The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time

Well, that was a huge chore. Shulevitz ostensible set out to explore the history of Shabbat and whether it still has meaning in the modern age. I would still read the heck out of that book, if anyone would like to write it.

But not Shulevitz. I will never read anything she writes ever again. I've read a lot of bad books, but rarely finished a book with such a strong antipathy for an author. It's not just Shulevitz's writing style, although there's certainly a lot to complain about there:
the prose is disorganized and often self-contradictory (some examples: in one portion Christians celebrating Sabbath on Sunday were considered anti-Shabbat, and in another the same activity is considered Sabbatizing; Christians don't celebrate a Sabbath in the Roman world because it's too hard when you're a minority group, but in the previous chapter, being a minority group is given as a reason that Jews persisted in celebrating Shabbat); the topic selection is eclectic enough to be completely dismissive of the reader – pages of quoting Wordsworth because he once wrote a poem in which a single line references the Sabbath? An entire section on the author's experience in a talmud study group with no discussion of Shabbat at all? Why not, I guess...
*the completely undeserved authoritative tone. At one point Shulevitz quotes several rabbis saying one thing and then follows that up with “but I think [the complete opposite]”, without any reason, then continues on as though her point of view is clearly the correct one. In another, following several pages of quotes from the New Testament about Jesus breaking the Sabbath she says “Obviously, the historic Jesus observed Shabbat.” Really, obviously? We'll just take it as a given that Jesus was shomer shabbat in face of all available evidence because...Shulevitz says so?

But also, the slim autobiographical sections displayed the same personality. In writing about her mother becoming a rabbi in her 50's (P.S. I would totally read that autobiography), Shulevitz relays that because no congregation would accept a female rabbi, her mother became a hospital chaplain. She then dismisses reports that her mother got extremely good feedback on her bedside manner by saying “my mother never had patience for the sick.” Then follows that up with the most offensive statement I've ever read in a modern book: “she was basically a glorified nurse”. Yes, that's right, chaplains? Glorified nurses. As someone who works alongside both chaplains and nurses, I struggled to decide on whose behalf I was more horrified. She then states that the whole situation was so troubling to Shulevitz (Why? Unclear.) that she had to go to psychoanalysis.

As an aside, Shulevitz loves psychoanalysis. She starts the intro by comparing Shabbat to psychoanalysis, because they both are considered antiquated, but are valuable. Or, I mean, psychoanalysis is a completely debunked form of pseudoscience, but whatever. She then spends the first chapter writing about Jewish psychoanalytics, including Freud, and speaks extensively and lovingly about Freud in the conclusion.

More evidence that Shulevitz is exactly as she portrays herself: A hilarious passage in which she says that she was frequently asked if she was going to become a Rabbi, since she knew scripture so well. She appears to have no insight into the fact that her knowledge of scripture, consisting of a single adult Talmud class, is quite lean.

Beyond my antipathy towards Shulevitz, the book was also frustratingly not any one thing. She never even articulates what a standard Shabbat would look like to an Orthodox family, instead strictly equating “Sabbath” with “free time” except for one confused passage where she tries to distinguish different types of Sabbaths, but puts Dickens' Sabbath in as contrasting subtypes “romantic” and “scientific” in different paragraphs. She seems to have done no research at all, which she excuses by calling this book an “autobiography”. And yet, for an autobiography, there's really not much there, either. I know that Shulevitz was raised Jewish and didn't like religion. She went to a Jewish overnight camp, where she felt the least educated in Judaism. Then she went on one date with an orthodox guy. Then she went to the synagogue that was the set for the Melanie Griffith/orthodox movie, because it was the movie set, but kept going back and crying in the back. Then she went to an adult talmud class, where she developed a crush on the rabbi. Then she stopped going to synagogue. Then she started going to synagogue again, because she got married. Now she tries to keep Shabbat, but mostly fails. Her children go to Jewish day school, but don't believe in G-d. That is literally the entirety of the autobiographical information in the book, with no more exploration into why these things have happened or what they mean to her.

I almost gave back a star for the admittedly interesting study of the Sabbatarian sects of Christianity, including the Anabaptist schism and the heaving Judaized Christianity of Transylvania. That was cool and novel to me. But less than 10% of the book, and given her error-prone statements in the parts of the book where I had background knowledge, I just can't trust anything she says.