The Impossible Necessary Sabbath: What an Ancient Institution Has To Teach Us in These Postmodern Times Judith Shulevitz, a culture critic and magazine editor who co-founded Slate, spoke about her journey writing The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time. Rabbi Joseph Topek said in his introduction, the book, which appeared on the New York Times 2010 notable book list, is "a very personal book about what for many people is a very personal service, but she [Shulevitz] has recontextualized it so that we are forced to examine the phenomena of the Sabbath from a different vantage point." Instead of giving away what she had written in her book, Shulevitz brought the audience in on the process, or what Shulevitz refers to as "the sort of weird, random, confused process" that led to her interest in the Sabbath. Shulevitz confessed that while she would like to pretend her interest in the Sabbath was an "intellectual exercise," it wasn't. In fact, before she started to write about the subject she had never written about religion. Shulevitz considered herself an atheist. When people did ask why she was working on such a book, Shulevitz would respond, "I find that structured period of non-productivity can be very useful for an over-scheduled society." And while this was true, Shulevitz admitted that there was something more to it. "I didn't like my life," she said. At the time, every day seemed the same for Shulevitz. Work followed her everywhere. "If I was reading it <b>...</b>