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

Leaning In/Leaning Back

“Think of yourself as Ayin and forget yourself totally.”

Dov Baer

Cheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, has got everyone talking about leaning in, the title of her new book.  The idea is to encourage women to give voice to their concerns, to assert themselves to achieve success and to stop getting in their own way by limiting or diminishing their capabilities. Women, she contends, need to sit at the table and not behind everyone else in the boardroom. They need to lean in, be unafraid of expressing ambition and enjoying success.

In contrast, Tami Simon, CEO of multimedia company Sounds True and a believer in discovering the inner life at work, argued on a recent NPR program (Krista Tippett’s On Being) that she needs to lean back. As the leader of an organization, she is all too aware of the strength of her voice and how in both articulation and body language, leaning back makes more space for others to lean in. It helps those who may traditionally take a quieter role in public settings find a place for themselves and their opinions.

What’s a girl to do?

The leaning in/leaning back dilemma is not really about gender. At heart, it’s about personality and passion. Leaders need to know when to lean in and when to lean back. Some of us in the presence of others do not know how to find a comfortable space to express a personal view so we just hold it in. Others feel too comfortable using all the available air space in a room, making it hard for others who are more hesitant. There is no one formula, but there are some aids from our own mystical tradition that can help us assess where we are and might want to be in any given setting.

Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezeritch (d. 1772), author of the Maggid Deverav L’Yakov where the quote above appears, was a disciple of the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement. He raised an inner circle of Hasidic disciples who then became masters and teachers themselves. Many famous legends developed around Dov Baer and his extraordinary piety. It appears that the key to his inner life lay in leaning back or contracting himself  - tzimtzum - to make room for God: “Think of yourself as Ayin and forget yourself totally.” Ayin means nothing, but in true mystical tradition, nothingness is always on the way to somethingness. Everything that currently exists came from non-existence.

Human beings exist, of course, but in order to minimize the self to make room for the other, we often have to forget ourselves totally: forget our petty concerns, our ego needs, our desires for power and status. So often our relationships fail not because we are not present for those in our life but because we have too much presence.

Dov Baer continues: “If you think of yourself as something then God cannot clothe himself in you, for God is infinite. No vessel can contain God, unless you think of yourself as Ayin.” In mystical literature, Moses is often referred to as a “kli” - or vessel - of God. For a vessel to serve its purpose, it must always be filled and emptied, filled and emptied. If a vessel is full, it has no capacity to hold anything else. Moses emptied himself to make room for God. This process is not inherently about debasing oneself or being subservient. It is about building capacity. If you don’t have strong sides, you will never be an effective vessel. You will not be able to hold anything. Letting go of self-absorption is not an act of weakness but a testimony to your strength.

Wisdom will dictate when to lean in and when to lean back, when to fill the vessel of self and when to empty it.

Shabbat Shalom

Vulnerability

“Happy is the person who is anxious always. But one who hardens his heart falls into misfortune.”

Proverbs 28:14

“Happy is the person who is anxious always” does not sound like an effective formula for achieving peace and serenity. To paraphrase from the “Life of Brian” – for an adage in Proverbs - it “doesn’t sound very wise to me.” How can we understand this perplexing statement?

The medieval commentators generally cluster around a singular meaning. Since the Hebrew word for anxious (the JPS translation) is “miphakhed” or fear, a number of interpreters explain that a person who fears God will always be happy because this anxiety will prevent him from wrongdoing. For Rashi, the fear is one of punishment. Fearing the consequences of sin, he will employ self-restrain under temptation. For Abraham ibn Ezra, the bar is a little higher. The constant presence of authority reminds him always to set high personal expectations of virtue.

These interpretations make sense in light of the words but not in light of the overall context. Fear of God or punishment may keep you on the straight and narrow but will not make you happy, even if you are pleased with the outcome these tensions generate. Perhaps we find a clue to understanding in the second half of the saying: “but one who hardens his heart falls into misfortune.” In the chiastic structure of this verse, anxiety is the reverse of hardening the heart. The ability to keep the heart open is a source of personal joy.

My friend Liza recently gave me a book called Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. The title is from a speech that Theodore Roosevelt gave in 1910 in Paris: “…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” Roosevelt gave us the charge of failing as the cost of taking important risks.

Brown gives us the charge of making ourselves vulnerable so that we are able to take emotional risks with others. She contends that when we hear other people confess to their vulnerabilities, we find them to be courageous. When we confess to our own vulnerabilities, we feel weak. She asks us to see the capacity for vulnerability as an expression of courage and strength in ourselves.

Brown relates this discrepancy in the way we view vulnerability as a function of “not being enough.” If we admit a deficiency, we are affirming a position that says, “I am not enough.” Not wise enough, not thin enough, not a good enough parent or a good enough friend. She quotes author Lynne Twist who writes that our first thought upon waking is “I didn’t get enough sleep” followed later in the day by “I don’t have enough time.” She concludes that “before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something.” This position of scarcity prevents us from experiencing life’s many abundances.

Happy is the person who is vulnerable always. This reading also colludes with the verse right before it: “He who covers up his faults will not succeed; he who confesses and gives them up will find mercy” (28:14). When we are able to articulate our weaknesses, we find compassion for ourselves and others feel mercy for us. We are not objects of pity because we admit our mistakes. We become models of authenticity because we do so.

Leonard Cohen wrote in his song “Anthem,” “There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.” Light comes to us when we are not afraid of the crack.

Shabbat Shalom.

Return to Memory

“We shall return to you…”

Hadran

Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav praised the gift of human forgetting, believing that if we remembered everything, we would paralyze ourselves. We might be lifted by joys unforgotten but total recall would also mean revisiting slights and anguish, anxiety and punishments. It would mean that we could never emerge out of loss.

Rabbi Nahman implies that the kind of remembering one is forgetting involves the arena of emotions. Our emotional memory fields are deep and associative. We might be in the middle of difficult work and suddenly an emotion grabs us and does not let go. It may be anger or pervasive sadness; when we caught in that maelstrom, it becomes hard to find the exit. Rabbi Nahman’s retreat from memory may not be total, but even in a partial state, it is a blessing. I remember writing an AP English essay for my exam on the quote “Time heals all wounds.” I couldn’t argue with the sentiment generally, but the word “all” felt too smug for all the hurt we humans carry.

I personally need a lot more memory back-up in reading and learning. Rabbi Nahman’s blessing of forgetfulness does not work for me there. When I can’t remember the theme of a book I read a few months ago or maybe even the title, I skewer myself. How can I possibly forget something I just read? There have been a number of articles on the benefits of reading even without recall, but it doesn’t seem right to me. Nietzsche once wrote, “The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” The up-side of forgetting what I read is that I can buy fewer books since I need only read the ones I’ve forgotten again. But I don’t.

There is a Jewish ritual that speaks powerfully to this act of reading and remembering: the hadran. It is a custom to say this prayer upon finishing an entire tractate of Talmud or another major Jewish work to its completion to acknowledge the momentousness of the end, which is not really an end. The Hebrew root H-D-R means glory; in Aramaic it means return or review. If you pay attention to the opening text of the Hadran, you find both of these meanings. Learning is retained when we glorify what we study and when we review it.

We shall return to you [name of book] and your glory is upon us. Out thoughts are upon you, and your thoughts are upon us. We will not be forgotten from you [name of book] and you will not be forgotten from us; neither in this world nor in the world to come…

Another striking feature of the Hadran is the way we personify the book. For the days, weeks, months or years we study it, it is in our mental embrace. We think about it. It thinks about us. It will not forget us. We will not forget it. The relationship is long-term, stretching far into the future. The dialogical nature of this prayer reflects a deeper approach than respecting the act of completion. It surfaces the nature of immersion. If a book is a true friend then not only does it stay with us and speak to us, it never leaves us because we return to it. The Hadran is not a “good-bye.” It is a “see you later” kind of expression.

Many of us who have trouble remembering what we read, have no trouble remembering people who have made their mark upon us. The Hadran makes the comparison between people and texts explicit. If you do not forget who your friends are, make this book into your friend, and it will come back to you. It will only come back to you, however, if you return to it. Learning, in Jewish terms, is not about completion but about suspension. You need to initiate.

Sometimes we can only remember the affection we have for a text; the content has long ago dissipated. It is at those moments that the Hadran gives us more than a ritual finish line. It gives us a philosophy of study. It comforts and inspires us to continue a relationship. Look at your books some time soon and whisper to your friends on the shelves, “I’ll be back soon.”

Shabbat Shalom

Soft

“The hardest thing in America is to be what one is softly.”

Leon Wieseltier

We insult people by calling them soft. Softness is regarded by some as a limitation. It implies that someone is not assertive or aggressive. He or she may be hesitant, shy, afraid of confrontation, easy to manipulate or lack strength of character. But there’s a softer side to soft. Soft is a compliment; it implies someone who is gentle, thoughtful, not worn down by life’s harshness. It refers to those who speak tenderly, without the need to dominate or exclude. If you want people to pay attention, don’t yell. Speak softly.

Soft might also inspire us to think of people the way we might describe an old couch, a piece of fabric or a pillow: comfortable. Unlike loving gestures, aggression can feel rough, harsh and unyielding – it’s emotional sandpaper. Softness is inviting and warm. It feels safe and open. Something soft is not sharply delineated. In linguistics it describes a sibilant rather than a guttural sound.  

In Hebrew, the word for soft is “rakh,” which ironically ends with a harsh guttural noise. In a noted biblical use of the term, it is employed to describe one of our matriarchs: “Leah had soft eyes, but Rachel was of beautiful figure and form” (Genesis 29:17). The way the verse is translated is a study in contrasts. Soft eyes are compared negatively to beauty of form, implying some defect in Leah that made her unlovable. This might explain Jacob’s natural attraction to Rachel and his feeling of injustice at having to wed Leah first as a ruse of his father-in-law.

One midrash regards Leah’s soft eyes not as the fate of nearsightedness or being cross-eyed but a description of her emotional state. She was to be wed to Esau, according to this midrash, and she wept continuously out of righteousness. She did not want to be married to this crass hunter.

A different reading might posit this verse as a description of two types of beauty: inner and outer. Leah possessed tenderness. Rachel had the magnetism of external good looks. Tender eyes show compassion and curiosity, connectedness and depth. It is this softness that Jacob needed because his life was symbolized by stones: those he slept on, the one he removed from a well and those he used in his pact with Lavan. Hardness is mitigated by softness.

The Wieseltier quote above is from his small and powerful book Against Identity. “The thinner the identity, the louder,” he writes there. Loudness can be a function of superficiality. “It is never long before identity is reduced to loyalty.” Wieseltier offers us the strange and counterintuitive understanding that the less you know about your nationality, ethnicity or religion, the more you express the veneer of pride. Loud cheering can mask ignorance and incivility. Authentic caring often involves a level of nuance or sophistication that is hard to fabricate or manufacture in absence of knowledge. Today, in politics and entertainment, we have come to believe that the louder someone is, the more credible. Being loud, however, is often a reflection of self-absorption and an incapacity to take in the other.

The author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” What would it take to be softer? What would you and others gain by having a softer tongue and softer eyes?

Shabbat Shalom

The Ten Commandments of Friendship

“Friendship or death.”

The Talmud

This short quote on friendship packs a powerful punch. Without friendship, the quality of life dwindles. Friendship can save lives; we learn this both in BT Ta’anit 23a and read it in the book of Ruth. Naomi, powerless and alone, rebuilt her life because another woman even more powerless than she, made her a companion for life. Aristotle wrote that, “A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence.”

I thought, reflecting on the two central texts of Shavuot, to merge the Mount Sinai narrative with story of Ruth and Naomi.

The Ten Commandments of Friendship I’ve Learned from the Book of Ruth:

#1 Under-promise and over-deliver. Naomi tells Ruth not to follow her because she did not want to be responsible for Ruth’s welfare, nor would she be able to find her a husband. But she did, encouraging Ruth to glean in the fields of a relative and prompting Ruth to reach out to Boaz in chapter three. Too many times friends tell you they were going to do something nice but fail to deliver. Intentions are not the same as actions, not in law and not in friendship. It’s better to under-promise and over-deliver.

#2 Be a friend when times are tough. The friendship of Ruth and Naomi emerges from shared loss and shared companionship throughout loss. “Wherever you go, I will go ends with, “Wherever you die, I will die and there I shall be buried.” As people, we are often drawn to success and not distress. Note: friends remember who was there at a shiva and who was at a bedside during illness. They see through us when we do not make the time or effort.

#3 Be a friend when times are good. Don’t only show up for funerals. Dance at weddings, too. After he won the Nobel Prize, Elie Wiesel shared in an interview that he could tell who his friends were by those who took genuine pleasure in his success and shared his joy. True friendship is not feeling like another person’s success takes away from our own or threatens us. It enhances us. Naomi and Ruth are together at the book’s end, sharing in the love of a new child as they shared in mourning at the book’s beginning. Stick around for happy endings.

#4 Friendship isn’t always even. When Ruth makes her magnanimous speech, Naomi does not respond in words. Sometimes we are too personally depleted to offer back much. Sometimes we cannot reciprocate evenly. But life is not even. The great biblical friendships of Naomi and Ruth and David and Jonathan were not even in terms of giving and taking.

#5 Kindness is the glue of great friendships. When Boaz acknowledges Ruth’s difficult journey to Judaism in the same language used to describe Abraham’s journey, he gives her the gift of kindness and validation. He shows her empathy in a world of harshness. A midrash tell us that these two individuals were divided by every external measure: he was 80, she 40. He was rich and influential. She was poor and an outsider; the glue that transcended these factors was their capacity for chesed, loving-kindness.

#6 Friendship is not static. There are cycles of intimacy and distance. When children are little, they have friends for a day. If you share your snack, you are my friend. If not, I will not speak to you. Adults have better snacks, but they don’t always share. Sometimes life interrupts friendship. Good friends understand that friendship is not static. It evolves and changes, just as individual human beings do. We grow out of certain friendships and mature into others. Naomi emerges as a woman who can give more of herself when life begins to nurture her again, and Ruth was there for her.

# 7 Be a giver. We all know friends who are givers and friends who are takers. Ruth and Boaz were givers. Strive to be the giver and not resent the taker. But also identify other givers so that your own friendship energy is replenished, not depleted.

# 8 Great friendship has staying power for generations. The child born to Ruth and Boaz is named Oved. Oved means service in the most authentic sense of the word. Boaz and Ruth saw themselves as servants of others and acted as if serving others was the very purpose of their existence. As a result, their union resulted in someone named for the humility and generosity that translated into the next generation of love.

#9 Great leadership can emerge from great friendships. We all know that we go places by virtue of hard work and connections. Rather than minimize the significance of those you know and leave it all up to meritocracy, we might understand the favor bank in more generous terms. When we invest in social capital, others also invest in us. Ruth’s friendship with Naomi led her to love Naomi’s people, country and God and eventually produce an heir to it all.

#10 The best kind of friend challenges you to be a better self. Naomi becomes a more generous and loving person as a result of Ruth’s unconditional love and nurturing. The older woman learns from the younger and grows as a result. Naomi moves from someone who self-identifies as bitter to someone who can truly love and give again. She does this because her friendship with Ruth is aspirational. Maimonides explains that there are three types of friends: the utilitarian friend, the delightful friend and the ethically inspiring friend. Seek out friends who inspire.

If you’ve learned a friendship commandment from the book of Ruth – or discover one this Shavuot – please send it over.

Happy Shavuot and Shabbat Shalom

Celebrating Wisdom

“Had the first tablets not been broken, the Torah would never have been forgotten by the Jewish people.”

Rabbi Eliezer

Many of us wonder how it is that we read something and quickly forget it. If only we could remember all that we read and study. Rabbi Eliezer above gives us one hint about retention: if something is engraved upon your heart, you do not forget it. This is how he understands the superfluous words used to describe the Ten Commandments in Exodus 32:16: “engraved upon the tablets.” The verse already mentions the tablets as both the work and writing of God. What could be added by this unusual phrase? R. Eliezer reads it as the relationship we could have had with the original text. Had it not been broken, we would have engraved it within us. It never would have left us.

On Shavuot we celebrate the role of study in our lives by doing additional learning. Many people stay up the whole night immersed in Jewish texts and coffee. Others make a point of attending classes during the daylight hours of the holiday. If you attend as many study opportunities as you indulge in slices of cheesecake, it might help maximize one aspect of the celebration and minimize another!

Another way we celebrate the role of study and how it shapes us as a people is to study the art of studying. How did the rabbis of old believe one should learn and retain knowledge? After all, the great debates of the Talmud are critical not only for their content but also for their method. The rabbis often articulated their notions of pedagogy along with the legal substance of their arguments. They wanted us to know that it is not only about the what and why of knowledge but about the how.

Marilyn Vos Savant (her real name, which means “a person of learning”) made it to the Guinness Book of World Records in 1985 as the woman with the highest IQ (190 before the category was retired in 1990). Here is what one of the world’s smartest people - according to this measure - says about learning, “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”

And here is what some rabbis observed about learning in a section of Talmud devoted to the topic (BT Eruvin 54a-55a):

Beruria: “If the Torah is ordered in your 248 limbs it will be secure. If not, it will not be secure.” Make your body language reflect your learning. Animate the words with movement when you study, and they will become yours.

Shmuel: “Open your mouth and read from the Torah. Open your mouth and study the Talmud, in order that your studies should endure in you…” Say the words out loud so that you hear and ingest them.

There was even a discussion of study as medicine to reduce headaches and throat sores, intestinal pain and bone problems. Why? Because, according to Rabbi Yehuda, “It is a drug of life for one’s entire body.” Some sages believed that engaging in learning as an intellectual and spiritual pursuit distracted the mind, allowing the body to take its natural course of healing. If you are sick, however, please see a doctor in addition to opening a book.

The Talmudic passages also mention the virtue of mnemonic devices and of repetition and review – up to 400 times! Collected together, these statements all point to the most important aspect of learning: retention. In the world of scholarship and mastery, it is not the initial stimulation and curiosity of learning. It is all we do to hold on to what we already know, to engrave it in our hearts.

This Shavuot, instead of learning something entirely new, perhaps we can follow the path of ancient Jewish wisdom and study something we’ve studied before, taking new ownership of it as it seeps deeper into our consciousness. Lather, rinse, repeat. Study, apply, repeat.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Shavuot