Year in Review 5772

“Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.”

Deuteronomy 32:7

            It’s that time again: the last week before a new Hebrew year is upon us. It’s time for the Jewish year in review based on a mandate from Deuteronomy that we remember days past because they teach us life lessons for the future. And when our memories fail us, we are told to seek out the help of others. Yehuda Kurtzer in Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past makes a fascinating observation: “One of the great ironies of modern Jewish life is that we now know much more about our origins, our history, and our ancestry than we ever did before; and as a collective, we care about it considerably less.” But we should; to help we need a quick review of 5772.

We started out of the gate with the long-awaited but highly controversial release of Gilad Shalit only days after Yom Kippur. Our prayers were finally answered.  Close to the same time, good news of a different kind hit the papers; Israeli chemist Daniel Shechtman won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery that atoms could fit together inside of crystals in a nonrepeating pattern. Got that?

He was not the only Israeli to distinguish himself in 5773. In the Paralympics, Israeli tennis player Noam Gerhsony took the gold in wheelchair tennis. And while Israel did not take home any gold medals in this past Olympics, gymnast Aly Raisman brought her team to the gold in a floor exercise performed to Hava Nagila as the first American woman to win the gold for floor exercises. The honor she accorded to the fallen of the Munich Olympics 40 years earlier did not compensate for the fact that Olympic organizers would not honor their memory with a moment of silence. “Shame on you International Olympic Committee because you have forsaken the 11 members of your Olympic family,” said Ankie Spitzer. Her husband, Andre, an Israeli fencing coach, was a victim in the massacre.

On the entertainment front, Matisiyahu shaved his beard and the Israeli film “Footnote” was nominated for an Oscar. Edon Pinchot’s singing charmed the crowds all the way to the semi-finals of “America’s Got Talent” with his pop songs and his yarmulke. Speaking of music, while people may have said disco has been dead for decades, it really died this year with the loss of Donna Summer and Robin Gib of the Bee Gees. Neither of them were Jewish, but Marvin Hamlisch certainly was. He composed the music of a generation with “The Sting,” “The Way We Were,” ‘Sophie’s Choice,” and “A Chorus Line.” Another pearl of screen and book, Nora Ephron, succumbed to illness but at least doesn’t have to wear turtlenecks anymore. We lost Mel Stuart who directed “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” with Gene Wilder.

On the American political front, this year brought us Jack Lew as a new chief of staff for the White House and the hysterical video of Rick Perry dancing with Chabad Hasidim around a menorah – and we’re still engaging in the ever-present question of how “Jewish” presidential candidates have to be to win this year’s election. In Israeli politics, the question of Iran’s threat still looms large as two veteran politicians said their last farewells; former MK Hanan Porat died as did former prime minister, Yitzchak Shamir.

In July, 250,000 people mourned the death of the influential authority, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv at his funeral. He was 102 and had 1,000 descendants. In the ultra-Orthodox camp, we also had the Asefa or stadium-packed denunciation of the internet and social media and the Siyyum ha-Shas, the completion of the seven and a half year cycle of Talmud study, one page a day. Sadly, the Beit Shemesh controversy over schooling and the place of women garnered international attention prompting some very profound questions about tradition and modernity. In that spirit, Tamar Epstein is still fighting for her get – her Jewish divorce and another year has passed without resolution.

Three shootings in Toulouse and Montaubon, France shook the Jewish world with the loss of 7 lives in March. And Germany’s ban on circumcision caused a world outcry and more anguished debate.

The year that was tells a story of pain and triumph and influence on the world stage. What Jewish event rocked your 5772? What event do you hope for in 5773? Pray hard and hope, and let’s see how history unfolds.

Shabbat Shalom and blessings for a year of wonder!

Laugh a Little

"God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me."

Genesis 21:6

            As we prepare for the Days of Awe, it is easy to focus on tears and fears and not the joy that the holiday also invites. One of our central characters, Isaac, is named precisely for the experience of laughter. The first child born Jewish was named for happiness. Isaac was a much awaited child, the product of much anguish. And his breathless fate on Mount Moriah that we read on Rosh Hashana was also a time of anguish. And yet, he is still named for joy, perhaps because he was a source of relief and a sign that impossible things can be possible: an important message as we face any new year.

Both Abraham and Sarah laughed when they heard the good news. It seems however, that just like there are different kinds of tears, there are different kinds of laughter. In Genesis 18, when the angels tell Abraham that he will have a son, Sarah overhears and laughs. This was the laughter of disbelief, and it was regarded as a sign of disrespect towards God. “So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, ‘After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?’” God was angry that this magnanimous gift was snubbed. “Is anything too hard for the Lord?’” There is laughter of relief and laughter of joy and laughter of the skeptic. Sarah’s laughter fell into the last category. “Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, ‘I did not laugh.’ But he said, ‘Yes, you did laugh.’” Arguing with God is usually not a good idea when you’re not telling the truth. We’ve all had Sarah moments when we laughed but denied it later because laughter was inappropriate to the moment.

Pianist and singer Regina Spektor came to America from Russia when she was 9. She discovered her voice on a sponsored trip to Israel for gifted Jewish teenagers. The rest is history. He song “Laugh With” posits that God is actually funny, but that at key times of life drama, no one laughs at God:

No one laughs at God in a hospital

No one laughs at God in a war

No one's laughing at God

When they're starving or freezing or so very poor

But God is responsible for joy as well, and people who embrace joy also bring God into the world. Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav discusses suffering and how one suffering person holds it in, unable to share with others the extent of his pain. But then sometimes you meet someone with a laughing face. That face is powerful according to Rabbi Nahman because such a person can revive others with his joy. And this, Rabbi Nahman concludes, is a very great act of kindness: “To revive a man is no slight thing.” They say that laughter is the best medicine but to believe it you must believe that laughter is a form of medicine – that it is an act of healing and has redemptive powers. Jerry Seinfeld said, “The greatest Jewish tradition is to laugh. The cornerstone of Jewish survival has always been to find the humor in life and in ourselves.”

Spektor ends her song with the words, “We're all laughing with God.” Sarah said that people will laugh with her when they hear the news. We laugh with God about the immensity of our blessings. Spiritual joy is not minimizing possibility but enhancing it and believing that good things – maybe even the impossible stuff of dreams – may be ours to actualize. It happened before. It will happen again. Maybe even this year.

Shabbat Shalom

Return

“I wish to announce that there is a God in the world.”

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev

During the Hebrew month of Elul, we blow the shofar every morning in synagogue. This ritual coheres with a general principle of Jewish law, namely that we begin to prepare for a holiday 30 days before its arrival. We do not want to trip into a day of significance. We want to feel emotionally and physically prepared. As someone who prays at home daily but does not go to synagogue every day, I feel every year at this season that I’m missing out on an important wake-up call to prepare me and remind me of the importance of change and repentance.

The shofar’s blast is not like an alarm clock, however. The daily sound in Elul is one plaintive cry but when blown on Rosh Hashana, it is “played” in a more staccato fashion. The shofar blower must squeeze out 4 different but related sounds. The tekiah is 3 unbroken blasts. The sheverim is a tekiah broken into 3 parts. The teruah is 9 rapid fire blasts, and the tekiah gedola is one long cry for the duration of at least 9 seconds. Many blow the shofar until they are winded, trying to produce a long and wailing noise to pierce the solemnity of the day.

Because our tears over what we have done wrong, what we have not yet accomplished and who we mourn for are not the same tears, the shofar must capture all kinds of crying. We are broken, and so the sounds the shofar makes reflect our brokenness. Sometimes we sob uncontrollably in short, breathless bursts. At other times, we sigh loudly until the air is knocked out of us. The shofar can only wake us up and encourage us to return to our best selves if it mimics our inner emotional landscape: our anger at injustice, our hurt over personal wounds and our defeat at the hands of temptation.

But when you do not hear the shofar every day leading up to Rosh Hashana, it is less of a wake-up call and more of a fire alarm. I don’t know about you, but I often feel that when I walk into my synagogue for the first service of the High Holidays, I feel caught off-guard. How is it Rosh Hashana already? Where did the year go? Why am I so unready? I am unready because I did not pace myself spiritually. I did not hear the shofar calling me a month earlier, pulling me in with its cries.

Last year, because of this vacuum, I took upon myself a unique project. I began to write essays for each day of the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur – the aseret yemei teshuva or ten days of repentance. It was a personal ladder for me to try to achieve a greater sense of holiness and responsibility and go into the Days of Awe feeling the requisite awe. Each day I scaled a new topic for self-improvement rooted in Jewish tradition. I was so absorbed in it that I expanded it into a book that has just been published, Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe. In addition to a daily essay, I included portions of study on repentance in translation from Maimonides – the rationalist, Rabbi Kook, the mystic, and Rabbi Chaim Moshe Luzzato, the ethicist. I attached a life homework assignment to integrate study and action, using myself as a test case. I feel privileged to share what I learned.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, one of the great defenders of the Jewish people to God, was disturbed that many of his disciples were observing Jewish law but were not leading a moral life. One day he made a bold statement, “I wish to announce that there is a God in the world.” The shofar is our way of making the same announcement but without words. On Rosh Hashana we coronate God as our king and relinquish the feeble control we have over our lives. We think about who we are and what possibilities we can bring to a new year. Are you ready?

Shabbat Shalom

Travel Blessings

“Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings.”

Deuteronomy 28:6

For many of us, this last week of summer represents the end of waking up late, being off schedule and “chillaxing.” For many of us, the prospect of school approaching and structure is a long-awaited wish, wondering how it is that we ever thought taking children who are not farmers out of a learning environment for 10 weeks. It is also the last week of summer travel for many who want to squirrel away every last day. And for those who travel, the words of Deuteronomy have a special meaning. We hope that we are blessed in our comings and blessed in our goings.

In the days of old, coming and going had many meanings. It may have been a reference to war, which makes sense with the verse that follows: “The Lord will put to rout before you the enemies who attack you; they will march out against you by a single road, but flee from you by many roads.” In times of battle, enemies may approach you from multiple directions. Be prepared. Hopefully they will get to you by a single road, coalesced into a force that makes an easy target and scatter haphazardly because of your military might. If you are blessed in your going out to war and in returning from war, it means that you have suffered minimal casualties and leave victorious.

Among medieval commentators, the verse is typically understood as a reference to traveling out of cities. Abarbanel, a fifteenth century Spanish statesman, believes the blessing to be a request for safety when traveling out of cities. What travel anxieties did the ancients manage? They worried about wild animals on the way and dangerous river crossings. They worried about ambushes and robbers. They worried about being cheated in unfamiliar territory where they did not know who could be trusted. We have many Talmudic anecdotes that illustrate each of these travel problems. In such circumstances, our ancestors relied on the biblical words of blessing to find comfort in the newness and strangeness of uncharted places and unfamiliar faces.

On a spiritual plane, Rashi – the French 11th century commentator – saw this blessing in the broadest of terms. “May your leave taking from this world be without sin just as you came into the world.” Rashi is not talking about a trip but the trip, the journey of a lifetime. May you exit the world with the innocence with which you came into it.

            Why do we need this blessing today? It was written in ancient days when no one worried about flight delays or car accidents or hotel rooms that did not look like the website photo. Today, we tend to focus on pre-trip anxieties. Did we pack appropriately? Will our accommodations meet expectations? Will we get sick because of new foods or new bacteria? Will the planes, trains and buses get us to where we need to go reliably?

            But our blessing offers us solace for the way there and the way home, acknowledging two different states of worry. Coming home hardly has any of the nervousness of leaving. After all, we are returning to a place of familiarity. And yet, there are those few minutes when you wonder if all will be as you left it. After a vacation, I find myself standing before the front door holding my breath and hoping that the house will be as orderly as I left it, that the car battery will not have run out, that there will not be any bad news on my answering machine, that I will get no e-mails to let me know that the world has collapsed in my absence. Maybe the worries are silly, but they are there nevertheless. And so as I stand at the front door, I think of Deuteronomy and this blessing that my return be worry-free, kiss the mezuzah and feel blessed to be home.

Shabbat Shalom

Stiff Competition

“May the One who causes His Name to dwell in this house cause love and brotherhood, peace and camaraderie to dwell among you.”

BT Brakhot 12a

            This small prayer for grace and love is tucked into the early pages of the first volume of the Talmud. Until I came across it in the daily cycle of Talmud study, I had never before heard of it. It is not a custom to say it today; it was written in very particular circumstances and recited on a very specific occasion. In the days of the Temple, there were 24 cohorts of priests – cohanim – who served for approximately 2 separate weeks a year each before setting abck to their homes. The new watch would come for Shabbat and then the change of the guard would occur on Shabbat. All of the tasks of one cohort would transition to the next. The incoming priests were given this blessing to inform their service.

            It would be wonderful if we all began our work with a blessing. Imagien finding the language that enabled and inspired us to work harder or care more or devote more time and attention to others. This must have been an extraordinary changing of the guard and the ultimate statement of excellent succession planning: the group leaving blesses the group arriving, offerin ghtem the confidence and trust to continue sacred work.

            The idea of conferring a spirit of peace and love on the priests makes sense since it was they who blessed the people, and the blessing that they recited before blessing the people ended with the word “love.” We give blessings from a point of love. If that love was deficient then the priest is exempt; if, for example, a priest lost a beloved family member and was in mourning, he was exempt from this blessing. His own sadness and understnadbale self-absorption prevented him from conferring complete love on others.

According to the Maharsha, however, this blessing may have been inspired by a less noble sentiment. In the days of the Temples, there were more preists than there were tasks and some roles were more public than others. The choice of which particular priest would perform which function was based on stiff competition. We have a number of legendary battles among priests recorded in the Talmud, and they did not all resolve themselves pleasantly. If you thought the Olympics was a trial of talent and gumption…

In the new Koren  Steinsaltz Talmud, the Maharsha is cited as explainging the blessing as a wishful hope that “the incomign watch would be blessed with brotherhood and peace” precisely because enmity and envy developed among them around the anxieities fo competition. It raises the interstign question about the value of competition.

Today, many want to minimize the importance of competition by letting everyone win and wishing grades did not matter. This has not always had a positive result either, reducing the drive for indidivual success and often leaving children ill-prepared for a universe where competition is a constant. Instead, the priests of old understood that competition could bring out masterful performance and that the desire to best another could energize the sacred ritual lfie of Temple worship. Instead of elminaitng competition, the priests blessed it, asking that those in service give the best of themselves but retain a spirit of love and camaraderie because allw as done to bring greater love into God’s house.

The tension between personal excellence and communal peace

Fifty Shades of…

“If one commits a sin and is ashamed of it, all his sins are forgiven.”

Rabba

            I was thinking of writing a bestselling novel called Fifty Shades of Black about a young Hasidic man in Williamsburg who decides to buy a new hat. Then I thought of writing a novel called Fifty Shade of White about a kabbalist who is thinking of buying a new robe for Shabbat. In the end, I decided my novel would be called Fifty Shades of Black and White because, to tell you the prudish truth, I feel mighty uncomfortable about all the attention Fifty Shades of Grey is getting. I’ve heard any number of conversations about the book (no, I haven’t read it) where people forgot to blush. In a black and white world, we’d call it like it is. It’s pornography and not a beach read on a family vacation.

            We justify what we read in all sorts of ways. I’ve heard people say that they read this book, which has been called soft porn or even mommy porn, for work (and what line of work are you in, exactly?) or to make sure they understand a cultural phenomenon (although they don’t seem to be reading much on global warming). My friend Sally Quinn – who read this for “research” - wrote about the book in the religion pages of The Washington Post stating that women have found God in this book, relating some of the explicit sexuality to submission to God. Fascinating idea but let’s be honest, who are we kidding? Is the ultimate justification for engaging in subversive reading to say that it helps us become better servants of God? There are many paths to faith, but there are dead-ends too.

            I was once teaching in a university and picked up the college newspaper. It had an interview with a woman on her porn star career who was coming to the campus to speak about job options. I am afraid to know what her declared major was, but it probably had more to do with frat parties than the library. All of this has raised pornography to a legitimate art form and job instead of seeing it as the ultimate weapon against a woman’s right to be treated with dignity and reverence. There was time when women had to use their bodies as sole sources of power, but we’ve come a long way, baby, too far to now walk backwards.

            In the Talmud [BT Brakhot 12b], Rabba makes an observation about shame. Shame is critical to the person of faith. It is a moral barometer of permissibility and transgressiveness. It helps us understand that there are boundaries of person and soul and that when they are crossed, confusion and pain often result. Rabba, a Talmudic giant, understood that being able to experience the shame of doing something wrong puts us one step closer to personal redemption.

In comparing definitions of the word “shame,” I noticed that it is universally regarded as a painful emotion usually caused by a combination of a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness or disgrace. But what interested me more was that shame is also defined as the capacity to have such a feeling.

When we blush, discomfort and shame show up on our faces. The novelist Cynthia Ozick wrote in Writers at Work that, “After a certain number of years, our faces become our biographies.” Let our facial biographies show that our society has not lost the capacity for shame. And let us not minimize the impact on ourselves and our children of a sexuality so open and shameless that we no longer have the ability to turn fifty shades of pink.

Shabbat Shalom

Empowering Children

“My son, the future of your great, martyred people lies in your hands!”

Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog

When your father says this to you at your bar mitzvah, it’s a pretty heavy message. It’s one thing to say you’re a man to a kid who hasn’t started shaving and whose voice cracks when he speaks. It’s another to lay the entire Jewish future in his hands. But this was no ordinary bar mitzvah, either. This was said by the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel Rabbi Isaac Herzog (who held the position from 1936 to 1959) to his son.  The Herzog child took this message to heart and Chaim Herzog, the son he spoke to, became the sixth president of the State of Israel, thus taking the future of the Jewish people to heart.  It’s remarkable what one good bar mitzvah sermon can accomplish!

Rabbi Herzog’s message might have been more weighty than most, but its essence is something we tell our children all of the time in different ways. They are a continuation of an amazing legacy. Our people use the expression “dor va-dor” – from generation to generation - like tagline candy. It’s ubiquitous. And we mean it when we say it. We believe strongly that children are our future. Herzog articulated it beautifully “My son, strive to know yourself, to know and understand your Judaism, your wonderful and unique history, the inseparable connection of your people with the patriarchs and the prophets…”

So if we truly believe that our children are our future and Judaism’s future, how can we understand the day school teacher who was just arrested for possession of child pornography? How can we read front-page stories in national newspapers about the cover-up of child abuse in religious communities? Are we doing enough to protect our future?

It is all indefensible. We do have to do more to protect our children. The world of technology has empowered kids with adult information and access but also disempowered them as victims of stalkers and abusers who – in another universe – may have restrained their perverse inclinations. But when pictures of compromised children are only a click away, too many people give in to their basest desires.

Child abuse hurts everyone. It hurts our community, too. Published national child abuse statistics include:

·      A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds

·      More than five children die every day as a result of child abuse.

·      Approximately 80% of children that die from abuse are under the age of 4.

·      More than 90% of juvenile sexual abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way.

·      14% of all men in prison in the USA were abused as children.

·      36% of all women in prison were abused as children.

·      Children who experience child abuse & neglect are 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile, 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult, and 30% more likely to commit violent crime.

·      Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.

Organizations likeness Darkness to Light, JCADA and local domestic abuse awareness organizations offer prevention programs to help us recognize the danger signs. They need our support, but they also need us to take advantage of their programming and counseling opportunities in our schools, synagogues and area institutions.

Rabbi Herzog ended his speech to his son with these words of hope: “May you become a source of blessing to yourself, to those dear to you, and to the entire house of Israel, Amen.” May all of our children be loved, blessed and protected so that they, too, can continue our legacy.

The Flowering of Spring

The sign on a local church this week read: “Spring has sprung. Is your faith blossoming?” Faith does blsossom when we see a world regenerating. We hear the birds after a silent winter. We see cherry trees flowering and the weather warming and we feel the relief of

There are four blessings that are only recited once during the Jewish calendar year, and one of them can be done only in the month of Nissan, giving you only a few weeks to get it in. During Nissan, we are obligated to make the blessing over flowering fruit trees when in their presence. This blessing gnerlaly does not apply to fruit trees and generally only to  If you can’t identify the other three for the double jeopardy win, see below.

Countries where the Trees Blossom at other Times
However, in the United States a problem exists, for not always during the month of Nissan do the trees begin to blossom. Therefore, the question becomes whether or not one is permitted to recite the Blessing of the Trees in the month of Iyar. 

The Sefer HaEshkol (authored by Rabbeinu Avraham Av Bet Din, one of the great Rishonim, page 68) writes that one should recite the Blessing of the Trees during the month of Nissan; however, this does not mean specifically Nissan, rather, it means the first time that year that one sees the trees blossom. Similarly, the Ritba (Rabbeinu Yom Tov ben Avraham Elashvili) in his commentary on Tractate Rosh Hashanah (11a) writes: “Not necessarily Nissan, rather, every place based on when the trees blossom there.” Many other Poskim rule likewise. 

Thus, one may recite the Blessing of the Trees based on whenever the blossoming of the trees happens to occur in his current location, for there is no specific requirement for it to be done in the month of Nissan; the only requirement is the spring blossom, which usually occurs during Nissan. 

On Which Trees one May Recite this Blessing
One may only recite this blessing on fruit-bearing trees and it may not be recited on barren trees. Nevertheless, if one mistakenly recited this blessing on a barren tree, he should not repeat it upon seeing a blossoming fruit-bearing tree. 

One may only recite the Blessing of the Trees upon seeing two trees and it is halachically sufficient even if they are from the same species. It is especially praiseworthy to bless upon several kinds of trees. 

Grafted Trees
Regarding trees that are grafted from two different species, for instance a tree grafted from etrogim (citrons) and lemons, some are of the opinion that one should not recite the Blessing of the Trees upon seeing them since their existence is against the will of Hashem; thus, one should not thank and praise Hashem for them. Others argue and say that since this blessing is with regards to the entire creation in general, one may even recite it upon grafted trees. Although if one wishes to recite this blessing on such a tree we shall not protest, nevertheless, it is preferable not to recite the blessing on such a tree due to the famous rule, “When in doubt regarding a blessing, do not bless.” 

However, there is much room for leniency in this matter regarding trees which are not so clearly forbidden to graft, such as citrus trees including citron, lemon, “Chushchash” (wild oranges), and grapefruits, for according to Maran Harav Ovadia Yosef Shlit”a (see Responsa Yabia Omer, Volume 5, Chapter 19 and Halichot Olam, Volume 2, page 200), one may tell a non-Jew to graft such trees with one another. Based on this, the existence of such trees is certainly not against Hashem’s will and the Blessing of the Trees may be recited on them just as it is customary to recite the “Shehecheyanu” blessing on such fruits, as we have explained in another Halacha.

Breaking the Habit

“is too late to prepare when temptation is actually at hand.”

Rabbi Yizchak Meir of Ger

They say that bad habits are hard to break but Charles Duhigg, in his recent book, The Power of Habit, argues that the more we know about how we form our habits, the easier they are to change. He amasses scientific evidence to show that difficult tasks repeated multiple times become rote. We may barely think about what we do when he shoot a basket, drive a car or take a shower because we go into automatic pilot. We’ve done things so many times that our bodies engage even if our minds coast. David Brooks, writing on Duhigg, claims that, “Your willpower is not like a dam that can block the torrent of self-indulgence. It’s more like a muscle, which tires easily.”

If repetirion is the key to habit then recalibaratign behaviors and doing them again and again in a different way becaomse one critical way that we break bad habits and willfully choose new ones. When we learn new routines and practice them repeatedly we “teach” ourselves how to adopt best practices. It is awkward at first but far from impossible. Research done at Duke Unviersity shows that 40% of our behaviors are made through habit rather than intentional decisions. With a little concerted mental effort, we can shape this

Rabbi Yitzchak Meir (1798-1866) was a Talmudic scholar and the first Gerer Rebbe, a Hasidic sect popular in Poland. Many stories and legends have evolved about the rebbe’s piety and knowledge. Martin Buber, in Tales of the Hasidim, shares a well-known story about the Rebbe when his mother died and he followed her bier, begging for forgiveness. He spoke to his mother’s coffin, “In this world, I am a man who is much honored and many call me rabbi. But now you will enter the world of truth and see that it is not as they think. So forgive me and do not bear me a grudge. What can I do, if people are mistaken in me.”

Truth and Fiction

“This is the punishment of the liar – even when he speaks the truth no one believes him.”

The Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 89b)

            Credibility is hard to earn and easy to lose. Tell one lie, and a relationship that you have invested in for years may be compromised. The Talmud understood this problem all too well and condemned the liar to the greatest punishment: a tarnished reputation. The liar can speak the God-honest-truth, and we still have our doubts. As frustrating as this is for the liar with truth finally on his lips, we can hardly blame those once subjected to falsehood for harboring questions.

            The Path of the Just was written in 1738 by the Italian scholar, Rabbi Moses Hayyim Luzzato as work of ethical guidance and character development. It has a long and illustrious history of study, prepping readers on the intricacies of saintliness and humility. Rabbi Luzzato did not take the Talmudic punishment of liars at face value. Instead, he parsed the “work” of liars into various categories, from the mild to the outrageous, understanding that lying often begins on a continuum of truth. Therein lies its greatest danger.

            Lying is understandable on many levels. I once caught one of my children in a lie at the age of six. “But why did you lie to me?” I asked, even though the offense was minor. “Because I didn’t want you to be upset.” We often lie because we want to protect ourselves and others. Sometimes we convince ourselves that a white lie never harms; it only helps smooth rough waters. It may even be good to lie. It is not always easy to explain that while a lie may prevent hurt to someone else, it begins to hurt us. We stop being seen as truth-tellers.

            Rabbi Luzzato mentions another piece of Talmudic wisdom: that liars are included in a class of people who “are not received into the presence of God.” If honesty is a hallmark of the divine, then lying puts a person outside of God’s inner circle.

Just how wide is that circle? Rabbi Luzzato mentions that there are people who lie for a living, to promote business or to be counted among the wise. There are others who lie, not because they manufacture stories, but because “when they give an account of something true” they interlace it with lies. “They habituate themselves to this practice to the point where it becomes part of their nature,” following the prophet Jeremiah’s warning: “They have taught their tongues to speak falsehood. They have become weary with wrong” (9:4).

            We have another word for these kinds of lies that have become a cultural reality in many Jewish communities and schools: exaggeration. OMG. I am so sick I could die. That job is killing me. You’ll never believe what happened to me last night! Every sentence deserves an exclamation point. We’re living on the edge. But we’re really not. Or what about the odd expression, “I’m not going to lie to you.” Well, that’s a relief.

We usually exaggerate because it entertains. In fact, the Talmud itself has a language for this sort of tale - a “guzma.” Elephants cannot go through the eye of a needle. Nevertheless, sometimes it becomes hard to distinguish the kernel of truth in the packaging of humor. And, as The Path of the Just warns, we can become habituated to forms of speech which are permanently altered by these kinds of lies. They are not malicious. They may be a good laugh, but over time, they hurt the reputation of the teller because the listener cannot separate truth from fiction.

Rabbi Luzzato alerts us to a subtle verb choice in Exodus 23:7, the verse that warns us to distance ourselves from falsehood. The verse does not say to guard oneself against lying but to restrain or withdraw ourselves from it in order to “awaken us” to the vigilance we must achieve in fighting falsehood. And no one suffers more from lying in the end than the liar himself.

Shabbat Shalom