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12 Tishrei 5761 - October 11, 2000 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family
Vacation
by Z. G.

This piece was written in the summer break, vacation or holiday, however you like to call it. Chol Hamoed is the Torah mandated `break' from routine, that breath of fresh air, when many of us go to the lap of nature to marvel at the beauty of Hashem's world, to drink it into our souls for the grey, long winter ahead. To plug out of the manmade concrete world and into the natural one.

As they say, memories are forever.

With a flap of its wings, the bird landed. One hardly ever notices sparrows, even pigeons, absorbed as we adults are in our reveries, as we walk down the street.

The daily grind of life was taking its toll on me. Bills waiting to be paid, anxieties and disappointments weighing down. The daily routine was getting monotonous.

A pair of bright, fascinated eyes follow the bird's progress with wonder. Standing on the garden gate, his cherubic little face glowing with anticipation, he flails his little arms about and is soon rewarded for his efforts. The bird soars skywards as the child dances a delighted jig, enraptured by the graceful beauty and magic of flight.

The grey cement tenement blocks that line the street seem to cram you in on all sides. Through the misery of the summer heat, you note absently, almost begrudgingly, that it really is a beautiful day.

With little to occupy him now, the child has moved on to his second most favorite pastime.

"Hello!" a little voice pipes up. You look up, genuinely surprised and amused. Your smile of appreciation warms the heart of the little hero. For a minute, you get a glimpse into the friendly, ingenuous world of a carefree child.

As you walk on, the load on your shoulders becomes a little lighter. Your encounter with the child has touched you somewhere deep down, for you, too, were once a child, just like that. In truth, part of you must still be. As you walk along, you feel a small pang of longing for a lost world of innocence, purity, seeing the world through transparent un- glasses in its everyday beauty and fascination. You square your shoulders to face the adult humdrum world.

Out of habit, you tell yourself to keep going and not slacken, when what you really need, more than anything else, is a vacation.

You may be feeling a little baffled, though, as to what constiutes a vacation. Some hideaway in hi- tech-land? With all the fuss raised about the wonders of computers, we might believe that therein lies the solution to all the world's problems. The truth is very far -- as far as you can distance yourself -- and as close as you can get back to the real thing.

I recaptured some of the lost innocence, the childlike vision, as I looked out to sea, spellbound. I had completely forgotten the awe it inspires. I had gone to Netanya for Shabbos and was standing in the shul, waiting for mincha. Through the window, I watched the red sphere of the sun edging its way towards the horizon, where sea and sky meet, its progress actually visible at this Eretz Yisroel latitude. No book, no written description could ever match a viewer's appreciation of the vastness and beauty of Hashem's vista-world. And my ensuing mincha was much the richer for having tuned into that spectacle.

The sea seemed to beckon, for at four in the morning I found myself wide awake, having slept like a baby to the lullaby of the night-tide. Now I was restless.

I got up and few moments later, I was negotiating the dark stairs leading down to the sea. The loose sand impeded my progress but I soon found myself on firm sand as I approached the sea.

The air was warm and humid. I had never heard the sea so loud before as it crashed and roared itself into smithereens, wave after frothy wave.

I turned to walk northward, moving at a steady pace. It occurred to me that I was walking in the footsteps of the spies that Moshe had sent, thousands of years before. They, too, had walked up the north of Eretz Yisroel along this beach. Had they moved along the packed sand by the edge of the sea, in the middle of the night, as well, when the native Canaanites were sleeping?

I continued on, walking as close to the sea as possible. The faint glow coming from the moon and stars glistened on the wet sand, clearly demarcating a dividing border between sea and sand, along the guidelines of Creation.

I felt I was treading a magic line where daring waves raced up to me, stopping just short of my feet.

The throb of the sea drowned out any other sound: the patter of my feet and the inner beat of my pulse. Visibility stopped short beyond the few meters of wet, moon-glowing sand ahead. I almost felt like I was floating along, at one with the sea.

I was, I finally realized, on VACATION.

In the urban world in which most of us live, dominated by man-made machines, deadlines, phone lines, on-line, asphalt whitelines, newspaper by- lines and all that between-the- lines of daily stress -- vacation time constitutes just peeping out of the narrow concrete confines for a while to sense some of the vastness of the natural wonder and splendor in Hashem's world around us.

There, amidst the seas, rivers, streams -- by Hashem's water spots -- and in the mountains and valleys -- one can once again concentrate on the Creator and His creations. And drink in the majesty that proclaim and reflect His own . . .

Relaxed and serene, we may even awake to the inner beauty of those most close to us, whom we so often take for granted, whom we keep on hold, on a busy line.

Reduced to size in the panaroma of nature, we may even be able to peel off some of the thick layers of self- sufficiency, self-preoccupation, perhaps simple apathy, to dig deeper and connect to our own neshomos.

Perhaps we can rediscover, recapture, that fresh innocence and wonder of a child watching a bird in flight.

 

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