Be Our Guardian

“Guardian of this holy nation, guard the remnant of the holy people, and let not the holy nation perish…”

Excerpt from Tachanun

Life-threatening danger to our people surfaces multiple, often conflicting issues - from the practical to the existential. As sirens blast across Israel and the news is dominated by pictures of rubble and rockets piercing Israeli skies, we cannot help but ask ourselves: How long will this last? How can we resolve this conflict on a more permanent basis? Is there hope?

At such times, I find myself thinking often of one of my favorite daily prayers: Tachanun. The word literally refers to a type of prayer: supplication, which demands self-contraction, humility and beseeching God. The Talmud reads a verse in Daniel as the basis for such prayers: “I turned my face to the Lord, God, devoting myself to prayer and supplication [tachanunim] in fasting, sackcloth and ashes” [9:3]. Many different sages had personal supplications, usually a pastiche of different biblical verses designed to petition God for mercy. This prayer - because of its solemn nature - is often the first to be abandoned in synagogue at times of joy, like the afternoon before a holiday or for the entire Hebrew month of Nissan. But when we don’t say it, we miss out on a moment to think about grace and its role in our lives.

The prayer Ashkenazic Jews recite today was probably an amalgamation of such personal prayers and verses constructed in the 14th century. There is a short version of the prayer that is read daily at the morning and afternoon services and a substantially longer one on Mondays and Thursdays, market days when the Torah was traditionally read in public, days that the Talmud marks are an “et ratzon” - a time of God’s openness to hearing our innermost prayers.

One of the foundations of the prayer is a string of words and sentences that appear in the sixth chapter of Psalms, a time when David was ill and suffering and reflected on his pain. “My whole being,” David wrote, “is struck with terror - and You, God, how long?” The odd construct of this sentence clues us into David’s anguish. When terror takes over, we cannot imagine our own resilience. We need the situation to end. We ask God how long this will endure because we can endure it no longer. In this chapter, we confront David’s deepest vulnerabilities: “I am worn out with my sighing, every night I cause my bed to float with my tears. I melt my couch. My eye is dimmed with anger; it has aged because of my tormentors.” 

Tachanun also has a fascinating choreography, and is often called “nefilat apayim” - or the bowing of the face because when a Torah scroll is present in the room, we say a passage of the prayer with our foreheads leaning down on our less dominant arm. “Be gracious to us, God, be gracious to us for we are saturated with humiliation. In anger, remember to have compassion.” When we feel one emotion, we ask for another. Help us forgive.

We move from standing, to a bowing of the head, to sitting erect to standing again. Our body adopts a dance of sadness that moves to a place of strength so that our bodies are telling us not to sign on the couch forever. Take charge. “Strangers say: there is no hope or expectation for us.” We say this line as we are already sitting up straight. Someone else may say this of us but we cannot say this of ourselves. Perhaps one way we respond to a situation that is out of our control is to say this prayer with greater intention and meaning.

Many years ago, I called the reception desk of a busy company, asking for a woman whose first name was Hope. The receptionist replied, “There is no Hope here.” Hearing it startled me, and I responded quietly, “There is always hope.”

Hope is the name of our Israeli national anthem and the abiding song of Jewish history. It’s time to bring hope back.

Shabbat Shalom

Ugly Torah

“Matters of Torah are likened to three liquids: water, wine and milk. Why?”

BT Ta’anit 7a

This week we have been bombarded with images of ugliness and pain. Where it says in the Talmud that matters of Torah are likened to three liquids: water, wine and milk, this week we have to add tears to that list. Those sensitive to the Torah’s teachings about love and peace cannot help but weep at the bloodshed and violence in our beloved homeland. And yet, this particular teaching will strangely elevate ugliness.

The Talmud sage Rabbi Oshya asked why these three liquids have been compared to Torah and explained that since “these three liquids can be retained in only the ugliest of vessels, so too are matters of Torah retained only by one who is humble.”

The Talmud then illustrates this with a story that seems cruel but telling. The daughter of a Roman emperor said to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananya, “Woe to glorious wisdom – like yours – which is contained in an ugly vessel.” She, a princess surrounded by finery, was dumbstruck by the dissonance between the intellectual and spiritual expansiveness of this scholar and his appearance, which defied any Roman aesthetic she knew.

Rabbi Yehoshua did not defend his looks or comment on her rudeness. Instead, with expected wisdom, he asked her a simple question: “Does your father keep his wine in clay vessels?” She replied with an obvious yes since this was the norm. “You who are so important, should put it in vessels of gold and silver.” Just as these are expensive liquids, should their containers be of equal expense to showcase the status they bring.

The emperor’s daughter repeated the conversation to her father who proceeded to have the wine transferred. No expense was to be spared in the fulfilling his daughter’s request. It made sense to a person of influence and wealth to treat his wine with honor and dignity. Alas, the transferred wine all turned sour. The acid in the wine had a corrosive effect on the metal and impacted the taste. Clay is porous and contained none of the poisonous contaminants often found in ancient metal vessels. The experiment failed. The king was angry. “Who told you to do this?”

The emperor summoned Rabbi Yehoshua. We are not sure why a sage would have been discussing these matters with a princess, but now he was to be held accountable for the spoilage. When the emperor questioned him, Rabbi Yehoshua explained that the best material is preserved in the most humble of vessels because it retains its specialness this way. The emperor thought about his and questioned this assumption based on his own experience. “But there handsome people who are learned!” Many wise people are blessed with good lucks. But Rabbi Yehoshua was not buying it. They would be even more wise if they were not as beautiful, he retorted.

“Had they been ugly, they would have been even more learned!”

We often mistake beauty for intelligence, but that is not the prevailing issue here. While it’s true that Ethics of the Fathers says not to look at the holding vessel but what ‘s inside it, this admonition is for the one who looks.  Rabbi Yehoshua suggested that human beauty can be a distraction to its “owner” and minimize wisdom because beauty and humility rarely come in the same package.

Sister Wendy Beckett, an English nun in an order of silence who temporarily renounces her retreats to host art programs on the BBC, was interviewed by Bill Moyers about her incredible gift for art analysis. With buck-toothed charm, she confessed that not being beautiful herself has given her more capacity to appreciate beauty. She spoke matter-of-factly, not asking for pity or false encouragement but with a sadness for the rest of us that we fall too often for the illusion of beauty. “Grace is deceptive. Beauty is illusory” [Proverbs 31:30].

Things are not always as they seem. Perhaps something of beauty will come out of all of today’s ugliness. To be human is to believe that today’s anguish – however existentially exhausting and painfully repetitive – will one day be transformed. Beauty is illusory. But maybe ugliness is illusory too.

Shabbat Shalom

The Difference a Day Makes

“Teach us to count our days well, that we may obtain a wise heart.”

Psalms 90:12

Sometimes when life gets rough or news is suddenly good or a special event takes place, you think to yourself: “What a difference a day makes!” And it does. In one day you can go from being single to being married. In one day you can go from being married to losing a spouse you cherish. In one day you can get a diagnosis, and in one day you can have surgery to remove a growth. One day you become a parent and life changes forever. One day, you stand on stage and get a diploma and suddenly you are a doctor, lawyer or accountant. It is not that you knew less the day before. It is that one day was picked to confer a different status upon you.

Any transition that takes only a few hours but changes a life, reminds us of the preciousness of counting days and making each day extraordinary when we can. The well-known verse from psalms above, however, points not to the extraordinary days of our lives that appear in photo albums but to the span of time that does not stand out for anything unusual. Days and days pass in monotony. Number those days well, and you have made a life. According to Psalms, you will obtain a wise heart.

We find this perspective in the unusual way that days are counted in Genesis 25:7 and 47:9. In the first verse, when Abraham approached his death, and the text records “the days of his years.” In the second, Jacob shared the hardships of the “days of his years” with Pharaoh when the two finally met. Long swaths of time are broken into the days of the years in these ancient passages as a reminder that years are an accumulation of days. They can blend into each other with sameness and tedium or stand out from the years as times of productivity, joy and distinctiveness.

Mason Currey, in his new book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, offers over 100 portraits of the every day rituals of famous novelists, composers and artists in brief spurts of a few paragraphs each. A few sleep all day and work all night. Some can’t begin work with a strong drink and a smoke; others need complete silence and a morning coffee. Maya Angelou writes in a hotel room to separate work from life. Truman Capote called himself a horizontal author because he loved to work in bed. Most woke early to catch the morning light and the first burst of creative energy and generally wrote 3-4 hours.

Some belittle the revelation of an artist’s rituals because it does not make a difference to us what someone else does to inspire the muse. Yet, we do want to know. Perhaps if, like Stephen King, we sit down every day and reach our 2,000 word quota, we will write the next airport bestseller. Maybe if we can discover a good daily ritual we can maximize our productivity.

William James believed that the best way to make meaning is to create daily routines that we stick to religiously: “The more details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.” Without a plan, he says that the indecision of how we should spend time, wastes previous time.

We are now in the period of the nine days, a season in the Jewish calendar where we grieve over the ancient destruction of Jerusalem and the Temples. We count these nine days as part of the 21 day period of our past violently lost. But what about day 10 and 11 and 32 and 1,045? When we count days, we are essentially saying that each day matters, and we have an opportunity to redeem time every morning. A day makes all the difference in the world.

Sanctifying time day after day brings us to another writer, William Faulkner, who once said: “I write when the spirit moves me, and the spirit moves me every day.”

Shabbat Shalom

Good Neighbors

“Distance yourself from a bad neighbor.”

Ethics of the Fathers 1:7

A police officer approached two men hanging out in a public space in the middle of the night. He approached the first guy: “What are you doing here?

“Nothing.”

He turned his attention the other fellow: “And what are you doing here?”

“I’m helping him.”

We tend to do what the people around us do. It’s human nature. The sages of old recognized this and had a saying: “Woe to the wicked. Woe to his neighbor. How wonderful is the righteous person. How lucky for his neighbor” [BT Yoma 56b]. The decision of where to situate ourselves physically in a community is not random or coincidental. We make social choices everyday. Alice Roosevelt Longworth did. She famously said, “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”

Alice probably has a lot of company.

In his TED talk, “The Hidden Influence of Social Networks,” Dr. Nicholas Christakis talks about the tendency of like-minded people to cluster with each other and influence each other in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. With James Fowler, he studied the mathematical, social, biological and psychological rules and patterns in networks and offered some stunning examples of the impact of our homogeneous clustering: “…if your friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 45 percent higher…if your friend’s friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 25 percent higher…if your friend’s friend’s friend  - someone you probably don’t even know – is obese, your risk of obesity is 10 percent higher. And it’s only when you get to your friend’s friend’s friend’s friend that there’s no longer a relationship between that person’s body size and your own body size.”

Who would have thought that moving might help with weight loss?

In analyzing the reasons for this striking phenomenon Christakis suggests three possibilities: 1) obesity spreads from one person to the other in a causal fashion, 2) homophily – we gravitate to others who are like ourselves, and 3) confounding – we are not causing each other’s weight gain but share a common exposure to a factor that influences us both. We both happen to live walking distance to a bakery.

The Bible devotes many verses to the importance of picking the people you’re with and choosing well because we all operate “under the influence.” We are also told the importance of being good neighbors to attract good neighbors. Proverbs offers a few suggestions:

“Seldom step foot in your neighbor’s house – too much of you, and they will hate you,” [25:17].

“If a person loudly blesses his neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse,” [27:14].

“A person who lacks judgment ridicules his neighbor, but a person of understanding holds his tongue” [11:12].

Give space. Be quiet at off-hours and zip the lip.

We live in the proximity of others. Our communities usually determine the norms, values and boundaries of our lives. Our social contract with others may never be articulated, but it’s virtually always present: in the decisions we make, in the social capital we invest, in the way we think, behave, vote and spend our leisure time. No wonder we are told to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we pick the neighborhood carefully, this won’t be very difficult.

Do you live in a neighborhood that helps you be a better person? Do something today that shows you’re a good neighbor.

Shabbat Shalom

Early Risers

“Wake up like a lion…”

Shulkhan Arukh, Code of Jewish Law

Laws of Rising in the Morning 1:1

When I taught young adults, one of my favorite quotes was, “Those who hoot with the owls at night, cannot soar with the eagles in the morning.” My children have heard this countless times when they’ve stayed up late then looked ghastly in the morning, trying to compose themselves for a day of school or work. What I love about the image is not the choice of animals but the choice of verbs. Do you want to muddle through the day or do you want to soar? Stay up late enough and you may have no choice in the matter. Feet drag. The brain feels foggy. And time seems to pass slower than ever until you can meet your bed again. The old Henny Youngman wisdom comes back: “If you’re going to so something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.”

In Rabbi Joseph Karo’s 16th century code of law, it is not the owl or the eagle who begins his book but the lion. The legal fragment above continues: “Wake up like a lion to stand in the morning to serve one’s Creator since he wakes up the dawn.” I’ve always struggled to understand who the “he” is modifying. Is it the lion who wakes up the jungle each day with a mighty roar, instilling fear in the other animals that generates adrenaline, or is it God who wakes up the morning? The contemplation of God inspires us to grab hold of the day and make it ours.

An early 20th century commentary, that of Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan, observes here the affect of the owl. A person in the winter lies in bed and thinks about the warm and toasty feeling of being under the blanket or the lethargy of the summer and then feels immobile. Why get up? He suggests that just as one has to rise for work commitments, the mandate is to get up early for one’s ultimate work. This plays on the verb “la-avod” in Hebrew, which means both to work and to worship.

A Talmudic principle underscores this sentiment: “The vigilant are early in the performance of mitzvot.” What are you waiting for when it comes to goodness? Tractate Rosh Hashana 32b uses the term “vatikin” to describe such individuals, a term that implies both piety and early rising possibly from the Greek for straight or trustworthy. People who rise early to pray, study and commit themselves to kindness show great enthusiasm for life and what it can unfold when you seize on the day’s energy.

Naturally, the slow to move become the object of chastisement in the Bible, particularly in the book of Proverbs, because if you’re lazy, you won’t be able to take care of your needs or those of others in the most basic way.

 “Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the slothful person goes hungry” [19:5].

“The sloth will not plow because of the cold and then will beg during the harvest because he has nothing” [20:4].

“The desire of the lazy man kills him for his hands refuse to work” [21:25].

The momentary desire for inertia is overwhelmed by the long-term need to support oneself. But perhaps the best quote from Proverbs on the topic is about lions. “The lazy man says, ‘There is a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming in the streets.’ As a door turns on its hinges, so does the sloth turn on his bed” [26:13-14]. A lazy man sees a fierce lion approaching but then turns over and goes back to sleep.

We know what the lion had for breakfast.

Shabbat Shalom

The Book of Empathy

"I've been told all about what you have done…”

Boaz to Ruth

empathy: noun 1.the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. 2. the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself: By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self. Origin: 1900-05;  < Greek empátheia  affection, equivalent to em- em-2  + path-  (base of páschein  to suffer) + -eia -ia; present meaning translates German Einfühlung [definition.com].

To be empathic in this definition can be either an intellectual identification with someone else or an emotional mirroring. It is the capacity to go beyond the self to hear and relate to the needs or pain of another. And it’s hard, particularly when it involves getting beyond your own hurt, getting over yourself and your bruises to see how you have bruised. Empathy represents a mature level of adult emotional development that few really achieve.

On the intellectual level of empathy, we turn to a passage in the Talmud. There was a legal argument of some consequence between two great sages. One was obligated to follow the other, and the submissive sage was concerned that he was breaking a very important law. Rabbi Akiva saw this scholar's distress and offered him an alternative way to look at the situation, to which the sage replied: “Akiva, you have consoled me; you have consoled me” [BT Rosh Hashana 25a]. Commentaries parse this, saying that he was consoled for two separate problems. But repeating an expression of solace is like emotional highlighting, a way that we acknowledge the depth of how someone has touched us. You have truly and deeply consoled me when I thought that I was inconsolable.

Then there is the emotional aspect of empathy. This takes us to the heart of the book of Ruth, chapter two: “So Boaz said to Ruth, ‘My daughter, listen to me. Don't go and glean in another field and don't go away from here. Stay here with my servant girls. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the girls. I have told the men not to touch you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.’ At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, ‘Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me--a foreigner?’ Boaz replied, ‘I've been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband--how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.’  ‘May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,’ she said. ‘You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to your servant--though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls."’”

Ruth is so unused to an empathic ear that she seems almost embarrassed by Boaz' compliment. He is able to articulate her sacrifices when she never does, giving her a profound level of self-worth that was foreign to her.

Christian theologian Henri Nouwen in Out of Solitude writes, “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

Maybe Shavuot is not only a time for Torah study but for a time for reflecting on friendship and celebrating it. It’s a time when we can reach beyond ourselves to acknowledge the suffering and the kindness of others, and sometimes giving voice to joy and pain beyond what a friend has communicated.

Celebrate friendship this Shavuot.

Our Hearts Weep

“Through the window peered Sisera’s mother. Behind the lattice, she sighed. Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why so late the clatter of his wheels?”

Judges 5:28

Those of us who are parents recognize in this verse in Judges the anxiety of not knowing where a child is: that momentary loss of eye contact in a busy place, that waiting for news, that expectant sound of a familiar car parking in the driveway or a key turning in the door. Until we hear it, we wrestle with a polarity of emotions: we expect the worst and then push aside the demons of worry that are ever-present. There must be a logical explanation for the delay. The biblical text masterfully captures this moment, not by telling but by showing. A mother sighs at the window, wondering when her son will come home.

This is no ordinary mother. It is the mother of a cruel enemy general who oppressed the Israelites for years, a general who died a coward. But the text pushes aside the politics to ponder the anguish of a mother in pain, one who intuits that her son will perhaps not be coming home. We have never met Sisera’s mother. She is introduced to us only to provide this spotlight. Her ladies-in-waiting try to reassure her that Sisera is merely enjoying the spoils of war: the women and the embroidered clothes, as if they were all mere objects. The text here offers a vulgar note of women making other women into chattle.  There is a reason Sisera has not yet made his way home, they contend. And she, too, dismisses any thought of a bad outcome with this reasoning: “she also assures herself,” the verse states. We are not convinced.

As readers who have already learned that Sisera is dead, we sense that when this mother approached the window in pain she somehow already knew.

As a community, we have all been waiting by that window for weeks, checking the news constantly and asking if there are any updates, any developments about our three kidnapped boys. We prayed for them, thought of them, cried for them. We told ourselves that the army would find them. It was just a matter of time.

The murder of three Israeli teenagers was just confirmed when journalists and pundits were talking about political and military responses within hours. The inevitable responses of harsh retribution or measured restraint were out in the public domain, as expected. They were predictable and predictably not effective.

But these were mere distractions. All most of us could really think about was what it must be like to be a parent of one of those boys at that hour and for every other hour after that. Our own sacred texts demand that we do this as a sign of compassion, pushing away the politics and prognoses that will inevitably follow a tragedy like this for one simple moment: the moment a parent who is waiting finds out the terrible news that he or she has lost a child.

We have all been in some psychic, mystical way the parents, brothers, sisters and friends of those boys: Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar. This bond of connection and concern runs deep, in tears, in friendship, in helplessness. We waited by the window with the families of these boys.

Yet, at the end of the day, our verse in Judges reminds us that we are not the parents.  Whatever closeness and pain we experience can never come close to that of the families who lost those children. Sisera’s mother does not stand with her friends at that window. She stands alone.

And this too, is an obvious but critical aspect of community. There is something intensely uncomfortable about strangers or acquaintances who are more distraught than the actual mourners. An I-Thou relationship is constituted through many private understandings. One of them is that we must know when to respect the privacy and singularity of mourning, especially in deaths that receive great public attention. We can never to presume to understand someone else’s most intimate pain. We have our own pain as a community and extended family that has lost three young lights. It translates and extends itself but also has a limit. We go on when those who sit on the floor in mourning cannot imagine they ever will.

Compassion extends us. Respect limits us. Our humanity makes us reach out. Our humility makes us stand back. We mourn with these parents, and we also know that there is an abyss that we will never understand. Even as we all stood with these parents, they stood at a window alone and will be alone still.

Shabbat Shalom

The Name Game

“A good name is better than fine perfume…”

Ecclesiastes 7:1

A good name is easy to compare to perfume because perfume leaves its residue in the form of a smell. Many people wear a signature perfume that identifies them even before they walk into a room. Sometimes it’s a great smell, and sometimes it’s overbearing. Remember the old commercial; everyone in the office smelled the boss coming before he entered the room because of his terrible cologne, so they immediately started working to give the appearance of busy-ness. Your reputation - your name - is a lot like perfume. It announces your presence, introducing you, accompanying you and even leaving a little after-effect for impact. And just like perfume, you hope that the impact is positive and maybe even beautiful.

We are about to read the story of Ruth, a book filled with names that invite interpretation. Some believe Ruth’s name is related to the word for friendship, a grammatical stretch but true to her character. She was totally committed to her mother-in-law and her mother-in-law’s people, God, homeland and future. She had the opportunity to stay and rebuild her life at home but wanted instead the spiritual adventure of a lifetime. Her devotion ends in the true redemption of her life and the life of the people she adopts through the legacy of leadership that follows.

There is Naomi who does not want to be called “sweet” because her life was deeply embittered by loss. When the women of Bethlehem come to the city gate to greet her and ask, “Is this Naomi?” she quickly disabuses them of that notion. I have suffered so much loss that I cannot be called by the same name. I am no longer that person. As she says this, it is a chastisement to these women who dismiss her with their question. God has punished me enough, she reminds them. I do not need you to punish me further. Perhaps if you call me a different name, you will treat me differently. You will find compassion that you do not have now.

Orpah’s name in the midrash means “neck” because in leaving Naomi, she turned her neck from the life she had. There is ploni-almoni, a name associated with anonymity because this redeemer failed to redeem Ruth and was not considered worthy. And then there are Naomi’s sons: machlon and hilyon, loosely translated as “sickness and destruction.” Lovely. Glad I wasn’t at that baby-naming.

Scholars believe that these names were transposed on the text to reflect the feelings that readers should have upon reading this story. Maimonides helps fill in the gap by suggesting that Naomi’s sons were leaders of the generation who, during a time of famine and political unrest, turned away from those in need. They moved to Moab to seek their fortunes and evade the cries of petitioners. We appreciate their predicament. It is hard to have and be surrounded by have-nots. But that is where the work of leadership must take place. Those are the times when instead of moving away, we need leaders to lean in.

Ethics of the Fathers identifies four crowns, three of which appear in the book of Ruth: “Rabbi Shimon would say: ‘There are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of kingship. But the crown of a good name transcends them all’” [4:13]. The book of Ruth contains the crown of kingship in presenting the ancestry of King David. It contains the crown of Torah because, in addition to its special narrative qualities, it demonstrates the Jewish values of charity and the importance of the levirate marriage in protecting women and the family name. And it contains the crown of a good name because Naomi returned to her state of sweetness by the book’s end and Ruth showed us the power of transformation through friendship.

If your name is your perfume, what fragrance do you bring into the lives of others and what beautiful smells are associated with your reputation?

Shabbat Shalom

Ruth and the Ego Check

We just read the story of Ruth, a book filled with names that invite our interpretation. Some believe Ruth’s name is related to the word for friendship, a grammatical stretch but true to her character. There is Naomi who does not want to be called “sweet” because her life was deeply embittered by loss, and Orpah whose name in the midrash is “neck” because in leaving Naomi, she turned her neck from the life she had. There is ploni-almoni, a name associated with anonymity and then there are Naomi’s sons: machlon and hilyon, loosely translated as “sickness and destruction.” Lovely. Glad I wasn’t at that baby-naming.

Scholars believe that these names were transposed on the text to reflect the feelings that readers should have upon reading this story. Maimonides helps fill in the gap by suggesting that Naomi’s sons were leaders of the generation who, during a time of famine and political unrest, turned away from those in need. They moved to Moab to seek their fortunes and evade the cries of petitioners. We appreciate their predicament. It is hard to have and be surrounded by have-nots. But that is where the work of leadership must take place. Those are the times when instead of moving away, we need leaders to lean in.

Judaism has always coupled power with responsibility, even if there is a large price to pay. The Talmud says that “authority buries the one who owns it.” Some commentaries believe that this is to be taken literally. People with power have shorter lives.  Others read it as a quality of life issue. You will take on the problems of others and the burden of fixing them. If you are the head of an organization or the president of a board, pay attention to this health warning. It should say on the side of the stationary: “This leadership position could and will be hazardous to your life.”

What our health warning also needs to say is that not taking on leadership may be hazardous to the lives of others. We need good leadership. We need visionaries who can chart a course for us and great managers who can get us there operationally because without them we’re lost.

The problem is how to use authority wisely and keep humble when you have power. And here we turn to the Talmud again: “He was naked when he entered [into power], and he will be naked when he leaves it. If only his exit would be like his entrance – without sin and iniquity.” Few people enter the world with any power. Not even kings are born wearing ermine capes. And when they exit this world and their position of power, they will once again be naked but this time sin and iniquity will have to be removed. Power changes people.

Because power changes people, those with power have to keep their egos in check. When one Talmudic sage, for example, went from his home to the court to judge a legal case he would say to himself: “Of his own will, he goes to die.” In other words, I know that this is a difficult job and that I imperil my life when I do it.

Another sage did the same thing but when a crowd of people followed him, he added a few verses from Job to his self-whispers: “Though his excellency ascends to the heavens, and his head reaches the clouds, yet he shall perish forever like his own dung; they who have seen him will say: where is he?” (Job 20:6-7). When you achieve power, be wary of your downfall. With your ascent comes a possible moral descent. You may have your head in the clouds, but you are really like the basest of human waste. You are dung.

The Talmud then relates the story of Rabbi Zutra who was carried on the shoulders of his admirers on the Sabbath and on holidays. He, too, would recite something to keep him aware of authority’s perils. “For power is not forever, and does the crown endure for all generations?” (Proverbs 27:24). He reminded himself that  power is only temporal and short-lived. Each of these sages was highly conscious of power and the way it can manipulate – and possibly bury - those who have it. Each identified a saying to keep the ego in check.

Shabbat Shalom

Every Day Counts

“Today my days and years are exactly filled to teach you that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, sits and fills the years of the righteous from day to day, and from month to month, as it is stated, ‘The number of your days I will fulfill’ [Exodus 23:26].”

BT Rosh Hashana 11a

‘Tis the season of graduations and that unique saturation of trite, feel-good advice known as the commencement address. Seize the day. The world is your oyster. Now is your time.

This year, we’ve spiced up the season because perfectly good commencement speakers were “fired” because of student protest or fired themselves first to avoid the fray. Condoleeza Rice was ousted as was chief of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, Robert Birgeneau, former chancellor of Berkeley and Attorney General Eric Holder. This led Timothy Egan in The New York Times to conclude of the graduation bullies: “They’re afraid of hearing something that might spoil a view of the world they’ve already figured out.” And while we are on The New York Times, let’s not forget Jill Abramson’s graduation address this year at Wake Forest University, only days after she was let go as the paper’s executive editor. She said to the 2014 graduating class: “What’s next for me? I don’t know. So I’m in exactly the same boat as many of you.”

At least she was honest. She – along with many in her audience – are unsure of what is next. The messages of overweening confidence don’t always resonate with young people insecure about their choices or the still sober job market. Carpe Diem doesn’t always hit a cord. So for all you graduates out there, I offer the present of a passage of Talmud. It didn’t cost me anything, but it’s still priceless, and I mean well, even if the message still borders on cliche.

The Talmudic observation above is complex and related to time. The words are imaginatively put in the mouth of Moses who died at 120. The verse recording his death in Deuteronomy has Moses addressing the people, his own commencement speech, if you will. “And he said to them, ‘I am one hundred and twenty years old today’” (31:2). Quite an announcement. The Talmud parses out the phrase and wonders why Moses included the word today and decides that it is for the sake of precision. Moses lived out every one of those years to the day, leading to the conclusion that God fulfills the days, months and years of the righteous exactly: “The number of your days, I will fulfill.”

We are into only in graduation season. We are also counting the days from Passover to Shavuot. We count them by days and weeks, noting each one and blessing the Omer count as a way to remind ourselves that every day matters, that every day requires our blessing, that were each day really significant, not an hour or minute would be wasted. In that sense, it’s not so much that God gives the righteous the gift of squeezing the most out of time, but that perhaps this is what constitutes genuine righteousness: the ability to use time well, to regard it as sacred, and never to believe that an act of grace or compassion towards another human being is a waste of time. We are put on this earth to serve.

In the spirit of fulfilling the demands of each day precisely and with meaning, I leave you with the words of French novelist Marc Levy in If Only It Were True:

If you want to know the value of one year, just ask a student who failed a course.

If you want to know the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

If you want to know the value of one hour, ask the lovers waiting to meet.

If you want to know the value of one minute, ask the person who just missed the bus.

If you want to know the value of one second, ask the person who just escaped death in a car accident.

And if you want to know the value of one hundredth of a second, ask the athlete who won a silver medal in the Olympics.

Congratulations to all of our graduates (we have three this year). May you live until 120, and may you make every minute matter.

Shabbat Shalom

Naming Opportunities

“If someone gives charity saying, ‘I give this sela [ancient monetary amount] to charity in order that my children may live or that I may merit life in the world to come,’ he is still considered a fully-fledged righteous person.”

BT Rosh Hashana 4a

It is sometimes hard to give full credit to someone who gives charity on condition or as a naming opportunity, particularly if the name is his or her own and not that of a relative or friend. And yet, this passage of the Talmud has no qualms about the practice. If someone gives charity on the condition that something good will happen to him or his children, it is regarded as an act of righteousness regardless of the terms. This individual is considered a “tzadik gamur’ – a fully-fledged righteous person.

This is difficult to compute with a competing statement about humility that appears in Ethics of the Fathers: “Be not like servants who serve the Master to receive a reward” (1:3). The Koren Steinsaltz brings two Talmud commentators who offer an alternative reading of this statement because of their discomfort with the notion that such a person is a tzadikand read it instead as tzedaka. It does not matter how you give, the money is considered a complete act of charity, thus placing the emphasis on the gift and not on the person. Some emphasize that what makes this person righteous is not what he hopes to gain but the way in which he gives. If he or she gives generously, even for the sake of some reward, then this individual is considered special and worthy. In charity it is the how and not the why that is of ultimate importance.

This passage gets to the heart of a difficult conundrum in charity. Is it about the process or the outcome? In the statement above, the outcome is critical, but we know that a lot of charities today are process rather than outcome driven. They have campaign goals and a culture of cultivation, courting donors [and spending a lot of time and money doing so] instead of stating very specific needs and how they achieve them. For example, “our campaign is one million dollars, and we are 50% to goal” as opposed to “we need to feed 150 seniors in a daily meal program at the cost of…” All of the events and lunches and meetings often distance people from the very problems they seek to solve with their charitable dollars.

Yet, in a medieval compendium of Jewish law, the Sefer Ha-Hinukh, the emphasis is on the one who gives and how the charitable transaction creates a deeper level of compassion and generosity in the giver, almost in absence of the receiver. Thus, the process is paramount. How are you transformed as a result of giving more expansively?

But perhaps there is something deeper in the charitable equation or negotiation above. After all, what is at issue here is not a name on a wall but the welfare of one’s children or the future of the giver in the next life. In other words, the stakes here are not about status but about leveraging charity to achieve health and religious satisfaction, ultimately two spiritual goals. The profound desire to invest in one’s future is paralleled by the investment that the giver makes in others. If I make someone else’s life better, will it make my life better? The answer in this passage of Talmud is a resounding yes. My existential understanding of the world is that if I build spiritual capacity by addressing the needs of others, I may expand, in some way, the compassion I need to live in this world.

This sentiment is echoed in another legal text that understands charity as a spiritual insurance policy. “A person should meditate on the fact that, at every moment, he asks God for his livelihood. And just as he requests that the Holy One, blessed be He, hear his cry, so too should he hear the cry of the poor. He should meditate on the fact that the wheel of fortune turns constantly, and ultimately he, his children or his grandchildren may need to receive charity” (Laws of Charity, Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh 34:1).

The wheel of fortune turns constantly, and we may never know when we will have to be on the receiving end of charity. It’s good to be the hand that gives. It helps us appreciate that if we ever need to be the hand that receives, someone else will put out a hand with love and grace.

Shabbat Shalom

Trigger Happy/Sad

“Behold the Lord stood by a wall of wrongs, and in His hand were the wrongs.”

Amos 7:7

I learned a new concept this week: the preemptive trigger. It has been spreading on college campuses and has been reported in the Times, The New Republic, The Nation, and The New Yorker. I am always the last to know.

A preemptive trigger is a verbal or written alert offered by professors in advance of presenting or discussing material that may be racially, ethnically or sexually offensive in the classroom. Issues of privilege or oppression also need to be flagged. Originating in online feminist forums, it seems to be an academic offshoot of political correctness. Students who encounter material that may trigger traumatic feelings, particularly if they are revisiting a personally painful subject, need time to prepare emotionally. If the classroom is to be a place of authentic learning, it needs to be a safe space.

This is a presumptuous statement about the nature of education. The assumption that learning takes place in emotionally comfortable environments undercuts what many educators believe is at the heart of education: making people uncomfortable enough to question themselves and their universe. Some educators believe that the preemptive trigger fails students precisely because we rarely get warnings when an insult or offense is thrown our way. Journalist Jessica Valenti contends that there are so many possible ways to hurt people that it is impossible to catalogue them. And even if you could: “There is no trigger warning for living your life.”

What does Jewish law say about the preemptive trigger?

The closest legal parallel I could find is the rabbinic explanation of a verse in Leviticus: “A person must not oppress his fellow. He should fear the Lord” [25:17]. This chapter contains both the transgression of oppressing someone with money and oppressing someone with words. A mishna records the comparison [Bava Metzia 58b-59a]:

Just as it is wrong to aggrieve someone in business, is it also prohibited to aggrieve someone with words. One should not ask how much an item costs if he has no intention to purchase it. If a person once led a sinful life, one should not remind him what he used to do. If he was the grandchild of gentiles, one should not say to him, “Remember what your ancestors did,” as it is written, 'Do not oppress the stranger...' [Exodus 22:20]."

The ensuing Talmudic discussion goes into detail. Asking the cost of an item without intention to buy it is not a problem in today’s capitalist environment where people are accustomed to inquiring about prices before purchase but was important to bear in mind when taking up the time of a craftsperson who made the wares or a peddler who must continue traveling. One may make the argument today that if one takes up a salesperson’s time knowing that he or she was going to purchase the item online anyway, it may traverse an acceptable boundary of the Jewish value of sensitivity to another’s feelings or another’s time.

Reminding people about their past is another matter. If a person speaks freely about his or her previous lifestyle, then perhaps it would not be oppressive to mention it. But you never know. As a result, we are not allowed to reference a person’s conversion in front of him, unless he wants to bring it up. It may simply be too painful: the isolation, the difficulty of the spiritual journey, the alienation from family members. The Talmud goes so far as to say that if a person had someone hanged in his family, a fishmonger should not ask him if he can hang the fish he selected as it may cause him pain. Talk about cataloging previous hurts, that’s real attention to detail. If that is not a preemptive trigger, what is?

The sage Rabbi Hisda tags on an inspiring message on this passage of Talmud that may be an intriguing explanation of why the verse that asks us to be sensitive about what oppresses others mentions the fear of God: “All the gates have been locked, except the gates through which pass the cries of the oppressed, for it is written ‘Behold the Lord stood by a wall of wrongs, and in His hand were the wrongs’ [Amos 7:7].” It is not only that God knows our real intentions when we hurt others but pretend that we meant nothing by it. It is that God stands by the wall where the oppressed cry and holds on to each of those bruises and holds us accountable to them. We may forget the hurt we create, but God does not.

We are accountable for our words. We cannot afford to take people back to a place of woundedness because God is standing there with an admonition. We are human. We are all wounded. Remind someone of his or her pain, and you will simply surface more pain in the world. Grace and our silence are the only compassionate response.

Shabbat Shalom

The Book Thief

“One who is always generous and always lends, his children will be blessed.”

Psalms 37:26

I was recently speaking with a friend who bemoaned the state of book lending. Perfectly wonderful people who would never think of taking a dime from you without returning it, can have a book of yours on the shelf for years without the thought of returning it. I have even purchased the same book twice to lend it out, without thinking it would ever make its way home. Someone I know warned never to lend him a book because the whole world was his library. You’d never see it again. What, this friend asked, could possibly explain this strange phenomenon?

Before we tackle this question, let’s turn for a moment to a few excerpts from a letter that Maimonides’ Hebrew translator, Judah ibn Tibbon, wrote to his son Samuel in twelfth century Spain: “I have assisted you by providing you with an extensive library for your use and have thus relieved you of the necessity of borrowing books. Most students must wander about to seek books, often without finding them. But you, thanks be to God, lend and borrow not.” It seems that book borrowing is a time worn practice that was taxing to the student. Ibn Tibbon relieved his son of this by – in his words – “journeying to the ends of the earth” to procure teachers and texts to grow his son intellectually.

But Samuel was a disappointment to his father. He did not immerse himself in learning. Of his books, his father chastises, he took no care “to know them or even their titles.” Samuel wouldn’t even have recognized his books in the hands of another. This scholarly family was not producing an heir in Samuel, thought his father. “You are still young, and improvement is possible, if heaven but grant you a helping gift of desire and resolution, for ability is of no avail without inclination…” Have no fear. Samuel turned into a fine translator, philosopher and physician.

The point is that his father understood that having books and being able to lend them rather than borrow them is an exalted position to be in when it comes to the development of the heart and mind. The verse above in Psalms describes the need of generous people to be generous, which is only fed by giving and not getting back. Generosity is a sign that children will be blessed because of the spillover effect that it engenders in the giver, which changes the life of the receiver.

If people don’t return books it may be because the borrower understands that the lender wants to share sometimes more than the borrow wants to borrow. After all, why do lenders keep lending, even to recidivists? When we are moved by something we read, we want to share the delight and adventure and provocation of it. It both validates and enlarges our own reading. What could be better than a borrower telling a lender, “I love the book you gave me. It gave me pleasure. It helped me understand something about myself. It changed my life!” Borrowers should be wary, however, of taking advantage of the lender’s delight in sharing by not returning, thus preventing the lender from lending the book out again and magnifying the pleasure.

Do me a favor, will you? When you finish reading this, return that book that you’ve had for ages or suffer the fate in this little poem by Canadian author Lucy Maude Montgomery, best known for Ann of Green Gables:

“Steal not this book for fear of shame

For on it is the owner’s name

And when you die the Lord will say

Where is the book you stole away?

And when you say you do not know

The Lord will say go down below.”

Shabbat Shalom

Welcoming Distractions

Sometimes when you study Talmud, you find yourself laughing out-loud. OK. Maybe rarely, but it’s always surprising when it happens. Here is today’s laugh. Rabbi Avya the Elder asked Rabbi Huna a complicated question about the slaughtering of an animal on a festival. Are you laughing yet? Rabbi Huna did not want to answer the question so he used the oldest trick in the book. He told Rabbi Avya that a raven was flying by to distract him – “Look. A raven flies.” - hoping that when they looked up at the sky, his colleague would forget his question. Laugh here.

Did Rabbi Huna think his colleague was stupid? Rabbi Huna’s son witnessed this interaction and was deeply puzzled; after all, Rabbi Huna said that Rabbi Avya was a great man. If he was such a great man and a great scholar, why didn’t Rabbi Huna answer his question instead of resorting to a juvenile distraction? Rabbi Huna responded with a sense of despair: “What should I have done for him? Today I am like this [best described by the verse that states]: ‘Let me lean against stout trunks; let me crouch among apple trees’ (Song of Songs 2:5), and he asked me about something that requires reasoning.”

Rabbi Huna was a scholar of distinction who was deeply engaged in matters of the community. People were leaning on him. He was the stout trunk in Song of Songs. Everyone needed him for guidance and legal advice. He wanted, instead, to be like one crouching or hiding among apple trees, far from sight. He was so tired from answering questions that he did not have the mental state to tolerate another, even or perhaps especially, from someone learned who would require a thoughtful response.

Rabbi Huna did not lie. Rashi states that a raven really did pass by at that moment, perhaps startling the group study. Rabbi Huna leveraged this diversion because he either did not want to give Rabbi Avya an answer right away or because he could not think of one. The more honest approach would have simply been to say he had run out of mental steam. Some commentaries believe that Rabbi Huna was being dismissive of this scholar because he thought the question did not make sense. But this would not explain Rabbi Huna’s convoluted answer.

Being a public figure can be very hard at times, particularly if you are running low on energy or creativity; when all of your ideas are spent and you have very little room left for negotiating politics or engaging in difficult intellectual gymnastics, you may get to a point where you say “Enough.” It is hard to replace lost energy or to feel inspired when you are this burnt out. Maybe when Rabbi Huna saw the raven, he was trying to distract himself. The image of a bird free in flight for a stout and rooted tree trunk would have been an appealing relief.

Ravens live for a long time, often for decades. They mate for life and are very territorial in pairs. We know the raven from Edgar Allen Poe stories as a symbol of doom and a foreshadow of trouble on the horizon. In the ancient world, however, ravens were often revered because of their intelligence and ingenuity. Rabbi Huna could have been, in some way, suggesting that Rabbi Avya was like the raven. He was smart, swift and flying high while Rabbi Huna felt too weighed down and burdened to respond. This may even have been a play on words because Avya in Hebrew suggests a birdlike quality, referencing the air or sky.

Jackie Kennedy explained her role as first lady much as the raven functioned in this story: “I think the best thing I can do is to be a distraction. A husband lives and breathes his work all day long. If he comes home to more table thumping, how can the poor man ever relax?” She knew that a president’s work is rarely done and that home had to be an oasis that would distract her husband from the burdens of leadership. And a lovely distraction she was.

While we may not agree with Rabbi Huna’s trick, we can certainly appreciate where it comes from and what it was trying to mask. We appreciate his vulnerability and the confession of his inadequacy. And he teaches us something at the same time. Rather than take us far away from our goals, helpful distractions can provide small diversions that help us relax and re-focus.

Distractions don’t always have to be viewed negatively. They can provide us with a temporary mental space and pause to re-focus. Name one of your positive distractions. Be a raven and fly away with it, but don’t forget to come back.

Shabbat Shalom

By Bread Alone

“Why do you spend money on that which is not bread?...Eat that which is good and let your soul delight itself in its richness.”

Isaiah 55:2

It’s just about this time, mid-Passover, that we begin hankering for a nice piece of bread. The flatness of the matza begins to disappoint. And we should desire bread because it is one of the foundational foods of the Bible and was offered in the Temple as a gift to God. The word for bread in Hebrew “lekhem” is also used to refer to food generally, most likely because bread was foundational to the meal and eaten at every meal. At this time when we do not traditionally eat bread, we can spare a few moments to appreciate it upon its return.

The verse above in Isaiah is used in an unusual context by the food writer Jeffrey Steingarten in The Man Who Ate Everything. Opening a chapter on bread with the verse, Steingarten writes: “The world is divided into two camps: those who can live happily on bread alone and those who also need vegetables, meat, and dairy products. Isaiah and I fall into the first category. Bread is the only food I know that satisfies completely, all by itself. It comforts the body, charms the senses, gratifies the soul, and excites the mind. A little butter also helps.”

When we look throughout the Bible. We sense that God also agreed with Jeffrey Steingarten. Bread is regarded as a source of plenty, holiness and joy. When we abide by our covenantal relationship with God, God will provide us with bread:

Exodus 23:25- “And you shall serve the Lord your God and he shall bless your bread…”

Leviticus 21:22 – “He shall eat the bread of his God, of the most holy and of the holy.”

Ecclesiastes 9:7 - “Go your way. Eat your bread with joy…”

This relationship is one that we must pay forward, as discussed in another unusual and oft-quoted biblical verse about bread: “Cast your bread on the surface of the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give portions to seven, yes to eight,” (Ecclesiastes 11:1-2). Many scholars understand this enigmatic verse about bread to refer to commerce in ships. Send many ships out to many ports to sell grain, and some will return with success. In other words, cast a wide net and some initiatives will be rewarded.

Others take a different view. This is not a verse about merchants. It is a verse about adversity. At a time of disaster, give out portions of bread liberally. It is natural to want to hoard resources in times of challenge, but if you cast your bread out, if you are generous with what you have, your generosity will be repaid in full. When you cast anything into running water, it will disappear quickly. You will lose control of it. Bread thrown into water absorbs liquid like a sponge and dissolves. The message becomes more clear. When you are generous, expect nothing in return. Yet sometimes your unexpected kindness will yield unexpected results. Your own portions will be multiplied. Perhaps this explains why the Talmud says that one should spend money liberally on holiday food because it will never be wasted and will always be recompensed by God (BT Betza 16a).

One of the gifts of having bread is the capacity to break it with others. Don’t keep a source of joy and holiness to yourself. Cast it out. It will come back. And if it does not come back, you will have the pleasure of pure giving. If you love bread – and you’re not on a low carb diet – share it. Last week in honor of Passover, we cast out our bread. When we re-stock, we can take stock of how we want to multiply this joy.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Passover

A Sacred Lambchop

“This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. You shall eat it in a hurry; it is your Passover offering to the Lord.”

Exodus 12:11

Imagine my shock at opening up yesterday’s Washington Post food section and seeing a recipe for matza that actually does not qualify for the mitzva but was advertised as tasting better. Of course it tastes better. It’s actually bread by Jewish legal standards. And then there was the roasted rack of lamb as part of what was labeled the Karaite Passover, the Karaites being a religious sect of non-Jews who take the words of the Hebrew Bible literally. It advises that the lamb be roasted in true biblical fashion when in rabbinic Judaism we specifically do not have roasted meat on Passover today, especially not lamb. The paper’s idea was more to cultivate an exotic foodie than to observe the actual holiday with its sensitivities and established traditions.

The paschal lamb sacrifice, represented today by the shankbone on the Seder table (the one board piece that Jason Bateman wanted to be at the Seder he attended as told to Jon Stewart), is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the Seder. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his masterful Haggadah explains the reason we do not eat roasted meat at the Seder: “Unlike the two other foods, we do not lift or point at the roasted bone on the Seder plate, lest this gesture be misinterpreted as dedicating it as a sacrifice. Even after the destruction of the Temple it was not unknown for individuals to eat meat prepared to resemble the Paschal lamb. The sage took exception to this, and we are therefore careful to avoid any act that might look as if we were bestowing special status on the object symbolizing the Paschal offering.”

We honor the memory of our ancient Temple and its loss by not doing something that would mimic an offering, despite the fact that in all other ways, we try to relive that night of escape through symbolic foods at the Seder. But the paschal lamb was not a sacrifice in the typical manner of Temple gifts since there was no Temple at the time we were slaves. We were commanded to take a lamb and keep it in our homes for about two weeks and then at twilight to slaughter it, roast it, feed it to our household and guests, take blood from the slaughter and brush it with the small leaves of a hyssop plant and paint a small marking on any doorpost so that God would pass over our homes that night. It sounds like this was more of a holy B-B-Q than it was a sacrifice.

And then we read the verse above and being to understand what it really was. Before you ate, you needed to gird your loins – be ready for war – put on your sandals and have your personal staff in hand. In other words, like the matza, this was a take-out meal meant to be eaten in a hurry, filling us up before sending us out into a time of freedom and uncertainty. But haste is not the only thing emphasized here. The war imagery is meant to warn the Israelites that their next move was filled with risk. The Egyptians revered sheep. Slaughtering and roasting thousands of them at the same time would create a powerful shared aroma for the slaves and the smell of offense for the Egyptians. Maimonides mentions in The Guide for the Perplexed that killing the lamb was a theological statement, a violent rejection of a host culture’s religion. With that brazen act, they would not only want to leave Egypt, they would have to leave. The sacrifice was really their own. With this act, they gave up life as they knew it, protesting slavery and rejecting the culture of gods and pyramids.

Speaking of pyramids, Rabbi Saks tells a wonderful personal story in his Hagaddah. In 2000, he was invited to Windsor Castle to give a prestigious lecture in the presence of Prince Philip. He was the first Jew in England’s history accorded this honor. When nervous, he reminded himself of a verse from Psalms: “I will speak of Your statutes before kings and not be ashamed (119:46). Here is a snippet of what he told the esteemed audience: “Jews will never own buildings like Windsor Castle. We are not that kind of people. But we own something that is, in its way, no less majestic and even more consecrated by time. The Jewish castle is built not of bricks or stone, but of words.

We will share many of those words together in a few nights’ time. In rejecting the culture of pyramids, we began building our own majestic castle of words that transcended time and space and touch upon eternity.

Shabbat Shalom. Have a joyous Passover.

Hametz and the Everyday Struggle

“You shall not eat anything leavened for seven days…”

Deuteronomy 16:3

Very soon, we will begin the ritual search for hametz, leavened bread, that takes place the night before the Seder. My Zeide, of blessed memory, loved to find difficult places to hide ten pieces of bread wrapped in foil all around his house, and we walked around with candles and hot wax dripping on our hands trying to find them. I am now the hider, but my memory often fails me so I have to write down where I hide them. The next day, we burn the hametz we find and recite an ancient “cleansing” formula: “All hametz in my possession, whether I have seen it or not, whether I have removed it or not, shall be nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth.” We may not be able to extricate all our hametz, but we affirm that our intent was to do just that.

Mystical writers often regarded hametz as a visual symbol of arrogance. Leavened bread is made with yeast, a chemical agent that causes dough to rise, puffing up that which would ordinarily remain flat. Since arrogance is at the root of so much wrongdoing, many equate hametz with the yetzer ha-ra, the drive to do evil and behave in a self-centered, self-absorbed way, rather than with the humility of matza, our beloved flat bread.

The Babylonian tractate of Sukka [52a-b] offers us much insight into the nature of the yetzer ha-ra that, when processed, helps us understand Passover in a different way. I have taken a few excerpts from these Talmud pages to help us think about that which drives us to betray our best selves on occasion.

“Rabbi Ashi said: Initially, the evil inclination is like a strand of a spider’s web and ultimately it is like the thick ropes of a wagon.” What starts off as a small temptation that remains unchecked quickly becomes an immense seduction.

“The evil inclination has seven names: evil, uncircumcised, impure, an enemy, a stumbling block, a stone, a hidden one.” Our drive for wrongdoing comes in many forms and not in one-size-fits-all. It is called the hidden one because, according to the Talmud, “It is always hidden in the heart of man.” Ironically, the word for hidden used her is tzafun, another word we use at the Seder, referring to the Afikoman, the matza that we hide and then have as the last taste in our mouths when we end the meal at our Seder.

“The school of Rabbi Yishmael taught, ‘If this scoundrel [the evil inclination] accosts you, drag it into the study hall.’” If you feel overcome by the desire to do wrong, help your self-control by going to a sacred place and engaging in an elevating activity that can make you realize that the wrong you were thinking of doing will compromise the integrity and the life you really want.

“Rabbi Samuel bar Nahmani said that Rabbi Yohanan said: ‘The evil inclination incites a person to sin in this world and then testifies against him in the next world’” We want the legacy that we leave the world to be free of scandal and gossip. We can’t control our reputations, but we can control ourselves.

“Rava said: ‘Initially the evil inclination is like a traveler coming from afar. It is called a guest...Ultimately, it becomes the homeowner.’” Through complex word plays, Rava tells us something very profound about the evil inclination. When it first enters our minds, it is like a stranger. We don’t recognize it. It is like a traveler about to walk away. But when we invite it in, it soon becomes the owner of our house, if we let it, taking over the way we think and act.

“Rabbi Simon ben Lakish said: ‘A person’s evil inclination overcomes him each day and seeks to kill him, as it is stated, ‘The wicked watches the righteous and seeks to kill him’ (Psalms 37:32). And if not for the Holy One, Blessed be He, who assists him with the good inclination, he would not overcome it...” The struggle to overcome unwanted cravings and desires is with us always. This spirit of wrong-doing does not characterize who we are as much as offer us a daily challenge. It is no wonder that a lot of mussar writers, those who contemplated character development, make the desire for good and the desire for evil into soldiers constantly waging war within us.

The verse that we began with from Deuteronomy tells us that it is not enough to eat matza. We must refrain from leaven, hametz, for seven days. Not one day. One day is not enough to rid us of excessive self-love and self-absorption. Understood mystically, we might regard Passover as a personal humility retreat, a chance to break away from our overly sensitive egos and our puffed-up sense of self to tell a majestic story that demands self-sacrifice and humility. We don’t only throw away our hametz, we burn it. We know just how divisive the ego is so we give ourselves a better chance to fight our daily struggles when we try to eradicate the obstacles completely.

Let’s use this Passover as the humility retreat it is meant to be because when we are too full of ourselves, it is hard to make room for others, for community and for God.

Shabbat Shalom

Full of Kindness

“Rabbi Elazar said, ‘Anyone who performs charity and justice is considered as if he filled the whole world in its entirety with kindness.’”

BT Sukka 49b

Ever have a bad day that takes an unusual turn because of a small act of kindness? Sure  you have. Moments like that make us wonder about the magic of kindness. And here Rabbi Elazar tells us that we don’t even realize the full power of kindness because if we did, we’d know that it not only transforms our day but that one some level, it transforms the world. How can it be that one act of kindness fills the entire world with kindness? The talmudic statement found above is supported by a biblical proof from Psalms about God, who “loves charity and justice; the earth is full of the kindness of the Lord (33:5).

To answer this, we turn to a number of other statements that Rabbi Elazar makes on the very same folio page of Talmud: “One who performs acts of charity is greater than one who offers sacrifices, as it is stated, ‘To perform charity and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than an offering’” (Proverbs 21:3). God wants us to give more to each other than to make divine offerings. And Rabbi Elazar keeps going: “Acts of kindness are greater than charity, as it is stated, ‘Sow to yourselves according to charity, and reap according to kindness (Hosea 10:12). If a person sows he is uncertain whether he will or will not eat. If a person reaps, he will definitely eat.’” You can give charity and not be sure if it will have the desired effect. But if you do an act of kindness you can always be sure that your warmth, affection, generosity and concern will touch someone.

To this, the Sages added that acts of kindness are superior to charity in three respects: Charity can be performed only with one’s money while acts of kindness can be performed both with one’s person and with his money. Charity is given to the poor while acts of kindness are performed both for the poor and for the rich. Charity is given to the living while acts of kindness are performed both for the living and for the dead.

These statements all place acts of kindness within a competition for what behaviors yield the most results, impact others most and engage the majority of our own resources. Kindness wins each time. Kindness involves the totality of ourselves in relationship to the totality of another, rich or poor, living or dead. Acts of kindness offer us more ways to express goodness than any other way we might engage others.

And the winner is (drumroll please)…kindness. Such goes the commercial for kindness. This does not, however, explain why kindness changes the world, only why kindness may change the one who offers it and the beneficiary of it.

When you think about that bad day you’re having, your mind creates a landscape of pessimism. You imagine that whatever can go wrong will go wrong and then even when good things happen, you manage to twist their meaning or ignore them in preference to the emotional narrative you have created around personal failure. Your gloom and doom begin to wear away at the rosy picture you may have had of the world at large. Any act of cruelty or insensitivity – from a newspaper article about genocide to a simple episode of road rage – confirms this mental spiral descent. Suddenly, a stranger does something unexpected and full of grace, and the downward plunge you were taking has to recalibrate itself. Maybe the world is not that bad after all, if a total stranger can reach out and do something nice for me or for someone else. Maybe I have to revisit the interpretation of events that I have conjured and come up with a landscape of greater optimism. It is not that the world has changed because of one act of kindness. It is that you have changed your view of the world through an act of kindness.

Desmond Tutu once said: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

Let’s overwhelm the world today. Do something unusually kind today for someone you don’t know. It may change the world.

Shabbat Shalom

Welcoming Spring

“For lo, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers are springing up, the season of singing birds has come, and the cooing of turtledoves fills the air.”

Song of Songs 2:11-12

Today is the official first day of spring. I know what you’re thinking. You’re looking out the window at ten inches of snow and saying, “I don’t care what the calendar says. Until the snow melts, it’s not spring.” You have a point. What we are waiting for after this long, long winter are some signs: the budding of trees, the appearance of a crocus or two, a blink of sunshine. It may not feel like spring today, but just as time always marches on whether or not we are ready, spring will arrive soon enough. Pablo Neruda once wrote, “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep spring from coming.”

You cannot stop spring. In Hosea, we read that spring comes upon us sometimes suddenly, even after a long wait. “Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge Him. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear; He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth" (6:3). One set of rains presses upon us and then another, the way that the reality of the divine presence in our lives is not always apparent but then its signs are suddenly everywhere. Spring, in the Bible, also presaged another season: the season of war, as we read in II Samuel: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David…” (11:1). A number of medieval commentators point out that kings declared war in the spring because they did not have to battle other obstacles, like rain and mud. If spring is good for flowers, it is also good for soldiers. These two images do not come together for us organically but highlight the anticipatory nature of the season.

The burgeoning sense of anticipation and excitement that comes with spring is apparent in the verses above from Song of Songs, which are part of a famous passage that, on the surface, describes the sensual release of winter as the earth transitions into another season. The winter rains once pelting us dry up. The small signals that the earth is awakening appear in the form of flowers just coming up, and birdsong can be heard everywhere in the morning light.

The mention of the turtledove is important because the birdsong is not only from birds native to the region, but also from the dove that migrates to Israel in the spring. The dove has returned. In Hebrew the turtledove is similar to its word in English, “tur” – which represents its cooing sound. Thus, we smell, feel and hear spring in the air, with its surround-sound capabilities. Everything breathes with anticipation. The verses continue: “The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines in blossom give forth their fragrance.” Nothing is quite ready in nature, but all is in a state of preparation. It is with this heady sense of an abundant future, that the text closes, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” All of this newness signals romance. It is time for love. Move from the dormancy of winter and welcome possibility in all its forms.

The Israeli botanist Yehuda Feliks, in his commentary on Song of Songs, observes the opening of the world that takes place, “The migrant birds wheel around in the skies and the song of native birds is heard. Within a few weeks, turtledoves throng in from the south. The unripe figs begin to reach out, the vine displays its beguiling blossom.” He makes us aware of a message that all of nature is saying to us: Pay attention to the small ways that possibility surfaces in your universe. It will all grow in intensity and appearance, but don’t forget to have your eyes wide open now so that you can see it at its very beginning. Experience the opening up of nature early on and you will add weeks to your experience of the happiness that it brings.

We can’t rush spring, but we can go outside and look for its signs early on. And when we see that nature anticipates a wonderful transition, perhaps we can internalize its message: What possibilities will open up for you this season if you pay careful attention?

Shabbat Shalom

A Place Called Home

by Erica Brown

“Great sages would kiss the borders of the land of Israel, kiss its stones and roll in its dust, as it says in Psalms: ‘Behold, your servants hold her stones dear and cherish her dust’ [102:15].”

Maimonides, Laws of Kings, Mishne Torah 5:10

The past few weeks have been our season of Jewish peoplehood. We move from Passover to Shavuot - exodus to Sinai - and in between we observe Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers and Israel’s Independence Day. These are the days we became a nation, celebrate our collective shared history and values and mourn those who made it happen who did not survive. It’s a good time, in the thick of so many mixed emotions, to take a moment to think about the role Israel plays in our own lives. Maimonides, in a collection of law, felt it important to inject a note of deep emotion. Great scholars kissed the stones of Israel and rolled in its dust.

“For most Jews, Israel is Zion. Zion has a special meaning for our people everywhere. Ultimately, it is the meaning of home. Israel is the Jewish home. As such it is a haven. But it is also a functioning enterprise with a future to fulfill and to look forward to.” These are the words of David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, in his memoirs. He did not want Israel to be an ephemeral idea but a reality that required constant work and effort. And he felt that Israel was not only a haven for Jews in need. “We are a busy, forward-looking nation with much more work to accomplish. Israel cannot just be a refuge. If it is to survive as a valid nation, it has to be much, much more.”

And it is. Because there is an Israel, Jews under distress in today’s Ukraine have somewhere to go, as do Jews world over. Israel is not just a refuge. It is a place where Jews express their national identity, creativity, scientific accomplishments and are active in international trade and politics. Torah emerges out of Zion, as the expression goes, in many different ways, as a locus of Jewish educational institutions that prepare rabbis and educators to share Jewish values across the globe and as a place that thousands of young adults visit to strengthen their commitments.

Can there be a Zionism without aliyah? This question has long been the subject of controversy among early and later Zionist thinkers. In Ben Gurion’s memoirs, Israel is both a geographic location and a metaphor for collective Jewish contributions on the world stage. It is about a particular type of character informed by years of history, destiny and sacred literature. Anyone who has been in Ben Gurion’s home in Tel Aviv and seen his library can appreciate that as a secular Jew, he was highly literate in Jewish life and believed that this should be the national standard.

“Outside Israel, the growth of secularism brings the Jewish communities of the world ever closer to assimilation. Secularism is a fact of our time and since I am not religious I have no reason to deplore it. But if I’m for secularism, I’m certainly not for the ignorance that comes in its wake. In areas where Jews are not persecuted, an increasingly high number vanish, not dramatically but passively, passing into an anonymity born of lack of conviction.”

Ben Gurion spoke like a true prophet. Our distinctiveness may vanish passively because of our lack of conviction. Zionism gave us a renewed sense of passion embedded in possibility. But we cannot let go of the knowledge that creates our distinctiveness.

For Ben Gurion, Israel represented the center of Jewish idealism: “You cannot reach for the higher virtue without being an idealist. The Jews are chronic idealists which makes me humbly glad to belong to this people and to have shared in their noble epic.”

How have you shared in this noble epic?

Shabbat Shalom