Black Shoes

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

— BT Bava Kamma 59b

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

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

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

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

Shabbat Shalom

Evicted

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

Leviticus 27:14

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat Shalom

Justice Needs Practice

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

— Hosea 12:6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat Shalom

Turning Political Darkness to Light

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

Deuteronomy 31:8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat Shalom

Fishing for Ideas

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

— Proverbs 15:30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat Shalom

The Blues

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

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

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

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

Erica

Where is God?

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

— Eli Wiesel

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat Shalom

Memory and Activism

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

What is Rest?

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

— Traditional Shabbat Afternoon Prayer

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

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

A Spiritual Bucket List?

“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
”

— Psalms 90:12

This summer is a great time to check things off of your bucket-list. The pace is slower. Vacations often create opportunities to travel the world or to start or deepen a hobby. If you go on Bucketlist.org, you can create your own bucket list and compare your lists to others. The last time I looked, the site claims 48,924 participants with 889,936 goals. That's a lot to do. Better get them done quickly. You might run out of time.
 
This time-limitation helps us appreciate the verse above, the wisdom to live life fully awake. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” [Psalms 90:12] And it pays to start now, according to the Hebrew Bible, because we don’t control time. “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring,” [Proverbs 27:1].” We make our plans, and then find out that there are other plans waiting for us. “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” [Proverbs 16:9]. On the other hand, when we live life to the fullest, we do have a sense of the spiritual abundance that God has in store: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy...” [Psalms 16:11].
 
Popular bucket-list goals on Bucketlist.org include skydiving (of course), swimming with sharks, spending the night in an underwater hotel and experiencing zero gravity.  I got the feeling as I scanned the popular lists that doing some of these activities may actually precipitate death. This would most certainly compromise the actualization of any other goals on a bucket list.
 
You can imagine that the other winner category on bucketlist.org are sites around the globe to visit before you go, ala 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. I wish the author would have picked a number less ambitious like 11. That would have been more doable. I might have even bought a second volume. There are a lot of travel goals on the bucket-list site: visiting Stonehenge, standing in the Sistine Chapel, straddling the Equator, eating sushi in Japan. These do seem worthy of a bucket list. But they require significant financing, time and careful planning.
 
Kissing passionately in the rain (shared by 944 others), giving blood (581) or laughing until you cry (475), however, just seemed too banal to merit a place on any list. That was also true for learning CPR or eating a slice of Spam. Really? You can’t do better than that? People, where is your imagination?
 
I struggle with society’s understanding of a bucket-list. If we are going to check off anything, it better be the experiences that make life worth living before the checklist runs out. I have opted for a different bucket list, one that has emotional, spiritual or intellectual goals that offer depth, breadth and heft to life. What about organizing a family reunion this summer or writing down your memoirs, going to a silent retreat or reconciling with a sibling? Few of us can say that we have really prayed, really spent meditative time in wonder or told a friend just how much he or she has meant to us. Let’s say at 87 you jumped out of a plane with a parachute and a prayer and can tweet that to all your friends. It’s still not going to fix the broken relationship you have with your estranged son.
 
We have many deathbed scenes in Tanakh, enough to help us realize that although our biblical heroes did not use the rather crass term “bucket list,” they had a very deep understanding that the last words, blessings and demands one makes are listened to with a different kind of attention. There is also a strong sense, whether standing beside Abraham, Jacob or King David’s deathbed that these towering figures needed to say what they did before they left this world to those who were staying.
 
You will not be repeating this life. Every day is a chance to squeeze a little bit more out of this blessed existence. So what are you waiting for?
 
 Shabbat Shalom

After Orlando

“For what are we?”

— Exodus 16:7

For most of us, the very word “Orlando” surfaces images of childhood fantasies. Whether you are at Disney World, Universal Studios or an actor playing a Mormon missionary and dreaming of the place you’d most like to be stationed, Orlando represents something innocent in the minds of most Americans. Until now...
 
When events like this shatter a piece of our comfortable assumptions about safety, security and tolerance, we often move from the initial stage of bewilderment to anger and then to questioning basic assumptions about our shared humanity. It is this last stage that is most pernicious because it eats away at hope and optimism. Years ago, I came across this translation of a passage from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, first chief rabbi of what was then Palestine, in the introduction to Herbert Wiener’s Nine and Half Mystics. It gave him hope. It's always given me hope.

As long as the world moves along accustomed paths, as long as there are no wild catastrophes, man can find sufficient substance for his life by contemplating surface events, theories and movements of society. He can acquire his inner richness from this external kind of “property.” But this is not the case when life encounters fiery forces of evil and chaos. Then the “revealed” world begins to totter. The man who tries to sustain himself only from the surface aspects of existence will suffer terrible impoverishment, begin to stagger...then he will feel welling up within himself a burning thirst for that inner substance and vision which transcends the obvious surfaces of existence and remains unaffected by the world’s catastrophes. From such inner sources, he will seek the waters of joy...

Rabbi Kook adds an important stage to traveling through the kind of emotions many of us are experiencing this week. When an event pushes us deeply out of the complacent and familiar, we are forced to search for a language of reason and meaning to get us out of the existential mess. When our revealed world - the one we know - totters, we stagger but then find that this itself releases a desire for something greater and more meaningful to carry us above the pain.
 
In the biblical verse above, Moses and Aaron encounter an Israelite nation who complain sharply against God because they were hungry and unsure of their collective future. They murmur so harshly that Moses asked himself and Aaron: what are we? Rashi interprets this to mean: “Of what importance are we?...Your sons, your wives, your daughters and the mixed multitude” are murmuring against us.  On the face of it, this is a crushing moment in the leadership of two biblical heroes. But in mystical literature, this reads as a turning point. Only when Moses and Aaron humbled themselves with this question, were they truly able to rise in service to the people.
 
How does this work? Fasten your seatbelts and we will read Rabbi Kook’s interpretation of this verse through the translation of Daniel Matt in The Essential Kabbalah:   

The greater you are the more you need to search for your self. Your deep soul hides itself from consciousness. So you need to increase aloneness, elevation of thinking, penetration of thought, liberation of mind - until finally your soul reveals itself to you, spangling a few sparkles of her light.”
 

Rabbi Kook believed that were an individual to reach this very elevated station of personal growth, he or she would abandon the ego and his or her individuation, melting into a state of unity, “becoming one with everything that happens.” At this stage, “you gather everything, without hatred, jealousy, or rivalry. The light of peace and a fierce boldness manifest in you. The splendor of compassion and the glory of love shining through you. The desire to act and work, the passion to create and to restore yourself, the yearning for silence and for the inner shout of joy - all these band together in your spirit, and you become holy.” [Orot Ha-Kodesh 3:270]
 
In other words, when we reach a true state of righteousness, we don’t see the differences among us. We rise above all the fractiousness and smallness of being human and achieve wholeness. For Rabbi Kook, this is not a serene, lonely state but a fierce boldness with the capacity to allow love to shine through oneself to others.
 
Now is the time for a fierce boldness of love and unity that comes from every person transforming the same question - “What are we?”  - from the rhetorical, self-deprecating question of our human capacity for evil to the “What are we?” question of how little divides us ultimately when we overcome judgment and jealousy, pettiness of heart and smallness of spirit.
 
So what are you?
 
Shabbat Shalom

Ruth and Food

“She ate her fill and had some left over.
”

— Ruth 2:13

Forget the cheesecake. If we really wanted to eat a genuine Shavuot menu, we’d pass out the roasted grain and bread dipped in vinegar. I know what you’re thinking. Yum. Where can I get some of that? Answer: I have no idea. Maybe Bethlehem, where the story takes place? These are the foods mentioned in the Book of Ruth. In the Hebrew Bible generally, we have food mentioned very rarely; we have little idea what our heroes and she-roes of old ate and drank. When these details are offered to us, they generally communicate something far beyond the food itself.
 
Because Elimeleh, Naomi and their two sons leave a place called “House of Bread” to Moab, a tribal nation that denied us food during our wilderness sojourn, we sense that something will go very wrong in the story. What we don’t expect is the death of three family members and the devastating loss and grief that Naomi experienced as a result. In addition to the famine in Canaan that precipitated the move to Moab, this family lived in a time of great political, spiritual and social unrest. We know that simply by a few Hebrew words from the book’s first verse: “And it happened in the days when the judges ruled...” The Book of Judges offers us sordid tales of violence, our first bouts of idolatry, political instability, and faith under fire. It is also a book where food or hospitality are denied. Gideon was denied bread, and the “hospitality” of chapter 19 takes us straight back to Sodom.
 
Yael Ziegler, in her excellent book Ruth: From Alienation to Monarchy does a deep dive into the comparison of these two books, that take place at the same time but offer divergent portraits of society. Along with many contrasts, Ziegler notes the generous giving of food in the Book of Ruth: "Ruth records repeated situations in which characters generously provide food for each other...Food, given generously and unhesitatingly, becomes the symbol of a society in which social cohesiveness and basic decency form the core.” The opposite is also the case in the Book of Judges, as she observes: “During this era, the Nation of Israel has lost all semblance of social cohesiveness, along with a basic decency to offer food to those in need. Food symbolizes the depth of alienation that prevails in this society.”
 
Here are a few salient examples of the way that food serves as a love language in the book: “At mealtime, Boaz said to her, ‘Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in vinegar.’ When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate her fill and had some left over” [Ruth 2:13]. Boaz had been kind enough in letting Ruth remain in his field and protecting her from the clutches of his workers. He tells her to take water but when she makes her way over, he offers her much more. First water. Then bread. Then roasted grain. Ruth, who harvests in poverty, is actually full from this meal and then she pays the kindness forward. She saves the leftovers and delivers them to her mother-in-law.
 
Later in the same chapter, we find Ruth harvesting with great zeal and endurance; she offers the gift of her labors to her mother-in-law, coupling kindness with security. Her intake was so great, it delights and tells Naomi that they will be safe this season. They will not go hungry: “So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough. Her mother-in-law asked her, ‘Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!’” Naomi understood immediately that Ruth had landed in the fields of someone good-hearted, pairing her daughter-in-law’s work ethic with someone else’s generosity.
 
As a close to the humiliating mistake of going to the threshing floor in the middle of the night to seek Boaz in marriage, Boaz gives her a present. The shawl that she threw across him signifying marriage would not be used for this purpose but another: “He also said, ‘Bring me the shawl you are wearing and hold it out.’ When she did so, he poured into it six measures of barley and placed the bundle on her.” [3:5]. She did not go home a bride but did go home “armed” with a gift that would assure her and Naomi that love and security were on the immediate horizon.
 
On Shavuot, we honor our past not by the kind of cheesecake or blintzes we serve but in how we serve them. The Book of Ruth reminds us that food is a powerful symbol of generosity. Put and extra dollop of love in your meals. And maybe it’s not only the food on our holiday table that matters but who surrounds us at the table. Ruth and Boaz nudge us to give food away to those who are hungry, needy and anxious about their next meal. No one should feel empty on our holidays. Celebrate Shavuot with a gift to a food pantry or volunteer in a food shelter.
 
The simple act of serving food with love on Shavuot is delicious.
 
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Holidays.

Secular Holiness

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

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

“She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”

— Ruth 2:7.

Last week I saw a middle-aged man wearing a popular T-shirt: “Hard work never killed anyone, but why risk it?” I’m used to seeing this kind of thing on teenagers but never on someone his age. Did he buy it for himself, or worse, did his boss purchase it for him? We’ll never know, and I wasn’t about to ask. The slogan feeds into a certain attitude about work that sanctifies laziness and makes it into an art form. Even Anne Frank admitted the attraction of laziness but believed that only work could bring a true sense of satisfaction.

In Genesis, God works and then rests and demands that we do the same. God also had a six-day work week, embedding in creation the notion of purpose that comes through industry. Perhaps in no biblical character is this work ethic more apparent than in Ruth. One might argue that Jacob worked very hard and under poor, exploitative conditions, for his father-in-law Laban, but he did this out of love. Ruth works simply to sustain herself and her mother-in-law. She was also a woman in a man’s world, as testified by the verse where Boaz makes sure that no men harass her in the fields while she is gleaning.

Ruth asked special permission to work, understanding that gleaning in the fields as pauper, widow and convert would have been degrading to her mother-in-law, who left Bethlehem as a woman of means and returned empty: “And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, ‘Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.’ Naomi said to her, ‘Go ahead, my daughter.’”[Ruth 2:2] At this point, there was little either could do but rely on the kindness of strangers.

But the fact that Ruth was prepared to work does not indicate that she worked hard. Our proof comes from a third-party observer. Boaz had an overseer who spent his days supervising the activity in the fields. When Boaz spots a new young woman gleaning, he notices her hard work and asks the overseer about her. “The overseer replied, ‘She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. She said, ‘Let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.’”[Ruth 2:6-7]

Nothing like a little workplace gossip. People of the town knew that a Moabite woman had come back with their old neighbor Naomi. Her conversion did not seem to register. As far as they were concerned, she was still a foreigner, but she won the admiration of this supervisor because she worked all day with nary a break in the hot Middle Eastern sun.

The Talmud states that a father is obligated to teach his child a trade. [BT Kiddushin 29-30]. Failure to do so may result in thievery because the child who becomes an adult with no dignified way to make a living may resort to crime. People need money to live. Yet later on in the same tractate, sages weighed in on preferred trades. Don’t be a donkey or camel driver, a pot maker, a sailor a shepherd or a store-keeper. Some of these professions were associated with deceit or long absences. One sage naturally believes that Torah is the perfect trade, as it “preserves one from all evil and in his youth it provides one with a future and a hope in his old age.” 

The Talmud also makes a general observation about work. “Rabbi Meir says, ‘A person should always teach his son a clean and easy trade and pray to the One to Whom wealth and property belong, as there is no trade that does not include both poverty and wealth. Poverty does not come from a particular trade, rather all is in accordance with a person’s merit.’” Work goes in cycles of success. Be righteous and you may find more success in what you do. 

In any event, no matter what your work, Ruth teaches us not only the value of kindness but the importance of hard work. And if you don’t learn it from Ruth, then try Babe Ruth: “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”

Shabbat Shalom

The Hidden and Revealed Name

“This is My name forever.
”

— Exodus 3:15

One of the great religious wonders in Jewish tradition is how to pronounce God’s name; the sense of its ineffability adds to the oblique question of who and what God is. In Exodus 3, after Moses questioned who he was to take on his leadership role, he immediately transitioned to who God is, in verses that wrap the mystery in an enigma: “Moses said to God, ‘Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” Glad we cleared that up.

According to the Ten Commandments, we are not allowed to take God’s name in vain, which is not hard when we have no idea what God’s name actually is or how to pronounce it. To clarify, we use an English term that makes it all better: the Tetragrammaton. Judges of this weekend’s National Spelling Bee might try this one to slip up an ambitious young speller.
 
It turns out that in this past week’s Talmud cycle, the issue of why God’s name is not made public is discussed, using the verse above as a prooftext: “This is My name forever.” In Hebrew, the words forever and hidden are linguistically related, leading to this incident: “Rava planned to expound the way to say God’s hidden name in a public teaching. A certain elder said to him, “It is written so that it can be read l’alem - keep it hidden” [BT Kiddushin 71a].
 
Then the passage adds this confounding detail: “The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: ‘Not as I am written, am I pronounced.’” As it turns out, long ago, the sages would tell anyone who wanted to know, God’s 12-letter name. But then people used it disrespectfully so the priests used to say it only when blessing the people, but sang it absorbed in a melody. Thus, it would remain concealed. One sage, it’s recorded, inclined his ear to hear it. People will always be curious.
 
According to this debate, if people were to treat God’s name respectfully, then God’s name would be used more publicly. No one wants to get too casual with the Almighty. The Talmud continues to this effect: “

Rabbi Yehuda says in the name of Rav: ‘The 42-letter name of God may be transmitted only to one who is discreet, and humble and stands at least half his life and does not get angry and does not get drunk and does not insist he is right. And anyone who knows this name and is careful with it and guards its purity is believed above and treasured below and fear of him is cast upon the creatures and he inherits two worlds, this world and the World to Come,” [BT Kiddushin 71b].

So now we understand who gets to use God’s name: people who are Godly. What underlines most of the above description is the characteristic of humility. Those modest in spirit are trusted not to abuse God’s name.
 
This brings us to one of the heroes of our upcoming holiday, Shavuot: Boaz. We meet Boaz in the Book of Ruth in what appears to be a preoccupied moment. “Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, ‘The Lord be with you.’ They answered, ‘The Lord bless you!’” It’s a tender moment of elevated greeting that leads to a legal precedent. The Talmud concludes that when you greet someone, you should do so in the name of God [BT Brakhot 54a].
 
I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon among our people. Bearing Boaz in mind, I often greet people with “Shalom” - which is a name of God  - and part with people by saying “God bless” or “God bless you.” It feels like a little insertion of everyday holiness, and I enjoy when people say this to me. After all, we need all the blessings we can get. When I say this to non-Jews after a transaction, they regularly bless me back. But if you say this to Jews, they often raise an eyebrow and say simply, “Goodbye.”
 
This fascinating debate about the use of God’s name is, at heart, an attempt to keep a healthy balance between spiritual intimacy and proper reverence. What we find in Boaz is a man who saw in his employees, and Ruth in particular, a shadow of God - and as a result, he treated them with utmost care and respect.
 
Shabbat Shalom

No Man is an Island

“Sing His praise from the end of the earth!”

— Isaiah 42:10

Small sign in a shop window in Nantucket, “How to Live on an Island: Stretch, Listen in on shells, Put living things back, Cultivate quiet…Sugar yourself with sand, Float…Ebb and Flow…

This week Porter Fox wrote an article in The New York Times about his childhood on an island off the coastline of Maine. The article was called, “Everything is Different on an Island,” a thought I have had often, fascinated as I am by the small scrims of land that create an isolation Fox finds hard to describe. He wrote that, “… there is no escape from an island. The borders are finite and the surrounding ocean deep. Waves, wind and flotsam drift in with the breeze and tide, somehow drawn to the island’s singular existence. The thing is, a solitary entity in the middle of a void becomes the void. The sea is everything. The island is a vanishing point on a map. It is disconnected from the outside and, when you inhabit it, it becomes your world.”

This immersion and isolation make an excellent combination for writers and painters, scientists and those who seek to leave lives of convention. Little did I realize that islands occupy an interesting place in our sacred literature. Perhaps the most well-known appearance of islands is found in Esther 10:1. “King Ahaseurus imposed taxes throughout the empire, to its distant islands.” If you want to show just how insidious and far-reaching taxes are, make sure they get to the farthest island in your kingdom!

Their relative smallness also made islands a symbol of human insignificance in the presence of the Almighty, particularly in the Book of Isaiah (See Isaiah 11:11, 40:15-17, Jeremiah 31:10). In the Book of Jeremiah, we find such a use: "For cross to the islands of Kittim and see and send to Kedar and observe closely and see if there has been such a thing as this! Has a nation changed gods when they were not gods? But My people have changed their glory for that which does not profit” (Jeremiah 2:10-11).

In the Hebrew Bible islands can also be symbols of distance and isolation, as if to suggest that God’s presence is expansive, reaching even the most remote corners on earth. “Sing to the Lord a new song. Sing His praise from the end of the earth! You who go down to the sea, and all that is in it, you islands, and those who dwell on them.” (Isaiah 42:10). “Hear the word of the Lord, O nations and declare on the islands far off and say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him and keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock’” (Jeremiah 31:10)

The reverse is also true. Not only will God reach these distant places because a good shepherd keeps his flock together no matter how disparate, but people will hear of God and come from the remotest parts on earth to bring tribute and honor the Divine Presence: "Surely the islands will wait for Me, and the ships of Tarshish will come first, to bring your sons from afar. Their silver and their gold with them, for the name of the Lord your God, and for the Holy One of Israel because He has glorified you” (Isaiah 60:10). The idea of people responding to God’s call from afar – from islands - echoes in several other biblical verses (Isaiah 24:15, 42:4, 51:4-5). 

In a similar usage in the book of Isaiah, we find islands ironically as places so far away that they do not know of God, as in this verse: “"I will set a sign among them and will send survivors from them to the nations: Tarshish, Put, Lud, Meshech, Tubal and Javan, to the distant coastlands that have neither heard My fame nor seen My glory and they will declare My glory among the nations” (Isaiah 66:19). In a similar thread, despite their distance from mainland and convention, those on islands are not beyond the law (Isaiah 59:18, Ezekiel 25:16-17, 39:6). 

When the poet John Donne wrote “No Man is an Island,” one of the first poems I studied seriously in school, he wanted to communicate the artificial nature of isolation. We think we are alone, but we are never alone: “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” 

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

Our prophets had a similar message to communicate much earlier. Islands can be a spiritual oasis, a place to go away to find oneself, to find God. But they can communicate a false distance from humanity, as Isaiah, our island prophet said long ago, “Listen to Me, O islands, and pay attention, you peoples from afar The Lord called me…” (Isaiah 49:1). We are a community. We are not islands.

Shabbat Shalom

Celebrating Homeland

“We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.”

— Golda Meir

This week marks both Israel's Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and Israel's Independence Day so it's a great time to do an IQ test (Israel Quotient). How well do you know the ancient and modern history, language, politics, music, theater and literature of the country? When's the last time you visited? How often do you speak to someone from Israel? How knowledgeable are you about current events?

These questions make an underlying assumption about the Holy Land. It will always be here. It will always be a refuge, an in-gathering of global Jewry, a place of Jewish strength and identity, a mecca for those of different faiths. Yet there are still people who remember well the days before the State, when this assumption of Israel's existence was not even a dream, let alone a reality. And it's a good reminder to check in sporadically with our own feelings and commitments to the Zionist enterprise, which has so often come under biting criticism from without and within.

In the medieval period, Maimonides - who traveled to Israel with his family but settled in Fostat, the old city of Cairo - had this to say about the early relationship of scholars and the land: "Great sages would kiss the borders of the land, kiss its stones, and roll in its dust, as it states in Psalms 102:15: 'Behold, your servants hold her stones dear and cherish her dust.'" [Laws of Kings 5:10 ] If anyone has seen people get off a plane at Ben Gurion airport and kiss the ground, you can imagine the sages of old marveling at Israel's existence and never taking it for granted but treating it like the miracle ground it is.

And yet, when the country was founded, there were sharp attacks from some on the religious right who were not convinced that the timing was right. They believed (and some continue to believe) that Israel is a land and not a state and only when it's declared a state from heaven above, will they move there or, if they are there, respect and treat it as an independent political entity. Others believed that the Balfour Declaration and the UN decision were the actual signs from heaven above that it was indeed time.
 
In Kol Dodi Dofek (Listen, My Beloved Knocks), Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik famously challenged the right wing religious position using chapter five of Song of Songs. The beloved knocks on the door of his lover. She takes so much time answering that she misses him and then goes into a frenzy at the possibility that he may not come back for fear of rejection. "God who conceals Himself in His dazzling hiddenness" during our great suffering "suddenly manifested Himself and began to knock." This knocking was a way of awakening us to the possibility of an immense collective transformation, "...as a result of the knocks on the door of the maiden wrapped in mourning, the State of Israel was both Fate and Destiny." In 1948, God knocked on our door, as if to say that this is the miracle we waited for and needed after a war-decimated Europe almost put an end to us.
 
No one believes Israel is problem-free. Today, we are more divided about Israel politically than ever. Many don't rely on Israel to shape their own Jewish identities anymore nor do they support the country unequivocally. Rabbi Haim Sabato was in conversation with Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein (1933-2015) before his death and recorded this ongoing dialogue between these two great scholars in a new book Seeking His Presence. There, Rabbi Lichtenstein takes a sober view of the matter:

"I wish I could tell you that all we dreamt of in returning to Zion has come true. I wish I could tell you that all the problems and concerns have been resolved and that all is just as it should be. I wish I could feel that we have arrived "to the rest and inheritance" (Deut. 12:9), diplomatically, politically, societally, spiritually - in terms of sanctity, Torah and fear of Heaven. But I don't want to deceive you. Even if I wanted to, I would not be able to. You would see through it."
 

Even so, he observed that what we have is truly worth celebrating. Israel, he writes, is "not a perfect alternative" but "the best chance to safeguard the identity of the Jewish people, in quantity, in strength and in ideas." Israel is the global Jewish project, the place of our inspiration and hope. "The Zionist position," Rabbi Lichtenstein states, "adopted by the rabbis and other religious adherents of the movement as well, believed not only that man is capable and authorized to take up this mantle but that man is obligated to do so. He is obligated to fashion an optimal world, both spiritually and physically."  

Perhaps one of the reasons we don't celebrate Israel enough is that we set our aspirations for this optimal world so high that we and others judge ourselves much more severely when we fail than we would other countries. Let's all take a step back and a deep breath in, especially this week, and list our small and great victories, not on the battlefield but as Golda Meir declared, when "a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel."
 
Happy Birthday Israel. Shabbat Shalom.

Jewish Crystal Balls

“Rabbi Yossi: A person does not place himself in a situation of uncertainty.”

— BT Kiddushin 51b

I laughed out loud this week when I read Michael Wilson's article "Tarot Cards in the Age of Yelp" in The New York Times. How on earth do you rate a psychic? Is it based on a prediction you like? Maybe you get fewer stars for a negative prediction. It seems like a rough business, but at least any psychic worth his or her salt (crystals) knows in advance what rating you are going to give.
 
Psychics have been in the news quite a bit lately, mostly for crazy scams that have led to law suits. I even noticed, for the first time, a radio advertisement for California Psychics. On their website, they claim that two reasons that people choose them is that they are very selective. Only two out of every 100 are deemed worthy. They also have a policy  that "if it's not the best psychic reading you've ever had, it's FREE." Another laugh out loud moment. I think people must choose them for the weather.
 
So what does Jewish law have to say about this? Maimonides, the rationalist, had quite a bit to say, actually, and he never knew that there was a California. In his "Laws of Idol Worship" he devotes an entire chapter to defining different aspects of astrology and divination and why they are prohibited.  Here is a brief sampling from chapter eleven:

It is forbidden to practice soothsaying as idolaters do: "Do not act as a soothsayer." [Leviticus 19:26] What is a soothsayer? For example, those who say: Since my piece of bread fell out of my mouth, or my staff  fell from my hand, I will not travel to this place today, since if I were to go I would not be able to accomplish my goals. [Excerpt from law #4]

What is a diviner? This is a person who does particular acts that cause him to fall into a trance, clear his mind of thought and then predict the future, saying, "This will happen" or "This will not happen;" or "You must do such and such or be careful to do so." Some diviners who use sand or stones. Others bow to the ground, make strange motions and scream. Others look at a metal or crystal mirror, use their imaginations and speak. Still others carry a staff, lean on it and tap it until they fall into a trance and speak. [Excerpt from law #6]

Who is a fortuneteller? A person who tries to predict auspicious times, using astrology saying, "This day will be a good day" or "This day will be a bad day," "It is appropriate to perform a particular task on a certain day"; or "This year" or "This month will not be opportune for this particular matter." [Law #8]

It is forbidden to tell fortunes, even if one does not act on it but merely relates the falsehoods that the fools consider to be words of truth and wisdom. Anyone who performs a deed because of an astrological calculation or arranges his work or his travels to accommodate a time that was suggested by the astrologers is punishable, as it states: "Do not tell fortunes." [Leviticus 19:26] [Law #9]

Maimonides wrote these laws over 850 years ago, but they seem eerily resonant given the popularity of psychics today. The question is why this surge in popularity. I believe it can be explained by Rabbi Yossi's observation made over two thousand years ago in the Talmud: "A person does not place himself in a situation of uncertainty." The drive to predict the future is the ultimate way humans confront the insecurity of a life unknown. People hate uncertainty and will go to great and irrational lengths to avoid it. Today we are arguably in a time of great uncertainty. We face global political instability, threats of terrorism and are just recovering from financial recession. Is it a wonder that people want to know what's next?
 
Maimonides fought against this need ferociously because he believed in the fundamental power of free will and argued against any practice that vitiated it. He did not want people to predict the future. He wanted people to shape the future. He closed chapter 11 with the rationale for the Torah taking a strident approach to prediction of any kind. It is "emptiness and vanity that attracts the feebleminded and causes them to abandon all the paths of truth."
 
Shaping the future requires a lot more autonomy, energy and honesty than predicting it.
 
Shabbat Shalom

Stable Instability

“Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind all that night, and the sea turned into dry ground”

— Exodus 14:21

The last days of Passover can seem anticlimactic, given that the Seder/s are already "passed over." And yet, it is on these last days that we re-create the crossing of the sea, arguably the eleventh plague for the Egyptians who pursued the Israelites and the final and most spectacular miracle of our redemption. On the last days of Passover, we read the Torah portion about crossing the sea and cannot help but notice a biblical refrain that gives the narrative the feeling of a momentous song: "the sea on the dry ground." This expression is chanted with a different musical notation that alerts us to pay attention and be swept away musically, much the way our ancestors were in the heady moment of a final act of freedom. We begin with the verse above and then continue with the verses below:
 
"The waters were split, and the Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left." (14:22)
 
The Israelites marched through the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left." (14:29)
 
"For the horses of Pharaoh, with his chariots and horsemen, went into the sea; and the Lord turned back on them the waters of the sea, but the Israelites marched on dry ground in the midst of the sea." (15:19)
 
Many biblical books later, when we crossed the Jordan, instead of the Reed Sea, we find a repeated image of dry land in the midst of the sea. God told Joshua to command the priests transporting twelve stones representing the tribes across the Jordan to come out of the water, after the Israelites had already crossed: "the feet of the priests stepped onto the dry ground and the waters of the Jordan resumed their course, flowing over its entire bed as before" (Joshua 4:18).
 
This expression can simply highlight the miraculous nature of the event: the astonishing fact that we could go through water on dry land. This contradiction is not unlike other plagues that had opposing natural forces in combination, like the hail that contained fire. This would surely augment the miracle capacity within each miracle. But perhaps there is something deeper that the text wants to draw us to with this expression and its repetition, and to understand it we must find other places where sea and dry land appear together.
 
We turn no further than the very first chapter of the Hebrew Bible: "God said, 'Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear.' And it was so. God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters, He called seas. And God saw that it was good" (Genesis 1:9). Sea and dry land, once a singular unit, was separated in the creation of two distinct earthly topographies. Later, Noah's raven, the one he sent out on a search expedition to know if he could release his family and the animals he stewarded, "went to and fro until the waters had dried up from the land" (Genesis 8:6). But the process of the earth drying took much time: "the waters began to dry from the earth; and when Noah removed the covering of the ark, he saw that the surface of the ground was drying. And in the second month, on the twenty-seventh of the month, the earth was dry" (Genesis 8:13-14). It was then that God told Noah it was time to leave the ark. Earth and water had to be separated and distinct yet again for a new and improved universe to emerge.
 
In the book of Jonah, a prophetic maritime adventure, the sailors on the ship Jonah boarded wanted clues to his identity that would explain why the storm around them was so treacherous. Jonah summed up his identity in a curious phrase: "I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, God of the heavens, who made sea and dry land" (Jonah 1:9). Later, this same God had created a fish to swallow Jonah and then, after Jonah prayed and reconciled himself with his mission, "it spewed Jonah out upon dry land" (Jonah 2:11).
 
An ark and a fish are images of dry land within water. They are containers, much like Moses' basket on the Nile, that served as temporary modes of protection against the dangers of the sea. They were, metaphorically speaking, the dry land amidst the sea. Psychologically one can argue that they provided stability in an inherently unstable place. God, Jonah's God, is both the God of dry land and the sea. He, too, is a place - Makom - of stability in a world of instability, a spiritual anchor in chaos. Redemption is predicated on our capacity to make ourselves temporarily unstable for the sake of greater stability.
 
When we repeat the almost incomprehensible refrain - the sea on dry ground - we are invited not only to experience wonder at the miracle but to take risks to make miracles happen. Had we not taken those initial steps into the water, the water wouldn't have parted. We make miracles when we are prepared to trust that nothing is truly stable. The best we can hope for is a stable instability, that keeps us both strong and vulnerable in an exquisite balance. The American marital arts expert and actor Bruce Lee once said, "If you want to learn to swim, jump in the water. On dry land, no frame of mind is ever going to help you."
 
Sometimes we crave stability too much. You want to make miracles? Jump. 
 
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Passover!

Slave Pains

“One who calls another a slave should be ostracized”

— BT Kiddushin 28b

Soon we will sit at our Seder tables taking the imaginative journey from freedom to slavery. Although we are commanded to relive this experience, we all know that whatever we say and do will only be a poor simulation of what our ancestors suffered. Even the joy of freedom will be hard to muster since it is something we take for granted today. One way to put ourselves into the mindset of the slave is to compare the Egyptian treatment of us as slaves to the institution of slavery and its limits in the Hebrew Bible.
 
Slavery was permitted in the days of the Hebrew Bible and Talmud but not regarded as a desideratum in Jewish law. It was seen as an inevitability of its day that needed strict guidelines since the exertion of power over another human being is never to be taken lightly. Individuals could sell themselves into slavery to pay off debt. Others were captives of war. It would be more accurate to call an "eved" an indentured servant than a slave, given our associations with slavery in the past centuries. This kind of barbaric forced work at the risk of death is completely forbidden in Jewish law and punishable by death: "He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:16)
 
The following verses illustrate some of the Jewish restrictions on power in this relationship that are the exact opposite of the outcry described by our ancestors at the hands of a cruel and hard-hearted Pharaoh:
 

• "If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished." (Exodus 21:20)
• "If a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye. And if he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free on account of his tooth." (Exodus 21:26-27) 
• "He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:12)
• "Six days you are to do your work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female slave, as well as your stranger, may refresh themselves. (Exodus 23:12) 
• "Now if a man lies carnally with a woman who is a slave acquired for another man, but who has in no way been redeemed nor given her freedom, there shall be punishment..."(Leviticus 19:20) 
• "You shall not hand over to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you." (Deuteronomy 23:15) 
• "If a countryman of yours becomes so poor with regard to you that he sells himself to you, you shall not subject him to a slave's service. He shall be with you as a hired man, as if he were a sojourner; he shall serve with you until the year of jubilee. He shall then go out from you, he and his sons with him, and shall go back to his family, that he may return to the property of his forefathers. For they are My servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt; they are not to be sold in a slave sale. You shall not rule over him with severity, but are to revere your God." (Leviticus 25:39-43) 
• "If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment." (Exodus 21:2)
• "Do not slander a slave to his master or he will curse you and you will be found guilty." (Proverbs 30:10) 
• "He who pampers his slave from childhood will in the end find him to be a son." (Proverbs 29:21) 

 
Finally, the Talmudic statement above, says it all. We don't even use the word "slave" lightly and ostracize someone who does for denying the freedom of agency that we believe is inherent in all human beings regardless of status. Maimonides, in his "Laws of Indentured Servants" helps us understand how to negotiate the tensions of having too much power over another. He contends that one can deal with a slave harshly yet,

 
...although this is the law, the way of the pious and the wise is to be compassionate and to pursue justice, not to overburden or oppress a servant. One must provide for them from every dish and every drink. The early sages would give their servants from every dish on their table. They would feed their animals and their servants before sitting to their own meals...So, too, you should not denigrate a servant, neither physically nor verbally. The Torah made him your servant to do work, not to be disgraced. Do not treat him with constant verbal abuse and anger, rather speak to him pleasantly and listen to his complaints. Such were the good ways in which Job took pride when he said, "Did I ever despise the judgment of my servant and my maid when they argued with me? Did not my Maker make him, too, in the belly; did not the same One form us both in the womb?"

The integrity of the human being is always what ultimately matters. The same God made us all. We should feel uncomfortable that slavery appears in the Torah at all. And every time we fail to use our own human agency to prevent injustice, we, too minimize that godliness in ourselves and others. We opt into another form of slavery when we compromise our freedom, as Harriet Tubman so beautifully said, "I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
 
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Passover. May it be a time of true freedom.