Remember Me

 My dear friend,

 

I have been thinking about our conversation.

 

So much detritus lies in the dust after our lives are over.  I remember a song by Craig Taubman entitled, “Who Will Remember Me?”.  It is a powerful question contained in song thinking about dying after a satisfied life knowing that we will not be forgotten.  Yet as the song supposes, what if no one recalls us?  What if our lives are erased and no one remembers our name, how we labored, what we crafted, our joys and sorrows, our creations and missteps?  After life isn’t it a universal wish that we will be remembered?  Don’t we all hope that our lives meant something and have left a lasting imprint on the world?

 

I think of the items I have collected and saved from my parents.  There is almost nothing from my mother and some important documents that have come to me from my father.  But who will want them?  And what happened to all the things of the previous generation?  Sure, I have few photos of my grandparents and a couple of great grandparents, but I accept that even if my children take them, they will not remember who these people were as they have no personal memories of interacting with them or knowledge of their lives, much less physical contact with them.

 

Grudgingly, reluctantly, I have come to accept that the pictures and various documents will reach the rubbish heap.  There is too much for any of my kids to take and little reason for them to want them since these items do not relate in any meaningful way to their lives.

 

And yet.  These are their blood relatives, their forbears, to whom they ultimately owe their lives.  

 

To make matters worse, not only do I have these various pieces of family history I have also collected more “things” than they ever had. I have more certificates, prizes, letters, awards, degrees, cherished books and articles than they had in a lifetime.  I remember purchasing a Shas (Talmud) when I was in college. I meticulously researched the best set available, one that had a high rag content and was likely to last generations.  The tomes must weigh well over 200 pounds, and I paid a lot of money (in those days) for them.  Who will take all that?  Already my library has been significantly downsized.  Only that which is most cherished remains with me. And still….

 

My children will suffer through the same agonizing questions as they come of a certain age.  Perhaps my grandparents and great-grandparents; perhaps Moses and Abraham puzzled over the same issues.  Is this just part of the human condition?  We are predisposed to live a life that matters, one where we will be recalled and our life story told.  Except for the Sarahs, Rambams and Einsteins our life histories are swept clean by time.

 

Does anything last?  

 

The people whose lives we touched and helped will also pass away.  So even all those acts of generosity and selflessness will disappear as one generation takes the place of another.

 

On more than one occasion someone has come to me and shared how what I said to them at a time of transition in their life galvanized them to face their trial.  Each time when presented with a story like that I freely admit that I never recalled saying what they told me I said.  

 

I am warmed and comforted by those moments.  It tells me that my life has had meaning, that I made a difference to someone.  Nothing physical lasts, including us.  But something infinitely more important survives the short span of our time on earth. 

 

You have changed the world, one tiny bit at a time.  One pebble at a time you leave behind a mountain of accumulated goodness.  You leave the world in better condition.

 

Ellul

 

The Hebrew word for this month, Ellul, is said to be an anagram for “I am my beloved’s and my beloved I mine.” (Ani l’dodi v’dodi li).  Taken from Solomon’s Song of Songs the phrase expresses an idea that runs quite deep in Judaism.

We all know that love is but what is the opposite of love?  Elie Wiesel, the world’s conscience, taught that the opposite of love is indifference. Is this true?

Why did God create the world?  What purpose could a world filled with endless possibilities of destruction fulfil? Why would God have crafted a place where evil in the guise of indifference to suffering exist?

In my life I have often marveled at the faith and hope people hold in life.  A child dies and the parents find reason to love one another or devote themselves to having another child.  Two people meet, fall madly in love only for their relationship to end in a pyre of pain and exhaustion.  And when time has healed their wounds, they seek new love.  In the extreme, Holocaust victims whose families were brutally murdered raised new families.

Why do people go to such extravagant lengths in the aftermath of pain and horror?  After being singed by death or betrayal we continue to believe.  As humans we keep faith and hope alive.  We know in our hearts that love is still possible.  We seek to live life fully and give live to those whom we love.

To return to the question above, “Why did God create the world?”  Being perfect, God had no need for imperfection.  Yet, this was the ultimate act of love just as you have done many times in your life.  I believe the answer is hope and love.  

Judaism speaks of a world of crafted out of the tendrils of love. All the basic holy texts that we revere hold the same underlying principle.  One of the primary prayers that precedes the Shma in every service describes the fabric of a universe where God wove it out of a love that had no boundaries, no limitations.  

Every time we tap into that vast cosmos and feel the pulsating care that radiates out of the Divine, we can find ample reason to embrace that love and be in harmony with it.

Indifference to this universe of love is a rejection of all things that are sacred.   The path of Judaism is to look for the luminescence of joy, resilience and love that inheres everywhere.

So, at this time of year as we enter into the month of Ellul we are reminded by our sages of old that “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is Mine,” is God's endless commitment of hope and love.

 

 

Everything in its Place

 “A person is obligated to say a blessing for the bad things just as he is responsible to say it for the good.”  Berachot 33b

Having a world view is important.   We know where we stand in a comprehensible universe.  Chaos becomes minimized and confusion reduced.  In such a mind-set everything has a place and makes sense.  There is a purpose to all things.  Nothing is extraneous.  Nothing is lost.

Of Talmudic fame, Rabbi Akiva is a prime example of someone who possessed a world view that enabled him to lead a rich life.  Akiva’s life was far from pristine.  He was an impoverished and illiterate shepherd. He had virtually no possessions, certainly nothing of real value.   Eventually, Akiva fell in love with a rich landowner’s daughter and subsequently spent many years separated from her because of his impoverishment of both money and learning.  His father-in-law had such a low opinion of him that he severed his relations with his daughter when she informed him of her love for the poor and ignorant farmer.  

Akiva’s guiding principle in life was, “Everything God does is for our good.”  Now, that does not mean that Akiva joyfully embraced the many painful and terrible things that happened to him but he understood that even bitter medicine was still medicine.  Every event in his life had kernels of growth hidden inside.  It was his task to find it and grow from it.

We hear people say, “It is God’s Will,” when bad things happen.  Such a way of thinking is akin to making the best of every situation and accepting that we can grow and learn from any experience.  Railing against reality does us no good while asking what we can learn from a situation affords great opportunity.

 

“Blessed is God day by day.  He bears our burdens.  The Lord is our salvation. Selah.” Psalm 68:17

 

The Deeds

 Mishna teaches, “All whose actions exceed his wisdom, his wisdom will endure.  All whose wisdom exceeds his deeds, his wisdom will not last.” (Avot 3:5)  

This Mishna could mean that without implementation we forget.  Has it ever happened that no sooner had you learned an interesting fact that you lost it?  If we do not put into practice what we have learned the knowledge leaves us.  Question for contemplation: If this is true how would we change what we read or watch?

The Mishna could also be a philosophical comment.  What is the purpose of listening to the news?  Or reading the latest journal?  Why bother taking advanced courses or going to school at all?

For our faith, the purpose of learning is to inform life, not simply gather information.  In other words, we learn to change.  There is little value to knowledge if it does not lead to growth.  In fact, one of those most powerful statements of this belief is found in the second paragraph of the Aleynu where it reads our objective is, “to perfect the world.”  Knowledge can be used to win an argument, build a more effective way of killing people, or fix that which is broken.  We choose.

I have performed far too many funerals for my liking.  I recall few instances where the bereaved family proudly told me how brilliant the deceased was.  I remember times when their wisdom was lauded in connection with great accomplishments and also remember other times when their knowledge was mentioned in a derogatory, snide way.

Each hour should contain moments when we actualize the meaning of the Aleynu.  At the end of the day we ought to be able to recall times when we lifted grayness from the world and allowed more light to filter in; when the world became less broken and more whole because of something we did or said.

That is why Judaism insists of the path of mitzvot, action.  We have 613 mitzvot, or behaviors, that govern our lives.  It is learning put into action.

Winston Churchill said in 1936 at the brink of the World War, “I am looking for peace.  I am looking for a way to stop war, but you will not stop war by pious statements and appeals.  You will only stop it by making practical arrangements.”

We are -- there for we do.

 

A wealthy man approached the Gates of Heaven.  He tried to enter but the Ministering Angel blocked his way.  Finally, he took out his checkbook and said, “Everyone has a price.  How much do you want?”

“You don’t understand.  We don not take checks up here.  Only receipts.”

Anyway

 Anyway

 

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;

Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;

It was never between you and them anyway.

Anonymous

Patience

"God of patience, 
teach me 
patience. 
Help me learn 
to wait— 
for the good 
that is just around the corner; 
for the assistance 
that will soon be within my reach; 
for the relief 
that is just a moment away. "


 The Gentle Weapon

On Account

            At the Phoenix House in New York, the celebrated drug rehabilitation center in New York City, newcomers arrive and gather for their first session.  They sit around in their chosen seats and gab.  Then, someone will say something like, “It isn’t your mother or society or even the pushers who put the needle in your arm.  You did.”  Only then does the therapeutic process begin. US News and World Report

Most of what we have leaned is due to pain.  We suffer and grow.  Who among us cannot attribute innumerable physical and psychic scars to moments of shame, despair, and loss?  No one seeks pain but we all grow from it.

They say that nothing is assured except “death and taxes.”

Regarding the first, we are all survivors.  As we age the scythe of the Angel of Death comes closer and closer and we feel more vulnerable to its sharp edge.  Judaism has many prescriptions for addressing death.  You know what they are: immediate burial, shoveling earth into the grave, sitting shiva, observing the eleven months of mourning, yahrzeit…  I find most folks nowadays want to remove themselves from the process.  They want to get it over with quickly and “move on.”

Life waits for no one and we have to run if we expect to keep up.  It is shame.  

I wish society would turn back to when time was not a commodity but a luxuriant gift.  With a determination to sit, tells stories of the dead, say kaddish, and openly weep we give ourselves the gift of healing.  We take responsibility for the true loss we have experienced.  We own it, understand it, and learn from it.  And such time is a luxury.

What do we learn from such attention to the time of shiva and going to say kaddish on yahrzeits?  One lesson is that we are far less than we think we are.  In the end we are dispensable.  We may attempt to stave off the claws of the death but it will only be a temporary stay.  Then what will happen to our clients?  People who depend on us?  They will “move on” and forget about us.  This is one of the lessons of being quiet and waiting for the lesson.

An idea from our past: the kaddish is the prayer that asks God to acquit the dead.  It is an altruistic prayer, a gift to the souls who have passed.  That is noble.  It is also an act of memory and who does not want to remembered after their life is over?

Another item learned from saying kaddish is the broad path that is left by death.  When we stand to say kaddish in a community we are rarely alone.  Looking around we see others who have suffered. We knowingly look at them and they at us as we share a bond, a sacred unspoken bond.  We support one another.  That is why kaddish happens only in a minyan, in a community.  It is never to be said alone.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “God is concern, not only power.  God is He to whom we are accountable.  In the wake of religious insight, we retain an awareness that the transcendent God is He to Whom our conscience is open.”  In other words, God wants us to be accountable.  He does not desire us to pass by the many roads of life without looking both ways.  We are supposed to laugh, cry, talk, be silent at all the appropriate times.

And regarding taxes (see third paragraph), a law student was finishing a course in federal income tax.  As he was walking in to take the final he spotted a penny, heads up, on the ground.  He picked it up and said to the professor, “It must mean good luck for the exam.”

“Not necessarily,” he replied.  “But it does mean you have taxable income.”

Be accountable.  Be responsible.  It is God’s gift to you and the best gift you can give yourself.

Do

 Once there was a lonely woman.  She went to class by herself.  She did homework alone.  No one wanted anything to do with her.  There was a good reason for it; she was not a nice person.

Feeling isolated, she went to a rabbi seeking advice.  A far as she was concerned she was fine.  Life was treating unfairly (people tend not be able to see personal flaws).  While sitting with the rabbi her personality shone through and he saw the young woman for what she was, selfish and self-centered.

“What should I do?” she wept as she told of her isolation.

The rabbi listened compassionately, waited and then said, “Here is what I want you to do.  Go to the school cafeteria as you usually do at lunch but I want you to look for people to help with their trays, paying for what they cannot, getting them salt, a seat, whatever.”

The young woman went away relieved that she had a specific task to do.  It enabled her to focus on something and slowly, as she performed these helpful duties, she began to see herself differently, and, as a result, others began to view her differently too.

Many programs like Dr. Phil or lots of self-help books emphasize what is wrong with our lives and how to fiddle with it.  They tell us to enroll in step programs or take certain classes which will change our behavior.

The Jewish approach tells us that what we do influences the way we think and behave. That is why we place such a heavy emphasis on mitzvot and tend to minimize creeds or statements of faith.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “God is more immediately found in the Bible as well as in acts of kindness and worship than in the mountains and forests. It is more meaningful for us to believe in the immanence of God in deedsthan in the immanence of God in nature.”

Heschel teaches us that our actions, mitzvot, as a response to the call of God.  That in addition to the fact that when we act we change our character are strong reason to follow the mitzvoth our faith places before us.

There are always mitzvot to perform  On Shabbat we bless our children, bless our spouse, light candles, make Kiddush.  Pesach follows with its own actions/mitzvot.  Each time we act with God, travel the path of our ancestors we alter some powerful part of our self.

 

 

This is for the thoughts I place at the bottom of my column:

A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought- -Abraham Joshua Heschel

Av

"Woe unto the heart that is not broken,” wrote Aryeh Cohen. 

No one wants pain but no one can avoid it.   

People let us down.  

Our bodies are instruments where the parts wear out and sometimes are defective.  

The things that we expect to make our lives simpler often do the opposite.  

When life does not cooperate with our expectations it is frustrating, to say the least.

 

As we pass through time we amass a wide array of these broken experiences.  Learning how to manage life’s disappointments is wisdom.   Wisdom does not come from books or what others teach us, it what we learn as the wheel of life turns.

 

This month on August 13 is Tisha B’Av, on the Jewish calendar.  Tisha B’Av is a day of historic tragedy.  It marks when our ancestors the Children of Israel, were sentenced o forty years of aimless wandering in the desert. It is the day that marks the destruction of the both the first and second Temples in Jerusalem.  It is also the anniversary of when Betar, the last breath of Jewish independence for 2,000 years fell.  Jews all over the worlds read Jeremiah’s Lamentations and fast.

 

Why?  Why bother to remember an historic event that has no bearing on our life?

 

A story:

 

One Tisha B’Av Napoleon rode by a synagogue in small town and noticed Jews sitting on the ground and wailing bitterly.

“Why are the Jews crying?” he asked a bystander.

“They are mourning their land which was destroyed about two thousand years ago,” he was informed.

These words deeply impressed Napoleon.  “A nation that can mourn over the destruction and loss of their land which occurred two thousand years ago,” he exclaimed, “Such a people will never perish.  They may be certain they will survive and that their land will eventually be restored to them.”

 

Our memory - both individual and collective – takes our pain and uses it to become wiser in our years.  Just as a scab started out as a bleed, it becomes much more resilient when new skin forms over it.  But, and this is crucial, a scar remains to remind us and teach us how to enrich our lives through the panoply of our experiences, good and bad.

Ten Commandments of Coming to Shul

I.      Thou shalt dress appropriately.  No revealing attire (keep shoulders and frontal area covered; nothing risqué). Wear clothes that reflect standing before the Lord.
II.     Respect and keep the Shabbat.  This means no smoking, cell phones, pagers, cameras, etc.
III.     Do not disturb thy neighbor.  People are trying to daven (pray).
IV.     Children are always welcome at Shul.  Use our children's room if they need a change of scenery.
V.      Do not swear.  This is the House of God.
VI.     Males wear a kippa.  All those who are called to the bima (elevated stage) cover their heads.
VII.    A tallit (prayer shawl) is worn by adult Jews.
VIII.   Thou shalt not clap.  Instead, say "yasher koach!"
IX.     When the Ark is open, stand and do not enter or leave the Sanctuary.
X.      Covet thy Siddur and Humash.  Treat them with respect.  If they fall, kiss them.  Place them right-side up when finished.

Miracles

A question: If there was enough oil for one night, then the first night was no miracle. So why celebrate 8 days? The answer is that the first night was also a miracle. Why? Because if all the oil were used up on the first night, then even God could not make the lights burn for the other seven. Even God does not provide one hundred percent miracles.  Nes Bederekh Hatevah -- the miracle too is done in a natural way. If there is oil, God can stretch it. Man must provide the one jar, then God can make it burn for eight days.

Elisha is confronted by the Shunamite woman. He asks: Ma Yesh Lokh Babayit -- "What do you have in the house?" After she tells him she has one jar, he tells her to keep pouring, and the oil keeps pouring and fills many utensils.

The same thing happens at sea. Why didn't God raise and carry them from one side of the sea to the other?

You know the story about the child who comes home from Sunday school and the mother asks: Jimmy, what did you learn in school today? And the child describes how the engineering corps built pontoon bridges, and these escaped convicts ran over the water, while the airforce was giving cover overhead. And the mother says: That's not how I learned about the crossing of the sea. And the child says: Mom, if I told it to you the way the teacher told it to us, you would never believe it!

The sea did not split until Nachshon ben Aminadav jumped in. Man must make his contribution to the miracle. Nes Bederekh Hatevah.

Hashamayim Shamayhim Lashem, Vehaaretz Natan Levnei Adam God is in heaven, and we are here -- this verse is not to be taken literally. Man cannot tell God to mind His own business, stay in heaven and not mix into earthly matters. God expects man to aspire to heaven and not limit himself to earth. 

Thoughts are Real

 Why does the Torah tell us that after giving birth, a mother must bring a sin offering?

Rabbi Simon bar Yohai answers, "Since she may have cried out in the midst of her birthing pains, "I will never again let my husband come near me."
For such a thought, the Torah requires that a sin offering be brought.
Two ideas emerge from this passage. The first is that people are prone to say regrettable things. We will cry out in the depth or pain despair uttering curses or vows that, given a moment of rational thought, we would never say. The second notion is that even though all humanity may succumb to such wrong and excessive language; we are not excused from what comes from our mouths. We are always held responsible for what we say.
 
The Mishna in Pirkay Avot states, “Know what is above from you. An eye that sees, an ear that hears, and all of your deeds are recorded in a book! (2:1)

Future Shock

Not so very long ago famed author J.K. Rowling was asked to address recent college graduates. It was a moving talk. Having eagerly devoured her many Harry Potter books, the students were anxious to hear what advice this successful writer had to offer. What Rowling chose to speak about was failure. Rowling explained that her parents urged her early on to pursue a vocational degree. In having a trade, they believed their daughter would never experience the poverty they had endured. But she had other ideas. This is what the famous author had to say:

"What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be … without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. 
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me…I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had and old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale that I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default. Failure taught me things about myself I could have learned no other way."
Rowling’s advice is priceless. It cuts through humanity because the fear of not succeeding keeps the best of us stuck in our rocking chair.
During Sukkot there is a special prayer that we say during the Grace After Meals, "May the Merciful One (HaRachaman) restore the fallen Sukkah of David." Can God really repair the two-thousand-plus year old lean-to? No, say the great Sages of the Talmud. In that prayer we are asking God to restore to the people confidence. We want to be able to transform our painful past into a better future. In other words, the prayer wants us to build better "us" from the ashes of our failures. The pathway to wholeness happens when we overcome the internal hurdles that hold us back.
I am a professional bumper-sticker reader. One that struck me recently read, "What if you had no fear? What could you accomplish?" 
I mulled that question over in my mind for a very long time. What, indeed, could life offer if I was unafraid of failure? What mountains would come into reach? So many times, the fear of crashing keeps us from trying new things, having new experiences, finding our hidden strengths.
There is a novel web-site that has visitors writing letters to themselves in the future. Called FutureMe.org, people from all over the world write letters to themselves. The messages invariably contain a single element that remains a constant: the writers hope they can get over their pain. 
The creator of FutureMe.org sees this site as an attempt "at forward narrative, a poignant, maybe desperate, assertion of personal continuity over time. … More deeply, such a message implicitly accepts a duty to future generations. … Future me may reject present me’s choices, but my message … is, in its way, an attempt to acknowledge responsibility rather than evade it. Globe and Mail, April 28/07
People are deeply concerned that they will not survive the pain they are living through now. Here is one entry dated October 27, 2005, Dear FutureMe, How are you now? you happy? did you find your "next big thing"? work ok? did dad survive the transplant? 

Unlike the usual conventional wisdom, "failure is an option" is closer to the truth than it not being an option. In fact, failure is how we learn. The greatest challenge for us to be unafraid of non-success. Think of what is possible, as the bumper sticker read, if we allow ourselves to fully test the limits of our abilities. And if we fail? We have learned our limitations and will have grown in the process. And towering above us is the Lord God who urges us to test the limitations of what is possible and grow to become what He has envisioned for us.

Wonder of Wonders

Miracles abound in our people’s past.  Perhaps the most famous miracle of all was when the Sea parted allowing the slaves to pass through to newfound freedom.  Celebrated each year at the Passover Seder we recall this powerful deliverance.  Yet, there were others too.  Think of the manna in the desert or the appearance of wells slaking the thirst of those on the forty year trek.  What about the walls of Jericho?  Or the famous walls of Solomon carved from rock without use of any metal?!  Hanukka remembers another kind of miracle; great light generated from a miniscule amount of oil.

It is surprising that the birth of the universe is not accorded status as a miracle.  Perhaps that is because no one witnessed the event.  Note: something qualifies as a miracle only when people are involved.

Miracles are often abrupt.  They happen swiftly and are over.  A malignancy disappears: Life goes on.  An accident is avoided and we drive from the scene shaken but unharmed..   Miracles can happen on a small scale: A person walks away after a fall from a treacherous height.  Miracles may occur in a grand way: The salvation of the Israelite nation after Hitler is miraculous.  

Purim is all about miracles.  Yet, the holiday is built around the one Book which makes no mention of God.  Nowhere in the tale of Mordecai and Acheshveros is God named.  What exactly are we celebrating?  

If a miracle is defined as something beyond the bounds of what is normal and expected, what do we make of the eclipse of the Holy One in the chronicles of Esther?

Perhaps the greatest mystery is also the simplest one to solve: a miracle only happens to us when we acknowledge it.  Otherwise it passes unnoticed.  In fact, if you think about it for more than a moment, you will realize that every miracle in the Torah can be explained away or ignored much in the same way we can miss the grandeur of a birth or regeneration of nature.  Maybe that is why the holiday of Purim will still be observed after the Messiah comes: we will still need to be reminded to find holiness and miracles that happen every day..

The Broken Heart

Just having learned of President John Kennedy’s assassination, Daniel Patrick Moynihan exclaimed, "When you’re Irish, one of the first things you learn is that sooner or later the world will break your heart."

Coping with pain is the great trial we confront time and again. It is no simple matter to deal with the pains of life an adult, well-adjusted manner. We want to scream, curse, cry, or ball up into a tight cocoon where no one can touch us. The older we get the more the same patterns of behavior repeat themselves in our lives. We do the same thing over and over. The source and kind of pain changes but not our reaction to it. 

There is a discussion among the sages in the Talmud about right and wrong blessings. In the midst of one long conversation a rabbi comments that it would be a sin to approach your home, see smoke rising in the distance and pray, "I hope that is not my home." Such a prayer implicitly asks that it be someone else’s home.

A minister was giving an impassioned sermon to his congregation and said, "Everyone in this church is going to die."

The preacher then noticed a man in the front row who was smiling broadly. "Why are you so happy?" the minister asked. 

"I’m not from here. I am just visiting my brother for a couple of days."

We know what pain is like. We are familiar with its taste, texture, how we react to it. For most of us, we are far too intimate with the way it feels. We all know that Moynihan was correct: the world will and does break our heart.

A strong Jewish current of thought is that we are supposed be familiar with a broken heart. That kind of woundedness gives us empathy for others who suffer. It makes us better friends and spouses, better parents and leaders. Above all, it makes us better Jews. Our job is to help people, not be personal consumers for our own welfare. That is why it is a sin to be unconcerned with those who suffer - whether we know them or not.

In the aftermath of the Great Liberation from slavery the Jews threw themselves on the shore of the Sea as the waters rushed to engulf the Egyptians coming to capture them. As the languid waters suddenly gushed over the helpless bodies of the slave-masters, hosts of Angels began to sing in heaven. Praising God’s might and sovereignty they cascaded into a massive chorus of praise. "Stop," said the Holy One. "My children are downing and you sing?" 

Shir HaShirim Rabah 5

Waiting for Elijah

 Opening the door for Elijah was a highlight of our Seder evening, an experience we treasured ever since childhood. That full goblet waited for the prophet, and we couldn’t see him, but somehow the level of the wine seemed to drop. Just a little, didn’t it? Eliyahu hanavi, we sang happily. We dramatized the tradition that told us he was here to announce that the Messiah, son of David, was coming.

This year when we enter the closing days of Passover, when that same tradition predicts that when the long-awaited deliverer does arrive, it will be on one of these days.

And what will happen then? 

The Jerusalem Talmud in the tractate Sanhedrin presents rabbinic teachings about the week when the Son of David will arrive, and what disaster will take place each day of that week. Deluge, earthquake, etc. Nature, too, will do its worst to bring the Messiah.

The Tzemah Tzedek, was asked why David’s song is read on the Seventh day of Pesach, rather than the Song of Deborah, since the women rejoiced more than the men when the Red Sea split. He answered: “The Haftarah is the Song of David because on the final days of Pesach there is a revelation of Mashiach, who is a descendant of David. Thus, it is to honor Mashiach that we recite the Song of David.”

What he will do, that no one else could do, would be to cure this planet of its trouble, its corruption and its wars.  

We need this now. more than ever.

Pesach’s Meaning

 Pathos is understanding feelings, particularly disease (think pathology) and  the root causes of sadness.  Empathy is related to pathos but is more about feeling what other people feel, understanding them on an emotional level.  Both are commands on Pesach.

 

-On the holy day we open ourselves to understanding the pathology of hatred, the superiority of one people, or class, over another.  Were our ancestors slaves in a distant land?  Yes, historians have located the time and name of this people from ancient Egyptian documents.  These are your ancestors.  They were untermenschen, subhuman, ignored and abused.  Our concerned God heard the pitiful cries and sent His deliverance releasing them from the lash of their overlords.  

The pathology of understanding the past should lead us back to God and knowledgeable enough to recognize those same signs of raw discrimination emanating from hatred in our day.  And those signs are present now.

-We are commanded to feel as if we were personally liberated from bondage.  This is empathy.  We need to feel the empathy of being on the side of the oppressed.  Everyone understands pain.  We have all felt oppressed and abused at some point(s) in our lives.  We used those reference points to feel the prize of liberation.  It is a great gift that we should not take for granted.  We are free here.  We have a Jewish homeland.

Virtually every day we learn of some group in the world that is being oppressed.  We have to make a decision to be on the side of the victim or victimizer.  Who would dare to stand with the victimizer?  Every time we are silent we are providing fuel for the victimizer to carry on their path of hatred.

Empathy is two sided.  As Hillel pointed out millennia ago, “If I am not for myself who will be for me?  And if I am only for myself what am I?”  

We are not fulfilling our mandate if we do not stand up for ourselves, our people.   And we are woefully inadequate when we do not stand in solidarity with the other. 

Support Your Shul

 When God gave His holy Torah to the people there was thunder shattering the air already thick with smoke.  The earth convulsed, as it was about to give birth to a new universe of order and justice and hesed.

 

And yet as we come to the next book of the Torah we are perplexed.  God speaks to the people through the Ohel Mo’ed, the Tent of Meeting.  In there, God spoke directly to His servant, Moshe.  When the Divine Voice spoke Moshe heard clearly, the ancient ones tell us.  Those outside the Ohel Mo’ed heard God’s Voice indistinctly.  They had to try to listen to hear the words being spoken.

 

Many of the sages wonder why the change.  Why was God’s Voice so thunderous at one time and barely discernable the next?

 

An answer: God was preparing us for a time when His diminished Voice would have to be sought.  That is why we come to the sanctuaries of today; it is where the Voice is most keenly felt.

 

That is why synagogue has been the central hub of all things Jewish for millennia.  From that place we feed the hungry; it is where we learn Torah.  Synagogues are places where children are educated; babies are named, brises are conducted, weddings performed and mourners encouraged.  From this cornerstone of Judaism cemeteries were purchased, news about Israel was gathered, and Federations were born.

 

When something goes wrong where do we gather for mutual support and strength?  Where can we pour out our heart without fear of ridicule or judgment?  It has always been the same whether in France, Poland, Russia or Yemen.

 

That is why support for the Synagogue remains the first and most critical arena for our ongoing care.  Without this what would remain?  Most of us know from our personal experience growing up in small hamlets around the south that when a synagogue closes in town there is no Jewish life left.  It is dead.

 

Consider either a gift to the synagogue of whatever amount you can afford….or even better….think of leaving a legacy grant to the synagogue in your will.  Imagine the great good that can be done in preserving and enhancing Jewish life in  for years to come!  The power of extending the gift to the next generation – as it was gifted to us – lies within our hands.

 

Remember all Jewish events and program are extensions of what we teach and promulgate.

 

Yet. Don’t wait to be asked.

Torah Truth

 There are many Torah passages which could raise eyebrows well into the nether regions of the forehead.  Among them are the age of the universe versus our almost six thousand year calculation, manna feeding at least 1 1/2 million freed slaves for forty years, burning bushes and parted seas to name a few.

The question actually runs yet deeper:  If the Torah cannot be read at face value, if we cannot trust it to tell the truth all the time, how can we depend on it for truth any time?

No one who reads Torah with any degree of seriousness will fail to notice these and other incongruities.  In fact, it is probably the most frequent question asked of rabbis today.  What do I tell people?  Even more, how can anyone, including a rabbi, have faith with such unbelievable tales and inconsistencies?

I am fond of telling the story of the grandfather who greets his little one at the door.  

“So how was Hebrew School today, Yaacov?”

“Oh great!  We learned about how General Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.  Cornered by the Egyptians with their troops, General Moses fired bazookas and strafed the advancing army while the Israeli navy placed pontoons across the Sea.  The people narrowly escaped!”
“Oy,” said the grandfather. “Is this what they taught you??”

“Grandpa, if I told you what they said, you’d never believe it.”

On a primary level, the Torah is filled with stories.  The tales we tell are human, full of adventure, achievements, falls, and recoveries.  They are great stories that we know well and retell through generations.  Think of Adam and Eve.  They tell the story of reward and punishment; listening to God and the penalty of disobedience.  Think of Noah, the savior of a world.  What about Abraham, the one who discovered and was discovered by God?  The narrative then follows Abraham through his trials and triumphs.  This is story-telling at its finest.  These are well worn tales that have traveled the world many times over, through millennia.

On a secondary level, each story contains kernels of knowledge and philosophy that we often miss (because we stop in step 1).  For example, the depiction of Adam and Eve serves the purpose of telling us we are free.  God rewards and punishes but the real lesson is about personal control and responsibility.  And Noah?  It is all about choosing your destiny regardless of what the outside world does and thinks.  Consider that Noah’s righteousness was singular in a world gone bad.

On a tertiary level, we are guided by the Zohar which states, “If the Torah were mere tales I could tell better stories myself.”  We learn through metaphor.  In Eden, we understand the trappings of Paradise.  We are not meant for utopia.  Our lives are only validated through struggle.  We are Adam and Eve.  We choose banishment because there lays our greatest hope.  Abraham is the paragon if self-discovery.  We must pass through walls of flames, become scarred before we can contemplate wholeness.  We must travel far in our youth to find what is most close, so close that it cannot be seen; only perceived.

Is there more?  Yes, there is always more.  That is why it continues to feed our souls after a ll this time.

 

Kaddish

The kaddish is not Hebrew, it is Aramaic.  It was put into that language because it was the spoken tongue at the time.  That places it in the post-biblical era.  It was crafted at a time when many Jews no longer fully understood Hebrew despite the fact that they still prayed in that language and  the fact that Aramaic is a very close relative to Hebrew.

Parts of the prayer are mere renderings of Hebrew into Aramaic.  For example, Yehi Shmay (the refrain after the first paragraph) is a direct translation of Baruch Shem (the line after the Shma).   Originally Baruch Shem, or Yehi Shmay, was the response by the people to hearing the Holy Name of God fully and only pronounced on Yom Kippur.  Hearing the name was so powerful that the people fell on their faces as they shouted this phrase. That is, by the way, why we only say Baruch Shem to this day out loud only on Yom Kippur.  In any event, the Yehi Shmay response is as if we have just beheld the Face of God.  It is a powerful phrase that indicates something far more intimate than most prayers.  It is, by the way, also the line that we state when we use God’s name inappropriately, i.e. when saying the wrong prayer.

There are several kaddishes.  Some of them are sung and some are recited like the mourner’s kaddish and a few others.  The two kaddishes that are most alike are the kaddish shalem (full Kaddish) and the mourner’s kaddish.  The difference between them is a single line that begins with “titkabel…”    Titkabel means “receive.” In a state of mourning we do not ask anything of God but accept our prayer.  We do not decry God’s decree, ask that death be reversed or anything else of God when we are mourning.  Our tradition asks us to simply accept the judgment.  That is the essence of the mourner’s kaddish.  

It is probable that the mourner’s kaddish takes its theology from the book of Job.  Job, the man who lost everything, is urged by his companions to atone, consider how he offended God and even repudiate the One that took away all that he loved.  In the end, God speaks to Job stilling his queries by indicating that he will never know the ways of God.  In a rhetorical query, God asks Job, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?”  In other words, humankind can never fathom God’s ways.

The mourner’s kaddish is then an acceptance of God’s will, knowing that we will never comprehend His ways or understand why death has taken someone we love away.

Implicit in Job’s quandary and explicated by the Talmud is the idea that physical life is finite but life itself is not.  We believe in a life that goes beyond death. That is the underpinning of the mourner’s kaddish: it is the ultimate belief that death is not the end, it is an end.  The soul survives.  For this we thank God for both the life that we shared and the one that endures beyond the physical realm.

We recite the kaddish, as opposed to singing it, because we cannot ignore that fact that we are wounded as we publicly proclaim when we utter the words of the mourner’s kaddish that our faith in God remains firm, unshaken.

Most of the other kaddishes are sung because they extol God’s glory and justice.  Yet when a person is in mourning it is hard to sing, it is enough just to say the words.

Aside from these considerations there is also the sacred notion of continuity.  “Just as my father did for his parent, so I will do for him.”  This idea of traditional passing on what one generation has done to the next takes on a power of its own.  The strength that we gain from saying these holy words alongside others who have suffered similarly is also a comfort.  We are never alone in our pain.

High Holy Days

 Praying for some comes easy.  For others it is arduous.

On the High Holy Days we do a lot of it.  For those who find it easy to pray, time flies.  For those who find prayer difficult, time is inexorable; it could not pass any slower.  This column is dedicated to those in the second category, the ones who find it hard to pray.

There are essentially two ways to come to synagogue, in need or on empty.  

Need: Need means you walk in the doors of Beth Shalom wanting healing.  We are all broken.  Some are afflicted with physical ailments, some are psychically torn, some are scarred by loss of a job, some feel just worthless, some are wrestling with dark demons that take the form of abuse, and some are looking for their direction.  Most everyone suffers from all of these in varying degrees.

Healing begins when we acknowledge our brokenness.  We come to the Synagogue with open wounds and ask God to help us get through them.

Idea: On Rosh Hashanna we do not wish one another a “Happy New Year.”  We say Shana Tova, which means “A good year.”  What is the difference?  It is already here, so it is “new.”  What we have come to find is not just an acknowledgement that another year has passed, but we seek a cleansing of the self, a purging of the negative parts of our person.  We seek a “good” year not a “new” one.

Take time before the Holy Days and search for exactly what part of us needs healing.  Then bring it to God.

Empty: Expectations can be terrible.  An expectation indicates that we know what is about to happen.  If we go to a fine restaurant, for example, and expect to have the same quality service and food that we had last time, the evening may be a let down.   We anticipate the night out with our new friend will be as spontaneous and joyful as the last one.  We are disappointed when they are in a pensive mood.

The same principle applies with the service.  Before coming into the Synagogue, it may help to verbally acknowledge that we want to “hear” whatever God has planned for us.  This means emptying ourselves of all else.

This is an ancient poem translated by Robert Bly:

“Listen, friend, this body is his dulcimer,

He draws the string tight, and out of it comes

The music of the inner universe.

If the strings break and the bridge falls,

Then this dulcimer of dust goes back to dust.”

Like the dulcimer we sit.  Turning the pages of the mahzor we look to find and sing the song of our redemption.

God does not disappoint.  At times a single word or phrase jumps out of page to arrest our vision and communicate something vital.  Other times, it is a word spoken or a seemingly random thought that emerges from the inner emptiness.

In one old story, a rabbi sings loudly and forcefully exhorting the congregation to follow his example.  He says, “The moment you begin to sing your soul becomes one with everyone before you.”  

Without out preconception just sing, read, and sway.

 

Thought: If you have a setback, don’t throw in the towel.  Even if you need to take one step back before taking two forward, it is one step toward success.