The Sabbath between Creation and Automation.

This paper contributes to current discussions in Jewish Studies on the intersection of halakhic practice and technological mediation, highlighting how sacred time challenges modern automation. It explores how contemporary technologies—digital automation, Shabbat mode appliances, and AI-mediated systems—reconfigure the halakhic and theological understanding of menouhah (rest) and melakhah (creative labor) in Jewish thought. Far from a simple resistance to modernity, halakhic discourse on technology expresses a dynamic hermeneutic negotiation between divine creation and human technical agency.Drawing on classical sources (Genesis 2:2–3, Mishnah Shabbat 7:2) and modern responsa, the paper analyzes recent debates about grama (indirect causation) and kavanah (intention), revealing how rabbinic authorities reinterpret the notion of action in an automated environment. From a philosophical perspective, the study engages with A. J. Heschel (The Sabbath, 1951), E. Levinas (Totality and Infinity, 1961; Difficult Freedom, 1963), and M. Buber (I and Thou, 1923) to examine how Shabbat articulates a phenomenology of sacred rest as an ethical interruption of technological mastery.Ultimately, the paper argues that technological innovation becomes not merely a halakhic challenge but a theological and ethical opportunity to rethink a Jewish ethics of technological rest, where sanctity emerges through the re-humanization of technique within sacred temporality.”