Aggadot from Hamivtar

by
Rabbi Yitzchak Blau

Integration and the Tale of a Lifetime

R. Illai said: [The inner reality of] a man is known in three ways: by how he drinks, how he is with his money and in his anger (in Hebrew, this is a triple word play). And some say: Also in his play. (Eruvin 65b)

While the opening list of three certainly merits discussion, let us turn our attention to the added item. Why does play reveal the truth about a person in a way that more serious pursuits do not? The answer may have to do with the religious call to live an integrated life. Most observant Jews realize that mizvah performance demands a certain religious orientation and seriousness of purpose. While in the beit medrah or beit haknesset, they would not dream of consciously excluding religious values. At the same time, they may think of their leisure time as divorced from religious demands. They fail to realize that one can understand that areas of life are indeed devar reshut, neither forbidden nor commanded, without thinking that religious ideals become irrelevant to those areas. Halakha has nothing against playing basketball but it does have something to say about how one plays. Halakha's voice in this area is not to be found in a section of the Shulhan Arukh called Hilkhot Basketball but in the more general command to live a live a life of holiness, service and ethical excellence. The individual whose play also exhibits religious ideals (e. g. playing without selfisheness, laziness or anger) has moved to a more profound level of commitment. Sometimes, it is precisely the conduct while enaging in a leisure activity that reveals the true quality of a given individual.

This message should have particular relevance to those, who like this author, do not think that Judaism frowns on all activities that are not concrete mizvot. In an excellent essay (Tradition Fall 1985), Rabbi Shalom Carmy writes of the challenge facing Modern Orthodox Jews to live a unfied existence. Rabbi Carmy utilizes the image of the human life as a story. In discussing a peoples adherence to their core ideals, Rabbi Carmy writes as follows. "A life is integrated if it tells a coherent story in the light of those principles and ideals, it is dis-integrated to the degree that the individuals experience, thoughts and deeds fail to cohere with them, or insofar as the principles and ideals are internally inconsistent." When thinking about the quality of our recreational activity, it behooves us to ask whether or not they fit into the same story as the chapters on our learning, davening and giving zedakah. As a good author strives to craft a unified story, each individual constantly writing the most important tale there is, his or her own life story, must certainly work on an coherence of meaning in the wholeness of a human life.