Shabbat in Israel

Greetings from Israel!

Yesterday my daughter Karen and I boarded a flight at Dulles about 2:a.m. Israeli and arrived in Tel Aviv about 12½ hours later. We picked up our rental car and drove to our hotel near the Mediterranean Sea just before the beginning of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath.

Karen is a professor at the University of Arizona (UA) and the director of the Religious Studies Program there. UA is one of five universities doing research on "Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging."

Tel Aviv University, one of the institutions in the project, is hosting a meeting of representatives from the five schools on June 23-25. Karen, who was being sent to the conference by UA, invited me to go along—and so here we are!

Welcome sign in Tel Aviv airport (June 19, 2015)

As we neither one of us had been to Israel before, we decided to go a few days early in order to do some sightseeing before her meetings begin. Today (Saturday) we plan to drive to Nazareth and then in the evening drive on to Tiberius where we have a hotel booked near the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Mark Levin, a retired Jewish rabbi and active civic leader in the greater Kansas City area, is a new friend/acquaintance. We sat at the same table at a community event last month and had a long telephone conversation after that.

Among other things, we talked about timshel , the key word in Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which I wrote about here (Rabbi Levin confirmed Steinbeck’s interpretation), and about tikkun olam the Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world.”

I was somewhat familiar with that term tikkun because of Jim Wallis and his friendship/corroboration with Rabbi Michael Lerner in California who is the editor of a quarterly interfaith Jewish magazine by that name.

Rabbi Levin suggested I read the Wikipedia article about tikkun olam. According to that article, “Jews believe that performing of ritual mitzvot (good deeds, commandments, connections, or religious obligations) is a means of tikkun olam, helping to perfect the world, and that the performance of more mitzvot will hasten the coming of the Messiah and the Messianic Age.”

This is closely related to Shabbat. The same article goes on to state,

Some explain the power of Shabbat by its effect on the other six days of the week and their role in moving society towards the Messianic Age. Shabbat helps bring about the Messianic Age because Shabbat rest energizes Jews to work harder to bring the Messianic Age nearer during the six working days of the week. Because the experience of Shabbat gives one a foretaste of the Messianic Age, observance of Shabbat also helps Jews renew their commitment to bring about a world where love and mercy will reign.

I was intrigued by what Rabbi Levin posted on Facebook late last Saturday afternoon: “As another shabbat is about to end, we Jews will pray for the messianic redemption of the world, by invoking Elijah the prophet, who, at least at this moment, did not appear this shabbat. We have to wait another week for a perfected world.”

Tikkun’s website states, “We are committed to full and complete reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinian people within the context of social justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel.”

So as Shabbat is celebrated here in Israel today, whether the messenger Elijah appears or not, I pray that this will be a part of the perfected world that Jews, and many of us who are not Jews, eagerly long for.

Sunset on Mediterranean Sea (just before Shabbat began on June 19)

“Jiko Manzoku”

The World Cup matches currently being held in Brazil started on June 12 and the final match between Argentina and Germany will be in Rio de Janeiro on July 13.

Perhaps, like me, you don’t know or care a lot about soccer. And many of you may be more interested in the upcoming games of the XXXI Olympiad, the Olympics that will also be held in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2016.

Ninety years ago, back in the summer of 1924, the Olympic Games were held in Paris. Many of you probably have seen “Chariots of Fire,” the British historical drama film about the ’24 Olympics.

That movie, which won the Academy Award for the best picture of 1981, is partly about Eric Liddell, the “Flying Scotsman.”

Liddell was born in China in 1902, the son of Scottish missionary parents. Eric became an outstanding athlete at Edinburgh University, excelling at rugby as well as track.

His best event was the 100-meter dash, and he was selected to run that event for the 1924 British Olympic team. He was greatly disappointed, though, when he heard that the qualifying heat for the 100 meters was going to be held on Sunday.

As a devout Christian, he believed that to engage in an athletic event on Sunday was to violate the Commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy. He refused to compromise.

So rather than competing on Sunday, later that week, on July 11, he ran the 400-meter race—and surprisingly won the gold medal, breaking the world record.

The following year, in 1925, Liddell became a missionary to China. He was ordained as a Christian minister on his first furlough in 1932.

Then in 1943 he was forced into a Japanese internment camp in China, dying there in February 1945 of an inoperable brain tumor and malnutrition.

Liddell was certainly a man of great talent, winsome personality, and deep Christian faith. But to be honest, I have mixed feelings about his refusal to compete in an Olympic event because it was on Sunday.

On the one hand, I generally admire people who stand up for, and act on, their Christian convictions. But it depends on what those convictions are and whether standing up for them enhances or detracts from one’s Christian witness.

In Japan I often heard the term “jiko manzoku,” translated into English as “self-satisfaction.” “Jiko manzoku” is often used in criticism of people who do things that don’t particularly help anyone or anything but just makes them feel good about themselves.

Back in the 1980s, I heard a preacher tell how when traveling on Sunday night, if necessary, he would wait at a service station until after midnight to buy gas because he didn’t think it was right to make purchases on Sunday.

He now laughs at his previously held belief and accompanying actions.

I’m sure he felt very “righteous” about living by his convictions then—but no doubt it was mostly a matter of “jiko manzoku.” It didn’t particularly help anyone else.

Jesus wasn’t big on keeping the Sabbath when it came to matters that were about “jiko manzoku.” But he was big on loving others and helping to meet their needs: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, lifting up the fallen, and forgiving sinners.

Liddell also served others as a missionary. His life and work in China is far more praiseworthy than what he did, and didn’t do, in Paris in July 1924.