The Best Place to Live
Jul 13th, 2010 | By admin | Category: 2007-8, Archivesby Rabbi Yisrael Rutman
You can tell a lot about someone by the way they talk, their clothing, their body language. A person’s choice of residence (assuming it’s by choice, not necessity) can also tell you something about them.
A survey published recently in Money Magazine (what they call themselves might also be a clue) listed the most affluent places in America to live in. For those who are as yet impervious to the gloom-drenched economic climate, and are shopping for something upscale, there’s nothing more upscale than Hillsborough, California. The northern California town (excuse me, “enclave”) boasts a median household income of $263,456, and a median home price of $2,606,764. Hillsborough outpriced even such bastions of affluence as Scarsdale, NY, Los Altos Hills, CA, and Winnetka, IL.
Not everyone is dazzled by money, though, even at a magazine by that name. “Economic opportunity, good schools, safe streets, things to do, and a real sense of community” were the editors’ criteria for the best small towns to live in. At the top of the list was Middletown, Wisconsin (pop. 17,400) which offers “small-town charm, booming economy, extensive parks and bike trails.” (That it also offers one of the best opportunities to freeze to death in winter just proves the adage that you have to take the good with the bad.) Someone who moves to Middletown after reading Money’s endorsement obviously shares those values. (Either that, or can’t afford Hillsborough.)
In the Mishna in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, 6:9), Rabbi Yossi ben Kisma informs us of another criterion for choosing a place to live: “Once I was walking on a road, when a certain man met me. He greeted me and I returned his greeting. He said to me: ‘Rabbi, from what place are you?’ I said to him: ‘I am from a great city of scholars and sages.’ He said to me: ‘Rabbi, would you be willing to live with us in our place? I would give you thousands upon thousands of golden dinars, precious stones and pearls.’ I replied: ‘Even if you were to give me all the golden dinars, precious stones and pearls in the world, I would dwell nowhere but in a place of Torah.’ ” It doesn’t mean that Rabbi Yossi had anything against extensive parks and biking trails; but for him Torah trumped everything else.
The prophet Jeremiah’s Lamentations over the destruction of the First Temple at the hands of the Babylonians is the central text of the 9th of Av. In the third verse, he says that “Judah was exiled because of oni, poverty.” But such a description can’t be taken at face value, since Jerusalem (located in the territory of Judah) was at that time a splendid city with a thriving economy and culture. So the Midrash (Eicha Rabba) interprets the word oni as an allusion to lechem oni, the bread of poverty, the matzot that our fathers ate in Egypt, and that we eat every year at the Passover Seder. It’s because the citizens of Judah were eating lechem osher, the bread of wealth, leavened bread, forbidden during Passover, that they were sent into exile.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains the verse in the spirit of the Midrash. The oni, the poverty, was not of a material nature, for of that Jerusalem lacked nothing. But what it had was not its own; what the people took pride in was imported from elsewhere. The beautiful architecture was in imitation of the Greeks, the economic policies were Egyptian, the cultural standards set by Moab. The oni, the poverty was of a spiritual type; it was Judah that had gone bankrupt. The Jewish traditions of Judah which they had abandoned in favor of alien ways brought about the exile.
The “best places to live” may be beautiful and expensive, the envy of millions. But if it’s poor in the heritage of Judah, if its residents have exiled themselves from Jewish tradition, then we must say with Rabbi Yossi, “I would dwell nowhere but in a place of Torah.”
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