Vacations in Modern Times

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Friday, August 7, 2009

I never imagined Abraham, or for that matter, Rashi, loading up the wagon with his family and suitcases and heading off for a two week vacation.

It not that earlier generations of Jews didn’ t travel –they did move from place to place. They fled famine, anti-semitism and pogroms, and moved to places that seemed to offer security and prosperity. They also travelled as merchants, often one or two representatives of an extended family, taking on the risk of travelling thousands of miles, across continents and cultures. I imagine that some of them might have been curious about the world and adventurous, but I still wouldn’t consider that pleasure travel.

There is no word in ancient Hebrew for vacation, the modern word chofesh was invented when Hebrew was revived. Vacation as we understand it now is a concept that didn’t exist in the time of the Bible or Talmud. The English word, vacation, comes from a Latin root, used first in the 14th century, and stresses the idea of being free from some obligation.

But vacation travel is more than not being at home and involved in your regular responsibilities. Often you are travelling to some site or place of special meaning.

When I was a child, we took family vacations to Mt Rushmore and to Gettysburg, and once, when we lived in England, to Israel. To that extent, modern vacations do have an ancient parallel, the pilgrimage, the trip made to a site of great holiness or other exceptional meaning.

Jews made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in Biblical times, but also later in medieval times, as circumstances allowed. Jews also made pilgrimage to other places, particularly the graves of great sages or places that were associated with healing. Jewish folklore taught that a change of place could change one’s luck, and so on occasion pilgrimages were meant to start new chapters in a life that had been particularly difficult.

The visits to the graves of the sages remind me of one additional reason that people left their homes in pre-modern times. Young men left their parent’s home and sometimes even their wives and children, to join a well regarded rabbi in study. This was common enough that the question of how long a man could absent himself from his family for the sake of study is found in many Jewish legal texts. Though viewed as meritorious, leaving home was also understood to have the potential to have negative consequences, and not something to be encouraged overly much.

Just before our family headed off to Berlin this summer, we watched parts of an old movie, the Accidental Tourist. In the first part of the film, the main character, a writer of travel guides, is seen visiting foreign countries, while trying as much as possible not to vary his normal routines. He seeks out familiar American style food and lodging and tries not to experience anything challenging in the new places he is visiting. Only later in the film,as he allows the foreign –ness of the places he visits to seep into his life does he benefit at all from his travels.

Whether we are vacationing purely for pleasure, or travelling as pilgrims or for some other goal of learning or healing, it is important that we are open to our experiences as they unfold. As we head off on our summer travels, may we depart and return beshalom, in peace and wholeness.