The Pardoner's Tale

Absolution*

`absu'looshun

1. an absolving or setting free from guilt, sin or penalty; forgiveness of an offense.
2. the exercise of priestly jurisdiction in the sacrament penance, by which Catholics believe that the sins of the truly penitent are forgiven.
3. an absolving from ecclesiastical penalties; -- for example excommunication.

[First off, I can't tell you how happy I am to be back in Israel.  I'm sorry for the light blogging while I was away, but the combination of a packed schedule, jet lag and an epileptic iMac conspired to keep treppenwitz dark for a few days.  Somehow I imagine you all managed just fine without me.]

I borrowed the title for today's entry from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for a very specific reason.  Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale pokes fun at a phenomenon that existed during his lifetime whereby the Church granted licenses to professional confessors, or 'Pardoners' who would travel around selling absolution to anyone with money enough to pay.  Today, the idea of paying a professional pardoner is ridiculous... especially now that there are so many of us that are available to do it for free!

As a rule, when I travel I tend to wear baseball hats rather than my kippah (yarmulke).  The reason for this is that invariably I will be approached by people on the plane who feel the need to tell me that they were once observant... that their parents or grandparents were very religious people... that their brother-in-law's half brother once kept kosher... that they had wanted to have a Passover Seder last year but they suddenly found themselves on vacation in Sri Lanka  during the holiday and there was no place to buy matzoh...

I don't know exactly what motivates these impromptu confessions, but the end result is that I end up being placed in the unenviable position of having to somehow make them feel OK about the fact that they (or their various relations) are no longer interested in being observant Jews. 

The truth is, I have enough trouble keeping myself on the straight and narrow... I can't possibly help anyone else deal with their personal crisis of faith.  Therefore, I don't wear my kipah anymore on planes... just my trusty 'Bosox' cap.

However, on last week's whirlwind speaking tour around Connecticut and New York I was obviously unable to keep a low profile as an observant Jew, and as an Israeli.  This combination seems to have brought out many people who are genuinely interested in moving to Israel... as well as a few in search of absolution for NOT wanting to move there!

Let me give you a 'for instance':

"Hi, my wife Vashti and I really, really want to move to Israel but we're concerned about a couple of small issues.  I have a doctorate in an extremely obscure sub-dialect of Sanskrit poetry and my wife has an asthmatic condition that requires that she live in a humidity free area that has a constant ambient temperature of between 76 and 81 degrees Fahrenheit.  In addition, all 8 of our children have a rare behavioral disorder that requires them to be given special medication and several hours of 'restrained quiet time' during the middle of the school day.  We have been very fortunate to live near the world expert in this particular problem, and he is always available to us when one of the kids needs a supplemental dose of Thorazine.  Up until this point the only thing keeping us from packing up and moving to Israel has been that my mother has become too frail to look after her 37 cats by herself.  Can you give us some advice on how to put our Israel plans on the fast-track?"

Whenever I had one of these encounters (and I'm really not exaggerating), I felt like I should make the sign of the cross and say, "I absolve you... you are forgiven". 

C'mon people... it's really OK to not want to live in Israel.  Really.

You have to understand that what people like this are looking for is permission to stop feeling guilty about not moving to Israel.  What they want is the smallest sign of hesitation on your part so they can spend the rest of their lives confidently telling people "we would have gladly moved to Israel... but we met someone who said it really wouldn't be the right place for us".

[sigh]

Don't get me wrong.  I met many, many wonderful people on my trip who are quite serious about their plans to move to Israel. 

I also met many, many wonderful people who are quite comfortable with their decision to live their lives outside of Israel.

Either way is really okeeydokey with me.  Really.

My role on this trip was to offer limited advice to people who are thinking about moving and to share my own personal experiences (having gone through the process of moving to Israel in the not-too-distant past).  It was not to assuage or escalate anyone's guilt over decisions they have already made!

There is something called 'Free Will' (no people, not Free Willy) that each of us was given at birth.  Some of the choices we make require us to act decisively... and other choices are made by simply taking no action.  Yes, inaction can also be a decision.

The neat (and difficult) part of the whole 'free will' thing is that very few choices we make during our lives are clearly wrong or right.  They are simply small decisions whose ramifications may or may not become clear to us before the end of our lives. 

Some of us make most of our decisions without input or advice from others (kind of like the way I drive without ever asking directions, or put together the Ikea stuff without ever glancing at the instructions), and others are diligent about doing extensive research and looking directions up on Mapquest. 

In my experience there is merit to both approaches to decision making.  Just please, please take some personal responsibility for whichever way you decide to live your life.   If at some point you decide to change your mind... that's OK too.

As the song goes"

"Yes there are two paths you can go by
but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on"

Just don't look to me for absolution.

* 3 of the 6 definitions from Webster's 1913 Dictionary