Rabbi Mishael
Zion | Moonshine Kislev 2014 | Text and the City
 |
| Odysseus Returns Home, 8th C BCE |
As the weather turns colder, the gaze turns inward. This
year’s month of Kislev is bookended by the
two holidays of the hearth and home:
Thanksgiving and Hannukah. As myriads travel “home” this week for Thanksgiving,
I wonder what makes a home worthy of its name.
I’ve been pondering this question as I’ve found myself moving
back with my own family to the same neighborhood in which I grew up. As I walk
down the familiar streets of Talpiyot in Southern Jerusalem, I keep wondering:
after all these years, does it still feel like home? And more importantly – why
do I care? As Viennese philosopher Jean
Amery asked it: “How much home does a person need?” Why does this question
keep cropping up in my life, even as our ultra-portable wireless lives seemingly
allow us to feel at home anywhere in the world?
This question also underlies two issues in the headlines. As
the United States allows millions of illegal immigrants to functionally call
America their home, one wonders defines “home” and who gets to define who is at
home and who is “alien”. As Jerusalem is plunged back into violence and a deep
lack of personal security, the pat answer of home as a place of refuge and
safety is undermined. Strangely, despite the lack of security – the sense of
home goes unscathed, as it had in previous periods of fear. Home as safety is
an aspirational, but insufficient, answer. I am sent scurrying for other
definitions. This is where “A Bride for One Night: Talmudic Tales” by Ruth
Calderon found me. In her explorations of Talmudic narratives, she keeps
returning to stories focusing on the home, turning it into my recommended book
for this stormy month of Kislev.
Rav
Hama went and sat for twelve years in the study house. When he planned to
return home, he said “I will not do what Ben Hakinai did [and surprise my wife
after all these years]”.
He
stopped at the local House of Study and sent a letter to his wife.
His
son, Oshaya, came and sat before Rav Hama in the House of Study.
Rav
Hama did not recognize him.
Oshaya
asked him many questions of law. Rav Hama saw that he was a brilliant student,
and grew faint, thinking: “If I had stayed here, I could have had a son like
this.”
Finally
Rav Hama returned home. Oshaya entered behind him.
Rav
Hama stood before him, thinking: Surely this student is coming to ask me
another question of law.
His
wife scolded him: Does a father stand before his child? Do you not recognize
your own son?
(Babylonian
Talmud Ketubot 62b)
Seemingly a tale of a Rabbi over-zealous in his studies, so
lost in his Yeshiva he doesn’t recognize his own progeny, this story easily
evokes questions much closer to home. In our zeal for a professional life,
committed as we are to the demands of a successful career, do we find ourselves
not recognizing our own children as they grow up? 12 years or 100 hour weeks,
postponing family until one becomes Rosh Yeshiva/partner/tenured professor,
these questions are the clichéd conversations of our generation, and yet
balance alludes us. The Home and the House of Study compete – can we have it
all?
Rav Hama’s story is another version of the “treasure was at
home” tales, as in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist or Reb Nachman’s tale of the
Treasure under the Bridge. Hama discovers that what he really wanted all along
was to have a son learned in Torah, not just to be a scholar himself. That son
was waiting for him at home all these years, ignored. Seemingly Hama has
attained both of these by the end of the tale – he is a great scholar, and so
is his son, Oshaya. He went on Odysseus’ journey and returned victorious. Yet
standing awkwardly in the kitchen, father and son face eachother in formality,
not intimacy. The journey was a failure if one is unrecognizable in your own
home.
This story captures the essence of home as being known,
familiar, comfortable, intimate. Home is where the guards can be put down,
where you don’t have to explain yourself, where one is understood. Hama lost
that familiarity with his son – and thus lost it with himself. “How much home
does a person need?” None, says young Hama, leaving for twelve years. Home is
where I am least understood, says the adolescent scholar, and goes. Only upon
returning home, a decade and more later, does he understand just how much “home”
was missed. The journey itself, the process of exile and return might be necessary,
but there is a limit: the journey away from home must end before alienation
sets in.
One post-script: The missing chapter about Rav Hama is the
one I am most curious about. Did he stay home? Did he rebuild his life at home,
or did the Yeshiva beckon him to return to his wanderings? The drama of return
often gets the headlines, but it is what we build once we’ve returned home that
is most challenging. That is the challenge we face today.
May this month of Kislev be a month of regaining home-hood:
being understood, feeling known, being safe.
Hodesh Tov,
Mishael
<Sidebar>
Barefoot Talmud
Ruth
Calderon, the public face of the new Jewish House of Study, even bringing Jewish text to the Israeli Knesset,
had her book of Talmudic stories come out in English this year. Aided by Ilana
A Bride
for one Night” Calderon takes 17 Talmudic tales, lays them out for the
reader to study themselves, then gives her own prose re-telling of the tale
before unpacking it more analytically. Rabbi Hama makes an appearance, as do
some other Bronfmanim favorites like Resh Lakish, Shimon bar Yohai and Elisha
ben Abuyah. It is the best book currently out there to recreate or share with others
the joy and passion of Jewish text study.
Dedicated to a theme in the Jewish month, Moonshine is a combination Dvar Torah and springboard for learning in the coming 30 days. Moonshine - in honor of the Hebrew month’s commitment to the lunar cycle, with a hint of distilling fine spirits off the beaten track and - perhaps - intoxication.
