The Jewish Backpacker- Adventures In Vietnam - The World On Fire

Are you happy? Heat. Heat. N. Heat. This past Friday night, I walk out of Schul here in Hoan, Vietnam. It's hot. It's sticky. There are scooters zipping past me. There's street food that smells everywhere. There's grilled meat and fried noodles and fresh bread. And I'm heading back to my hotel, walking down an alleyway, and out of nowhere, two Israeli backpackers on motorbikes slam their brakes right in front of me. And there's dust flying and their helmets are half off and they have tattoos and earrings all over their bodies. And one of them leans in and he says, "Hey, where's the Shabbat meal?" So I point them down the road and they take off with their engines roaring and a minute later another Israeli backpacker and then another and then another. All of them going in the same direction. And I'm thinking to myself, why in the world are they going there? They're not going there for the food. Many of them don't eat kosher. They're not going there for the entertainment. There's no shortage of entertainment here in Hoan. So, why ride hours from the farthest corners of Vietnam just to sit at a Shabas's table? Why use up your Friday night eating chicken and rice when you could be exploring Vietnam? The answer is obvious. Because shabas isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. It's oxygen for the soul. Yeah, the body can win sometimes. It can win with Kashos. It can overcome the soul with Sneeas. The soul might give in for a while. But Chabas, the nishama will never give in. It will drag the body 4 hours through the rain, through the dust on a beat up motorbike if that's what it takes. Because some fights it will keep on fighting till the end. And Shabas is one of them. Because Shabas is too precious. It's the day we remember who we are. It's the day we hit reset. It's the day we remind ourselves that life is short and the only way to live it right is with Hashem. And yet sometimes we regret that we don't know more about chapas. We might not know the translations to all the zeras or the deep cobalistic esoteric concepts hiding underneath chabas. And there's no doubt we should learn them. But there's also this truth that sometimes you just need to turn your motorcycle around in life and find yourself a shabas table and open up your nishama and let shabas work its magic.