MissinglongsummerShabbats

AS A perpetual sun worshipper, I’m always saddened by the end of the summer. Still, there is plenty to love about autumn. Apples gleaming on the trees, just waiting to be made into crumbles for Rosh Hashanah. The landscape becoming a kaleidoscope of reds and oranges. Swapping nude tights for thick, snug black ones, and feeling justified in purchasing yet another scarf.

As a child, for all that I dreaded the return to school, September always meant the thrill of new stationery, freshly sticky-back-plasticed books, catching up with friends and, for me anyway, Shabbat getting shorter.

Obviously, Shabbat is the same duration all year round –— 25 hours, give or take. Sundown to sundown. But just as the Yom Kippur fast feels shorter when it falls late in the calendar year and thus ends around 6 something, Shabbat in the summer feels longer. Shabbat in June, July and August, when candlelighting is hours after the working day ends, when it doesn’t finish until as late as 10 or 10.30pm, can feel like it goes on forever.

As a teenager, in an observant family where I wouldn’t drive or spend money on Saturdays, I loathed this. When I was 14, and 16, and 18, long summer Shabbats meant being stuck at home, being unable to go to friends’ parties if they weren’t in walking distance.

It meant asking people to come to my house rather than privately socialising at Brent Cross, leaving my homework until Sunday, and arriving at my school prom as the last songs began playing.

Yet, nowadays, I see only the benefits of those lazy, hazy, crazy summer Shabbats. In my own home, with friends both observant and not in walking distance, with some family nearby, I revel in those extended Saturdays. The ones when lunch can stretch on, when the morning melts into the afternoon and then into the evening (helped, perhaps by a jug of Pimm’s), and it’s still Shabbat, so nobody has to be anywhere, rush anywhere, get anything done right now. When you can sit outside with the newspaper for hours, without feeling that your time would be better spent.

With weekends very much the focal point of a busy professional life, I increasingly value the “switching off” that a prescribed day of rest offers.

For all that, Shabbat is not always work free — for example, if you are hosting guests, or looking after small children — once the candles are lit and the challah is cut, it’s a day apart from the rest of the week.

To me, that’s the essence of Shabbat, not the services, or indulging at Fridaynight dinner, but the escape from the hustle and bustle of the week, the holiday from everyday life.

It’s about having the time to go for a walk — not to get somewhere, but just because — or to read, and really devour books as I did as a child, when the internet was still mostly theoretical and the home computer was an object of great fascination. Or the time just to sit and talk, without something more pressing distracting you.

In these switched-on times, I savour the fact that Saturdays can be a day of detox from technology, the one point in the week when a screen is optional.

I make no claim of being strictly observant, but if I’m on my phone on Shabbat it’s to make arrangements, while I consider catching up on the latest Netflix series a restful activity.

If I am logged on, it’s in a much more passive way than the rest of the week. If I don’t answer my phone, it doesn’t matter.

In the secular world, the idea of the digital detox is gaining currency, as people realise that having access to endless reams of information at our fingertips is not necessarily the key to contentment.

Writing ahead of Shabbat UK last year, the Chief Rabbi highlighted that “Shabbat is more relevant now than ever before” because, while we are increasingly digitally connected, we are often becoming more disconnected as a result.

That rings true; and the way I “do” Shabbat certainly taps into the feeling of needing a respite — from technology, and from the non-stop nature of contemporary life.

Even if you don’t observe it to the letter of the law (which I don’t), having a day that is distinct from the rest of the week is incredibly powerful and incredibly valuable.

Which is why, as the leaves start changing colour and conversation turns to new fruit, I mourn the loss of those long, languid summer Shabbats.

When I was a teenager, I loathed being stuck at home