Decisions, decisions!

That which is difficult is easy, the easy is difficult. Why is this so?

 

We get through most of life's challenges by making snap decisions, knee-jerk reactions or having honed responses so finely that we do not linger over them.  

But present most people with an easy question like what is life for? What is your purpose in living? And they begin to stutter and mumble.

 

"Oh," you say, "those are not simple questions!"  I counter, "If every day we make decisions that are hinged upon our response to those questions we should know the answer.  Well, we go to work, open savings accounts, put money away for vacations, tell her kids they need more education, do all these things and so many more and you would never think to ask what is our purpose? The answer to that question should inform the rest of our lives.  The reason why we do everything in life should be our response to the question, "What is our life's purpose?"

 

Nu?

 

The first man and woman in the garden had a single task: to maintain what had been created in Eden.  As we know that simple charge ended in failure.  

Noah was assigned seven commandments for his heirs.  As the Torah and history reveals, this experiment also failed.  

So what is the ultimate lesson that curtails humanity's appetite for wrongdoing?  How does Torah configure the destiny of humanity?  It answers, make him responsible for more than himself.  While this may seem counterintuitive, read on.

In the Talmud, we learn of one of the students a rabbi who became ill.  As the student was new to the Academy and not very well learned or known no one went to visit him.  When the master, Rabbi Akiva, heard that his student was sick he ran to his home to pay him a visit.  The brief tale ends with the student rising out of his sickbed and thanking his teacher profusely for restoring him back to life. The lesson? Everyone is obligated to visit the sick.  This is not a good deed. It is a mitzvah, a commandment.

"Those who do not visit the sick are guilty of spilling blood," declares our sages.

There is another story of a ship floundering in a fierce storm. One companion said to another, "This is the worst thing to ever happen!"  His companion replied, "No. Something far worse would be when someone asks you for bread and you have none to give."  

In these instances and one thousand more examples just like them, our responsibility in life, to God and to the world is not to hoard but a gift. Giving gives life meaning.

Returning to the initial question posed at the beginning of this message, "that which is difficult is easy, the easy is difficult" is simple to understand. We fight against doing what we feel is imposed upon us (mitzvah).  That makes it difficult. But once we self obligate to do God's will we find it is very easy and our actions breathe meaning into life.  And on the other side of the equation, when we do that which is most expedient it provides no sense of real achievement.  In the final analysis it leaves us empty.

So, what is the meaning of life? What is your answer?

Do Not Die

 "I have no intention of dying so long as I do things.  And if I do things, there is no need to die.  So I will live a long, long time," said Albert Schweitzer.

In the book of Proverbs we read, “tzedakah saves from death.”  The same caption is emblazoned on the tzedakah box in our library.  What do the words, “tzedakah saves from death,” mean?

A story is related in the Talmud about the daughter of Rabbi Akiva.  It was prophesied that she would die on her wedding day from the bite of a poisonous snake. The day of her wedding came and passed uninterrupted.  “What did you do to avert the prediction?” she was asked.  “I do not know, but on the day of the nuptials a stranger came to the door needing food and money.  I fed him and gave him what he needed,” she explained.

Akiva understood that the actions of his daughter prevented the Angel of Death from taking his daughter.

Question: Is this true?  Can we stave off the arms of death by being benevolent?  By doing acts of tzedakah?

Each of us has experienced great pain these past weeks.  The invasion of Israel by the Hamas terrorists left us dazed, angry and deeply concerned.  The right would tell us to check our mezzuzas.  That prophylactic would prevent evil from touching us.  The left declares that the victims are to blame for the terrorist’s despicable violations.  We know the truth: we do not hold the reigns of death and cannot stay its hand and we cannot control human behavior.  

Life can be lived or endured.  We can choose to live a life that matters or grit our teeth and get by making as little disturbance as possible, hoping to pass unnoticed.  Judaism’s response is unequivocal.  What we do matters.  How we behave creates not only our character but the way we view and interact with our world.  It urges us to be invested in our world and work to change it for the better.

We were not granted life to simply live but provide balance and order in a world that is often chaotic. “Tzedakah saves from death” is the hallmark of the Jew because it keeps us fully engaged and alive.

The Talmud tells us to say one hundred blessings each day.  Why?  We say blessings for good things we experience and perform. So, the only way a person is enabled to recite one hundred brachot is to be active in seeking out ongoing opportunities to be “just” (that is the real meaning of tzedakah…i.e. it is not just giving money).  Every meeting, each encounter and event is another chance to not die but live fully.  When we take time to act righteously the life force in us becomes an indomitable spirit infusing us with a vitality that validates the gift of life we have been granted.

So, what do we do with the vile actions of those who breathe violence and hate?  How do we move ourselves out of a sense of helplessness and become a force of being fully alive?  Not a helpless victim but a person who rises to grasp life.

Ø Give to causes that directly support those most affected by the terrorism.  The easiest path is to give to the Federation and earmark the funds for Israel.

Ø Adopt a family or person that has been murdered or abducted.  Support the survivors and let them know they are not alone and will not be forgotten.  You can find the names of the kidnapped here: #KidnappedFromIsrael

As you know from know from your own wounded experience when people reach out to you the loneliness, isolation and pain are assuaged.  When no one calls, writes, or connects the pain is exponential.

Ø You often hear, “I will pray for you.”  Make it real.  Pray for the victims and let your children and grandchildren hear the prayers that you utter.  Pray with them.  Besides sending strong missives to heaven you are teaching a profound and lasting lesson to the next generation; one they will never forget.

 

Ø When people and the press seem to have a lapse of memory on what precipitated these horrific events, remind them and yourself of the mass murders, the executions, violation of women and torture of innocent civilians, guilty of only being Israeli. 

"I have no intention of dying so long as I do things.”  Embrace life. It is your life’s meaning, destiny and call.

 

Wonder

 Wonderful” starts with wonder.  Can anything be truly wonderful if we do not feel the well of amazement when experiencing it?  

The most deeply religious men and women of history were consumed by “radical amazement.”  They peered at the world through lenses that saw the miraculous in the mundane.  This is the primary difference between the religious and the non-religious.

A colleague tells the story of a child looking up to her father, pointing to the heavens and asking, “Daddy what is up? Beyond the sky?”

“Ether, my child.”

At this the little one crinkled her nose and turned her attention to other things.

The task of an educator (and who is not an educator to a child?) is to enlarge her horizons, not to limit inquisitiveness or crush curiosity.

Make no mistake: Wonder is not the sole purview of children or tzaddikim.  It abides in each of us and must be allowed to swim in the endless ocean of life.  Stand by the shore of the sea or smell a fragrance, the rabbis tell us, and say a blessing.  Why?  Such an utterance allows us to give way to jaw-dropping inspiration.

Albert Einstein wrote that, “The supreme task [of scientists] is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.  There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them…”

Sit back, gaze at the stars and feel awestruck.  You have not forgotten how to do that, have you?  No, it is like riding a bicycle.  Once you know, you always know.  What draws us away from feeling amazement are the pulls on our time that want to make us believe that they have something more important to tell us.  There is nothing more meaningful than being still, saying a single prayer with kavanah (meaning), hugging love and hanging on to them feeling your emotions overflow, tasting your food, not questioning helping another or being thankful for your eyesight.  That is why the ancient ones tells us that we must utter one hundred blessings each day.  In being aware of the multitude of miracles that surround us we become elevated.  And happier.  Much happier.

The Pathless Path

There is no answer.

There never has been a n answer.

There never will be an answer.

That’s the answer.  

~Gertrude Stein

 

Isn’t that wonderful?

A Thought....

 We live this life as if it matters.  And perhaps it does.  Everything our faith tells us about this physical universe is that our actions matter; they make a difference.  How we act, what we say, the piecing together of mitzvot or aveirot seem to indicate that, yes, we make a difference - whether we want to acknowledge the truth of that or steadfastly ignore it.  

And yet at the same time everything seems to be of so little consequence.  What truly makes a lasting difference?  Doesn't Proverbs tell us that all is "vanity"?  All that we see and do is nothing but self-deception, an ode to the self?  We are so over-occupied with telling ourselves that we 'count' when in actuality, what really counts in the final analysis?

And pain.  If everything matters, if this world is the sum of existence, then pain too matters. It is real, objective and meaningful.  We need to squirm when afflicted.  If, on the other hand, little matters in these scant years of life, then what difference does pain make?  It is as inconsequential as a flower bursting into light only to wilt tomorrow?  Pain and exuberance are ephemeral, so fleeting that their impact is negligible on our lives.

My sense is that we we do matter for a few reasons: What we do matters to our self-esteem.  How we behave rebounds on what we think of ourselves.  In turn, what we think of ourselves then has an impact on how we behave due to a positive or negative self-image.  I also sense that what we we do matters to our soul and to God.  We become muddied and confused by poor choices and elevated by good ones.  Yet, in the grand scheme these things do not make a whole lot of difference.  After all, if God and the soul is timeless, eternal, what difference do a a few heartbeats really make?

Perhaps then in the scope of eternal life we give ourselves too much credit.  Maybe the real essence of wisdom is to live life joyfully and well and good knowing that the best is yet to come.  This life does not even register as a filament on the canvass of life.  Pain and ecstasy may make us feel more alive but God is the only final and ultimate reality.

Much love to you wherever you are....

Bless God

 Once a devout Jew felt an intense desire to give a gift to God.  How can such a thing be done? how it is possible to give something to the Almighty?  Swaying over his prayer book he said, Ribbono shel Olam, "What can I give You?  What can I even wish for You?  Riches?  More possessions?  You have everything.  In fact, psalms says, "The earth belongs to the Lord and everything that is in it."  There is nothing you do not possess."

"I cannot wish You wisdom or power.  You are the definition of these things.  After all, don't we say, "There is nothing like the Lord (Ayn Kelohaynu)"?
Let me then wish you what I want for myself: I wish for You, Lord and Master, naches, joy, from Your children."

At each stage in a person's life new aspects of Torah are revealed.  We cannot achieve them all at once.  we receive them only when we are ready.  with an open mind we will find each discovery at the appropriate time.  the only constant in this lifelong process is the joy that accompanies the discovery.  Rebbe Nachman Likutay Moharan I, 22:9
This is the joy that gives God the greates delight.

How to Comfort the Bereft

 Some Thoughts on Attending to the Bereaved

 

It is not easy to deal with death.  Yet, it is a part of all our lives.  Knowing the correct thing to say or what to do can be the cause of a lot of stress.  It is helpful and empowering to know how to behave and what to do when confronted with this pain.  What follows are some random thoughts:

 

Do not leave the mourner alone for too long.  Facing death alone makes it doubly painful.

 

Words do not come without effort; they do not come gracefully.  Listening is often enough.  It is not easy to offer comfort.  Just be there.  Even “I am sorry for the loss,” works just fine.

 

Make sure there is a first meal, the Meal of Consolation after returning from the cemetery (this is the Jewish source for sending food to the mourners).  Traditionally, the first meal consists of hard-boiled-eggs or lentils (symbolizing the roundness of life) and food staples that will form a full meal.  Bring food that will be appreciated and needed by the family sitting shivah.   Flowers are not appropriate for a Jewish home.

 

Come to the minyans (services) at the Shivah house.  The comfort of having people attend services at the house is of incalculable value.  It says they are not alone.

 

Offer to serve as a pall-bearer.  It is a mitzvah that ought to be done by one’s family or community.  The general principle of Judaism is that we do things for one another and do not leave tasks to others.

 

If young children are involved an offer to help with them may be greatly appreciated.

 

General thoughts about being with mourners:

 

Silence is okay.  Do not feel like you have to force conversation.  Allowing for quiet moments will often provide space for the mourner to let you know what is on their mind.  Ask about the deceased.  Share what you know.  This is what the shivah is for.  It is generally a good idea to steer away from unrelated, trivial subjects unless directed by the mourner.  

 

Offer to help clean-up, take out garbage, drop off mail, pick up relatives, run errands…..