DEUT166 In the repetition of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, the explanation for keeping Shabbat is to remember that you were a slave in Egypt [this verse]. This means that the Jew, through Shabbat, should appreciate that now he is no longer a slave and has freedom. Thus, Shabbat is a day of freedom. But how can this be so? One has only to look at the hundreds of restrictive laws of Shabbat to realize that this is a day when a Jew usually feels freedom denied. How can a person feel more free when he or she is not permitted to perform so many everyday activities? To understand this concept, one must recall the famous conditioning experiment of Pavlov and his dogs. After Pavlov rang the bell a few times while the dogs salivated and received meat, the dogs then were conditioned to salivate whenever the belt was rung, even when the meat was no longer present. When alone in one's house and in the midst of a shower (with no answering machine connected), most people hastily will run out of the shower sopping wet to answer the ringing phone (it is usually a wrong number or the person has already hung up). Like Pavlov's dogs, man is also conditioned to respond to a bell without thinking. Those who observe Shabbat, however, have trained themselves not to answer the phone even if it rings and rings. The observant Jew who does not answer the phone is demonstrating a sense of freedom--freedom from society and all its pressures making daily demands on people. By stopping one's daily routine and "shutting out the world" and its pressures one day a week, the Jew is saying, I am truly free and not psychologically addicted to those everyday habits we routinely are conditioned to. There are numerous other examples displaying this type of freedom on Shabbat. The person "addicted" to television and specifically to one type of television, such as soap operas or sporting events, is saying that he or she is in control of life by refraining from watching one day a week, even if a terrific show or event is on the tube. That sense of control over one's life is true freedom. Thus, by submitting to the demands of all the Jewish laws on Shabbat, one gains a sense of freedom and control over one's destiny.… This can be applied to any psychological addiction that one "needs" each day. By stopping the activity, this "addiction," one day a week, a person shows that he or she is not really addicted and has the freedom to choose to stop.