God

A key to understanding ourselves lies within gazing at our offspring.  To look at them is to gain personal insight.  After all, our children grow to embody the sensibilities, sensitivities and principles that we hold as sacred.  This may also be why our children sometimes have a problem with God, because we are uncertain.

“God” is one of those - well, you know – words, things, that is difficult to identify unless we are about to hit a car or in process of giving birth.  That is not to say that we do not believe in God.  Most Americans have a firmly rooted belief in the Supreme Being.  They will even pray.  Sometimes.

Developing a sense of comfort with a personal God is more challenging.  One colleague has gone so far as to say that until a couple discusses what God means to them in their lives they are not truly intimate.  Only when such a sensitive issue is shared without embarrassment can people be said to be really honest each other.  There is truth here.

Children are receptacles for what spills over from our lives into theirs.  Our beliefs have a profound impact in forming their inner core values.  Feeling shy or reticent to speak about God is a reflection who we are.  It is not them.  It is us. 

I strongly suspect that is why so many young Jews today turn away from faith and religion.  They infer that God is too mysterious and distant and potentially dangerous, a societal taboo.

As Jews Hebrew compounds the problem.  Christians have less difficulty in expressing their values in religious terms than Jews.  Jews would greatly prefer to worm their way around such worn aphorisms, like “God loves you.”  In Hebrew it presents as less dangerous and more austere.  The only problem is, nobody understands what he or she is saying.  All are familiar with the phrase, “Our Father who art in heaven.”  Jewish words.  Comes from Avinu Sh-ba’shamyim.   How about, “God loves you?”  We say those words each day before the Shma.  We call it the “Ahava Rabba.”

A key factor in coming to terms with God is developing a comfort level with our verbiage.  I urge people to try speaking out loud to God when praying from the heart (or even from the siddur).  In fact, the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch demand such.  It can be an awesome experience to speak aloud to God.  Most important is to find our deep-set belief in the Ultimate and nourish it, feed it.

The Baal Shem Tov once told of a young man who wanted to learn the art of becoming a blacksmith.  He approached an older, established man wanting to become an apprentice.  Learning from this teacher, the young man was a quick study; he learned all the skills of the trade.  Going out on his own however, the young man soon failed.  He returned to his teacher and asked what he was doing wrong.  The elder replied, “You have all the information, all the necessary tools and you’ve mastered the techniques.  What remains is to learn how to kindle the spark.”

Rabbi Jonathan Case

PS God bless you

A Rabbi's Role

A bit of nostalgia: My first sermon (Beverly, Norwood, N. Adams).

Millennia ago Moshe rabbenu descended from Mt. Sinai after meeting HaKadosh Baruch Hu.  With him, he carried the Tablets of Stone, luchot, engraved by the finger of God.  Moshe was not just the FTD man of the ancient world; he was much more.  And the item which he carried were far more precious than anything the world had ever seen.  Moshe was acting as more than an errand boy delivery a thing from point A to point B.  He was an expounder.

After the Revelation Moshe’s task was to teach masses of Israelites the meaning of the words God scribed.  That is why we call him Moshe rabbeinu, our teacher, our rabbi.

In Mishnaic times, roughly 1900 years ago those who taught the Law that Moshe brought and taught, were given the title of Rabbi, meaning “my teacher.”  

This is what a personal teacher is, a rabbi, a mentor.  And like all other teachers a rabbi has concrete priorities and techniques that have been handed down through the generations.  Like the “old school” they can be reduced to the three R’s; reading, righting and ‘rithmatic.

In Great Britain, where I went to college, people asked what I studied in rabbinical school.  I answered, “Political Science.”  When I asked what they studied they responded something like, “I read English.”  “Yes, I understand,” I would then say.  “But what did you do?”

“I read English,” they insisted.

When students in England go to university they “read” a subject.  We have a  “major.”  A “reader” is a more descriptive title since it implies that learning is a process, not a destination.

In this regard the role of the rabbi is much the same as a reader.  One must be an avid reader, gobbling up new ideas and nuances alongside ancient notions. A rabbi needs to be a perpetual student.  As the Mishna observes, d’la mosif yasif.  Loosely translated it means, “Use it or lose it.”  (It literally means, “One who does not add, loses”).

A rabbi is a reader because there are only so many message one person can deliver and teach without enlarging their sphere of knowledge.

I hope as the years pass what I say and believe will change as I grow and mature.  With ongoing expansion of knowledge I can share newfound insights with my community.  After all, for us learning has been the bedrock of our people for thousands of years.  Many would argue that it has been the breath, which has kept us vibrant and alive through the long centuries.  I agree.  Learning for the sake of growth.

What does good preaching and teaching sound like?  It ought to grab and secure the attention of the listener along with exercising the imagination bringing it towards thoughts that are familiar towards ones that have not been considered.  It is also the responsibility of the preacher to involve the community in the joy of the learning process, growing, blossoming within the context of our tradition.

This is where the individual reader moves from the inward to the collective, the whole.  In life there are always shades, varying perspectives on all issues.  That is because no two situations are exactly alike.  Life is not black and white, it is gray.  My task to to show how all things can been seen in a different light too through the lenses of generation upon generation of learned scholars and rabbis.  Hindsight is only wonderful when it illuminates the present.

That is why I am a reader.

This leads me to the second crucial role of a rabbi, that of righting (or correcting).

There is an old Hasidic tale of a man who taught his students that something can be learned form everything, from the most profound to the most mundane.  “Even man’s inventions can instruct,” said the master.

“What can be learned from a train?” asked one inquisitive student.

“That in a single moment you can miss something critical.”

“And from a telegraph?”

“That every word is counted and changed.”

“And what can be learned from a telephone?”

“That what we say here is heard elsewhere.”

“Righting” involves taking a situation out of its visual context in the moment, where judgments are made instantaneously and look at the context and event through the lens of Jewish ideals. 

“Righting” is when we speak to a family or person about the merits of keeping a kosher home.  Or speaking against insider trading or prejudices.  Righting means talking with people, not “reading” them, and attempting to have an impact by throwing a Jewish perspective on the matter.

There are two avenues of “righting.”  The first is as a group, a community, a congregation or gathering.  The second is through personal contact; being an influence by example and personal connection.

Finally there is the arithmetic.  This is the most trying of all.  As the late great Rabbi Milton Steinberg once said of his profession, “You suffer from a sense of defeat and frustration.  You may find yourself unable to effect your ends, but you will never feel that what you are doing in not worthwhile.”

Arithmetic is the end product, the hope desire that we might effect real, meaningful change.  It is the sum of a rabbi’s lifelong efforts.

I cannot possibly hope to reach everyone, to have an effect on the whole.  But, in the final analysis, the arithmetic is the judge of the success of a rabbi.

A farmer has to be intimately familiar with his implements, a hoe and plough.  A rabbi must be equipped with the tool of reading, righting, and arithmetic.

This is the message that I bring today.  Reading is my initiative and responsibility.  Righting is our joint task.  Arithmetic is our heritage and our future.

The Fruit of Life

A parable: Once there was a king who held daily court for his people.  They would line up for a chance to see the monarch, or better, to have a word with him.

One poor man showed up regularly.  In his rags he would present the king with a fruit on each occasion. The king graciously accepted it and then threw it aside, seeing the source it came from.

For ten years the beggar showed up at the palace and presented his gift.  One day, a monkey escaped from its cage, grabbed the proffered fruit, and took a bite.  Squealing in pain the monkey threw it aside, revealing a precious gem inside.

There is so much that we come to know as we age.  In the first years of life we watched our children scrape their knees, cry and then get up and be more careful.  When young we learned many things but that knowledge was a different kind of knowledge we possessed we grew in age. 

A young person quickly gains the know-how to navigate through interpersonal issues.  Then comes wrestling with learning how to recognize a friend from a potential partner changing past paradigms.  We learn how to achieve our financial goals, which flux with time, and live with someone who has different ideals from us.  Parenting brings new understanding.  Old age presents its challenges and new understanding comes along replacing the old.

Life is not linear.  It has bumps and jolts and lots of u-turns. 

When the curtain of life is about to draw to a close where are we?  What have we learned in all the decades of wanderlust?  The process of ongoing learning, unlearning and re-learning?  Bumps and diversions? 

Does anything stand inviolate at the beginning and end of time?

Yes.  The word for this in Hebrew in emet.  Emet means truth. It is unchanging.  Emet stands and alone remains at the end of the day and at the end of a life.

What you knew as a child is what you know now: 

Life is for giving and receiving love.

-The world is a giant playground filled with weird smells, sounds and fabulous colors.  It is meant to play in.  Use.  Don't uproot. 

-There are dangers lurking everywhere.  It pays to stick together. 

-Nothing should be wasted because it is so much more fun to repurpose. Ask any four-year old what to do with an empty carton.  Or ask any eighty-four year old why she does not throw out her old things.  You never know.

-Share with those that do not have.  What are you going to do?  Have it interred with you? Leave it to a family that will glare at each other in court over what remains?

Above is a distillation of the Ten Commandments.  Emet.

About the only thing missing is G-d.  And of course, where we began is where we end.  The first prayer we learned was the Sh’ma.  It will be the last words out of our mouths before our soul ascends.

So eat the fruit.  Enjoy but bite slowly in case there is a ruby hiding inside and more than likely, there will be.