Remaining in Contact with Others

Summer time seems to be a wonderful time to get away from the every day grind of life. Often there are opportunities to engage in activities that revolve around nature and the outdoors or even to leave one's everyday activities altogether and spend time in another location. These opportunities remind me of a phrase found in Psalm 55:7-8 that says, "Would that I had the wings of a dove, and could fly to a distant place and rest there."

Finding the time for solitude and getting out of the rat race can be healing. But the key is not to withdraw for long periods of time just for brief periods of time.

This summer I had the opportunity to visit a Russian Orthodox nunnery built in a location near the Mt. of Olives. The setting was serene and the women who lived there seemed pleasant. But they had taken a vow of silence and did not interact with the tourists nor with each other. I was told that they had one hour each day in which they could communicate with others. It struck me that such a vow was totally antithetical to our outlook on making life holy. In the Talmud we are told that a "person should not retreat into isolation, but should remain in contact with others."

In fact, from a Jewish point of view, partaking in a community is part and parcel of our heritage. If you look at the narrative of the Torah following the exodus from Egypt, much of it has to do with our development as a people that had a centralized form of worship. When we entered the Land of Canaan, we were told that we would worship G-d in a place that He would choose. The idea of creating a centralized form of worship was to discourage the idolatrous worship of many gods whose altars were established on many high places in the land. We were also instructed that everybody in our midst, including the slaves and the Levites (who owned no land) were to be involved in our rejoicing before G-d. In other words, everyone in the community was to maintain a relationship with each other as they established a relationship with G-d. The three pilgrimage festivals of Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot also had a communal aspect as well. When the Temple was established, all of Israel joined together not only to offer their sacrifices to G-d but to socialize and mingle with one another during these three times of the year.

Today, we have many communities world-wide with established synagogues where we can worship together. Though our places of worship are dispersed, key, we still believe it is important to have a place in which to gather as a group in order to celebrate, mourn, and worship. The entire group suffers when too many individuals choose to withdraw and remain in isolation. We cannot welcome a baby into the people of Israel nor mourn the loss of a loved one without a community present. When we put our focus on creating a holy community and move it away from our own self-indulgent actions, then we are also moving away from idolatry. Idolatry is about having a focus on one's self. We must take care that if we withdraw into ourselves for short periods of time, whether it be to meditate or just to revive our spirits, that we also make sure we return to have contact with others...being in isolation does not fit into the Judaism's outlook on life.