By Jay D. Homnick on 5.29.09 @ 6:05AM
A greeting for the holiday of Pentecost.
The other day while making a social call I was privy to a
well-known local figure railing resentfully against the Jewish
law requiring seven days of mourning for a departed parent. Why,
he asked, should a person have to give up seven days of work and
recreation to honor a father who abandoned him at birth, while a
foster parent who cared for him for years and paid for his
education does not get the same consideration? (Incidentally, a
voluntary mourning would be permitted and highly appropriate in
the latter instance, but not required.)
It was not appropriate to comment in that environment, but I
could not resist reveling in the irony.
This man achieved fame as an attorney by representing a place of
worship that had set up in a neighborhood of Hollywood, Florida.
The people attending services were well-mannered and unobtrusive,
but a few ornery neighbors had used technicalities of zoning to
press for eviction. The municipality unwisely backed the
troublemakers and was defeated in court by our friend. In the
end, the city had to pay damages of a few million dollars.
Now, many residents of Hollywood favored the cause of this
congregation, cheering this attorney as he plied their grievance
through the courtrooms of Broward County. They were nothing but
pleasant and supportive at every step. Yet when the judgment came
though, those friendly open-minded taxpayers paid exactly as much
as their crabby, hostile neighbors.
This is how the law works. It imposes systems on human activity.
These systems bring order and clarity according to a set of
guiding principles. Our transactions, our interactions, are
measured against a yardstick based firmly in the ground of
justice. Still, not every result is pleasant or convenient… or
even, taken by itself, so very just. Yet the irritation
experienced when the law rumbles over our foot with a heavy tread
is itself a contribution to a noble cause.
The holiday of Pentecost (Shavuot), celebrated this year on May
29 and 30, commemorates the Law being handed down at Mount Sinai.
This law has brought an encompassing clarity to the behavior of
mankind. When it is followed good things happen. When it is
ignored life becomes that much less dignified, that much less
edified. It is possible for individuals to skate through their
lives in disregard of its tenets, but when the world at large
tries to navigate without it, very little time elapses before
chaos reigns triumphant.
There is a secondary meaning to this holiday as well. Tradition
says that mankind is judged on this day, to determine how much
fruit will grow on its trees. It seems reasonable to assume this
covers more than just apples and oranges. Our creativity on all
levels is given its motor on this day.
This year all this arrives in the midst of great economic
turmoil, accompanied by a sort of moral disorientation. People
are struggling to grab hold of a rudder, to right the shift of
life. They are sensing more and more that government and courts,
shredding the meaning of marriage and the sanctity of life, do
not hold the key to our salvation. It is a time to return to our
creativity, to ask for a new inventiveness and ambition, but only
within the context of honoring the great law by which mankind has
been ennobled.
