opinion
Judaism Doesn’t Want You to Wander
and Live Just Anywhere — or Does it?
Ben Harris
JTA illustration
I was a remote worker long before the pandemic made
it a thing, but it was only this year that I really took
advantage of it. Early on the morning of New Year’s
Day, I boarded a plane from Connecticut bound for
Mexico, where I spent a full month sleeping in thatch-
roofed palapas, eating more tacos than was probably
wise and bathing every day in the Pacifi c. I’ll spare you
the glorious details, but suffi ce it to say, it wasn’t a bad
way to spend a January.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found myself again and again
coming into contact with expats who had traded in their
urban lives in northern climes for a more laid-back life in
the tropics. There was the recently divorced motorcycle
enthusiast slowly wending his way southward by bike as
he continued to work a design job for a major American
bank. There was the yoga instructor born not far from
where I live in Massachusetts who owned an open-air
rooftop studio just steps from the waves. There were the
countless couples who had chosen to spend their days
running beachfront bars or small hotels on the sand.

And then there were the seemingly endless number
and variety of middle-aged northerners rebooting their
lives in perpetual sunshine.

Such people have long mystifi ed me. It’s not hard
to understand the lure of beachside living, and part of
me envies the freedom to design your own life from
the ground up. But there’s also something scary about
it. Arriving in middle age in a country where you know
nobody, whose language is not your own, whose laws
and cultural mores, seasons and fl ora, are all unfamiliar
— it feels like the essence of shallow-rootedness, like a
life devoid of all the things that give one (or at least me)
a sense of comfort and security and place. The thought
of exercising the right to live literally anywhere and any
way I choose opens up a space so vast and limitless it
provokes an almost vertiginous fear of disconnection
and a life adrift.

Clearly, this feeling isn’t universally shared. And the
fact that I have it probably owes a lot to my upbringing.

I grew up in an Orthodox family, which by necessity
meant life was lived in a fairly small bubble. Our house
was within walking distance of our synagogue, as it
had to be since walking was the only way to get there
on Shabbat and holidays. I attended a small Jewish
day school, where virtually all of my friends came from
families with similar religious commitments. Keeping
kosher and the other constraints of a religious life had
a similarly narrowing eff ect on the horizons of my world
and thus my sense of life’s possibilities. Or at least that’s
how it often felt.

“I spent a full month sleeping in thatch-roofed palapas, eating more tacos than was probably wise and
bathing every day in the Pacifi c.”
What must it be like — pardon the non-kosher
expression — to feel as if the world is your oyster? That
you could live anywhere, love anyone, eat anything and
make your life whatever you want it to be? Thrilling,
yes — but also frightening. The sense of boundless
possibility I could feel emanating from those sun-baked
Mexicans-by-choice was seductive, but tempered by
aversion to a life so unmoored.

The tension between freedom and obligation is baked
into Jewish life. The twin poles of our national narrative
are the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai,
each commemorated by festivals separated by exactly
seven weeks in the calendar, starting with Passover. The
conventional understanding is that this juxtaposition
isn’t accidental. God didn’t liberate the Israelites from
slavery so they could live free of encumbrances on the
Mayan Riviera. Freedom had a purpose, expressed in
the giving of the Torah at Sinai, with all its attendant
rules and restrictions and obligations. Freedom is a
central value of Jewish life — Jews are commanded
to remember the Exodus every day. But Jewish
freedom doesn’t mean the right to live however
you want.

Except it might mean the right to live any place you
want. In the 25th chapter of Leviticus, God gives the
Israelites the commandment of the Jubilee year, known
as yovel in Hebrew. Observed every 50 years in biblical
times, the Jubilee has many similarities to the shmita
(sabbatical) year, but with some additional rituals. The
text instructs: “And you shall hallow the 50th year.

You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all
its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: Each of you
shall return to your holding and each of you shall return
to your family.”
Among the requirements of the Jubilee was that
ancestral lands be returned to their original owners.

Yet the word for liberty is a curious one: “d’ror.” The
Talmud explains its etymology this way: “It is like
a man who dwells [medayer] in any dwelling and
moves merchandise around the entire country” (Rosh
Hashanah 9b).

The liberty of the Jubilee year could thus be said to
have two contrary meanings — individuals had the right
to return to their ancestral lands, but they were also
free not to. They could live in any dwelling they chose.

The sense of liberty connoted by the biblical text is a
specifi cally residential one: the freedom to live where
one chooses. Which pretty well describes the world we
live in today. Jewish ancestral lands are freely available
to any Jew who wants to live there. And roughly half the
Jews of the world choose not to.

Clearly, I’m among them. And while I technically could
live anywhere, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. I like
where I live — not because of any particular qualities of
this place, though I do love its seasons and its smells
and its proximity to the people I care about and the
few weeks every fall when the trees become a riotous
kaleidoscope. But mostly because it’s mine. ■
Ben Harris is the managing editor of My Jewish
Learning, where a version of this essay fi rst
appeared. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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