There can be no doubt of the fact that the Sabbath is a, or perhaps the, central institution of biblical and rabbinical religion. It is commanded in the Decalogue; it is one of the few religious laws emphasized by the great reforming Prophets; it has a central place in rabbinical thought, and as long as Judaism exists in its traditional customs, it was and is the most outstanding phenomenon of Jewish religious practice. It is no exaggeration to say that the spiritual and moral survival of the Jews during two thousand years of persecution and humiliation would hardly have been possible without the one day in the week when even the poorest and most wretched Jew was transformed into a man of dignity and pride, when the beggar was changed into a king. But in order not to think that this statement is a crude exaggeration, one must have witnessed the traditional practice of the Sabbath in its authentic form. Whoever thinks that he knows what the Sabbath is because he has seen the candles lit has little idea of the atmosphere the traditional Sabbath creates.
Erich Fromm, You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and its Tradition (New York & Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 193-194.