Saturday, May 03, 2008

Parshat Kedoshim 5768: The vacation.

This week we continue with a series of various Halacha, including a repeat of the sexual prohibitions from last week, the prohibition of mixing milk and meat, and even the golden rule.

Leviticus 19 starts:

1. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2. Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel, and say to them, You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy. 3. You shall revere every man his mother, and his father, and keep my Sabbaths; I am the Lord your God.

In the first year of Shlomo’s Drash I wrote my Kedoshim Drash on this verse. After a disastrous vacation in Colorado, I wondered something: why tie honoring parents and Shabbat together in the verse above?

I’m on vacation again. There are ironies between this vacation and that one. What I did during that vacation six years ago was watch a series of videotapes, which actually led to this vacation. Those tapes formed my background knowledge about where I am right now. The ten tape series was the first distance learning course I took for my degree in Jewish Studies: the religion of Biblical Israel. This trip to Israel is a bit of a graduation celebration, that I finished my degree.

That Colorado vacation was horrible due to all the time I ended up sitting in my time-share. I faced a horrible monster there in my room: the Void. I'd heard about the void. The void is the emptiness inside ourselves, the parts of us that are not fulfilled. It is so horrible to be in the presence of our personal void, we do a lot of a-void-dances. I never understood how much I avoid the Void, until I sat there in that timeshare alone with it. I realized six years ago much of what I do, my intense amount of being busy, of filling my apartment with stuff or trying to fill my stomach with food is exactly that. If I fill space with other things there would be no room for the Void. In Colorado, doing nothing but video tapes in a mostly abandoned skiing town, I was alone with this void, and it was horrible. I felt how much emptiness is in my life, how lonely I am and how little that matters I really have. This continued until Friday night when I lit candles. I decided the candles and the fireplace would be my only light source. As I sang Shalom Aleichem to myself I felt better than I had in a long time. I felt relaxed and calm.

I mention my rather bad vacation with the Mediterranean Sea outside my hotel window for a reason. How is the doing nothing that brought the void to create such a horrible vacation different than the doing nothing of Shabbat? One reason this is late is experiencing my first Shabbat in Israel, this one in and around a Tel Aviv beachside hotel. And in one link between parents and Shabbat, I’m not traveling alone this time, my mom is with me.

In Genesis we are told that God rested on the seventh day of creation. God rested so that we would rest. As we read in the verses from Kedoshim, If God is holy by resting, then we are holy by resting. We spend our lives doing busy work, even if it good intentioned and meant to help others. At some point however, we have to stop, or it affects our health. The results might be might be a heart attack, gastritis or pneumonia. Many take various over the counter or prescription drugs to treat symptoms of a deeper illness: we don’t let our bodies rest. But we can do something beside pharmaceuticals to help ourselves prevent stress-related illnesses from damaging us. That is Shabbat. The best help is simply stopping. Shabbat literally means STOP. Not to stop kills you before your time- a slow but inevitable suicide.

I thought while returning from Colorado what honor can parents be given more than their child actually living and thriving? This is the meaning of fusing the honoring of one parent with Shabbat in the same verse. They were the ones to give us the bodies we have, and to nurture that body until it was able to do things on its own. For us to kill our body is the most ungrateful thing we can do.

How much more so that the Holy One Blessed be He is our parent not only of us but of the world around us. To rest on Shabbat is to honor the parent of all of creation. I spent this Shabbat in the rather secular city of Tel Aviv, walking along the seaside promenade, down Ben Gurion Street and eating at a wonderful beachside restaurant which is so common here. Watching all the people come and go at the beach either sitting in the sun, walking their dogs, conversing with each other in a outdoor café, folk dancing, playing paddle ball, or beach volleyball, flying a Kite or people watching like I was. All of it is good and in its own way resting and witnessing creation.

I realized today, halfway around the world, what I have been missing in my own observance. Its not just prohibitions, as I will see much more clearly next Shabbat in Jerusalem. It’s also witnessing what goes on around you. To not acknowledge such is to not honor the Parent of all. I failed this in Colorado, the void was never there – the void was mere self absorption. Here in arguably the most secular part of my trip to Israel I’ve learned this lesson well.

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