Stepping Out

It is always a choice.

A bird steps out from its perch high atop the cliff.  The winds loop, roil, and howl up here.  It is a dangerous first step.  Fear could paralyze the trajectory of the bird.  It knows that if its mind seizes up, everything will become a hopeless jumble; the bird might forget its appointed task.  Dark images begin to crowd to the mind’s eye of how its small body would twist hopelessly through the air not knowing which direction was up or down.  It may even crash into the cliff in the long screech to death.  The plummet would be inevitable.  If that vision were allowed to become concretized in the bird’s imagination it would mean the end for the bird.

Fear takes control.  It breaks the focus and steady contact with our higher self.  Fear disconnects us from our strength.  Fear separates us from us.  Sapping our energy we become pawns to chance winds and malicious designs.  We are prey for evil influences.  At best, we survive.  At worst we fall short of meeting our destiny and wind up despising what we have become.

There is another way.

The bird may gingerly push off from its nook, spread out its wings to catch the breeze.  At once it is in flight, afloat on invisible strings from heaven.  With thoughtful and deliberate motions the wings start to move in tandem with the rising winds.  They are buffeted and pulled upward closer to the clouds.  Upward.  The power is intoxicating.  Soaring, an overwhelming exhilaration takes hold.  It is done. 

“This is who I am!”  “This is my path!” 

The realization brings the bird to the limits of its capability.  No, it brings them closer to their new expanded potential.   The boundaries of the universe have been stretched.

The wings flap and tilt and direction is changed.  Another shift and the flight pattern takes a sudden dive.  Racing even faster than the flow  of air now the bird gleefully pulls out of the rapid descent and once more is borne higher and higher.

It is a choice that has been made. 

Reality itself is a choice.  We choose to be victims.  Or we can be beacons of endless energy and potential.

It is true that there are times we may feel crowded by external factors – people pushing us off the cliff -- but the decision always belongs to us alone.

We decide which road we take.  We choose where we wish to live.  We opt to simmer with rage.  We can choose to forgive.  We make the decision to judge someone favorably.  We can damn them and us.  The endless loops that replay in the mind causing endless bouts of angst are not beyond our control.  

Each of us possess the greatest gift of God; endless potential.

Allow us to step off the edge into the air, Lord Master.  Make us firm in the conviction to trust ourselves and You.   Help us to let go of the earth that binds and constricts our consciousness.  Give us the courage to forgive them.  Grant us the strength to forgive ourselves.  Trust.   Help us to choose, Avinu, our Father, the ultimate path of life.

Derekh Eretz

Certain Hebrew terms convey great meaning.  Yiddish is the same.  Ever try translating ‘shmooze’?  Or ‘noodnik’?   Or ‘oy gevalt’?

The phrase derekh eretz is similar.  It conveys great depth.  Derekh eretz literally means the way of the land.  But the inner meaning of the phrase goes well beyond that.

Our ancient tradition has laws that cover just about every situation we would ever encounter.  We know how much tzedakah to give, how to give it; what kind of spouse to choose; how to litigate; what is kosher and how often to have sex.  Yet the one thing the tradition cannot legislate is derekh eretz.

The Torah tells us what honesty means but it cannot detail the intricacies of facial expression, body movement, or the way we look at one another.  There are just too many variables to consider!

          For example.  The Torah tells us to respect our elders.  It says that we should show them courtesy and deference that.   Yet, what does this mean?  Rabbenu Yonah of Gerona, centuries later, interprets to mean that when speaking to or about the elderly and scholarly we are to use words of respect.  This is derekh eretz.

The Midrash makes a remarkable statement when it says derekh eretz kodma la’Torah, that is, even before the Torah was given, humanity was endowed with a sense of derekh eretz, an understanding of correct behavior.  While the Torah teaches us how to conduct our personal and communal lives it is understood that without derekh eretz all else is devalued.

The Talmud states that a wise person does not open his mouth before being addressed by one much wiser; they do not interrupt another mid-sentence; they do not reply hastily…”.  All these ideas are one person’s attempt to address what is derekh eretz.  It is ultimate common sense.

         A friend tells the story of a newspaper boy standing in the cold rain.  An old man saw the boy shivering in a doorway and went to buy a paper.  “My boy, aren’t you terribly cold standing here?”  The boy looked up with a warm smile and said “I was, sir, before you came.”

         This is derekh eretz.

Truth or Preference?

One of the great masters, Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Koktsk, taught that when God crafted the world and was about to create people, He first threw away “truth.” 

Centuries and millennia passed when the Mishna declared that the world stands on three principles, “Torah, worship, and acts of generosity.”  What is noteworthy is that “truth” once again is missing from the list.  How could the world possibly be created, much less survive, without this critical element?

Rabbi Larry Kushner observed that if everyone held on to his or her own “truth” and was unwilling to let go of it there would never be peace.  Peace is only possible when every person is willing to forgo some measure of what they hold as their personal “truth” for the sake of something greater.  Those who grow righteously indignant and scream their vehemence cannot find common ground with anyone but the few who agree to go along with them.  For the rest of us there are few areas of commonality. 

For certain there are some inviolate truths.  Yet, it is informative to think that our faith does not permit us to foist our beliefs  (truths) on others.  We know we are the “chosen” people but only because we have chosen not because we are superior.

I will often ask students to name some “truth.”  Without much hesitation I get answers like not stealing, being honest, not hurting, being kind, respecting elders, and a host of other agreeable ideas.  In each instance we can raise problems, which question the foundation of their “truth.”  For example, is stealing still wrong if you or someone else will die if you do not?  I bring up the Holocaust as an example.  Is being honest always the correct thing to do?  I suspect people who are too honest have injured us all.  Does respecting elders extend to pedophiles? 

Truth is neither a constant nor an absolute. 

Another colleague, Rabbi Jack Reimer, once wrote that at the end of the Amida (and Kaddish) you take three steps back when saying Oseh Shalom (the One who makes peace) because peace is only realized when we back up, leaving room for other ideas, other truths.  In much the same way I have taught that we place the mezzuzas on our doorframes on the right hand side, in a slanted position – not horizontally or vertically – to demonstrate that every home must harbor compromise if there is to be shalom bayit (peace in the house).

Everyone wants peace but the critical idea conveyed by Torah is that being rigid with our “truths” will not lead to that destination.  Rabbi Shimon said two thousand years ago, “Be pliable like a reed, not rigid like a cedar.”