The summer after eleventh grade, I worked at Camp Ramah in the Poconos. The camp was affiliated with the Conservative movement, but I considered myself Orthodox at the time. This often posed challenges for me over the course of the summer. But nowhere were the differences in my Jewish practice from everyone else harder for me than on Shabbat. All the other campers and counselors played baseball and basketball, swam in the lake or ran around in countless other field games. For me – being Orthodox- all those other activities were Muchtza – off limits – as they were considered work. So, while they had a blast doing all the things I would have loved to be doing, I was lying in my bed reading.
The distinction between work and rest can be a confusing one. Take the word “Tizmor” that is used in this week’s Torah portion, Emor. It can both mean to prune a vineyard, and to sing at the Shabbat table. In Leviticus 25:3-4 we are told, “Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard (Tizmor Karmecha), and gather in its fruit; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest to the land.” The Torah is describing the Jewish practice of Shmita, an agricultural practice where the land is granted rest every seventh year. The root of Tizmor is Zemer, meaning song. Singing Zmirot, also from the same root, is a common practice in Orthodox communities on Shabbat. If pruning your vineyards and singing at the Shabbat table are interchangeable in the Hebrew, then so are the very concepts work and rest.
This Shabbat, I am in Panama with a group of Shir Shalom members on a congregational trip (Thanks Darci Cramer and Jim Cornell for making this possible!). This is both a work trip for me, and a highly rewarding, meaningful, and I dare say, restful, break from everyday activities. While it isn’t always the case, sometimes work and rest can, in fact, be intertwined. And, when they are, it is a truly beautiful thing.
Shabbat Shalom from Bocas Town, Panama,
Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein