Charlie Kirk embraced Shabbat as a life-changing pause. Judaism knows it as the force that sustained a people and changed the world.
Before his assassination, Charlie Kirk's final project was to introduce the idea of Shabbat to millions of people around the world. His book, Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Change Your Life, was posthumously published this month – and became an instant bestseller.
Whatever your opinion about Kirk's politics and personality, he was undeniably a high-achiever: hosting three hours of radio every day, juggling an intensive travel and speaking schedule, and fundraising US$100 million annually for his organisations.
For 24 hours Charlie Kirk would turn off his phone and step back from his frenetic schedule to spend time with his family and realign with his inner self.
Yet precisely because of that frenetic lifestyle, Kirk, whenever possible, would turn off his phone for 24 hours every week, from Friday evening till Saturday evening. He and his family would spend the day going on hikes, journaling, and just detaching from the noise.
Kirk writes:
In a society where identity is increasingly tethered to output – where your worth is measured by how busy you are, Sabbath… rehumanises us in a dehumanising world… Sabbath is our rebellion. Our resistance… It is a weekly declaration of allegiance… not to the machine, but to God.
For Kirk, Shabbat enabled him to step back from life’s daily pressures and realign with his inner self.
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In our age of nonstop beeps and pings, Shabbat speaks with universal relevance – affirming belief in God, who created the world with purpose, order, and a built-in weekly recharge.
Commemorating history
There is, however, a second fundamental theme of Shabbat. During the Friday night Kiddush, Jews declare that Shabbat not only “testifies to Creation,” but also “commemorates the Exodus from Egypt.”
Beyond national liberation, the Exodus conveys a revelation about the nature of reality itself. Creation established that the world has an Author. Through the Ten Plagues and splitting of the Sea, open miracles that overturned natural law, the Exodus demonstrated the Author’s involvement in the world.
Shabbat is a weekly testimony that human destiny is governed by Divine providence.
The Exodus did not merely liberate a people—it forged a nation whose collective missions to reveal God’s active presence in history. God’s act of creation is a universal abstraction; no one was there to witness it. Divine providence requires a living witness. The Exodus did not merely free a people; it formed a nation whose national mission is to reveal God’s active involvement in history.
Every week on Shabbat, the Jewish people reaffirm the dual truths of Creation and Divine providence, two elements fused into a single day.
Eternal sign
Today, history’s great civilizations, Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Babylonians, Romans, are archaeological relics. Meanwhile, the Jewish people, despite being few in number, dispersed across the globe, and subject to intense persecution, have made an outsized impact on the world.
Across continents and centuries, empires fell and languages disappeared, while every Shabbat, the Jewish people gathered around the table to renew their eternal vitality.
Comprising just 0.2 percent of the global population, Jews have received roughly 25 percent of all Nobel Prizes. That is not proportional influence; it is influence on a scale one thousand times their demographic weight. Against every expectation of history, a tiny and vulnerable people have shaped science, ethics, law, medicine, economics, and culture far beyond their numbers, leaving an imprint on civilization that empires could not.
Across continents and centuries, empires fell, borders shifted and languages disappeared, Meanwhile the Jewish people were gathering around the Shabbat table every week to renew their eternal vitality.
The miracle of Jewish survival bears witness to God's active guidance. As Rabbi Yaakov Emden (18th century Europe) writes:
Jewish survival throughout the generations is more miraculous than all the biblical miracles. The longer the exile continues, the miracle of Jewish survival is further substantiated, revealing God’s power and mastery.
Today, we’ve witnessed how, after 2,000 years of exile and from the ashes of the Holocaust, the Jewish people miraculously ingathered the exiles, revived the ancient Hebrew language, made the desert bloom, and built the start-up nation.
All others nations are sustained by power, land, language, or memory. The Jewish people are sustained by a seven-day rhythm. As the poet Ahad Ha'am famously said, “Even more than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th century Germany) writes:
Shabbat is not merely a day of rest, but the eternal sign of the covenant between God and Israel (Exodus 31:17). Shabbat testifies that Israel’s national existence is bound to its mission to proclaim God as Creator of heaven and earth, and as the One who intervenes in history to redeem the oppressed and guide humanity…
Therefore, as long as Israel exists, Shabbat exists. And as long as Shabbat exists, Israel remains the eternal people.
