The Long Way Home

After finding out that my parents were going to divorce, I knew that I couldn’t manage to get through the inevitable storm by myself. As a college student I had tried to find meaning through meditating, exercise, music, and exploring different faiths. But when this happened to my family, I turned to our roots, Judaism.

With my minimal Jewish understanding at that point, I ordered a $400 pair of Tefillin from the internet which turned out to be not kosher. Slowly I started learning little by little about Judaism, the prayers and about Shabbat. My Shabbatot were spent alone with my dog and cheap sweet Kiddush wine. I had no idea what I was doing, and didn’t even know all the rules. What did make sense was the sleeping in part and enjoying a good strong drink with my meal. I was a college kid in Arizona and wasn’t yet a fully observant Jew. In fact in the beginning I would make Kiddush Friday night and then go to work.  The Friday nights that I didn’t have work I’d go to the dance clubs. I knew that I wasn’t completely doing it the right way, but I was doing it at the pace right for me.

Time went on and the divorce was more and more in the process. Who gets what? Who gets how much? What will be with the other kids? My head was spinning. To my great relief, every week the reform synagogue had a wonderful Shabbat service with a band. I didn’t know it was forbidden to play music on Shabbat but totally knew and realized completely that driving was prohibited on Shabbat. Nevertheless, I’d drive to synagogue and enjoy myself picking up little dosages of faith week after week. One particular evening, the rabbi told us that the following week we would be hosting a guest from Israel. This news left a huge impact on me, I was thrilled to think that “wow, someone from the holy country of Israel! I’ll definitely be back next week!”

The entire week I was so excited looking forward to hearing the guest speaker from Israel. What was he going to talk about? Was he in the army? Maybe he’ll say something so everlasting that it will change my life forever. Before I knew it, it was Friday and I was getting showered, putting on my finest clothes, cologne – the works. I was super excited to meet this special visitor. What was he going to talk about, my mind kept repeating itself.

I pulled up to the synagogue and parked my car, I was there early to make sure I’d have a front row seat for this experience. More and more people arrived until we had a fully packed synagogue. The band was rocking out and everyone was smiling as we welcomed the Shabbat. This was a memory that would last a life time. Our speaker then took to the stand…

“Shalom, as you know I’ve come to bring an important message, I’ve come to share my voice about the unfairness that there is no public transportation on Shabbat in Israel.”….. I nearly choked.

Here I was praying to Hashem for help in getting through the biggest challenge of my life, seeing my parents split up, and in the house of faith, this speaker flew 14 hours to tell me he can’t use a bus in Jerusalem? My blood was boiling.

Now, at this point I was driving on Shabbat and knew it wasn’t allowed, but for some reason something clicked inside of me when I heard this man speak his opinion. At that moment, I realized that his message was so inappropriate given the opportunity that he had. He could have spoken about the importance of Aliyah, or about investing in Israel, let alone strengthening oneself in Torah. But no he simply blabbered about his own personal inconvenience.

As I listened to this man’s words, something came up inside of me that helped me change my life forever. As he spoke I made a resolution that I would not drive anymore on Shabbat. I simply was fed up with cutting around the corners in my Judaism. When you start strengthening yourself in Emuna and Torah you feel it’s true, all that’s left is for you to adapt. This person who came on Shabbat from our Holy Land to tell me that there should be public transportation helped me. He was trying to make a statement that there are no rules that we must hold to, and that helped me see that he is living a lie.

 I enjoyed every step I took back in my 90 minute walk back home.

Homework:  Something upsetting you? Don’t sit around! Make a statement, change your world, change begins with yourself.