’s still so much to finish.” 

Heschel replied, “I am not finishing my work before Shabbat. I am entering Shabbat before my work is finished.” 

I keep coming back to that idea: entering Shabbat before the work is finished. Because when is our work ever finished? When have you answered every email, solved every problem, cared for every person, completed every task, worried every worry? If the prerequisite for rest is that the work is finished, we will never rest. Torah knows this about us. And so Torah does not suggest Shabbat. Torah commands it. 

זָכוֹר אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹ — Zachor et yom haShabbat l’kadsho. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” 

Not when it’s convenient. Not when the calendar clears. Every seventh day, whether we’re ready or not, Judaism tells us to stop. There is something incredibly powerful about belonging to a tradition that refuses to leave this decision entirely up to us, because left to ourselves, we’re not particularly good at stopping. 

We live in a culture that rewards the opposite: more productivity, more availability, more information, more consumption. We carry devices that allow anyone to reach us almost anywhere at almost any time, and then wonder why we feel as though we are never completely anywhere. We have confused accessibility with connection and activity with purpose. We have become extraordinarily good at filling time and increasingly unsure of how to sanctify it. 

Shabbat is Judaism’s answer, and Torah gives us two different reasons why. In Exodus, we read: כִּי שֵׁשֶׁת־יָמִים עָשָׂה ה׳ אֶת־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ… וַיָּנַח בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי. “For in six days God made heaven and earth…and rested on the seventh day.” 

God creates, and then God stops creating. Surely there was more God could have done. Creation was hardly perfect. There was still chaos to order and possibility to unfold. Yet God stops. 

The first thing Shabbat teaches us is that stopping is part of creation, not a failure of it. We are creatures, not machines. There are limits to our bodies, our attention, our energy, even our capacity to care. Torah places limits at the very center of creation and calls them holy. 

But when Moses repeats the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, Torah changes the explanation: וְזָכַרְתָּ כִּי־עֶבֶד הָיִיתָ בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם — V’zacharta ki eved hayita b’eretz Mitzrayim. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.” 

This time Shabbat has everything to do with freedom. A slave does not control their own time. Someone else decides when the work begins, when it ends, and what is enough. And so perhaps one of Torah’s most radical definitions of freedom is this: a free person can stop. That makes Shabbat more than rest. Shabbat is resistance. 

Every week, we declare that there are forces in this world that do not get unlimited claim upon us. Our jobs do not. Our possessions do not. Our phones do not. The news does not. Other people’s expectations do not. Even our own ambition does not. 

Pharaoh’s fundamental demand was: keep making bricks. Shabbat says: put the bricks down. Our personal Pharaohs rarely announce themselves as Pharaoh anymore. They arrive as opportunity, responsibility, productivity, urgency, even importance. They tell us that everything depends upon us and that stopping is somehow irresponsible. Judaism says otherwise. 

Isaiah takes us one step further. It’s not enough to refrain from work. Isaiah says: וְקָרָאתָ לַשַּׁבָּת עֹנֶג — V’karata laShabbat oneg. “Call Shabbat a delight.” 

How many of you came to at least one Shabbat on the Plaza? Wasn’t it delightful? Clearly, for us and for Jews everywhere, Shabbat requires that we do more than stop. It asks us to make room for something else. Maybe even Pickle Fest V. Or simply a conversation uninterrupted by a notification. A meal that isn’t rushed. Prayer. Singing. Walking outside and noticing what’s around you. Sitting beside another person without needing the interaction to accomplish anything. 

Shabbat asks: Who are you when you are not accomplishing something? During the week, the yachid, the individual, carries all sorts of roles: employee, parent, student, caregiver, leader. But Judaism never leaves us only with the yachid. Shabbat moves us toward yachad. 

We gather around tables and in sanctuaries. We sing in voices that sound better because they are joined to other voices. We linger at Kiddush. We walk. We talk. We notice the person we haven’t seen in a while. 

By creating time, Shabbat creates community. 

That feels especially important this year as we explore Yachid v’Yachad: Every “I” Strengthens Our “We.” We cannot build meaningful community entirely in the margins of overscheduled lives. Community requires time that is not optimized. It requires lingering. It requires showing up without immediately asking what comes next. 

So four times in this new year, we’ll try something together. We’ll spend all of Shabbat together. Instead of coming to services and immediately going home, we will pray, eat, learn, talk, play, walk, rest, and simply stay. 

Jewish communities have been doing this for thousands of years, so it shouldn’t feel revolutionary. And yet today, maybe it is. We’ve grown accustomed to treating time as something that must justify itself. Shabbat asks a different question: What did you experience? Whom did you encounter? What did you notice because, for once, you stayed? 

The rabbis of the Talmud teach in Berakhot that שַׁבָּת אֶחָד מִשִּׁשִּׁים לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא — Shabbat is one-sixtieth of the world to come. One-sixtieth isn’t much. The rabbis aren’t promising perfection every Saturday, probably because they understood Jewish families. They’re saying Shabbat gives us a taste: a world in which human worth is not determined by productivity, workers rest, families have time for one another, creation can breathe, and strangers become neighbors and neighbors become community. A world in which we put down our infinite-scroll machines and pick up each other. 

And this is where I think we sometimes misunderstand Shabbat. Shabbat is not a retreat from the world we’re obligated to repair. Shabbat is practice for the world we are obligated to create. 

We spend six days confronting what is broken. For one day, Judaism asks us to live, however imperfectly, as though wholeness were possible. Then we go back to work, responsibility, advocacy, caregiving, building, repairing. But hopefully we go back differently, because once we have tasted what the world could be, we become less willing to accept that the world as it is must remain that way. 

This is why I’m not making the case today that Shabbat is good self-care. Of course rest is good for us. I’m making a stronger claim: Shabbat is a Jewish obligation because without sacred limits, something essential in us is lost. We lose our ability to distinguish urgent from important. We lose time with the people we claim matter most. We lose connection to creation and community. Eventually, we can even lose ourselves. 

Judaism refuses to accept that as the price of living in the world. So it gives us Shabbat. Not when the work is finished. Right in the middle of the unfinished work. 

Which brings me back to Meta. After building technology designed to keep us scrolling, even Meta is now agreeing to limits: at certain times, for certain users, enough. Stop. Because continuing would not just be excessive. It would be harmful. Judaism has been insisting on this for thousands of years. Not because we’re children who can’t be trusted with our devices, but because we are human beings who sometimes need to be commanded to protect what matters most. 

And ten days from now, Judaism will command us to stop even more completely. Yom Kippur is שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן — Shabbat Shabbaton, the Sabbath of Sabbaths. For one day, almost everything falls away. Work. Food. Consumption. Distraction. We stand before God and one another and confront some basic questions: Who have I been? Who am I becoming? What deserves the finite time of my life? Perhaps weekly Shabbat is practice for answering those questions. 

And so this Rosh HaShanah, I want to ask each of us to do more than admire the idea of Shabbat. Keep some Shabbat. Choose one act of sacred rest and guard it. Light candles and let them mark an actual transition in your week. Put away your phone for a meal. Take a walk without earbuds and notice the world God created. Come here and pray. Stay for Kiddush. Join us for one of our four full Shabbatot and experience what happens when a community decides that being together is itself worth our time. 

It does not need to be everything. But let it be something. Because zachor, remember Shabbat, is not nostalgia. Shamor, guard Shabbat, is not quaint tradition. They are commandments about the kind of human beings we refuse to stop becoming. Six days a week, there will always be another brick to make. But on the seventh day, put the brick down. 

Remember that you are part of creation. Remember that you are free. Remember that other people are more than interruptions to your schedule. Remember that this world is more than something to consume. Remember that you are more than what you produce. 

And then, when Shabbat ends, pick up the work again, not because Pharaoh commands it, but because you have chosen what is worthy of your labor. For one day, taste the world as it might yet be. And then spend the other six helping to build it. 

Shanah tovah.