Don’t Let Summer Put Your Soul To Sleep

Rabbi Pinchas Landis On Rest, Family Memories, And Remaining Spiritually Awake

Summer sends a clear message: slow down, loosen the schedule, leave the city, and take a break. The Jewish calendar seems to be saying something very different. Just as vacations, camps, bungalow colonies, beaches, and family trips reach full swing, we emerge from the Three Weeks and begin the seven weeks of consolation leading toward Rosh Hashanah. Before long, the shofar of Elul begins sounding, calling upon a Jew to wake up precisely when the surrounding culture is telling everyone to relax.

That tension formed the heart of Rabbi Pinchas Landis’s conversation on Chazaq Torah Talks. With his warmth, humor, and unmistakable Southern energy, Rabbi Landis joined Rabbi Yaniv Meirov to discuss “Summer or Slumber?” and how a Jew can enjoy the season without allowing the soul to drift into hibernation.

Rabbi Landis grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in a family so firmly rooted there that nearly every member of several generations remained in the city. As a teenager attending public school, however, he felt drawn toward yeshivah life. There was no Chazaq in Atlanta at the time to help guide that transition, so he learned wherever he could, connected with the Atlanta Kollel, and entered yeshivah after graduating from high school.

His path took him to Yeshiva University, Ohr Somayach in Eretz Yisrael, and Ner Israel in Baltimore, where he received semichah. After working in outreach and the rabbinate in Cincinnati, he moved to Cleveland to help establish Partners Cleveland. The organization connects Jews across the city—and, through virtual programming, far beyond it—with Torah study and one-on-one learning. An important part of its approach is empowering ordinary community members to become learning partners rather than leaving Jewish education entirely to professional rabbis and teachers.

That background helps explain why Rabbi Landis views the summer question as far more than a matter of scheduling. It touches the broader challenge of living fully as a Jew while remaining engaged with the world around us. Rabbi Landis contrasted Noach, whose preservation came through entering the teivah, with Avraham Avinu, who went outward and brought the knowledge of Hashem to others. A Jew’s task is to participate in the world without allowing its values to determine who that Jew becomes.

From the Jewish calendar’s perspective, these weeks are among the most serious of the year. The mourning of Tishah B’Av is meant to awaken reflection and change. The seven weeks that follow carry messages of consolation, rebuilding, and closeness to Hashem. Elul then arrives with its call to examine our lives and prepare for the Yamim Nora’im. Yet all of this unfolds while American culture is saying, “Go to a ballgame. Get on a boat. Head to the amusement park.”

Rabbi Landis laughed about the apparent contradiction. In New York, he joked, it can seem almost forbidden to be in the city during August rather than in the bungalow colonies. Still, Jewish holidays are never truly early or late. They arrive exactly when the Jewish calendar says they should, whether or not that fits neatly with our vacation plans.

The answer is not to reject relaxation. Rest has a purpose. Time away can restore a person, strengthen a family, and create experiences that remain long after the suitcases are unpacked. But Rabbi Landis drew an important distinction familiar to every parent: There is a difference between a vacation and a family trip.

A vacation suggests quiet, sleep, and freedom from responsibility. A family trip may involve hours in the car, luggage piled everywhere, children arguing in the back seat, food packed from home, a cabin with unreliable Wi-Fi, and plans that begin unraveling almost immediately. Parents who expect uninterrupted peace are setting themselves up for disappointment. Parents who enter the experience hoping to create memories will see the same difficulties very differently.

Rabbi Landis spoke shortly before taking his own family on its first major trip in more than a year. Five children, a long drive, a wedding, the Smoky Mountains, and the need to carry kosher food into an area without the conveniences of the Catskills did not sound especially restful. Yet rest was not the only goal. “The point is creating memories,” he said.

Ordinary days easily blend together. A family may barely remember one Tuesday from the next, but everyone remembers the trip when the tire went flat, the cabin was not what they expected, or a carefully planned outing went completely off course. Whether those become warm memories or bitter ones often depends on how the adults respond.

Rabbi Landis recalled hearing from an outreach professional that some of the best moments on organized trips to Eretz Yisrael occurred when the bus broke down. At first, that sounded absurd. How could a broken bus compete with the Kosel or Masada? The answer was that an interruption forced everyone to slow down. Staff members stopped racing toward the next attraction, sat with participants, and had conversations that might never have happened otherwise. The breakdown itself created an unexpected opening.

The same can happen within a family. A wrong turn, a delayed flight, a rainy afternoon, or a child’s meltdown can ruin the day—or become part of the story everyone laughs about years later. Parents set the emotional temperature. When they remain calm and flexible, children learn that happiness does not depend upon everything going according to plan.

That does not mean summer should become a spiritual vacation. Rabbi Landis compared life to walking upward on a downward-moving escalator. Standing still does not leave a person in the same place; it carries that person backward. Spiritual life has its own headwinds, and ignoring them does not make them disappear.

The answer is not necessarily to maintain the exact same learning schedule used throughout the year. A different season can create room for a different kind of Torah. Someone who usually studies Gemara might use a long drive to listen to Jewish history. Someone immersed in practical halachah might finally open a sefer on Tanach, Jewish thought, or the life of a great Torah leader. Summer offers time that may not exist during the ordinary rush of school and work. The goal is to use some of it deliberately.

Rabbi Landis shared advice once given by one of his own teachers before students left yeshivah for vacation. The rebbi understood that they would not learn as many hours while visiting family, traveling, and catching up on sleep. Still, each student was urged to learn something every day and to choose material different from the regular yeshivah curriculum—something personally enjoyable that might otherwise remain unopened. A Jew should never confuse taking a break from routine with taking a break from identity.

The same principle applies to tefillah, kashrus, tefillin, and every other commitment a person values. Problems usually arise not because observance is impossible on vacation, but because it was never included in the planning. Families research hotel rates, attractions, restaurants, traffic, weather, and discounts. Rabbi Landis urged listeners to plan the spiritual side of the trip with equal care.

Where will there be a minyan? When will the family daven? Is kosher food available, or must it be packed? Are the tefillin safely in the car? What will everyone listen to during the drive? These questions should be answered before departure, not after arriving in a place where the nearest Jewish community is hours away.

To illustrate what preparation can accomplish, Rabbi Landis described a close friend who went nearly three decades after his bar mitzvah without missing a minyan. That did not mean he never traveled. It meant that every trip was arranged around the commitment. Before flying to Rabbi Landis’s wedding, the friend made sure everyone davened in the airport rather than assuming there would be another opportunity later. His consistency did not happen by accident; it was the result of careful preparation. “If you anticipate the headwinds and prepare for them,” Rabbi Landis said, “you’ll win the race every time.”

Summer also offers unusual opportunities to influence others. Families spend more time together. Friends travel, gather for barbecues, sit outside after dinner, or share long car rides. Children watch how their parents react when plans fail, how seriously they treat a minyan away from home, and whether a brachah is said with the same care beside a pool as it is at the kitchen table.

People learn as much from what we do as from what we say. A person who speaks beautifully about Torah but abandons every standard while traveling sends a stronger message through conduct than through words. A person who enjoys the trip fully while remaining calm, considerate, grateful, and committed shows that Torah does not diminish life. Torah gives life direction.

Rabbi Landis drew upon Rav Dessler’s teaching that Torah is not something later imposed upon the world; Torah is the blueprint through which the world was created. Each season therefore carries its own spiritual possibilities. Those possibilities exist whether or not we notice them.

He compared the idea to radio waves. Long before smartphones and streaming, music and voices traveled invisibly through a room. Someone with a radio tuned to the proper frequency could hear them. Someone without a radio heard silence, even though the signal was present all along.

The weeks following Tishah B’Av carry a current of consolation. The haftarot repeatedly speak of Hashem comforting His people and remaining with them after loss. Elul carries an invitation to return, rethink, and begin again. The signal is present, but we must decide whether to tune in.

That may mean taking ten minutes during a quiet morning to learn something. It may mean having a meaningful conversation with a child during a long drive. It may mean bringing a less-connected relative to a warm Shabbos meal while everyone is away together. It may simply mean recognizing that the extra time and different surroundings are not interruptions to Jewish life but opportunities within it.

Rabbi Landis found another lesson in the Torah readings of the season. During the summer, we begin Sefer Devarim, Moshe Rabbeinu’s final address to bnei Yisrael. Over the last weeks of his life, Moshe reviewed their history, warned them about the choices ahead, and gave them the teachings he most wanted them to carry into Eretz Yisrael.

Devarim does not hide the difficulties bnei Yisrael would face. Moshe Rabbeinu warned that the nation would make serious mistakes, experience exile, and endure hostility among the nations. Yet the message was never one of abandonment. Bnei Yisrael would survive, return, and rebuild because Hashem would never forsake His people.

Rabbi Landis cited a striking calculation from Rabbi Dr. Dovid Gottlieb, who estimated that the likelihood of the developments described in Devarim unfolding naturally was approximately one in 16,000. The exact figure represents Rabbi Dr. Gottlieb’s own probability estimate, but the broader point is unmistakable: Moshe described a nation that would be scattered across the world, repeatedly threatened yet never erased, and ultimately drawn back to its ancestral homeland.

Our generation has watched that return unfold on a scale earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. Eretz Yisrael is now home to the world’s largest Jewish population, with nearly half of world Jewry living there. After centuries of exile and persecution, bnei Yisrael did not disappear. The nation survived, returned, and rebuilt.

For Rabbi Landis, this is not merely a remarkable chapter of Jewish history. It confirms the message running through Moshe Rabbeinu’s final words: The road may be long and difficult, but Hashem never abandons His people.

That is the thought he wanted listeners to carry through the summer. Rest, travel, laugh, explore, and create memories. Do not expect every plan to work, and do not allow the inevitable mishaps to define the experience. Prepare before leaving so the values that guide the family at home continue guiding it on the road.

Most of all, do not sleep through the spiritual opportunities of the season. The comfort, closeness, and call to return are already in the air, and sometimes all we have to do is turn on the radio.

By Rabbi Yaniv Meirov
Chazaq Torah Talks –
Episode 23
Originally Aired July 28, 2021