Growing up in Vancouver, we always had a rotating family Shabbat dinner (a traditional Jewish , family meal)  ever Friday night. One week it would be at my parent’s home, the next at my aunt and uncles and the next week  at my Granny and Oupa’s. It was always fun to be with the family but, as a teenager, it was often difficult to reconcile the high demands of highschool social life with the duty of staying home every Friday.  I have many memories of feeling frustrated and weighted down by this tradition that seemed restrictive and without any obvious benefit to my emerging social existence.

At eighteen, I left the Vancouver nest and went off to study on the other side of the country , in Montreal. This separation from my family would, ostensibly, have offered the perfect opportunity for me to dispose of the Shabbat tradition and recreate a life freed from the oppression of Shabbat. However, ironically, after a few weeks I came to realize that these dinner’s every Friday were the things I missed the most about home. A week that flowed forth into the next without the Shabbat marker seemed incomplete or undefined. There was no place for me to let go of one week and enter fresh into the next. I decided that I would begin to have Shabbat dinner’s ever Friday at my own student digs. Since my family was not around  I began to invite friends and acquaintances that I met through my studies and experiences at University. I would make a special effort to invite people from different spheres on the same week (i.e the Rugby team members with friends from the the theatre crowd). I would invite many people not knowing who would actually come and who would drop out at the last minute. The result was sometimes a massive Shabbat with thirty people and other times an intimate affair with four friends. Each week was distinct and full of its own flavour but the theme that always ran through was the idea of sharing a moment of rest together and an honouring of the week that had passed. It became the most memorable feature of my University career and a treasure that I still carry with me to this day.

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When I was in my mid-twenties I lived in Paris for about four years. What an amazing place to be for a young, aspiring  theatre artist. Every moment was rich with inspiration and beauty. Sitting in a cafe you felt part of a novel, walking down the street you were in a painting, and just being a few hours in a town square would provide enough drama to fill five acts many times over. Yet, the city also had a dark side. In the winter, the sky was grey, the buildings were grey, and the people often turned sour and bitter. One day, after a particularly gruesome visit to the immigration office (which is infamous for treating applicants as if they were all thieves or five year-olds in need of a spanking), I found myself in tears sitting on a hard park bench, alone. In that moment, images of the BC forests began to emerge in my mind. I would eventually call my parents and talk through my troubles but my initial comfort did not come from people but rather from the trees. Imagining the sights and  smells of the endowment land forest I had roamed freely as a child was enough to give me the strength to go on.

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There is a story I have been told many times and in many different contexts. In many ways , it has followed me throughout much of my adult life. It is possible that you have heard it too (it ‘s everyones story in some way) but I will tell it again anyways.

It tells the story of a man (but it could just as easily be a woman), let’s call him Benjamin, who is not very wealthy and struggles sometimes to even have enough food to get him through the day. One night he has a dream that there is a mass of treasure that can be found under a particular bridge in the (appropriately named) neighbouring town of Richmond. So, the next morning, excited by what seemed like a sign from above, he  gathered up all the coins he had in his house and bought a ticket on the skytrain to this particular spot. When he arrived at the closest stop on the train, he jumped out  and rushed down to the area under bridge that had appeared in his dream. When he arrived, however, a security guard was stationed in front of a massive gate, barring his way. When Benjamin asked to go through he was told that there was construction taking place and that only licensed personnel were allowed passed. On a whim, Benjamin decided that his best chance of inspiring sympathy from the guard might be to tell him the full story. So, he proceeded to tell the security all about his dream and reason for needing to enter. The security guard laughed, “Ha! You came all the way to Richmond because of a dream. How foolish. Even just last night I also had a dream that there is treasure under the oven of a man named Benjamin in Vancouver. Imagine. How silly!”

Upon hearing this, Benjamin said goodbye to the guard and ran back to the skytrain, still able to use his transfer, he rushed straight home. Sure enough, as he moved away his heavy oven ,from its usual spot, he discovered a trap door that opened to reveal mounds of  cash and unused gift cards below. The treasure he had been searching for had always been there, in his own home.

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Home is our source. It is also the place many of us spend most of our lives running away from and then , with what time is left,  struggling to return to. While we all experience different memories as children, the comfort and warmth of home is something we all have implanted in our psyche (maybe from the womb). Those early feelings become a part of us and become an archetype of comfort and safety throughout our lives. I believe that concept of “home” deep within us then becomes a major source of strength and support that can be tapped into in difficult times. That is why depriving children of safety as children (through abandonment, abuse, or neglect) can have such a deeply traumatic effect well into adulthood; the archetype has been corrupted at its roots and accessing that sense of safety is much more difficult. Ironically, in our journey towards self identity we often need to travel as far as we can away from our essential “homes” in an effort to assert independence only to often discover that the treasure we longed for had been under the oven all the time.

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Image 1: slgckgc,Shabbat Candles.Taken on June 18, 2010 (Open Source)

Image 2: RestfulC401 WinterforceMedia. Undercut bank in Capilano River Regional Park, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.11 April 2009 (Open Source)

Works Linked

Jeffrey, Scott. “A Closer Look at Carl Jung’s Individuation Process: A Map for Psychic Wholeness”, https://scottjeffrey.com/individuation-process/ (Accessed February 18, 2019)

Posner, Menachem. “Shabbat”, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/633659/jewish/Shabbat.htm (Accessed January 27, 2019)