| The Torah of Vacation
A D’var Torah for Parashat Re’eh
By Rabbi Rob Scheinberg, PhD
Here’s a good question to ask in August: What does the Torah teach us about how to go on vacation?
Our initial answer might be: not so much. You would have a hard time coming up with references to vacation in the Torah. Perhaps one could refer to Shabbat as a weekly vacation, but that uses the word “vacation” very differently from how we tend to use it.
There is a lot of discussion of travel in the Torah: Abraham moves to the land of Israel; the people of Israel go down to Egypt, and then take a long and scenic route for forty years back to the land of Israel. But most of this travel is desperate wandering and displacement, rather than the vacation travel that many experience today.
Surprisingly, though, every summer we read a passage from the Torah portion of Re’eh that may be the Torah’s closest parallel to contemporary vacations. We are told (Deuteronomy 14:22-27) that, during the era when a Temple stood in Jerusalem, each Israelite was to separate out one tenth of the net produce of their fields (after having paid all other taxes and tithes). But unlike other tithes which were given to the Kohanim and Levi’im or distributed to the needy, this produce, which is called maaser sheni (“second tithe”), would still belong to the owner. The rule was, however, that the owner could only consume that produce in the city of Jerusalem while in a state of ritual purity.
This law is, of course, very convenient if you happen to live in Jerusalem. But those Israelites who did not live in Jerusalem would now have a certain portion of their produce that could only be consumed in Jerusalem. This would give them a financial incentive to visit Jerusalem. They would probably plan to go for one of the three major pilgrimage festivals, when hordes of people would descend on Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, Shavuot, or Sukkot (though the maaser sheni produce could be consumed in Jerusalem at any time of year).
The Torah notes that if one lived at a distance from Jerusalem, the first thing one would probably do is sell the produce, converting it to cash. One would then carry that cash when going on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and that cash would then function as part of one’s vacation budget while away in Jerusalem. One could use that money to buy anything one wanted to consume within the city limits of Jerusalem.
This institution of maaser sheni was good for the people because it forced them to get away from life as normal. We often experience time differently when we are away from home, and our experiences outside of our normal routine can often be transformative. And it was good for the economy of Jerusalem, because it encouraged consumer spending in Jerusalem. And it was good for the Jewish people as a whole, because the institution of maaser sheni encouraged everyone to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, even the people who might have thought that they couldn’t afford it. And the fact that the pilgrimage in Jerusalem was one that everyone would take part in, made it a more powerful experience for everyone, and heightened its transformative power. Sometimes an experience may look like something that we are doing for ourselves, but it turns out that we’re not only doing it for ourselves – we’re also doing it for our community and our people.
Those Jewish communities that observe maaser sheni today do so in a token way (by separating out a portion of produce grown in the land of Israel, and then discarding it, on the assumption that no one today has the appropriate status of purity to consume it). But the theme of maaser sheni can remain relevant for us when thinking about vacation spending that benefits us, but not only us. I can think of two contemporary parallels to maaser sheni that can be relevant to a Jewish life today.
The first parallel may be obvious: travel to Israel. Travel to Israel is expensive, requiring, for most travelers, serious planning and budgeting, sometimes for years in advance. And it can’t be denied that travel to the place where the Jewish people was born, where the plurality of the world’s Jews live today, can have a transformative effect on the Jewish identity of the people who visit there. Travel to Israel may feel like something that one is doing for oneself (and it is), but it’s also something that one does for the people of Israel and for the Jewish people in general. For these reasons, I encourage people to think of the spending that they do on a trip to Israel not only in the category of the funds they expend on themselves, but also in the category of the funds they expend to benefit others. (And travel to Israel now is also a powerful expression of solidarity at one of the most excruciating times for Israel and its residents.)
Something many American Jews find striking about visiting Israel is that Israel is a place where being Jewish is normative, rather than countercultural and unusual and compartmentalized as it usually is in the United States for most Jews. In fact, one of the few contexts in the United States where people experience Judaism as normative is at Jewish summer camps (as long as they actually have real Jewish content). For this reason, I think a second contemporary parallel to maaser sheni is Jewish summer camp. Ideally, children return from a Jewish summer camp experience and have some understanding of what Judaism looks like in its natural habitat. It’s not just the child who benefits from an experience like that, but the entire family, the community, and the entire Jewish people. It’s a pilgrimage as much as it is a vacation. And I suggest to families that they think about spending on Jewish summer camp as a modern analogue to maaser sheni, spending that benefits the individual but also benefits the entire Jewish community.
If you will be on vacation for some part of the remainder of the summer, I hope it is happy, peaceful, and restorative for you!
Rabbi Rob Scheinberg, PhD
Rabbi-in-Residence |
