By: Rabbi Bill Berk

There are a lot of old jokes about Jewish guilt. Deep in our culture there is this tendency to cast guilt upon ourselves and others. Some times it seems as if our self-inspection causes us to not only feel guilty but to lose that precious commodity called Jewish optimism. Right now in Jewish life the pessimists are having a field day—the American Jewish community is shrinking, Israel is in trouble, the world is against us, etc. Then along comes the summer…

You have to love the gift of summer. Most of us get a chance to get away from our lives. We get a chance to experience something new and think and feel something different. Summer gives us the chance to see a bigger picture and to rediscover hope. With this in mind I’d like to throw out three challenges for the summer.

The first challenge is to work in to your summer travel some Jewish experience. Find your way to some museum, some synagogue, some historical site. Check out the marvel and miracle of Jewish life and creativity.

Here in Israel we are inundated with Jewish travelers— There’s a reason people come here. There is 4,000 years of Jewish history here. My apartment is on a street built that Abraham and Isaac walked some 3,800 years ago. There are archeological sites going way back before that. Christian tourism is huge here and getting bigger all the time—people want to explore the roots of where we all came from.

Here you also find a big piece of the Jewish future—amazing Tel Aviv culture, the unique spiritual city of Jerusalem, the astounding work being done by Israel’s scientists and entrepreneurs. However you don’t have to go 8,000 miles to witness Jewish life. You can visit the Skirball Museum in L.A. or a Reform synagogue in Salt Lake City.

The 1st summer challenge is to find one Jewish stop on your summer journeys. The 2nd challenge is to study some text. If there is one thing most Jews agree on it’s that study and using our brains is a very important part of life well lived.

Here are a few suggestions. Read or re-read the first couple of chapters of Pirke Avot and check out the wisdom literature of the early rabbinic period. You might ask yourself what is going on with the big deal made as Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai presents his five disciples.

Read again the opening chapter of the Bible—what is the message? Why the repetition of the word “good”? How does Genesis chapter one understand the issue of how there can be evil in the world created by the one God? (compare with Isaiah 45:1-7) What is tohu ve-vohu (“unformed and void”)? How does the creation really begin? What recommend everything he wrote but you might try God in Search of Man or The Sabbath or Israel, An Echo of Eternity or A Passion for Truth or The Earth is the Lord’s.

The third challenge is the hardest:try on some new commandment, halacha. Life is sanctified by taking responsibility, by transforming ourselves, our relationships, and our time with each other into something more refined, lofty, and dignified.

Here are some suggestions: take on a new obligation bringing honor to an elder, take on some Shabbat practice that will make that day more different than your week days, make some new tzedakah commitment, try on a new prayer practice.

If you currently don’t pray take on a one minute practice each day. If you do pray, try tacking on a new meditation or a new piece of text or a new focus of the heart or a prayer ritual or garment that in the past didn’t speak to you.

The main thing is to be open to the possibility that some new obligation will sink roots and help you change you. Summer is also a good time to get back to neshima amukah, a deep breath, feeling the fullness of life, and the chance that the world can be good again, and that we can all fall in love again with the world, with life, and with the optimism that sustains us and creates us anew.