TEMPLE HIGHLIGHTS | RABBI'S MONTHLY COLUMN

Will your summer's rest include acts of holiness?

From the study of Rabbi Robbins

Editor’s note: From time to time throughout the year, in addition to Rabbi David Stern’s columns, other members of our clergy will be contributing columns in this space.

Many teachers miss a wonderful learning opportunity, in the fall, at the start of the school year. They ask the wrong question to the wrong students. They ask kids they have just met to discuss, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.” The best teachers know great learning takes place: through the fine art of questioning, by helping students organize their experiences and reflect on them, when relationships exist between students and teachers and among the students themselves. Imagine if the question were asked slightly differently, in the spring, at the end of the school year, by a teacher who had been working with the student for a year. Imagine if before school let out for the year each student wrote about, “What I Will Do on My Summer Vacation.” Imagine if that paragraph or essay or list became an advanced organizer for the student to prepare for vacation so that he or she could really rest and return in the fall refreshed and renewed. What if from the work in the classroom the student could learn, grow and be creative with their summer freedom? What if this was a question we asked ourselves as adults as we prepare for summer vacation—a few days, a week, maybe a few weeks away from our busy schedules, at home and in the office, of our projects and our responsibilities?

Like students, we all have to prepare for vacation. To plan means more than making plane and hotel reservations. It means more than registering for camp. It means more than making a list of the projects to be completed around the house. It is more than a summer reading assignment. The Torah has no word for vacation. The Torah commands us to observe Shabbat, to rest from our work after 6 days. The Torah tells us that we must allow our land to rest every seven years. Rest in the Torah is everything that is not work. Rest is those activities that remind us of God’s creation of the world and our capacity to create. Rest is those actions that celebrate our freedom from slavery in Egypt and the new responsibilities that accompany freedom. Rest is letting things happen naturally and being present to observe them. To rest, according to the Torah, is to engage in acts of holiness. Our summer vacations can express that holiness too.

Each June when I anticipate my summer vacation, I read this poem by Wendell Berry. I try to carry the words with me like luggage as a reminder of the sacred possibilities of rest.

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With the flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

(From The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry)

This man’s vacation sounds like the lives many of us live all the time. We rush everywhere and try to do it all. We take the pictures but so often we are not in them. If this is what our lives are like is this also what we want our vacations to be like? Is this how we make our rest an expression of holiness?
As this summer begins, I will read Berry’s poem and ask myself these questions:
• What will I do on my summer vacation?
• What activity will I participate in that is different from the work I do all the time?
• Where will I be like God and express my creativity?
• When will I experience the freedom to take on a new responsibility?
•How will I be in the moments, and the photos, of my vacation and my life?
My plane and hotel reservations are confirmed. My summer reading list is complete. Now it is time to prepare. It is time to experience the holiness of vacation. Are you ready?