The Secular-Holy

Dear friends, 

In Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, which Ezzy was assigned to read over break for his Hebrew school class, Reuven, the main character receives from his father a history of Hassidism. He learns how the Besht, the founder of the movement found meditating and praying in the forest far more important than studying Talmud. So Ezzy asks me “if Hassidism is about not studying Talmud, why do Hassids today study Talmud all day?” “Well,” I mumble, “they study Talmud in a very different way than Jews did before Hassidism. You can study it just for the sake of knowing it and showing off your knowledge, or you can study it to see how it relates to your life.” 

He’s staring at me. So I pull out the decidedly not useful tractate of Talmud I’ve been studying, Moed Katan. I read him the opening line: 

מַשְׁקִין בֵּית הַשְּׁלָחִין בַּמּוֹעֵד וּבַשְּׁבִיעִית,  
One may irrigate a field that requires irrigation on the intermediate days of a Festival as well as during the Sabbatical Year. 

“You see,” I instruct him, “you could easily study this purely to collect information. Us Shulmans don’t have any “fields that require irrigation,” Jews long ago found ways around most of the rules of the Sabbatical year, and at The New Shul even the rabbi doesn’t follow Jewish law on most issues.” 
“Okay.” 
“But there may be some deeper lesson that does relate to our lives. That’s what Hassids look for when they study this today.” 
“I’ll take your word for it.” 

Ezzy went back to reading. But I was left wondering what lessons I could manage to find in these ancient discussions, which seem thoroughly unrelated to life here in New York in 2025. 

All holiday long I’ve been meditating on uselessness. I have a deep sense that the actions I take which appear to have no value in the eyes of the world are the very ones that give my life value; That it’s the nothings I do that matter most. Even as I sit here staring at my open Talmud my eldest son walks by and says: “That doesn't look like work.” (I had told him yesterday that I’d be working from home today.)  

So studying this Talmudic tractate about obsolete prohibitions makes a certain type of sense. As do the concepts of the Sabbatical year and the intermediate days of a festival. A Sabbatical year (Shnat Shmitah in Hebrew), when our farmer ancestors were forbidden from farming for a year is a deep challenge to our modern ethos of utility, and the American ethic of work. Studying how the rabbis made sense of it leads one to contemplate the balance between utility and pleasure, and imagine a healthier work-life balance.  

The same goes for the concept of "intermediate days of a festival." These, called Khol Hamo’ed, or the secular-holy are the middle days of Passover and Sukkot. The beginning and end of both week-long holidays are days of strict rest. During the middle days, though there is no prohibition on things like using electricity, and certain types of work are permitted. And yet, these are not regular workdays. On these days of Khol Hamo'ed I’ll often see Hassidic families hanging out in Prospect Park during the day, for example. The concept of secular-holy, or partial rest strikes me as another building block of a healthy balance between work and rest. 

In the Mishnah I quoted above the rabbis are hashing out what the secular-holy should consist of. Their opening statement about the“field that requires irrigation” tells us a lot. On the days we call secular-holy we may work only on what would otherwise collapse into oblivion. If the field in question can survive on rainwater or dew, without our intervention,  don’t touch it. Rest! If it can’t - do the minimal work of watering it. And if it’s somewhere in between, for example if the purpose of watering it is to enhance output, to maximize profits, to squeeze more out of the earth – but the field’s survival is not at stake – don’t do anything. 

Imagine how different our world would look if we defined even one of our five workdays as secular-holy in that way.  

May 2025 bring our ideas about what we must accomplish, and how often we should relax into a harmonious balance. Despite what it may seem, maybe the Talmud could be useful toward that after all. 

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha