Is a little quiet so bad?

It happens to me every Yom Kippur. I get ready to leave the house, put all the equipment in my pockets: telephone, earbuds, cigarettes, lighter, keys (is it any wonder all my jeans are falling apart-), and finally my wallet. Wait, why do I need a wallet? I remember that even if I try, there's nothing to spend money on. And so once a year, a secular person in Tel Aviv heads out without any form of payment on his person.

It doesn't matter how unobservant you are -- you didn't have a bad Yom Kippur this year, either. A day of quiet in the streets and the quiet on the phone line is nice. Nor do secular Jews hate the Sabbath. There's a different smell in the air on Friday evenings, even more so on Saturday mornings. So the debate, as it were, on the number of businesses operating on the Sabbath and the various possibilities for consumers gives me an unpleasant sensation. If they told me that everything would be open on Shabbat, just like a weekday, but when I woke up at 10 a.m. I'd find 10 unanswered phone calls and 30 new emails waiting for me, I'm not sure I'd take the deal.

A day of rest is important beyond the religious context. Nonobservant Jews also enjoy a day free from work-related matters, and nonobservant Jews also prefer not to get a knock on their door from their building's tenants' committee or a call from the bank on Shabbat. Shabbat isn't only for the religious. So how is it that we don't mind other people working for 23 shekels ($6.30) an hour just to sell us a cheap T-shirt or an overpriced carton of milk?

Don't misunderstand me -- I don't mind things being open on Shabbat. It's so much more convenient. But it's certainly not the most important thing we should be fighting for. It's important to fight for freedom and equality, but the right to spend $8 on ice cream and toppings shouldn't be the top priority for secular Jews.

Do you want a solution? As usual, it's somewhere in the middle. Make Sunday a day of rest on which everything is open, even once every two weeks. Sometimes banks, post offices, and government offices could be open as a sort of public contribution, like the pharmacies that take turns opening on Shabbat -- a different entity each time. That way, the exploited workers wouldn't be hurt and everyone could enjoy the privilege of free time for errands.

The Sabbath is a more complicated matter. A few improvements to public transportation, and we can say that with the service taxis that run along some of the city's major bus routes we're not in bad shape. I personally don't want buses running outside my house all through Shabbat, or for the drivers to have to work and give up their quiet family time.

The question of stores, supermarkets, and the rest of the cash-guzzlers we're devoted to on weekdays can also be solved, but the solution needs to be creative, intelligent, and supervised by the municipality. Maybe places could be opened in certain areas that would rotate every few months. Maybe charging extra to open on Shabbat would allow people to go corner by corner and think about the right thing to do and what they can do without. In a big city, it's important that places be open, that everything be available. This is part of the fabric of the city, its power.

But this pause, this quiet, for a few hours when even the sidewalk cement gets to rest, is also important, and not only on Yom Kippur.