By Senator Joseph Lieberman

It’s Friday night, raining one of those torrential downpours that we get in Washington, D.C., and I am walking from the Capitol to my home in Georgetown, getting absolutely soaked. A United States Capitol policeman is at my side as we make our way up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol building toward our distant goal, a four-and-a-half-mile walk. Before leaving my Senate office I changed into sneakers, but now they are full of water.

As we slosh forward, a Capitol police car travels alongside for extra security at a stately pace. But I do not—indeed I cannot—accept a ride in the car.

What accounts for this strange scene? The presence of the two policemen is easily explained. The Senate’s sergeant at arms, who oversees the Capitol police, once said to me, “Senator, if something happens to you on my watch while you’re walking home, it will be bad for my career.” So that’s why the police are with me.

But why am I walking instead of riding on a rainy night? Because it’s Friday night, the Sabbath, the day of rest when observant Jews like me do not ride in cars. That would violate the letter and spirit of the Sabbath laws, as the Bible and Jewish rabbinical opinions make clear.

Normally I get home from my work in time for the start of the Sabbath—Shabbat in Hebrew, or Shabbos in Yiddish, at sundown on Friday. But on this occasion, important votes on the budget of the United State kept me from doing so. Voting in the Senate is conducted the old fashioned way, by voice, and there are no proxies. You can’t vote on behalf of one of your colleagues. If I miss an important vote, it would mean that on that particular issue the people of my home state of Connecticut would lose their representation. They would lose their say in the running of our country, the spending of their tax payments, or the safety and quality of their lives. That is something my religious beliefs tell me I cannot allow, even on the Sabbath, so when there are votes in the Senate after sundown on Friday, I vote and then I walk home.

I’ve taken this long walk from the Capitol to my home on thirty or forty occasions in my twenty-two-year senatorial career. The police officers who accompany me normally provide not only security but welcome companionship and conversation. Many are devout Christians. The journey takes about an hour and a half, and we’ve had some wonderful discussions about the Sabbath in particular and faith in general. But not tonight. It’s just too wet and miserable to talk much. It is now 10:00 p.m., and my police escort and I take a break and slip under the shelter of a convenience store awning.

At that moment, I must admit, I looked to the heavens from which rain continued to pour and asked, half in humor and half in sincerity, “Dear God, Is this really what you want me to be doing to remember and honor the Sabbath?”

More like a gift
That’s not a question I often feel compelled to ask. Observing the Sabbath is a commandment I have embraced, the fourth commandment to be exact, which Moses received from God on Mt. Sinai. Most of the time, it feels less like a commandment and more like a gift from God. It is a gift I received from my parents who, in turn, received it from their parents, who received it from generation of Jews before them in a line of transmission that goes back to Moses.

For me, Sabbath observance is a gift because it is one of the deepest, purest pleasures in my life. It is a day of peace, rest, and sensual pleasure. By sensual I don’t mean sexual—though you might find it interesting to know that one religious “responsibility” given to every married Jew is to make love with their spouse on the Sabbath, because this is meant to be a day on which we experience the fullness of life.

My wife, Hadassah, once mentioned this to be couple of women friends who were started by the revelation.

“Oh,“ said one, her eyes going wide, “I wish my husband would become more religiously observant.”

When I said the Sabbath is sensual, I meant that it engages the senses—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—with beautiful settings, soaring melodies, wonderful food and wine, and lots of love. It is a time to reconnect with family and friends—and, of course, with God, the creator of everything we have time to “sense” on the Sabbath. Sabbath observance is a gift that has anchored, shaped, and inspired my life.

The Sabbath is an old but beautiful idea that, in our frantically harried and meaning-starved culture, cries out to be rediscovered and enjoyed by people of all faiths. It takes the form it does—its laws and customs—because from ancient days, generations of rabbis and sages have been transmitting, refining, and elaborating traditions that define Sabbath observance. These traditions build fences—like not riding in a car—around the Sabbath to protect it as a day of faith and rest.

The Sabbath is an organic entity reflecting centuries of thought and experience. It is not an arbitrary contrivance. Some ordinances may have seemed meaningless in the past, but they have been revealed in their full meaningfulness in modern times. I constantly seek the wisdom of Sabbath practices, and I’m rarely disappointed by what I find. If the cost is an occasional inconvenience or discomfort—like getting soaked on the walk home from the Capitol—I consider that a small price to pay for all the Sabbath gives and teaches me.

A place beyond time
Hadassah and I sometimes speak of a place beyond time called “Shabbatland.” In many ways, the Sabbath is an entirely different place from the one in which we live our weekday lives. It’s a place away from the clocks and watches, bound only by the natural movements of the sun. Whether I am spending Shabbat in Washington, D.C., or in my hometown of Stamford, Connecticut, entering the Sabbath is like stepping into a different world defined not by geographical boundaries but by faith, tradition, and spirituality.

“On Shabbat,” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the rebbe (or chief rabbi) of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, said, “we cease to struggle with the world, not because the task of perfecting it is on hold, but be-cause on Shabbat, the world is perfect; we relate to what is perfect and unchanging in it.”

In speaking with Christian friends, especially in the Evangelical and Roman Catholic communities, I’ve felt an appreciation for the gifts of Sabbath observance and a desire to spread them. Some have asked me, “Why do you observe the Sabbath?” and “What do you do on the Sabbath?” I now propose to answer them and you through the prism of the Hebrew Bible, which most Christians call the Old Testament and which provides the shared wellsprings from which we draw our faith.

In the Torah, the Bible’s first five books, we are given the text of the fourth commandment twice: once in Exodus, when Scripture narrates the revelation of God to the children of Israel at Mt. Sinai, and again three books later in Deuteronomy when Moses repeats the story of the Sinai revelation to the Israelites in the desert forty years later. The wording of the commandment in these two accounts is different.

Exodus emphasizes the role of the Sabbath in commemorating the creation of the world and in acknowledging and honoring God as Creator. We are told there to “remember” the Sabbath, to remember particularly that the world has a purposive Creator. We are not here by accident. We got here as a result of God’s creation.

The second recording of the commandment to observe the Sabbath is in the context of God’s liberation of the Jewish people from Egypt. It is an affirmation that God not only created us but that He continues to care about His creation and about human history:

“And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord, thy God brought thee out from there with a mighty hand and a stretched out arm:  therefore the Lord thy God commended thee to keep the Sabbath day.”  (Deuteronomy 5:15)

This Exodus let to the revelation at Sinai in which the commandment to remember and guard the Sabbath is given. And with the law came the responsibility each of us has to become God’s partners in shaping, improving, and ultimately perfecting human history.

The Sabbath officially begins on Friday evening at sundown and ends on Saturday at nightfall. Like a symphony with its different parts, Shabbat also has its “movements”—distinct phases of the day. I count nine of these, formally beginning on Friday night with Kabbalat Shabbat, the Welcoming of the Sabbath Bride, and concluding on Saturday night with the ceremony called Havdalah, which means Separation. Havdalah is the moment when the conclusion of the Sabbath separates the holiness of the Sabbath from the ordinary weekday that fol-lows.

But in a very real sense, the Sabbath begins during the day on Friday, which we call Erev Shabbat, the eve of the Sabbath, a time of intensive practical and, one hopes, spiritual preparation. Shabbat officially concludes at “nightfall” Saturday night (rather than at sundown, which is earlier) when we enter the six days of work that follow the day of rest.

For Jews and non-Jews
The Sabbath is for both Jews and non-Jews, whatever their personal religious observances may be, because the fourth commandment and its gift of Sabbath rest were given to all people. In fact the Sabbath provides answers to the most difficult questions people of all faiths have asked themselves for generations: How did I get here? Does anyone care how I behave? What will happen to me after I die?

The prophet Isaiah taught beautifully about a future time when everyone will observe the Sabbath:

“Also the sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants, every one that keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it…Even them will I bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer.”  (Isaiah 56:6-7)

Then in the concluding verses of his book, Isaiah pictures how it will be in that blessed future:

“And it shall come to pass, that every new moon, and every Sabbath, Shall all flesh come to bow down to the ground before Me, says the Lord.”  (Isaiah 66:23)

The Sabbath is a gift from God to all people. In our time, I believe, it is a gift that is desperately needed.

The Sabbath is not an all or nothing proposition. It offers to enrich your life and give you rest in direct proportion to how much of its spirit and practice you choose to incorporate into your life. But I warn you: a single taste of Sabbath can lead you to want more. I hope that the more you experience its pleasures, the more you will want to remember, guard, and enjoy God’s day.

Now in his fourth and final term representing Connecticut in the United States Senate, Joe Lieberman is perhaps best known as the Democratic candidate for Vice President in 2000. Senator Lieberman is Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This article is adapted from The Gift of Rest by Senator Joe Lieberman. Copyright ©2011 by Joseph Lieberman.  Reprinted by permission of Howard Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.