Pekudei(Exodus 38:21-40:38)

House and Home

"Make books your companions. Let your bookshelves be your gardens. Bask in their beauty, gather their fruit, pluck their roses, take their spices and myrrh."
  -- Rabbi Ibn Tibbon

"When does a house become a home? When does a job become a cause? An obligation become a responsibility? An acquaintance become a friend? A teacher become a mentor? Affection become love?"

With everything in life, definition is the key. Definition is the first step to living as opposed to existing, of finding purpose in life as opposed to going through the motions. Otherwise - house, home - what's the difference?!

Definition is always difficult before experience. If you have never had a true friend, it's difficult to define one. However, it's a big mistake not to define a term before the experience. Because otherwise the experience may form a definition different from the reality - for example, people who are "infatuated" often mistake the experience as "love."

Your mind is your best instrument to abstract and define concepts. But you have to put it in gear to get the job done. Because if your mind doesn't define your terms, your heart will.

For example, if you don't know the difference between an acquaintance and a friend, you may - and very likely will - have lots of acquaintances and call them "friends." Your heart is telling your mind what to say - while disregarding what your eyes see!

WHAT MAKES A HOME?

How do you know whether you have a house or a home? How do we define the difference?

Many of us travel during the course of our lives, some more and some less. But is there a point at which we spend so little time in our home that it becomes just another step along the journey? Alternatively, how long do you have to stay at any particular destination to turn that place into a home?

The Torah lists all the journeys that the Jewish people experienced while wandering in the desert (see Numbers 33). Rashi points out that in 38 years they traveled 20 times. This indicates that if you travel 20 times in 38 years, then you are experiencing a "journey" and not a series of homes.

Does this mean to suggest that the essential difference between a journey and a home is whether or not you move once every couple years?! Doesn't the difference between "house" and "home" have more to do with the outlook of the one living there than the actual time spent?

The last few words of this week's Parsha shed light on the distinction between house and home:

"The cloud ... and the fire ... were visible to the entire Jewish people, in all their journeys." (Exodus 40:38)

Rashi is inferring that there are two types of lifestyles: One in which the person moves to a place because this is the place where he ultimately wants to live. The other is when a person moves but never intends to stay permanently. Emotionally, he is constantly on the move.

Living in a house as opposed to living in a home is like living out of a perpetual suitcase. Houses are great for holding families, or storing our clothes and books. But they are rarely used to 'live' in. Houses are often only fancy bases from which to vacate, or from which to leave for work - a sort of "base camp for the summit." We stay until we get too small for the new family, or too big for just us two, or too far away from the new job, or too close to the new enemies.

It could very well be that your 'home' is really just a house.

ON THE MOVE

"I was born in Akron, Ohio, but the house I remember growing up in was in Toronto. By the time I was halfway through high school we had moved to Los Angeles, and when I entered college my family bought a house in the San Fernando Valley. Now I live by myself in Dallas and I'm looking for a career abroad.

"Looking back on all the houses I've lived in, I can't say I want to go back to any one of them. 'Home' for me is a place I still hope to find."

Houses often tend to be places we happen to be in because we can't afford anything else, or we can't be bothered to move anywhere else. And if someone does stay for any length of time, it's often not because he wants to stay, but rather because there's nowhere else to go!

Have you ever tried wearing someone else's clothes? They never quite fit. If you are living in a house and not a home it's like living in someone else's clothes. You call it your home, you go 'home' to it, but it's just an address, a P.O.B., a convenience, somewhere to hang your clothes and sleep at night. It's an estranged feeling of not quite fitting; you can ignore it but it underpins everything.

No one likes to think of himself as a wanderer, transient, passerby, drifter, nomad. To do so is to realize you have no place called "home." We like to think of our houses as homes, because it's far more comforting.

It may be comforting, but is it true? Is it really home?

Here's a good litmus test: How many of us look at the place we now live as the place we also want to die?

Is your work very personal to you, more than your home? We often relate to work far more deeply, and fight for it far more strongly, beyond its financial aspect. Many of us relate to our work as personal and our house as disposable. If you feel more at home with your work it's probably because you are not at home with your 'home.'

Marx said that capitalism alienates the worker from his work. A far deeper alienation is taking place in the human being from his very environment. We move to find a home, a place to fit in. Few if any find it.

The Kabbalists say that our desire to travel and move is actually an expression of our souls' yearning to find its place in this world. So really we aren't running from, we are running to! We are not fleeing - but searching, looking not hiding, questioning not disappearing.

ALL OF LIFE IS REALLY JUST A JOURNEY

The story is told of the Chafetz Chaim, the greatest sage of the 20^th century. The Chafetz Chaim lived in an extremely modest house in a village in Poland, with sparse and simple furnishings.

A reporter came to interview the eminent rabbi. After conversing together for some time, the reporter posed the question he'd been waiting to ask: "For such a great and important rabbi as yourself, where's all your furniture?"

"Let me ask you a question," the Chafetz Chaim replied. "For such an important reporter as yourself, where's all your furniture?"

"Well," the reporter said confusedly, "I'm only travelling through."

"I, too, am only travelling through," the Chafetz Chaim replied.

The rabbi was trying to illustrate that we are all just travelling through. We have yet to arrive at our permanent destination. This world is extremely temporary.

You wouldn't take a crystal chandelier on a camping trip; you only take along those things you really need. Life is ultimately a journey. And your chandelier is not going with you.

In other words, the place we call 'home' should be a place of meaning, a place where we find purpose to life. That place is made more through the quality of the books on our shelves and the relationships it nurtures than it is in the cut of our carpets.

Because ultimately, we are all "just travelling through."

BRAINSTORMING QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Question 1:  What three things in your house make it a home?

Question 2:  Do you feel more at home with your work than your home?

Question 3:  If you took the TV, telephone and computer out of your home, would you feel comfortable spending a lot of your time there? If not, what is missing?