January 29, 2023|ז' שבט ה' אלפים תשפ"ג My vacation and three religious responses to the world around us By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

If you didn’t notice from the fact that davening ended pretty quickly last Shabbat morning, I was on vacation last week. I spent most of this past week hiking with Yael, Daniel and another family through different parts of Death Valley and the outskirts of Las Vegas as we encountered different types of nature. In doing so, I came across different ways that I, as a religious Jew, can respond to the natural world around us. The truth is that I didn’t invent these responses. In fact, God shared these responses with us at the dawn of our national history in this week’s parsha. Let’s go through these responses one by one in the hopes that we can arrive at a meaningful religious framework through which we can live our lives.

First, when I go on vacation, I feel a sense of appreciation to God for the beautiful world that He created, in this case the beautiful topography of Death Valley, the Valley of Fire and Red Rock Canyon. God gave us a world to enjoy and when we enjoy that world and appreciate it as a manifestation of God’s greatness, we fulfill the mitzvah of ahavat Hashem, love of God, according to the Rambam. And maybe this is what God told us as we were about to leave Egypt. God commanded us, “v’higadta l’vincha bayom hahu laimor ba’avur zeh asah Hashem li b’tzeiti mi-Mitzrayim.” We should tell our children on the night of Pesach “ba-avur zeh,” or because of this, God took us out of Egypt. Rashbam explains this pasuk to mean that because of the miracles that God performed when He took us out of Egypt, we perform the Pesach service. In other words, the Pesach service is all about appreciating our freedom and God’s message at this time is that we have a responsibility to express appreciation for all that God does for us. If we are freed from slavery, express appreciation. If we see a beautiful sunrise or a beautiful sunset, express appreciation. Our mission as Jews is to celebrate the good that God has provided for us. And I did that on my vacation when I saw so many beautiful sights and called out “mah rabu ma-asecha Hashem,” or “how great are Your creations, God!”

However, this first response to the world around us is inadequate and incomplete in the totality of our religious lives. Yes, sometimes we view the world in all of its grandeur and we are full of appreciation, but what about all the pain and suffering and challenges that people go through? What about the parts of life that don’t seem so beautiful? What about all the evil in this world? As human beings, we can’t always respond through appreciation. That is why we need another response to the world around us beyond appreciation. And that response is a call to action.

Let me give you an example from my vacation. Last Friday, we decided to go to Red Rock Canyon, which is outside Las Vegas, early in the morning and daven shemona esrei at sunrise, which is the ideal time to daven. Everyone else around me was snapping photos at the precise moment that the sun rose above the mountains, while I was trying my best to daven with kavanah and time my davening such that I would start shemona esrei precisely at sunrise.

This experience reminded me of the famous story of the clerics in space. They tell a story of a rabbi, a priest and a minister who are sent into space. On their reentry, as the shuttle returns to earth, there is a large group of reporters waiting for them on the landing strip. The minister emerges first with a special glow in his eyes. A reporter asks him how he felt, circling the earth in space. The minister replies, “I felt very close to Jesus up there!” The priest emerges with a very satisfied look on his face. The same reporter yells out, “Father, what was it like in space?” The priest answers, “It seemed like I could almost reach out and touch Mary and all the saints.” The rabbi is the last to appear, and he looks absolutely exhausted. The reporter asks him what space was like, and he moans, “Shacharit, mincha, maariv, shacharit, mincha, maariv. Again and again and again.”

For the Jew, confronting the beautiful world is not only an opportunity for appreciation, but it’s also a call to action. It’s a call to observe halacha. And when everyone else was taking pictures of the sunrise and I was timing my davening so that my shemona esrei could begin precisely at sunrise, I felt a bit like Rav Soloveitchik’s “Halachic Man.” Halachic Man was a work written by Rav Soloveitchik and it describes Rav Soloveitchik’s ideal religious Jew. Halachic Man approaches the world armed with the Torah. For Halachic Man, seeing the first light of dawn breaking over the horizon is not an aesthetic experience. It’s not an experience of “mah rabu ma-asecha Hashem.” Rather, Halachic Man’s first thought about seeing the first light of dawn is, “It’s time to recite shema.”

In truth, this is how Rashi explains the mitzvah of “v’higadta l’vincha bayom hahu laimor ba-avur zeh asah Hashem li b’’tzeiti mi-Mitzrayim.” Rashi explains that commandment as an obligation to tell our children that God took us out of Egypt “ba-avur zeh,” so that we would perform His mitzvot. For Rashi, yetziat Mitzrayim isn’t simply a gift that we received to engender appreciation. Yetziat mitzrayim is a call to action. We were taken out of Egypt to serve God and to do good in this world. God is telling us at the dawn of our national history that we react to world events not merely by saying thank you, but by responding through observance of halacha. And when we are committed to this religious framework, then, according to Rav Soloveitchik, we are transformed from a people of “fate” to a people of “destiny.” We cannot control our fate but we can control our destiny, how we respond to our fate. As such, both appreciation and a call to action as responses to the world around us help complete our religious framework.

But the truth is that both of these responses may not be enough. Because a call to action, or a commitment to halacha, does not always feel that satisfying for us. There are many halachot that are difficult for us to understand and appreciate, and a life of simply observing halachic details without understanding them can seem empty. And that is why we need our own national story.

And that national story was all around me during my vacation. Yael and I were saying to each other that the canyons that we hiked made us feel either like we were on the planet Mars or like we were leaving Egypt. I remember specifically hiking through the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, which was a vast area of large sand dune fields that go on for miles and miles. As Daniel and I hiked these dunes, we took out our musical playlist from the movie “Prince of Egypt” and started playing the different songs from that movie. While some visitors to this site said that they felt that they were on a massive beach, Daniel and I immediately connected to our national story, to yetziat Mitzrayim, as we sang the “Prince of Egypt” songs. And connecting to our national story is something that God also commanded us when we were about to leave Egypt. In fact, it is included in the first mitzvah that He commanded to Bnei Yisrael of “hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chodoshim,” of sanctifying the new month. God does not just tell the Bnei Yisrael to sanctify the new moon. He does more than that. He identifies Nissan as the first month specifically for the Jew. The Ramban explains that just like every day of the week is called in reference to Shabbat – hayom yom rishon ba-Shabbat, today is the first day in Shabbat, hayom yom sheni baShabbat, today is the second day in Shabbat, etc., every month is called in reference to Nissan, like Iyar is the second month and Tishrei is the seventh month, etc. Every month is called in reference to the month when we left Egypt. But why? Because Nissan is the focal point of the year because this is when our national story begins.

Some people are Tishrei Jews and some people are Nissan Jews. Tishrei Jews are motivated to observe mitzvot because they are being judged at that time and they want to be judged favorably. However, if you are a Nissan Jew, if you live a life of “hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chodoshim,” that Nissan is the beginning of the Jewish experience, then you are motivated to observe mitzvot because you want to connect to your national story. A brilliant Yale law professor, Robert Cover, died tragically at a young age a little more than 35 years ago. He wrote a landmark article called “Nomos and Narrative.” In this article, he argued that we all live in a nomos, or a normative universe. However, there are not just legal principles, but there is also a narrative, or a story, to go along with those principles. We cannot separate the legal principles from the narrative. What is the function of the narrative? The narrative gives meaning to the principles and it is this combination of nomos and narrative, the laws and the story, that creates our legal world. It is natural for us to try to understand the meaning and application of the law in the world in which we live. Once understood in the context of the narrative that gives it meaning, law becomes not merely a system of rules to be observed, but a world in which we live.

That is what our national story does for us. It provides context for our call to action, the halachot that we are commanded to observe. We may not understand and appreciate every halachic detail by itself, but to the extent that we can connect the halacha to our national story that gives us purpose and meaning, then the halachic rules become more than rules. They become an expression of our unique story. And I felt that story as I muddled through the Mesquite Sand Dunes and the Mosaic Canyon when I imagined that I was leaving Egypt, but I also felt that story when I engaged in the practice known as “bageling.” Bageling is the art of letting someone in your presence who appears to be Jewish know that you are too. And we do that when are on vacation and we encounter someone who seems to be Jewish. We may engage in a full-scale conversation with that person if we are very friendly. However, we may simply do the bageling nod, letting the person know that you know that he or she is Jewish, but you don’t really want to talk to him or her. However we engage in bageling, we like to bagel because we feel a sense of comfort that there is a group of people throughout the world who shares our national story. We don’t simply observe halacha, but we feel part of a great people who share a grand story. That sense of community and belonging can be so empowering.

From the dawn of our national history, God shared with us three responses to the world around us: appreciation, a call to action through halacha, and a deep feeling that we are part of a national story. Integrating each of these responses constantly into our daily lives, whether on our vacations or our regular lives, can be the source of so much blessing, mental and spiritual health and fulfillment. May God help us succeed in this endeavor.