I grew up in a cold house. Not emotionally, literally. My parents kept the thermostat low, and summer in our home meant sweatshirts and socks while the rest of the world was in shorts. My internal temperature never seemed to match the household’s. I learned early that if I wanted to be comfortable, I had to bundle myself up.
I think about this every summer, when the air conditioning debates begin anew. In my house now, the family I have chosen runs warm too, and we are a household of sweatshirts in July and August (at least I am). But I have also spent enough summers in other people’s homes, other people’s offices, other people’s sanctuaries, to know that not everyone is built this way. Some people are perpetually warm. Some people would happily live without air conditioning at all. Some people need it blasting to function.
What I have come to is this, I can’t control the temperature of every room I walk into. But I can control how I respond to it. I have the privilege, and it is a privilege, of bringing a sweater. Of layering. Of adjusting myself rather than demanding the room adjust to me. And I have come to think of this small, unremarkable act as a form of shalom bayit.
Shalom bayit, peace in the home, is usually invoked in conversations about marriage and family harmony. But I think its reach is wider than that. The Talmud places enormous weight on it, going so far as to say that for the sake of peace in the home, even certain truths can be set aside (Yevamot 65b). That is a striking claim. Peace is not merely the absence of conflict over the thermostat, or anything else. It is an active practice, something we do, often through small accommodations that cost us little and give the people around us a great deal.
This summer, when I am in a room and I see one person in a heavy sweater and another in a tank top, sitting comfortably in the same space, I recognize what is happening. It is not a failure to agree on the temperature. It is shalom bayit in action. Two people, two different needs, one shared space, and a quiet, often unspoken willingness to meet in the middle: one person tolerating a room slightly warmer than they’d like, another tolerating it slightly cooler, both choosing the relationship, the community, the shared sanctuary, over their own perfect comfort.
This is, I think, a small but real model for how we might move through community more broadly. Not every difference needs to be resolved by someone winning and someone losing. Sometimes peace looks like both people adjusting a little. Sometimes it looks like one person bringing a sweater so that someone else doesn’t have to sweat through services, or one person agreeing to a slightly warmer room so that someone else isn’t shivering through a meeting. These are not grand gestures. They rarely get noticed. But they are, in their way, sacred.
Our tradition teaches that the external shapes the internal: how our bodies feel affects how present we can be, how patient, how generous. A room that is too hot or too cold for us makes it harder to be our best selves with each other. Recognizing this in ourselves, and extending that recognition to the people around us, is itself an act of compassion.
So this summer, when you walk into a room and find the temperature isn’t quite right for you, I hope you’ll remember that you have choices. You can bundle up. You can step out for air. You can ask, gently, if anything can be adjusted. And if you notice someone else doing the same, bundled in a sweater across from someone in short sleeves, I hope you’ll recognize what you’re seeing: not a disagreement, but a quiet practice of shalom bayit, the small adjustments we make so that a shared space can hold all of us.
May we move through these last weeks of summer, and every season, with that kind of compassion and grace, toward ourselves and toward each other.
Rabbi Jodie
