When it comes to choosing a place to live or a place to open a business, it is all about location.
Why? Well, in business, if your retail shop is in a poorly located, even if you have very attractive goods but nobody knows about them, you will not sell anything. However, why does it really matter where you live? A house is a house. Why does the neighborhood matter? If you have children in public school then you can argue that you want certain services. However, if you are sending your kids to Jewish Day School, then does it matter in which community you live? So long as you can get them to school, you are good to live in any house you choose. We can expand the question to colleges. If a university student is going to learn and earn a degree, does it matter if there is “Jewish life” on campus? How about if one is figuring out what job to take? Lately there have been articles published about how people are fleeing the big cities (NY, LA, DC) and moving to smaller cities around the country (Charlotte, Austin, Columbus). Should Jews leave the infrastructure of Jewish life, Jewish community, etc., just so that they can live a more “comfortable life” where the Jewish community is less established? Should the Jewish community be a deciding factor in our decision-making? In addition to the broader benefits that one might get from living in a community that has the amenities one might need, there is also a spiritual factor that one should take into consideration. This week’s Torah portion starts with the words, “And Jacob went out from Be’er Sheva and went toward Charan.” The commentators point out that it should read he went toward first, not he went out from first. This teaches us that his leaving town left behind a void—even though his parents, righteous people as well, were still in town. A city or town with righteous people living in it is a blessing for all its inhabitants, and when they leave, those blessings leave with them. Hence the void. Jacob was running for his life from his brother, Esau, so he had no choice. Wherever he went he had to build a Jewish life there. It wasn’t easy for him and eventually he went back home, but that is for another discussion. The focus here is on the town that he left behind. This spiritual factor is, at times, hard to notice. How Jewish a community is might be hard to measure. Even in our personal lives we might not be sure how involved we want to be in our own Jewishness, but that doesn’t negate the fact that our “location” will have an effect on our lives. Let’s translate this verse with a Chasidic twist: By looking at the meaning behind the words of the verse, we can glimpse a deeper message hidden within the story. “Jacob” represents the Jewish people, so Jacob becomes the “soul” of the Jewish people and “Be’er Sheva” – the city with seven wells – represents the wellspring of life, or “heaven.” It follows that our souls descend from the highest place in heaven and enter into the town of “Charan,” representing the difficulties of this world, the challenges of day-to-day life. The distraction of our soul, the “Charan” of the world, makes us forget from where our soul came. How do we stay connected? By living in “Be’er Sheva,” by deciding to live in a Jewish community. So does location matter? Absolutely! Does it matter which college a kid chooses? 100%! Does my neighborhood matter? Of course!
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