D’var Torah – February 13

I was reminded of LDS family night when I read this week’s parsha of Mishpatim (Exodus 21:1-24:18). In it we are commanded, “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor, in order that your ox and your donkey may rest, and that your home-born slave and the stranger may be refreshed.” (*Exodus 23:12). In order words, Shabbat (the Sabbath) is a day of rest for everyone in Israel including the livestock! Nothing, no matter how pressing, is meant to interfere with the holiest day of the week; it can and will wait.

As a teenager, I once asked my dad how to save up for retirement. He told me, “Take 20% of your annual earnings and immediately put it into a 401K. Do it automatically, every year, without fail. Don’t even think about it. When you make your budget, it doesn’t even go on the spreadsheet because you’ve already put that money in the 401K. No matter what’s going on in your life or in the world, never compromise on this.”

Too often in life, we let things go. There are things that are important to us, but when a competing activity, cost, or interest comes to the forefront, the thing that is important to us gets triaged and begins to slide down the list. It happens once, then twice, then thrice, and before we know it, it’s just no longer a priority.

To be clear, this mindset is far more than just honoring Shabbat; it’s about all the commitments and priorities that have value for us.
This is about wanting to get healthy by going to the gym, and starting out strong by going once a day, until once a day becomes once every other day, and then twice a week, and then a few times a month, until not at all. This is about committing to visiting an elderly parent or grandparent twice a week, until twice a week becomes twice a month, then once a month, then on holidays, until maybe once a year at best. This is about how date night goes from being a weekly activity that couples look forward to, to a once-a-month outing, to “let’s see where we can fit it in,” to “I can’t remember the last time we went out.” And finally it’s about saying that we’ll give regularly to a charitable cause that we care about, until it becomes intermittent, then seldom, then finally not all.

I’ll be the first to say “I get it.” There are only 24 hours in a day and often there are certain time slots that become “prime real estate.” I 100% understand it. Our kids need their extracurricular activities, we have jobs that we need to work in order to put food on our tables and pay the bills, and money certainly doesn’t grow on trees…in other words, this is all easier said than done.

Ok, so how do we make sure that we don’t lose sight of those things that we care about?

To this end Rabbi Shammai taught “make your [study of the] Torah a fixed practice.”[*3] Likewise, the Jerusalem Talmud instructs us that we must always leave at least 1/60th of our produce fields for the needy.[4] The commonality of these teachings is that like Shabbat for us and like family night for our LDS friends, they are non-negotiable. So if our gym time is 6-7AM, then that time is blocked off. The same goes for visiting mom in the nursing home, weekly family and date nights, and going to Shul. It also applies to the charities we care about and putting money into our 401K’s. These things are blocked off, end of story. But what if there’s a kids rec league, a civic club, or job whose hours require us to revolve around their schedules? That’s a valid concern. I would argue that Exodus 23:12 is telling us that the fixed things come first and all other considerations come second.

Making a fixed, consistent schedule is not an easy endeavor. However, if we depart from it, we’re teaching our children a very important lesson about who and what are important to us. If we stick to it though, we’re gifting them with an even more powerful message.

Bizrat HaShem, with God’s help, may we be strengthened to keep the people, the times, and the values that are so cherished to us fixed and upfront!