Weekday Warriors

August 8, 2013  / 2 Elul,  5773

I just completed Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul, a book that was both captivating and enriching, not to
mention instructive about some of the gaps in our spiritual lives. Moore argues that the human soul “has a
preference for details and particulars, intimacy and involvement, attachment and rooted-ness. … To the soul,
the ordinary is sacred and the everyday is the primary source of religion.

Coincidentally, I was fascinated by a comment to last week's Torah portion of Re'eh, entitled The Jerusalem
Oasis, in which Rabbi Michael Laitner probes the rationale for why Ma’aser Sheini, the Second Tithe, was to
be eaten on the premises of the Temple in Jerusalem, under the rubric of ‘so that you will learn to fear the Lord
your God all of the days.’
After surveying many opinions, Rabbi Laitner arrives at the viewpoint of Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir(known as the
‘Rashbam’), who suggests that the inspiration gained from the journey to Jerusalem was in seeing the revelation
of God’s presence at the Temple, the Kohanim (priests) at work, the Levi’im (Levites) on their platform and the
other Jews working in the Temple. A visit to the Temple was a quasi Yom Tov for the visitor, something that we
may find difficult to appreciate without a Temple. Rabbi Chizkia ben Manoach adds to the Rashbam’s
comments, stating that the experience of seeing the Sanhedrin (supreme Rabbinical court) in session at the
Temple, making legal rulings for the Jewish people, would encourage us to ‘fear’ God. This created
appreciation of the seriousness of the mitzvot and thereby promoted their observance.

Rabbi Laitner concludes that eating Ma’aser Sheini on a regular weekday when the Temple was fully
functioning, as opposed to going for a Festival Day, was important in developing a religious personality,
providing an inspirational experience which also carried over to more mundane activities.

Is it any wonder, after reading these two testimonies about the high value of living our spirituality through the
context of a weekday experience, that we are struggling with Jewish continuity?

Not only have we crafted our personal calendars so that religious celebrations might occur during the weekend,
but we expect that those experiences will mesh and dovetail with other weekend recreational activities. In an
ironic sense, we sometimes find ourselves encountering more of a logjam with our weekend schedule than is the
case between Monday and Friday! Some earnest people have actually shared with me, from time to time, that
they look forward to the predictable and somewhat serene environment of work as a rebound from the frenetic
pace of their overly filled Saturday/Sunday.

The settings that are truly important – such as prayer, meals laden with blessings and conversation among loved
ones, and visitations to those who are isolated – beckon our attention throughout the course of our daily
existence. The returns on these investments are infinite; the costs of ignoring what we have been shown to be
vital to the soul are, to say the least, formidable.