I don’t need Rabbinical school to guessing that the plague has completely disrupted your normal routine. Whether you are still sheltering at home, or are just missing new movies and live sporting events, it seems like nothing is the way it was. And so it is fitting that Order is next up in our rotation of soul traits. (Order is covered in Chapter 13 of The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions.)
The Hebrew word for order is Seder, which you probably recognize from Passover. The Seder is an ordered and organized meal. Order brings with it a sense of stability and predictability, two things sorely lacking in the world right now. When we don’t have them, we feel stress.
Many people, including my family, are using the extra time at home to practice Order by finally cleaning out that overstuffed closed. My wife is organizing our boxes of old photos, which has allowed us to revisit some wonderful memories.
As the same time, we don’t want to try to stuff too much Order into our lives when we are reeling with trauma and stress. You don’t need to be productive – this is not necessarily the time to finally write that novel. We need to get through, which is why I recommend the following Mussar practice that has the right amount of Order. And, this Mussar practice can help with isolation.
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What can I tell you, I’m an old school guy who misses the spontaneous phone calls of years gone by. It has been really wonderful getting calls from old and new friends, checking in to see how I am. Together, let’s emulate Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, who made it a practice to greet others in the market before they could greet him (Talmud Berachot 17a). In a similar way, let’s be the ones to proactively reach out and connect to others.
I am going to make my phone calls at 4PM time. How about you? Please leave a comment below. Scheduling a time, and publicly committing to it makes it more likely that you will follow through.
And please join us Thursday at 4 PM Pacific for our weekly Jewish Wisdom For Coping in a Pandemic Zoom call. No prior anything required.
Image by tommyzwartjes from Pixabay
My first call was to my second cousin. We’d fallen out of touch, and we had a wonderful talk today.