For the past few weeks, I've been participating in a fitness challenge to raise money and awareness for JWRP - the Jewish Women's Renaissance Project - which is an incredible partnering organization of ours in bringing women to Israel. If you are a Facebook friend of mine, you may already be aware of this particular challenge (ahem).
Pretty much, I bought a Fitbit, which is a cute little green gizmo, an amazing invention, I might add, that I wear on my waistband all day, and I do mean from the moment I open my eyes in the morning until just before I pass out retire for the night. The gizmo tracks how many steps I've walked that day - whether it's a two-mile hike, or a dash to my laundry room. It also tracks calories burned, even those burned just by existing, and miles walked. It's an incredibly validating piece of technology and I highly recommend it for busy people who don't have time to work out. What you will discover is that you're working out all day!
Anyway, I've committed, among others all across the globe, to walk 100 miles over the course of one month, and I'm so grateful to all those who believe in me and have sponsored this endeavor.
Now let's talk about Shabbos.
The first Friday of the challenge, I was preparing for Shabbos, and realized that my Fitbit would sit untouched, untracking and unchecked in my drawer for 25 hours for the first time since the challenge had begun. I had never felt compelled before to know how much I was walking, but now that I had been exposed to the joys of the Fitbit, I was hooked. As someone who has "kept" Shabbos my whole life, this was hard - because it was a new challenge for me. Even my phone is easy to part with, because I had always refrained from phone use on Shabbos, and even before phones were what they are today, I was totally a phone person (think pink phone in your room, ladies, in like the 1980s).
My good friend Hallie just sent me this interesting tidbit (unrelated to the Fitbit) a few days ago. It's an interesting idea, based on the Torah, to create a "tech Sabbath."
"In 2003, a small group of Jewish artists, writers, filmmakers, and media professionals wanted to find a way to slow down in an increasingly hectic world. They developed The Sabbath Manifesto, a creative project designed to encourage people to take a weekly day of rest from their technology. The idea of a Tech Sabbath comes from the ancient, religious one; in the Old Testament, God rests after spending six days creating the world, and then commands his people to do likewise: “six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in plowing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.”
How retro can you get?
Back to the Fitbit. While the Tech Sabbath is a "spirit of the law" kind of Sabbath, it's certainly a step in the right direction. While spending time in nature is considered an excellent way to spend Shabbat, gardening is not - that's creative labor, enjoyable though it may be (to some). Participating in a new kind of abstention for me - refraining from Fitbit use - is a perfect example of keeping both the spirit AND letter of the law fresh. Technology exists to make our lives faster, more convenient, funner, and, arguably, easier. But refraining from it periodically makes us more interesting, more compassionate, more reliant on each other, more focused, and more free.
Shabbat shalom, Fitbit. Till we meet again.
