The lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have arrived. Time to do things that we don’t get a chance to do, or do enough of the rest of the year. Time to set aside a few days or a few weeks, if we can, for relaxation and recreation, whether swimming, biking, wiggling our toes in the sand, or just settling down with a good read.

Centuries ago, the rabbis put a particular Jewish book on the recommended summer reading list. It is called Pirke Avot, often translated as Ethics of the Fathers, and it is a section of that great classic, the Mishnah.

Unlike the rest of the Mishnah, which deals mostly with the basic laws governing different particular aspects of Jewish living (such as Shabbat and holidays, laws of marriage and divorce, tort law, etc.), Pirke Avot focuses on values, ideas and attitudes which help us make sense of the whole of Jewish life.

For it was clear to the rabbis that we can lose sight of the forest for the trees. Just as in our work life, if we get snowed under a blizzard of details, we can lose track of the road we set out to follow, of our plans and our purpose.

In this sense, our Jewish life is no different. Sometimes we need to take the time to think of how we are approaching the whole of our Jewish life.

The teachings in Avot that rise to my mind this summer season address the way that we use our tradition. What is the ethic that guides us to a constructive use of the spiritual, intellectual and emotional riches that Judaism delivers into our creative custody?

The first teaching I am thinking of asks us to consider the greatness of the gift that we have in Torah:

Ben Bag Bag said: “Go over it and go over it again, for everything is in it. Look deeply into it, grow old and gray over it, for there is nothing more edifying.”

That is a teaching worth pondering. Go over it again as you think of the issues we face as individuals, as communities, as a world.

Consider the more than 3,000 years of real-life experience passed down in Jewish texts and traditions. The rabbis were students of human nature and using the divine wisdom of the Torah, they guided real people through politically, financially and emotionally difficult times.

They were well-acquainted with the limitations of human insight and learned that only together with God’s wisdom did we have a chance of surviving.

The other proverb from Avot that rose to my mind clarifies the approach we need to take as students seeking wisdom.

Yosay ben Yoezer of Tzredah said: “Let your house be a meeting place for Sages; sit in the dust at their feet; and drink in their words thirstily.”

The spirit of Jewish learning has something in common with summertime musing. There is an intellectual and spiritual humility that is required, an open mind and an open heart.

Study gives us an opportunity to challenge ourselves, to question our paradigms. We can clear out some space and let the light come shining in.

When we are taking a little time off, when we are slowing down just a bit and can actually begin to smell those roses, we may be able to really get this message.

Torah’s purpose is to put us in touch with that which is larger than ourselves, into whose presence we can only come by being willing and open to see and know what we haven’t yet grasped, and to be who we haven’t yet been able to be.

Maimonides put it this way: “The purpose of studying wisdom should not be anything other than knowing it. The truth has no other purpose than knowing that it is truth. Since the Torah is truth, the purpose of knowing it is to do it.”

Summertime, the rabbis knew, puts one in the mood to consider things, to ponder. Let the ideas percolate a little bit. Let it steep in the sunlight like sun-brewed tea.

Is the gift of Torah to provide shining phrases and familiar rhetoric to decisions we make for our own profit and glory?

Is its best use for arguments to back our chosen political party or to prove to others that we are right in the latest battle of trendy ideas?

Or is the Torah’s real purpose to bring us to search our own souls deeply, to find a way past the many levels of our own self-centeredness to center our lives on God and God’s purpose of peace within this world?