By Yochanan Gordon
I’m writing from Orlando, FL, where it seems that many of the people I see daily back at home made the trip down south in observance of what has ironically become known as Yeshiva Week.
It isn’t accidental that I neglected using the cliche “sunny Florida,” because it hasn’t been all that sunny or hot. It isn’t a complaint, as complaining about a luxury is one of my pet peeves. The weather is one irony on top of another, since traveling to Florida from New York during the winter is an attempt at schadenfreude, and although I am here and many of you are there, the schadenfreude has been turned on me.
There are a number of ironies that stick out from my childhood—namely, why we park in a driveway and drive on a parkway. Similarly, it’s quite interesting that the week that yeshivas give off during the winter has become known as Yeshiva Week, when the kids aren’t in yeshiva and, by and large, they aren’t learning anything. When I was in yeshiva there was no winter break. My sisters got off, but we didn’t. Admittedly, it created a situation of sorts since families had to split up if the girls were going to spend their time off in fashion. But regardless of whether or not we had off, going down to Florida was a no-no, and grounds for certain suspension if we got caught. Oh, how the times have changed.
Building on the theme of ironies, the Gemara in Chagigah states: “Ee efsher l’beis midrash b’lo chiddush” and if there aren’t any chiddushim emanating from within the walls of the batei midrash or classrooms, then I will have to come up with one from the Airbnb on Bookman Dr. in Kissimmee, FL.
We’ve been coming down to Florida for a few years now. This time however, our itinerary was a little different. Instead of just staying put in Miami or Sunny Isles Beach, spending a majority of our waking days basking in the therapeutic Florida sun and doing the restaurant scene in Bal Harbor or Aventura in the evenings, we decided this time to spend the first two days, Friday and Shabbos, at family in Hallandale and then make the trek 265 miles north from Miami to Orlando where we would spend a day at Disney World, which we haven’t done yet as a family.
The challenge that this itinerary presented for me was the three-and-a-half-hour drive from Hallandale Beach to Orlando, since it’s a lot longer than I would normally be able to sit behind the wheel without growing jittery from the monotonous driving experience. I know it sounds somewhat petty, but it’s an issue that I have had for quite some time. Anything longer than an hour and a quarter behind the wheel starts to wear my patience real thin. While I could normally split the driving time with my wife, who has always been a ready and able copilot, with a one-month-old girl onboard she needed to be on call in the event that Rosie needed her attention.
I had resolved to transcend my comfort level in order to give our kids an extraordinary few days so that they return to their studies with greater vigor and focus. I noticed an amazing thing: my decision to overlook my natural discomfort for the sake of giving my kids a great time enabled me to make the three-hour-plus drive without even the slightest feeling of jitteriness behind the wheel.
As finite creations, we all possess inborn limitations, which manifest in much more serious areas of life—in our relationships with ourselves, our parents, spouses, and children, in an endless number of life situations. Often, we resign ourselves to those features of our character that we were born with and cannot change. And although the books of mussar may also recognize the shortcomings of a human being, in the lens of Chassidus, having been created with a Divine soul, we have been given an opportunity to defer to the infinite element within us and to accomplish things that seem otherworldly or superhuman.
As these reflections were traveling the highways and byways of my cognitive faculties, I realized that the term for father, in Hebrew, is “av” or “abba,” which in addition to meaning “father” is a euphemism, in the works of Chassidus, for the sefirah of chochmah. Chazal state: “V’ha’chochmah me’ayin timatzei,” which means that the faculty of wisdom is rooted in the Divine realm of nothingness. The letter of the aleph-beis that is associated with the faculty of wisdom is the letter yud, otherwise known as a nekudah, which is in its pre-written form, which is symbolic of negation, or bittul.
I alluded to this in my column last week. I had in mind a certain Mishnah in Avos that I never get around to citing. However, the entire piece last week was centered on this one Mishnah, which states: “I have learned much from my rabbis, even more from my colleagues, and from my students even more than them all.” The ability to remain humble and learn from all people is a manifestation of wisdom, as another Mishnah states: “Who is wise? He who learns from all people.”
Being able to act selflessly and go beyond one’s comfort level and natural ability is a further manifestation of chochmah, wherein one accessed the Divine element within to surpass one’s normal limitations. It may have been Yeshiva Week, but although the buildings were closed and the classes out of session, it’s important to take the lessons learned and apply them outside the walls of the beis midrash. I hope for my kids, at least, that message got through.
Yochanan Gordon can be reached at ygordon5t@gmail.com. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.