It is a special mitzvah to have guests at the Passover Seder. Our Sabbath becomes even more special when orchim graced the table. But our kids also want our time and attention. How do we reconcile the demands of family with the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim?

Reb Yosef was an Iranian man, no longer young, who dropped by to visit from time to time. My husband had met Yosef at a wedding, where he was collecting money to buy insulin for his sick mother in Iran. Yosef felt an affinity for us, for two reasons. First, our last name, Ben Shushan, indicated that our family hailed from the same region in Iran as did his (near the Shushan of Purim fame). Second, he enjoyed conversing with us in the French he had learned in Iran.

He would come to the house, sit and talk, have a cup of tea and something to eat, accept a donation for his mother, and leave. We never knew when he would show up and we were never clear where he lived or how he kept himself fed and clothed.

On his last visits, Yosef complained that he felt sick; he said that something was wrong with his liver. We tried to trace him subsequently, but with no success. We never knew for sure if he was who he said he was, or a charlatan, or perhaps Elijah the Prophet in one of his many guises.

In appreciation for our hospitality, Reb Yosef, who was a kohen, would bless us before he left. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Bracha,” he would tell me. “I bless you that your house should always be open, like the house of Avraham and Sarah, that you should always have many, many guests and show them kindness as you show me.” Then he would recite Birkat Kohanim, placing his hands upon the heads of the baby and the little kids. I was never quite sure how I was supposed to respond, especially since I didn’t know exactly who he was, but I figured a brachah couldn’t hurt and did my best to accept it gracefully.

I think about Reb Yosef often. I have the eerie conviction that his brachah carried great weight, because ever since his departure, we are rarely without guests for long. There always seems to be somebody camping out in the kids’ playroom or popping up from overseas or sent by a friend (“Why don’t you try the Bensoussans? They always have people over”).

Which leads to the question: How much is too much? The mitzvah of hachnasat orchim is a legacy from our forefather Abraham. Our tradition for welcoming guests is thousands of years old. The Haggadah states: “Let anyone who is hungry come and eat.” We are to open our arms to those who need hospitality. Yet is there a point where family obligations conflict with hachnasat orchim, a point where we must draw the line and say that family comes first?

I have seen the extremes when it comes to hachnasat orchim. I know families who almost never have Shabbat guests. These friends value their privacy, family time, and hard-earned hours of rest. Not everyone is at ease with guests — particularly total strangers — or has the energy to make conversation on a Friday night.

I also know families who every week host five, ten, even fifteen guests at their Shabbat table. There is a family in my neighborhood that invites a minyan of older singles every Shabbat — middle-aged, often eccentric folks who have been alone for many years and have no one else they can count on for a steady invitation.

The wives in these families deserve tremendous credit for the institutional quantities of food they prepare, not to mention the massive cleanup they endure. Instead of sitting tranquilly during the meal, they are constantly serving or clearing. There is little likelihood that these valorous women will snuggle into bed early on Friday night. I greatly admire them, wondering how they manage to rest when they dedicate themselves every Shabbat to serving others! And there is an additional factor: when one is preparing for a small army, the expense is significant.

In the early years of my marriage, my motive for inviting guests was selfish. Stuck at home all Shabbat with little babies, I was bored; a new face at the table livened up the day for me. Also, there were fewer Bensoussans then. And the kids were younger; they did little more than mouth a piece of challah and fall asleep. We could have four or five guests and still not feed more than seven people.

Now we are eight people all by ourselves, and some of us consume serious quantities of food; if we invite four or five guests, my Shabbat preparations resemble catering for a minor simchah. The children no longer fall asleep in the high chair; they are in full discussion mode, with reams of Torah questions and personal news to relate.

As the family has grown, so has the tuition expense, and my husband is frequently obliged to be absent on weekday nights to make ends meet. Our Shabbat meals are our window of opportunity for family communication and relaxation. When there is a horde of guests, some of them hungry for attention, it is not so simple for a seven-year-old to get his two cents in.

Moreover, at a certain age kids have the nerve to voice opinions about the guests. “Oh, not him again,” groaned my son a few weeks ago upon learning that a certain person was coming for Shabbat. “All he does is shmooze with Papa, and then I’m so bored!” I responded that sometimes hachnasat orchim is more mitzvah than pleasure. But try convincing a child who hasn’t seen much of his father all week. What the child hears is: “The guest is more important than I am.”

A guest’s personal qualities influence the children’s eagerness to have him join our Shabbat table. As Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler points out in his classic mussar work Michtav Me’Eliyahu, people either are givers or they are takers. True, a guest by definition is taking, in that he accepts hospitality from you. However, if a guest is, in his essence, a giver, he will show his appreciation with a bouquet of flowers, a bottle of wine, candy for the kids, or some other token.

When a guest compliments the food, this too is a giving gesture. And I have a particular soft spot for orchim who show interest in the children, so they do not get bored or feel themselves to be invisible (not to mention disappearing from the table in frustration).

The “takers,” on the other hand, are those people who dominate the conversation with their personal issues, who usurp a husband’s attention so that the wife and children are left abandoned at the other end of the table, who don’t say thank you when it’s all over. Some guests are well-intentioned but insensitive, such as the overly enthusiastic yeshivah bachur who can’t wait to regale the assembled with his latest Torah novellae, failing to notice that half of his audience is getting an early start on the traditional Shabbat nap.

Moreover, some singles and ba’alei teshuvah, in their earnestness to share the details of their life struggles with a sympathetic ear, forget that children should not be exposed to adult-oriented subject matter.

Still, while guests like these can put a strain on a family’s Shabbat time together, the truth is that they also need a place to eat and someone with whom to converse. In certain cases I think that G-d is trying to test me: “You said you wanted to participate in hachnasat orchim? Ha! Let’s see if you’re still eager when it means giving up family time to spend Shabbat with so-and-so!” How should you approach this delicate subject? Every family is different. It takes a certain effort to maintain the balance between time for the family and time for guests, and between hosting guests who are a pleasure to receive and hosting guests who are more challenging yet are in equal need of a place to eat. Some kids love guests; other kids want and need parental attention. And husbands and wives need their time together. On the other hand, mitzvot are not always easy. The Talmud says that a defining characteristic of the Jewish people is that we are rachamanim b’nei rachamanim — merciful descendants of merciful ancestors. Ingrained in us is the mitzvah of reaching out to help the needy. Some families may have to consult their rabbi to arrive at an appropriate balance.

Reb Yosef’s brachah has brought us many interesting people over the course of time, and I hope we have been able to help them without neglecting the needs of our children. We live in a time of great prosperity, so it is not difficult materially to share our food with a fellow Jew. We also live in a time of great emotional and spiritual hunger, where a warm family ambiance and the divrei Torah of a Shabbat table or Pesach Seder are vital for so many people who are lost or alone. May Hashem grant all of us the ability to fulfill the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim to the best of our abilities, whether our table can hold one or a dozen courses of food and one or a dozen guests.

Barbara Bensoussan has written for numerous magazines, including Gourmet and Women’s Day. Her “Soul Food” appeared in the December 1998 issue of The Jewish Homemaker.