I was listing to a Jewish podcast where the speaker referred to Shabbat as a day off. He said that God says “Hey I love you so much, why don’t you take the day off?”And then take the same day off next week off too.”

The person who was speaking was male. I’m starting to understand why in Orthodox Judaism one of the morning prayers is giving thanks to God that you were not born female.

Shabbat is not a day off if you are female.

Shabbat is making up for all the extra work you had to do the week before. On Shabbat you’re not allowed to cook. This means you have to cook twice as much the day before. You can prepare for this throughout the week but ultimately it means you have to do twice as much work in order to “take the day off”. The house has to be clean and everything prepared by sunset on Friday night. No work is allowed until sunset on Saturday night. It is like preparing for a major holiday every week.

It is similar to when the Jews were wandering in the desert. They were expected to gather twice as much manna on Friday because there would not be any provided on Saturday. Gathering twice as much or working twice as hard is the same thing. So it’s not really a “day off” so much as a day of recovery from all the extra work you had to do to prepare for your “day off”.