The Sabbath & the Cell Phone

A new Shabbos app lets observant Jews use their cell phones on the Sabbath. Which is not that good a thing, really. It’s not like the devices that let them ride the elevator on the Sabbath, because by stopping at every floor it saves them the forbidden work of having to push the button.

It’s a device that lets you be un-Sattathian on the Sabbath. At least that’s what I think, as does Eliyahu Fink, writing in the Forward.

To me, it’s real simple. No one would have thought of the Shabbos App or the need for the Shabbos App if people were enjoying the break from technology that Shabbat affords. If we all loved being off our phones for 25 hours, the Shabbos App would be superfluous. No one would want it. No one would care to have it. But that is not the reality.

Many people struggle with observing Shabbat every week. The phone is a private and quiet way to escape Shabbat observance. That’s one the many allures of the smartphone. It’s like holding the universe in your hands, and if someone is feeling stifled by Shabbat observance, the world in one’s hands can feel quite liberating.

Fink’s answer is to “craft Shabbat experiences that are meaningful to American Orthodox Jews” and his suggestions I commend, because Catholics face the same challenge, made even more difficult because we’ve lost any idea of our Sundays as a Sabbath, a day of rest, recreation, and leisure. (For the meaning of the last, see Father James Schall’s introduction to Josef Pieper’s Leisure, the Basis of Culture.)

Also of interest in Fink’s take on the place of these devices in our lives. They’re  not addictions, as people so often say, he notes. but a habit and not necessarily a bad habit. This is why we have such trouble not using them all the time.

Smartphones have become like appendages to our bodies. They accompany us to the kitchen for recipes and culinary inspiration. They come with us to the dinner table and can be used to research a point of discussion at the table or to share a YouTube video that gives everyone a good laugh. They are part of our Torah study routine, with the entire Torah available at the tap of a finger. Calling us addicts completely mischaracterizes the challenge. Our devices are like auxiliary brains. They are part of everything we do during the week.

Critics of the technology treat them as addictions and the user as someone who’s essentially distracting himself from the world he’s supposed to be engaged with, and there’s obvious truth to that. But they’re also useful things that aid our engagement with the world, and that makes giving them up even harder. Which in some ways makes a Sabbatarian retreat from their use even more useful.