Mile marker 0 on the journey toward a better tomorrow
Rabbi Seth Phillips
A birth, a bris, a bat mitzvah, a marriage, a graduation, a birthday ending in a 0 — we rightly use the expression “milestone.” As with so many words from days of yore, milestone’s origin tells a fascinating story. As can still be seen across Europe and in museums, milestones were just that,
stones marking distances along Roman roads. “All roads led to Rome” because distances were measured from the Golden Milestone in the Roman Forum. This column marks a milestone of sorts for me. It’s my first in 20222023 (to the chagrin of my colleagues who had to double up to keep this monthly column going) and my first as a retiree. As I hoped a year ago, I was able to retire from a wonderfully fulfilling “job” after 10 years, but not from the Lehigh Valley Jewish community. Connections and friendships, trust for life-cycle events, new students to learn with and from all carried over from my
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working past. I shed the responsibility for the Jewish future to a new generation of leaders and became what I had not been since 1973 — a Jew in the pew. Despite my oft-repeated joke that I was looking to arrive late, sit in the back and complain, I must have listened to myself the rabbi, for I did none of them. The good advice that I received was that a retiree not only retired from something, but also had to retire to something. Becoming an active saba (grandfather) took a surprisingly long time to come to. Making up for lost Jewish time is perhaps a surprising admission for a rabbi to make, but that is what I retired to. The rhythms and rituals of Judaism are measured out in daily doses. They may be more or less important than, as the retired admiral and author William H. McRaven advised, making one’s bed every morning, but they are meant to be practiced daily. Not weekly, not two days a year, not three days a year, but daily. Comparing the mitzvot to bed making might be seen as sacrilegious or trivial, but in reality, they both express a commitment to a sense of order and a hands-on acceptance of external standards and goals. For me, in this milestone retirement year, the mitzvah I chose was Daf Yomi. Literally, the “daily page” put me on
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the same universally read page of Jewish learning. Since September 11, 1923, learners young and old have committed to the same page of Talmud in a sequence that takes 2,711 days to complete. As the adjective “talmudic” has a pejorative meaning (overly detailed or subtle, hairsplitting), some might question my choice of this retirement activity. Yes, there are head-splitting pages, days when the difference between the world of Babylonia circa 400 C.E. and today is unbridgeable. Not differentiating between the baby and the bathwater has been the all too common reaction of “modern” Jews. In choosing to stick with something that is a struggle, that is often outside my comfort zone, the fact that I need an awful lot of help even to understand the English translation could be seen as masochism. But through my struggle with Hillel and Shammai, Rav and Shmuel, with a world that ended in 70 C.E., what I am really learning about is myself. As Alexander Pope wrote, “The proper study of mankind is man.” I might have turned to the stars or to therapy for that understanding, but I chose a daily encounter with my people’s struggle to understand their place in HaShem’s creation. Realizing that I am not alone
on this journey, that there are spaces in Allentown and Baltimore where fellow pilgrims gather, has kept me in community. I am certainly happy to share the many yomi (daily) Jewish learning programs that now exist. There are shorter commitments and texts that address human yearnings and desires for meaning more directly than the Talmud. My offer to be your guide is not meant to compete with my stillworking colleagues, but to be a small way to repay the kindness and trust that you have shown me over these years. We measure our lives by the milestones that we encounter. Presumably we judge our success by the increasing numbers on those markers. In urging you to find a time or a topic that could bring you meaning and order, the milestone we need most has a 0 on it to signify the start of our journey to a better tomorrow.
