From the heart of Jerusalem: Gone fishing'

To this day there are few things I enjoy more than fishing. When I was younger, my dad would take me quite frequently during the summer months. We would rise at the crack of dawn, grab our packed lunches, and drive out an hour to the pond. The first steps in the cold water, the soft mud cushioning my feet soaking through my toes, the enclosing walls that were the deep green trees encompassing the pond transported me into a different world. There was stillness of the world in those moments; the sheer silence interrupted only by the whistling of my line soaring out into the depths of the pond.

Most of the time, this was where the glory ended. As important as fishing was to me and my dad, neither of us knew the first thing about it. Morning after morning, we would fish for hours and get not as much as a single bite. Literally, not a single bite.

As a child, these frequent episodes filled me with a profound sorrow; I would pack up the fishing gear sluggishly, weighed down by the burden of the time-wasted. I did not have anything to say on the ride home, but usually my dad would try to make-light of the situation, “You know what they say—a bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.”

As a child, the only comfort I found in this phrase was his accompanying smile. Knowing our failure was insignificant to him made it less significant to me. Not until recently did I start to scratch the surface of the saying’s true depth.

The line came alive to me this year when on occasion I would have a “bad day” in yeshiva. The tragedy—I have to sit in class even though I am tired. The rigorous yeshiva schedule would start to look like labor. A miserable feeling of immobility would choke me and suck any enthusiasm out of my day.

But then I would take a step back and witness the absurdity of my emotions. Any single one of my yeshiva days, had it been placed in the thick of my high school junior year, SAT season, would have been a relief beyond words. Even on the holy blessed snow day you have homework and tests. But in yeshiva, our greatest fear is what’s for lunch. And not only do I have one of these days but an entire year of them. So in objective terms, a bad day of Yeshiva is better than a good day of work.

My fundamental flaw both in the case of the unsuccessful fishing trip and the uninspiring yeshiva day is my failure to appreciate. The concept of a “bad” day in yeshiva shouldn’t exist and wouldn’t exist if I were able to appreciate the underlying gifts I have come to take for granted. And as I have finally started struggling to understand my dad’s message, I started to see that so much of Jewish practice is centered on achieving not quantifiable success but mental success.

Last Shabbat, I read my bar mitzvah parsha, Bechukotai, which describes the blessings that accompany adherence to halacha and the pains that come with abandonment of halacha. One of the blessings is that “you will eat your bread to satisfaction” (Vayikra 26:5) In brainstorming for my bar mitzvah d’var Torah, my father and I observed that the ideal in Judaism is not lavish excess nor exquisite quality. Instead the highest material reward is just enough to satisfy.

Imagine looking up a restaurant or hotel review, and you find descriptions like “satisfactory” or even “perfectly satisfactory.” To me, such a review would certainly discourage me. I would much rather stay at a hotel that went beyond the satisfactory. And yet the Torah seems to suggest a person strive only for enough.

That was where the bar mitzvah discussion ended. But what I missed was that the blessing is actually not that we will have bread. Rather it is that the halachic man will find satisfaction in his bread, no matter its quantity or quality. To me, this means that following halacha will instill in the Jew a system of values that will naturally bring contentment. If, at every moment, a person’s greatest priority is family, learning, and chessed, he could not possibly be dissatisfied with his financial means so long as he has enough that it does not interfere with his greater purpose.

So that is what Judaism promises—a life in which a bad day of fishing doesn’t exist because the freedom to go fishing is itself satisfying. What more could I want than for fishing failure to be my greatest grief?