Friday, December 12, 2014
Ferguson and Torah
Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice..We are hopefully at the tail end of a terrible barrage of police shootings against young black men. It’s really nothing new; for the African American community, it just is a sad reminder that nothing has really changed. But it is an important wake-up call that people are hearing. We need to listen to this call.
At a recent gathering of AMOS, a group of local clergy, Damon Lynch III pointed out the radically different reactions of European Americans vs African Americans to these racially charged situations. When, for example, OJ Simpson was cleared of murder charges, the black community cheered even though many of them thought he was guilty: it was one brother finally standing up against a system that so often (in their perception) persecutes them. White children are taught if they are lost, find a policeman; black children are taught, if they see the police, go the other way fast. And at that meetings, my black colleagues shared that they experience a shocking number of unnecessary police stops & frisks, and are often treated roughly—as criminals-- by police.
As Jews, we are a little on the outside of this dynamic. For the Nazis, we were not white. In America, it was only since civil rights that we succeeded in becoming white, while the African American community largely didn’t (and not just because of skin tone). So especially as a Jew, I hate to use the terms white and black, since that really is not a kind of person but just a simplified description of skin tone (which is truly a spectrum). But in this case it really is about skin color. How should we as Jews view the situation & respond?
We live in a culture of fear, and fear causes violence. Why would a white policeman drive up, and shoot a black kid through his window? Why would a white cop describe a young man as an animal? They saw a black man with a gun, they were afraid, and fear leads to violence.
On the other hand, the white cop (and maybe some black cops too) will argue: we can’t trust black men when black crime is a reality. We try to impose equity through laws against racial profiling, but police departments argue: most criminals really are black, just like most terrorists really are Muslim. This fact puts them in a terrible bind.
Are African Americans more criminal than whites?
Here are some facts:
• 1 in 3 black males today will go to prison in lifetime, compared to 1 in 17 non-latino whites. There are more black men in prison than in college. Keep in mind that returning citizens face incredible challenges finding employment as “ex-felons.”
• Drug crimes are an area where there may be a real enforcement disparity: 5x as many whites use drugs as blacks, but 10x as many blacks go to jail (and often are sentenced to longer jail times than their white equivalents). Perhaps the kinds of drugs they use tend to be higher profile, perhaps they tend to use & sell them in public areas, and perhaps there is some selective enforcement.
• Gun violence affects the black community, and is perpetuated by blacks, more than the white community: blacks are 6x as likely to be shot, and 8x as likely to be shooters. Most of that violence is intraracial—black on black or white on white. Hence the statistic Guliani cited: 93 % of black victims are shot by blacks (he didn’t mention that 80% of white victims are shot by whites). There is simply more gun violence in the black community than in the white community.
• One study reported that 80% of muggings in high-crime areas of London are black; these high crime areas are also high poverty areas. I personally have been mugged twice, once in a predominantly black area, once in a white area. All 3 criminals involved were black.
But there’s another issue here: it’s not just that blacks are criminals. It’s that they are largely mired in a cycle of poverty & crime. The Black unemployment rate is more than twice that of whites, and their household income is $20k less. There’s lots of possible causes:
• Is this a remnant of slavery, and the fact that black released from slavery weren’t given any way to rebuild their lives? Probably.
• Is it created by racism, an unwillingness to hire qualified blacks? Maybe
• Is it contributed to by a bad education system underfunded by local property taxes, high cost of good day care, and minimum wage jobs that force parents to work overtime and prevent them from being available for children? For sure.
We can’t solve violence without solving poverty.
My first job out of college was on a peacekeeping mission in Washington DC. We wanted to reduce inner city violence. Who was shooting whom? Gang members shooting other gang members over turf issues. The gangs sold drugs, mainly to white customers who drove in from the suburbs. Pretty much all the young black men in the neighborhood joined gangs, because it was the only good job available; all of them ended up doing jail time. They didn’t want to be criminals—the guys I met were good people, with no other good options. Crime is a byproduct of poverty
What should we do?
Advocate against police violence—btzedek tishpot et amitecha—Torah calls us to ‘judge each other fairly,’ and to give the benefit of the doubt. Police need to assume that everyone they encounter is a law-abiding citizen, while also protecting themselves with the least force necessary.
Advocate for federal prosecutors in situations of police violence. Prosecutors who normally work together with policemen cannot be put in the position of prosecuting them.
Advocate for & help bring an end to cycle of black poverty & crime. The black community needs economic development, and better education. Many of us are in a position to help, either personally or professionally.
Help returning citizens be able to find good employment without turning back to crime, both personally and at the ballot box. There is a movement now in Ohio to require state employers to only ask whether someone is an ex-offender after they make a hiring decision, and if they choose not to employ based on that, they need to justify their decision; this would be a great step in opening doors for this population. We can also help ex-offenders with job training, and by employing them in our businesses.
Let’s all work together to help address this cycle of criminality & violence, until “justice rolls down as the water, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
Shabbat Shalom.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Fragility and Interdependence
This past Tuesday, when I came into work, somebody commented that he needed to go back and repair his sukkah, because it had been blown over. I smugly thought about how lovely my own sukkah was, and visualized it in my back yard, erected the prior evening, standing beautifully. Very late that evening, as I came home, I thought to look out back just to see how it was doing. It wasn’t good.
I was surprised: I thought I had done a good job. But the truth is, this is how sukkahs are by necessity. As we studied over the past 2 mornings, the sukkah has to be impermanent, and anything impermanent is inherently fragile. According to the Talmud, anything that looks permanent (like by being too high) is treyf. For a week we surround ourselves with the experience of impermanence, fragility.
What’s so great about fragility?
The truth is, that which is most important in life is the most fragile. We davenned on Yom Kippur a prayer about our extreme fragility: we wither like grass, vanish like smoke, like a dream. People, god forbid, have heart attacks, get hit by cars, and are gone in an instant. There we say, “atah hu meleck el hay vekayam.” God is the eternal king, somehow if we can root ourselves in transcendent values, we can transcend our own fragility, our own mortality.
Today we read in kohelet (4:7-8):
There is one [person], and there is no second [with him]; yea, he has neither son nor brother, and there is no end to all his toil; neither is his eye sated from wealth. Now for whom do I toil and deprive my soul of pleasure? This too is vanity and an unhappy affair.”
Yes, my bank account seems pretty stable: it’s insured, I could leave it there forever. We insure our possessions, and can replace them if anything happens. But what good are possessions if you don’t have anyone to leave them to?
There was an excellent movie on this theme, “Up in the Air.” The protagonist has as his ambition amassing one million miles in the sky, has no home, no base, no true friends. His job is to go around firing people, making them rootless, destroying their lives. By the time he finally reaches the goal, he realizes his life is completely empty. There is no family there to congratulate him, just a flight attendant and a legendary pilot, and a glass of champagne he doesn’t enjoy.
I have worked in nursing homes around Philadelphia, especially the Philadelphia geriatric center. I will tell you that on their walls, people didn’t have pictures of their cars or homes. They didn’t save the letter telling them they’d paid off their mortgage, or their student loans. They had pictures of their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. And the ones with no pictures, no visitors, were the most depressed.
The Earth for ages was thought of as the image of permanence: think of the ad slogan, solid as a rock. Kohelet says: dor ba, vedor holech, veha’aretz leolam omed—a generation comes, a generation goes, but the earth stands forever. The earth was used as a counterpoint to highlight our own fragility. But now we see that the earth itself is deeply vulnerable. Because of deforestation, pollution, unsustainable agriculture & climate change, the world’s species are disappearing 1,000 times faster than the rate at which species naturally go extinct. By the year 2100, researchers say that 1/3 to ½ of earth’s species could be wiped out. Nahmanides says we are prohibited from making one species go extinct. This is a mass tragedy.
The physical earth, too, is fragile, and changing. Many of you may have read about the massive sink hole, 330 feet across, in Siberia, which may have been caused by methane released from the permafrost. The black panther is coming back, but an estimated quarter of its habitat will likely be lost to rising oceans. The earth is changing.
Zalman shachter shalomi, who died last year, said one of the major shifts in consciousness was when we went to space and could see the earth as a whole. He called this gaia consciousness: earth is a living organism that we are ethically responsible to, that we are limbs of. The earth is finite, just a big spaceship, and there’s not really anywhere else to go. Maybe Mars, but it’s not much of a life. The earth, like us, is a beautiful and fragile divine creation.
If life is so fragile, if we are so vulnerable, how do we respond?
Kohelet posits at least 2 parts of the response:
1. don’t try for safety—enjoy that which is fragile. Enjoy your limited time here. Enjoy those things which are most meaningful in life, and also most fleeting.
2. find safety in Healthy interdependence:
It is amazing to me how pathetic babies are. When they are born, the only thing they can do is cry, suck, and move their eyes. They can’t use their limbs effectively, they flop over, they can’t hold their heads up, they fall off furniture if you let them. They are completely vulnerable, completely fragile. So how have humans survived for millions of years? By being carried by their mothers, and in the days before slings and strollers, carried in their mothers arms, around the world, for millions of years. Parental love that has kept babies safe, has kept the human species and all mammals alive for millions of years. We cannot survive alone
Kohelet 4:9-12: Two are better than one, since they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his friend, but woe to the one who falls and has no second one to lift him up. Moreover, if two lie down, they will have warmth, but how will one have warmth? And if a man prevails against the one, the two will stand against him, and a three- stranded cord will not quickly be broken
In America, and perhaps this is human nature, we prize independence. I know of Iraqi vets who couldn’t go to bathroom by themselves, and felt deep shame for it. I have met many seniors scared of aging because they don’t want to be “a burden,” and who prefer to live alone in a nursing home where they are lonely and depressed rather than impose on their children.
My college years: only felt successful if I could accomplish a task by myself. At Dartmouth, there was a legendary challenge, “the moose.” I had a goal of hiking all the 50 miles of trails on mt mousilauk in one day—a sign of individual strength & endurance. I never did it. The person who did, my friend, Tom Marlowe, had other people stationed around, ferrying him, giving him food, maybe a massage. Now he’s a doctor, helping people walking their way through the world.
The truth is, every minute of our lives we are amazingly interdependent. Sitting in this building, with concrete made by one person, poured by another. Wearing clothes, cotton picked, transported, processed, woven, shipped, sold. Our bread, planted, harvested, the grain ground, shipped, baked. The electric company that powered the lights in the store where we bought the bread. And just think about our iPhones!
Back to the sukkah which was blown down, I had 2 people helping me, and for part of the time I was taking care of the baby; the other 2 people told me, I think you are needed inside. You can only imagine what would have happened if I had tried to put it up alone.
It is no coincident that sukkot, and festivals and Shabbat in general, are celebrated with family. The Talmud gives us advice: guys, eat red meat and wine, buy toys and candy for the kids, and jewelry for your wives. Not bad advice. Joy is celebrating together. Hold each other up. Two is better than one, and three is even better.
Judaism institutionalizes interdependence, forces it on us, by making it a mitzvah to get married. You can’t have a celibate clergy in Judaism because it’s not an ideal—lo tov heyot ha’adam levado—it is not good for a person to be alone. We studied this last week in our discussion of solitary confinement, and the detrimental psychological effects it has. People need human contact, and literally go crazy without it. I have often heard it said that we need to know who we are before we can love someone else. I don’t agree- we can’t know ourselves until we are in relationships. And we never finish knowing who we are- we grow, are challenged, are kept on our toes by having a partner. we grow through love, through relationships, through realizing our mutual dependence.
In the sukkah, we surround ourselves with that which is truly important, truly valuable, irreplaceable, and completely fragile: our family, our friends, our planet. Enjoy it.
Hag sameach, a festival of joy, togetherness & celebration
I was surprised: I thought I had done a good job. But the truth is, this is how sukkahs are by necessity. As we studied over the past 2 mornings, the sukkah has to be impermanent, and anything impermanent is inherently fragile. According to the Talmud, anything that looks permanent (like by being too high) is treyf. For a week we surround ourselves with the experience of impermanence, fragility.
What’s so great about fragility?
The truth is, that which is most important in life is the most fragile. We davenned on Yom Kippur a prayer about our extreme fragility: we wither like grass, vanish like smoke, like a dream. People, god forbid, have heart attacks, get hit by cars, and are gone in an instant. There we say, “atah hu meleck el hay vekayam.” God is the eternal king, somehow if we can root ourselves in transcendent values, we can transcend our own fragility, our own mortality.
Today we read in kohelet (4:7-8):
There is one [person], and there is no second [with him]; yea, he has neither son nor brother, and there is no end to all his toil; neither is his eye sated from wealth. Now for whom do I toil and deprive my soul of pleasure? This too is vanity and an unhappy affair.”
Yes, my bank account seems pretty stable: it’s insured, I could leave it there forever. We insure our possessions, and can replace them if anything happens. But what good are possessions if you don’t have anyone to leave them to?
There was an excellent movie on this theme, “Up in the Air.” The protagonist has as his ambition amassing one million miles in the sky, has no home, no base, no true friends. His job is to go around firing people, making them rootless, destroying their lives. By the time he finally reaches the goal, he realizes his life is completely empty. There is no family there to congratulate him, just a flight attendant and a legendary pilot, and a glass of champagne he doesn’t enjoy.
I have worked in nursing homes around Philadelphia, especially the Philadelphia geriatric center. I will tell you that on their walls, people didn’t have pictures of their cars or homes. They didn’t save the letter telling them they’d paid off their mortgage, or their student loans. They had pictures of their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. And the ones with no pictures, no visitors, were the most depressed.
The Earth for ages was thought of as the image of permanence: think of the ad slogan, solid as a rock. Kohelet says: dor ba, vedor holech, veha’aretz leolam omed—a generation comes, a generation goes, but the earth stands forever. The earth was used as a counterpoint to highlight our own fragility. But now we see that the earth itself is deeply vulnerable. Because of deforestation, pollution, unsustainable agriculture & climate change, the world’s species are disappearing 1,000 times faster than the rate at which species naturally go extinct. By the year 2100, researchers say that 1/3 to ½ of earth’s species could be wiped out. Nahmanides says we are prohibited from making one species go extinct. This is a mass tragedy.
The physical earth, too, is fragile, and changing. Many of you may have read about the massive sink hole, 330 feet across, in Siberia, which may have been caused by methane released from the permafrost. The black panther is coming back, but an estimated quarter of its habitat will likely be lost to rising oceans. The earth is changing.
Zalman shachter shalomi, who died last year, said one of the major shifts in consciousness was when we went to space and could see the earth as a whole. He called this gaia consciousness: earth is a living organism that we are ethically responsible to, that we are limbs of. The earth is finite, just a big spaceship, and there’s not really anywhere else to go. Maybe Mars, but it’s not much of a life. The earth, like us, is a beautiful and fragile divine creation.
If life is so fragile, if we are so vulnerable, how do we respond?
Kohelet posits at least 2 parts of the response:
1. don’t try for safety—enjoy that which is fragile. Enjoy your limited time here. Enjoy those things which are most meaningful in life, and also most fleeting.
2. find safety in Healthy interdependence:
It is amazing to me how pathetic babies are. When they are born, the only thing they can do is cry, suck, and move their eyes. They can’t use their limbs effectively, they flop over, they can’t hold their heads up, they fall off furniture if you let them. They are completely vulnerable, completely fragile. So how have humans survived for millions of years? By being carried by their mothers, and in the days before slings and strollers, carried in their mothers arms, around the world, for millions of years. Parental love that has kept babies safe, has kept the human species and all mammals alive for millions of years. We cannot survive alone
Kohelet 4:9-12: Two are better than one, since they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his friend, but woe to the one who falls and has no second one to lift him up. Moreover, if two lie down, they will have warmth, but how will one have warmth? And if a man prevails against the one, the two will stand against him, and a three- stranded cord will not quickly be broken
In America, and perhaps this is human nature, we prize independence. I know of Iraqi vets who couldn’t go to bathroom by themselves, and felt deep shame for it. I have met many seniors scared of aging because they don’t want to be “a burden,” and who prefer to live alone in a nursing home where they are lonely and depressed rather than impose on their children.
My college years: only felt successful if I could accomplish a task by myself. At Dartmouth, there was a legendary challenge, “the moose.” I had a goal of hiking all the 50 miles of trails on mt mousilauk in one day—a sign of individual strength & endurance. I never did it. The person who did, my friend, Tom Marlowe, had other people stationed around, ferrying him, giving him food, maybe a massage. Now he’s a doctor, helping people walking their way through the world.
The truth is, every minute of our lives we are amazingly interdependent. Sitting in this building, with concrete made by one person, poured by another. Wearing clothes, cotton picked, transported, processed, woven, shipped, sold. Our bread, planted, harvested, the grain ground, shipped, baked. The electric company that powered the lights in the store where we bought the bread. And just think about our iPhones!
Back to the sukkah which was blown down, I had 2 people helping me, and for part of the time I was taking care of the baby; the other 2 people told me, I think you are needed inside. You can only imagine what would have happened if I had tried to put it up alone.
It is no coincident that sukkot, and festivals and Shabbat in general, are celebrated with family. The Talmud gives us advice: guys, eat red meat and wine, buy toys and candy for the kids, and jewelry for your wives. Not bad advice. Joy is celebrating together. Hold each other up. Two is better than one, and three is even better.
Judaism institutionalizes interdependence, forces it on us, by making it a mitzvah to get married. You can’t have a celibate clergy in Judaism because it’s not an ideal—lo tov heyot ha’adam levado—it is not good for a person to be alone. We studied this last week in our discussion of solitary confinement, and the detrimental psychological effects it has. People need human contact, and literally go crazy without it. I have often heard it said that we need to know who we are before we can love someone else. I don’t agree- we can’t know ourselves until we are in relationships. And we never finish knowing who we are- we grow, are challenged, are kept on our toes by having a partner. we grow through love, through relationships, through realizing our mutual dependence.
In the sukkah, we surround ourselves with that which is truly important, truly valuable, irreplaceable, and completely fragile: our family, our friends, our planet. Enjoy it.
Hag sameach, a festival of joy, togetherness & celebration
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Handing back the Polish Torah through the back door.
Can we correct past behaviors in gentle, heart opening ways? Do our hearts really have to be broken?
The Polish family who yesterday handed their Torah beck to the jews provides an interesting illustration of how hard it is to get out of a long established pattern, and how we can help each other do that.
Recently found polish torah:
Two University of Warsaw students, Joanna Kopacka and Bartek Krzyżewski are coordinators of the Matzeva Project. As part of the team’s tactics, they go door-to-door asking residents if they have or know where there are gravestones in small Polish towns such as this northern village called Filipów.
There, an elderly couple in its late 70s was approached. The husband, Kazimierz Wróblewski, a retired shepherd, denied knowledge. But his wife suggested he show the students the Jewish item they did have.
Wróblewski lifted cushions from a couch and revealed a brown-paper wrapped Torah scroll that had been hidden there since 1939 when the Jewish population of approximately 280 was deported and murdered.
The next door neighbors of the Wróblewski family were religious Jews who before deportation had asked his father to keep the Torah scroll safe, for them until they returned home – but that if they did not, to transfer it to another Jew. The couple did not come across many Jews in post-war Poland, and it was only now, in 2014, that they found the right party to transfer the scroll to - Mi'amakim Director Johnny Daniels, who brought the scroll to Israel this week
Wróblewski was ashamed of keeping the scroll and only allowed Daniels’ organization to enter and remove it under wraps, through the back door. His wife, upon learning it would be taken to Israel, said she strongly supports the country and asked the organization to send her earth from the Holy Land.
The scroll’s condition is dire: Half of the Torah was used by the family over the past 70 years as rags, including as insoles for shoes. The Wroblewski family denied knowing that it was a sacred book. (Adapted from the Times of Israel)
I have a hard time believing they really didn’t know it was a sacred book. Why were they ashamed of keeping the scroll, asked organization to take it out through the back door? Why didn’t they find somewhere to donate the scroll after the war, write a letter? If they had this scroll in their couch for 70 years, did it never occur to them to contact someone?
My guess is: They were probably ashamed that they had not done anything with it, and the longer they kept it, the stronger their shame, and the harder it was to overcome that shame and do anything about it.
We become sunk in our patterns, and the deeper we become sunk, the harder to extricate ourselves.
Rambam writes about Pharoah (Hilchot Teshuvah 6:3) that:
“it is possible for someone to commit so heinous a sin or so many sins of his own volition and free will that the True Judge would rule that the only fitting punishment would be to withhold teshuvah from him, and not to grant him permission to do teshuvah”
The way I understand this is that our patterns can get so ingrained, it becomes impossible to get out of them, like a gutterball in a bowling alley: when you roll a bowling ball, it can wobble from side to side, but once the bowling ball is in the gutter, it just can’t get out.
There’s another story from the Ba’al Shem Tov, also about doing escaping a deeply engrained habit.
“The storytelling yid” (shlomo’s stories 3-11)
When Baal Shem tov died, assigned jobs to students
Reb Yankele: go around world telling stories about BeSht.
How long do I need to leave home?
You will know when your job is done
Sienna Italy: heard of rich man who paid 50 lira for every story about BeSht!
Yankele: great! I know thousands! This is it, now I’ll be able to retire
Goes to the yid, yid pleased, invites him for shabbes
Every meal: yankele can’t remember any stories
Havdalah: yankele apologizes, yid gives him a few hundred liras & says goodbye
Sunday morning, on his way out, yankele remembers a story, writes it down
Goes to yid, tells him the story
Story: besht travelled to city with terribly despotic bishop who had a plan to incite everyone to kill the jews
Before bishop’s speech, besht summons bishop[ to an audience
Bishop spends a few hours with besht, buishop leaves in tears, doesn’t give the speech
Yid: do you recognize me?
I was the bishop,
I was a poor jew, converted to Christianity to improve my lot
had to prove myself as a Christian by being as murderous as possible
I asked teshuvah to davven for me in heaven
Besht told me: teshuvah accepted when someone comes & tells you today’s story
Shabbes: you forgot stories—I realized my teshuvah hadn’t been accepted!
All last night I cried, totally broken hearted
Now I know my teshuvah has been accepted
How do we do teshuvah for such profoundly ingrained sin?
Baal Shem tov: regret must be as deep as the pain we caused
“there is one key that opens all locks: a hammer. A broken heart opens all the gates of heaven.”
Rambam HT 1:5: publically declare your teshuvah: “Anybody who is too proud and doesn’t publicize his sin but covers up their sin has not completely repented”
This is why pharaoh couldn’t do teshuvah—never really regretted
But the polish torah situation offers a different model of teshuvah
Teshuvah by sweeping things under the rug, or ushering them out the back door
They were too embarrassed to come out & do the right thing with the torah
Not so bad to open the door to teshuvah, letting them come right by taking it out through the back door,
I think this isn’t such a bad model: do we have to have our past rubbed in our faces? Can’t that hurt rather than help? It seems to me that we don’t respond well to having our past rubbed in our faces; it can be more effective as a gentle process. It also seems to me that perhaps the need to have a broken heart becomes an impediment to teshuvah.
Can we make teshuvah easier on ourselves?
Can we correct patterns that are so ingrained, we don’t see a way out?
Can we correct patterns of hurting others, that if we admitted it would be so overwhelmingly embarrassing, we can’t admit it to ourselves.
Can we put aside our pride and admit where we have hurt others.
Can we make teshuvah easier on each other?
When somebody hurts us, do we demand a broken heart, or can we let them make it better, can we help them make it better?
The Polish family who yesterday handed their Torah beck to the jews provides an interesting illustration of how hard it is to get out of a long established pattern, and how we can help each other do that.
Recently found polish torah:
Two University of Warsaw students, Joanna Kopacka and Bartek Krzyżewski are coordinators of the Matzeva Project. As part of the team’s tactics, they go door-to-door asking residents if they have or know where there are gravestones in small Polish towns such as this northern village called Filipów.
There, an elderly couple in its late 70s was approached. The husband, Kazimierz Wróblewski, a retired shepherd, denied knowledge. But his wife suggested he show the students the Jewish item they did have.
Wróblewski lifted cushions from a couch and revealed a brown-paper wrapped Torah scroll that had been hidden there since 1939 when the Jewish population of approximately 280 was deported and murdered.
The next door neighbors of the Wróblewski family were religious Jews who before deportation had asked his father to keep the Torah scroll safe, for them until they returned home – but that if they did not, to transfer it to another Jew. The couple did not come across many Jews in post-war Poland, and it was only now, in 2014, that they found the right party to transfer the scroll to - Mi'amakim Director Johnny Daniels, who brought the scroll to Israel this week
Wróblewski was ashamed of keeping the scroll and only allowed Daniels’ organization to enter and remove it under wraps, through the back door. His wife, upon learning it would be taken to Israel, said she strongly supports the country and asked the organization to send her earth from the Holy Land.
The scroll’s condition is dire: Half of the Torah was used by the family over the past 70 years as rags, including as insoles for shoes. The Wroblewski family denied knowing that it was a sacred book. (Adapted from the Times of Israel)
I have a hard time believing they really didn’t know it was a sacred book. Why were they ashamed of keeping the scroll, asked organization to take it out through the back door? Why didn’t they find somewhere to donate the scroll after the war, write a letter? If they had this scroll in their couch for 70 years, did it never occur to them to contact someone?
My guess is: They were probably ashamed that they had not done anything with it, and the longer they kept it, the stronger their shame, and the harder it was to overcome that shame and do anything about it.
We become sunk in our patterns, and the deeper we become sunk, the harder to extricate ourselves.
Rambam writes about Pharoah (Hilchot Teshuvah 6:3) that:
“it is possible for someone to commit so heinous a sin or so many sins of his own volition and free will that the True Judge would rule that the only fitting punishment would be to withhold teshuvah from him, and not to grant him permission to do teshuvah”
The way I understand this is that our patterns can get so ingrained, it becomes impossible to get out of them, like a gutterball in a bowling alley: when you roll a bowling ball, it can wobble from side to side, but once the bowling ball is in the gutter, it just can’t get out.
There’s another story from the Ba’al Shem Tov, also about doing escaping a deeply engrained habit.
“The storytelling yid” (shlomo’s stories 3-11)
When Baal Shem tov died, assigned jobs to students
Reb Yankele: go around world telling stories about BeSht.
How long do I need to leave home?
You will know when your job is done
Sienna Italy: heard of rich man who paid 50 lira for every story about BeSht!
Yankele: great! I know thousands! This is it, now I’ll be able to retire
Goes to the yid, yid pleased, invites him for shabbes
Every meal: yankele can’t remember any stories
Havdalah: yankele apologizes, yid gives him a few hundred liras & says goodbye
Sunday morning, on his way out, yankele remembers a story, writes it down
Goes to yid, tells him the story
Story: besht travelled to city with terribly despotic bishop who had a plan to incite everyone to kill the jews
Before bishop’s speech, besht summons bishop[ to an audience
Bishop spends a few hours with besht, buishop leaves in tears, doesn’t give the speech
Yid: do you recognize me?
I was the bishop,
I was a poor jew, converted to Christianity to improve my lot
had to prove myself as a Christian by being as murderous as possible
I asked teshuvah to davven for me in heaven
Besht told me: teshuvah accepted when someone comes & tells you today’s story
Shabbes: you forgot stories—I realized my teshuvah hadn’t been accepted!
All last night I cried, totally broken hearted
Now I know my teshuvah has been accepted
How do we do teshuvah for such profoundly ingrained sin?
Baal Shem tov: regret must be as deep as the pain we caused
“there is one key that opens all locks: a hammer. A broken heart opens all the gates of heaven.”
Rambam HT 1:5: publically declare your teshuvah: “Anybody who is too proud and doesn’t publicize his sin but covers up their sin has not completely repented”
This is why pharaoh couldn’t do teshuvah—never really regretted
But the polish torah situation offers a different model of teshuvah
Teshuvah by sweeping things under the rug, or ushering them out the back door
They were too embarrassed to come out & do the right thing with the torah
Not so bad to open the door to teshuvah, letting them come right by taking it out through the back door,
I think this isn’t such a bad model: do we have to have our past rubbed in our faces? Can’t that hurt rather than help? It seems to me that we don’t respond well to having our past rubbed in our faces; it can be more effective as a gentle process. It also seems to me that perhaps the need to have a broken heart becomes an impediment to teshuvah.
Can we make teshuvah easier on ourselves?
Can we correct patterns that are so ingrained, we don’t see a way out?
Can we correct patterns of hurting others, that if we admitted it would be so overwhelmingly embarrassing, we can’t admit it to ourselves.
Can we put aside our pride and admit where we have hurt others.
Can we make teshuvah easier on each other?
When somebody hurts us, do we demand a broken heart, or can we let them make it better, can we help them make it better?
Friday, August 29, 2014
Uzis and 9 year olds
Hearing about Charles Vacca, the firing range instructor in Arizona who put an uzzi into the hands of a nine year old girl (who had never held one before) and set it to automatic, with predictable results, I wonder what a nine year old was doing firing a gun in the first place. In some parts of our society, guns are approached as toys: and if you don’t get to fire one off you’ve missed out on one of life’s great experiences. Yes, gun safety is taken seriously (in general), but there really is no reason for a child to be firing a gun. The 2nd amendment, which gun rights advocates always quote, has to do with the necessity of having a militia: what is now the Reserves, or the equivalent of volunteer firefighters, especially when there isn’t much of a standing army.
The glorification of guns and violence also is in our movies and videogames. Is it really okay for children to play with toy guns? Are we sure that doesn’t send them a message about the acceptability of violence, and of using power to resolve conflicts? Why is it okay for a child, or even adult, to engage in the fantasy of killing and murdering, in a video game? How can this not be harmful to our neshamas, our souls?
The Talmud has a discussion about carrying swords on Shabbat. Apparently, at the time of the discussion, people liked to wear ceremonial swords. If they can be considered a garment or ornament, then you are wearing, not carrying, so you can go out with it on Shabbat. If it is something you carry, an implement that is not part of an outfit, then you can’t carry it oon Shabbat. The gemara concludes that it is not an ornament, but rather a disgraceful thing (Shabbat 63a).
We need to teach this distaste for guns and violence to our children. Yes, sometimes they are necessary, sometimes we do have to put on uniforms and defend ourselves, but even then we are saddened by being turned into killers. Guns are never glorious.
May Mr. Vacca's family, as well as the little girl who he gave the uzzi to, and the families of all those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, be comforted.
The glorification of guns and violence also is in our movies and videogames. Is it really okay for children to play with toy guns? Are we sure that doesn’t send them a message about the acceptability of violence, and of using power to resolve conflicts? Why is it okay for a child, or even adult, to engage in the fantasy of killing and murdering, in a video game? How can this not be harmful to our neshamas, our souls?
The Talmud has a discussion about carrying swords on Shabbat. Apparently, at the time of the discussion, people liked to wear ceremonial swords. If they can be considered a garment or ornament, then you are wearing, not carrying, so you can go out with it on Shabbat. If it is something you carry, an implement that is not part of an outfit, then you can’t carry it oon Shabbat. The gemara concludes that it is not an ornament, but rather a disgraceful thing (Shabbat 63a).
We need to teach this distaste for guns and violence to our children. Yes, sometimes they are necessary, sometimes we do have to put on uniforms and defend ourselves, but even then we are saddened by being turned into killers. Guns are never glorious.
May Mr. Vacca's family, as well as the little girl who he gave the uzzi to, and the families of all those who have lost loved ones to gun violence, be comforted.
Friday, August 15, 2014
Jewish Wisdom and Depression
Robin Williams & depression
Shocked to learn of robin william’s death
Brought so much joy
I think of “mrs doubtfire,” a truly harmless character,
father who just wanted to see his children
he was a father, and also a giving person, who once spent the day with a girl dying of cancer
hard to believe he was depressed
turns out: manic depressive,
alcohol, which people often use to self-medicate mental illness
he was an overworker, which can also be a way of avoiding the perceived pain of one’s life
perhaps even comedy was a way of coping with depression—
comics often have mental illness
Robin Williams himself said comedy was a depress against fears.
reminiscent of the greek god Dionysus, who had 2 faces, one crying and one laughing
Dionysus was the god of wine, which can bring both laughter and tragedy
Reflects also the two extremes of human experience
It turns out: there are scientific studies claiming that religion can help with depression
Not talking about extreme depression, which may be a different ballgame
One study out of Columbia u followed a group for 10 years, and divided them between children of depressed and non-depressed parents. It turned out that the students who reported that “religion or spirituality was highly important to them had about one-fourth the risk of experiencing major depression between years 10 and 20 compared with other participants.” But [I have to be totally honest here] it Bible-thumping church goers who had this reduced risk. Neither the amount of attendance to religious services, nor the specific religious identity, predicted the outcome. The protection against depression was strongest in children of depressed parents.
Another study out of Wayne State University has demonstrated that even people suffering from traumatic brain injuries have been helped specifically by their faith. A definite correlation exists between those who are self-reported as having religious beliefs or seeing themselves as Spiritual (a connection to a Higher Power) and better emotional and physical rehabilitation outcomes!
A third study out of Columbia and published in JAMA Psychiatry claimed that regular spiritual practice thickens the brain cortex!
Admittedly, there are also studies claiming it does not help. A british study in “psychological medicine” actually claims that being religious predisposes people toward major depression!
Why might religion help?
Michael Govan has suggested:
God is seen as a power to get us out of depression when we can’t
Religion brings us into community, so we are no longer isolated
People are inspired by sacred texts about heroes overcoming obstacles
This morning: is there specific jewish wisdom that can help us when we’re depressed?
1. Positive sense of who I am, which the daily prayers are designed to reinforce
a. The belief that I am perfect exactly how god has made me, I am a pure soul
b. I have a mission
i. To face challenges I encounter. Every day is a spiritual test.
c. Gratitude for exactly what I have been given, belief I have been given the right things to accomplish that task, and a sense of pride in that task
Tanya ch 31: Paradoxically then, depression contains the key to its own demise. It can be fought in Kung Fu fashion, using its own power against it. Depression argues that you’re a worthless, hopeless scum in whom nobody would ever take interest. So agree with it. Tell it back, “You’re absolutely right. I’m even less than that. I was created with a purpose that I have not lived up to. I’ve messed up again and again. And yet, nevertheless, I have a G d who has put up with me despite all my failures, who continues to ask me to be His agent in His world, eagerly awaiting my mitzvahs, looking forward to me sharing my concerns with Him three times a day. My purpose still lies before me, and whatever of it I can fulfill, even for a moment, is worth more than all the pleasures of the Garden of Eden.”
There is a tale about the Chabad rebbe:
The Rebbe looked at the young man standing before him and said, “A Jew has to serve G d with happiness!”
The young man replied, “Rebbe, what is there for me to be celebrate?”
“Celebrate about the mitzvahs that you do!”
The young man paused. “Rebbe, I haven’t done any mitzvahs for a long time.”
“Then celebrate that you have a G d who waits every moment for your mitzvahs!”
Against such an argument, depression has nothing left to say. We call this “transforming darkness to light.” When light pushes away darkness, darkness only waits in the corners for its time to return. But when the darkness itself is transformed to light, it is a light that no darkness can oppose.
d. Daily prayer reinforces this identity
i. Elohai neshamah: my soul is pure, I can feel good about myself. I am beautiful and holy at my core
ii. Birkot hashachar: gratitude for everything I’ve been given
iii. Shema: reminds me that I work for god, and my task today is to find the opportunities to “love god when I walk on the way and when I sit at home”—i.e. to bring holiness and repair into every moment
iv. Amida & aleynu remind me that my mission is to bring repair to the world.
1. “rebuild Jerusalem”-may I be instrumental in bringing messianic repair
2. Aleynu: letaken olam
v. In the amida: we pray honen hada’at—may every encounter teach me how to serve you
vi. The very act of davenning is starting my day serving god, and feeling good about serving god
Conclusion: As a practice, always be enthusiastic.
1st line of shulchan aruch: yitgaber c’ari; value of zerizut-enthusiasm.
talmud: ein omdim- we can’t serve god out of sadness,
so we try to do every mitzvah with enthusiasm
from the moment we get up until we go to bed, we should be enthusiastic about fulfilling our mission for the day
I knew a shaliach tzibbur, who sometimes when there was no minyan would start davenning by saying “we have no choice, we must davven”.
What a depressing way to approach god!
Zerizut, enthusiasm, is to say, great, now we can commune with our maker!
Hasidim: depression is a bad yetzer taking me away from serving god—
Sefer Tanya ch 26: “ every mitzvah must be done with joy, every prayer with song and every word of Torah studied with enthusiasm—not just because without that joyful enthusiasm, you are simply not there within that mitzvah, but because without joy, the Jew lives in a precarious state. “Because you didn’t serve G d your G d with joy and a good heart…and so you will serve your enemies.” Meaning: When a Jew acts as a Jew but with a heavy heart, he is fair game for the enemy within—the urges and passions of his animal soul.”
We need to ignore it
Rebbe Nahman (who some claim was bipolar)): Mitzvah gedolah lihyot besimha tamid
use niggunim, jokes, anything, even pretending to be happy
so we have the energy to bring healing into the world and to serve those around us.
Shocked to learn of robin william’s death
Brought so much joy
I think of “mrs doubtfire,” a truly harmless character,
father who just wanted to see his children
he was a father, and also a giving person, who once spent the day with a girl dying of cancer
hard to believe he was depressed
turns out: manic depressive,
alcohol, which people often use to self-medicate mental illness
he was an overworker, which can also be a way of avoiding the perceived pain of one’s life
perhaps even comedy was a way of coping with depression—
comics often have mental illness
Robin Williams himself said comedy was a depress against fears.
reminiscent of the greek god Dionysus, who had 2 faces, one crying and one laughing
Dionysus was the god of wine, which can bring both laughter and tragedy
Reflects also the two extremes of human experience
It turns out: there are scientific studies claiming that religion can help with depression
Not talking about extreme depression, which may be a different ballgame
One study out of Columbia u followed a group for 10 years, and divided them between children of depressed and non-depressed parents. It turned out that the students who reported that “religion or spirituality was highly important to them had about one-fourth the risk of experiencing major depression between years 10 and 20 compared with other participants.” But [I have to be totally honest here] it Bible-thumping church goers who had this reduced risk. Neither the amount of attendance to religious services, nor the specific religious identity, predicted the outcome. The protection against depression was strongest in children of depressed parents.
Another study out of Wayne State University has demonstrated that even people suffering from traumatic brain injuries have been helped specifically by their faith. A definite correlation exists between those who are self-reported as having religious beliefs or seeing themselves as Spiritual (a connection to a Higher Power) and better emotional and physical rehabilitation outcomes!
A third study out of Columbia and published in JAMA Psychiatry claimed that regular spiritual practice thickens the brain cortex!
Admittedly, there are also studies claiming it does not help. A british study in “psychological medicine” actually claims that being religious predisposes people toward major depression!
Why might religion help?
Michael Govan has suggested:
God is seen as a power to get us out of depression when we can’t
Religion brings us into community, so we are no longer isolated
People are inspired by sacred texts about heroes overcoming obstacles
This morning: is there specific jewish wisdom that can help us when we’re depressed?
1. Positive sense of who I am, which the daily prayers are designed to reinforce
a. The belief that I am perfect exactly how god has made me, I am a pure soul
b. I have a mission
i. To face challenges I encounter. Every day is a spiritual test.
c. Gratitude for exactly what I have been given, belief I have been given the right things to accomplish that task, and a sense of pride in that task
Tanya ch 31: Paradoxically then, depression contains the key to its own demise. It can be fought in Kung Fu fashion, using its own power against it. Depression argues that you’re a worthless, hopeless scum in whom nobody would ever take interest. So agree with it. Tell it back, “You’re absolutely right. I’m even less than that. I was created with a purpose that I have not lived up to. I’ve messed up again and again. And yet, nevertheless, I have a G d who has put up with me despite all my failures, who continues to ask me to be His agent in His world, eagerly awaiting my mitzvahs, looking forward to me sharing my concerns with Him three times a day. My purpose still lies before me, and whatever of it I can fulfill, even for a moment, is worth more than all the pleasures of the Garden of Eden.”
There is a tale about the Chabad rebbe:
The Rebbe looked at the young man standing before him and said, “A Jew has to serve G d with happiness!”
The young man replied, “Rebbe, what is there for me to be celebrate?”
“Celebrate about the mitzvahs that you do!”
The young man paused. “Rebbe, I haven’t done any mitzvahs for a long time.”
“Then celebrate that you have a G d who waits every moment for your mitzvahs!”
Against such an argument, depression has nothing left to say. We call this “transforming darkness to light.” When light pushes away darkness, darkness only waits in the corners for its time to return. But when the darkness itself is transformed to light, it is a light that no darkness can oppose.
d. Daily prayer reinforces this identity
i. Elohai neshamah: my soul is pure, I can feel good about myself. I am beautiful and holy at my core
ii. Birkot hashachar: gratitude for everything I’ve been given
iii. Shema: reminds me that I work for god, and my task today is to find the opportunities to “love god when I walk on the way and when I sit at home”—i.e. to bring holiness and repair into every moment
iv. Amida & aleynu remind me that my mission is to bring repair to the world.
1. “rebuild Jerusalem”-may I be instrumental in bringing messianic repair
2. Aleynu: letaken olam
v. In the amida: we pray honen hada’at—may every encounter teach me how to serve you
vi. The very act of davenning is starting my day serving god, and feeling good about serving god
Conclusion: As a practice, always be enthusiastic.
1st line of shulchan aruch: yitgaber c’ari; value of zerizut-enthusiasm.
talmud: ein omdim- we can’t serve god out of sadness,
so we try to do every mitzvah with enthusiasm
from the moment we get up until we go to bed, we should be enthusiastic about fulfilling our mission for the day
I knew a shaliach tzibbur, who sometimes when there was no minyan would start davenning by saying “we have no choice, we must davven”.
What a depressing way to approach god!
Zerizut, enthusiasm, is to say, great, now we can commune with our maker!
Hasidim: depression is a bad yetzer taking me away from serving god—
Sefer Tanya ch 26: “ every mitzvah must be done with joy, every prayer with song and every word of Torah studied with enthusiasm—not just because without that joyful enthusiasm, you are simply not there within that mitzvah, but because without joy, the Jew lives in a precarious state. “Because you didn’t serve G d your G d with joy and a good heart…and so you will serve your enemies.” Meaning: When a Jew acts as a Jew but with a heavy heart, he is fair game for the enemy within—the urges and passions of his animal soul.”
We need to ignore it
Rebbe Nahman (who some claim was bipolar)): Mitzvah gedolah lihyot besimha tamid
use niggunim, jokes, anything, even pretending to be happy
so we have the energy to bring healing into the world and to serve those around us.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Va'etchanan: Loving God in today's world
Everybody knows that the heilige Rav Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev and Rav Baruch of Medzhibozh were the very opposites of each other. Reb Baruch was very civilized. When he davened, he barely moved. When he sat with his family at the Shabbes table, he was so regal he was the king of the world.
But when Rav Levi Yitzhak prayed, he jumped from one end of the room to another. He would dance, turn around, fall to the ground. At his table, one had to be very careful. You never knew what to expect. In the middle of kiddush, he could go absolutely wild, take the wine bottle, pour it up, pour it down, throw the cup into the air.
Reb Levi Yitzhak wanted so much to spend a Shabbes with Rav Baruch, the Baal Shem Tov's grandson, that he finally invited himself.
Rav Baruch said: "You can come, but you have to behave my way. Especially at the table, with my family, you must be very proper."
Reb Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev thought about it. "The only way I can behave is if I don't open my mouth. I won't even pray, except to say 'Amen,' because the minute I daven, I'm no longer myself."
So he said to Reb Baruch: "When we're making kiddush, don't ask me to say a blessing. Let me be absolutely silent, because it's the only way I can control myself."
The two rebbes agreed. Reb Levi Yitzhak came for Shabbes. They davened and he only answered "Amen." The praying went beautifully. Everybody was sure that by kiddush, Reb Levi Yitzhak would start jumping on the table. But, no, Reb Baruch made kiddush and Rav Levi Yitzhak only said "Amen."
Everybody knows that it's a minhag, a custom on Friday night, to eat sweet fish and sour fish. The deepest question in the world, and a big controversy among the rebbes, was which fish to eat first. Some said sweet fish, because then you have the strength to bear the sour. Others said: "Let's get the sour fish out of the way, so that the end will be sweet."
But both ways are holy.
Rav Baruch was civilized. He had a little hasid, like a waiter, bring the fish on a platter and ask each person which he preferred to eat first - sour fish or sweet. So the waiter came, sadly enough, to Reb Levi Yitzhak and asked, "Do you like sweet fish? Hostu lieb zisseh fisch"
That's all the poor hasid had to ask. Rav Levi Yitzhak said: "Hob ich lieb fisch? Do I love sweet fish? Ich hob lieb nor hashem! I love only God!"
And he took the whole platter of fish and threw it up to the ceiling. And the fish began to drip onto Rav Baruch's tallit, because in those days the big rebbes always wore their prayer shawls for the feast on Friday night.
Everyone was aghast. Everyone, that is, except Rav Baruch who, for all his civilized behavior, would never wash his tallit after that feast because, he said, the stains were very holy. "These stains are caused by a Jew who really loves God. How can I wash them out?"
After Rav Baruch's death, the tallit was passed from one rebbe to another to wear on Shabbes, but never washed. During this century it became so precious that the rebbes only wore it for Yom Kippur. The holy Munkatcher Rebbe, the last to possess it, wore it only for Neilah, the final prayer of Yom Kippur. He must have foreseen the destruction that would be coming into the world with the Holocaust. For the holy Munkatcher's last will was to be buried in Rav Baruch's tallit, covered with the stains caused by one who loved only God. (as told by R Shlomo Carlebach)
What does love of god look like for us?
Are we really commanded “veahafta et adonai,” to love god, to have a particular emotion?
What is we don’t feel it?
Do we even want to feel it?
“loving god” as an ideal is very challenging
In a world where fanatics claim to be focused on divine
But use this as an excuse for killing and hatred
So Many of us don’t think of God as a person we would be in love with
And if god is a person, we think of god as a parent or ruler
One way many people tone it down: “love” as service
If I love you, do nice things for you
Veahafta leads into “vehaya im shamoa”—leads to action
Useless to love god is we don’t serve god
If I love someone, always thinking about making them happy
Most important value in my life
This is very dry
Is this really loving god?
But what can loving god be for us in today’s world?
One aspect: yearning to experience divine, spiritual core of everything
we can yearn to see the divine,
to taste god,
to bring god’s presence into our life in a palpable way
Story: blessing over apple
Once a man brought his ten year old son to visit R' Aharon HaGadol of Karlin. As they were sitting and talking, Reb Aharon asked for a bowl of apples to be brought in. Reb Aharon and his guests each took an apple, with great intention recited the blessing, ". . .Borei Pri HaEtz. . ", and began to eat.
The boy thought to himself, "What is the difference between me and the Rebbe. He eats apples and also I eat apples. He makes a blessing and so do I. Even I could be the Rebbe someday."
Reb Aharon, attuned as he was to the thoughts of others, felt what the youngster was thinking. "Oh, there is a real difference between us my friend", divulged Reb Aharon. "When you wake up in the morning and look out the window, you see that there is a beautiful apple tree in your yard. You see the juicy, red apples growing on it and right away you can think of nothing else but those apples. You run to wash your hands, get dressed as quickly as possible, bolt out the door and scamper up the tree. You quickly decide which apple is to be your breakfast and open your mouth for the first delicious bite. You almost take that bite until you remember, just in time, that you must make a blessing before eating an apple. So you make the blessing in order to eat."
"When I wake up in the morning", continued Reb Aharon, "it is a different story." "When I wake up and look out the window I see a beautiful apple tree. I think about the wonder of Hashem's creation. I contemplate how this apple tree began as a small seed in the ground, and how it slowly grew year by year until one year it flowered and then apples appeared. I remember to wash my hands before I run outside to take a closer look at this amazing creation. In awe of Hashem and His Creation I want to make a blessing on the apple tree and its fruits. I begin to say the blessing, but then I remember, in order to make a blessing, I need an apple. . .!" (retold at Nishmas.org)
Loving god, yearning for god, is to yearn to experience divine energy
What the kabbalists call sheaf, divine abundance which flows through every molecule of the universe
Also: yearn for a world where that divine energy is palpable
Mishnah: ever since shekhinah exiled, sky changed color, fruit lost its flavor
We can no longer simply taste the divine
We have to look for it, yearn for it
Love of God also comes from appreciating the way god loves us love in our lives
The blessings of food, water, shelter
The love from our family, their presence in our life
The love from our critics, the way they help us grow
All of these are expressions of divine love
And of course loving god is an action as well, of pouring our energy into taking care of each other & of the world
Mother Theresa: In loving one another through our works we bring an increase of grace and a growth in divine love
May we discover divine love in our lives
May we become fountains of divine love
But when Rav Levi Yitzhak prayed, he jumped from one end of the room to another. He would dance, turn around, fall to the ground. At his table, one had to be very careful. You never knew what to expect. In the middle of kiddush, he could go absolutely wild, take the wine bottle, pour it up, pour it down, throw the cup into the air.
Reb Levi Yitzhak wanted so much to spend a Shabbes with Rav Baruch, the Baal Shem Tov's grandson, that he finally invited himself.
Rav Baruch said: "You can come, but you have to behave my way. Especially at the table, with my family, you must be very proper."
Reb Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev thought about it. "The only way I can behave is if I don't open my mouth. I won't even pray, except to say 'Amen,' because the minute I daven, I'm no longer myself."
So he said to Reb Baruch: "When we're making kiddush, don't ask me to say a blessing. Let me be absolutely silent, because it's the only way I can control myself."
The two rebbes agreed. Reb Levi Yitzhak came for Shabbes. They davened and he only answered "Amen." The praying went beautifully. Everybody was sure that by kiddush, Reb Levi Yitzhak would start jumping on the table. But, no, Reb Baruch made kiddush and Rav Levi Yitzhak only said "Amen."
Everybody knows that it's a minhag, a custom on Friday night, to eat sweet fish and sour fish. The deepest question in the world, and a big controversy among the rebbes, was which fish to eat first. Some said sweet fish, because then you have the strength to bear the sour. Others said: "Let's get the sour fish out of the way, so that the end will be sweet."
But both ways are holy.
Rav Baruch was civilized. He had a little hasid, like a waiter, bring the fish on a platter and ask each person which he preferred to eat first - sour fish or sweet. So the waiter came, sadly enough, to Reb Levi Yitzhak and asked, "Do you like sweet fish? Hostu lieb zisseh fisch"
That's all the poor hasid had to ask. Rav Levi Yitzhak said: "Hob ich lieb fisch? Do I love sweet fish? Ich hob lieb nor hashem! I love only God!"
And he took the whole platter of fish and threw it up to the ceiling. And the fish began to drip onto Rav Baruch's tallit, because in those days the big rebbes always wore their prayer shawls for the feast on Friday night.
Everyone was aghast. Everyone, that is, except Rav Baruch who, for all his civilized behavior, would never wash his tallit after that feast because, he said, the stains were very holy. "These stains are caused by a Jew who really loves God. How can I wash them out?"
After Rav Baruch's death, the tallit was passed from one rebbe to another to wear on Shabbes, but never washed. During this century it became so precious that the rebbes only wore it for Yom Kippur. The holy Munkatcher Rebbe, the last to possess it, wore it only for Neilah, the final prayer of Yom Kippur. He must have foreseen the destruction that would be coming into the world with the Holocaust. For the holy Munkatcher's last will was to be buried in Rav Baruch's tallit, covered with the stains caused by one who loved only God. (as told by R Shlomo Carlebach)
What does love of god look like for us?
Are we really commanded “veahafta et adonai,” to love god, to have a particular emotion?
What is we don’t feel it?
Do we even want to feel it?
“loving god” as an ideal is very challenging
In a world where fanatics claim to be focused on divine
But use this as an excuse for killing and hatred
So Many of us don’t think of God as a person we would be in love with
And if god is a person, we think of god as a parent or ruler
One way many people tone it down: “love” as service
If I love you, do nice things for you
Veahafta leads into “vehaya im shamoa”—leads to action
Useless to love god is we don’t serve god
If I love someone, always thinking about making them happy
Most important value in my life
This is very dry
Is this really loving god?
But what can loving god be for us in today’s world?
One aspect: yearning to experience divine, spiritual core of everything
we can yearn to see the divine,
to taste god,
to bring god’s presence into our life in a palpable way
Story: blessing over apple
Once a man brought his ten year old son to visit R' Aharon HaGadol of Karlin. As they were sitting and talking, Reb Aharon asked for a bowl of apples to be brought in. Reb Aharon and his guests each took an apple, with great intention recited the blessing, ". . .Borei Pri HaEtz. . ", and began to eat.
The boy thought to himself, "What is the difference between me and the Rebbe. He eats apples and also I eat apples. He makes a blessing and so do I. Even I could be the Rebbe someday."
Reb Aharon, attuned as he was to the thoughts of others, felt what the youngster was thinking. "Oh, there is a real difference between us my friend", divulged Reb Aharon. "When you wake up in the morning and look out the window, you see that there is a beautiful apple tree in your yard. You see the juicy, red apples growing on it and right away you can think of nothing else but those apples. You run to wash your hands, get dressed as quickly as possible, bolt out the door and scamper up the tree. You quickly decide which apple is to be your breakfast and open your mouth for the first delicious bite. You almost take that bite until you remember, just in time, that you must make a blessing before eating an apple. So you make the blessing in order to eat."
"When I wake up in the morning", continued Reb Aharon, "it is a different story." "When I wake up and look out the window I see a beautiful apple tree. I think about the wonder of Hashem's creation. I contemplate how this apple tree began as a small seed in the ground, and how it slowly grew year by year until one year it flowered and then apples appeared. I remember to wash my hands before I run outside to take a closer look at this amazing creation. In awe of Hashem and His Creation I want to make a blessing on the apple tree and its fruits. I begin to say the blessing, but then I remember, in order to make a blessing, I need an apple. . .!" (retold at Nishmas.org)
Loving god, yearning for god, is to yearn to experience divine energy
What the kabbalists call sheaf, divine abundance which flows through every molecule of the universe
Also: yearn for a world where that divine energy is palpable
Mishnah: ever since shekhinah exiled, sky changed color, fruit lost its flavor
We can no longer simply taste the divine
We have to look for it, yearn for it
Love of God also comes from appreciating the way god loves us love in our lives
The blessings of food, water, shelter
The love from our family, their presence in our life
The love from our critics, the way they help us grow
All of these are expressions of divine love
And of course loving god is an action as well, of pouring our energy into taking care of each other & of the world
Mother Theresa: In loving one another through our works we bring an increase of grace and a growth in divine love
May we discover divine love in our lives
May we become fountains of divine love
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Tisha B'Av: Holding ourselves up to a higher standard
Holding ourselves up to a higher standard
Talmud: he who doesn't see temple rebuilt, as if destroyed in his lifetime
we are meant to spend tisha b'av asking: what are we doing to delay the redemption?
what do we do now that causes temple not to be rebuilt
Opposite of blame game: always blame ourselves
Is this blaming the victim?
No: more productive to always grow
This year, with the war in Israel, Eicha resonates deeply with the destruction happening there
Thank God, not as many civilian casualties as when the romans destroyed jerusalem
But the fire of the rockets reminds me of the fire in the temple in roman times
fires now all across Israel
It is easy to point the finger at hamas and at the civilian population in Gaza
a terrorist organization dedicated to destroying Israel
spent on order of millions of dollars each tunnel instead of building infrastructure
sacrificed 160 children building them
civilians too:
gazans teach children right of return instead of building gaza
elected Hamas & happy to martyr civilians for its jihad
and publically we need to do this—to speak up for Israel
It's easy to say, we already hold ourself to too high a standard
roof knocks & leaflets when there are civilians in the way
actually investigate whether a target was accidental, fesses up when it makes a mistake
providing electricity to Gaza
Offering to provide blood to injured citizens (which Gaza turned down)--whether jewish or palestinian blood
Painful that the world holds Israel up to a higher standard
to a standard apparently: shouldn't fight back when threatened
and our response to the world is to say that we need to protect ourselves
The challenge of this teaching: what more can we do to promote peace in Israel?
What more can we do to promote peace between jews and palestinians, and all muslims?
What more can we do to help the palestinians build a viable state?
What more can we do to protect and save the lives of civilians?
What ways can we treat each other better, erase traces of sinat hinam, create jewish unity?
Can we reach out here to muslims we know, to create understanding, friendship, the seeds of peace?
Never to blame, only to constantly improve ourselves
Talmud: he who doesn't see temple rebuilt, as if destroyed in his lifetime
we are meant to spend tisha b'av asking: what are we doing to delay the redemption?
what do we do now that causes temple not to be rebuilt
Opposite of blame game: always blame ourselves
Is this blaming the victim?
No: more productive to always grow
This year, with the war in Israel, Eicha resonates deeply with the destruction happening there
Thank God, not as many civilian casualties as when the romans destroyed jerusalem
But the fire of the rockets reminds me of the fire in the temple in roman times
fires now all across Israel
It is easy to point the finger at hamas and at the civilian population in Gaza
a terrorist organization dedicated to destroying Israel
spent on order of millions of dollars each tunnel instead of building infrastructure
sacrificed 160 children building them
civilians too:
gazans teach children right of return instead of building gaza
elected Hamas & happy to martyr civilians for its jihad
and publically we need to do this—to speak up for Israel
It's easy to say, we already hold ourself to too high a standard
roof knocks & leaflets when there are civilians in the way
actually investigate whether a target was accidental, fesses up when it makes a mistake
providing electricity to Gaza
Offering to provide blood to injured citizens (which Gaza turned down)--whether jewish or palestinian blood
Painful that the world holds Israel up to a higher standard
to a standard apparently: shouldn't fight back when threatened
and our response to the world is to say that we need to protect ourselves
The challenge of this teaching: what more can we do to promote peace in Israel?
What more can we do to promote peace between jews and palestinians, and all muslims?
What more can we do to help the palestinians build a viable state?
What more can we do to protect and save the lives of civilians?
What ways can we treat each other better, erase traces of sinat hinam, create jewish unity?
Can we reach out here to muslims we know, to create understanding, friendship, the seeds of peace?
Never to blame, only to constantly improve ourselves
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Devarim: what is our vision for the third temple?
It’s been quite a week
uncovered Hamas plans to send 200 miltants into Israel on Rosh hashanah
to kill/kidnap civilians
we collectively have been saved from a contemporary Haman
ninth day of the month of Av (“Tisha B’Av”) coming up Monday night
Both the first Temple (833–423 BCE) and the second Temple (349 BCE–69 CE) were destroyed on this date.
How sadly apt now that we are in this terrible war
Shabbat preceding tisha b'av: “Shabbat of Vision,” for on this Shabbat we read a chapter from the Prophets (Isaiah 1:1–27) that begins, “The vision of Isaiah .”
Isaiah's vision but also our own.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev: the vision is our own.
each and every one of us is granted a vision of the third and final Temple
paraphrases the Talmud, “though we do not ourselves see, our souls see.”
even if we are not consciously aware of the cause of our sudden inspiration.
Our souls behold a vision of a world at peace with itself and its Creator, a world suffused with the knowledge and awareness of G d, a world that has realized its divine potential for goodness and perfection.
a vision that inspires us to correct our behavior and hasten the day when the spiritual vision becomes physical reality.
Now, with such violence in Israel
hard to imagine such a vision
of peace in israel, between Jews and Arabs,
a peace which inspires the world to live in peace
Reb Arthur Waskow's vision:
our sages teach us that when Mashiach comes, he will rebuild the Holy Temple in the twinkling of an eye. But often have I wondered: How can this be? Mashiach will be extraordinary, yet still a human being merely …
“But now! I have seen … Well, let me tell you: At the foot of the Western Wall, the Wall where God’s Own Presence weeps and hides in exile, I have seen hundreds of thousands of Jews gathered, singing.
“Mashiach has come! — — and they are singing, dancing, as the Great Day dawns. Women, men, together — — I could not believe it! I was not even sure” — — he glanced apologetic at his Chassid — “whether Mashiach was a wo … well, forget it.
“I can see from the sun, the heat, it is late afternoon. Yet the crowd are wearing t’fillin. The only time in all the year when Jews wear t’fillin in the afternoon is Tisha B’Av, so I can see that it is the day of mourning for our beloved Temple. But there are no signs of mourning — — except perhaps the way, the wistful way, Mashiach reaches out to touch the Wall, to tuck one last petition between the great carved stones.
“I see Mashiach speak a sentence to the crowds. I cannot hear the words, but I can see that from this voice there stirs a river. Like water from the ancient stones of Wall, I see a stream of Jews flow up the stairway that rises to the Temple Mount.
“The river of people pauses on the steps. They cluster ‘round a wrinkled, tattered piece of paper, posted above the stairway. I see it is signed by the rabbis of that day. It warns all Jews to go no further, lest by accident they walk — — God forbid! — — into the space set aside as the Holy of Holies.
“Mashiach reads. And laughs. And tears the sign to shreds. The stream of people shudders — — higher, higher.
“The crowd cascades from the stairway onto the great stone pavement of the Temple Mount. Their singing turns to the thunder of a great waterfall. They look toward the other end of the Mount — toward the great golden Dome of the Rock where Abraham bound his son for sacrifice.
“Surrounding the Dome are thousands of these children of Ishmael, these Muslims. They are not singing. They are shouting, furious, stubborn. ‘Not here!’ they shout in unison, ‘Not here!’
“ ‘You will not tear down our Holy Mosque to build your Jewish Temple!’
“But I can hear the crowd of Jews — — muttering, whispering, ‘Right there, yes! — — That is the place… No doubt, no doubt, the ancient studies tell us that it is the place.’
“Mashiach is quiet. The sea of Jews falls to a murmuring, falls silent. They turn to watch. Mashiach looks, gazes, embraces with fond eyes the Holy Space. Mashiach’s eyes move across the Dome, its golden glow, the greens and blues and ivories of the walls beneath it.
I hear a whisper from Mashiach’s lips: ‘So beautiful!’
“The Muslims too are silent now. The stillness here, the stillness there — — so total that they split the Holy Mount in two.
“Mashiach raises one arrn, slowly, slowly. The Muslims tense, lift knives and clubs and shake them in the stillness. The Jews tense, ready to leap forward with their picks and shovels.
“Mashiach points straight at the Dome.
“The peoples vibrate: two separate phantom ram’s horns in the silent air, wailing forth a silent sob to Heaven.
“Mashiach speaks quietly into the utter quiet:
‘This green, this blue, this gold, this Dome — — This is the Holy Temple!’
“I blink.
“For seconds, minutes, there is not a sound.
“Then I hear a Muslim shout, see him raise a knife: ‘No! No! You will not steal our Holy Mosque to make your Jewish Temple!”
“He throws the knife. It falls far short. No one stirs. The other Muslims turn to look at him. They look with steadfast eyes: no joy, no anger. They just keep looking. He wilts into the crowd; I can no longer see what he is doing.
”Mashiach steps forward, one step. Everyone, Jew and Muslim. breathes a breath. One Jew calls out: ‘You must not do this. You must not use their dirty place to be our Holy Temple. Tear it down! — — We need our own, the Prophets teach how wide and tall it is to be. It is not this thing of theirs, this thing of curves and circles.
“He takes a step toward Mashiach, lifts an axe to brandish it.
“The man beside him reaches out a hand and takes the axe. Just takes it. There is a murmur. but the murmur dies. The man holds the axe level in both hands, walks out with it into the no- man’s land between the crowds. He lays it on the pavement next to the Muslim knife, he backs away.
“There is another time of quiet. Two Muslims reach out from the crowd, toss their knives to land next to the axe. The pause is shorter this time. Then on every side weapons come flying through the air to land beside the axe, beside the knives. There is a pile. Somehow — I could not see how — there lights a fire. The pile begins to burn. The flames reach up and up and up - — to Heaven.
The weapons are the burnt offering
the beit hamikdash, holy temple
is not a building
but the space between them, sanctified by the flames of their burnt offering
uncovered Hamas plans to send 200 miltants into Israel on Rosh hashanah
to kill/kidnap civilians
we collectively have been saved from a contemporary Haman
ninth day of the month of Av (“Tisha B’Av”) coming up Monday night
Both the first Temple (833–423 BCE) and the second Temple (349 BCE–69 CE) were destroyed on this date.
How sadly apt now that we are in this terrible war
Shabbat preceding tisha b'av: “Shabbat of Vision,” for on this Shabbat we read a chapter from the Prophets (Isaiah 1:1–27) that begins, “The vision of Isaiah .”
Isaiah's vision but also our own.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev: the vision is our own.
each and every one of us is granted a vision of the third and final Temple
paraphrases the Talmud, “though we do not ourselves see, our souls see.”
even if we are not consciously aware of the cause of our sudden inspiration.
Our souls behold a vision of a world at peace with itself and its Creator, a world suffused with the knowledge and awareness of G d, a world that has realized its divine potential for goodness and perfection.
a vision that inspires us to correct our behavior and hasten the day when the spiritual vision becomes physical reality.
Now, with such violence in Israel
hard to imagine such a vision
of peace in israel, between Jews and Arabs,
a peace which inspires the world to live in peace
Reb Arthur Waskow's vision:
our sages teach us that when Mashiach comes, he will rebuild the Holy Temple in the twinkling of an eye. But often have I wondered: How can this be? Mashiach will be extraordinary, yet still a human being merely …
“But now! I have seen … Well, let me tell you: At the foot of the Western Wall, the Wall where God’s Own Presence weeps and hides in exile, I have seen hundreds of thousands of Jews gathered, singing.
“Mashiach has come! — — and they are singing, dancing, as the Great Day dawns. Women, men, together — — I could not believe it! I was not even sure” — — he glanced apologetic at his Chassid — “whether Mashiach was a wo … well, forget it.
“I can see from the sun, the heat, it is late afternoon. Yet the crowd are wearing t’fillin. The only time in all the year when Jews wear t’fillin in the afternoon is Tisha B’Av, so I can see that it is the day of mourning for our beloved Temple. But there are no signs of mourning — — except perhaps the way, the wistful way, Mashiach reaches out to touch the Wall, to tuck one last petition between the great carved stones.
“I see Mashiach speak a sentence to the crowds. I cannot hear the words, but I can see that from this voice there stirs a river. Like water from the ancient stones of Wall, I see a stream of Jews flow up the stairway that rises to the Temple Mount.
“The river of people pauses on the steps. They cluster ‘round a wrinkled, tattered piece of paper, posted above the stairway. I see it is signed by the rabbis of that day. It warns all Jews to go no further, lest by accident they walk — — God forbid! — — into the space set aside as the Holy of Holies.
“Mashiach reads. And laughs. And tears the sign to shreds. The stream of people shudders — — higher, higher.
“The crowd cascades from the stairway onto the great stone pavement of the Temple Mount. Their singing turns to the thunder of a great waterfall. They look toward the other end of the Mount — toward the great golden Dome of the Rock where Abraham bound his son for sacrifice.
“Surrounding the Dome are thousands of these children of Ishmael, these Muslims. They are not singing. They are shouting, furious, stubborn. ‘Not here!’ they shout in unison, ‘Not here!’
“ ‘You will not tear down our Holy Mosque to build your Jewish Temple!’
“But I can hear the crowd of Jews — — muttering, whispering, ‘Right there, yes! — — That is the place… No doubt, no doubt, the ancient studies tell us that it is the place.’
“Mashiach is quiet. The sea of Jews falls to a murmuring, falls silent. They turn to watch. Mashiach looks, gazes, embraces with fond eyes the Holy Space. Mashiach’s eyes move across the Dome, its golden glow, the greens and blues and ivories of the walls beneath it.
I hear a whisper from Mashiach’s lips: ‘So beautiful!’
“The Muslims too are silent now. The stillness here, the stillness there — — so total that they split the Holy Mount in two.
“Mashiach raises one arrn, slowly, slowly. The Muslims tense, lift knives and clubs and shake them in the stillness. The Jews tense, ready to leap forward with their picks and shovels.
“Mashiach points straight at the Dome.
“The peoples vibrate: two separate phantom ram’s horns in the silent air, wailing forth a silent sob to Heaven.
“Mashiach speaks quietly into the utter quiet:
‘This green, this blue, this gold, this Dome — — This is the Holy Temple!’
“I blink.
“For seconds, minutes, there is not a sound.
“Then I hear a Muslim shout, see him raise a knife: ‘No! No! You will not steal our Holy Mosque to make your Jewish Temple!”
“He throws the knife. It falls far short. No one stirs. The other Muslims turn to look at him. They look with steadfast eyes: no joy, no anger. They just keep looking. He wilts into the crowd; I can no longer see what he is doing.
”Mashiach steps forward, one step. Everyone, Jew and Muslim. breathes a breath. One Jew calls out: ‘You must not do this. You must not use their dirty place to be our Holy Temple. Tear it down! — — We need our own, the Prophets teach how wide and tall it is to be. It is not this thing of theirs, this thing of curves and circles.
“He takes a step toward Mashiach, lifts an axe to brandish it.
“The man beside him reaches out a hand and takes the axe. Just takes it. There is a murmur. but the murmur dies. The man holds the axe level in both hands, walks out with it into the no- man’s land between the crowds. He lays it on the pavement next to the Muslim knife, he backs away.
“There is another time of quiet. Two Muslims reach out from the crowd, toss their knives to land next to the axe. The pause is shorter this time. Then on every side weapons come flying through the air to land beside the axe, beside the knives. There is a pile. Somehow — I could not see how — there lights a fire. The pile begins to burn. The flames reach up and up and up - — to Heaven.
The weapons are the burnt offering
the beit hamikdash, holy temple
is not a building
but the space between them, sanctified by the flames of their burnt offering
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Praying for Peace in jerusalem on the 17th of Tammuz
Dear Friends,
I am excited to be preparing to start at Northern Hills Synagogue as the rabbi. I am in town, and am looking forward to getting to know all of you.
I am writing because today is the 17th of Tammuz, an ancient fast day dating back over two thousand years. Mentioned by the prophet Zecharayah around 518 BCE, it commemorates numerous tragedies, including the breach of the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans which led to the destruction of the Temple on the 9th of Av. Today is thus the beginning of the “three week” period.
According to the Talmud, the 17th of Tammuz is a minor fast day, and will in fact be abrogated when Jerusalem is at peace:
Rav Hanna bar Bizna said in the name of Rabbi Shimon Hasida: What is meant by the verse (Zekhariah 8:19): "Thus said the Lord of Hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth month, the fast of the seventh month, and the fast of the tenth month shall become occasions for joy and gladness for the House of Judah." - It is called "fast" and it is called "joy and gladness" - when there is peace, they shall be days of "joy and gladness", when there is no peace, they shall be a "fast" (Rosh Hashanah 18b)
This year, as Jerusalem and the rest of Israel face constant bombardment from rockets (over 500 so far), and 40,000 reservists have been called up for a looming ground war, the passage is particularly poignant and can add meaning to our observance of the day.
Please join with me in praying for peace in Jerusalem, Israel, and on earth on this day, and considering how we can contribute to peace in our sacred homeland and in our own lives.
B’shalom,
Rabbi David B. Siff
I am excited to be preparing to start at Northern Hills Synagogue as the rabbi. I am in town, and am looking forward to getting to know all of you.
I am writing because today is the 17th of Tammuz, an ancient fast day dating back over two thousand years. Mentioned by the prophet Zecharayah around 518 BCE, it commemorates numerous tragedies, including the breach of the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans which led to the destruction of the Temple on the 9th of Av. Today is thus the beginning of the “three week” period.
According to the Talmud, the 17th of Tammuz is a minor fast day, and will in fact be abrogated when Jerusalem is at peace:
Rav Hanna bar Bizna said in the name of Rabbi Shimon Hasida: What is meant by the verse (Zekhariah 8:19): "Thus said the Lord of Hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth month, the fast of the seventh month, and the fast of the tenth month shall become occasions for joy and gladness for the House of Judah." - It is called "fast" and it is called "joy and gladness" - when there is peace, they shall be days of "joy and gladness", when there is no peace, they shall be a "fast" (Rosh Hashanah 18b)
This year, as Jerusalem and the rest of Israel face constant bombardment from rockets (over 500 so far), and 40,000 reservists have been called up for a looming ground war, the passage is particularly poignant and can add meaning to our observance of the day.
Please join with me in praying for peace in Jerusalem, Israel, and on earth on this day, and considering how we can contribute to peace in our sacred homeland and in our own lives.
B’shalom,
Rabbi David B. Siff
Monday, March 24, 2014
Aaron's silent scream
Aaron’s silence
This week, I think we all were stunned by the disappearance of a Boeing 777 with 269 passengers onboard. After the pilots turned off their location radar, and saying goodnight, the plane flew off in silence through the night. It is an eerie silence, an absent cry, a mystery begging to be solved.
Scene: aaron’s silence
In this week’s Torah portion, Shemini, Aaron’s silence too confounds us. The Tabernacle just inaugurated, divine fire had miraculously issued from inside the Tent of Meeting to consume Aaron's burnt offering on the altar, and then Nadav and Avihu, Aaron's two elder sons, mess up. Maybe they were disrespectful, maybe they were drunk, it is unclear.
This time the fire came from the tent and burned them, turning triumph to tragedy. Moses’ response was sharp, and it’s unclear what he meant: “that’s what God said he’d do”—was he trying to be comforting? Waqs he being an “I told you so?” Aaron's response was silence: "VaYidom Aaharon"—one of the only instances where Torah says someone stayed silent.
Did he stop crying?
Did he stop himself from replying?
What did he want to say?
Why the silence? Why no scream?
Aaron’s response is striking. Personally, I find it troubling: is it really better to be stoic in the face of tragedy, to swallow my sorrow and put on a cheerful face, not to make even a whimper?
When David's vain and rebellious son, Absalom, who rebelled against his own father, was killed in flight, his father fully vented his grief: "My son Absalom! O my son, my son Absalom. If only I had died instead of you!" (2 Samuel 19:1).
We are taught in Leviticus, that we shall not stand by while our neighbor bleeds. While we might be inclined to respond to someone else’s suffering with silence, we are commanded to expose, to speak out and not be indifferent to unjust suffering.
In fact, the Zohar blames Noah for the flood, because when he was told about the divine decree to wipe out everyone else, he didn’t argue with God. As a result, the flood is called mei Noah, the waters of Noah, because when I keep silent, when I do not protest, I am responsible for what happens. I am accountable for keeping silent.
Abraham Joshua Heschel describes the prophet’s job as follows:
The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority, and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. Had the purpose been to express great ideas, prophecy would have had to be acclaimed as a triumph. Yet the purpose of prophecy was to conquer callousness, to change the inner heart as well as to revolutionize history.
Sometimes our voices must be raised like the prophets’, to speak out against injustice, to take out from anonymity the falsehoods and crimes perpetrated in our society.
And psychologically it is extremely dangerous not to speak out after tragedy, to let grief fester inside of us. When we speak we process feelings, we make extreme intolerable feelings more tolerable, we can integrate our experience and move on. This is I think why we have a tradition of shiva, of a mourner sitting for a week surrounded by friends and family who allow the mourner to speak. It is by talking about our loved ones, processing our loss, that we can move on.
We see this now with many returning veterans, who cannot talk openly about the horrors they have witnessed, and who constantly relive those war experiences in their imagination, in their dreams. And the treatment for them is to make their memories more tolerable to enable them to speak about their experiences without reliving the trauma. In this case, that which is silent must be articulated, or it will destroy us.
Silence as positive
I have talked up to now about the power, the value, of us speaking out, and our need for the world to speak out for God to speak out. But in our parsha, Aaron is silent, which I find very troubling.
The midrash sees Aaron’s silence as a positive thing. God speaks to Aaron after his silence directly, rather than through or with Moses, as a reward for that silence.
3 types of silence
1. There is the silence of the unknown, of the absent voice
This is the silence of the missing flight 370, a boeing 777 with 269 people
Where are they?
How can their families grieve and move on not knowing what’s happened to them?
This kind of silence begs to be articulated, it points to a mystery begging to be solved, of unspoken suffering begging to be recognized
Elie Wiesel, who broke the silence of Holocaust survivors and his own 10-year vow of silence, when he wrote Night, said:
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
The original version of Night was a 900-page memoir entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent). This is a silence begging to be given voice.
2. Silence of the unspeakable
There are also times when we hold ourselves back because what we say would be hurtful, or because we know we wouldn’t be heard
Shimon & Levi’s massacre in shechem
Jacob confronts them: 'You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.'
But they said (Genesis 34:31), 'Should he treat our sister as a harlot?
Jacob was silent—but not because he agreed with them
On his deathbed, finally speaks up:
Simeon and Levi are brothers;
Instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place.
Let not my soul enter their council;
Let not my honor be united to their assembly;
For in their anger they slew a man,
And in their self-will they hamstrung an ox.
Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce;
And their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob
And scatter them in Israel
When Jacob was silent, it was because he knew they wouldn’t listen. His words would have fallen on deaf ears, so he wisely didn’t bother.
Sometimes: to speak would be hurtful
Maybe aaron wanted to say “you jerk, what an insensitive thing to say”
Moses’ mistake: speaking first, offering explanation
When we visit a mourner, let them do the talking, we do the listening
Never say things like “it’s for the best,” which true or not are insensitive and unhelpful
3. The silent scream
3rd type: Silence of the awesome, of that which is beyond language, which defies language
Ismar Schorsch compared Aaron’s silence to Edvard Munch's painting of 1893, "The Scream.”
“A gaunt figure on a bridge with his face contorted in horror and hands clasped to his ears trembles in the midst of a cosmic scream, suggested by a wavy landscape in deep colors. Munch wrote of the experience that lay behind the art: I walked one evening on a road—on the one side was the town and the fjord below me. I was tired and ill — I stood looking out across the fjord — the sun was setting — the clouds were colored red — like blood — I felt as though a scream went through nature — I thought I heard a scream. I painted this picture — painted the clouds like real blood. The colors were screaming.” (JTS Commentary on Shemini, 5762)
These silences are not really silences at—they just speak a truth too massive, too powerful to be articulated in human language.
White fire
One can think of this kind of audible silence as the mystics did of the white fire with which Torah was written. What we naturally see when we peer inside of a Torah scroll is the black forms of letters that form words, and give the meaning of the Torah in human language.
The midrash says that torah was written with black fire on white fire. Right now when we read torah, we only read from the black. But in the messianic era, the white fire, too, the apparently empty spaces, the silence, will be revealed as Torah. We will encounter the inexpressible, silent torah, embodying a higher level of consciousness, a deeper mode of feeling & experiencing reality. As David Wolpe (In Speech and In Silence) has written, “Even in the silence, there is a message of faith. The paradox is listening for that which cannot be heard.” Psalms says, “to you silence is praise.” There is a type of silence which expresses that which is above expression, that which is awesome—being awe struck, being flooded by the white spaces in reality.
Perhaps Moses tried to relate to Aaron in words, and fell short, because words could not express what he felt. Perhaps Aaron was so overwhelmed by his emotions that only silence could express the depth of his feelings. And perhaps Moses and the community held him lovingly as he went through that experience.
This week, I think we all were stunned by the disappearance of a Boeing 777 with 269 passengers onboard. After the pilots turned off their location radar, and saying goodnight, the plane flew off in silence through the night. It is an eerie silence, an absent cry, a mystery begging to be solved.
Scene: aaron’s silence
In this week’s Torah portion, Shemini, Aaron’s silence too confounds us. The Tabernacle just inaugurated, divine fire had miraculously issued from inside the Tent of Meeting to consume Aaron's burnt offering on the altar, and then Nadav and Avihu, Aaron's two elder sons, mess up. Maybe they were disrespectful, maybe they were drunk, it is unclear.
This time the fire came from the tent and burned them, turning triumph to tragedy. Moses’ response was sharp, and it’s unclear what he meant: “that’s what God said he’d do”—was he trying to be comforting? Waqs he being an “I told you so?” Aaron's response was silence: "VaYidom Aaharon"—one of the only instances where Torah says someone stayed silent.
Did he stop crying?
Did he stop himself from replying?
What did he want to say?
Why the silence? Why no scream?
Aaron’s response is striking. Personally, I find it troubling: is it really better to be stoic in the face of tragedy, to swallow my sorrow and put on a cheerful face, not to make even a whimper?
When David's vain and rebellious son, Absalom, who rebelled against his own father, was killed in flight, his father fully vented his grief: "My son Absalom! O my son, my son Absalom. If only I had died instead of you!" (2 Samuel 19:1).
We are taught in Leviticus, that we shall not stand by while our neighbor bleeds. While we might be inclined to respond to someone else’s suffering with silence, we are commanded to expose, to speak out and not be indifferent to unjust suffering.
In fact, the Zohar blames Noah for the flood, because when he was told about the divine decree to wipe out everyone else, he didn’t argue with God. As a result, the flood is called mei Noah, the waters of Noah, because when I keep silent, when I do not protest, I am responsible for what happens. I am accountable for keeping silent.
Abraham Joshua Heschel describes the prophet’s job as follows:
The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority, and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. Had the purpose been to express great ideas, prophecy would have had to be acclaimed as a triumph. Yet the purpose of prophecy was to conquer callousness, to change the inner heart as well as to revolutionize history.
Sometimes our voices must be raised like the prophets’, to speak out against injustice, to take out from anonymity the falsehoods and crimes perpetrated in our society.
And psychologically it is extremely dangerous not to speak out after tragedy, to let grief fester inside of us. When we speak we process feelings, we make extreme intolerable feelings more tolerable, we can integrate our experience and move on. This is I think why we have a tradition of shiva, of a mourner sitting for a week surrounded by friends and family who allow the mourner to speak. It is by talking about our loved ones, processing our loss, that we can move on.
We see this now with many returning veterans, who cannot talk openly about the horrors they have witnessed, and who constantly relive those war experiences in their imagination, in their dreams. And the treatment for them is to make their memories more tolerable to enable them to speak about their experiences without reliving the trauma. In this case, that which is silent must be articulated, or it will destroy us.
Silence as positive
I have talked up to now about the power, the value, of us speaking out, and our need for the world to speak out for God to speak out. But in our parsha, Aaron is silent, which I find very troubling.
The midrash sees Aaron’s silence as a positive thing. God speaks to Aaron after his silence directly, rather than through or with Moses, as a reward for that silence.
3 types of silence
1. There is the silence of the unknown, of the absent voice
This is the silence of the missing flight 370, a boeing 777 with 269 people
Where are they?
How can their families grieve and move on not knowing what’s happened to them?
This kind of silence begs to be articulated, it points to a mystery begging to be solved, of unspoken suffering begging to be recognized
Elie Wiesel, who broke the silence of Holocaust survivors and his own 10-year vow of silence, when he wrote Night, said:
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
The original version of Night was a 900-page memoir entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent). This is a silence begging to be given voice.
2. Silence of the unspeakable
There are also times when we hold ourselves back because what we say would be hurtful, or because we know we wouldn’t be heard
Shimon & Levi’s massacre in shechem
Jacob confronts them: 'You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.'
But they said (Genesis 34:31), 'Should he treat our sister as a harlot?
Jacob was silent—but not because he agreed with them
On his deathbed, finally speaks up:
Simeon and Levi are brothers;
Instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place.
Let not my soul enter their council;
Let not my honor be united to their assembly;
For in their anger they slew a man,
And in their self-will they hamstrung an ox.
Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce;
And their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob
And scatter them in Israel
When Jacob was silent, it was because he knew they wouldn’t listen. His words would have fallen on deaf ears, so he wisely didn’t bother.
Sometimes: to speak would be hurtful
Maybe aaron wanted to say “you jerk, what an insensitive thing to say”
Moses’ mistake: speaking first, offering explanation
When we visit a mourner, let them do the talking, we do the listening
Never say things like “it’s for the best,” which true or not are insensitive and unhelpful
3. The silent scream
3rd type: Silence of the awesome, of that which is beyond language, which defies language
Ismar Schorsch compared Aaron’s silence to Edvard Munch's painting of 1893, "The Scream.”
“A gaunt figure on a bridge with his face contorted in horror and hands clasped to his ears trembles in the midst of a cosmic scream, suggested by a wavy landscape in deep colors. Munch wrote of the experience that lay behind the art: I walked one evening on a road—on the one side was the town and the fjord below me. I was tired and ill — I stood looking out across the fjord — the sun was setting — the clouds were colored red — like blood — I felt as though a scream went through nature — I thought I heard a scream. I painted this picture — painted the clouds like real blood. The colors were screaming.” (JTS Commentary on Shemini, 5762)
These silences are not really silences at—they just speak a truth too massive, too powerful to be articulated in human language.
White fire
One can think of this kind of audible silence as the mystics did of the white fire with which Torah was written. What we naturally see when we peer inside of a Torah scroll is the black forms of letters that form words, and give the meaning of the Torah in human language.
The midrash says that torah was written with black fire on white fire. Right now when we read torah, we only read from the black. But in the messianic era, the white fire, too, the apparently empty spaces, the silence, will be revealed as Torah. We will encounter the inexpressible, silent torah, embodying a higher level of consciousness, a deeper mode of feeling & experiencing reality. As David Wolpe (In Speech and In Silence) has written, “Even in the silence, there is a message of faith. The paradox is listening for that which cannot be heard.” Psalms says, “to you silence is praise.” There is a type of silence which expresses that which is above expression, that which is awesome—being awe struck, being flooded by the white spaces in reality.
Perhaps Moses tried to relate to Aaron in words, and fell short, because words could not express what he felt. Perhaps Aaron was so overwhelmed by his emotions that only silence could express the depth of his feelings. And perhaps Moses and the community held him lovingly as he went through that experience.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Tetzaveh: The Absence of Moses
Tetzaveh starts with the word “v’atah,” spoken directly to Moses, the entire parshah is about Moses’ role in appointing the cohanim, and yet Moses is never named. Why is he simply called “you”? Is there something unique about Moses this points to, potentially which we can emulate?
Taanit 9a
R. Johanan further said: Rain may fall even for the sake of an individual but sustenance [is granted] only for the sake of the many….
An objection was raised: R. Jose the son of R. Judah says: Three good leaders had arisen for Israel, namely. Moses, Aaron and Miriam, and for their sake three good things were conferred [upon Israel], namely, the Well, the Pillar of Cloud and the Manna…the Manna for the merit of Moses…Thus we find that sustenance may be granted for the sake of one individual! — The case of Moses is exceptional; as he prayed on behalf of the many, he himself is regarded as a multitude.
In other words, Moses developed his sense of self to empathize not only with his narrow personal needs, or his family, but of the entire world. He felt the pain of the world, he davenned on behalf of the world. His sense of self transcended “Moses,” and became a broader consciousness, a shechina consciousness. The Talmud says that when a criminal is executed the Schechinah says “my head hurts”—the divine heart feels, draws together all human pain. Moses identified with this divine heart.
In fact, this is something we are all called to do. The Baal Shem Tov taught that when we davven and say adonai sefatai tiftach, “God, open my lips,” that we allow the shechinah to speak through us. We become a clear vessel for this divine perspective, our concern broadens to encompass all humanity, all the world.
You can compare this to the Buddhist notion of anatman, ‘no-self.’ The idea in buddhism is that since we are always evolving, and we are interdependent, there is no fixed, separate self. I wake up each morning and decide what kind of person to become—mechadesh bechol yom tamid—like God renews each day, I renew myself. And interdependence is the idea that my soul isn’t fully separate from yours—we impact each other, we are shaped by each other.
In Hassidic thought, our souls are like different branches on the same tree—they are intermingled. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. There never was really a Moses.
The priestly clothing, too, points to a similar removal of the self. A few interesting facts about the priestly garments:
The cohen without them was considered a “zar” (stranger—non-priest) and could not offer a sacrifice. (Sanh 83a-b) The clothing made the man.
The cohen could not wear his own clothes, only the priestly garments
The high priest did not dress himself (there’s a debate about the pants)
In other words, in his official role, the cohen’s individual self is absent—they are a vessel, helping Jews reach the divine, so they cannot bring their baggage into that function. The clothes also atoned for their sins (Zev 88b):
The Breeches atoned for lewdness, as it is said, "And you shall make them linen breeches to cover the flesh of their nakedness" (Exodus 28:42). The Turban made atonement for arrogance---let an article placed high up come and atone for an offence of hauteur. The Sash atoned for [impure] meditations of the heart, beneath which it was placed. The Breastplate atoned for neglect of civil laws, as it is said, "And you shall make a breastplate of judgment" (Exodus 28:15). The Efod atoned for idolatry, as it is said, "Without efod or teraphim" (Hoseah 3:4). The Cloak atoned for slander---let an article of sound (i.e., the bells on the Cloak's hem) atone for an offence of sound. The Crown, worn on the forehead, atoned for brazenness... as it is written, "Yet you have a harlot's forehead" (Jeremiah 3:3).
We acknowledge these are human beings, serving as leaders, they are imperfect, so we find a way to put their issues to the side, to function selflessly.
The truth is, our sense of who we are is far less important than how we operate in the world—can I put my self aside, and be a vessel for the divine? Like the turkey prince, who is cured by functioning as a prince despite knowing he’s still a turkey (http://breslov.org/rebbe-nachmans-story-the-turkey-prince/), we serve God by putting aside our individual neuroses, our individual desires, and becoming vessels for divine love and divine healing, and in that process finding our truest and deepest Self.
Taanit 9a
R. Johanan further said: Rain may fall even for the sake of an individual but sustenance [is granted] only for the sake of the many….
An objection was raised: R. Jose the son of R. Judah says: Three good leaders had arisen for Israel, namely. Moses, Aaron and Miriam, and for their sake three good things were conferred [upon Israel], namely, the Well, the Pillar of Cloud and the Manna…the Manna for the merit of Moses…Thus we find that sustenance may be granted for the sake of one individual! — The case of Moses is exceptional; as he prayed on behalf of the many, he himself is regarded as a multitude.
In other words, Moses developed his sense of self to empathize not only with his narrow personal needs, or his family, but of the entire world. He felt the pain of the world, he davenned on behalf of the world. His sense of self transcended “Moses,” and became a broader consciousness, a shechina consciousness. The Talmud says that when a criminal is executed the Schechinah says “my head hurts”—the divine heart feels, draws together all human pain. Moses identified with this divine heart.
In fact, this is something we are all called to do. The Baal Shem Tov taught that when we davven and say adonai sefatai tiftach, “God, open my lips,” that we allow the shechinah to speak through us. We become a clear vessel for this divine perspective, our concern broadens to encompass all humanity, all the world.
You can compare this to the Buddhist notion of anatman, ‘no-self.’ The idea in buddhism is that since we are always evolving, and we are interdependent, there is no fixed, separate self. I wake up each morning and decide what kind of person to become—mechadesh bechol yom tamid—like God renews each day, I renew myself. And interdependence is the idea that my soul isn’t fully separate from yours—we impact each other, we are shaped by each other.
In Hassidic thought, our souls are like different branches on the same tree—they are intermingled. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. There never was really a Moses.
The priestly clothing, too, points to a similar removal of the self. A few interesting facts about the priestly garments:
The cohen without them was considered a “zar” (stranger—non-priest) and could not offer a sacrifice. (Sanh 83a-b) The clothing made the man.
The cohen could not wear his own clothes, only the priestly garments
The high priest did not dress himself (there’s a debate about the pants)
In other words, in his official role, the cohen’s individual self is absent—they are a vessel, helping Jews reach the divine, so they cannot bring their baggage into that function. The clothes also atoned for their sins (Zev 88b):
The Breeches atoned for lewdness, as it is said, "And you shall make them linen breeches to cover the flesh of their nakedness" (Exodus 28:42). The Turban made atonement for arrogance---let an article placed high up come and atone for an offence of hauteur. The Sash atoned for [impure] meditations of the heart, beneath which it was placed. The Breastplate atoned for neglect of civil laws, as it is said, "And you shall make a breastplate of judgment" (Exodus 28:15). The Efod atoned for idolatry, as it is said, "Without efod or teraphim" (Hoseah 3:4). The Cloak atoned for slander---let an article of sound (i.e., the bells on the Cloak's hem) atone for an offence of sound. The Crown, worn on the forehead, atoned for brazenness... as it is written, "Yet you have a harlot's forehead" (Jeremiah 3:3).
We acknowledge these are human beings, serving as leaders, they are imperfect, so we find a way to put their issues to the side, to function selflessly.
The truth is, our sense of who we are is far less important than how we operate in the world—can I put my self aside, and be a vessel for the divine? Like the turkey prince, who is cured by functioning as a prince despite knowing he’s still a turkey (http://breslov.org/rebbe-nachmans-story-the-turkey-prince/), we serve God by putting aside our individual neuroses, our individual desires, and becoming vessels for divine love and divine healing, and in that process finding our truest and deepest Self.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Olympics: the problem of international cooperation
It is ironic, as we are ramping up to the Olympics, to read about the imprisonment of “Pussy Riot” activists for criticizing Putin, and the murder of throusands of abandoned pet dogs (abandoned when their owners were relocated to make room for the Olympic village). Similarly, we the last winter Olympics were held in China, a country which is trying to be modern but which does not believe in free speech and persecutes countless minorities. Halloween, you may recall the letter from the inmate at the Masanjia forced labor camp, punished for being a member of Falun Gong, for whom making Halloween decorations without pay was a welcome relief. And the nadir of this depravity was the 1936 summer games in Germany presided over by Hitler (admittedly, Germany was selected before Hitler came into power). The attitude is summarized by Avery Brundage’s statement that “politics have no place in sport.” The Olympics claims to exist in this idyllic sphere above it all, when of course it really is taking place in a real country.
One the one hand, relationship building is a positive thing, and there’s the idea that maybe you build a relationship first then work on the hard stuff. I have always thought interfaith gatherings should focus on bonding over tikkun olam projects rather than discussing the things that make us different-let’s become friends then work out our issues
On the other hand, abusers utilize their victims’ silence. Truly abusive countries (and people) know that ‘decency’ will prevent their victims from speaking out, so they masquerade as decent while committing atrocities behind closed doors which nobody would know about and most civilized people have a hard time believing.
Abusive people act as if they are completely civilized—they con everybody (and intimidate those who have the guts to question their charade). Think about Ariel Castro in Cleveland, who held three women as personal slaves in his basement while hosting back yard barbeques. Or Hitler, who created fake ‘model ghettos’ to show how well he was treating the Jews. These people know perfectly well that their actions are abominable, or else they wouldn’t cover them up. They know that people who suspect will remain silent; they count on it.
I am going, on Monday, to visit the Ugandan embassy. The Ugandan parliament recently passed a law expanding the rules against homosexuality, calling for life in prison for homosexuals (it is apparently, in their eyes, one of the worst crimes one could do as a human). Homosexuality is already illegal, carrying 14 year prison sentence. I am going to speak out against a government trampling on human rights, against an abusive regime. But at the Olympics, of course there will be terrific Ugandan athletes. They will be welcome in the “community of nations,” as are Russia, China, and Saudia Arabia.
There is a notion, in Judaism, that if somebody is committing a sin, we first approach them privately, but if that fails, we denounce their behavior publically, setting aside the rules of lashon hara (negative speech) because of their bad behavior. And if we were in a position to protest but didn’t, we are held responsible for their crimes as if we had committed them ourselves.
Yes, we try to build a relationship with these people. Mishnah Shevi’it says we lend a sifter to someone suspecting of using untithed produce, out of the “ways of peace”—we still behave decently, create a peaceful world through cooperation. But at the same time, we rebuke them; we don’t build a relationship on lies, on covering up the dirty truths. That would be ‘flattery,’ which technically means giving a wrongdoer the impression they aren’t doing anything wrong. We cooperate, but at the same time make it completely clear what we think of their behavior. We build relationships based not on some idyllic realm of “sport competition” which exists apart from political reality, but based on openness, honesty, and love.
One the one hand, relationship building is a positive thing, and there’s the idea that maybe you build a relationship first then work on the hard stuff. I have always thought interfaith gatherings should focus on bonding over tikkun olam projects rather than discussing the things that make us different-let’s become friends then work out our issues
On the other hand, abusers utilize their victims’ silence. Truly abusive countries (and people) know that ‘decency’ will prevent their victims from speaking out, so they masquerade as decent while committing atrocities behind closed doors which nobody would know about and most civilized people have a hard time believing.
Abusive people act as if they are completely civilized—they con everybody (and intimidate those who have the guts to question their charade). Think about Ariel Castro in Cleveland, who held three women as personal slaves in his basement while hosting back yard barbeques. Or Hitler, who created fake ‘model ghettos’ to show how well he was treating the Jews. These people know perfectly well that their actions are abominable, or else they wouldn’t cover them up. They know that people who suspect will remain silent; they count on it.
I am going, on Monday, to visit the Ugandan embassy. The Ugandan parliament recently passed a law expanding the rules against homosexuality, calling for life in prison for homosexuals (it is apparently, in their eyes, one of the worst crimes one could do as a human). Homosexuality is already illegal, carrying 14 year prison sentence. I am going to speak out against a government trampling on human rights, against an abusive regime. But at the Olympics, of course there will be terrific Ugandan athletes. They will be welcome in the “community of nations,” as are Russia, China, and Saudia Arabia.
There is a notion, in Judaism, that if somebody is committing a sin, we first approach them privately, but if that fails, we denounce their behavior publically, setting aside the rules of lashon hara (negative speech) because of their bad behavior. And if we were in a position to protest but didn’t, we are held responsible for their crimes as if we had committed them ourselves.
Yes, we try to build a relationship with these people. Mishnah Shevi’it says we lend a sifter to someone suspecting of using untithed produce, out of the “ways of peace”—we still behave decently, create a peaceful world through cooperation. But at the same time, we rebuke them; we don’t build a relationship on lies, on covering up the dirty truths. That would be ‘flattery,’ which technically means giving a wrongdoer the impression they aren’t doing anything wrong. We cooperate, but at the same time make it completely clear what we think of their behavior. We build relationships based not on some idyllic realm of “sport competition” which exists apart from political reality, but based on openness, honesty, and love.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
What is serious Judaism?
At Ohalah this week, Sid Shwartz reiterated what Larry Kushner said 40 years ago in an article about "tent peg judaism," namely that synagogues must focus on serious Jewish content. We should not be JCC's, focusing on social content, but rather should become places that encourage serious Judaism, i.e. torah (study), avodah (prayer), and gemilut hasadim (acts of lovingkindness).
I was struck by this dichotomy between serious judaism and empty judaism, and think it is problematic. Too often, people think "serious judaism" means praying in hebrew, or studying Talmud, or other things that all so many contemporary Jews have no interest in. So when those "assimilated" masses don't come, we can say they are not serious Jews; I had a congregant say that young families don't come to minyan because they are "not spiritual."
The fact is, there is a very important middle ground between what looks like "serious judaism" and empty Jewish socializing. I know families who identify as secular and have no interest in "Hebrew School," but if you tell them about a Jewish Drama club which teaches values through improv and theatre games, they are in. I have a friend who is leading a Tuesday night get together with some study, some reflection on what they are grateful for, and a shema meditation; he is hoping to get people coming who don't come for a "service." I know families who will come out on a Friday night for a shabbat singalong and potluck, who would never come to a kabbalat shabbat service. These aren't just gateway programs; they are significant ways to enrich the spiritual lives of Jews.
We need a language for the middle ground between "serious judaism" and "social club judaism." These kinds of programs: fun, accessible, meaningful, joyous, are seriously Jewish. They are not serious, and that makes them work. The fact is, many of the people who identify as secular do yearn for community, for meaning, for children with good values; they just don't associate that with religion. We need to start giving them something seriously meaningful, seriously joyful, seriously transformative. Let's get serious about this.
I was struck by this dichotomy between serious judaism and empty judaism, and think it is problematic. Too often, people think "serious judaism" means praying in hebrew, or studying Talmud, or other things that all so many contemporary Jews have no interest in. So when those "assimilated" masses don't come, we can say they are not serious Jews; I had a congregant say that young families don't come to minyan because they are "not spiritual."
The fact is, there is a very important middle ground between what looks like "serious judaism" and empty Jewish socializing. I know families who identify as secular and have no interest in "Hebrew School," but if you tell them about a Jewish Drama club which teaches values through improv and theatre games, they are in. I have a friend who is leading a Tuesday night get together with some study, some reflection on what they are grateful for, and a shema meditation; he is hoping to get people coming who don't come for a "service." I know families who will come out on a Friday night for a shabbat singalong and potluck, who would never come to a kabbalat shabbat service. These aren't just gateway programs; they are significant ways to enrich the spiritual lives of Jews.
We need a language for the middle ground between "serious judaism" and "social club judaism." These kinds of programs: fun, accessible, meaningful, joyous, are seriously Jewish. They are not serious, and that makes them work. The fact is, many of the people who identify as secular do yearn for community, for meaning, for children with good values; they just don't associate that with religion. We need to start giving them something seriously meaningful, seriously joyful, seriously transformative. Let's get serious about this.
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