I was walking along the beach this morning and, despite the early hour of 6:45 a.m., the shoreline was already alive with activity.
Some people were running, pushing their limits as the sun rose over the horizon. Others were on yoga mats, breathing deeply and holding poses with serene concentration.
Out at sea, windsurfers and regular surfers alike darted across the waves, while a few adrenaline junkies were flying through the air on futuristic machines that, to the untrained eye, seemed far from airworthy.
As I watched this colorful tapestry of movement, I marveled at the diversity of activities that occupy the human mind and body. We are, after all, endlessly creative in how we fill our hours. But there was one activity, in particular, that I found hard to “get” – fishing.
There were quite a few fishermen (and maybe fisherwomen) dotted along the shoreline, each sitting on a small folding chair, their tackle boxes open and neatly organized with bait and maggots, their lines disappearing into the sea.
As we passed each one and offered a smiling boker tov (good morning), I turned to my wife and admitted that I could not, for the life of me, understand the point of it. Sitting there for hours, alone, waiting for a fish to bite – only to reel it in and possibly throw it back.
My wife, who is a psychotherapist, smiled patiently. She explained that these solitary anglers find immense comfort and calm in the experience. It is not about the fish, she said, but about them: about sitting still, contemplating the world, and immersing themselves in the rhythms of nature.
I SHOOK my head. She knows me well enough to anticipate my response. For me, sitting there would be maddening. In my internal hierarchy of sins, wasting time is the greatest of all. In fact, waste of any kind – food, money, time, talent, opportunity – is something I find almost unbearable. “That’s because your brain is wired differently from the fisherman’s brain,” my wife replied wisely.
Her words lingered with me as we continued along the beach.
A timely reflection approaching Tisha B'Av
And then a thought struck me – how timely this reflection was, as we are about to enter a somber period in the Jewish calendar: the Nine Days. From Rosh Chodesh Av until the Ninth of Av, Tisha B’Av, we step into a season of collective mourning. These nine days are marked by a subdued spirit, leading us into the saddest day of the Jewish year.
Tisha B’Av commemorates layers of tragedy: the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, the subsequent exile and countless calamities through our history: expulsions, pogroms, and even, many centuries later, the dark shadow of the Holocaust.
The Talmud (Yoma 9b) teaches that while the First Temple fell because of the classic sins of idolatry, immorality and bloodshed, the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat hinam – baseless hatred. In modern language, I would call it a failure to respect others.
AND SO, standing there on the sand, watching those fishermen, I had to confront something uncomfortable in myself.
Had you asked me whether I am guilty of baseless hatred, I would have indignantly said no. And yet, in that quiet moment, I realized I was. Because in my head – though not aloud – I was castigating those men for what I considered to be a monumental waste of time.
It was a sobering moment.
If I could so easily dismiss the value someone else finds in their chosen pastime simply because it does not align with my own values, what else might I be dismissing without noticing?
How many times in a day do we judge others by our own standards, failing to recognize that their brains are wired differently, their priorities shaped by experiences, traumas, cultural backgrounds, and educations we may never understand?
Once that thought took hold, I began to see examples everywhere. In England, where I grew up, people queue in an orderly fashion. They raise a hand in gratitude when someone lets them merge in traffic.
They generally avoid shouting in public. These behaviors are so deeply ingrained in me that when I encounter different social norms – someone pushing ahead in a supermarket line, refusing to give way in traffic, or shouting in a café – I feel myself bristle.
And yet, here in Israel, these encounters are not necessarily rudeness. They are expressions of cultures gathered from across the globe, thrown together in this extraordinary ingathering of exiles.
People have different norms, different histories, different wounds and strengths. If I cling only to my own standard and resent those who don’t share it, then I too am guilty of sinat hinam.
THIS REALIZATION isn’t just a private moral check – it is a call to action for all of us. We live in a miraculous era. Every day in Israel, we witness Jews returning from the four corners of the earth, each with their own backstory, each with their own way of doing things.
Instead of expecting uniformity, what if we leaned into that diversity? What if we celebrated it? What if we trained ourselves not to rush to judgment but to look for the value in someone else’s way of being?
In the words of John Lennon: “Imagine.”
Imagine, for a moment, what that would look like. Imagine an Israel where we truly respected one another – not only tolerating differences but cherishing them. Imagine a society in which the surfer, the yogi, the fisherman, the businessperson, the soldier, the rabbi, the artist, and the child all felt seen and valued for who they are.
Imagine an Israel where we treated each other with due respect, recognized our differences, and celebrated them rather than trying to assert dominance over those around us: That would be the ultimate redemption. That would be the day when we would no longer need to mourn in the Nine Days, because the very sin that brought about our destruction would have been uprooted from our hearts.
As we enter this pre-Tisha B’Av period of reflection and semi-mourning, let us each take a step back and ask ourselves: Where in my life do I judge others unfairly? Where do I impose my own standards without recognizing theirs? And how can I open my heart a little wider, soften my judgments, and honor the infinite variety of souls that make up the people of Israel?
The anglers on the beach taught me something precious today. Without saying a word, they reminded me that not all value is measured by productivity. Not all time is wasted when it looks empty. Sometimes, sitting quietly and contemplating the world is exactly what the soul needs.
If we can learn to see the world through each other’s eyes, perhaps we will yet merit to see the day when our mourning turns to joy, and the shores of Israel are filled not only with surfers and fishermen but with a people fully at peace with one another.
Imagine that.
The writer, a rabbi and physician, lives in Ramat Poleg, Netanya. He is a co-founder of Techelet – Inspiring Judaism.