What are We?

“Utter meaningless. Everything is meaningless.”

Ecclesiastes 1:2

We all have moments when we resonate with Ecclesiastes’ maudlin opening: “Everything is meaningless.” Bible scholar Robert Alter translates “hevel” not as meaningless or vanity but as breath. All is vaporous and disappears as quickly as a human breath.  Yet, over Sukkot, when we read Ecclesiastes in the synagogue, this is usually not the sentiment we feel. It’s a harvest holiday. It’s referred to in Hebrew as our time of joy, not our time of existential angst. And, as Ecclesiastes continues, it does not get better. There is no happy ending: “All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them (Ecclesiastes 1:8-11)

These verses are reminiscent of others found in our wisdom literature. One in particular stands out. If you walk past Emerson Hall’s philosophy department at Harvard, you’ll find these bold words in capital letters chiseled in stone framing the top of the building. “WHAT IS MAN THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM?” How’s that for an ego boost, as some of the world’s smartest young men and women walk through those doors? Remember: you’re nothing. But, in truth, this is faulty biblical advertising because the psalm continues: “What is man, that You are mindful of him and the son of man that You pay attention to him?” You have made him a little lower than the angels and have crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalms 8:5-6). Human buildings are a strange amalgam. We are nothing and something at the same time.

The Bible scholar, Nahum Sarna, writing on this psalm, captures its dialectic nature: “In a pensive mood, the psalmist muses upon a double paradox. There is the seeming contradiction between God’s transcendence and His immanence: God is beyond the limits of human cognition; yet He has chosen to make His presence indwell in the life of humanity.”

Emerson Hall, as I once wrote before, was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), a great American writer and thinker who was also a Unitarian minister and headed the Transcendentalist Movement. He was a Harvard student twice. He was first accepted to Harvard at 14 and was graduated at 18 and then returned to study in Harvard’s divinity school and continued his relationship with the university. In the same vein as our quote, Emerson once said, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

Thinking about the world and our Creator makes us feel small indeed. The human ego must humble itself before a complicated and vast universe of mystery. But to be human is also to assert oneself in that universe in God’s image. This dialectic tension surfaces strongly on Sukkot, where we hold symbols of the harvest, bless them and shake them, often in a sukka, a fragile and temporary building. The sukka reminds us that even buildings of brick and mortar, structures that seem durable and long-lasting, will not last forever. Nothing we humans make will last forever. For now, we are but breath. Breath disappears, true, but it is also that involuntary movement that reminds us that we are still alive, pulsing with gratitude, anxious to create something of importance in this small life we’ve been given.

If the sign of adult maturity is the capacity to hold contradiction, then Sukkot reminds us to lean into our complex mix of majesty and humility.

Shabbat Shalom

Can We Forgive?

“…at the time when someone who has done wrong asks for forgiveness, one should forgive with a complete heart and a willing soul. Even if someone pained him and profoundly sinned against him…”

— Maimonides, “Laws of Repentance” 2:10

Decades ago, the Nazi hunter and author Simon Wiesenthal wrote The Sunflower, a fictional scenario of an S.S. officer on his deathbed begging for forgiveness from a Holocaust victim. The officer was sincere in his regret, but the victim could only offer him silence - the silence that he felt was the response of so many others to Nazi war crimes: “...Ought I to have forgiven him?” ponders the survivor after the soldier’s death: “Today the world demands that we forgive and forget heinous crimes committed against us. It urges that we draw a line, and close the account as if nothing had ever happened...”
 
Wiesenthal challenges all of us who are not in this difficult position to ponder the same question: can we forgive? “The crux of the matter is, of course, forgiveness. Forgetting is something that time alone takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision.” Wiesenthal then asked his readership what they would have done in the survivor’s place. He placed this question to writers and theologians and collected the responses in the book.
 
We tend to think it’s harder to ask for forgiveness than it is to forgive. Yet time and again, even after we have technically granted forgiveness, we realize that a residual pain lingers, that we cannot trust again or that a relationship has inherently changed. We have not totally forgiven. This is why Maimonides’ words above are particularly instructive. Let’s repeat them: “...at the time that someone who has done wrong asks for forgiveness, one should forgive with a complete heart and a willing soul. Even if someone pained him and profoundly sinned against him...” It’s not easy to have a complete heart and a willing soul, especially when someone has profoundly hurt you. Maimonides asks us to dig deep in the wells of compassion.
 
I am always struck when people tell me that they simply cannot forgive someone for an offense or an insult, even in this season of forgiveness. It’s almost as if there’s a mental list: I can forgive this but not that, this one but not that one. It’s a list that may never be shared or possibly not even articulated, but it’s there, an invisible barrier to complete healing.
 
There’s another statement of Maimonides in his Laws of Repentance, that speaks directly to the Wiesenthal case. In chapter four, Maimonides lists obstructions to repentance; 24 to be exact. He singles out five of these because “it is impossible for the person who commits them to repent completely.” One of them is “the one who maligns the many without mentioning a specific person from whom he can request forgiveness.” Wiesenthal’s fictional Nazi wanted forgiveness from the many. It can never be granted. There is no one specific to ask who could possibly forgive for this collective, tragic wrong-doing.
 
But what about us? We might watch our gossip against individuals but not hesitate to malign an entire community. We can ask forgiveness from a person. We cannot ask forgiveness from a community. This should give us pause when we’re about to make a cutting judgment, affirm a stereotype or dismiss a group who think or act differently than we do - especially in this tense election season.
 
Forgiveness is a volitional act. We have a choice when we are in the position to forgive completely. Maimonides encourages us to make a positive, compassionate choice. But when we malign a group, we cannot hope for complete forgiveness. It’s best then to be vigilant with our restraint, as Eleanor Roosevelt wisely advised: “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
 
Shabbat Shalom

To Love Again on Rosh Hashana

“...Turn me back, and I will return, for You, Lord, are my God.”

— Jeremiah 31:18

In the haftarah on the second day of Rosh Hashana -Jeremiah 31:2-20 - we enter Jeremiah's complex universe of exile and its travails. Yet we only read half of a 40 verse chapter. As a result, we miss out on verses that seem a clear fit for the season, like this one: "For I will be their God and they will be my people" (31:33) or "For I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more" (31:34). Clearly the sages of old picked this text and parsed it with a specific goal in mind, namely that we absorb certain prophetic lessons.
 
Rabbi Binny Lau, in his wonderful book Jeremiah: The Fate of a Prophet contends that Jeremiah believed it was time for the divided nation of the Jews  - Judah and Samaria - to come together, the children of Rachel and Leah to be re-united. To accomplish this he must bring the Northern tribes, represented by Ephraim, back into the fold. Rabbi Lau depicts Jeremiah as a diplomat of sorts who shuttled between the two places in his attempt to fix the breech. "Like a professional mediator conducting political negotiations, flitting back and forth between the parties, Jeremiah tries to present each one with what it wants to hear, what it stands to gain."
 
In our chapter, we focus on the Northern tribes. Jeremiah wanted to entice these tribes back so he engages in a three-pronged seduction: the appeal of affection, happiness and nostalgia:

"And with a great love I have loved you, so I have drawn you close to Me tenderly. I will rebuild you, My maiden Israel, and you will be built; you will again play your tambourine and go out and dance with joy. You will again pant and enjoy the fruit. For the day will come when watchmen will shout from the hills of Ephraim, 'Come let us go up to Zion, to the Lord, our God'" (31:2-5)
 

If you come back, you will return to our romance, to innocence, to fiscal security. Most importantly, if you return, you will remove the distance that has set in between the people and their God. In order to accomplish this, Jeremiah recalled a favoritism for Ephraim and called him a  treasured son. He could never get away with saying the same thing in Yehuda. Such a memory would only cause additional strife, but to Ephraim, it is a welcome tease, as the prophet recalled the intensity of love and high regard Ephraim once enjoyed. Wouldn't Ephraim, Jeremiah agues, want to experience all of these feelings again?
 
Jeremiah also mentioned Ephraim's weeping grandmother, Rachel. If nostalgia fails, try guilt. Look at your grandmother crying on the border, waiting for you to come back. These tears produce self-reflection, and Jeremiah conjured Ephraim's response. "Chastise me, and I will be chastised, like an untrained calf; turn me back, and I will return, for You, Lord, are my God" (31:18). In Hosea, Ephraim is called a trained calf, but here Jeremiah calls him an untrained calf (10:11). The trained calf is a precocious image. In the metaphor, a young and arrogant calf thinks he can handle a harness on his own. Jeremiah wanted to emphasize community, that we cannot live alone, that we bear responsibility collectively, that we experience joy and grief together. He tried to weaken Ephraim's hard shell by making him into a calf that is unsteady on his feet, who is open to guidance, to chastisement, to the petition of the prophet.
 
By creating the picture of a desirable future, Jeremiah began with a grand dream of God's love, of Israel's influence over the nations, of a people finally reunited and able to heal the wounds of fracture. But to achieve these lofty goals, those who seem impenetrable have to crack open. The promise of geographic return can only work with the emotional and spiritual desire to return. In his JPS commentary, scholar Michael Fishbane also alerts us to one of the most touching repeated words in this haftarah. It appears four times in these twenty verse, and it is a word of only three Hebrew letters: O-D, again. We read it in verses four and five, in twelve and twenty. Again you will take up timbrels...Again you will plant vineyards...They shall never languish again...My thoughts will dwell on him (Ephraim) again...
 
Jeremiah reminds us that life and love go through cycles of intimacy and distance. In times of distance, we cannot imagine that there ever was affection and joy. In times of heady romance, we can never imagine despair and enmity. Jeremiah uses the word "od" to remind Ephraim that he is in a low part of a cycle that can once again turn but only if he is ready to return, if he wants the picture that Jeremiah created for him.
 
Now perhaps it is more clear why Jeremiah 31 is particularly appropriate for Rosh Hashana. Jewish time works in a spiral, a cycle that brings us back each year through holidays and seasons that demand different emotions. As we enter the Elul and Tishrei cycle, we may become aware of a gnawing distance, of being unprepared, of feeling unworthy. We may have Ephraim's hard and impenetrable shell and need the moving prayers of these days to crack us open. We may experience, nationally, a sense of our fractured existence as a people and need to remind ourselves of the obligation of togetherness. We may be far away when God beckons us to come closer. In that closeness, we will dance, we will raise our instruments, we will experience joy. We will celebrate.

And we will do all of this together. Again.
 
Shabbat Shalom

Can You Forgive?

Simon Wiesenthal, author of The Sunflower, created a fictional scenario of an S.S. officer on his deathbed, begging for forgiveness from a Holocaust victim. The officer was sincere in his regret, but the victim could only offer him silence – the silence that he felt was the response of so many others to Nazi war crimes:

“…Ought I to have forgiven him? Today the world demands that we forgive and forget heinous crimes committed against us. It urges that we draw a line, and close the account as if nothing had ever happened…”

The crux of the matter is, of course, forgiveness. Forgetting is something that time alone takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision.

You, who have just read this sad and tragic episode in my life, can mentally change places with me and ask yourself the critical question: ‘What would I have done?’”

·      In your opinion, is it harder to ask for forgiveness or to be forgiving?

·      As an individual, can you ever forgive someone for a sin committed against a nation?

The Season of Change

“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘These are my appointed festivals, the appointed festivals of the Lord, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies.”

— Leviticus 22:2-3

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that fall is the time people make their most serious changes. In other words, September is the new January . September catalyzes small changes in how we live, what we buy and what goals we set. "Families put routines back in place, enforce bedtimes and pack lunches. People clear clutter out and vow to plan and cook healthy meals." The fall is apparently the most popular time to make weddings - who knew? It is also when gym memberships spike, Weight Watcher memberships jump, grocery store sales rise and skincare product sales bump.
 
So tell us something we didn't know. For Jews, the fall has always been our reflection time, and it wouldn't be the first time, our people have set the trend. "The Lord said to Moses, 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'These are my appointed festivals, the appointed festivals of the Lord, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies'" (Lev. 23:2-3) Rashi, on 23:2, states that the verse is written this way to stress the discipline of placing oneself in such a calendar: "Regulate the festive seasons in such a manner that all of Israel becomes practiced in them." The idea of calling or proclaiming special days obligates people to make a conscious attempt to sanctify time, to be in touch with seasonal changes and to create regular occasions for celebration.
 
Bible scholar Baruch Levine stresses that by emphasizing all the Israelites, the verses demanding our observance of holidays, democratizes the process. Holidays are not only for priests. They are for all of us and must be proclaimed by us all. He also points to the act of partnership that is intended in this chapter: "The dates of the festivals and the regularity of a Sabbath every seventh day were set by God, and yet the Israelites are also commanded to proclaim them as sacred. These two acts are not contradictory, but, rather, complementary. The sanctity of the Sabbath and festivals is not achieved by God's act alone. It requires a combination of divine and human action."
 
In the same chapter, we have special verses to designate Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur:

"The Lord said to Moses, 'Say to the Israelites: 'On the first day of the seventh month you are to have a day of Sabbath rest, a sacred assembly commemorated with trumpet blasts. Do no regular work, but present a food offering to the Lord.' The Lord said to Moses, "The tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. Hold a sacred assembly and deny yourselves, and present a food offering to the Lord. Do not do any work on that day, because it is the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the Lord your God..." (Lev. 23:23-29).

"You shall do no work at all. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live. It is a day of Sabbath rest for you, and you must deny yourselves. From the evening of the ninth day of the month until the following evening you are to observe your Sabbath" (Lev. 23:31-32).
 

The baseline of both days is the Sabbath, in terms of not working and making it a day of rest. Then the special rituals that make the days unique are listed and discussed at much greater length in the Talmud. These days will always fall out in the fall, making the crisp change of air a signal to transition.
 
The Wall Street Journal pointed to this time of the year as a period of self-improvement (or at least the beginning of self-improvement projects) but never explained why. Maybe the weather has a lot to do with it. In the middle of winter when many resolutions are made and broken, it can be hard to have the discipline when fighting the cold to go to the gym or stay off the carbs or take on a new hobby. The summer can create the kind of lethargy and vacation mentality that also gets in the way of discipline. But in the fall, we may feel a need to improve on the failings of the hotter months, and the change of climate helps strengthen our resolve to change. It changes, and we change.
 
Revisiting the Jewish calendar each year gives us the anchor and stable base of time and ritual upon which to create a platform for our most important innovation project: ourselves. What will you be changing?
 
Shabbat Shalom

To Love Again on Rosh Hashana

“…Turn me back, and I will return, for You, Lord, are my God.”

Jeremiah 31:18

In the haftarah on the second day of Rosh Hashana -Jeremiah 31:2-20 - we enter Jeremiah’s complex universe of exile and its travails. Yet we only read half of a 40 verse chapter. As a result, we miss out on verses that seem a clear fit for the season, like this one: “For I will be their God and they will be my people” (31:33) or “For I will forgive their iniquities, and remember their sins no more” (31:34). Clearly the sages of old picked this text and parsed it with a specific goal in mind, namely that we absorb certain prophetic lessons.

Rabbi Binny Lau, in his wonderful book Jeremiah: The Fate of a Prophet contends that Jeremiah believed it was time for the divided nation of the Jews  - Judah and Samaria - to come together, the children of Rachel and Leah to be re-united. To accomplish this he must bring the Northern tribes, represented by Ephraim, back into the fold. Rabbi Lau depicts Jeremiah as a diplomat of sorts who shuttled between the two places in his attempt to fix the breech. “Like a professional mediator conducting political negotiations, flitting back and forth between the parties, Jeremiah tries to present each one with what it wants to hear, what it stands to gain.”

In our chapter, we focus on the Northern tribes. Jeremiah wanted to entice these tribes back so he engages in a three-pronged seduction: the appeal of affection, happiness and nostalgia:

“And with a great love I have loved you, so I have drawn you close to Me tenderly. I will rebuild you, My maiden Israel, and you will be built; you will again play your tambourine and go out and dance with joy. You will again pant and enjoy the fruit. For the day will come when watchmen will shout from the hills of Ephraim, ‘Come let us go up to Zion, to the Lord, our God’” (31:2-5)

If you come back, you will return to our romance, to innocence, to fiscal security. Most importantly, if you return, you will remove the distance that has set in between the people and their God. In order to accomplish this, Jeremiah recalled a favoritism for Ephraim and called him a  treasured son. He could never get away with saying the same thing in Yehuda. Such a memory would only cause additional strife, but to Ephraim, it is a welcome tease, as the prophet recalled the intensity of love and high regard Ephraim once enjoyed. Wouldn’t Ephraim, Jeremiah agues, want to experience all of these feelings again?

Jeremiah also mentioned Ephraim's weeping grandmother, Rachel. If nostalgia fails, try guilt. Look at your grandmother crying on the border, waiting for you to come back. These tears produce self-reflection, and Jeremiah conjured Ephraim’s response. “Chastise me, and I will be chastised, like an untrained calf; turn me back, and I will return, for You, Lord, are my God” (31:18). In Hosea, Ephraim is called a trained calf, but here Jeremiah calls him an untrained calf (10:11). The trained calf is a precocious image. In the metaphor, a young and arrogant calf thinks he can handle a harness on his own. Jeremiah wanted to emphasize community, that we cannot live alone, that we bear responsibility collectively, that we experience joy and grief together. He tried to weaken Ephraim’s hard shell by making him into a calf that is unsteady on his feet, who is open to guidance, to chastisement, to the petition of the prophet.

By creating the picture of a desirable future, Jeremiah began with a grand dream of God’s love, of Israel’s influence over the nations, of a people finally reunited and able to heal the wounds of fracture. But to achieve these lofty goals, those who seem impenetrable have to crack open. The promise of geographic return can only work with the emotional and spiritual desire to return. In his JPS commentary, scholar Michael Fishbane also alerts us to one of the most touching repeated words in this haftarah. It appears four times in these twenty verse, and it is a word of only three Hebrew letters: O-D, again. We read it in verses four and five, in twelve and twenty. Again you will take up timbrels...Again you will plant vineyards...They shall never languish again...My thoughts will dwell on him (Ephraim) again...

Jeremiah reminds us that life and love go through cycles of intimacy and distance. In times of distance, we cannot imagine that there ever was affection and joy. In times of heady romance, we can never imagine despair and enmity. Jeremiah uses the word “od” to remind Ephraim that he is in a low part of a cycle that can once again turn but only if he is ready to return, if he wants the picture that Jeremiah created for him.

Now perhaps it is more clear why Jeremiah 31 is particularly appropriate for Rosh Hashana. Jewish time works in a spiral, a cycle that brings us back each year through holidays and seasons that demand different emotions. As we enter the Elul and Tishrei cycle, we may become aware of a gnawing distance, of being unprepared, of feeling unworthy. We may have Ephraim’s hard and impenetrable shell and need the moving prayers of these days to crack us open. We may experience, nationally, a sense of our fractured existence as a people and need to remind ourselves of the obligation of togetherness. We may be far away when God beckons us to come closer. In that closeness, we will dance, we will raise our instruments, we will experience joy. We will celebrate.

And we will do all of this together. Again.

Shabbat Shalom

What’s in a Name?

“A good name is more desirable than great riches;

a good reputation more than silver and gold.”

Proverbs 22:1

Proverbs tells us that a good name is of great value. Ecclesiastes contends that, “A good name is better than precious ointment...” (7:1) Ointment is the thin layer we put on our skin that offers protection and fragrance. It’s what others sense when they approach us. Ethics of the Fatherschallenges us to acquire a good name and calls a good name a crown (1:7) and that a good name is something we uniquely own: “One who acquires a good name, acquired it for himself” (2:7).

But what if you don’t like your name or you don’t like the name you gave one of your children? A poll recently conducted in Great Britain concluded that close to 20% of parents regret the names they gave their children. All the major newspapers reported the findings. One out of five parents is a whopping number of disappointments. And if the parents don’t like the names, what chance is there that the kids like the names they were given? Slim, indeed. Of the 245 women who regretted the names they gave their children, a full 12% always knew it was a bad choice even before the baby was born, and 32% made the discovery within the first six weeks. Ouch.

Oh the agony and time expended for nine months selecting the perfect name only to be upset about it for a lifetime. The chief cause (25%) is that the name picked was too popular at the time and may not have captured the child's uniqueness. Eleven percent felt that the name created too many spelling or pronunciation problems. Two percent of those interviewed by the parenting website Mumsnet, that conducted the survey, actually changed the name because it troubled them so much. Example? Let’s say, as one parent reported, you named your child right before a terrorist group adopted the same name or picked Elsa right before the film “Frozen” came out.

The founder of the website chalked this up to just one of the many mistakes young parents make that they will later regret because the role and its many responsibilities is new and often difficult.

What’s in a name? A great deal. Adam’s first task in Genesis was to name animals. In our mystical tradition, when Adam named them, he understood their essence. When we name babies, however, we often do so without knowing anything about who they will become. We often name children after people we hope they will emulate, qualities we value or figures from our past who we wish to honor or who have had a great deal of influence over us.

But even in the Bible, a name can be a mistake. Ask Abigail. When the young strapping warrior David needed provisions and came to her estate, her husband Nabal refused him. After the text offers their names, it provides a description of the wife and the husband. “She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband was surly and mean in his dealings” (I Samuel 25:3). Nabal saw no reason to help a stranger. “Who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Why should I take my bread and water and the meat I have slaughtered for my shearers and give it to men coming from who knows where?” (25: 11). Betraying the Abrahamic tradition of hospitality where we are kind to strangers precisely because we do not know them, Nabal felt that because they were strangers, he had no responsibility to them at all.

Nabal in Hebrew means a disgusting person, a fool, someone of no class or poor taste. Abigail, realizing David’s budding majesty and embarrassed by Nabal’s lack of generosity, ran out to greet David and bowed low to the ground in humility. Unbeknownst to her husband, she brought David and his troops 200 loaves of bread, five sheep, wine, grain, raisins, figs - all in abundance.  Abigail told David to excuse her husband’s behavior and to seek no revenge for his stinginess. “Please pay no attention, my lord, to that wicked man Nabal. He is just as his name. His name means fool and folly goes with him...” (25:26). Conveniently for her, Nabal, after hearing who David really was, suffered heart failure and died ten days later. When David caught wind of the news, he sent for Abigail, and she became his wife.

Nabal’s name was actually his downfall instead of his crown. His wife hated his name and perhaps also hated the man behind it. “Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increase fear of the thing itself,” was advice Harry Potter once got. Nabal lived up to the name he was given but only in the worst and most ironic way.

Do you like your name?  

Is there something you can do now to earn an even better name?

Shabbat Shalom

Walk This Way

“And you shall show them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do.”

— Ex. 18:20

The Talmudic sage Rabbi Hiyya was approached by a woman and asked to authenticate a coin [BT Bava Kamma 99b-100a]. While he was not in the business of currency, a scholar may be called upon to offer his wisdom in areas far outside his realm of expertise. As it so happens, the sage authenticated the coin, but the woman had a hard time using it and eventually returned to Rabbi Hiyya. When he realized her troubles, he asked his assistant to note the problem and to replace the coin.  Was he obligated to do so, asks the Talmud?
 
In a word: no.

In a word: yes.

Technically speaking, Rabbi Hiyya owed this woman nothing. He gave what he thought was his best judgment and could not be penalized for it. And yet, Rabbi Hiyya felt some degree of responsibility for this unnamed woman. Perhaps she was poor and the way she held onto the coin indicated to this scholar that she could ill afford this kind of mistake. Perhaps Rabbi Hiyya was touched by her reverence for him. Alternatively, Rabbi Hiyya understood that there are duties and expectations of scholars and leaders that go beyond the letter of the law.

The Talmud itself continues with a discussion of Rabbi Hiyya's supererogatory behavior and finds justification in it from a teaching of Rabbi Yosef. "Rabbi Yosef taught concerning the verse: 'And you shall show them the way wherein they must walk and the work that they must do' (Exodus18:20)." What way are we bound to walk and what kind of work must we do? These questions interested Rabbi Yosef, and he parsed the verse and allowed it to unfold in an accordion of intellectual and humane responsibilities.
'And you shall show them:' this is referring to the core of their existence (Torah study).
'The way:' This is referring to acts of kindness.
"They must walk:" This is referring to visiting the sick.
"Wherein:" This is referring to burial of the dead.
"The work:" This is referring to conducting oneself in accordance with the law.
"That they must do:" This is referring to conducting oneself beyond the letter of the law.
This indicates that the Torah mandates that people conduct themselves beyond the letter of the law."

What is the work we must do? We must have the intelligence and presence of mind to live by the law and also know when to go beyond it. Not everything can be dictated by a rule. Often, acts of kindness and holiness are dictated by a generous impulse. We often squash that impulse. Rabbi Yosef asked us to pay greater attention to it.

Maimonides, who was a great believer in Aristotle's golden mean, wrote that when it comes to character traits, one should achieve a middle ground of temperament. And yet, even so, he acknowledged that there are people of piety who acquire saintly status by acting above the letter of the law [Hilkhot Da'ot 1:5]. Maimonides was particularly concerned with the behavior of scholars and demanded that they act above reproach and above the letter of the law so that they live up to the reputations they earned [Hilkhot Yesodai HaTorah 5:11]. Scholarship is always, in Jewish tradition, supposed to seep into who we are. And while we may not expect rabbis and leaders to go beyond the law, we are often quick to catch them for not doing so.

Many people, in building up to the High Holiday season, take on additional mitzvot. That's living by the law, just more of it. Sometimes its not always about doing more, but about doing what we do already but in a better, deeper, more sincere and more pious way. Walk this way, Rabbi Yosef, advises us, and you will walk to better places and with a better quality of people. Teshuva, repentance, is not always about refraining from what is wrong but doing more of what is right.
 
Shabbat Shalom

Stop Embarrassing Me!

“A month in which there is no embarrassment and shame...”

— Traditional Blessing for Rosh Hodesh

This Shabbat we welcome the Hebrew month of Elul, the warm-up for the High Holiday season and all it demands of us. Last Shabbat we announced the new month with a special prayer, said by the prayer leader holding the Torah. The ushering in of the new month is a solemn testimony and ritual, and we sing it with hope, anticipation and often a degree of anxiety. What will this new month bring? This slight tremor of worry is amplified when we know something momentous will be happening on the calendar in the weeks to come.
 
In the prayer, we make many requests of the new month: it should be a time of joy and friendship, love, honor and riches. We also ask that it not be a time of embarrassment and shame, not for us or for others. We should not be shamed nor should we shame. This expression seems out of line with our other happy and bouncy expectations.
 
And yet, the severity of this wrongdoing grabs our attention. After all, the Talmud takes a forceful approach to this sin: "One who embarrasses another is as if he shed his blood" [BT Bava Metzia 58b]. The Talmudic adage less well-known on the same page is that all who go to hell will come out except those who shame a neighbor. The Hebrew Bible contains many verses that describe the experience of shame, perhaps most importantly the law of not embarrassing someone who requires money as a loan: "When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not enter his house to take his pledge. You shall remain outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you" [Deuteronomy 24:10-11].

“One who embarrasses another is as if he shed his blood”

There are also biblical narratives that communicate the pain of shame. The prophet Elisha, for example, experiences shame when he is taunted and challenged by contenders for his position. They searched for Elijah who went up in a whirlwind, disregarding Elisha's pleas. "But when they urged him until he was ashamed, he said, 'Send.' They sent therefore fifty men; and they searched three days but did not find him."[II Kings 2:17]. Later, when Elisha gave the gift of a son to a woman who helped him, and the child died, Elisha was humiliated by his actions: "He fixed his gaze steadily on him until he was ashamed, and the man of God wept" [II Kings 8:10]. The powerful prophet weeping communicates the damage that embarrassment causes.

But what of the damage? In the Talmud's daily cycle, we are currently studying the payments due to someone who suffers personal injury. Shame is among those five payments. The others are damages, pain, medical care, and loss of livelihood. There can be costs associated with humiliation that involve no medical injury. Someone who slaps another across the face, shames him but there are unlikely to be medical costs associated with this act.
 
The Talmud raises some fascinating questions about humiliation. How does one estimate a psychic cost, for example? Do people who are rich or poor experience humiliation differently? My personal favorite is if one must pay "humiliation charges" if the victim humiliates himself anyway. Here's what the mishna states: "One who humiliates a naked person or a blind person or a sleeping person is liable, but a sleeping person who humiliates another is exempt" [BT Bava Kamma 86b]. A sleeping person cannot be held liable for his actions. But what about a naked person who displays himself freely? If one were to humiliate him, damages must be paid even though his behavior brings shame to himself.
 
The gemara, in explicating this mishna, throws out a question: "Is a naked person subject to humiliation?" And it offers an illustration. Let's say a gust of wind came and blew up a person's tunic and then another person lifted his clothes even higher to embarrass him further? Show him the money. Nature operates without intention but not human beings. There is no need to make a situation more disgraceful. In that vein, the Talmud makes little distinction, as it often does, between a minor and others. If a child is old enough to be embarrassed then it is forbidden to shame him, and one must pay expenses associated with that shame. Families can also experience shame when one of its members is publicly humiliated.
 
It is difficult to atone for humiliating someone else. The Talmud determined a payment scheme, but money cannot make up for shame. And so as we approach these months of teshuva, repentance, we understand that maybe it is not so odd to ask for a month without shame. The scars caused by humiliation are deep. Some made long ago never heal. It makes us pause and ask ourselves if we have the emotional discipline to hold back on a snarky comment or a public insult or a dismissive jibe that makes us look good at another's expense. And we pray that we aren't the victims of such comments.

Yes, let it be a month without shame or embarrassment, and then perhaps it will be a month of greater joy.

Shabbat Shalom and Hodesh Tov

Evicted

“And when a person shall sanctify his house to be holy to the Lord...”

— Leviticus 27:14

In ancient biblical days - and particularly in the days of the Temple - people consecrated the worth of property, objects and even themselves to support the Temple or to support Israelite leadership. One would evaluate what something or someone was worth (a complex process) and give that amount to a charitable cause. It was a way of evening out the economic playing field. If I buy a new house, I may translate this blessing into supporting God's house, as we see from the verse above. Donations may have been consecrated by kings from spoils of war, giving back to the spiritual source that helped them achieve victory. The Talmud on the verse above proposes that "Just as one's house is in one's possession, so too anything that one consecrates must be in his possession" [BT Bava Kamma 69b]. You have to own what you give away, just as what you give away is often mirrored by what you own.
 
A house is an interesting choice of designation, and it shows how important a house is in the life of a human being; it becomes a marker of personal worth. In Jewish life, we use the Hebrew word "bayit" to signify not only a house but a gathering space for study - beit midrash - for prayer - a beit keneset - and for the center of our ancient community - a beit ha-mikdash, our holiest house. In Jewish life we move from house to house, imbuing sacredness to each space by virtue of the activities that take place there. A person needs a home, an anchor of stability; in this changing, chaotic world, every soul needs to be an island of repose.
 
In this spirit, it was very hard to digest this line in Matthew Desmond's latest book: "Every year in this country, people are evicted from their homes not by the tens of thousands or even the hundreds of thousands but by the millions." In his study of poverty in the American city, Evicted, he writes how much people are taken advantage of because they don't live in homes they own. "'Every condition exists,' Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, 'simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.' Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate." He traces the lives of people who have been evicted and the landlords who evict them. It is a gripping and heartbreaking read.
 
This vicious cycle is nearly impossible to break, especially when exploitation centers on the basics: food and housing. "If the poor pay more for their housing, food, durable goods and credit, and if they get smaller returns on their education and mortgages (if they get returns at all), then their incomes are even smaller than they appear. This is fundamentally unfair," Desmond writes. Desmond tells us something we've always known about housing: "Residential stability begets a kind of psychological stability, which allows people to invest in their homes and social relationships. It begets school stability, which increases the chances children will excel and graduate. And it begets community stability, which encourages neighbors to form strong bonds and take care of their block." If this is true, then we understand the deeper costs of eviction: "Eviction does not simply drop poor families into a dark valley, a trying yet relatively brief detour on life's journey. It fundamentally redirects their way, casting them onto a different, and much more difficult, path. Eviction is a cause, not just a condition of poverty."
 
Perhaps this is what the prophet Jeremiah understood when he taught Jewish exiles how to live in their host countries. After the destruction of our shared spiritual house - the Temple - Jeremiah advised us to build homes and settle in exile, a counterintuitive message, to be sure. "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 'Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.'" [Jeremiah 29:5-7].
 
Historically, we may have been evicted, but we will and we have rebuilt. Now it's time to turn our attention to those who haven't.
 
Shabbat Shalom

Going for the Gold

“Maintaining a healthy and sound body is among the ways of God - for one cannot understand or have any knowledge of the Creator, if he is unwell...”

— Maimonides, "Laws of Character," 4:1

Has watching the Olympics inspired you to exercise or stretch your fitness goals? I've been pondering this question for the last two weeks and have sadly concluded that I've actually spent more time as a couch potato in front of the TV during the Olympics than I have all year. Having said that, I do feel nightly awe at the way human beings can push the body to be stronger, faster, more agile and more disciplined. Watching these athletes is almost a religious experience.
 
In many faith traditions, the body and soul are regarded as fierce adversaries. The soul is trapped in the body or a victim of the body's desires. The body pushes the soul off the straight and narrow track. This has hardly been the Jewish way. The body is a holy vessel that holds the soul. As such it needs careful tending. Many rabbis over the centuries have pointed to two verses in the beginning of Deuteronomy as proof that we must not harm the body, and we must take excellent care of it. "Do take utmost care and watch over yourselves scrupulously..." [4:9] and "Carefully guard your souls..." (4:15). The Olympics this year happens to converge with the reading of these verses. Coincidence? Maybe not.
 
The chief medieval proponent of a healthy spiritual and physical regime is Maimonides. As a physician and philosopher, the care of both body and soul was essential to his worldview. As a keen follower of Aristotle's golden mean, he stressed the need for moderation in the fulfillment of one's physical needs, particularly in his anthology: "Laws of Character." One should, for example, never eat to full satiation or avoid the benefits of sleep. At the same time, Maimonides advised that people tend the body so that it can house the soul and not for the sake of the body alone. "A person should live by virtue of medicine, but he does not follow a proper path if his sole intention is that his entire body and limbs be healthy and have children who will do his work and toil for him. Rather, he should intend his body to be whole and strong in order for his inner soul to be upright to know God. For it is impossible to understand and become knowledgeable in wisdom when one is starving or sick or when one of his limbs pains him" [3:3].

Maimonides repeated this trope often: "Since maintaining a healthy and sound body is among the ways of God - for one cannot understand or have any knowledge of the Creator if he is ill - he must, therefore, avoid that which harms the body and accustom himself to that which is healthful and helps the body become stronger." [4:1] He even suggested a morning routine: "The rule is that he should engage his body and exert himself in a sweat-producing task each morning. Afterwards, he should rest slightly until he regains composure and then he should eat." [4:2]
 
I am not sure Maimonides gave out guarantees, but he was quite confident that if one followed his advise, he would live long and keep Maimonides gratefully unemployed: "Whosoever conducts himself in the ways which we have drawn up, I will guarantee that he will not become ill throughout his life, until he reaches advanced age and dies. He will not need a doctor. His body will remain intact and healthy throughout his life." (4:20)
 
Maimonides believed that taking care of one's body was an expression of wisdom and a way to ensure longevity to engage in spiritual pursuits: "Just as the wise person is recognized through his wisdom and his temperaments and in these, he stands apart from the rest of the people, so, too, he should be recognized through his actions - in his eating, drinking, intimate relations, in relieving himself, in his speech, manner of walking and dress, in the management of his finances, and in his business dealings. All of these actions should be exceptionally becoming and befitting" [5:1]. For a person who is truly wise, intelligence penetrates every life arena.
 
So maybe as the 2016 Olympic summer comes to an end, it's a good time to consider ramping up your exercise routine and committing to better self-care so that you can live better, longer, stronger and more soulfully. Go for the gold.
 
Shabbat Shalom

Black Shoes

“I am in mourning over the destruction of Jerusalem...”

— BT Bava Kamma 59b

Marilyn Monroe once said, "Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world." I am not sure you can conquer the world with stilettos. They would certainly slow me down. But we are about to study a shoe story that gives the opposite message. Shoes can also be a sign that you are retreating from the world as it is, retreating out of loss. 

As we approach Tisha B'Av this coming Sunday and recount immense tragedies across our history, I thought I would share a Talmudic story of intrigue about public mourning that may take us back in time. One day Rabbi Eliezer Ze'eira was caught wearing black shoes in the market of Nehardea, an ancient Babylonian town packed with scholars. I wasn't really sure what the offense was in this, but it must have been great because, as the Talmudic passage continues, officials from the Exilarch's house found him and asked him by what right he has to wear black shoes in public. His reply was terse and moving: "Because I am in mourning over Jerusalem."
 
We have many Talmudic passages that deal with the excessive mourning of scholars upon the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem. The legal justification for amplifying mourning comes from a verse in Isaiah: "to appoint those that mourn for Zion" (61:3). There were sages who refused meat and wine since these were part of Temple rites. Even to this day, many weddings in Jerusalem feature only small bands because of the ban on live music after the Temple's ruin. The black shoes, however, triggered something very powerful in the eyes of these onlookers that was not positive.
 

Fresco from Pompeii depicting two upper-class Romans wearing black shoes. From the Koren Talmud, Bava Kamma 59b

We have a fresco from Pompeii that depicts upper-class Romans in black shoes (You can see this in the image above, taken from the Koren Bava Kamma). It seems that shoes were a statement of one's social class (think Manolo Blahnik today), and shoes with black straps were worn by Gentiles and not by Jews. Medieval Talmudic commentators suggest that Jews may have worn shoes with black soles and white straps or, a later commentary suggests that Romans wore glossy black shoes, and Jews customarily wore matte black shoes. Whatever the meaning of footwear was back then, it was enough to agitate these officials and prompt this odd conversation:
 
"They said to him, 'Are you a man of such importance to mourn Jerusalem (in public)?' They thought this presumptuous, and they brought him to prison to incarcerate him." Black shoes must have been a really big wardrobe malfunction for this rabbi. It turns out that mourning in public with this display of importance was a crime of sorts. Rabbi Eliezer turned to them and said that he was allowed to don black shoes for one reason: 'I am a great man (gavra rabba)." Modest, too.
 
In other words, Rabbi Eliezer was a person of note who felt that he could engage in this mourning ritual because of his scholarship. He did not regard it as a haughty behavior but as a significant one. The officials, however, were not backing down. "How do we know you are a scholar?" they asked. He responded with a test. "Either you ask me a matter of law or I will ask you a matter of law." The rabbi challenged them to come up with a question he couldn't answer, or he would ask one that showcased his knowledge. They allowed him to ask, and they discussed a matter of legal minutiae. He told them to confirm his answer with that of another great sage, Samuel. "Samuel is alive and his court exists," he claimed. Off they went to Samuel's court, where this exceptional scholar told the officials that Rabbi Eliezer was correct. When they heard this, they released Rabbi Eliezer, and the Talmud moves on to another legal issue.
 
People did not wear shoes in the Temple precincts but did need strong shoes for the pilgrimage to the Temple. Some sages interpreted the verse from Song of Songs, "How beautiful are your steps in sandals" [7:2] as a specific reference to the beauty of people marching together to this Jewish spiritual center, the heart of the ancient Israelites. The Vilna Gaon (1720-1796) understood Rabbi Eliezer's actions as a way of honoring these collective journeys to Jerusalem to pray and to live in community. Every time he looked down, he would have seen this reminder of where he wished his feet would take him.
 
Strange, no? In BT Ta'anit, we learn that one who mourns Jerusalem will one day rejoice in a rebuilt Jerusalem [30b]. Rabbi Eliezer felt that he needed to make a public statement about his loss; he was not behaving in what we might call self-righteousness, as the officials assumed. He may have intentionally gone to the market in his black shoes because it was a place congested with people, people who may have forgotten the significance of the Temple's loss. His footwear was not only a reminder for him. In public, it was a reminder for everyone who saw him that we walk always in a small dark shadow because of this loss.

Shabbat Shalom

Evicted

“And when a person shall sanctify his house to be holy to the Lord…”

Leviticus 27:14

In ancient biblical days - and particularly in the days of the Temple - people consecrated the worth of property, objects and even themselves to support the Temple or to support Israelite leadership. One would evaluate what something or someone was worth (a complex process) and give that amount to a charitable cause. It was a way of evening out the economic playing field. If I buy a new house, I may translate this blessing into supporting God’s house, as we see from the verse above. Donations may have been consecrated by kings from spoils of war, giving back to the spiritual source that helped them achieve victory. The Talmud on the verse above proposes that “Just as one’s house is in one’s possession, so too anything that one consecrates must be in his possession” [BT Bava Kamma 69b]. You have to own what you give away, just as what you give away is often mirrored by what you own.

A house is an interesting choice of designation, and it shows how important a house is in the life of a human being; it becomes a marker of personal worth. In Jewish life, we use the Hebrew word “bayit” to signify not only a house but a gathering space for study - beit midrash - for prayer - a beit keneset - and for the center of our ancient community - a beit ha-mikdash, our holiest house. In Jewish life we move from house to house, imbuing sacredness to each space by virtue of the activities that take place there. A person needs a home, an anchor of stability; in this changing, chaotic world, every soul needs to be an island of repose.

In this spirit, it was very hard to digest this line in Matthew Desmond’s latest book: “Every year in this country, people are evicted from their homes not by the tens of thousands or even the hundreds of thousands but by the millions.” In his study of poverty in the American city, Evicted, he writes how much people are taken advantage of because they don’t live in homes they own. “‘Every condition exists,’ Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, ‘simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.’ Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.” He traces the lives of people who have been evicted and the landlords who evict them. It is a gripping and heartbreaking read.

This vicious cycle is nearly impossible to break, especially when exploitation centers on the basics: food and housing. “If the poor pay more for their housing, food, durable goods and credit, and if they get smaller returns on their education and mortgages (if they get returns at all), then their incomes are even smaller than they appear. This is fundamentally unfair,” Desmond writes. Desmond tells us something we’ve always known about housing: “Residential stability begets a kind of psychological stability, which allows people to invest in their homes and social relationships. It begets school stability, which increases the chances children will excel and graduate. And it begets community stability, which encourages neighbors to form strong bonds and take care of their block.” If this is true, then we understand the deeper costs of eviction: “Eviction does not simply drop poor families into a dark valley, a trying yet relatively brief detour on life’s journey. It fundamentally redirects their way, casting them onto a different, and much more difficult, path. Eviction is a cause, not just a condition of poverty.”

Perhaps this is what the prophet Jeremiah understood when he taught Jewish exiles how to live in their host countries. After the destruction of our shared spiritual house - the Temple - Jeremiah advised us to build homes and settle in exile, a counterintuitive message, to be sure. “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 'Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.'” [Jeremiah 29:5-7].

Historically, we may have been evicted, but we will and we have rebuilt. Now it’s time to turn our attention to those who haven’t.

Shabbat Shalom

Justice Needs Practice

“…practice love and justice and wait for your God always.
”

— Hosea 12:6

Several places in the Talmud discuss the case of one murder committed by multiple hands. Maimonides gathers together these opinions in forming his own, which he shares in the “Laws of Murder” in his magnum opus, the Mishnah Torah. There are fourteen hefty chapters in this book because Maimonides is dealing with one of the most significant crimes in the Torah, the taking of a life.

“If ten people strike one person with ten different stick and he dies, they are all not held liable for execution by the court." The law applies whether or not they struck him one after the other or they struck him at the same time. These laws are sourced in Leviticus 24:17, ‘If one strikes any person mortally, he should be put to death;’ through implication we learn that death is not required unless one person alone is entirely accountable for the person’s death. The same law applies if two people push a colleague into the water and hold him there or several people are together and an arrow leaves them and kills someone, none is held liable.” (4:6)

This question of accountability in the case of a murder is not easy to resolve. On the one hand, murdering someone is a capital offense and treated with the full weight of Jewish law during times of Jewish sovereignty. On the other hand, in a case where multiple people are involved, it is near impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that any one individual is responsible.

Maimonides does delineate a case with a different outcome, however. “A different ruling is rendered in the following instance. Ten people threw stones at one person, one after the other. None of the stones was sufficiently heavy enough to cause death. Afterwards, another person cast a heavy stone that could cause death. The last person who threw the stone should be executed.”[4:7]

All things being equal, Jewish law does not implicate any one individual in the collective murder of one person. All bear the shame, but none bears the actual liability. When all things are not equal – one person has a much heavier stone than the others – the one who casts the final death blow is held responsible, even if everyone participated in this crime.

I pondered this last week for several days after the last police officer was acquitted in the Freddy Gray case that took place last year in Baltimore. Remember the case? On April 12, 2015, Freddie Gray was arrested by Baltimore police officers for possession of an illegal switchblade. He died 7 days later. When Gray was transported in a police van after his arrest, he allegedly suffered a coma and was said to have died because of spinal injuries. How did this man die?

The six officers involved were suspended with pay as an investigation ensued. Charges of homicide were waged against the police officers. Each case was presented separately in court. Last week, on July 27th, all the charges were dropped. The case garnered particular attention because Gray’s death was followed by days of violent protests and looting, especially on April 27th, 2015, the day of Freddie’s funeral. A state of emergency was declared in Maryland by the governor, and the National Guard was finally brought it to bring the city to order. It was a frightening and tense time and surfaced many of this country’s fears about police officers, about vigilante justice, about race.

After all the charges were dropped, when many expected the protests to resurface with an even more ferocious aggression, the streets were quiet. Most of the officers who were convicted are back at work. But all is not normal. There have been heated calls for criminal justice reform, for a more independent investigation, for police reforms. The Executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, Chuck Wexler, was cited in The New York Times with this pessimistic end note: “We’re nowhere.” He shared the disappointment many feel: “Both sides walk away from this feeling like they didn’t get justice – the people who were concerned about Freddie Gray, and the people who are concerned about cops doing their job.”

If Maimonides had been the judge, the outcome would likely have been the same. No one person could be indicted beyond a reasonable doubt with taking Gray’s life. But collectively, there is no doubt that something terrible happened in that van that day that reminds us to be vigilant in upholding the sacredness of every life. “Justice, justice you shall pursue,” we will soon read in Deuteronomy 16:20. We repeat the word justice, the commentators tell us, for all kinds of reasons: for emphasis, for additional vigilance, for a call to action. But perhaps we also read it twice because there is earthly justice and heavenly justice. There are people who get away with crimes because we simply cannot prosecute them, but it does not mean that they didn’t happen. Justice somewhere, at some time must be served.

Shabbat Shalom

Turning Political Darkness to Light

“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you or forsake you. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged.”

Deuteronomy 31:8

Looking back on the past two weeks of political conventions has been frustrating. Everyone I talk to is depressed about the elections. All the disparaging talk and name-calling, the focus on personalities rather than responsibilities, the rhetoric and the bullying are taking a mental toll. Current polls on the trust levels of both candidates conclude that the majority of Americans don’t really trust either nominee, and this comes at a time when America is desperate for strong moral leadership. How we will look back at this strange time in American history: will it be a turning point or not? Will it push the country in the direction of integrity or not?

The most vulnerable time in the life of a people is the baton change of leadership. Letting go of the familiar - even if the familiar is flawed - for the unknown surfaces doubts and anxieties about the future. We think about the larger impact of such shifts - on immigration, on the economy and on foreign policy - and then our more local concerns. How will this change of leadership specifically affect me: my family, my job security, my health benefits?

The statement above in Deuteronomy appears at a transitional moment in Jewish history. Moses’ brother and sister died. It was apparent that his life, too, would soon slip away, letting one great generation of the Bible be eclipsed by a newer generation with its own challenges. Moses spoke to his people at a time when he could no longer fight the inevitable: “I am now 120 years old, and I am no longer able to lead you. The Lord has said to me, ‘You shall not cross the Jordan.’” This admission of vulnerability and mortality must have been devastating for him and his audience. He had served the people for over 100 years. Letting go of his leadership meant letting go of his very life.

To ensure a smooth transition, Moses stressed that God would be with the people no matter what. Leaders come and go, but an enduring divine presence would never leave. The two verses before the one above create a context in which to understand Moses’ wish for the people as he is about to leave them. Moses used the same words that God would use repeatedly when Joshua took his place: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them (your enemies), for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” (31:6) Then Moses gave Joshua the moral authority of the camp with a similar pep talk: “Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel, ‘Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land...’” (31:7)

Moses called upon God to provide a successor so that Moses would know that his investment would carry through to the next generation. He wasn’t looking for a simple replacement. Really great leaders want to be overshadowed by the greatness of the next leader. “Succession planning doesn’t start with people. It starts with the requirements of the position,” states professor of business David Ulrich. It’s not only about personality. Succession planning is understanding what the job demands first.

The former CEO of Xerox, Anne M. Mulcahy, wrote that, “One of the things we often miss in succession planning is that it should be gradual and thoughtful, with lots of sharing of information and knowledge and perspective, so that it’s almost a non-event when it happens.” I hate to break it to her, but for us presidential elections are never non-events. Some are more thoughtful and transparent than others. Some offer more information and greater perspective than others. Voting today often feels like entering a fierce confrontation rather than a national succession planning venture. And because of the vehemence today, many of us are feeling embattled instead of excited.

Moses brought light to the people by emphasizing what endures when change is taking place. Maybe we need to take a page out of his political playbook to fight the depression. Instead of focusing on who will be president for a few years, let’s start talking about what got us here hundreds of years ago and what will endure long past these anguished days of politics: our freedoms, our strength, our collective national bond. I have to remind myself that we might feel depressed about our leadership, but we should never be depressed about our country.

Shabbat Shalom

Fishing for Ideas

“The light of the eyes gladdens the heart...”

— Proverbs 15:30

According to this verse in Proverbs, there is a direct line between the eyes and the heart. Having taught this verse and its interpretation many times, I've found three distinct understandings of what kind of light has the power to make the heart happy. Rashi believes that aesthetic sights have this impact: mountains and lakes, for example. Beauty provides light and makes us joyful. Rabbi David Altshuler, an eighteenth century exegete, claims that removing oneself from doubt creates happiness, in other words personal en-light-enment. Gersonides (1288-1344), a French commentator, believes that what gladdens the heart are the gifts of the intellect; when the light bulb goes off we find ourselves experiencing deep pleasure.

Let's stay with this last view for a moment. We can appreciate that the world of ideas offers personal satisfaction, but it also generates challenge and restlessness. Where do great ideas come from anyway? In an interesting comparison, the Talmud equates idea-catching to fishing. "This is analogous to a fisherman pulling fish from the sea. When he finds big ones he takes them and when he finds small ones, he takes them as well." You present one significant idea but then add additional responses or justifications to prove a point, even if they are not as compelling. But there is a contrary opinion, of course: "This is analogous to a fisherman pulling fish from the sea. He takes small ones then finds big ones, discards the small ones and keeps the big ones" [BT Bava Kamma 41b-42a]. If you are fishing for ideas, and you come across a really terrific one, you let go of the earlier iterations. In other words, do you keep minor ideas along with the main one or when you discover something really big, do you throw away the smaller ideas because you don't need them anymore?

 In his book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant, professor at Wharton, contends that original thinkers are not always good at judging their own ideas but,

If originals aren't reliable judges of the quality of their ideas, how do they maximize their odds of creating a masterpiece? They come up with a large number of ideas. Simonton [professor of psychology Dean Keith Simonton] finds that on average, creative geniuses weren't qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality.

Grant also writes that, "Being original doesn't require being first. It just means being different and better." In his book and his interesting TED talk of the same title, he confesses that he is a pre-crastinator. He gets work done before deadlines. As a professor, he has a lot of student procrastinators who convince themselves that they get their best ideas last minute. Who generates better ideas: early birds or late ones? In truth, neither. He argues that original thinking often emerges when someone begins the creative process early, takes a break and returns to it later, getting the benefit of additional cooking time. "Procrastination may be the enemy of productivity, but it can be a resource for creativity" and then adds this zinger: "Timing accounted for forty-two percent of the difference between success and failure."

From a spiritual perspective, we believe that great ideas can be inspired by higher thinking, prayer and mindfulness. We often say of geniuses that they are touched by God. In Jewish tradition, we pray to have the brain power to make good decisions, come up with innovative ideas and handle situations with intellectual maturity. In the blessing immediately before the Shema, we pray that God should, "...have compassion on us and put into our hearts the comprehension to understand and to be intellectually creative, to listen, to learn and to teach, to preserve, to practice and to fulfill all the words of instruction in Your Torah." Moments later in the Amidah or Eighteen Benedictions, we make a formal request for divine intelligence: "You favor humans with perception and teach mankind understanding. Grant us from Your perception, understanding and intellect. Blessed are You, God, Grantor of perception."

We ask God to grant us a sliver of divine intelligence, suggesting, with humility, that all our great ideas may not belong to us at all. If we're lucky, we stumble upon a few and feel grateful that our own originality is built on the shoulders of the giants who came before us.

Shabbat Shalom

The Blues

Dear Officer,
 
These must be deeply troubling days for you, watching the news, watching the streets. I was talking to a friendly security guard once, and I asked him about his family. He and his wife are both retired police officers who do freelance work. He told me that his son is in a police academy, studying to be an officer. "You must be so proud that he followed in both of your footsteps," I said. He paused, looked at me quite seriously and replied: "No. We told him not to do it. It's a terrible time to be a police officer." That was last year. I cannot imagine how hard it must be to count yourself as part of a police force today.
 
Jews have always valued the role of the police. We thank you profoundly for your service. In Deuteronomy, we read, "You shall appoint judges and police officers at all your gates that the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice," [16:18].  There is something regal about this verse, its weighty assumption that appointing people to guard over justice will ensure a civil society where fairness and safety reign. Immediately preceding this verse is the commandment that Jews celebrate the three major festivals - Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot - with a pilgrimage to the Temple. There, God will bless the people. Two Bible commentators connect these very different verses this way: no matter if you are obligated in the observance of these festivals and will, upon arriving, consult the priests there about Jewish law, "it will not be sufficient unless there are judges and officers at all your gates" [Hizkuni]. In other words, the spiritual world, in order for it to unfold, depends on upholding the integrity of society as a whole. You try to do that for us everyday.
 
Another interesting connection between these two disparate passages is articulated by the Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Berlin [1816-1893], namely, that blessing will be found when people honor those who judge and assure their safety. If you want a blessed community, make sure that you demonstrate proper respect to those who work for the public good.
 
Hate to get all scholarly on you, but I wanted to share a modern reading of this verse with you from Jeffrey Tigay. He takes a different approach in hi commentary on Deuteronomy:

Prominence is given to the limits established by God on the rights of each authority. By dispersing authority and prestige among various officials and limiting their powers, Deuteronomy seeks to prevent the development of a single, strong focus of prestige and power. That these limitations are here made known to the public is an important and original feature of the Torah. It lays the ground for public supervision and criticism of human authorities, and prevents them from gaining absolute authority and prestige.  Knowledge of these limitations empower citizens to resist and protest abuses of authority.

There are real concerns about abuses of power within the police now. I don't have to tell you that. We see this tension in the interpretation above - is this verse about protecting judges and the police or about protecting the people - makes for lively debate and helps us understand some of the living tensions we are all experiencing in these dark days of episodic protests, riots and violence by police and against them.

Yet, with all the conversations about race and police brutality that are shaking the country, many question the behavior of officers without considering their public service and their safety. Without in any way justifying police violence, in the shadow of Dallas, we all have to feel the sting and irony of this painful situation. Police don't always make us feel safe, and officers like you may not feel safe because protesters are lashing out at you. It makes a mockery of authority. In our ancient Talmudic tradition, we read this: "Pray for the integrity of the government; for were it not for the fear of its authority, a man would swallow his neighbor alive."
 
We know there are bad police, but that's not who you are. You've given your professional life to the service of our community. Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), former prime minister of the UK, had this to say about your commitment: "The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence." We are told in Deuteronomy to appoint officers. It's not enough to appoint police officers. We have to find ways to honor and appreciate you more because you help us live up to our own highest expectations of ourselves.
 
God bless you,

Erica

Where is God?

“If I have problems with God, why should I blame the Sabbath?”

— Eli Wiesel

In One Generation After, Elie Wiesel – of blessed memory - tells a short story that is long on meaning. Every morning, the beadle of a synagogue rushed to the bimah – the reader’s platform – and shouted with pride and anger: “I have come to inform you, Master of the Universe, that we are here.” Massacre after massacre hit the village, but the beadle survived and kept up his daily pounding on the lectern: “You see, Lord, we are still here.” The last massacre left the beadle alone in the deserted synagogue. He came up to the Ark and “whispered in infinite gentleness: ‘You see? I am still here.’ He stopped briefly before continuing in his sad, almost toneless voice: ‘But You, where are You?’” 

As we collectively mourn the loss of a great contemporary hero, much ink has been spilled on Elie Wiesel’s concern for humanity and memory, how he masterfully bore witness to tragedy and dignified the survivor, forcing the world into an uncomfortable look in the mirror at its complacency.  Challenging us, he demanded that memory not only preserve and shape the past but that it also set a moral agenda for the future. Less has been written, however, about Wiesel’s theology, how despite anger at God, he maintained his own observance and his own wrestling with God, a continuous if not tormenting presence.

In answer to the question of his faith leaving him during the Holocaust, he deflected in a fictive conversation. “I said I refuse to speak about God, here in this place. To say yes would be to lie. To say no – also. If need be, I would confront Him with an angry shout, a gesture, a murmur. But to make of Him – here – a theological topic, that I won’t do! God – here – is the extra bowl of soup pushed at you or stolen from you, simply because the man ahead of you is either stronger or quicker than you. God – here – cannot be found in humble or grandiloquent phrases, but in a crust of bread…Which you have had or are about to have?...which you will never have (Dialogues I).

Wiesel found God guilty in his literary court but and still went to the synagogue to pray. He loved old Jewish melodies, and his own melodious speaking voice was hypnotizing whenever I heard him lecture. As I looked at the string of his books in our personal library, I noticed so many more were about Hasidic tales than about survivor fears, as if nostalgia gripped him and made him a storyteller for magical sects that he was not a part of after the war. The Hasidic tale also provides a framework for lived theology; it may have allowed him permission to fight God without walking away from God.

Wiesel has been likened to an ancient prophet and inspired me to open A. J. Heschel’s book, The Prophets, to seek in its pages something descriptive of this man. Heschel did not disappoint, with this description of a prophet’s worldview: “It is a divine attentiveness to humanity, an involvement in history, a divine vision of the world in which the prophet shares and which he tries to convey. And it’s God’s concern for man that is at the root of the prophet’s work to save the people.” 

Today, many people valorize heresy as a sort of intellectual status symbol, suggesting that sophisticated people are beyond faith. Elie Wiesel helped us grieve the past with immense pride as a moral ambassador who was unabashedly Jewish. He also left a legacy of complicated faith that challenges us to reinvestigate what it means to live in relationship to God, not only through the tragedy of Auschwitz but also through the abundance of Jewish life after that horrible chapter closed.

Shabbat Shalom

Memory and Activism

David Gurion, in Memoirs, has a chapter on the primacy of the Bible as a text of Jeiwsh life, even Jews are activits, that is they have a Messiani spirit. The are not missionaries since they don’t seek to convet others to hteir ways. But they are merciless with themselves. The Bible has imparted to them that divine discontent leading at its best to initiatves such as the pioneering life at its worst to persecution but their fellow men. It has never allowed them as a people to enjoy for long comfrotbale mediocrity.

What is Rest?

“Our God and God of our ancestors, find favor in our rest...”

— Traditional Shabbat Afternoon Prayer

In Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, Maya Angelou shares a compelling definition of rest: "Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us." In her words, our concerns and anxieties don't willingly leave us, but we can make a conscious decision to leave them, at least for a brief respite so that we can recover the energy to enter the fray again.

Rest is more than a good idea. God actually demands and models it, as we read in the opening chapters of Genesis. "By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that which He had done" [Genesis 2:2-3]. God worked so we work. God rested so we rest.
 
Yet we are not sure what we are supposed to do when resting. Is it the absence of activity or engaging in alternate activities? Is it doing something or doing nothing? I was thinking about this one late Shabbat afternoon in a prayer service. We ask, in our silent meditation, that God accept our rest. In other words, it has to be a rest that is divine-worthy. So let's say I go to sleep, but I wake up and do not feel rested, that might not get God's metaphoric stamp of approval. It does raise the bar on what a great rest might look and feel like. The passage that precedes this statement hints at what divine-worthy rest looks like:
 
"Splendor of greatness and a crown of salvation is the day of rest. You have given Your people...a rest of love and generosity, a rest of truth and faith, a rest of peace and tranquility, calm and trust; a complete rest in which You find favor. May your children recognize and know that their rest comes from You, and that by their rest they sanctify Your name." It seems like our rest needs to be loving and generous, truthful, faithful, peaceful, calm, trusting and complete. And it needs to be recognized as God-sanctioned. Instead of offering clarity, this prayer seems to make rest harder to attain. Imagine a mattress store advertising its wares this way: our beds are guaranteed to make you generous and trusting.
 
My other question is why tell us this as we're almost parting from Shabbat? It would make more sense to put this up front, say on a Friday night, to create rest expectations or, my newest made-up expression, "great restpectations." Instead we insert it in our prayers when we've already gotten up from a nap. I was discussing this with my friend, Adina Israel, and she suggested that the language used here is not uncommon. We hope, after we do particular Jewish rituals, that they have been done well, the prayer equivalent of a survey or evaluation. Rate your resting, 1 to 10. Would you recommend this rest to a friend? It comes at the near-end of Shabbat to help us look back retrospectively and ask ourselves if we truly rested, and if we achieved not only physical recovery and calm but an inner calm that allows us to be less harried, more generous, more loving, more trusting. If you wake up from a nap grouchy, your Shabbat rest may not be what God had in mind.
 
You can disconnect from technology and not really disconnect mentally from the week behind you. Shabbat can become just another busy day, one over-stuffed with social activities and obligations of a different kind. But rest was built into creation as a weekly gift of recovery and renewal, and it should be so deep that it makes us better human beings.
 
What can you do to feel really rested?
 
Shabbat Shalom