At the beginning of the summer, a friend called me about his new goldfish. The family was going away on vacation, and he wondered if the preschool might like to babysit their fish. I offered to look after the fish in my own home, which turned out to be a great decision because my children loved the fish. They were excited to feed it, and just to watch it swim around and around. My two-year-old was especially entranced.
Towards the end of the summer, my friend and his family still hadn’t returned from their vacation, and we were preparing to go away ourselves for a couple of weeks. So the fish now needed yet another temporary home. A friend of mine offered to pet-sit, and we dropped the fish off on our way to the airport.
While we were away, I received a text from this friend asking, “How attached to the fish are you? My kids really like it…maybe we can keep this one and we’ll buy you a new one?” I found that a little strange, why not buy his kids a new fish and give me back my fish?
When I got back from vacation I called my friend about the fish, and he reminded me about a joke I said in last year’s Rosh Hashanah sermon.
Phil had worked almost every day of his adult life and never taken a vacation. He also looked after his elderly mother and his cat day and day out. So when he finally agreed to take a vacation (at the urging of friends and family), his main concern was his two charges. Who would take care of them? Kindly, his brother stepped in and Phil went off happily…
On the very first day, Phil called his brother and asked about the cat. “I’m very sorry but the cat has died,” his brother said.
Phil was devastated. “How did this happen? I don’t understand,” he cried. “The cat was healthy. I took care of it so well. I left one day and it is DEAD?”
His brother explained that the cat ran into the street and was hit by a car.
When he’d finally managed to compose himself, Phil told his brother to reconsider his method for delivering bad news in the future. “You should have said, ‘The cat is on the roof.’ In a couple of days you could have added, ‘We’ve had trouble getting the cat down,’ and a few days after that you say, ‘The cat fell off the roof and died.’ That way, I’d at least be prepared.”
The brother apologized and agreed to be more considerate in the future.
“And how’s Mom?” asked Phil.
“Um…she’s on the roof…”
So my friend remembered the joke and hadn’t wanted to tell me that the fish had died within the first 20 minutes he had it. You see, this friend had another tank with a different kind of fish. He figured, why keep both fish isolated, when they could be hanging out together in a single tank. He even called a friend to check if these two fish were safe to combine. But 20 minutes later, his fish got hungry and devoured my fish. So he waited until I got back from vacation to tell me the bad news.
I’m still waiting for a call from the original owners, and when they call I will be sure to tell them, “The fish is on the roof”
The Baal Shem Tov taught that we should be attuned to the lessons of everyday life. What did the fish incident teach me? I realized that like the fish, we’re all in our own “tanks,” which include challenges, hurdles and temptation. Often, we look outward to solve our conflicts. It’s easy to blame everyone else. But when it comes down to it, we need to look inward, examine ourselves and dig deep for a solution.
We are entering the beautiful holiday of Sukkot when we move out of our homes and into temporary dwellings for a full week. For seven days we rely on a hut to protect us from Mother Nature. The Sukkah represents G-d, and its shakiness represents the persecution our nation has been through over the years. We’ve suffered through wars, pogroms and virulent anti-Semitism. We’ve learned to rely only on G-d—we cannot rely on others to help.
So when we sit in the Sukkah this year, let’s remember the importance of looking inwards and relying on G-d to help us.