“This day I must confess: For the sin I have committed by packing too much; and for the sin I have committed by paying the baggage fee for a second suitcase . . . “
Well, these aren’t sins, exactly, but while traveling through Europe and Israel this summer I was guilty of excessive shlepping. The great travel sage, Rick Steve, once said, “On your journeys you will meet two kinds of people: those who pack light and those who wish they had.” My wife, Susan, belongs to the first category, but I’m definitely in the second. I watched packing videos and bought compression cubes, vowing to fit everything I needed for a seven-week trip into a single backpack or suitcase. Instead, I ended up with 50 pounds of backpack, and a daypack, and a suitcase. I shvitzed my way through seven countries — most embarrassing of all, I clocked more than a few people with my backpack when turning around. I am now fluent in saying “I’m sorry” in five languages. Still, there were many items I chose to leave behind. The pile of things that didn’t make the final cut was far larger than those that did.
Of course, my packing dilemma was but annoyance when compared to the life-and-death situation faced by Jews during the Shoah. I went to Auschwitz/Birkenau and Majdanek in Poland, and to Terezin in the Czech Republic. I soberly contemplated mountains of old suitcases, each chalked with the name and address of its one-time owner. I saw mountains of eyeglasses, shoes, bowls, cups, tallesim and other items that once were carried in those suitcases. Imagine being given a few hours, a day at most, to pack your belongings, told that you would be “resettled” permanently in the East. Imagine you were limited to a single suitcase. What would you have taken? Practical items only? Reminders of home? Money or jewelry to bribe those who held your fate in their hands? Each decision to pack something diminished the room available to bring something else. Yet for observant Jewish men, there was no question about leaving their tallit and tefillin behind, — a fact brought home by the piles of such items I saw on display at Camp I of Auschwitz.
All of the talk about luggage was itself nothing more than an elaborate plot of deception. In some places, the German authorities would even helpfully suggest what items to bring. As suitcases were gathered officials often distributed claim checks. The truth was the victims never saw their belongings again. Instead the Nazis set up an entire industry for collecting and sorting the stolen property of those sent to the gas chamber or the labor camp. The Shoah was hardly the first time in Jewish history that our ancestors had to make decisions about what to pack as they fled persecution and wandered from pillar to post, from one place to another.
Those who’ve seen Fiddler on the Roof, will recall the townspeople of Anatevka contemplating their meager belongings as they prepare to leave: “A little bit of this, a little bit of that / A pot, a pan, a broom, a hat.” Immigrants to Ellis Island had to condense their entire lives to the contents of a single trunk. Some who came from Eastern Europe freed themselves from the religious practices they considered impediments to life in the New World. Stories are told of Jewish immigrants who threw their tefillin into the New York harbor before disembarking at Ellis Island. They had yet to arrive in their new home, but were already unpacking . . .
Preparing for travel is as old as the Jewish People itself. It has its origin in the Exodus story. The Torah tells us the Israelites left Egypt in a hurry: “מָתְנֵיכֶ֣ם חֲגֻרִ֔ים נַֽעֲלֵיכֶם֙ בְּרַגְלֵיכֶ֔ם וּמַקֶּלְכֶ֖ם בְּיֶדְכֶ֑ם — Their loins girded, sandals on their feet, and staff in hand . . . their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders” (Exodus 12:11, 34). The Torah also mentions that the Egyptians gave our ancestors objects of silver, gold, and additional clothing. What an odd assortment to carry into the desert: bakeware and cloaks, gold pieces and walking sticks! Several chapters later we discover that the women of Israel brought something else with them: timbrels to play as they joyfully sang to God after their escape on the shore of the sea. Despite their hurried departure from slavery, the women of Israel had faith enough in God’s redemption to bring tambourines with which to rejoice! Consider a person’s luggage and you will learn much, not only about her destination but the manner in which she travels, her needs and wants, even her fears and hopes. But there are times when our baggage can enslave us, our belongings can become stern masters, and we its helpless servants with no choice but to obey its commandments.
As I settled into my seat on a Dublin-bound plane this summer, I suddenly realized I had left my CPAP machine at the newsstand near the departure gate. I bolted my seat in panic, and apologetically elbowed my way to the exit through the oncoming waves of boarding passengers. At the jetway I pleaded for permission from security to leave the plane and return to the terminal. Thankfully, my CPAP was where I left it. As I returned to my seat, I was relieved, but also rattled, and annoyed — both by my forgetfulness as well as the burden of having to carry a CPAP around in the first place. There are things we have no choice but to carry, yet we long to be free of their burdens. This is why the prohibition of carrying on Shabbat in public spaces can be so meaningful. There is real freedom in knowing you’ve forgotten nothing, because you carry nothing. It is inconvenient as hell, but that’s exactly the point: The one day I don’t carry reminds me of how enslaved I am to my belongings the other days of the week. How many times have you left the house, only to realize you’ve forgotten something? Panicked, you turn back to retrieve your (fill in the blank) . . . phone, wallet, passport, pills, umbrella, briefcase, purse . . . Unless you’re already too far away to return, at which point the only recourse you have is to course your forgetfulness.
The Talmud teaches that Shabbat is a foretaste of the world-to-come (B. Talmud, Shabbat 57b). To refrain from carrying on the Sabbath is a rehearsal in miniature of the final journey we all take. The last flight we board, metaphorically speaking prohibits all luggage except for our very selves. Jewish law forbids the burial of objects with the deceased because doing so diminishes the true nature of a journey beyond the world of things. Eternity ultimately liberates our souls from property. We may “need” our favorite Gators hat when we travel to Gainesville for a game, but not when our souls come before God.
At admission interviews to the Jewish Theological Seminary, Professor Abraham Joshua Heschel used to ask prospective rabbinical student the following: “If you were traveling to the Alaskan wilderness and were allowed to bring only one item with you, what would it be?” Eager to impress the scholar with their piety, the students would offer answers such as a tallis, a pair of tefillin, a TaNaKh – the Hebrew Bible, or even one of Dr. Heschel’s own books! He would then shake his head, and with a smile respond, “You wouldn’t bring a coat?”
We aren’t always good at packing for life. We forget our coats, so to speak, relying on an erroneous weather report or forgetting to check the weather all together. Each day we travel through life, we bring our baggage with us. Beyond the items in our purses or suitcase, we carry attitudes and preconceptions, hopes and disappointments, values, emotions. Without even being aware of it, we may be toting way too much personal baggage; it’s also possible that we may have packed insufficiently, or are shlepping around the wrong kind of luggage with which to deal with life’s exigencies. Rosh Hashanah is a day of unpacking. We have completed a journey since embarkation a year ago today. What souvenirs did we obtain along the way? Were they worth the extra weight in baggage? What attitudes did you carry around that turned out to be useful? Which ones just weighed you down and made it harder to move?
Rosh Hashanah is also a day of packing — for once we’ve emptied our suitcases and taken inventory, we have a chance to reevaluate what to bring with us as travel into the New Year. But despite the warning notes of the shofar some of us will continue to pack haphazardly, we won’t even bother with a list; instead we’ll just throw a bunch of emotions and values into our spiritual suitcases, or mindlessly stuff things into our bags, hoping we’ll be able to still zip them closed. Others won’t even get that far, but instead allow others to pack for them because they are afraid to think for themselves, But in NOT packing wisely for the journey, we are all but guaranteeing that somewhere along the way we’ll make the unpleasant discovery that life has filled our baggage with grudges, stale attitudes, pettiness, complacency, self-righteousness, and arrogance.
As a rabbi I often stand in the international terminal of life’s arrivals and departures. As some depart to the next world they leave behind on life’s carousel a treasure trove of wisdom, a suitcase filled with the love of Jewish believing, behaving, and belonging. We watch these items go by without making a move to claim these bags, even though the past generation has put our names on the luggage tags. And so unfolds one of life’s tragedies. For all of us have left unclaimed bags on life’s carousel, some even unaware of the unclaimed property that awaits them. There are the family stories we don’t know, the aspects of our heritage unfamiliar to us, even rituals and ritual objects that we have deemed dispensable. But at this season of reflection we are urged to look more closely. It is entirely possible that the suitcase we’ve left behind may be the one we most need to take with us.
On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is decided: Whose luggage will be lost and whose will be found? Who will pack wisely and who foolishly? Whose excessive baggage will cost them dearly and whose will remain unclaimed? Have you created a thoughtful checklist of what to bring on your journey through life? Have you included in your luggage patience, humility resilience, kindness and compassion? On life’s travels wherever you go there you will be. But your luggage, well, that is another story.
Rabbi Jonathan Lubliner 