I have a new T-shirt that almost perfectly describes me. The text reads, “I’m not procrastinating. I’m on a side quest.”

A side quest is when you open Google to look up one thing and find yourself clicking on page after page, as you follow a trail of thoughts. A side quest is when you’re driving somewhere and suddenly are compelled to pull over and take a picture of an exceptionally beautiful tree. A side quest is when you walk into a room looking for your glasses and find yourself an hour later sorting through old photographs.

Side quests are the little interruptions in our lives that can brighten your day, stimulate a new thought, or simply take you down an interesting rabbit hole for a couple of hours.

I’m no scientist, but I believe that these thought journeys confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity. How long were you thinking about this new thing? How long did it take to get from here to there while your mind was spinning and doing wonderful exercises? Time seems to collapse upon itself until you awaken to the sound of an alarm or the watch on your wrist and say oh my God, I’ve been doing this for hours.

Fortunately, for those of us who tend to detour onto side quests with some regularity, Judaism thoroughly approves. I have been teaching Talmud weekly for four years now, and if there is one thing I am certain of, it is that the sages of the Talmud delighted in side quests.

They will be seriously debating one thing, and the next thing you know, they’re wondering about the size of the cosmos, or what was on Moses‘s mind on a certain day.

The Talmud is a singular and incredibly complex thought experiment, in which several groups of men, over a period of some 500 years, created a unique and lasting document.

Much of it is practical, although out-dated. But the injunction against peeing between two trees because you might inadvertently pee on a demon seems as relevant today as it did 2000 years ago. There might not be a demon lurking there, but it’s probably a good idea to check for a wasps’ nest before exposing yourself.

One of the Talmud’s imaginative side quests is a question that is both fanciful and oddly practical. If God were to pray, what would the Divine’s prayer be?

Their answer: God’s prayer is this, “May it be My will that My mercy will overcome My anger towards Israel for their transgressions.”

In their collective imagination, God’s primary concern is not with peace on earth or a messianic age. It has to do with being in relationship with us humans, specifically the Jewish people. God’s primary goal is to avoid becoming angry with us; to be merciful when we inevitably fail.

Our sages understood that the world was and would remain imperfect. That we humans are imperfect. Wars would continue to break out, terrible leaders would continue to rise, and bad things would continue to happen to good people.

Our task is not to strive for perfection. Rather, it is to acknowledge and forgive our own flaws, and try to transcend them, regardless of our continued and inevitable failure.

The part about God praying is a side quest, in which they wonder briefly about God’s prayer during a discussion about human mutual responsibility. In the end, the side quest shines a light on the larger issue, which is that we are responsible to each other.

Among other things, this page of Talmud states that if only two people are praying separately in a synagogue, one should not get up and leave the other alone. God wants us to be in relationship with each other, as well as with God.

The passage stresses again and again that the essential human model is community. As the Talmud teaches elsewhere, Kol Yisrael aravim zeh ba zeh, all Israel is responsible one to another.

If the Talmud teaches us anything, it is that creative thought is always welcome in Judaism, and that side quests are seldom a waste of time.

May we continue to wonder, to dream, to travel on trains of thought that take us many miles away, and, as we enter into a new secular year, may we continue to take care of one another.