Turning the World Off

nce a week, I get to turn the world off. No cell phones, no computers, no television, and no iPods allowed for a 25 hour period.  It’s called Shabbes.

God made the world and on the seventh day He rested. He stopped and took stock of what He had done. And for thousands of years, Jews have been emulating this pattern.

We got our first computer a bit later than most, only in 2000. The world seems to have burst into a rainbow of media since that time with people now dependent on devices to manage just about every facet of their lives.

That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Most of the time, I’m convinced it’s a wondrous thing.


That’s why it comes as a bit of a surprise to me, how much I revel in accessing NONE of my gadgets, screens, and keyboards on Shabbes.

What I do is put up my feet and READ. I read and read and read and then I read some more.

Prior to getting our first PC, I read 5-7 books a week. I have always loved to read. Well, not quite always.

It took a few years for me to really develop the knack. I was in the slow reading group in first grade. But by third grade, I was not only reading David Copperfield, I was writing short stories. I drank in words and poured them out only to take in more. The thirst never ended.

I was sorry when I saw how media came and replaced the reading habit in my life. But once a week, I get to close it all down, shut off the world and let reading back into my life. Each week, it seems like nothing short of a miracle.

I have a cooking marathon on Friday because we don’t cook on Shabbes. Then I take a luxurious, hot bath. I put on my Shabbes robe (black velour with gold piping) and light 14 candles, one for each member of my family.

Then I get in bed, close my eyes and smile at how good it feels to put my feet up. I open my eyes and reach over to the stack of books that sits in readiness on my bedside nightstand. I feel like a queen, spoiled for choice, every single week.

 Thank God for Shabbes.

My Homemade sourdough Challoh. Photo Credit: Natan Epstein

True Blue

Most marriages are filled with compromise, and my own is no exception. I always tell Dov that it's a good thing we don't own a house—we'd never agree on the interior décor. But he always insists that there is plenty we can agree on and we'd have no trouble finding that place of agreement. Maybe so.

But while we can and do find places of happy agreement, there are still a great number of tastes and issues on which we will never see eye to eye. We have learned to stay out of each others' way with mutual good grace so as to provide us the freedom to pursue our differences. Music is a good example of the way this marital consideration works. I love Joni Mitchell, Dov hates her with a capital H.

I get it--I get why he doesn't like Joni: her voice with its twists and turns, sails into the higher registers and grates on his nerves. But I like that about her. I just do. Her jazzy vocals don't just sing, they speak. I don't like all of Mitchell's music, but I could listen to the tracks from Blue, for instance, all day, and never, ever tire of them.

I have the habit of falling in love with songs, so that I can listen to a single, beloved song over and over at full volume, for hours at a time. That's how it is for me with All I Want, Carey, Case of You, and California. I used to wait until Dov left for work, and then blast those songs, in a continuous shuffle, as I swooned and crooned, attempting to match her vocal acrobatics.

Now that I have an Ipod, I can listen to my heart's content without causing offense to my dear husband, though there is a certain amount of occasional annoyance generated by the idea that I've cut myself off from him and the kids. I've learned to keep one earpiece in and the other dangling, so no one feels scorned: not my family, and not Joni, either.

Yes. I'm on a first name basis with this particular singer, because she is singing my soul. The other day I wrote about the affection we have for reading diaries because they represent the writer's truest and deepest emotions without concern for others' eyes. The tracks on Blue, both the music and the lyrics, are like that, offered with such complete honesty it makes me ache.

Maybe Joni's musical/lyrical approach back in 1971, when Blue came out, was a bit immature in its full-blown rush of emotion. In 1979, Joni discussed the way the music on this album reflected her raw, emotional state at that time, "The Blue album, there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either."

That's the precise reason the album became so popular: the music and lyrics are so open and poignant that you suspect the writer was either very brave or never thought anyone else would ever listen in. I don't believe anyone other than Joni has the power to convey that state of raw adolescent feeling as expressed in All I Want. James Taylor's gutsy guitar on this track is unashamed and strong. That guitar is like a heartbeat weaving in and out of the words:

"I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you.
I want to renew you again and again.
Applause, applause—life is our cause
When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws."


Most of the time, lyrics don't mean much to me. I'm paying much more attention to the music. But with Joni, it's different. To my mind, the most poignant lyrics ever heard on the subject of longing can be heard in My Old Man:

"The bed's too big/The frying pan's too wide."


In Blue, Joni took emotion and turned it into an art form.