Grow and Allow Others to Grow

A teacher was lecturing his pupils on the story of Joseph who was sold by his brothers to passing slave merchants. 

At once, a sympathetic student began to weep listening as the tragedy unfolded.

The next year while teaching that same passage, the same student began to laugh uproariously.

“Are you insane?”  The teacher rebuked.  “Last year you were crying and now you are splitting your side with laughter?”

“Why shouldn’t I laugh?  After what happened last year Joseph should have learned his lesson!”

The stories in Torah do not change from year to year, but we do.   It is not surprising to understand them in an entirely different light with the passing years.

One year Moses may be our hero and the next, a man handicapped by all kinds of idiosyncrasies and deep flaws.  The same can be said for Rebecca or Abraham or Isaiah. 

There is one underlying concept, which undergirds the opinion we hold about the actors in the Torah: what makes a hero?  That entirely subjective question is determined by who we are.  The heroes we venerate are a reflection of our values.  For example, do you think Abraham, was fearless, unwavering in his faith to G-d?  Was he the paradigm of a religious human?  Or was Abraham too pliant, too easily moved to do evil?  After all, he was willing to murder his own son.

The answer to that question, like so many others, start with a simple question: Who is your hero?  Gandhi?  Akiva? Roosevelt?  Mao?  The next-door neighbor?  A relative? 

Why choose them?  What is it that makes them a hero to you?

We choose our heroes based on some ideal of human life.  When we know who is our hero, we understand who we wish to become.

That ideal changes as we grow.

“When I was young I admired clever people.  Now that I am old, I admire kind people,” wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel.  As we grow our priorities and wishes change.  Some become more conservative, others move to become liberal, while others change their world-view in myriad directions. 

The question burns: whom do we idolize?

A Midrash:  When Moses ascended to heaven to receive Torah the angels complained, “What is flesh and blood doing here, among us?” they wailed.

HaKadosh Baruch Hu responded, “He is here to receive the Torah.”

 “Nine hundred seventy- four generations have passed since the inception of the world.  Since that time Your word has been safe with us.  And now you want to give it to such beings??”

HaKadosh Baruch Hu responded, “They can do teshuvah.”

Hearing the clamor raging in heaven, Moses grew afraid.  What if the angels grew spiteful and destroyed him?

HaKadosh Baruch Hu soothed Moses’ anxiety saying, “Hold My throne and you will be safe.”

Even angels hold opinions. Allowing others to do likewise and respecting differences is what this midrash comes to teach.  Times change and people change along with them.  G-d trusted Moses and the people to change.  One upon a time we were radically different than we are today.  Thank G-d someone was wise enough to know we would grow out of it.

Thank You

Norman Podhoretz of Commentary Magazine fame once interviewed Professor Sidney Hooks, a few weeks before he died.  Hooks was a well-known atheist.

Podhoretz asked Hooks about his philosophy on life.  After a moment’s hesitation, Hooks replied that when something meaningful happens to him – whether it be the birth of a grandchild or by not being hot by a falling brick – he felt thankful.  (Note to self: Thankful to whom?)

Sometimes my mind meanders to all the things that could possibly happen to me.  Everything seems delicately balanced to fall apart at any given moment, especially in this technological age when all appears to be automated, the dishwasher, television, telephone, music systems, event he walls of our homes!  There are so many potential pitfalls of things that can go awry during the day from the greatest of them (death) to the least of them (the earphone jack does not work) that just getting through the day without a terrible mishap is a major accomplishment.  And it is only an accident of birth that we did not enter the world in say, Libya.

At the end of the day (assuming there will be a usual end to this day) it may be worth our while to be thankful having survived it reasonably intact, along with our family.  What an novel concept—to be grateful for all that did not go wrong.  And, of course, the potential for things to go “off course” is endless.

Helen Keller: “I, who am blind, can give but one hint to those who can see.  One admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if you would be stricken blind!

“And the same method could be applied to the other senses.  Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow.  Touch each object as though tomorrow your tactile senses would fail.  Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you would never smell or taste again.

“Make the most of every sense, glory in all the facets of beauty which the world reveals…”

A short poem with more than a measure of wisdom:

My Little Plant

My little plant died

I worried why.

“Too much water

And it will die.”

My little plant died

I questioned why.

“Too much handling

And it will die.”

My little plant lived

I asked not why

Just threw my arms exultantly high.  –Sada Applebaum

Eden in the Sukkah

The story goes that a Hasidic Jew had saved 50 rubles so that he could buy the best citron possible for the holiday. With joy in his heart, he went to buy the citron; however, on his way he met a friend who looked miserable. It became clear that his friend’s horse had died and now the poor man could not make a living. “How much would a new horse cost?” the man asked his friend. “45 rubles,” he replied. The Hasid gave the man 45 rubles, and with the five remaining rubles, he bought himself a cheap, shriveled-up citron.

That night in the synagogue the rabbi announced, “I smell the scent of the Garden of Eden. Everyone take out your citrons!” The rabbi inspected every citron until he came to the Hasid who was too embarrassed to even take his citron out. “Let’s see it,” demanded the rabbi. The Hasid sheepishly revealed his citron. “That’s it!” declared the rabbi. “The scent of Eden!” The rabbi asked what led the man to buy such a citron, and the Hasid told the rabbi all about the money he had saved and then given away.  Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins

The Person Next to You

I dislike articles that begin with, “I am sitting on my lounge chair looking up at the….”.   It likely probably stems from my early essays that all began that way.  I mistakenly assumed that people would be interested in what I was doing on a Wednesday evening in April….

Anyway. 

As I stood this year on the bima marveling at this wonderful community of people who gathered to pray on Yom Kippur evening I was struck was the wide variety of people that comprise our congregation.  We are all Jews with the same collective history and unconscious but that is where the similarity ends.

We came in fine clothes from the most posh and fashionable stores, recently obtained clothes from Goodwill, and with an amazing scale of skin tones.  We had every conceivable color present!  Straight, frizzy, curly, done-up, shaved close, blonde, gray, dyed, and black hair.  People with serious addictions to food, alcohol, pornography, drugs and gambling.  Entrepreneurs and thieves.  Tzaddiks and scoundrels.

There were gossipers and rubber-neckers, swindlers, cads, and altruistic saviors.

Transsexuals, bisexuals, homosexuals, heterosexuals, people faithful to their partners for life and others who were not.

Then the Hazzan began to intone, just before Kol Nidre, “I hereby declare it is permitted to pray with sinners.”  At that moment all barriers dropped.  No one was better than the next.  All became equal in God’s eyes (always that way actually) and more importantly, in one another’s eyes.

To be rid of judgmentalism is utopia.  It is perfection and exactly what G-d wants from us.  Forget about what you heard about disparity of wealth, learning, class, orientation, or color, what really divides humanity is being judgmental, believing that someone unlike us, is worth less.

I’d like every day to be Yom Kippur (minus the fasting) when pretense is stripped away and we all stand before God knowingly naked and indistinguishable from one another.  Death is like that.  But it would be a shame if we wait for the end of life to teach us the ultimate lesson of life.  We are all the same.

Ten for Parents

Ten Crucial Thoughts on Parenting

10. Some part of any money that comes your way should be for tzedaka.

9. The way you fulfill your appetites should be preceded by, “How does Judaism say I should do this?” 

8. You have a home in Israel.

7. Nothing is more important to your moral development than Jewish education.

6. Come to shul with me.

5. Make a Shabbat table.

4. It is important to daven.

3. I expect you to live as a Jew.

2. Zei a mensch.

1. “This is what I believe about God…”

Read the list. Discuss them.  Let them become part of the dialogue.

Prayerful Hints

“Work is great.  It warms us,” declares the Talmud (Gittin).

Who does not like a vacation?  Yet, who sits around and just that?  So many people set withering agendas on vacation.  Sports, adventures, hiking, catching a bus or running for a plane or boat, parsing on hundreds of miles, and on. 

Perhaps we have all learned that keeping busy, being productive makes us feel “warm.”   A good day concludes when we have exhausted ourselves with sightseeing.

The same is true for life in general. We seek work that gratifies us, knowing we have expended energy in a constructive manner.  We enter into relationships and know that it will take ongoing effort to ensure continuity.

An Israeli joke tells of Yossi and Shmulik sitting at a café in Tel Aviv drinking coffee all day.

Yossi explains, “We have to watch our caffeine intake.  Too much and it interferes with our sleep at the office.” 

The Holy Days are upon us.  We will sit for long hours seeking forgiveness, meting our responsibility as our ancestors did before us, greeting old friends and looking for God.

In most of those tasks we succeed but there are times when in the course of seeking God we are derailed.  That may be because no one bothered to ever explain how to look for the holy One.

-       Plato wrote the first sentence of his famous “Republic” nine times before he was satisfied.

There are different approaches to God.  They do not all work all the time.  We must be prepared to try different avenues.  How about sitting still?  Try quieting the mind and simply focus.  Or repeat a meaningful word(s) from the prayers like Shma Yisrael, or Hashevaynu Adondai (Return to me, God).  How about moving your body (what we call “shuckling”) as a form of prayer?

-Noah Webster worked for thirty-six years on his dictionary, even crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice to gather information.

Follow his example and read the marginal notes for inspiration.  Or bring an inspiring book with you to shul to resource during the service.  We keep books for reference in the bookcases at the rear of the Sanctuary for this purpose.

-Milton rose at 4 am every day so he could finish Paradise Lost.

Don’t give up.  If one form does not work, try another.  Singing is a way to cast your soul outward.  If it is, sing louder. 

-       Cicero practiced speaking in front of his friends every day for 30 years to perfect his elocution.

Why not read up on the Holy Days before you arrive at shul?  There are loads of books in the library and innumerable sources on line.  Come prepared.

-       Byron rewrote on of his poems ninety-nine times before he was satisfied.  Only then was it declared a masterpiece and has become a classic.

When we put effort into work, vacations, the yard or whatever we come away with a feeling of accomplishment, a rewarding sense of success.  Since it happens in every sphere on our lives why not shul too?    

- Gibbon spent twenty-six years writing The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I do not think you will be in services that long but come prepared, dedicated to search for your Maker.  As Torah says, “Seek Me and you will find Me.”