Faith

Where is God today? Few question the existence or presence of the Lord in history. We speak of God as the Ultimate Creator.  God was the Source in the Garden of Eden. God was liberating force long ago in Egypt, the nexus of the event we celebrate each spring.

Moshe Rabbenu saw the shadow of God on Mt. Sinai. In the ancient ghettos of Venice or Rome the people knew God and accepted His Hand.  Throughout the breadth of personal and collective histories we can hear the plaintive voices of our bubbes and zaydes.

To see the power of God in history is not an achievement. We tend to question God's existence now, not retrospectively. People make demands of the present that have never been made before. For example, past queries would probe the notion of justice and challenge the belief whether what we were doing was what God really wanted us to do.

Our ancestors questioned of the interpretation of practices such as why tefillin be located so high on the forehead. They pondered issues like does God really intervene in our daily affairs? They did not, however, question the existence of the Deity. In short, their doubts centered around belief that God… Our questions revolve around believe in God.

Herein lies the basis for most of the existential woes of modernity.  We do not have firm roots. As a result, insecurity, doubt and fear are natural byproducts of us becoming arbiters of right and morality. Compounding the problem, we consider our value based on what others make of us and we are therefor frequently in trouble.

When we see others acting in ways that we believe to be inappropriate or wrong; when we do not get approval from people who we love; when someone does something hateful towards us, we take these as indications that define our value.

Were our self definition to be based on an unchanging, absolute belief our sense of self would be assured.  When I set my mind on the truths of God I am liberated from the roller coaster and begin to tread the road of selfhood, rather than engaging my worth from the approval of others. Boundaries are more firm when we stand on solid ground.

”You are my witnesses that I am God,” (Isaiah 43)

When you are with my witnesses, I am God;

when you are not My witnesses, I am –as it were – not God.” -Midrash

A Community

An educator and friend wrote an article entitled, “Always Tag All Four Bases.  Joel Grishaver's theory struck a resident chord deep inside. The basic idea is this: there are four indispensable components to living a conscious Jewish life and ensuring Jewish survival in the next generation.

The first area begins with "Bunny." Bunny was our synagogue janitor. He was some sort of Christian, I never learned exactly what kind. He was always soft spoken.  The biggest thrill for any of us kids was to see the inside of Bunny’s apartment during Junior Congregation. The epitome of cool was to sit in the kitchen and hang out with Bunny.  He would always listen to what we had to say it would never report back to my parents the terrible things that we did. He was cool.

Many years later I learned that Bunny was not his real name. But for us it was. That is what he was to all of the children, Bunny.

Then it was Mr. Eisner. He cracked a smile about every other Rosh Hodesh. But he was always at Services and ran the youth programs. It was definitely not cool but we listened to him he spoke.

Our Hazzan, Cantor Marcus. laughed a lot.  In fact he waited for us to tell him jokes.  And when we failed to do so, he shared some of his own.  If we laughed he would tell more. One day I mentioned the writer Elie Wiesel to him but mispronounced it.  It came out as Eli Weasel.  He laughed so hard that his face turned red and he ended up having to hold his stomach. That was the end of that Bar Mitzvah lesson.

Sunday morning services were always the same. Same crew. Same still jokes. How many times can you laugh at “ha-motsie lechem Minnie Horvitz?”  Yet all the old men, for that is how they seemed to me, belly laughed every week.  They also welcomed me to sit next to them and passed food down whenever my plate was empty.

Then there's the rabbi’s class at the local college. It was there that I first learned that there was so much more to Judaism than reciting the ashray and eating matzoh. In that seminar room, I am discovered my first inkling to become a rabbi. It was a kind of awakening for me.

Here is the main point:  Memories are a great tapestry composed of individual filaments which form the core of our identity. Each one of the people of our past and countless more beckoned us, welcomed us and embraced us. They interacted every day. They knew our lives and our dirt. We were part of a holy community.

Things shared by community are sacrosanct through time and companionship. Alliances forged by common experience become a great underpinning of our personal identity. As Grishaver notes, people fly from one diet to the next but when he finally make it to Weight Watchers, with dozens of others who are there for support and encouragement, they make it. And don’t forget about AA and NA and DA and all the other recovery groups. They work because they are a community.

Hillel said, millennia ago, “Do not separate yourself from community.”  Pretty wise advice.

Home

Families are not what they used to be, but maybe they never were to begin with. What people say is true: “You can pick your friends but you cannot pick your family.” They really mean to say that if we had a choice we would opt for our friends to be our family and for our family to become her friends  -- if not a little more removed.  The only problem with that wish is that if it were true, our friends would then become our family and we would likely despise them every bit as much as we do our family today.

Families breed intimacy by definition. Boundaries are few. Friendships, on the other hand, have clear delineated boundaries. That is why we adore our friendships and are so threatened by our families. The first few real emotional demands while the other has many.

Being stuck, having to work out the problems that accompany every intimate relationship makes a family.  Fly-by-night relationships can never deliver the emotional stability or impact that long term ones give.  Tensions do not dissolve families; they challenge them. Each obstacle is a joint hurdle that the group faces together.  Overcoming these obstacles bolsters the love and secures the members to the family unit.

Milestones in the family’s life act as defining agent to the individual members. If, for example, the family celebrates Pesach and birthdays with joyous abandon it is all but certain that the children will re-create those events in their new lives as they physically leave the home nest. These things are carried deep within the psyche.

Shul observances and communal events can never supplant the home as the setting of Jewish life.  It simply does not possess the same impact. The movement within America has been to give over Jewish practice into the communal arena. It will not work. There is no substitute for a home Sukkah or chicken soup on erev Shabbat.

Here is a test.   Any child who is been through a religious school education but has never observed any festivals of say, Shavuot or Sukkot at home, challenge with the following question: what are these holidays about? (I assure you they have learned them 10 times over). But ask them about Pesach or Hanukkah, which they observe, and they will respond without hesitation.

The home is a far richer environment for learning than we give credit.  This is the one arena where no surrogate can fill in the gap.

Preparing for Life's Greatest Challenge

Reflecting back, I spent the greatest portion of my youth learning empirical facts, few of which relate to my life now. School never taught me how to be a good father or pitch a sale. It certainly did not teach me how to be moral, honest or file my income tax. In fact nobody ever showed me how to raise kids or be a decent loving spouse, unless you count the modeling of my parents.

Our culture places an inverse emphasis on utilitarian skills and trivia.  We learn lots of things that we will never use and less about critical aspects of personal growth.    “That is true,” you will say, “but kids are not ready to learn about how to raise children.”   So why not teach how to treat one another with dignity?  Remember Hillel’s axiom, “Do not do to others what is hateful to you?”  How to we impart this valuable lesson to the next generation?

Here is a dividend from our present educational system: Our children know how to communicate with and through machines but not directly with each other.  So nu?  When do we get our “real life” education?  It is on the job training.  The trouble is, it is usually a pass/fail course.

For some people it works while for others such learning is a dismal failure.  One of the most regrettable results of our inability to live happily is rooted in unsatisfying relationships. Too many marriages go sour for lack of preparation. Too many unsolvable fights occur for lack of having proper tools to disagree productively.

Listen: Chava came to me crying.  He was a monster. And she had it with him. It was all over. I sat with Chava, as she rolled back the years, tracing the roots of her pain. “If only I knew what he was like to begin with! He was so thoughtful and kind of the beginning. Even romantic. Now, all he does is sit around, scream at the kids and stare at the television. Do you know the last time you held me? Just held me?  With nothing else to follow??”

Could the marriage be saved, I wondered. Can it be saved? I grew angry when I thought this could all could have been prevented with a little inoculation before the marriage ceremony. If a fraction of their education had been directed towards relationships maybe they would know Shalom.

In a letter on sexuality written by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, he wrote:

Marriage is the most profound relationship we enter and therefore one of our most demanding undertakings. It touches on our deepest human longings for love, trust and intimacy, and therefore brings out the very best and very worst of who we are as individuals. Moreover, everyone grows and changes over time, and marital relationships have to adjust to such changes.  For these reasons and more, sustaining us assess for marriage is indeed hard work, and people contemplating marriage oh it to themselves and to the future spouses and children to prepare for that task. We spend years preparing for our careers.  Eight or ten sessions of a marriage preparation course, where available, is a superbly good investment of time.  Alternatively, the couple should consider a series of counseling sessions with the Rabbi and/or marriage counselor.

The goal of marriage preparation, whether in a course or in premarital counseling is to encourage the couple to talk to each other about the important aspects of their relationship. Adequate preparation might include issues of sexuality, children, parents, friends, jobs, money and communal commitments.  It might also teach people to fight and healthy and loving ways so that they emerge stronger as a couple and more generally, it should help people learn how to communicate better. A couple should also discuss how they are going to express the Jewish commitments in the new home and how Judaism and can help them with some or all of the issues that arise.

Clearly, none of these issues is ever fully resolved forever.  This is a life-long project.  Moreover, one can and probably will change one’s mind on these issues as time progresses and one cannot plan all of life’s future contingencies at the time of marriage. But to enter into marriage in this era without deeply exploring areas of concern is to close eyes to reality.

That's Rich

One of the most frequent and obvious questions I am asked concerns happiness.  The question takes various forms like, “How can I stop feeling so down?” and why can’t my wife be more supportive and sympathetic?” and “When will the good things start?”  The questions all focus on the idea (and ideal) of personal happiness.

Here is what Phyllis Theroux writes:  “Maybe it’s best to treat happiness like a deer in the forest.  Sometimes it will emerge from the woods and pay you a visit.  But it dislikes undue attention.  And if you chase it, it will run away.”

The more we speed up chasing after happiness the greater the distance between it and us.  With the exception of forms of physical emotional abuse happiness is not generated from without; it comes from within.  It cannot be achieved or won as a reward.  It simply is recovered.  Happiness is in being.

A single Hebrew word has always caught and held my attention, Ashray.  Nemesis of all Hebrew school children, the Ashray is the litmus test for Hebrew fluency and occupies a conspicuous part of our liturgy. 

Ashray is usually translated as  “happy,” but I think we can do better than that.  Ashray, the first word in the famous Psalm 145 is recited severe times each day.  And we are all familiar with its first cousin, from every blessing we recite, asher.  Asher means, “that which is.”  “That which is” is happy.  It asks no meaningful questions about our emotional state or childhood experiences.  It simply is.

All traditional fairy tales end with, “and they lived happily ever after.”  Takka??  They never argued?  Had spats?  Stormed out?  Threw dishes?  And where do all the money come from to pay the electric bills?  Were all the children really well behaved, blond, blue-eye kewpie dolls?  Of course not.  “Happily ever after” means living an accepting life.

The Mishna poses a question, “Who is rich?”  In good rabbinic fashion it answers its own question, “The one who is satisfied is rich.”  That is all.