The outside world
I’m a Jewish professional, in the sense that I work at a Jewish institution and I get paid for it. I am also a Jewish amateur: I’m a regular at Saturday services and a member of the synagogue board. Two of our kids are in day school, I sing in a Jewish choir, and I live in a Jewish neighborhood.
In short, I have to get out more.
I’m not knocking the involved Jewish life. But too much of a good thing can sometimes be more than enough. There’s a big world out there, and I often wonder what I am missing by spending so much of my time and mental energy in so small a corner of it. I also worry about the withering of my perspective. When diversity in your life is defined by the fact that you have friends who are Reform and Orthodox, you’re just not meeting enough people.
My wife is sensitive to this and made a rule that all the Judaica in the house — the Kiddush cups and tzedaka boxes, the Noah’s Ark woodcut, the panorama of Jerusalem — must be in the dining room alone. It’s a small gesture, but it’s her way of saying that while Judaism is at the heart of our home, there is room on the walls for other influences.
I’ve been thinking about this recently for two reasons. First, I just came back from a week’s vacation in Arizona — Phoenix, Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, and Sedona. The first thing you realize is that it’s a big country; I know this because we rented our first-ever SUV and had to stop for gas approximately 127 times. Oh, and the canyon: huge. Grand, even. Just when you think you grasp its dimensions you notice something — like a tiny smudge on the far rim that turns out to be a hotel — that makes you feel even smaller.
It’s also a country with an amazing variety of landscape, flora, and fauna. A half-hour drive took us from a piney forest above Flagstaff to the red rock desert of Sedona. Even a three-mile hike would start among leafy shrubs and end at a Mars-like mesa.
Finally, it’s a country with — not so many Jews. Oh sure, we heard a family speaking Hebrew at the Grand Canyon visitors’ center. I’ve never been to a tourist site in my life without hearing Hebrew. If all the Israelis who live in Israel actually stayed home now and then, they wouldn’t be facing a “demographic problem.”
But besides that, this wasn’t a “Jewish” trip. When we called the Jewish Community of Sedona and inquired about services, we were told they weren’t holding any that week. (A rabbi from Scottsdale leads monthly Friday night services; this week, the newly built synagogue will host Shabbat Across America, the 10-year-old project of the National Jewish Outreach Program.)
When Judaism stops being your frame of reference, a whole new raft of insights begins to emerge. For one thing, this person of the book stopped looking to the printed word for distraction and began to “read” the scenery around him. I might find myself mulling a snatch from Psalms (“Let the mountains sing together for joy!”) or Frost (“The mountain held the town as in a shadow”). But for the most part, I just let it all go. The Iranian nuclear threat, the Hamas victory, the neighborhood squabble about the new kosher butcher — all faded into the background as we tested the thorns of a prickly-pear cactus or peeked over the edge of a sheer cliff.
I’ve also been thinking about the world “outside” thanks to the monthly seminars I attend in a program called Leadership New Jersey. The 50 or so people asked to take part in this year’s “class” come from across the state and a variety of disciplines and backgrounds. There’s a minister from Paterson and a Cuban-American telecom exec and a Chinese-born entrepreneur.
Last month’s seminar included a tour of blighted Camden conducted by the Rev. Floyd White of the Woodland Avenue Presbyterian Church. Rev. White’s neighborhood is the poorest of the city’s many poor neighborhoods. Jewish leaders fret about our continuity “crisis,” but to understand the real meaning of the word “crisis,” you need to talk to a member of the clergy whose congregants’ median annual income is little more than $8,000.
White also gave new meanings to some other overused words, like “hope” and “blessing.” To hear him talk, there could be no greater gift than the ability to spend the last 18 years bringing both to his flock.
Like the tour of the Grand Canyon, our trip to Camden was a lesson in scale. Just when you think you grasp the scope of the city’s challenges, you learn something — the local high school’s dropout rate, the lack of a decent supermarket — that makes you feel even smaller.
No doubt the Jewish community has its challenges, and I don’t mean to belittle them. But sometimes you have to step outside yourself to get some perspective. That might sound strange at a time when we worry — with reason — that so many Jews have stepped so far outside their traditions that they may never come back.
What I am suggesting is that Jewish insiders take a little vacation now and then from their communities and traditions. Make it long enough so that you start seeing the world with someone else’s eyes — and short enough that you don’t forget how to get home. If you can afford the gas, you’ll be amazed at what you see.
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