All Life in Israel is a Way of Worshipping God

Being in Israel is like seeing a garden through a series of gates you have passed on a long walk. Each time you pass them, you wonder, “What lies beyond?” but if you do not make the effort to open them, the interior mystery remains hidden.

The gates are opening:

We’re in Jerusalem and the sunlight is pouring through the windows of our apartment in Katamon. Our flight – as blissfully comfortable as Air Canada can make a ten-hour cross-Atlantic seating in front of a TV set  (remember, no one forces you to watch all those movies and TV shows they’ve stocked) – was pleasant and as busy as such confinement can be. 


Travelers in neighbouring seats included families returning to Israel after visits to family in Toronto, a cluster of relatives bound for a beach wedding in the shade of Roman ruins in Caesarea (talk about a romantic setting!), and yeshiva students returning to limmudei kodesh ("sacred studies") in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

Looking at our passports, the Immigration officer at Ben Gurion Airport beams and says, “Ah, you are from Winnipeg! Your mayor, he is an Israeli! And your city makes such a tempting invitation for people to come and live there! But the winter is hard but beautiful?” 

The taxi driver is a new oleh from Moscow, his Hebrew passable, but whenever his cellular phone rings, he speaks Russian to the callers.  Laurelle and Keithen, exhausted, sleep in the back seat while I stare out the windows on the ride to Jerusalem. 

Unexpectedly a passage from Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev comes to mind and later in the day, after we have taken the long route to nearby shopping and restaurants, the words fairly blaze in the sky and across facades of buildings. The streets are filled with people strolling, shopping, or simply watching the passing parade.  This is the place they have made out of two-thousand-year-old dream stuff. 


The Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev passage:

“By the acts that people had to do – to plant and to sow, to raise cattle and to sacrifice -- the Creator, Who is Blessed, caused the flow of blessing to descend upon them. For Israel, because of their good deeds is made worthy of the blessings that the Creator sends down upon them. When Israel was in the desert, however, they were in the state that the Holy One showered blessing upon them because of God's great grace, as shown in the case of the manna and the well of water, for in these there was no human action at all. In the land of Israel, by contrast, the flow of blessings that they received was a function of their deeds. This flow, which comes to a person as a function of his or her own acts, is the source of true happiness and joy for that person.”

The teacher who introduced us to this unexpectedly pragmatic expression of Hasidic wisdom explained that in life all true blessing is a function of our labor: we must work for it. In this way of thinking and experiencing religious life, this way of understanding the meaning of “blessing” is preferable to the idea of “blessing” being something given as a gift. It transforms the idea of sacrifice – which ceases to be “giving up something” and instead becomes all the work and labor of which we are capable for the sake of something greater than ourselves.

I can live with and practice a spiritual life that asks something of me and that proposes that "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch". Want to serve God and know God?  First roll up your sleeves and start working. God will be there alongside you. The work will seem to take half as long, and you'll have such a feeling of satisfaction because of all you've done with and for others. Here, as the pioneers said, you stand for something in your labours, and you stand with God as you work.

That is why life in Israel is itself a form of worship.  That is what I remember about life here from long ago.

Our driver’s GPS unerringly brings us to our Katamon residence. The neighbourhood is not the Katamon I remember from my days at Machon Greenberg/Hebrew University. The streets are filled with yeshiva students, every other building seems to be a kollel or high school or drisha for teenage girls in school uniforms whose common features are white blouses and black skirts. Is the school year ending for them shortly?

It’s now Friday morning and I have so much more to share with you, but for the moment we must head into Mircaz ha’Ir and shop for Shabbat. 

On behalf of Laurelle and Keithen, I wish you all a beautiful Shabbat. 

More to come… and please write to us so that we can post you and respond!

With love,

Rabbi Larry Pinsker

As promised, more for (Shabbat) reflection:

(1)   There are two types of people: those who come into a room and say, "Well, here I am!" —  and those who come in and say, "Ah, there you are."   -- Frederick L. Collins

(2)  It is not enough to simply love another; I must learn to love as that other needs to be loved. If I do not, my love is merely an emotional generalization, suitable for all and mattering to none.         – Julius Lester, Lovesong: Becoming a Jew, p. 213