The Sickness of Never
Taking a Sick Day
YISRAEL CAMPBELL
SHMA.COM
“Iretired with over 300 sick days, for what?” My father spoke these words the day after he was diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer that had spread to his liver.
A series of strokes had left him unable to move
his left side. It had been a bad day. That first
night in the hospital was the first he had ever
spent in a hospital over the course of his entire life. My 75-year-old father lived twelve
more days, and we spoke of many other things,
but our conversation never again touched on
this topic. And now, of course, there is no way
to talk about anything.
One other time — twelve years earlier —
we had spoken about those “sick days.” At the
time of his retirement, I was shocked to hear
he would be paid only 25 percent of his sick-time benefit. I had suggested that instead of
retiring, he call in sick every day for the next
two years. “Dad,” I had said with the exasperation of someone who had never had a job
that included sick days, “why didn’t you ever
use any of those days?” “I wasn’t sick,” was
his answer.
He worked as a teacher and provided for
us; we lacked for nothing. But once he became
a grandfather, we saw what we had been missing. How he changed after retirement, how his
life was enriched, made diverse, when he became a daily caregiver to his grandchildren and
a twice-weekly tennis player up until the week
before his hospitalization! Though he had always liked to draw, mostly with pencil and usually on a napkin or the back of an envelope, he
began attending art classes. My parents’ home
slowly filled with children’s toys, tiny bags of
chocolate chip cookies in a drawer just within
reach of the children’s short arms, cocoa, and
juice boxes in the fridge. The walls of their
home became the backdrop to my father’s
somber portraits, mostly sketched in pencil and
charcoal, some nudes. I didn’t know he had it
in him!
The biblical Avraham had it easy. Every
time he walked down the street, he saw the
sign in his father’s shop: “Idols for sale.” It was
as clear as a summer night on the Vegas strip:
“Idols, Idols, Idols.” Avraham’s father trafficked
in idols, as did mine, as do I, I imagine. My
father fed the “idol of work.” I’m a comedian
who quite frankly is hard pressed to work as
often or as steadily as my father. Feeding the
idol of work isn’t my problem, anyway.
Growing up, the message was clear: Work is
most important. Undoubtedly, it was the repos-
itory of my father’s emotional energy. And as I
raise my children, I can understand why my fa-
ther made that choice. Work and career are a
more clear-cut venue for one’s emotional life —
certainly easier than the soft, complex, unclear
science of child rearing, which is filled with so
many disappointments and setbacks. Sure, with
a long view, most of us are pretty good at par-
enting, but with a long view — say 500 years,
if we discount a decade — Jewish life was good
in Poland. Day-to-day parenting is hard; focus-
ing on work is easier. But in the final analysis,
what he got for himself and gave to his grand-
children and even his children once his outlook
and attitude changed was worth far more than
Each month over the
course of this year, a
guest columnist reflects
on the midrash of
Avraham destroying the
idols in his father’s shop.
We’ve asked our writers
to think about the idols
they must still transcend
to “get to Canaan.”
Father’s Idols
A YEARLONG
CONVERSATION
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Because I am part of an active and conscious
spiritual community that forces me to reckon with
those idols of my father’s that I’ve broken and left
behind, I can’t just work. I can’t build my emotional
life and identity from my work alone.
the 25 cents on the dollar he was paid for those
unused sick days. And that is what we both realized when he said “for what” as he lay dying.
I, too, work and I work hard; I’m currently
producing a one-man show off Broadway that I
wrote, perform in, and do publicity for, while
also being a “hands-on” dad, parenting three
children and awaiting the birth of a fourth
whose due date is imminent. But because I am
part of an active and conscious spiritual community that forces me to reckon with those idols
of my father’s that I’ve broken and left behind,
I can’t just work. I can’t build my emotional life
and identity from my work alone. A parable: A
young mother and wife asked the Lubavitcher
Rebbe, z”l, if she should become a typist to help
her family. His response, I’m paraphrasing, was:
“If you need the work to help your family, by
all means take the work. But you’re a wife and
a mother; don’t become a ‘typist.’”
Yisrael Campbell, one of
Israel’s premier stand-up
comedians, is currently living in
New York with his family, where
he is performing in his one-
man show, Circumcise Me; at
the Bleecker Street Theater.
( www.circumcisemetheplay.com)
