Changing Years, Changing Lives

“Righteous people say little and do much.”

BT Bava Metzia 87a

“Every minute - every single second - there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world - don’t you feel we’re becoming more and more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You’d think we’d be getting better at it. But there’s just more and more chaos. The pieces - they’re everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it.”

These words from a conversation in David Levithan’s young adult fiction, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, create a picture of a frustration. The sadness in the world at times feels crushingly overwhelming. John-Paul Flintoff articulates this paralysis concretely in How to Change the World. “Surprisingly often, we find ourselves impaled on a paradox: we desperately want to do something, but have no idea what it may be.” This impulse often escalates in intensity as a new year approaches. There is a new chance to make this the year that we end poverty, hunger, cancer, etc.

But our impulse to do good in the world is often thwarted by the practical problem of how to do so. To help us change the world, Flintoff includes and index called “198 Ways to Act” excerpted from Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action and includes suggestions we might expect – demonstrations, pressure applied to political figures, boycotts, leaflets – and includes rude gestures, self-exposure to the elements, satyagrahic fasting (look that one up), mutiny, mock funerals, silence, teach-ins and, of course, protest disrobings.

Many of these suggestions involve communication in different modalities. But the rabbinic response seems, instead, to prefer silence and action, as the Talmud says above.  “To be is to stand for,” as Rabbi A. J. Heschel says. Standing is not speaking. In fact, sometimes speech masks inactivity. We talk about goodness instead of embodying it.

Our expression for social change, tikkun olam, is most famously expressed at the end of traditional prayer services “Le-taken olam b’malchut Sha-dai.” Critics of the tikkun olam impulse in contemporary Jewish life complain that too much energy is spent on environmental awareness or poverty in other countries but very little is expended on embracing Jewish law and ritual. We are a small people and if we do not help each other, who will take care of us? The Alenu prayer tries to focus our works under the shadow of the kingdom of God. Social justice is twinned with spirituality.

Permit me to offer an alternative reading. Perhaps the idea of fixing the world in the kingdom of God is recognizing our humility when we set out to repair something we deem broken. There is often a smug or self-righteous approach that accompanies social justice work that is condescending and intimidating. Even the presumption that we can change the world sounds arrogant. I can barely change my shoes on harder days.

Flintoff returns us to more modest goals: “…if we are really interested in changing the world, we have to put other people first. Every attitude we assume, every word we utter, and every act we undertake establishes us in relation to others.” Tikkun olam is less about changing the world in this view and more about attuning ourselves to the needs of others through curiosity and empathy.

Leviathan captures this sentiment majestically in his novel:

“…Then it hits me.

Maybe we’re the pieces,”



“What?”



“Maybe that’s it. With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces. Maybe, what we’re supposed to do is come together. That’s how we stop the breaking. Tikkun olam.”

Maybe it is audacious to think that this is the year we will change the world. Maybe it is enough to believe that this is the year we will change the brokenness ourselves. And maybe that too is audacious.

Shabbat Shalom

Distance Yourself

“Escape quickly from the company of fools; they’re a waste of your time, a waste of your words. The wisdom of the wise keeps life on track; the foolishness of fools lands them in the ditch. The stupid ridicule right and wrong, but a moral life is a favored life.”

Proverbs 14:7-9

This week I have been thinking a lot about the difference between escapes and exits. I finished Ira Wagler’s book, Growing Up Amish, about his multiple escapes from the Old Order Amish lifestyle in which he was raised. Wagler grew up with 11 siblings in a strict and regimented household. They spoke Pennsylvania Dutch (I didn’t know this was a language. I thought it was a type of pretzel). The Old Order is distinguished from other types of Amish in that it is less progressive. Electricity is not allowed in the home nor are phones. All clothing is homemade. Women wear bonnets. They drive buggies with steel rims, unlike those that permit rubberized tires.

The Amish fascinate us. Mired in technology and modernity, we find their lifestyle quaint and simple and imagine the retreat it would be from the world to drop everything and plow alongside Harrison Ford in Witness or build barns together. But as Wagler writes, being Amish is really hard at times. The strength of the community can be its weakness. “As I would come to discover later in life, one shouldn’t be condemned for simply craving freedom,” he writes.

The Amish preach Anabaptism, an adult choice to be a member of the church. The famed Rumspringa break that is permitted adolescents to experience the world is to provoke a definite choice about an Amish future and usually ends with a return to the fold. Amish children do not go to school beyond 8th grade. Their lives are so deeply enmeshed in a closed society that it is hard to envision oneself apart from it.

Wagler left his home for the first time at 17 in the middle of the night, leaving a brief note for his father to find at dawn. This is a common way of leaving the community. But because it was an escape and not an exit, Wagler never really articulated and owned the reasons he had for leaving. He just left. And then came back. And left and came back. He was engaged to an Amish woman and took church vows but broke the engagement and left again. Now, more than two decades apart from his leave-taking he realized the difference between his escapes and his final exit. He says that when he finally broke off, he “was not running in frantic despair into some wild and dangerous horizon. For the first time, I was leaving with a clear mind, quietly focused on faith, not fear. For the first time, I was leaving behind all the baggage, all the tortured, broken dreams, all the pain of so much loss and heartbreak.”

When we look at the verses from Proverbs above, they, too, speak about escape – leaving those who are fools. The medieval Spanish commentator, Abraham ibn Ezra, says that the word escape here means to distance oneself. Understand the risks and move away. Sometimes when we are too close to fire, we get burned. If you know what ignites that fire for you emotionally, then stay far away. Escape.

Rashi, who lived a bit earlier, takes a softer view. He might not translate the word as escape but rather as separate yourself. He contends that Proverbs is advising us not to be around a fool often, not to make him into regular company rather than moving far away. We cannot always distance ourselves physically from forces that constrict or diminish us. But we can make mental and emotional distances to protect our own health and well-being. In Proverbs, those distances are in defense of our moral values. Stay away from what damages your principles and from those who question or ridicule them. When you cannot be apart from bad influences, learn to negotiate how you react to them so that you do not feel compromised.

Running away isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, it’s better to make a slow and dignified exit.

Shabbat Shalom

Sweet Revenge

BT Yoma 22b-23a

We all know people who hold grudges so long that they can’t even remember what they were angry about in the first place. The words no longer matter. The negative emotional associations they have with the person who offended are so overwhelming and insulting that the feelings linger. Try as we might, we have difficulty unseating these feelings. And perhaps this makes us feel bad because we know that the Torah forbids any form of revenge or bearing grudges, as we read in Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take revenge nor bear any grudge.”

But then we read the statement above and it makes us wonder. How is it that a Torah scholar who is insulted should actually bear a grudge, and not only a little grudge, a grudge of snake-like proportions? No doubt, this sort of venomous anger will not go away. In fact, this person loses his scholarly credibility if he does not bear a grudge. It makes no sense.

The Talmud, being a document of dissent and debate, asks this question and raises the Leviticus verse. The last person we would expect to bear a grudge is the one who studies the stuff in the original. The Talmud then discusses the prohibition of revenge and says that the Leviticus text is specifically about monetary revenge rather than personal insult. “What is revenge? One said to his fellow: ‘Lend me your sickle,’ and he said, ‘No.’ The next day, he (the one who refused) said to the other, ‘Lend me your ax.’ And he said, ‘I will not lend to you just as you did not lend to me.’ That is revenge.”

What then is bearing a grudge? That’s the Talmud’s next question: “If one said to his fellow, ‘Lend me your ax,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and the next day he (the one who refused), said to him, ‘I am not like you, who would not lend to me. That is bearing a grudge.’”

In the first instance – revenge – monetary stinginess is, in many ways, an act of personal insult. I am saying that I do not trust you with my things, and you, in turn, are telling me that a deficiency of trust will come back to bite me. It is a zero-sum game, this game of revenge.

In the second instance, bearing a grudge seems to be an act of moral superiority. You give me something not to help me but to show that you are better than me, a bigger, more generous person. But in truth, you are not a generous person because you could not give me something without hurting me at the same time.

The Talmud distinguishes between monetary insult and personal insult in this way: in a case of finance, you can control how you spend your money or share your possessions and make choices. We hope you will make choices that engender trust and parity but if you cannot, at least be gracious to those who cannot. But the Torah scholar is not representing himself alone. The Torah scholar represents a universe of ideas and values that is being insulted and must protect that universe with ferocity. The scholar must uphold the honor of the Torah, its students and its institutions. The shame that a scholar experiences is the shame we all bear. For example, one may not support a particular president, but one should not call a  president by his first name or last name without reference to his office. It protects the honor of the office even if the candidate in question does not represent one’s politics.

In the chapter “Who Gets Hurts?” in William Irvine’s book about insults, A Slap in the Face, he writes that when we have self-confidence, we regard ourselves as being worthy. We feel proud of ourselves and “wealthy enough in self-esteem that we can afford to let others have fun at our expense.” This is not permission to insult us, but a possible explanation of why some people nurse old wounds for a lifetime, and others let them slide. Perhaps in this piece of Talmud, there was a worry not only about the status of scholars in society but also a need to help them de-personalize an insult and understand when it was directed to the enterprise of study and not to them as individuals.

Learning should never be diminished and insulted if we prize it as foundational to our Jewish identity. And we must protect the dignity of those who represent it.

Shabbat Shalom

Familiar Strangers

“As soon as Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them,

but he pretended to be a stranger..."

Genesis 42:7

Philip Galanes, in his advice column “Social Q’s” in The New York Times, fielded a question about the usual holiday joy: family get-togethers. David claimed that he has officially begun to dread Thanksgiving. Within 30 seconds of being in the same room as his immediate family, they all assume their old roles even when those roles are outdated. His question: “Do you have any ideas for short-circuiting those same old dynamics this year? It is really demoralizing for me.”

Galanes suggested inviting some new guests who might fast-forward the ancient dynamics by expressing interest in what everyone is up to now. Funnily enough, the Torah portions of the past few weeks have dished up variations of this theme, so I thought in the spirit of ancient dynamics, we might ask our old friend Joseph how he might have handled the contemporary Thanksgiving feast with his family.

Dear David,

I know exactly where you are, friend. You cannot imagine what it was like for me every Thanksgiving in Canaan. Dad would always make me carve the turkey in front of everyone in that ridiculous striped jacket; the dolman sleeves always dipped into the gravy and, let me tell you, it was an absolute beast to clean.

Every year Reuben and Judah fought constantly over the drumsticks, and in the early days before Mom passed away, she and her sister Leah would always be competing for who had the better sweet potato casserole recipe. My father basically sat on the couch watching football, while my other brothers practically killed each other. My sister Dina was so bored and upset, she would just wander off. I think she was looking for Black Friday sales in Shechem.

After I was thrown in the pit and taken to Egypt, Thanksgiving was different for me. I was all alone, often in prison with a baker who had no flour and a sommelier without wine. What good are they at making a party?

But I will never forget the year that my brothers came down to Egypt to find some stuffing – and anything else - because there was basically a famine in Canaan. I was already high-ranking in the Egyptian government and was sporting an Egyptian haircut and the latest in Prada tunics when ten of them walked in. I knew them instantly and found that despite my confidence, I was shaken. I hadn’t seen them in 13 years. I wanted so badly to say, “Look at me now and look at you,” but I bit my tongue and spoke in Egyptian. They clearly had no idea who I was. I wanted to see if they had changed. If there was any brotherly feeling, I would reveal myself. But otherwise, I had found safety only among strangers; my own family was too threatened by my success. I would stay in Egypt, thrive and have to give up on the Andrew Lloyd Webber play that would sustain my name for an eternity.

In the end, I am glad that I made myself a stranger to them because it was only as a stranger that they came to see me for who I really was. David, I wept so profoundly on the day that I told them my secret because by the time I told them, I was no longer filled with revenge. I was filled with love.

I learned then that the best way to handle the annual return of the ancient family dynamic is not to invite strangers to your table to distract you but to turn your own family into strangers, to ask them questions about their lives that you might ask strangers, to treat them with the courtesy you treat strangers. Strangers can become friends; friends can become family. Sometimes when families make each other into strangers, they can also become a better family.

I have had an amazing life, David. I have been successful beyond expectation. Some call me a dreamer. Some call me a dream interpreter. Some just call me “sir.” But it took me a lifetime to realize that what was most important to me was to be called a brother.

Happy Thanksgiving (And a joyous Hanuka),

Joseph

Ending Hunger

“All the troubles of the world are assembled on one side and poverty is on the other.”

Midrash Rabbah Exodus 31:12

All the talk today is about turkey: how to baste one, how not to baste one. Sutffing or no stuffing? Ethnic recipes for American favorites. It’s getting pretty tiring, especially because when we reflect on world hunger, poverty and vulnerability right now, the talk seems even more trivial. It makes us even more conscious of Elie Wiesel’s words, “Hunger is isolating; it may not and cannot be experienced vicariously.  He who never felt hunger can never know its real effects, both tangible and intangible.  Hunger defies imagination; it even defies memory.  Hunger is felt only in the present.” When you are hungry, you can never imagine being full. When you are full, it is too easy to forget just how hungry you once were.

Perhaps because of the difficult of empathy in this instance, rabbinic literature had to express itself on the matter emphatically, like the quote above. No matter what your problem, put it on one side of the scale and add on to it, and you will still not match the weight and burden of poverty. Poverty is never seen as a religiously redeeming state, as it is in some other faiths. In some faiths, those most spiritual beg for their food from others to teach humility. In our tradition, each person is mandated to give a fraction of his or her own food to the priests, levites, poor, widowed and orphans before eating, making a critical distinction between humility and indignity.

Jack London, author of The Call of the Wild, started his life as a poor man and observed that, “The very poor can always be depended upon. They never turn away the hungry.” When you know hunger that personally, it is impossible to turn away. A recent New Yorker profile on Jack London contends that this view of the universe was, for him, a basis of love: “…love is more likely to flourish amid need.”

The difficulty of feeling another’s poverty when you are not poor yourself, gave rise in rabbbinic literature to praise for those who do. “God says to Israel, ‘My Children, whenever you give sustenance to the poor, I regard it to you as though you gave sustenance to Me.’ Does God then eat and drink? No, but whenever you give food to the poor, God counts it as if you gave food to God” [Midrash Tannaim, Deuteronomy 15:10]

It is remarkable that in the rabbinic imagination humans are asked to transfer caring about the poor to caring about the divine since we associate one with great need and the Other to be without any need. But if you cannot muster the compassion to give because your heart aches in the presence of the hungry, then at least give because God shines on you at that moment.

This coming week, many people will overspend their normal budget to purchase beautiful food for a holiday table, much of which will become leftovers and then – as it molds in the fridge – get thrown out. What will you do this week to reduce the waste and share the abundance you have been given, to make this a week to give thanks for being the hand that can give rather than the hand that receives?

We will close with another stunning midrash, this one on Pslams 118:17: “When you are asked in the world to come, ‘What was your work?’ and you answer: ‘I fed the hungry,’ you will be told: ‘This is the gate of the Lord, enter into it, you who have fed the hungry.’”

Shabbat Shalom

Preserving History

“Get a scroll an write upon it all the words that I have spoken…”

Jeremiah 36:2

In the book of Jeremiah, as the political situation of the Jews crumbles in Judah, word came to the prophet to write down what was happening and exhort the Jews to change lest they suffer exile. Jeremiah was in prison at the time and requested a scribe who took dictation and then read the scroll to the public. A member of the listening audience took these words and brought them to officials who brought them to the king, whose rule was maligned in the scroll.

The king asked for the scroll, and when it was delivered, the king cut it into pieces and threw it in the fire. His ministers begged him not to destroy it, but to no avail.

In May of 2003, 16 American soldiers entered the Mukhabarat, Sadam Hussein’s intelligence service headquarters, looking for weapons of mass destruction. Instead, they found “weapons” of mass instruction: 2,700 Jewish books and tens of thousands of documents related to the Iraqi Jewish community. There were also 48 Torah scroll fragments but no whole Torahs. Most of them were damaged – water-logged, dirty or ripped. What were these documents doing there?

If we back up more than a half-century, to 1949, there were 130,000 Jews living in Iraq. But the political situation for Jews living in Iraq had begun heating up more than a decade earlier; many senior Iraqi officials were Nazi sympathizers and supporters. As tensions increased, 120,000 Jews took advantage of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah in 1950-51 and were airlifted to Israel. In 1967, nine Jews were publically hanged, and the last Jewish school closed its doors in 1973. In the 1960s, the Baath party confiscated Jewish documents as an act of scrutiny and anti-Semitism, disabling the Iraqi Jewish community from preserving its documentary history.

Enter the Americans. When these soldiers discovered this treasury, they contacted America’s National Archives for recommendations on how to salvage the mess. They recommended freezer trucks to stabilize the documents from water damage. In the middle of a hot summer, they managed to locate a freezer truck and later sent 26 trunk-loads to Texas for drying and cleaning that then went to the National Archives. Today, you can see some of these finds on exhibit there, documenting not only the community but also the remarkable, painstaking process of salvaging, preserving and digitalizing the documents before sending the collection back to Iraq.

Naturally, there are people questioning whether a return to Iraq is advisable given the investment the US government has made in saving a collection that could have easily gone to ruin under Iraqi government hands. Who will ultimately hold the keys to this important piece of our history?

Walking through the exhibit, I saw a page of Talmud, published in Venice in 1793 open to Tractate Yoma, the very tractate currently being studied today in daf yomi, our daily Talmud study project. The Torah fragment contained the Torah reading of Lekh Lekha, Abraham’s journey in ancient Mesopotamia to Canaan. The Talmud itself was developed in study halls and academies originally located in an around Iraq. But almost all that rich and celebrated history is gone now.

Returning to the book of Jeremiah, word got to Jeremiah in his prison cell that the king destroyed his scroll. And then he got his next order: “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the scroll…Get yourself another scroll, and write upon it the same words…”

We are deeply grateful – at this time of Thanksgiving – for the intervention of the United States government in preserving our history. We also know from the ancient days of Jeremiah, that you can destroy our books, but they are so much a part of who we are, we will write them down again. “Get yourself another scroll and write upon it the same words…” Parchment may be destroyed, but our words live on and on.

Shabbat Shalom

The Sound of Greatness

“The Sages taught: Three sounds travel from one end of the world to another, and these are: The sound of the sphere of the sun, and the sound of the crowds of Rome, and the sound of the soul at the moment that it leaves the body. And some say: even the sound of a woman giving birth.”

BT Yoma 20b

A few weeks ago, a hoax traveled the blogosphere. Rapper Kayne West said, "I am the next Nelson Mandela," He claimed, "By the time I'm 95, I'm going to be a bigger hero than he ever was.” West never said these remarks. They were in a satirical article about him. How does gossip like this make its way around the world? It may have something to with the fact that West, in other settings, compared himself to God, Andy Warhol, Shakespeare, Picasso, and Walt Disney - an impressive list of influencers where Mandela could have feasibly been located.

Lots of sounds travel around the world. Gossip is one such noise. In the Talmudic passage above, three strange sounds go across the globe: the sun, crowds in Rome and death.

The sun does not make a sound, but as it travels across the sky, we see it as a huge star that controls the way time and tides work in our world. Rome was an ancient political authority that stretched across the world; the bustle in its streets making it appear as the center of the universe. Both the sun and Rome in this curious statement seem to be dominant forces, but the Maharsha [1551-1631: Polish Talmud scholar R. Samuel Eidels] eludes to the fact that Rome’s power did not last forever because just as the sun disaapears, Rome’s power was also “eclipsed.”

The Talmud is prone to exaggeration, a term called “guzma” in Aramaic. But on the last sound – the sound of the soul leaving the body - perhaps there is a profound kernel of truth that still resonates for us today. People of greatness are not often ready to leave this world. There is still something to do. The heart protests at the thought of non-existence. Research tells us that high-achievement types struggle more with their mortality. We turn to the Bible’s pages to hear Moses’ anguished cries to God to let him live and cross into the Promised Land.

Poet Dylan Thomas captures this fight to the end in one of this most beloved poems:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

The sound of death in the Talmud may not only be that of the dying man or woman. It may be the sounds that stream across the world in sadness at losing someone of greatness. This week, we heard those sounds. News reports of Nelson Mandela’s death are those sounds: the vigils, the multi-page editorials, the despair that a leader like him has left us and can no longer continue work that still needs to be done.

            Last Thursday, I woke to news that a beloved rabbi of my youth had died, Rabbi Ezra Labaton of the Magen David Synagogue in West Deal, New Jersey. He was a scholar, a leader, a devoted servant to his community and his reach was far and wide. That afternoon, I learned that Nelson Mandela had died. The day ached with loss, the loss of extraordinary people who – each in his own universe – were a force for good. Celebrities may make the paper. But years of service to others and to the great causes of our day, make a life worth remembering.

The sages, the Talmudic passage continues “asked for mercy so that the sound of the soul at the moment it leaves the body would no longer be heard. God eliminated it.” If people were preoccupied by sounds of death, they could not live. God in an act of mercy stilled the sound.

I believe those sounds are still here when a person of greatness leaves the world. We cry out in pain, and we cry out in wonder: who will lead us?

But the Talmud does not end there. It ends with one last sound: the sound of a woman giving birth. The natural first reading is that the cry a woman belts out at this time can be heard around the world. Having given birth to four, I can still hear that sound. But maybe that is not a deep or hopeful enough reading. Maybe it is the cry of the child, not the mother. It is the cry of potential. It is the way a child says, “I have arrived in this world. Pay attention to me. Nurture me. Love me. And maybe I will be the next one to do great things in the world.”

Shabbat Shalom

Seeking Self-Respect

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows

with the ability to say no to oneself.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

I know nothing about football. But I know enough to know when bad behavior should no longer be tolerated simply because you are a world-class athlete but not a world-class human being. I was shocked when I heard the news that a Miami Dolphin’s player left the team because he was being bullied by another player with racist comments and threats to his life.  Playful behavior is acceptable and even desirable in building a team, but boundaries are not always obvious and what may feel like a bad joke to some may look unprofessional and damaging to others. It’s hard to be “incognito” if your life, your pranks and your language are very public.

The more I read about football hazing, the more shocking it seems: rookies forced to pick up $30,000 dinner tabs, new team members having their hair shaved or strong-armed into carrying another player’s heavy load. Some in the sport believe that this behavior is silently accepted because the meanness off the field often translates into worthwhile aggression on the field. A more insightful assistant coach for the Oakland Raiders observed this about the big, tough guys he works with: “Just because you can lift a house doesn’t mean you’re not emotionally fragile.

In The Complete Essays, Michel de Montaigne argues that, “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” This odd turn of phrase – to belong to oneself – conveys a quiet self-confidence and self-awareness. Montaigne implies the value of knowing yourself helps in your own self-management.

We search for the respect of others. Few people would say that they seek respect from themselves, and yet there seems to be a certain lack of self-respect when it comes to behavior that diminishes others. Self-respect leads to respect for others. When we have deferential regard and a healthy esteem for ourselves, we are better able to have compassion and insight into the needs of others. “Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself,” wisely observes Rabbi Heschel.

 Our society often encourages us to say yes to ourselves because we can or because we feel like it. We have an expression in Hebrew “magia li” – I have it coming to me, which echoes a very old and popular commercial for L’Oreal hair color that many of us remember: “Because I’m worth it.” Spend the extra. Treat yourself. Eat whatever you want. Say whatever you want. In this mentality, anything goes because you are the center and perhaps the only judge of your own actions. You answer only and ultimately to yourself.

 From a spiritual perspective, all the yeses we may nurture ourselves with may be detrimental to long-term goals. We may believe that yes is the only key to success. It is a word of possibility and permission. But it can also be a word of excess and thoughtlessness. Many leadership writers believe that self-discipline is the key to personal greatness that helps people with average abilities achieve magical results and that without, no amount of talent or desire can overcome. Say yes to self-improvement. Say yes to healthy drive and ambition. Say yes to your talent and your inner light. But know yourself enough to say no to behaviors and language that loudly advertises  selfishness or cruelty.

As it turns out, L’Oreal changed their slogan not once but twice. It became “Because you’re worth it,” and then in 2009 morphed into “Because we’re worth it.” Even in the vain universe of cosmetics, we have watched an “I” turn into a “we.”

“We” marks the beginning of a team. Say yes to our collective ability to change the world. Say no to personal obstructionist behavior that leads to a breakdown of teamwork and even, at times, to self-destruction.

Shabbat Shalom

Just Dozing

This is an odd question for the Talmud. In its usual spirit of debate, the Talmud has a fine disquisition on the nature of the snooze, specifically on the difference between sleeping and dozing. Having given many talks that have been sleep aids for others, my personal distinction is that a dozer at a lecture nods, hits chin to chest and then bounces up again before repeating, while a sleeper usually puts ear to shoulder, lightly (or heavily) snores while a rivulet of saliva moves from closed lips to the neck. I have obviously studied this close-up.

This debate actually appears at the end of this tractate of Talmud, and those who study Talmud daily came across it last week in the context of eating the paschal lamb. The sacrifice may have been eaten at a late hour, and one can imagine that such a feast would make a person sleepy and generally lethargic. The sacrifice was also eaten in groups; the small communities that formed around each offering were the basis of our larger community that spawned into a nation through the experience of the exodus. If, the mishna says, some participants at the Seder fell asleep and interrupted their meal, they may continue eating when they wake up. If, however, everyone in the party fell asleep, then they were forbidden from continuing their meal because no one in that group maintained vigilance for the mitzva.

In a discussion of the mishna, the ensuing gemara or exposition on the mishna, the sages distinguish between dozing and sleeping. If one merely dozes but makes a full, conscious come-back, then the ritual stream has not been broken. But sleeping signals that one has ended one activity and moved on to another. In fact, elsewhere the Talmud concludes that sleeping is 1/60th of death itself. A sleeping person cannot put his or her fully conscious self into anything. Edgar Allan Poe hated sleep and called it a little slice of death. Gandhi famously said,

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”

What then is dozing? Rabbi Ashi replied in the Talmud that: “One is asleep but not asleep, awake but not awake, and if he is called, he will answer but will be unable to make a reasonable answer. When they later inform him of what happened, he will remember it.” This entering and exiting of awareness does not constitute an all-out interruption of an activity. The Hebrew word for dozing is onomatopoeic – “le-namnem,” and creates an audial and visual image of nodding.

And then the Talmud illustrates with an example. Abaye was sitting next to Rava – two very famous wise men of the Talmud – at the Seder. Abaye saw Rava nodding off after beginning the afikoman or last piece of matza and asked, “Is the master sleeping?” Rava was awake enough to respond and told his study partner that he was just dozing. You never want to catch a sage off his game.

The debate engages us in a fascinating tangle about consciousness in the performance of commandments and invites us to challenge our own level of awareness and intention as we walk through daily routines. When you doze, according to the Talmud, you are somewhat aware of your surroundings, but you cannot exactly place where you are. When you are asleep, you have no idea.

What happens when you go through life not sleep-walking but doze-walking, being there and not there, awake and not awake? When it is brought to your attention, you sit up and realize the truth of what I read on the t-shirt touting coffee: “Life is short. Stay awake for it.”

Shabbat Shalom

Trust and Trustees

“One who has curly hair must not collect funds for the Temple treasury.”

BT Shekalim 9a

A recent article in the Forward by Josh Nathan-Kazis presented a catalogue of misfortune in the past 10 months, only five years after the Madoff case: recent large-scale Jewish non-profit scandals that have been shocking to the core of our value system and all that we as a community must stand for in the realm of integrity. The article begins with William Rapfogel’s crimes at the Met Council and then mentions a $57 million dollar fraud unfolded at the Claims Conference and the Yeshiva University abuse scandal. “One Jewish charity CEO hid allegedly stolen cash in his apartment closet. Another had an affair with his assistant while the assistant’s son-in-law stole from the CEO’s organization. A third covered up sex abuse charges for decades.”

While most Jewish non-profits are well-managed and above board in every area of ethics, the few and the bad have received a great deal of attention and have forced sobering introspection. In The Speed of Trust, Stephen R. M. Covey contends that when you have a “trust account” with someone, you have to understand that withdrawals and deposits are not even. To make up for withdrawals of trust, you have to deposit much more than you ever took out to regain what you’ve lost. Those of us in the world of Jewish communal service – both lay and professional - sadly know that we have a lot of trust building to do right now, even if we did not personally create the overdraft.

In thinking about this, we turn to the Talmud’s discussion of collecting the half-shekel charitable requirement demanded of everyone in the ancient Jewish world.  Charity collectors were particularly scrupulous lest they come under any suspicion whatsoever that as stewards of public money, they personally benefited from their jobs. This was true to the extent that someone with curly hair, as the text above suggests, could not collect money in the event that his hair was thick enough to hide the shekels in the curls. As someone with straight hair, it is hard to imagine using one’s own head as a wallet.

This was such a cause for concern that the Talmud continues and states, “The treasurers (of the Temple) would untangle the matted hair” after collectors with curly hair delivered the half-shekels.  They needed to be sure no coins were there. Not only that. The treasurers would also speak with each collector from the time he entered the chamber until he left to ensure that no money was placed in a collector’s mouth. The passage that contains these recommendations to maintain the integrity and trust of a communal fund ends with a broad desideratum: “A person must appear just before people as he must appear just before the Omnipresent.” The name for God - “Makom” – or Place is used here to suggest that God appears where we are even if we cannot see God. Awe and reverence must be upon us at all times from both those on earth and those above. We must be trustworthy custodians of our world, and we must do our jobs in good faith.

Turning back to today, the Forward article stated that, “Experts blame lax oversight, saying that the multi-decade leadership tenures common among Jewish charity CEOs have corroded governance at some of the Jewish community’s largest not-for-profits.”

It’s time for stronger moral fiber, better training and intensified oversight and review. I’m not suggesting that we hire CEOs with only straight hair but I am suggesting that we’ve got to do a better job checking in all the hidden places to make sure we can stand tall and transparent before God and each other. It’s time for some big deposits in our communal trust account.

Shabbat Shalom

Givers and Takers

“And what,” asked Rabbi Zusha, “can I learn from a thief?”

Pinhas Sadeh, Jewish Folktales

Many of us describe the polarities of the human personality in unadorned terms. In this world, there are givers, and there are takers. It’s as simple and as complex as that…until, that is, Adam Grant threw in a new category in his book, Give and Take, a study of success. Givers are those of us who love sharing contacts, presents, advice, ideas and time. We expect little in return - and even that can be expecting too much. Those of us who are takers want to ensure that we get as much as we possibly can from every opportunity and situation, even and often at the expense of others. Grant does not make a judgment about either category. He describes attitudes and approaches to the world. “If you’re a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs.” Givers, he says, use a different cost-benefit analysis: “you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs.”

Grant says that in the workplace, this formula may be too simple since few of us are pure givers or pure takers. He offers a third style: matchers. These are individuals who try to balance getting and giving, operating on the principle of fairness, protecting themselves by seeking and expecting reciprocity and exchange of favors. We all want to think of ourselves as givers, but what do others think of us?

Jumping backwards from 2013 to the eighteenth century, we encounter Rabbi Zusha of Hanipol (1718-1800). He is one of the heroes of Hasidic lore, most known for the rebuke he suffered in the afterlife. God asked him - not why he did not live up to the image of Abraham or Moses - but why he did not live up to the image of Zusha. He was a saintly disciple of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch. As told in Jewish Folktales, he once asked his teacher the secret of worshipping God. Rabbi Dov Baer claimed that Zusha could learn to pray from any child or even from a thief.

“Why, how can I learn it from a child?” asked Zusha.

The rabbi told him he could learn prayer from a child in three different ways:

1) A child needs no reason to be happy.

2) A child should always keep busy.

3) When a child wants something, he screams until he gets it.

Rabbi Zusha then wanted to know how he could learn to pray from a thief. To this Rabbi Dov Baer told him that he could learn this from seven different behaviors of thieves:

1)    Apply yourself by night and not just by day.

2)    Try again if at first you don’t succeed.

3)    Love your comrades.

4)    Be ready to risk your life, even for a small thing.

5)    Attach little value to what you have.

6)    Do not be put off by hardship and blows.

7)    Be glad you are what you are instead of wanting to be something else.

It is not that the holy rabbi busied himself studying the behavior of children and thieves but was, perhaps, advising those of us who struggle in prayer to make the whole thing simpler. Prayer should emerge out of happiness, busy-ness and – at times – through pain. Smiling, pausing when life seems overly hectic, and even screaming can be ways that we communicate with God. The thief – an overt criminal – can also teach us about praying: the discipline of the night shift, the willingness to take risks, the repeated attempts to be successful.

When we jump back to 2103, it’s easy to see the child as a giver and the thief as a taker. But again, it’s not that simple. Neither is prayer. In the spiritual realm, many of us pray as takers even though we look like givers. We are giving God our gratitude, our souls, our intention, our despair, and our time in prayer. But in reality, we are either takers or matchers. We think that if we put in the time, we will get a payback or that our prayers are some kind of insurance policy against future calamities. In other words, our relationship with God is not all that different than our relationships with each other.

So who are you with others: a giver, a taker or a matcher? A child or a thief?

And who are you in your relationship with God?

Shabbat Shalom

Givers and Takers

“And what,” asked Rabbi Zusha, “can I learn from a thief?”

Pinhas Sadeh, Jewish Folktales

Many of us describe the polarities of the human personality in unadorned terms. In this world, there are givers, and there are takers. It’s as simple and as complex as that…until, that is, Adam Grant threw in a new category in his book, Give and Take, a study of success. Givers are those of us who love sharing contacts, presents, advice, ideas and time. We expect little in return - and even that can be expecting too much. Those of us who are takers want to ensure that we get as much as we possibly can from every opportunity and situation, even and often at the expense of others. Grant does not make a judgment about either category. He describes attitudes and approaches to the world. “If you’re a taker, you help others strategically, when the benefits to you outweigh the personal costs.” Givers, he says, use a different cost-benefit analysis: “you help whenever the benefits to others exceed the personal costs.”

Grant says that in the workplace, this formula may be too simple since few of us are pure givers or pure takers. He offers a third style: matchers. These are individuals who try to balance getting and giving, operating on the principle of fairness, protecting themselves by seeking and expecting reciprocity and exchange of favors. We all want to think of ourselves as givers, but what do others think of us?

Jumping backwards from 2013 to the eighteenth century, we encounter Rabbi Zusha of Hanipol (1718-1800). He is one of the heroes of Hasidic lore, most known for the rebuke he suffered in the afterlife. God asked him - not why he did not live up to the image of Abraham or Moses - but why he did not live up to the image of Zusha. He was a saintly disciple of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch. As told in Jewish Folktales, he once asked his teacher the secret of worshipping God. Rabbi Dov Baer claimed that Zusha could learn to pray from any child or even from a thief.

“Why, how can I learn it from a child?” asked Zusha.

The rabbi told him he could learn prayer from a child in three different ways:

1) A child needs no reason to be happy.

2) A child should always keep busy.

3) When a child wants something, he screams until he gets it.

Rabbi Zusha then wanted to know how he could learn to pray from a thief. To this Rabbi Dov Baer told him that he could learn this from seven different behaviors of thieves:

1)    Apply yourself by night and not just by day.

2)    Try again if at first you don’t succeed.

3)    Love your comrades.

4)    Be ready to risk your life, even for a small thing.

5)    Attach little value to what you have.

6)    Do not be put off by hardship and blows.

7)    Be glad you are what you are instead of wanting to be something else.

It is not that the holy rabbi busied himself studying the behavior of children and thieves but was, perhaps, advising those of us who struggle in prayer to make the whole thing simpler. Prayer should emerge out of happiness, busy-ness and – at times – through pain. Smiling, pausing when life seems overly hectic, and even screaming can be ways that we communicate with God. The thief – an overt criminal – can also teach us about praying: the discipline of the night shift, the willingness to take risks, the repeated attempts to be successful.

When we jump back to 2103, it’s easy to see the child as a giver and the thief as a taker. But again, it’s not that simple. Neither is prayer. In the spiritual realm, many of us pray as takers even though we look like givers. We are giving God our gratitude, our souls, our intention, our despair, and our time in prayer. But in reality, we are either takers or matchers. We think that if we put in the time, we will get a payback or that our prayers are some kind of insurance policy against future calamities. In other words, our relationship with God is not all that different than our relationships with each other.

So who are you with others: a giver, a taker or a matcher? A child or a thief?

And who are you in your relationship with God?

Shabbat Shalom

Divine Study

“There is divine beauty in learning...”

Elie Wiesel

When Elie Wiesel tells us that there is divine beauty in learning, we intially sense the larger spiritual and transcendant purpose of study. It creates a powerful ladder to God, our history and ourselves. But the context in which Wiesel made this remark makes study a way to see the divine in others.

This week Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel celebrated his 85th birthday, and it is a special occasion to revisit some of the central aspects of his teachings. In an article “Have You Learned the Most Important Lesson of All?” in Parade magazine in 1992, Wiesel explained the principle that governed his life: “It is the realization that what I receive I must pass on to others. The knowledge that I have acquired must not remain imprisoned in my brain. I owe it to many men and women to do something with it. I feel the need to pay back what was given to me. Call it gratitude.”

In this address to the general public he talked about the centrality of study and education as a means to share knowledge, shape thinking and reduce fanaticism. It is this that generated his own obligation to bear witness and to pass down what he has learned. “I speak to you,” he remarked, “as a teacher and a student - one is both, always. I also speak to you as a witness. I speak to you, for I do not want my past to become your future.” The notion of being both teacher and student as a Jewish value is rooted in the Hebrew language – to teach and to learn share the same Hebrew root letters.

Learning is not only to elevate our minds; it is also a way of expanding our worlds so that we reduce suspicion of the other and the violence that can result. As Wiesel says, “The world outside is not waiting to welcome you with open arms.” Although this was written many years ago, he mentions the troubled economy, the radical forces that govern much of our world and a psychological climate that can foment hostility. In such a challenging environment, Wiesel warns us about how we react to these global threats and local problems:

“But should you encounter temporary disappointments, I also pray: Do not make someone else pay the price for your pain. Do not see in someone else a scapegoat for your difficulties. Only a fanatic does that not you, for you have learned to reject fanaticism. You know that fanaticism leads to hatred, and hatred is both destructive and self-destructive.”

To learn is to reduce ignorance so that you do not make others the scapegoat for your own problems. In this equation learning becomes a global tool of outreach. Finally, Wiesel offers the way in which education contributes to humility:

“To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.”

Our very existence demands that we learn about and from those who live beside us horizontally and share the world with us. And it also demands that we study vertically, inheriting the legacy of those who came before us and bearing witness as we transmit our truths to the generation to come.

To honor this milestone in Elie Wiesel’s life, perhaps we can all take a moment to identify a quote or a text that has helped create greater tolerance and love and – because learning and teaching are so closely interwoven – share it with others.

Shabbat Shalom

The Sukkot Challenge

“Spread over us your sukka of peace.”

Jewish evening prayer

We ask God to shelter us in the shadow of a sukka, not once a year but regularly. For a sukka to be a place of peace, it needs to be a place that brings people together in a genuine and deep way. Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” This sukkot is a great time to give people – children, new guests and old friends - the attention they deserve. One way to accomplish this is to take the Sukka Challenge – make your sukka into a technology-free zone for the next week, and in E. M. Forster’s words, “Only connect.”

In this spirit, I would like to share a piece of my Yom Kippur sermon, translating ten of our al chets – our sin list - into a current idiom so that we can think of how to use sukkot as a time to re-frame and renew special relationships. This new list is from the recently published Steve Jobs’ Technology Machzor or High Holiday prayerbook.

ONE - For the sin of lightmindedness (kalut rosh):

For the sin of playing hours of the same video game, stalking people on Facebook or instant messaging without content and not doing something more productive.

TWO - For the sin of misusing the power of speech (dibur peh):

For the sin of being able to connect to anyone at virtually anytime and sacrificing personal silence and contemplation to do so.

THREE - For the sin of entrapping a fellow man (tzdiat re’ah):

For the sin of always answering the phone – being entrapped in conversation - even when it comes at the expense of other important activities like eating dinner with your family. Beat your heart twice if this is a Skype conversation, and you are dressed badly and have not brushed your hair.

FOUR - For the sin of a confused heart (timhon levav):

For the sin of misreading the intention of an e-mail, ascribing bad motives or assuming the worst out of simple confusion. This sin includes getting angry because people do not respond to your texts or e-mails right away or checking your e-mails when someone is telling you something really upsetting on the phone.

FIVE - For the sin of gazing the eyes (sikur ayin):

For the sin of looking at a text when you should be paying attention at a meeting or in a class. Also included is the sin of allowing yourself to be distracted when in the presence of other people who need your attention because you have screenisitis, you are addicted to screens.

SIX - For the sin of the evil inclination (yetzer ha-ra):

For the sin of texting while pausing, not while driving. You would never text while driving but at a red light, it’s OK if the light changes. You’ve just got to finish that last word…distracted drivers can kill people. And they have. Don’t be one of them. Remember: whatever that text says is not worth an accident. If you are a new driver, beat your chest twice.

SEVEN: For the sin of business dealings (masa u’matan):

For the sin of buying too many things on-line because it is just so easy. This sin also includes not pressing the unsubscribe button on all those retailers who are creeping into your computer late at night with the most amazing Groupon manicure, Living Social sky-diving deal for two, Zappos shoes and Overstock sales. If any of you are having trouble understanding this sin, think of two words: Amazon Prime.

EIGHT: For the sin of foolish talk (tifshut peh):

For the sin of going to bed holding a cellphone, as if you could not possibly live without it and checking it the moment you wake-up instead of saying Modeh Ani the minute you wake up. According to the latest medical research a cellphone is still not officially part of your actual body.

NINE: For the sin of impurity of the lips (tuma’at sefatayim):

For the sin of being mean or angry at a stranger online or at a telemarketer simply because they will never meet you. They are still human. This sin also includes the infraction of writing in all CAPS to communicate anger, of writing things that should only be said in person or by making someone else feel bad by not responding soon enough to a painful e-mail.

TEN: For the sin committed openly and secretly (begalui u’beseter):

For the sin of secretly looking at websites that we should never look at because they betray our most deeply held moral values and tear away at the fabric of sacred relationships.

In his article, “How Not to Be Alone,” Jonathan Safer Foer makes this confession about technology: “My daily use of technological communication has been shaping me into someone more likely to forget others. The more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care.”

Let’s use this Sukkot to show that we do care, that we can create a temporary space that affirms long-lasting relationships by taking the Sukka Challenge. And if you don’t have a sukka, you can still create a technology-free zone elsewhere, and let the vacation begin!

Happy Sukkot and Shabbat Shalom

The Echo of Authenticity

“If a person heard the sound of the shofar, he has fulfilled his obligation, but if he only heard an indistinct sound, he has not fulfilled his obligation.”

Mishna, Rosh Hashana 3:7

By this time tomorrow, many of us will have heard shofar blasts. Little children will cry. Big kids will stand at attention even though interest in the service may have waned. Adults will hold on to the strong resonances of the shofar’s wail with sounds from the past and possibly associate the sharp, plaintive noise with the past year’s pain. Many of us will view the shofar as the existential wake-up call to energize ourselves for the year ahead.

Even those who may not be particular about prayer during this season often feel a need for this ritual. It is not Rosh Hashana without the shofar’s cry. The mishna above anticipated this and asked if there were certain situations that compromised one’s fulfillment of this command. The mishna starts with an odd situation: a person blowing shofar into a hole into the ground, a pit surrounded by walls or a large earthenware barrel. Maimonides writes that this might have been the case in times of persecution. People in hiding may have to blow shofar in small spaces. Others who hear the sound have fulfilled their obligation to hear shofar only if they hear a clear sound and not the echo of the shofar, the sound as it bounces off the walls of an enclosed space.

Rabbi Pinhas Kehati, modern commentator on the mishna, writes that you fulfill your obligation if, “The sound of the shofar was clear, without any interfering sound or echo.” You have fulfilled this mitzva. But, as the gemara – the exposition on the mishna - later deliberates, one standing outside the pit or the cave cannot be sure if what he or she heard was the shofar or the echo. The echo is not enough to fulfill your obligation.

An echo is an interesting scientific phenomenon. It mimics what is real but does so in a diluted fashion, a reflection of sound waves caused by hitting particular surfaces that create a parallel, repetitive experience of the original sound but are not the sound itself. The reverberation of sound is only a close second, and third and fourth, depending on how long the echo lasts.

A friend of mine, Or, taught me this mishna again in light of repentance rather than pure obligation. The mishna, in essence, is asking us to be the genuine article, not the shadow of it. Teshuva demands our authenticity. You have to hear the shofar, not intimations of it. You have to be present in the moment, not in the reflection of it. You have to embody forgiveness, not merely ask for it. You have to pray, not – as I heard in the name of scholar, Maurice Samuel, read prayers because there is an exponential difference between praying and reading prayers. Reading prayer is an echo off a wall. Praying is an authentic conversation we have with God and sometimes with others and sometimes with ourselves. Anything less is only an echo experience.

Dr. Steve Maraboli, a behavioral psychologist wrote in his book Unapologetically You that:

“Cemeteries are full of unfulfilled dreams... countless echoes of 'could have' and 'should have'… countless books unwritten… countless songs unsung... I want to live my life in such a way that when my body is laid to rest, it will be a well needed rest from a life well lived, a song well sung, a book well written, opportunities well explored, and a love well expressed.”

May this be a year of authenticity, where we live in the present and not in its shadow, where we hear clearly the clarion call of the shofar to seek peace, justice and meaning, and we know the difference between the echo of a life and a life well-lived.

Shana Tova and Shabbat Shalom

Hold onto the Mystery

“There were seven things created before the world was created…”

BT Pesakhim 54a

This week, The Washington Post reported that new scientific findings have shed light on some of the noted phenomena of near-death experiences. Those who have researched near-death experiences when the heart stops, describe people “floating” out of their bodies often to a gathering of ancestors and a burst of light – among other patterns in testimonies. Now we may be able to understand these experiences through a scientific lens. When the heart stops, it seems, neurons firing in the brain create an amazing side-show effect. Neurologist Jim Borjigin explains that a lot of people believed they were getting a taste of heaven because science could not come up with a plausible explanation of what was happening physiologically.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, based on peak experiences right before death of rodents. This may explain what happens to people neurologically before they die, but there is still a long way to go before we reach true understanding. Even so, it is a comfort to know that before the brain shuts down finally, there may be a powerful resurgence of mental activity.

Some people will read these findings and say that it is only a matter of time before science explains away every unique spiritual phenomenon. I am a skeptic. We will understand much but never everything, and when we do understand a process neurologically or scientifically, it only offers more wonder at the capacity of the human being and animal to function in this world. “The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery,” wrote Anaïs Nin.

This week, in the daily Talmud study cycle, we visited a number of texts that contemplate when various foundational aspects of Judaism and the world were created. The Talmud posits, for example, that there were seven things created before the world was created: Torah, repentance, the Garden of Eden, Gehenna, the Throne of Glory, the Temple and the name of the messiah (BT Pesakhim 54a). What is this passage really saying since it is not a comment about scientific creation?

I believe it is telling us that there are certain concepts that transcend creation or are so essential to the spiritual development of the world that they are not of this world. They abide in eternal mystery. The Torah is a map for ethical and spiritual living that speaks to us through law and story. Repentance is the mechanism that tells us that not only is change possible; it is desirable. The Garden and Gehenna may be references to reward and punishment, systems of justice that so often elude human understanding. The throne and the Temple are physical/metaphoric repositories of the human heart in its connection with the divine. In other words, they represent the holiness of space. The name of the messiah as opposed to the messiah itself represents the longing for salvation and redemption, particularly when hope feels distant. We can reduce any of these to a cluster of scientific or psychological needs and it still would not take away the significance of any of them for a life of meaning and spirit.

Richard P. Feynman, a theoretical physicist and writer who died in 1988, described his friendship with an artist who criticized him for taking apart the beauty of a flower and reducing it with science to “a dull thing.” Feynman was not only insulted at the thought that beauty would only be available to artists. He claimed that as a scientist, he could appreciate the flower’s beauty and so much more. “I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty…All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”

Life offers us the gift of so much mystery, no matter who we are, no matter what we do. Embrace the gift of scientific understanding and its human limits. Science can be a platform to achieve great holiness because it does not take away the wonder. It enhances it. It adds without subtracting.

Shabbat Shalom

The Inner Voice of the Shofar

“With shofarot and the blast of the ram’s horn, shout for joy before God, our King.”

Psalms 98:6

Pablo Neruda in his poem “Tonight I Can Write” observes, “Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” This week we began blowing the shofar in honor of the month of Elul in anticipation of Rosh Hashana. It is an instrument of love and one that reminds us not to forget. In love, its plaintive, primitive sound calls out to us to awaken us to be better, more humane, and more compassionate. In memory, the shofar reminds us of ancient events: of Abraham on Mount Moriah, of the shofar of Sinai, of the biblical music that signals the release of debts and slaves, of Joshua surrounding the walls of Jericho. It is the sound of the Jewish soul of yesterday and today.

According to Maimonides, the mitzvah is not to blow the shofar but to hear it. Many of us remember being taken into the sanctuary as children on these holy days to hear the shofar. Everyone was silent. People who may normally whisper their way through much of the service, stand at attention.

There is a mystical quality to the silence that allows the sound of the shofar to puncture the air. If the shofar blower is good, the sounds come out crisp, and piercing. If the shofar blower is having a bad day, the sound puffs its way out, tired and interrupted. A bad blow of the shofar always feels ominous, as if the year will have the same quality as the sound. This mirroring of self and sound is captured in a famous Talmudic debate.

In the Talmud, there is a distinction made between the shofar that should be used for Rosh Hashana and the one to be used on Yom Kippur. In the Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashana 26a, Rabbi Levi states that a curved shofar of a ram should be used because “the more a person bends his mind, the more effective is his prayer.” The shofar is not only an external call to repentance; it mirrors the inner workings of the human being. As we celebrate the birthday of the world, Rosh Hashana reminds us to look backwards to look forwards. We have to adjust, accommodate, twist ourselves into new situations, new transitions and new demands.

The same Rabbi Levi is of the opinion that on Yom Kippur we should use a shofar that is straight - the horn of an antelope - emblematic of our own desire to be upright and righteous: “the more a person elevates his mind, the better the effect (of his prayer).” This is directly in contradiction to Rabbi Yehuda, author of the opinion in the mishna that we use a straight shofar on Rosh Hashana because it is then that we are straight, standing tall before our Creator. On Yom Kippur we are bent over with humility and the weight of wrongdoing. Rashi confirms that we use a bent shofar on Yom Kippur because it most closely resembles the desired posture of prayer on a day of judgment.

Today we use a bent shofar for each of these holy days. It is hard to remain straight before the presence of the King of Kings and before the mirror that we hold up to ourselves in self-reflection. Nevertheless, the verse above from Psalms reminds us that the shofar is ultimately a sound of joy and relief. It is the way we shout in prayer at God in the hopes that just as we listen with intent, God will hear us with compassion.

In Jeremiah 4:19, we read: “My heart pounds within me. I cannot keep silent. For I have heard the call of the shofar.” The shofar calls us each morning now. Do not keep silent. Allow your heart to hear it and respond.

Are you ready for the days ahead?

In Pursuit of Excellence

“…You bring the stolen, the lame, and the sick; and you offer it as a sacrifice. ‘Will I accept it from you?’ says the Lord.”

Malachi 1:13

It is hard to define excellence. We all want to be outstanding and exceptional at what we do, but there are not always metrics to measure this. For example, I may want to be the best wife, mother, friend, volunteer, or employee - but who is to judge? I always find Mother’s and Father’s Day presents that say “World’s Best Mom or Dad” amusing since companies produce thousands of t-shirts, buttons and cards at a time. We can’t all be the best, but we can all buy the shirts.

Obviously, the measure of excellence in some arenas must be determined within. We know when we are giving the best of ourselves and when we are merely coasting or going through the motions. The Ishbitzer Rebbe, Mordechai Yosef Leiner (1801-1854), made this observation on the rejection of Cain’s gift in Genesis 4. Cain gave the first sacrifice. It was easy for Abel to one-up him. Why did God reject both Cain and his gift? Because, the Ishbitzer says, he gave the least of himself. Abel brought the first of his flock. Cain brought the last of his harvest.

In the spirit of gifts, today’s daily page of Talmud opens with a discussion of sacrifices. You can offer a blemished sacrifice as a gift to the Temple that has monetary value for the Temple’s maintenance but not as an actual sacrifice. When you sacrifice something, you have to give the best of yourself, not something blemished. We know that this was not always the case because in the very last book within Prophets, we find an exhortation against the people and the priests. They were bringing and allowing blemished sacrifices to be offered on the holy altar.

            The giver brings something stolen or lame or sick as a gift. God asks rhetorically, “Is this truly a gift?” If I buy you a present, and it is broken, would you want it? Earlier in the chapter, God observes that people would bring sacrifices, treat them with scorn and say “What a bother.” At this point, God asks that the doors to the Temple be closed altogether because the sincere desire to bring the best of oneself was compromised. In a universe of mediocrity, it is best to just shut down and move on because mediocrity is usually self-perpetuating.

            The problem in this text is that not only are people acting in a mediocre fashion and giving mediocre gifts, they believe that they are doing nothing wrong.  Perhaps they believe that it is the thought that counts. What they fail to realize is that mediocrity and excellence are judged by results rather than by effort.

            As we near the High Holiday season, we should pause and reflect on who we are and how to be more excellent at what we do. I have been thinking a lot about excellence recently and offer three quotes for your consideration. Which quote most resonates with you?

·      “If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?” ― John Wooden

·      “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” ― Vince Lombardi Jr.

·      “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.” ― Steve Jobs

These quotes move from instrumental – doing something well the first time saves time – to the aspirational – setting a high standard will push us harder – to the inspirational – we have one life. Let’s get it right.

            What drives you to excellence?  What does it mean to be spiritually excellent?

Shabbat Shalom

The Great Perhaps

“Three things sap one’s strength: worry, travel and sin.”

Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 70a

Legend has it that the French renaissance thinker Francois Rabelais’ last words were, “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” If you did not catch this phrase from his own writings, you might have seen it in John Green’s novel, Looking for Alaska, the story of a young man who sets out to boarding school in search of adventure.

These are intriguing words as people pack up for summer vacations and expeditions. We never really know what we are going to experience when we take a journey. We hope for the Great Perhaps: the possibility that we will see something that will change us, relax us, challenge us and help us decompress. We want mystery but also long for the comforts of home. Alain de Botton confronts these contradictions in his book, The Art of Travel. The Talmud understood this and, as we see above, regarded travel as a source of potential anxiety.

Travel can sap your strength precisely when you do not view it as an adventure but as a humbling experience. You may not know the language, the currency or the simple gestures and expectations of the culture. You may get stomach cramps from the water and lose your way. People might see you for the foreigner you are and take advantage of you. We waste a lot of psychic energy perseverating on potential problems so it is not hard to understand why a Talmudic sage posited that travel saps our strength. Like sin and worry itself – travel knocks us out of a comfort zone.

But there is another side to travel captured in a different Talmudic volume. In the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 57b), we find this sentiment: “Three things restore a person’s good spirits: beautiful sounds, sights, and smells.” Travel can be restorative, inviting us to renew ourselves through a beautiful change of scenery. Where we might miss the sounds, sights and smells of our own neighborhood because they thin through familiarity, we become attuned to our senses in another environment. If you are on vacation right now or will be soon, contrast the sounds, sights and smells of where you come from to where you are now.

This process of “sense discovery” offers a new portal into the inner life. When we travel, we get disoriented and may blame it on the confusion of new surroundings. But this is perhaps because new places unsettle our own identity. Who am I in this new place? New places can stimulate personal reflection for precisely this reason: what held us back from thinking about ourselves was the absence of time and space. When we are given the gift of time and an extraordinary landscape, we may be forced into self-confrontation. Our new silence speaks.

As work environments relax and children go off routine, the summer offers us the opportunity to take inner journeys and explore closed off regions of ourselves. It offers us time to think about the rest of the year: our schedules, priorities and that which matters most. New sounds, sights and smells beckon to take us where we have not been before. We have to allow ourselves to go there, a leap into the Great Perhaps.

Shabbat Shalom

Let Freedom Ring

“Is not this the fast I choose? To loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke?”

Isaiah 58:6

July 4th in America is a day off work. It is typically observed with fireworks and barbeques. While Memorial Day may be the time when public pools open and traditionalists take out their summer whites, the weather usually does not signal summer until early July, when the heat is in full swing.

As a kid who grew up on the Jersey Shore, we had fireworks off the Boardwalk every Friday night. On July 4th, the township ramped up the number and intensity of them. Fireworks are always magical, gifts in the sky that are as ephemeral as they are luminous. As a child, I was entranced. As an adult, I feel the same way. 

I wondered when the “minhag” or custom of fireworks developed across the United States. According to various web sources (never trust those), the Chinese invented fireworks between 960 and 1279 BCE, and the famous traveler Marco Polo brought them to Europe in the early medieval period.  They are a beautiful export, but why are they associated with Independence Day?

Apparently, on July 8th, 1776, fireworks were displayed publically as a way of mocking the British, who used fireworks prominently in the birthday and celebratory parties made for kings and queens. By lighting them in colonies that had broken away and were seeking independence from the British, the American fledgling government was effectively saying to their own: “We will have our own victories on this side of the Atlantic” or suggesting that fireworks should be displayed upon the death of the British monarch. The following year on July 4th, fireworks were used again – this time in Philadelphia - to mark independence along with cannon blasts and other ear-shattering noises. From that year onward, cities across America spread the custom, and in 1941, July 4th became an official American holiday.

Fireworks are great for celebrations, but they last for a very short time. They burst in the sky and disappear. Not so freedom. And, in truth, it is freedom – hard-earned and fought for – which we must take a moment to recognize today.

In Jewish life, freedom almost never stands on its own. It is almost always paired with a “to;” what do we have freedom to do? It is never for the sake of freedom alone. When the firework display is over, what will you do with your freedom? The prophet Isaiah boldly makes a suggestion above.  Use your freedom to bring freedom to others. Loosen the straps of oppression, remove the yoke. You know that feeling of carrying something really heavy that you cannot remove alone? Consider the moment when someone else relieves you and physically lifts the burden off you. The weight brought you down. The freedom brings you up. You stretch and sigh with relief and then you are grateful for the presence of those who helped you. Be that one who brings relief, Isaiah implores.

Isaiah understands freedom as the reason we fast, to oppress ourselves in some small way so that we understand what a burden feels like. When you are full, it is hard to remember what it was like to be hungry. We never take our freedoms for granted. And the prophet continues in the same chapter: “Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house... (58:7)

This year, let’s add to the celebration by going to a shelter or giving charity to those who are vulnerable. It is time for a custom of meaning on this day because homelessness is a form of oppression. Hunger is a form of oppression. Domestic abuse and poverty are forms of oppression. Let freedom ring because we bring a little hope to those under a yoke. Bring a sliver of independence to others this Independence Day.

Happy 4th and Shabbat Shalom