At Home
Do you experience the sacred potential inherent in the daily routines of your home life? Here you'll find Jewish rituals, reflections and insights that can help you to access this dimension of the sacred.
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Keeping A Sense Of Home When You Are On The Road
How do you make a "home" when you are staying in a hotel or a vacation spot?
Our tradition teaches that if we are sleeping in one place for a month, we should place a
mezuzah on the door. But how do we create a sense of home when we are staying for just a
week? Or just a night? For a people that has spent generations wandering, we have learnt
how to make home on the road. The Talmud teaches that "…in all the places that
Samuel visited, his home was with him" (Babylonian Talmud: Brakhot 10b). How was it
possible that wherever Samuel traveled, he always felt at home? Rashi explains that Samuel
was able to be at home wherever he went because he traveled with his tent and cooking
utensils.
Meditation:
Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yaacov
How good are your dwellings, Israel!
Ritual:
When you are packing for a trip, bring small things that symbolically represent home to you. This might be photographs, artwork, a book, a stone from your garden.
Blessing:
Barukh shenatan shalom b’chaylaych
Blessed is the One who creates peace within these walls.
Teaching:
Today the world is God’s hotel, in the world to come it will be God’s home.
(adapted from Moed Katan 9a)
May there be peace within your walls, serenity within your dwelling places.
(Psalm 122)
Yehi shalom b’chaylaych
May there be peace within your walls
(CLAL Faculty)
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