There are lots of commandments I don’t especially enjoy, but I have been an enthusiastic Sabbath keeper for most of my adult life. In college, I enjoyed sanctifying my laziness by declaring that I wouldn’t do homework on Sundays, and I loved explaining (while wearing a black turtleneck, of course!) that I was being radically countercultural by refusing to participate in the capitalist economy for one day each week. When my children were small, Sunday sanctified my generally inept housekeeping and let me feel virtuous about putting them in front of a churchy video and taking a nap. But it was reading a sermon by the Jewish poet Maxine Silverman…

In Exodus 20:8-11, Moses gives the sabbath day commandment to the children of Israel: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day; and hallowed it.” In Ezekiel…