On the day before Simchat Torah, my five-year-old son, Mendel, injured his eye. I called my friend, an eye doctor, who advised me to go to the emergency room at the eye infirmary downtown—the best place in NYC for eye injuries.
He mentioned there would be a little wait.
Turns out that “little wait” can be a very relative term!
We arrived and the nurse rushed us in, asking question after question about the wound. Then she sent us to the waiting room where there must have been at least 200 people! I asked how long the wait would be, and was told there were only two people ahead of us. Good.
Thankfully I had my ‘droid with me, which is almost like being in my office. The day before a holiday is always very busy and this day was no exception. All was well until my battery ran out…
Looking around I realized the nurse had a funny way of counting. Something along the lines of, “one, one, one, one, two, two, two, two…” There must have been at least 50 people who went ahead of us!
All in all, the ordeal took a full six hours!
Later, I remembered that as soon as I arrived, the nurse asked me how I would classify my son’s injury—low, medium or high. I told her I thought it was high, but she said it looks more like a medium injury. Turns out, that’s why we had the long wait. We were third in line in the medium category, after all the “highs” had been taken care of.
The truth is that on any given day we ask ourselves the same question. Is it low, medium or high?
In this week’s Torah portion, we read the story of Noach. The world had become corrupt and G-d was determined to destroy it. He commanded Noach to build an ark to save himself and his family from the destructive flood. Noach worked on the ark for 120 years, during which time he beseeched the people around him to repent and reevaluate their connection with G-d. How important is spirituality and G-d? Is it high, medium or low priority? Unfortunately, it was a very low priority to those around him, so G-d ultimately sent the flood which destroyed the world.
We are at the tail end of the month of Tishrei, a month where we spent so much time in the synagogue connecting with our Creator. We made commitments and resolutions, and now it’s up to us to follow through. We have to ask ourselves, how important is it? How important is it to me to light Shabbat candles, give my children a Jewish education, wear tefillin, come to synagogue, or eat only kosher? Is it low, medium or high?
Let’s try to keep them as high on the priority list as we can.