Why do I feel like I’m going crazy on Shabbos without my phone?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau answers that the problem usually isn’t Shabbos. When someone says, “I can’t handle Shabbos. No phone, no noise. I go crazy,” what he is really saying is that he can’t handle being alone with himself. All week he has been distracting himself, “scrolling, texting, and escaping.”
On Shabbos there is nowhere to run. You are left with your own thoughts, your own fears, your own soul. “And that’s exactly the point. Shabbos is about meeting yourself.” He quotes “Shuvi nafshi limnuchaychi,” “Return, my soul, to your peace.” Shabbos is when your soul comes home.
To get there, he says, start small. Take one hour during the week with no phone and no distractions, and just face yourself. “Do that, and Shabbos won’t even scare you anymore. It’ll feel like coming home. Because it’s not Shabbos you’re afraid of, it’s you.”
Watch Rabbi Landau's teaching · Also taught in: teaching 2
Related concepts: The phone that owns you · Noise is not intelligence
In A Soul at Peace: Afraid of the Sabbath? Come Home, My Soul
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
The restlessness people feel on Shabbos without a phone is not really about Shabbos.
Fear, vulnerability, or tension
On Shabbos a person is left with his own thoughts, fears and soul, with nowhere to run. Rabbi Landau says what people fear is not Shabbos but themselves.
What may be behind it
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the distractions of the weekdays “are not just a bad habit. They are a mechanism” for avoiding hard thoughts and feelings.
Deepest human truth
What is Shabbos really for?
Shabbos is about meeting yourself. “Return, my soul, to your peace”: it is when the soul comes home, and with practice it feels like home.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Shabbos · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz