Love’s Limits

“By making extraordinary demands, it [Judaism] inspires ordinary people to live extraordinary lives.”

Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World

We leave Passover with a keen sense of historical liberation, but ours was neither an easy freedom nor one that came without responsibility. We left slavery for Sinai; a life of commandedness for a different type of commandedness.  This was not obedience for its own sake but for the sake of God and for the sake of becoming a people of transcendence, as is true for all those of faith and belief.

What changed in this transition? Altruism, a feeling or commitment to selflessness, duty and responsibility comes from the French for “the other.” Altruism is an outer directed impulse that pushes down the loud voice of narcissism and self-absorption. It tells us that a purpose-driven life is not one where our own desires matter most. Throughout the Bible, God commands altruism, and it changes us. We become truly free with the capacity to give.

In a recent article, “Ego, Love, and Self-Sacrifice: Altruism in Jewish Thought and Law,” David Shatz, a professor of philosopher and an inspiring teacher, writes that Judaism, “is both realistic and aspirational. It recognizes the reality of self-interest, but affirms the capacity of human beings to escape its grip. It understands that self-interested actions can promote the good of others, but it looks as well at inner intentions and emotions.”

The article is one of many fine essays in Radical Responsibility, an anthology celebrating the thought of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks as Rabbi Sacks nears retirement. Rabbi Sacks in his extensive writings, makes a compelling case again and again that commandedness can lead to moral greatness and to achieving extraordinariness.

Many would argue that altruism merely masks self-interest. This seems to be supported by a famous Talmudic passage [BT Makkot 28b] that Shatz quotes in his article: “He who eulogizes the deceased will be eulogized at his death; he who buries the dead will be buried when he passes on; he who carries the coffin will be carried by others [when his body is ready for burial]; he who mourns for others will be mourned by others.”

By being present for the ritual needs of others at their most vulnerable, we bolster the chances that we will not be alone in ours. This is not selfish, but it is certainly utilitarian, reminding us of the more positive Yiddish expression of this sentiment, “I will dance at your wedding so you will dance at mine.” The social capital we invest becomes our best insurance policy, but it does not sound particularly altruistic. Love, it would seem, has its limits.

Read differently, however, the passage in the Talmud is not the statement of a person trying to protect himself. It is not stated by him but about him. One who shows particular sensitivity to the needs of others, particularly during trying times, will likely have that sensitivity repaid in the future; we honor those who were selfless by becoming less selfish ourselves. Those who are truly altruistic teach us through their compassion and kindness that we, too, should be more compassionate and kind. They inspire us with their thoughtfulness to become as thoughtful as they are.

Many find the language of command too authoritarian or bossy. I personally find it a comfort. When it’s raining outside, and I’m too tired to pay that shiva call and maybe the mourner won’t even notice, I think of the word “mitzva.” Command. Demand. Responsibility. Obligation. Expectation from on High. Suddenly, that sense of altruism as the clarion call of the other comes to mind. It is not about my creature comforts but about another’s need for human comfort that matters. And usually I get up, and I go. And I never regret it.

Shabbat Shalom

The Passover Jew

“This, too, will be for the best.”

Nachum Ish Gamzu

I tucked into a take-out place and asked the man behind the counter what he could make me in two minutes since I didn’t want to miss my train home from New York. He told me he had something ready and sent me quickly on my way. A block and a half later, I realized I had left my briefcase with my computer in the restaurant. Oy. Now I was definitely going to miss the train. I called the number on the take-out bag, checked that it was there and ran back. The nice man handed me my case, looked at me and said, “Repeat after me: gam zo le-tova.” I repeated the mantra, left the restaurant and took off. I made the train.

Gam zo le-tova – this, too, will be for the best - is a talmudic expression attributed to Nachum Ish Gamzu. Hebrew speakers will no doubt notice that his last name and the expression are parallel, and this is intentional. So much was he known for putting what we call a positive spin on life’s challenges, that his last name essentially became “An eternal optimist.” Nachum was a teacher of the sainted Rabbi Akiba according to the Talmud (BT Brakhot 22a) and himself suffered terrible body paralysis that he attributed to his own failure to feed a poor man quickly enough thus causing the man’s death (BT Ta’anit 21a). Nachum is at the center of many Talmudic miracles even though it is unclear what his real name is. His attitude must have stunned those who could not make sense of his upbeat demeanor and his crippled appearance.

The writer Daniel Pink, in his latest book To Sell is Human, describes this as an explanatory style. An explanatory style is the way we explain difficult life events or negative experiences to ourselves. He calls it a kind of self-talk that we use after events to generate internal understanding, following research done by the psychologist Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology. Pink writes: “People who give up easily, who become helpless even in situations where they actually can do something, explain bad events as permanent, pervasive and personal. They believe that negative conditions will endure a long time, that the causes are universal rather than specific to the circumstances, and that they’re the ones to blame.” Seligman believed that this way of seeing the world can turn setbacks into disasters and translates over time into learned helplessness.

Contrast this to a positive explanatory style. Difficult events will pass. They are specific to a set of circumstances and not abiding realties, and they are external to the self rather than inherent. Now let’s apply this thinking to the story of the exodus. Those born into long-term slavery, who know no other reality from one generation to the next, cannot but help believe that their situation is permanent, pervasive and personal. The Jews must have done something to suffer the fate of oppression. This helplessness was not of their own making but helps explain the rabbinic dictum that only 20% of the Jews left Egypt when they could. If you internalize slavery so that it not only describes what you do but how you think, you will never leave Egypt, even if you leave. If you have a positive explanatory style, you can be a slave and be free at the same time because you retain an enduring sense of possibility and jump at opportunities for change.

It is a common Jewish behavior to see history as a series of tragedies, strung together like mismatched pearls on a long string of sadness. You can certainly look at our history that way, and you would have a lot of supportive evidence. In this worldview, we view outsiders as suspicious and see the world filled with hate and disappointment. Alternatively, we can look at the explosive Jewish miracles that defy all explanation and push the tragedies far apart, the way they really appear on a timeline. When we focus on the spaces between calamities, we find our longevity, our influence, our creativity, our amazing capacity for meaningful survival and our commitment to social justice.

What explanatory style explains your Judaism? In other words, what kind of Jew are you? The Passover Jew reads the Haggadah and can only come to one conclusion. Nachum Ish Gamzu was right: This, too, will be for the best.

Shabbat Shalom and have a joyous Passover.

The Passover Jew

“This, too, will be for the best.”

Nachum Ish Gamzu

I tucked into a take-out place and asked the man behind the counter what he could make me in two minutes since I didn’t want to miss my train home from New York. He told me he had something ready and sent me quickly on my way. A block and a half later, I realized I had left my briefcase with my computer in the restaurant. Oy. Now I was definitely going to miss the train. I called the number on the take-out bag, checked that it was there and ran back. The nice man handed me my case, looked at me and said, “Repeat after me: gam zo le-tova.” I repeated the mantra, left the restaurant and took off. I made the train.

Gam zo le-tova – this, too, will be for the best - is a talmudic expression attributed to Nachum Ish Gamzu. Hebrew speakers will no doubt notice that his last name and the expression are parallel, and this is intentional. So much was he known for putting what we call a positive spin on life’s challenges, that his last name essentially became “An eternal optimist.” Nachum was a teacher of the sainted Rabbi Akiba according to the Talmud (BT Brakhot 22a) and himself suffered terrible body paralysis that he attributed to his own failure to feed a poor man quickly enough thus causing the man’s death (BT Ta’anit 21a). Nachum is at the center of many Talmudic miracles even though it is unclear what his real name is. His attitude must have stunned those who could not make sense of his upbeat demeanor and his crippled appearance.

The writer Daniel Pink, in his latest book To Sell is Human, describes this as an explanatory style. An explanatory style is the way we explain difficult life events or negative experiences to ourselves. He calls it a kind of self-talk that we use after events to generate internal understanding, following research done by the psychologist Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology. Pink writes: “People who give up easily, who become helpless even in situations where they actually can do something, explain bad events as permanent, pervasive and personal. They believe that negative conditions will endure a long time, that the causes are universal rather than specific to the circumstances, and that they’re the ones to blame.” Seligman believed that this way of seeing the world can turn setbacks into disasters and translates over time into learned helplessness.

Contrast this to a positive explanatory style. Difficult events will pass. They are specific to a set of circumstances and not abiding realties, and they are external to the self rather than inherent. Now let’s apply this thinking to the story of the exodus. Those born into long-term slavery, who know no other reality from one generation to the next, cannot but help believe that their situation is permanent, pervasive and personal. The Jews must have done something to suffer the fate of oppression. This helplessness was not of their own making but helps explain the rabbinic dictum that only 20% of the Jews left Egypt when they could. If you internalize slavery so that it not only describes what you do but how you think, you will never leave Egypt, even if you leave. If you have a positive explanatory style, you can be a slave and be free at the same time because you retain an enduring sense of possibility and jump at opportunities for change.

It is a common Jewish behavior to see history as a series of tragedies, strung together like mismatched pearls on a long string of sadness. You can certainly look at our history that way, and you would have a lot of supportive evidence. In this worldview, we view outsiders as suspicious and see the world filled with hate and disappointment. Alternatively, we can look at the explosive Jewish miracles that defy all explanation and push the tragedies far apart, the way they really appear on a timeline. When we focus on the spaces between calamities, we find our longevity, our influence, our creativity, our amazing capacity for meaningful survival and our commitment to social justice.

What explanatory style explains your Judaism? In other words, what kind of Jew are you? The Passover Jew reads the Haggadah and can only come to one conclusion. Nachum Ish Gamzu was right: This, too, will be for the best.

Shabbat Shalom and have a joyous Passover.

A Smokin’ Good Idea

“You shall carefully guard your lives.”

Deuteronomy 4:15

Is smoking forbidden in Jewish law? This is an extremely interesting legal issue. Smoking is, of course, a personal preference, and yet the Bible states outright that people should not do anything that will actively compromise their health under the proviso above.

 This past week, The Jerusalem Post covered the story of two rabbis who tried to prevent smoking in their city: Rabbis Shlomo Riskin and Shimon Golan. They wanted to revoke the kashrut license of any food establishment selling cigarettes under the banner of two biblical prohibitions: aiding and abetting another human being who is endangering himself and standing idly by when a life is at risk. The two rabbis said that anyone who sold cigarettes transgressed two legal prohibitions.

 Municipal law, however, forbade the ban because rabbis are only permitted to determine the kashrut of food products. Until people start eating cigarettes, these two rabbis could not forbid their sale. But they could and did begin a campaign to persuade people to view the dangers of smoking within a religious framework as a consequence of their deleterious health risks.

 A few years ago, the High Court ruled against rabbis who tried to ban the kashrut certification of a restaurant that offered belly dancing, which may, if you are not in good shape, actually be worse for you than smoking! Rabbi Riskin regards the problem as profound: "At the very least someone who smokes is transgressing the Torah's commandment to carefully guard your soul, and it could even be considered killing yourself, not to mention the fact that you are endangering others with secondary smoke.

Smoking is a serious problem in many ultra-Orthodox communities where young yeshiva students start as minors. A Haredi marketing firm even leveraged the nicotine withdrawal over Shabbat by producing a clever ad of a havdala set with a pack of Israeli cigarettes on it that said, “Shavua tov” - have a good week - the typical greeting we wish others at the end of Shabbat.

Rabbis who were asked formal legal questions regarding the permissibility of smoking took different sides. Some forbade it because of the verse in Deuteronomy. There was a time when we actually believed that smoking was good for your health. But now that there is enough scientific evidence marshaled against smoking, many rabbis appropriately banned it. Those who permit it do not ignore our verse in Deuteronomy but quote an alternative verse from Psalms that says that God protects the foolish. Smoking is regarded as a foolish behavior, but perhaps God will protect those foolish enough to smoke from endangering themselves. Sounds risky to me. One well-known authority forbade individuals to start smoking but permitted someone already addicted to continue smoking. This shows sensitivity to the difficulties that anyone with addictive behaviors faces and assumes that if no one starts then in one generation the problem would end itself. Those committed to smoking, however, did not pay attention to this voice of authority and found justification in other opinions to their own detriment.

We often use authorities, laws and protocols to protect us from our own worst selves. You can ban large volume cups of soda, but it will still not stop us from drinking them. A kosher lifestyle involves taking care of oneself, even if cigarettes are not under kashrut supervision. Deuteronomy stresses that you have to protect yourself and guard your own life. You cannot expect that someone else will do it for you.

Shabbat Shalom

The Price of Nasty

“You shall neither curse God nor put a curse upon a leader or your people.”

Exodus 22:27

“You are an obvious amateur in Talmud and rabbinic sources. Why show it off?” - comment on website posting of one of my articles. My first thought: what if it’s my eleventh grade Talmud teacher outing my ignorance? Second thought: it’s an anonymous comment filled with rancor and meanness. Get a life.

Many journalists I have spoken to never read writer comments. When asked why - since this should be excellent feedback for writers - their response is almost uniform: “I don’t take crazy people seriously.” Most readers who express themselves subtly and thoughtfully keep their thoughts to themselves, send a letter to the editor or find an alterative route to the author.

This dilemma brought me to the biblical verse above. Why do people curse God or their leaders? Two medieval commentators on this verse suggest that the six verses that come before are about the poor, the widowed and the orphaned. Perhaps in the rage over a personal situation that seems beyond their control, those who are vulnerable curse those they feel are responsible for their circumstances or could possibly do something to change them: God and their leaders. The two Hebrew words for “curse” used in the verse refer, according to some, to an act of defiance and an act of envy. We belittle people for different reasons.

Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, a Spanish medieval poet and exegete, says that the prohibition to curse God or leaders should be observed “both in private and in public.” It dawned on me that the internet combines the worst of both worlds; you diminish someone in private – anonymously – and then you press submit or send and it goes out into the largest public domain possible. The globe is now the stage for an unimaginable amount of cruelty.

Nation, we’ve got a problem. It’s now been called the nasty effect, and it is more than online incivility. We believe that people must express themselves freely and openly in a democratic state. But what we have not enforced is people taking ownership of what they say. Free speech must come with at least one pricetag: your name. If you are afraid to put your name to what you say – in virtually every instance – you should not be allowed to say it.

Why? Because we readers actually do take crazy people seriously. Recently two professors of science communication from University of Wisconsin studied the impact of reader comments on articles that appeared online. The New York Times published the research in a recent article called “This Story Stinks,” which opens with all of the benefits of the internet: its capacity to bridge geographic, cultural and economic distances and generate meaningful debate. Then, the article posits, “someone invented ‘reader comments,’ and paradise was lost.”

            These scientists were interested in what they call the nasty effect, the impact of reader comments on the way in which we frame and understand an issue presented online. By intentionally placing rude comments or curse words in fake reader comments, they discovered that most readers filtered their own attitudes to the material based on anonymous comments. Once upon a time we thought that reader comments created a more open, transparent dialogue, we now understand that such comments can have the pernicious effect of biasing innocent readers and possibly shutting down open conversation.

Michael Bernstein, a computer science professor at Stanford, was quoted in The Washington Post recently critiquing internet anonymity but also suggesting that it “fostered experimentation and new ideas” since users feel comfortable taking risks when no names are involved.

            The same Ibn Ezra mentioned above, however, points us to a companion verse in the book of Proverbs: “And do not mix with dissenters, for disaster comes from them suddenly…”(24:21). Political dissent is a necessity in creating a fair and just society, but let’s not confuse dissent with plain old anonymous meanness. New research may show this to be the ruin of us, not because crotchety people talk out of turn but because we listen to them.

            Or we can take the Tina Fey approach seriously when she tried to fight this phenomenon in protecting her reputation: “…you should have to put your real name, your address and a current photo” when posting a comment. It is time for more responsible journalism to protect the world of ideas and those who promote them. “Anonymous” just doesn’t work anymore.

Shabbat Shalom

From Fasting to Feasting

“…the same days on which Jews enjoyed relief from their foes and the same month which had been transformed for them from one of grief and mourning to one of festive joy.”

Esther 9:22

Today is the fast of Esther, preparing us for Purim. We are invited into the narrative world of ancient Persia, where we find that the book of Esther is a text of extremes. The king goes from extreme happiness to dejection to anger. The empire was 127 provinces. The post containing the king’s various edicts had to be translated into every language in the kingdom. The story opens with a party that lasted for 187 days. The women who competed for the king’s favor dipped themselves in spa treatments for a year. The declaration of a winner stimulated a tax cut only to be met by a tax hike in the last chapter. Esther summoned her maidens and the people to fast for 3 days. I can barely fast for one. This is not a story of moderation.

This ancient tale took us from the neutrality of assimilation to the victimhood of obliteration to the happiness of unexpected triumph. If you follow our roller coaster of fate and the story’s emotional modulations, you find yourself exhausted by chapter ten. Arguably there is no other story in the Bible that throws us from one set of emotions to their opposite in the span of a few verses. Why employ this literary technique?

To answer this question, we turn to the Torah of Rabbi David Hartman, an intellectual Jewish giant who passed away last week.  We will study his teachings as a way of honoring his memory and preserving his legacy. In his article, "The Joy of Torah," he asks if happiness is a desideratum and frames it with the Talmudic statement: "Commandments were not given for your enjoyment (BT Rosh Hashana 28a). With this kind of attitude, commandments become a weight and a burden to uplift us but not tools to bring us greater joy.

            Rabbi Hartman takes a different view, one that connects responsibility with human dignity and possibility:

In receiving mitzvot, we experience joy in knowing that God accepts human beings in their limitations and believes in their capacities to shoulder responsibility...Divine acceptance empowers human acceptance in the form of our serving God with joy. We manifest our love for God by performing the commandments with joy - that is, for their own sake, and not as a means to have God gratify our needs. When I sense God's love, I realize that the reward for doing a mitzva is the mitzva itself (Ethics of the Fathers 4:2).

In addition to the intellectual joys of scholarship, Rabbi Hartman believes that being a “commanded person before God” offers the joy of knowing that God believes in our capacity to achieve greatness. We do not give responsibilities to those who cannot handle them. By demanding that we aspire and inspire others through kindness and compassion, prayer and study, we achieve the joy that comes with virtue.

            The rabbis of the Talmud believed that Purim was a time when Jews accepted the authority of the oral law, a package of mitzvot and demands. But even a literal reading of the text suggests that as Jews became stronger in their expression of Jewish identity, they stabilized their own position in the kingdom. Immediate joy came from the relief of being able to protect themselves and win in battle. Long-term joy came from achieving stability and influence in the kingdom.

            It is hard to appreciate and experience true joy without the contrast to sorrow. Fasting yields to feasting. Mourning to joy. It’s the Jewish way. As the saying, “All is good in the end. If it is not good, it is not the end.”

Shabbat Shalom and a Joyous Purim

10,000 Hours

“Would you give twelve hours a day?”

Isaac Stern

Legend has it that the famous conductor Isaac Stern (1920-2001) was once confronted by an admirer after a concert who said the following to him: “O, Mr. Stern, I would give anything to be able to play the violin as magnificently as you do.” Stern’s answer: “Would you give twelve hours a day?” He probably wasn’t exaggerating.

Stern was born in Poland but moved to the United States with his family before he was two years old. By fifteen he had his debut as a violinist and spent decades traveling the world with his music.  In his lifetime, he discovered and nurtured talent, bringing to the public eye the famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and others. He first played in Israel one year after the founding of the State and maintained a close relationship with Israel, visiting and playing during wartime. An obituary in The Los Angeles Times records the moment when during an air raid siren in Israel, Stern’s performance was interrupted. To calm the audience, he played a piece of Bach; the audience put on their gas masks and watched the rest of the performance. Carnegie Hall’s main auditorium is named after him, and it’s not hard to understand why.

The talent Stern exhibited in his youth was honed and developed over a lifetime of playing and discovering the talents of others. Maimonides citing the Talmud writes, “ According to the effort is the gain.” And it reminds me of a Talmudic debate that also involves twelve hours. The sages believed that study demands rigor: hours, discipline and self-sacrifice. They believed the life of scholarship was earned without luxury; to acquire wisdom meant sleeping on the floor and eating bread dipped in salt. This wasn’t a prescription for knowledge. It was a warning against those who believed that study would bring them material success and status.

Study alone would not support a family so one of the debates around Jewish scholarship was how much time should be given to learning Torah in contrast to earning a living. One formula favored in the Talmud is a 3/9 ratio: 3 hours of work (often manual labor) and 9 hours of learning. We wonder how this worked in reality, but then again this is the Talmudic equivalent of Isaac Stern in the scholarship department. You can’t create great scholars unless there is real investment in both the process of study, the skills and competencies that are necessary and the commitment to mastery. Being a life-long learner is all about sequentially preparing ourselves to make study more nuanced, textured and challenging across the lifespan.

The 10,000 hours rule was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling book, Outliers. Gladwell used research that suggested that mastery in any field depends on spending at least 10,000 hours perfecting one’s skills and competencies. Others, like Geoffrey Colvin in Talent is Overrated, write about the importance of deliberative practice. It’s not only about how many hours you put in but about customized practice that helps you improve on your specific areas of weakness. One of the great tests of talent is one’s willingness to practice what one is not good at and the willingness to practice alone.

Sometimes we want outcomes without effort, but current research suggests what our sages knew 2,000 years ago. It takes 12 hours a day, 10,000 hours a life and mental and physical drive to achieve excellence. What would you like to be great at and are you willing to put in the hours?

Shabbat Shalom

Free John Bates

“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who bestows kindness upon the vulnerable, and who has bestowed goodness on me.”

Jewish blessing

            Those of us who are avid Downton Abbey fans have been waiting patiently to know whether or not John Bates will ever be released from jail, exonerated of his alleged crime, and returned to his loving wife Anna. The dramatic Masterpiece Theater scenes take us to the squalid and dangerous insides of a Victorian prison. It helps us understand the terrible conditions that awaited prisoners and did not always reflect well on our judicial system, here or across the pond, as they say.

If Bates is released from prison, and we find out that the rumor is true that he is Jewish (his real name is Harry Lifshitz), he would make the special blessing above, which many believe should only be said by prisoners accused of murder and other very serious charges. There is a debate as to whether or not one would say this blessing after imprisonment for financial crimes, and according to one source, it is best to check with your local rabbi if you find yourself in this situation (honestly, this the least of your problems).

This blessing is familiar to some because the Talmud records that it should also be said upon several occasions: after you have crossed an ocean, after you have crossed a desert, after recovering from a serious illness and for a woman after childbirth. Many say this blessing after any life-threatening situation.

All of these instances present situations of potential danger where we aware of our vulnerability and rely on God’s grace, even when we may not always feel we deserve it. Each of these situations also involves a significant transition in either time, space or across the life-cycle. It is at these worrying times that we are in greatest need of divine support and human kindness. The thrill of prison release must, no doubt, be tempered by the anxiety of being reunited with one’s family, being accepted in community and finding employment. I find this blessing deeply moving because the word “G-M-L” in Hebrew is more than an act of kindness; it is a spillover of abundance, a shower of grace.

One of the most moving prison-based pieces of Jewish text appears in the 16th century. Many centuries ago, a man named Reuben was incarcerated and asked to be released from jail for Yom Kippur. His request was denied but he was granted another day, of his choice, to be freed from prison to go to the synagogue. Which day or holiday should he request? The question was posed to Rabbi David Ibn Zimra, a 16th century rabbi who authored over 3,000 responsa. Legend has it that he died at 110. Scholars believe he probably died in his mid-90s.

The rabbi considered the possibilities and also reviewed the legal literature where he had first encountered a similar question. The answer given by another scholar was Yom Kippur as it is the holiest day of the year and a time for profound repentance. Reuben’s second choice should be Purim because it is a time of rejoicing in the reading of the scroll of Esther and a time to display God’s great kindness on Jews in history through miracles. But, Rabbi Zimra says, “do not rely upon his words.” He was unhappy with the answer. Instead, Rabbi Zimra bases his answer on the principle that you never skip over the possibility or opportunity for a mitzva. Every day presents us with various choices. Never put off goodness when given the chance. Since Reuben is in prison and does not know if this offer will be sustained, he must leave prison on his first opportunity: the next day.

This is the Jewish version of carpe diem. But it is more than that. Freedom and autonomy are such powerful and primal needs that we should never wait for some future time if we can access them now.

Most of us are not in prison, and we will have to wait and see if Mr. Bates ever makes it out. But there are many metaphoric prisons that trap people today: painful relationships, bad jobs, addictive habits. When we have the chance for freedom we must take it at the very first opportunity. This does not mean running away from a situation; this often leads to later entrapment, like a prisoner who tries to escape and gets more years in prison when he’s caught. Freedom involves the personal maturity to control our lives by making good choices and sustaining them and blessing the chance to do so. Seize today.

Shabbat Shalom

A Friend in Need

“At the sight of misfortune you take fright…”

Job 6:21

American humorist Arnold H. Glasow once said, “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” This begs the sensitive question of how to get in the way when your friend is on the way down. For our purposes, going down can be interpreted in two ways: 1) the friend in question spirals downward morally or emotionally and needs to get back on track, 2) the friend is suffering from loss, confusion or both and seeks answers and companionship.

 Some people shy away from others in need, even close friends. They may tell themselves it is none of their business or act as if help would be offensive. This may be true, but it may not. It may be an excuse masked in fear. We don’t like seeing other people’s vulnerabilities. “It’s too hard for me.” Really? Seeing friends who are depressed or under the shadow of addiction or marital crisis reminds us often of our own weaknesses and anxieties. But friendship is cyclical, and friends do cycle out of relationships when they feel betrayed or neglected at times of need. Maimonides speaks at length of the importance of rebuking a friend who has lost his or her way but privately and tenderly so that the friend understands your interest is out of love and commitment. You care. You are invested.

 The second circumstance can be more nuanced and difficult: being a friend to someone who is suffering not because of his or her own doing but out of tragic circumstances. We want to be present but don’t always know how to be present. Does the person want to be left alone or is loneliness threatening and painful? Does the person want to talk about the problem or avoid it altogether? Is a friend looking for conversation or distraction? It is hard to get it right, especially when there is no right.

 Both situations qualify for inclusion in Job’s category of misfortune above. Job had a life that went from sweet to sour in a matter of days. He had a wife and three friends, but each of those relationships proved more alienating than comforting. The Talmud advises us not to be like the friends of Job, helping us understand what not to do when friends needs us. What did they do wrong?

When Job lost his children tragically and sat in mourning with scabs and wounds, the biblical text sings the friends’ praises: “When Job’s three friends heard all about these calamities that had befallen him, each came from his home…They met together to go and console him” (2:11). The three friends could not recognize Job, such was his devastation. They broke out into loud weeping, tore their robes and “sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. None spoke a word to him for they saw how very great was his suffering” (2:12-13).

 The silence of the friends during the early days surfaces their kindness, as Confucius wrote, “Silence is a true friend who never betrays.”

The problem was that these friends did not stay silent. They began to speak. They began to judge. Do good people suffer? There must be a reason for tragedy. As each of them speak, Job realizes just how alone he is. His losses were not enough. His suffering was compounded by the knowledge that his wife did not understand him nor did his friends. He felt alienated from and punished by God. Whom do you turn to when there is no one to turn to?

 Job finds the strength to reprimand his friends: “A friend owes loyalty to one who fails,” he tells them. He calls his friends fickle – like a wadi. A wadi is a dry riverbed. It has the shape of a riverbed but has dried out, offering the illusion of commitment but, at close inspection, there is no water. Job’s friends look like friends but, like riverbeds in the staunch heat, “they disappear where they are.” In the end he arrives at a terrible conclusion: “You are as nothing.”

 We cannot be nothing for our friends in need. We need to be something. That something may be just about being present and silent. Sometimes a hug can penetrate a soul much deeper than words.

Shabbat Shalom

Re-Generation

“We hoped that the experiment would succeed and would be tried by others, and we knew that we had a lot to learn.

Joseph Baratz

            On October 29, 1910, ten men and two women founded the first kibbutz in Israel: Kibbutz Degania, not far from the Kinneret. Joseph Baratz, who had the first child to ever be born on kibbutz, was one of the ten men, and in 1960, he wrote his memoirs of half a century of kibbutz life. Eleanor Roosevelt, who visited Degania, wrote an introduction to the book. The social experiment fascinated her, and she observed that the “desire to live in common and share in common” represents “high thinking and unselfishness of action.”

            I saw the kibbutz last week and found an English translation of Baratz’ book and could not put it down. Looking around the green fields and early kibbutz stone buildings, it is hard to imagine what it was like to come to a desolate expanse of swampland, unprotected and rife with malaria. Baratz left his family in the Ukraine with the passion of a young Zionist at age 16 to become a peasant of the soil of Palestine.  He writes of reacting against his upbringing and the surrounding culture, believing that “in order to construct our country we had to first reconstruct ourselves.”

            He was afraid to tell his parents. When he finally confessed his desire to go to Palestine, his father went straight to the rabbi who offered an emphatic “no.” A boy of sixteen should not undertake such a journey; he might “fall among free-thinkers” and drift into irreligious ways. But his parents eventually broke down and gave him the money for the journey. His mother called out as the train left the station: “Joseph, my child, be a good Jew,” and Joseph was off to a new life.

            Joseph found a group of like-minded new friends willing to work the land. All the theory that they had discussed about nature and human nature was then put to the test. Growing food was not about supporting people, as necessary as this was to a country that was not yet a country. It was a philosophical statement for these fledgling Zionists about “the wholeness” they lacked in exile.

The group was totally committed to its goal of living collectively and tending the land and had a heated discussion about putting off marriage and children for at least five years until the kibbutz had initial success. One of the chief debaters against marriage at the time fell in love a month later, married and had the second child born on the kibbutz: Moshe Dayan.

The idea, radical as it was at the time, was that people would lack nothing because they possessed nothing; strength would come from the community and go back into the community. “Nobody would have to be ambitious or to worry for himself.”

Degania, which means cornflower in Hebrew, would, over the next decades, attract some of the most famous Zionists and politicians, including A.D. Gordon, Joseph Trumpeldor, and the poet Rachel. It became a flagship kibbutz, spawning other kibbutzim and collective projects. In Baratz’ words, it fulfilled a dream of what the Jewish nation could become on its own terms: “The land had lost its fertility and it seemed to us that we ourselves, divorced from it, had become barren in spirit. Now we must give it our strength and it would give us back our creativeness.”

The heyday of the kibbutz movement is long past. Much of the social experiment failed, but we also failed it. We have traded group laundry for the iPod, shared dining for Facebook networking. But we cannot forget Baratz’ youthful enthusiasm which turned into a mature philosophy of obligation to land and country. In its largely secular flavor, the kibbutz movement imprinted Israel with values that twinned the deepest biblical connection to the earth with the talmudic sensibilities of collective responsibility.

What will our modern ideologies build to replace what we have lost?

Shabbat Shalom

Unaffiliated?

“Matters of Torah only endure in a person who kills himself over it.”

BT Shabbat 83b

            The Pew Research Center just released a global study of religion whose findings have appeared in newspapers and social media everywhere. They found that one out of every six people has no religious affiliation – the third largest group in relation to religion, equal to the world population of Catholics, about 16 %. Christians double that population. Jews are only about 0.2% of the world’s population. An increasing number of people, however, do not attach themselves to any world faith. This should be of concern to anyone who cares about religion.

Jon Stewart once said “Religion: it’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.” In a world where religion has been the source of so much violence and internecine battling, many people will just walk away altogether from faith. But in the absence of religion people may lose a language in which to express deep universal sentiments about love, suffering and community. In the words of a friend who began his involvement in Judaism late in life, “Since I’ve become involved with Jewish life, not one day has passed where I have asked a question about my purpose in life.”

Clergy and religious leaders often spend the majority of their time trying to strengthen faith in those who show a sparkle of commitment, and yet the disengagement of tens of thousands should make us think more about what it takes to enhance faith in the world generally.

            Contrast this spiritual malaise to a passage of Talmud that highlights the role of passion and religion.  A rabbi entered a study hall and suddenly a matter he had studied for many years about an esoteric detail was suddenly clarified for him by one sage and he had yet another level of illumination. One cannot miss a moment of study for int  at one moment, all clarification can occur.  Torah is only attained by one who kills himself in a tent” ‘This is the Torah: A person who dies in a tent (Numbers 19:14)

Rabbi Yonatan said: One should never prevent himself from attenidnging the study hall or from engaging in matters of Torah, even at the moment of death.

I will sing to the Lord for God has been good to me.” “I trust in Your kindness; my heart will exult in Your deliverance.” Psalms 13:6

Take It Outside

“It is a commandment to place the Hanukkah light outside by the entrance to one’s house.”

BT Shabbat 21b

            We are entering the last days of Hanukah and filling our homes with sanctified light. In Israel today many menorot are lit on outside house walls in glass boxes fulfilling the legal requirement mentioned above in the Talmud. We traditionally light the menorah outside, but today we light it inside. Why the change?

            Hanukah is a holiday that has internal and external dimensions. Internally, we are supposed to reflect on ancient and current miracles; we add special prayers tucked into our regular prayers for gratitude that we have survived in impossible ways and add a whole section of prayer called Hallel to every morning service as hymns of appreciation and praise.

            But Hanukah has an external dimension as well. We are supposed to publicize miracles and not keep them to ourselves by lighting in places that will attract the attention of the street, both in terms of time and space. According to the Talmud, the menorah has to be lit as people are leaving the marketplace and can be lit until the last stragglers leave the market stalls. It was to be lit outside one’s house to maximize viewing. The text above continues: “If one dwells on an upper floor, one places it by the window that faces out to the public.” The menorah was the billboard of ancient times, letting fellow Jews and neighbors remember that our present is because of our past.

            Yet in darker days, publicizing miracles was also a way of publicizing the fact that you were Jewish. Sadly, the problem of anti-Semitism is almost as old as Hanukah itself. The Talmud continues: “In a time of danger, one places it on the table, and that is enough.” If you cannot publicize the miracle to the world outside your home, make sure that your home is filled with light and publicize the miracle to your family.

            Today we light inside as a leftover to sadder days; this residual practice should be overturned in times of Jewish security, as it has all over Israel. We should not be afraid to state who we are proudly and publically and feel protected enough in our ethnic and religious identity to share it with the world – a simple candelabrum signals not only miracles but our state of freedom.

            In this spirit, it is time to give the Gross family a Hanukah present and finally bring Alan Gross home from Cuba to his freedom. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stated that Alan is being held illegally and in violation of international law. The United States Senate unanimously adopted S. Res. 609 calling for Alan's immediate and unconditional release. Now it is time to do our work. One week out of the 25th anniversary of the March for Soviet Jewry on the National Mall, we cannot now stay silent. We didn’t then. We cannot now. If we can get one million Jews out of Russia, we can get one Jewish man from the United States out of Cuba.

Alan’s wife Judy sent a heartfelt letter this week calling for support because there has been recent media attention and genuine progress on the case in the past few weeks. In Judy’s words, “I really need some additional support. I have launched a petition on Change.org which urges the Government of Cuba to release Alan and also calls on both the Cuban and U.S. governments to sit down and get my husband's case resolved.”
You can find recent developments at www.bringalanhome.org.
Please take a minute to click and sign the petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/cuba-and-the-united-states-free-american-citizen-alan-gross.

In December 2009, Alan was arrested. In December 2012, let’s get him out of jail. This Hanukah, be the light for Alan Gross.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Hanukah

To Redeem Suffering

“Why do you hide Your face…?”

Job 13:24

            Buddhists believe that Nirvana is the end of suffering. That is how you know that Judaism is not Buddhism. If we put an end to suffering, what would Jews talk about? We could have no more Suffering Olympics, where we debate who had the most terrible visit to the dentist and whose child has greater woes. Oppression was a second skin for us for most of history. It is hard to shed that skin. But in our most ancient text, the Bible, suffering is not a “Jewish problem.” It is a universal condition that demands a response.

            Rabbi Harold Kushner makes this point elegantly in his new book, The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person: “Job’s problems are the problems of Everyman, not only of Jews.” This may explain why Job is not from the land of Israel, nor is any mention made of his being Jewish. The characters do not have Hebrew names; no one in the book alludes to earlier events in the Bible that are formative throughout the rest of wisdom literature, like Sinai and Exodus. One sage of the Talmud went further. Job was a fictional character, a literary platform to discuss human suffering and how a compassionate God could ever permit the cruelty we sometimes observe in our world.

            Kushner takes us through ancient and modern scholarship on the book to try to answer the profound theological questions posed by human suffering. He refuses to accept any reading where God is painted as inferior to human beings or where God’s master plan is so complex and elusive that we must make peace with randomness and accept fate with a beatific smile.

            Job, he contends, is not satisfied with God’s response of mystery as much as he is warmed by God’s presence. God took Job seriously. God engaged in conversation with Job about his suffering. God’s very presence was a solace. “I find God in the miracle of human resilience in the face of the world’s imperfections, even the world’s cruelty.” God is the force within each of us that prompts goodness in the encounter with evil. What is worse than suffering is abandonment, the sense that we face our ultimate trials alone.

            Resilience is a spiritual response to suffering. But it is not resilience alone. It is resilience fueled by compassion - strength powered by kindness - that colors the kind of resilience we embody when darkness approaches. When Job suffered immense, incomprehensive losses he asked, nevertheless, for the God who allowed the tragedy to happen not to hide His face.

            No one wants to look at suffering squarely. We do not want to look at the eyes of the homeless man, at the abused woman, at the neighbor who lost a child, at the friend struggling with chronic illness, at the spouse we hurt in an argument. But look we must. Because if we hide our faces then we have added immeasurably to the suffering of others. The most intimate form of communication in the Bible is to encounter the other, panim el panim – face to face. Anything less is inhumane.

We cannot explain suffering or why God is good and good people suffer. Anyone who claims to have an answer is either naïve or arrogant. In most instances we cannot eliminate it. But we have the capacity to  take away some of its sting.

And that is why Hanukah is a time of joy for us because we celebrate resilience in the face of oppression. When we could have given up, we did not. We did not let our underdog status compromise our hope in the impossible. The suffering is the process; the triumph of spirit is the outcome. Hanukah teaches us the lesson that, “All will be good in the end; if it is not good, it is not the end.” This does not mean that suffering is redemptive; it only means that we cannot always see, in the thick of trouble, our own resilience and capacity to make meaning out of the most challenging situations. We can. Hanukah teaches that we must.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Hanukah!

In God We Trust

“It is better to trust in God than to put confidence in human beings.”

Psalms 118:8

I was grabbing a cup of coffee on Tuesday morning at Penn Station in New York when I heard a well-dressed young man talking loudly on his cellphone in an agitated voice. He was holding an Amtrak police report and telling his mother that his wallet and ID were taken. I naturally overheard snippets of the conversation and asked him if he needed some help. He had no train ticket; I asked him where he was going and what it would cost and gave him the cash I had in my wallet. Thirty dollars. He was very gracious, leaned in to give me an awkward and unwelcome hug, said thank you and called my cellphone to leave his number. If I texted him my address, he would send back the money.

About a half an hour later (my train was delayed), I saw the same man speaking loudly on the phone in front of another woman waiting for the train. Suddenly the likelihood that I was scammed seemed certain. I walked over to the station police to find out if he really did file a report. He had. The office, nevertheless, looked at me from his newspaper with disdain. In a heavy New York accent, he cautioned me: “Lady, when you’re in a train station, do me a favor. Get on your train. Don’t give anyone money, OK?”

At home that evening, I discussed what had happened with my kids. “You’ll never see the money,” my son said. I didn’t expect to, but I texted the number anyway to see if he got home. Guess what? He did not write back.

Honestly, I would do the same thing again. It’s only money. After all, one of my children could easily have been robbed in a train station. I could have been in this man’s position, and I, too, would have had to rely on the kindness of strangers. The kindness of strangers is probably more important to us that any other kindness, following in the Abrahamic tradition. The kindness of a stranger affirms that we are on this planet not merely as self-interested beings who take care of those we know but are part of a universal grammar of humanity.

Today is Rosh Hodesh Kislev, the Hebrew month that houses the holiday of Hanukkah. On this day, we add special prayers of thanksgiving to acknowledge a new chapter of time and the goodness that it brings. In these prayers, we read the verse from psalms above that tells us not to place ultimate trust in human beings. Only God is our refuge, following the famous witticism of American statistician William Edwards Deming, “In God we trust; all others must bring data.”

Throughout the Hebrew Bible we read a great deal about the limitations of trust. In Proverbs 3:5, we are even told to minimize self-trust for a posture of humility: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and lean not on your own understanding.” And during the ancient days of Hanukkah we could not rely upon the goodness of strangers. As a small people, we had to fortify ourselves for war. And today we find ourselves, sadly, in a similar position and must do all that we can to assure that Israel remains strong and secure in the vulnerable days ahead.

Although we ultimately can trust only in God, we cannot live a life of purpose and meaning unless we learn to trust other people. Some number of them will abuse our kindnesses and exploit our trust. They will think of us as naïve. Let them. That is the price we pay for being human. But the larger price would be to stop trusting people and withhold all small transactions of goodness out of suspicion. The result would be a world much contracted, devoid of sanctity and blessing. Giving of ourselves to strangers allows us to become more loving and gracious in a world full of pain. We can all afford to trust a little bit more in others.

Shabbat Shalom

The Art of the Impossible

“Her rulers judge for gifts; her priests give rulings for a fee; and her prophets divine for pay.”

Micah 3:7

            This has been a week of much drama and change in the United States. An important presidential election is over, and with it the spate of negative campaigning and character assassination is blessedly done. It’s time to reach across the aisle and heal the wounds. And it’s going to take a lot of time. At the same time, the landscape of much of the New Jersey and New York shoreline has shifted as people are only starting to come out from under a startling hurricane that left many homeless and in the dark. Both situations of uncertainty, different as they are, demand strong and honest leadership. Leadership matters most when stakes and outcomes are ambiguous, and we need a guiding figure of wisdom and clarity in situations of confusion.

            In continuing the third week of our view from the ancient prophets, we find Micha railing against poor leadership specifically leadership which is for purchase. The quote above does not single out any one paradigm of leadership. Kings, priests and prophets can all have a price when power is more important than integrity. In criticizing prophets, Micha is taking a jab at his own form of leadership, understanding that there is no one ideal platform for power. Any and all can become abused, particularly when money is involved.

            If you look carefully at the Bible, you notice that we have different models of leadership: king, judge, priest and prophet. Each of them comes under scrutiny because none of them can guarantee that power will be harnessed appropriately and transparently. Changing models of leadership helps us focus more on outcomes than on platforms.

            Micha does not leave us, however, with a depressing outlook on authority, suggesting only that every form of leadership is corruptible. Some of the most famous lines in the Bible come from Micha’s observation of a world where good leadership reigns:

·      “For instruction shall come forth from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” ( 4:2).”

·      “Nation shall not take up sword against nation. They shall never again know war” (4:3).

·      “Every person shall sit under his grapevine or fig tree with no one to disturb him” (4:4).

·      “What is good and what does the Lord require of you? Only to do justice, and to love goodness and to walk modestly with your God” (6:8).

When leadership is at its best, it seems that the impossible becomes possible. Nations put down swords. People live without disturbance. Vaclav Havel, the last president of Czechoslovakia, wrote a book called The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice. There he shares that he had become suspicious of himself as a person of power. He says that he and others “used to condemn the powerful for enjoying advantages that deepened the gulf between them and the rest.” But then he found himself in power: “We are beginning, inadvertently but dangerously, to resemble in some ways our contemptible precursors.”

Havel was not only being modest. He was being honest. He realized that power always has dangers, even for those who thought themselves incorruptible. At least he was courageous enough to admit it and perhaps catch himself before falling.

Steven Covey writes in The Speed of Trust that, “Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust.” In the aftermath of consequential politics and heartbreaking natural disaster, let us hope and pray for responsible expressions of power ahead to clear the way for a better tomorrow.

Shabbat Shalom

The Valley of Decision

“Multitudes upon multitudes in the Valley of Decision! For the day of the lord is at hand in the Valley of Decision.”

Joel 4:14

How strange, I thought, to call a place the Valley of Decision. But somehow if we could imagine decision-making in topographical terms, a valley might just capture what it is like to be in the throes of a difficult decision. A valley is a low area surrounded by mountains. We often make critical decisions from a low place, a place of insecurity and vulnerability; when we look all around us, we feel surrounded by heights that we believe we cannot climb. Joel continued to describe this place: “Sun and moon are darkened, and stars withdraw their brightness.” We’ve all been there.

This powerful image comes to us from one of the 12 minor prophetic books. They were minor only in size, not in spirit. The biblical prophet Joel bemoaned a plague of locusts that is described, in lyrical and devastating terms, as destroying crops and ruining the ancient Israelite economy.  Joel called for collective reflection and repentance. He used the plague as a parable for other large challenges that seem beyond our control and can have severe and difficult consequences.

This is not the first time we meet a Joel in the Bible. The prophet Samuel had two sons: Joel and Aviyah. We learn that these two sons did not follow in their pious father’s footsteps: “They were bent on gain; they accepted bribes, and they subverted justice” (I Samuel 8:3). Their evil paved the way for kingship because the people rightly rejected Samuel’s sons as leaders. Some midrashim, rabbinic embellishments on the Bible, actually identify these two Joels as one and the same person, believing that Joel saw the error of his ways and reformed himself. This would have given him a lens with which to speak to the people from a place of personal darkness and change. Perhaps only one who has spent real time in the Valley of Decision can speak with authority about its darkness to others.

An eighteenth-century German commentator, Rabbi David Altschuler, observes that this place was really the Valley of Jehoshephat, a word that means “The Lord judges” and also mentioned in Joel. This valley was likely the site of a court that made quick and definitive judgments. Multitudes would gather there for the sake of justice to have their cases adjudicated. In other words, you came to the valley to have your case decided. Someone will always leave court elated and someone else will leave despondent.

Deborah Grayson Riegel’s new book, Oy Vey Isn’t a Strategy (I actually thought it was), offers 25 solutions for personal and professional success. She shares that when she coaches clients, they have often experienced disappointment and are quick to self-soothe. Sometimes this takes the form of believing that someone else’s burdens are bigger, thus making theirs smaller. While she acknowledges that this strategy shows willingness to move to a happier place, she invites the person back into their pain: “Too many of us feel that we’re not entitled to mourn when others have greater losses, or that if we do grieve, we’ll never leave that dark place.” In the same chapter, she quotes the wonderful Yiddish expression: “God gives us burdens and also shoulders.”

One of the gifts of the prophets was to give us a universal language in which to express human experience. Joel gives us the gift of his Valley of Decision and allows us to enter a dark place of ambiguity and confusion where everything seems overwhelming and large. But once we can enter that place of pain and acknowledge it and make affirmative decisions, we find ourselves on the edge of the valley and getting closer to a place of greater stability and confidence. We can’t be afraid to enter the valley. If we are, we’ll never scale the mountain.

Shabbat Shalom

The Hand of God

“And I have grasped you by the hand.”

Isaiah 42:6

One of the most iconic images in the art world is the finger of God reaching out to the finger of Adam and raising him up in the act of creation. Michelangelo’s rendition of the creation story on the Sistine chapel ceiling remains a constant visual imprint for many of us who read these texts. The fingers almost touching communicates an intimacy that many of us strive for in our relationship with God or find forever elusive if we feel “out of touch.”

Andrew Graham-Dixon, chief art critic for London’s Sunday Telegraph, wrote the book Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel and describes the physical and artistic feat of this great artist. When working on some of the largest figure compositions, the entire fresco plaster became infected with “great blooms of fungus,” and Michelangelo compromised his eyesight working for years at the painting.  Graham-Dixon wonders why the artist rendered God’s creation of Adam with a finger since other artists depicted the scene differently. Here is his theory:

“I began to see it as the creation of the education of Adam, because that’s the symbolism of the finger. God writes on us with his finger, in certain traditions of theology…The finger is the conduit through which God’s intelligence, his ideas and his morality seep into Man. And if you look at that painting very closely, you see that God isn’t actually looking at Adam, he’s looking at his own finger, as if to channel his own instructions and thoughts through that finger.”

Perhaps – and this is just conjecture – Michelangelo read Isaiah 42, the haftarah reading that accompanies creation. There, we read that God created and stretched out the heavens and spread forth the earth and gave breath to people who live on the earth. But Isaiah’s creation account does not stop there. It takes an intimate and visual turn. “I the Lord, in My grace, have summoned you. And I have grasped you by the hand. I created you and appointed you a covenant people, a light to the nations…” (6-7)

God not only made human beings. In this account, God grasped us by the hand and took us on a tour of creation to give us a purpose: be a light to others. This image of light is quite literal as Isaiah continues: “Opening eyes deprived of light. Rescuing prisoners from confinement, from the dungeon of those who sit in darkness” (42:7). Being a light to others means going to places of darkness and shedding the light of rescue and relief. Wherever there is darkness, strive to bring the light.

This past Shabbat, we re-opened Genesis and re-read the majestic story of creation.  God was the Creator, all-powerful and distant. But in the second chapter, God invested the divine breath into the muddy form of man, imbuing human beings with sanctity, taking them from inanimate, powerless creatures to beings who – with each exhalation – were bringing the divine presence into the world. And when we finished reading Genesis about the creation of man and woman, we turned to Isaiah to understand not how we were formed but why.

It is there that Isaiah reminds us that God created light and then grasped us by the hand and showed us a world with many pockets of darkness. God called us a covenant people, meaning that we are to be partners in the act of creation. God created light in the world and created us. Now it is our turn to create the light. What are you doing to partner in the on-going creation and bring more light into the world?

Shabbat Shalom

Supporting Role

“And I have grasped you by the hand.”

Isaiah 42:6

One of the most iconic images in the art world is the finger of God reaching out to the finger of Adam and raising him up in the act of creation. Michelangelo’s rendition of the creation story on the Sistine chapel ceiling remains a constant visual imprint for many of us who read these texts. The fingers almost touching communicates an intimacy that many of us strive for in our relationship with God or find forever elusive if we feel “out of touch.”

Andrew Graham-Dixon, chief art critic for London’s Sunday Telegraph wrote the book Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel and describes the physical and artistic feat of this great artist. When working on some of the largest figure compositions, the entire fresco plaster became infected with “great blooms of fungus,” and Michelangelo compromised his eyesight working for years at the painting.  Graham-Dixon wonders why the artist rendered God’s creation of Adam with a finger since other artists depicted the scene differently. Here is his theory:

“I began to see it as the creation of the education of Adam, because that’s the symbolism of the finger. God writes on us with his finger, in certain traditions of theology…The finger is the conduit through which God’s intelligence, his ideas and his morality seep into Man. And if you look at that painting very closely, you see that God isn’t actually looking at Adam, he’s looking at his own finger, as if to channel his own instructions and thoughts through that finger.”

Perhaps – and this is just conjecture – Michelangelo read Isaiah 42, the haftarah reading that accompanies creation. There, we read that God created and stretched out the heavens and spread forth the earth and gave breath to people who live on the earth. But Isaiah’s creation account does not stop there. It takes an intimate and visual turn. “I the Lord, in My grace, have summoned you. And I have grasped you by the hand. I created you and appointed you a covenant people, a light to the nations…” (6-7)

God not only made human beings. In this account, God grasped us by the hand and took us on a tour of creation to give us a purpose: be a light to others. This image of light is quite literal as Isaiah continues: “Opening eyes deprived of light. Rescuing prisoners from confinement, from the dungeon of those who sit in darkness” (42:7). Being a light to others means going to places of darkness and shedding the light of rescue and relief. Wherever there is darkness, strive to bring the light.

This past Shabbat, we re-opened Genesis and re-read the majestic story of creation.  God was the Creator, all-powerful and distant. But in the second chapter, God invested the divine breath into the muddy form of man, imbuing human beings with sanctity, taking them from inanimate, powerless creatures to beings who – with each exhalation – were brining the divine presence into the world. And when we finished reading Genesis about the creation of man and woman, we turned to Isaiah to understand not how we were formed but why.

It is there that Isaiah reminds us that God created light and then grasped us by the hand and showed us a world with many pockets of darkness. God called us a covenant people, meaning that we are to be partners in the act of creation. God created light in the world and created us. Now it is our turn to create the light. What are you doing to partner in the on-going creation and bring more light into the world?

Shabbat Shalom

A Pair of Shoes

“We will buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes.”

Amos 8:6

W. H. Auden once wrote, “Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.” I find this hard to accept. I really hope our poet had good friends. Not everyone in the world is out to exploit others. The Bible understood that some people were naturally susceptible to exploitation and warned us lest we begin to think too much like Auden and not enough like Amos.

Our verse above is often twinned with another from Amos: “Because they have sold for silver those whose cause was just, and the needy for a pair of shoes” (2:6) One contemporary Israeli commentary observes that this is the price of injustice. Those in positions of power and authority will have become so corrupt and extortionist that in order to live under their leadership, the poor will sell themselves for basic necessities.

Another interpreter believes that shoes are an inexpensive, insignificant item and that the choice of this metaphor illustrates the depth of a corrupt society. Another posits the exact opposite.  Most of the poor go barefoot because shoes are expensive; corrupt leaders will sell out the poor to keep themselves in shoes. Yet other commentaries understand this verse more literally. Shoes were often used in business or other deals as a sign of transaction – this is true in the rejection of Levirate marriage as described in the book of Ruth. Rashi sees shoes as representative of land purchase, perhaps because land was often measured by footfalls.

Rashi translates this term not as shoe but as a reference to a “locked door” since the two words have a common Hebrew root. The rich would buy up land from the poor, locking away real estate for themselves and taking away the little security that a needy person might have.

There is a very old midrash on this expression that states that when his brothers sold Joseph, they used the money to purchase shoes for themselves. In essence, they were benefitting personally from the sale of another human being. While this purchase never makes an actual appearance in the Bible, Genesis does tell us that after Joseph’s brothers threw him in a pit, they sat down to eat lunch. This small detail tells us everything we need to know about their callousness at that moment. Subsequently, the expression “to sell someone for a pair of shoes” is used to capture particularly harsh and cutting behavior that lacks compassion and humanity.

There is a Hasidic story that I have always loved and think of sometimes in the face of rejection. A young yeshiva student who was dirt poor went door-to-door in his village to ask for a few dollars to buy himself a pair of shoes. The young man was considered a prodigy but still his feet were bare. He approached the door of the village’s most wealthy family only to have the door slammed in his face. He was utterly humiliated. Years passed and the young scholar achieved great fame and was scheduled to speak in the village of his old yeshiva. The wealthy man who ignored his plea years earlier approached him and offered to cover the cost of publishing the scholar’s first book. In earnest, the prodigy looked him straight in the eye and rejected his offer with these words: “No thank you. But there was a time when you could have had me for a pair of shoes…”

            Amos understood that compassion must be a greater driver in creating a just society than self-interest. The fact that you can buy someone for a pair of shoes does not mean that you should. Those who have that kind of power over others – be it financial or emotional - must temper it with grace. Kindness is the measure of a good society.

Shabbat Shalom

Peace on High

“Oseh Shalom Bimromav”

(Who Makes Peace on High)

Job 20:25

            In Leonard Bernstein’s symphony “Kaddish,” the composer begins the lyrics with a call to an ancient and hallowed Father who has been rejected by the universe. He says that he wants to pray. He wants to say his own kaddish in case there is no one to say it after him. He wants to know when his own life will end and will it be while everyone is singing. He claims to approach God not with fear “but with a certain respectful fury.” The anger gives way eventually to surrender and submission and ends with a call of tenderness: “We are one, after all, You and I; together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.” This last line perhaps best represents the prayer struggle on Yom Kippur. We reflect on our own weaknesses but also on a broken world. We have to make peace with ourselves and peace with God.

In the traditional Kaddish, “Oseh shalom bimromav” is perhaps one of the best known lines of Jewish prayer, the line that begins the closing of Kaddish and one we will hear again and again this holiday season. Many people do not recognize that this expression is from the book of Job, lodged in a very specific spiritual context. The kaddish, which today is most associated with mourning, never began that way. It is a product of Babylonian Jewry and is almost two thousand years old. It is written in Aramaic with snatches of Hebrew, pasted together with clauses from the Hebrew Bible. It was originally uttered by rabbis at the end of study or teaching, and this custom is still practiced today. While we do not know exactly why the practice of prayer after study emerged it may have provided an important transition from intellectual to spiritual space or the move from the cognitive to the emotional.

            When the kaddish became associated with mourners, most likely during the medieval period, it became apparent that it functioned as “tziduk ha-din” or the rationalization of God’s judgment. In the Talmud, we are mandated to bless on the bad as we do on the good because as humans we are not aware of a larger master plan where good turns to bad and bad turns to good. What we see and experience never provides the full picture or context of events and emotions. Kaddish never mentions death, it only mentioned praise of God, in accordance with a verse from Ezekiel 38:30 where God says that His name will become enhanced and sanctified and known in the world. These very words form the basis of kaddish’s first line where we are tasked with enlarging God’s name and presence in the world.

            And here is where Job, the ancient Leonard Bernstein, comes in. Job is the Bible’s suffering servant who never lost faith despite the intense difficulties he faced. He was a pawn in a great theological debate between God and Satan. Satan provoked God, waging that people only believe and worship God because their lives are filled with blessings. Take it away and you will take away their faith and loyalty. God pointed to Job as an example of a person whose faith would never cave in due to a change in circumstance. To prove the point, God took apart Job’s life piece by tragic piece. This wager was regarded as so unlikely that the Sages of the Talmud believe that Job was a fictional character, a platform for discussing the theodicy, why bad things happen to good people.

            By the end of the book Job was rewarded with a return of his wealth and children to “replace” those he lost. But before God restored Job’s abundance, God told Job that he would never understand the master plan. There are mysteries he would never plumb, discoveries he would never make. He must walk the world humbly because so much will never be revealed and more will be beyond his control. Connecting kaddish to Job is critical because they accomplish, in many ways, the same outcome. Magnified and sanctified – we acknowledge in our times of grief that so much eludes us.

This theme is central to our prayers on Yom Kippur. We acknowledge that God is the King of Kings, the Father of all Fathers and we can only hope and pray for a good year ahead but what will happen is beyond us. When we read “who makes peace on high” in Job, we are actually acknowledging that God can make peace in the heavens, a place that we will never access. As for peace on earth, that’s our job. It’s a lot harder.  We may never know what happens on high, but that cannot minimize our responsibility and accountability for what happens in the here and now. Magnify and sanctify life. Pray for yourself, your people and the world and then go out and do whatever is in your control to change yourself, your people and the world.

Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova!