Saying that the miraculous is that there should be something rather than nothing is wrong, for it holds the world miraculous, when the very notion of the miraculous comes from Scripture and pertains to that which contravenes the world, that which suspends the laws of nature. That there should be a Sabbath is completely at odds with the ostensible definition of a worker as, by nature, someone who works. It forces a consideration of him first in his humanity, and only then in terms of his function. This offers an implicit rebuke to aristocracy. “A scholar should have a trade” (Ethics of the Fathers).

The language of “the holiness of the everyday” is politically atrocious because it is the endorsement of the condition of the worker as uninterrupted by a Sabbath, a day of rest that is sanctified as holy precisely by contrast with the everyday.