Q&A: Leisure Time
Leisure Time
Question
Regarding leisure culture—meaning what is permitted and what is forbidden to do when I have free time—am I obligated to study Torah all the time? Is it forbidden for me to get a little rest or meet friends, etc., etc.? Rabbi Shimshon Pincus wrote (as cited in Rabbi Stav’s book Between the Times):
When a secular Jew and a Haredi Jew sit in the same camp and both watch
movies, except that one is a supervised film, kosher to the highest standard of kashrut,
and the other is unsupervised, utterly non-kosher to the highest degree of non-kosherness,
even so there is prosecution against us,
because in the end we are together…
I do not want to speak harshly, but we must know a fundamental principle.
Every act and every thing that could also interest a secular person, even if there is
nothing forbidden about it, for us it is considered like non-kosher pork, and this is no exaggeration.
For example, hikes. Where did this concept come from among us? Do we really have
a tradition from the Hatam Sofer that he took his students to the Judean Desert?
True, there are differences: secular hikes are done with immodesty, Heaven forbid,
whereas yeshiva boys go separately, wearing kippot,
and of course they do not forget to recite the blessing “that all came to be by His word” when drinking water from the canteen…
But in the end, through these actions we find ourselves with the secular Jews
in the same camp, God save us. So too regarding listening to the radio. Even
if we are talking about broadcasts that are kosher to the strictest standard, etc., etc.
In short, he argues that the world of material pleasures inherently contradicts the world of Torah. This is making me a bit despairing, and I feel trapped in a world where the only thing I’m allowed to do when I have free time is study. What do you think about that?
Answer
I think not. There is a reasonable balance, but a person is allowed to enjoy himself. Things about this are even brought in the Talmud as well (Resh Lakish cried on the day of his death over the fact that he had not enjoyed saffron cake, and indeed there are already moralistic explanations for that). I have an article here about leisure time in Jewish law:
Discussion on Answer
There is a tradition about the Hatam Sofer’s yeshiva students that they definitely went out to the springs on a vacation day—and when was that? In the month of Elul… Yes, that was the time to hike and relax. Afterward they would go out to towns and villages to serve as prayer leaders on the High Holy Days for the sake of earning a living…
And that was at springs belonging to gentiles, in the impurity of the lands of the nations. All the more so the Judean Desert in the Land of Israel. And once he walked there four cubits, he had already merited the life of the World to Come. He hiked—and did plenty of it. May you merit both a fun life in this world and the life of the World to Come.
Has not our national poet already taught us that the study hall is considered a spring, as it is written: “If your soul desires to know the spring from which your brothers drew… strength and mighty powers of soul… — to the study hall, go…”
With blessings,
Haim Nahman Bialik, Volozhin Yeshiva
That is Rabbi Elazar HaKappar—who said that one needs atonement for having deprived himself of wine.
And in general one can learn from Moses our teacher: he did not sit and study Torah, but moved around a lot.
The whole idea of sitting and studying (more precisely, chanting and mumbling) Torah as though that by itself helps with anything is complete nonsense. What matters is action, not study.