When Rob Wasserman decided to take his junior year abroad from the University of California, Santa Barbara—and switched his destination from Sweden to Israel—he wasn’t searching for a spiritual transformation. But a spiritual transformation found him anyway. What he found that year in Jerusalem was something that would shape his life: Shabbat. That discovery eventually became ” ShabbatNow,” a weekly email he now sends from his home in St. Louis to subscribers around the world. It offers a short quote and a reminder of what Jewish tradition calls the day of rest.
A weekly pause in a hectic world
Wasserman created “ShabbatNow” about five years ago, after decades of slowly cultivating a love for the Jewish day of rest.
“I registered the name ShabbatNow and had my friend’s daughter create a logo,” he said. “Then I launched it with one quote. Now, we have people all over the country—and some around the world—subscribing.”
Wasserman didn’t launch “ShabbatNow” with a strategy. “I’m not even sure how people find it,” he said. “But every now and then someone will say, ‘Hey, I get your Shabbat email,’ and I’m always surprised.”
He’s not on social media. No Substack. No marketing. It’s just an email. “That’s literally the only thing I do.”
It may be minimalist, but it’s not mindless. “In some ways, it reflects Shabbat because it’s a simple message of dialing it back,” he said. “But it’s also the antithesis of Shabbat, because it’s so short—and that’s pretty much the attention span most of us have during the workday.”
That’s why “ShabbatNow” is built for one thing: the Friday scroll pause. In a world of infinite feeds, it offers one small stop. The quote is short enough to read between Zoom meetings or in the school pickup line. “Anything longer wouldn’t be read,” he said. “Any video wouldn’t be watched. Even links—almost nobody clicks.”
Still, each quote is chosen with care. “Everywhere and anywhere,” he said—books, websites, podcasts, even scribbled notes from earlier in the week. “But usually it’s the same day.”
If it feels unpolished, that’s the point. “ShabbatNow” isn’t a sermon. It’s a nudge—a quiet push toward stillness.
“I just hope it helps people get into a different mindset,” he said. “Because Shabbat’s not about rules. It’s about presence.”
Inspired by open doors in Jerusalem
Wasserman’s commitment to Shabbat took root during that year in Israel, where Friday nights weren’t spent partying in Tel Aviv but instead being sent—sometimes blindly—to strangers’ homes. “Every week, we’d meet at the Kotel and this guy named Jeff Seidel would assign people to Shabbat dinners,” he recalled. “Religious families—some modern Orthodox, others from more traditional or Hasidic communities—would host total strangers.”
It wasn’t just hospitality. It was intentional. “They actually preferred hosting non-Orthodox Jews,” Wasserman said, “because they wanted to expose us to the beauty of Shabbat.”
He carried that lesson home. Today, he and his wife, Renee, host Shabbat dinners three out of four Friday nights a month in their University City home, often inviting guests from a range of backgrounds. “It’s not about religiosity,” he said. “It’s about the feeling of Shabbat.”
Sign up for ShabbatNow emails.
