What restrictions do practicing Jews follow on the Sabbath?

Answer 1

There is a vast number of individual things which cannot or can be done, but the main restrictions fall into 39 categories, including planting, baking, trapping animals, and writing. Other Rabbinic restrictions include the moving of objects which cannot be used on the Sabbath. Ask an Orthodox Rabbi for more information and specific questions. Sabbath restrictions only apply to Jews. ====================================================== With Pnina's and the category supervisor's permission, there's an important note on this subject that really needs to be spotlighted here, before this answer is developed in more detail: We need to look a little closer at the whole notion that the primary distinguishing characteristic of the Jewish Sabbath is 'restriction', and that practicing Jews are required to adopt hardship and deprivation regularly, in submission to some kind of Judaic weekly martyrdom. When you really get into it ... in a depth that you only experience from living it, which is too complex to describe adequately for a non-Jewish audience in this or any similar popular forum ... the concept begins to emerge that the Sabbath is a very active day, filled with a broad range of recommended pursuits that focus on the spiritual, familial, intellectual, introspective and contemplative; that these leave little time or opportunity for the simultaneous pursuit of weekday activities, and that weekday activities in any case are inconsistent with the most fulfilling Sabbath environment and can't successfully coexist with it. In the end, for those who choose the emotional, psychological, and spiritual benefits available in the realization of a full Sabbath experience, it's clear that certain pursuits enhance the experience, while others interfere and dilute it. The Sabbath is different in every way, whether or not the Jew chooses to experience it in his own life. If he does so choose, then it makes sense that his own life has to be somewhat different on that day in order to experience it. That's all I wanted to say. ======================================================