As most synagogues do, each year we do a Yom-Kippur appeal. But unlike most synagogues our appeal isn’t for money and donations (we’re a college campus community) instead its about an annual mindset or mitzvah, a perspective emphasis, or an activity for the new year.
This year, Yom Kippur 5785/2024 fell over Fall Break. Most students were away, so didn’t plan for an appeal, as it was just a few of us here. But some kept asking what the appeal might be this year, and we did have about 15 minutes between end of Neilah and when we could go Shofar – so we turned the Fall Break theme into the appeal itself.
Take Spiritual Breaks! Carve out Time-Outs for a Mitzvah!
Breaks are important. They help us refresh, rejuvenate, get back to ourselves. Even computers need restarting from time to time, otherwise they got overloaded and bogged down with all the things open. They do much better after a reboot. Shabbos is a good example of this. Academic breaks are good for this, too.
Our first website was built in 1999 with the help of alumnus (then student) Jason N and friends. It was built on Microsoft’s then-FrontPage program which translated something like Microsoft Word into HTML (and you could toggle in between) which made it accessible to an amateur internet ignoramus like myself. It actually got a lot of traffic because we kept it updated, there was little extra coding so it was super searchable, and it was one of the first rich Jewish content sites on the web. But when FrontPage was no longer supported and CSS sheets and other issues became more of a problem, we switched the website to WordPress, and that’s the platform you are reading this on now.
What does the website have to do with this? The old website had an iconic (very dated!) front entry page. It was am image of a house, clip-art style, and you’d click on various components of that house to get inside. The doormat said Welcome and explained who we are, the chimney’s smoke was titled “Student Speak” as if it was a speech bubble, and the windows and doors all took you places. One window was titled “Time Out for Torah” and that was that website edition’s version of what we have now as “Mendel’s Messages.”
Time Out for Torah is important. Our days get busy and full of all types of obligations and distractions. Students have class and assignments, some of you also work, there are clubs and activities and time for the gym. Much of what we do isn’t particularly Jewish-oriented (though in Baal Shem Tov vision, much of it can be, a message for another time).
Raizy and I once attended a workshop by Rabbi Dr. Laibl Wolf where he visually demonstrated an important message about stress and resilience: He took two chairs and spread them apart and lay a 2×4 beam of wood across them. The beam looked pretty straight. Then he placed a brick on the unsupported middle of the beam and it sagged a bit. Then he took off the brick and the wood bounced back to form. He put two bricks and it sagged more, but also bounced back when removed soon after. But he said that leaving too many bricks on for too long will warp the beam and it won’t bounce back anymore, it loses its resilience. Bricks = stress, and stress can be managed without changing us. But if we have too much stress and its constant without breaks to bounce back, it will reshape us. We won’t be the same and won’t be able to bounce back.
Let’s use this same beam and brick metaphor to our Jewish resilience. If we go too long without Jewish connection, we risk getting shaped away from it, and if for too long and too much, it can shape us in ways that are harder to bounce back from. Simply taking off those bricks for a few minutes here and there – can greatly increase our Jewish resilience!
There are simple small and short ways to take meaningful “Jewish Breaks” on our hectic and busy daily lives:
Saying Shema twice daily, morning and evening. Shema can be a time-out in many ways, in fact, one of the reasons we close our eyes is to create a time-out focus zone for that one sentence! Guys doing this on weekdays with Tefillin can be a game-changer. Even without the whole prayer, should take under 10 minutes start to finish but goes a long way.
Torah-study, especially a daily study regimen is a really good way to zone-out of the daily grind and zone-in to Jewish thinking. Chayenu or Chabad.org’s daily study is one way, and there are all kinds of online study opportunities. Study something daily, even for 5 minutes a day, and over a few weeks it really builds up. There are also study opportunities with a partner, a friend or via a service like Jnet.org which partners you with a study partner over the phone at regular intervals. Keep it regular, constant, routine. Build these study-breaks (to study!) into your routine!
To be finished later