August 19, 2026

The Tyranny Of Things

Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.

Heschel wrote these words in The Sabbath, published in 1951, after escaping Nazi Germany and losing much of his family in the Holocaust. He watched modern civilization race to conquer space—land, buildings, machines, possessions—while neglecting the deeper dimension of time itself. For Heschel, the seventh day was a weekly rebellion against the grip of things, a reminder that everything built and owned will eventually pass away. Surrounded by more devices and more possessions than any generation before, his words ask us to notice what we are actually chasing.