Your Choice

Living in the past.  Reflection over words not spoken; things not done; moments not seized, occupy how much of our lives?  It is not possible to accurately gauge how much lost time we have accumulated throughout the years of longing.  In fact, I reckon that many of the times when we could have taken advantage of another moment -that might well be savored in the future- we miss because we are living in the past.

            Reflection is helpful where we analyze history in order to affect a change in our future action, reaction or inaction but where the past becomes a fixed image to be replayed and relived, it carries us away from life.  We miss the movie because we are still watching the commercial.

            Eeyore, the ever-pained donkey of Milne fame, is “stuck again” because he really never got “unstuck.”  Once upon a time Eeyore found himself in a place where he felt helpless.  Now, every new situation produces the same response.  He is stuck in the past.

            So much of Judaism is consumed with meeting the present.  When we eat we are supposed to bensch (bless) the food.  We wake to utter words of appreciation at our own rebirth.  In each of these ways and countless more, the mitzvot seek to wake us from a reverie and project us into the present.

            Eliezer Silver was an American chaplain who was at the infamous death camps at liberation.  He went from prisoner to prisoner consoling the desperate, lonely and emaciated souls.  Rabbi Silver tried to infuse them with hope, renewal.  Surprisingly, most were grateful and deeply thankful.  Few were embittered from their hellish experiences.  One man Rabbi Silver attempted to comfort was too angry to accept any consolation.

“I have no use for you!  I have no use for religion,” he exclaimed.

“Tell me why,” asked Silver.

“I will tell you.  In the camp there was death and continual torture.  But I tell you there was one religious Jew that had a siddur.  Do you know what he did with it?  If someone wanted to pray they had to pay him with bread to use it!  You should have seen all the bread he took for that siddur!  That is why I have no use for religious Jews.”

            Rabbi Silver looked at this man and said, “Why do you focus on this one man?  And not the many other religious yidden who paid such a high price just to hold and use a holy prayer book?”

            We may have no choice over our circumstances but we always control the way we interpret them.  In the same way, we have the ability to listen to the many voices of the present and abandon the vapid sirens summoning us to emptiness.