On hospitality

With the most dire economic projections suggesting that perhaps 50 million people world-wide may be out of work in the depths of this depression, now might be a good time to talk about hospitality.

To many of us, hospitality is some vague social nicety that encourages us to open our doors to dinner guests and occasional meetings, card games or book clubs. It might mean welcoming family for weekend visits, holiday meals, or family reunions, and if you are in the more observant community, it might mean putting up strangers who are visiting your shul for a family simcha. In fact, those are valuable social niceties that multiply and enrich, in small ways, life's social encounters and strengthen the knitting of society.

But now is when we will learn the true meaning of hospitality, the way it is understood in desert communities, or was practiced among the "overlanders," the intrepid Americans who traveled from Missouri to settle on the west coast in the mid-1800's, or in any society or migrant population when scarcity and dislocation rudely reared up.

To us, hospitality means sharing a bit of our excess. When we expect guests, we prepare and shop for more. When they stay over, we offer a guest room. Our stores are not usually diminished, our portion is not truly burdened, when we extend our hand and home in hospitality. Most often, though not always, we offer hospitality on our schedule. Some of us may feel a little put out, or may sense some invasion of privacy. But these are conceits and blessings of luxury and muchness. For, in fact, most of us can afford the space, the time and the money. to be hospitable. It is a small badge of honor we still cherish. And we know the guests will leave soon.

But in this economic climate, when people are losing their homes and their jobs, hospitality may be pressing instead of optional. Family and friends may need to take guests in. Our guests might be able to pay or they may not. There might be an end date in sight or there may not. And while our guests may be grateful, they may not be gracious. For they may come with emotional baggage filled with loss, embarrassment, guilt and anger.

That is when the true test of hospitality begins. When we are asked to bring others into our sphere, allow them to share our limited supply of food and space and time. It does not mean that our guests have no obligation to give back to us. They may assist in the home-work when they are with us. Or they may not, being overwhelmed at the moment. They may return our kindness to us years from now. Or they may repay our generosity by showing the same to others.

Or perhaps even this picture is too rosy. Perhaps we will not be the hosts pressed into service for our loved ones. Perhaps we will be the supplicants, the reluctant guests needing to live off the generosity of others. It is intriguing that the words guest and host come from the same root, as if to reinforce the fact of their mutuality, reciprocity. That is, not only do I need a guest to make me a host (hence, mutuality) but while today I am the host, tomorrow I may need to be the guest (hence, reciprocity). Such awareness arouses my humility and my patience, no matter which side of the equation I am on at the moment.

We are living in a time that will challenge us all. It will challenge our generosity, our sense of entitlement, our boundaries, our sense of self. It will ask us to think deeply about what is truly ours; how much we truly need; what is best, and rightly, shared. It will ask us to judge ourselves and others more grandly than by our income and what we crudely call "worth". It will ask us to measure life by the truer standards of goodness and joy and satisfaction.

Perhaps, then, in this dark time, we will learn to be guided by the gentler lights of simple joy and the elegance of enoughness that have been outshone by the blinding glare of the rush for more. If so, that would be a lesson we can all take to the bank.