What is Shabbat All About?

These two texts talk about what people should do on Shabbat? What is the nature of the activities that the rabbis tell people to do on Shabbat?
Might someone think that it is prohibited to have sex on Shabbat? Why?
Do you think there are other things that people should be engaging in on Shabbat, that would fulfill the "spirit of Shabbat"?
Where does prayer fit into this vision of Shabbat?
What about study?

The Sabbath
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. 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. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation, from the world of creation to the creation of the world...(p.10)
He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil...He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self. (p. 13)

Art Green These Are the Words pg. 255
Shabbat or the Sabbath is the central religious institution of rabbinic Judaism. Observance of Shabbat is the practice that most defines membership in the traditional community of the Jewish faithful. The idea of a holy day, unlike any notion of sacred place, is seen by the Torah as existing from the beginning of the world. It started on the day after humans were created, on the day God rested. God sanctified the Sabbath from the very beginning of time. This is a way of saying that human existence itself cannot be imagined in a world where there is no Shabbat.
The root of the word Shabbat means to ‘cease’ or ‘desist.’ To observe Shabbat means to cease our work life and break our daily routine every seventh day, making that day holy. Shabbat is to be a day of enjoying God’s world rather than doing battle with it; a day of relaxation rather than struggle, a day time to live in harmony rather than to achieve domination…
The Torah gives almost no instruction about how to observe the Sabbath. “Work” is forbidden, but the nature of that work is not defined. A few details, including the forbidding of lighting fire and gathering wood on the Sabbath, are all the text provides. The rabbis, however, found an entire body of Shabbat law hidden in the Torah, based on a parallel between the work prohibited on Shabbat and the work required for the building of the desert tabernacle. All the forms of work required for the building (there are thirty-nine major categories and many derivatives form them) are those forbidden on the Sabbath...
Shabbat may still be the most important religious form that Judaism has to give to humanity. In our age of ever increasing pace and demand, the need for a day of true rest is all the greater. But the forms of Shabbat observance as they have evolved in endless detail are, for many Jews, overwhelming and even oppressive to the very spirit of Shabbat freedom. A contemporary Shabbat will have to be simplified and streamline one. This is necessary before Shabbat can be accepted by larger parts of the Jewish people, and also for the sake of any new message of Shabbat we might hope to extend beyond the borders of Jewry. Such a Shabbat will of course have to be entirely voluntary, without compulsion of any sort. In the spirit of fulfilling this need, I offer the following list of ten prescriptions for a contemporary Shabbat. They may be used either alone to created a Shabbat for you and your family, or in combination of whatever traditional Jewish law seems to work for you:
1. Stay at home. Spend quality time with family and real friends.
2. Celebrate with others: at the table, in the synagogue, with your community, or with those whom you can best share in appreciating God’s world.
3. Study or ready something that will edify, challenge, or make you grow.
4. Be alone. Take some time for yourself. Check in with yourself. Review your week. Ask yourself where you are in your life.
5. Mark the beginning and end of this sacred time: lighting candles and kiddush on Friday night and havdalah on Saturday night.
6. Don’t do anything you have to have to do for your work life. This includes obligatorily reading, homework, unwanted social obligation, and preparing work as well as doing your job itself.
7. Don’t spend money. Separate completely from the commercial culture that so much surrounds us.
8. Don’t do business. No calls to the broker, no following up on ads, no paying of bills. It can all wait.
9. Don’t travel. Avoid especially commercial places like airports, hotel check-ins and similar depersonalizing commercial encounters. Stay free of situation in which people are likely to tell you to “have a nice day!” (Shabbat already is a nice day, thank you!)
10. Don’t use commercial or canned video entertainment, including TV and computer. Stay in situations where you can be face-to- face with those around you, rather than facing the all-powerful screen.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, https://rabbisacks.org/credo-the-soul-needs-its-silences-in-the-midst-of-the-web-chatter-and-the-electronic-noise/
Is the internet making us stupid? Are social networking sites distorting personal relationships, encouraging us to substitute virtual encounters for real ones? Are the almost infinite distractions of the Web making us lose self-control?
So argue Nicholas Carr, Sherry Turkle and Daniel Akst in their recent books, part of a wave of scepticism that has overtaken the utopian expectations of how the Internet might change our lives.
Carr argues, in The Shallows, that the internet is rewiring our neural networks, changing the shape of our minds. It maximises distractions, making it hard for us to pay attention for long, or to follow complex and subtle arguments.
In Alone Together, Turkle contends that social networking media like Facebook and Twitter are making demands on us that are not good for real relationships in real time. They make demands on us to be “on”, available, accessible, all the time. They tempt us to present “edited” editions of ourselves. There is a difference between electronic communication and genuine interpersonal care.
Meanwhile Daniel Akst claims, in We Have Met the Enemy, that the Web is one of what he calls the “weapons of mass consumption.” By making everything available to us all the time, our twenty-first century lifestyle is causing us to lose our self-control and do everything in excess.
All of this is true, up to a point. But it is also true that the Web is making information accessible at a speed and with a reach that is unprecedented, thus democratizing knowledge. Social networking helps people stay in touch in ways they simply could not do before. I have seen it bring support to people who are seriously ill and helpful advice to worried, housebound mothers of young children. And yes, we need to learn self-control, but did we not always have to do so?
The truth is we are living through a revolution whose consequences are immense, far-reaching and impossible to predict. We have just witnessed how Facebook and Twitter played a significant part in the popular uprisings in both Tunisia and Egypt. They helped get people on the street. They spread provocative images and words with extraordinary speed and power. They allowed people to defy and circumvent state control of conventional media. Within less than a month they helped bring down two governments and destabilise an entire region. The world is changing fast.
New information technology has this effect and has done so throughout history. The invention of writing, first in Mesopotamia, then in Egypt, led to the dawn of civilization. The alphabet led to the book and to the people of the Book. The invention of printing led to the Reformation, the growth of science, mass literacy and the birth of the modern. Only in retrospect do we know where it leads.
Information technology makes it easier for people to communicate, but what happens next depends on what we communicate, not just how. In and of itself, technology never solves people problems. Only people can do that.
Which is why the Jewish Sabbath is acquiring new salience. It’s the day when, for the most part, we put technology aside. We don’t watch television, answer emails, switch on our computer or use our smart-phone. In the synagogue and at home we spend real time with real people. The Sabbath builds communities, strengthens marriages, and gives parents and children undistracted time with one another. It’s also, around the dinner table or in synagogue, a time for study of our ancient texts, study that demands extended concentration on arguments and interpretations.
It is, in other words, the perfect antidote to the negative effects of the web. It is astonishing how the Sabbath has been a form of liberation in age after age, from the tyranny of slavery three thousand years ago to that of technology now.
The Sabbath teaches us about limits and the ability to say No. It tells us to take time out to focus on what really matters: the important as opposed to the urgent. It gives our most significant relationships the time and space to breathe. It keeps us human, reminding us that we are the masters of technology, not its slaves.
I thank God for the Sabbath because, reconnecting to Him I find it easier to reconnect to others without the interruptions and distractions of the latest i-miracles, wondrous though they are. The soul needs its silences in the midst of the web chatter and the electronic noise.