Nourishment

 The key to living is to feed and nourish the body. The key to growth is to feed and nourish the soul.The growth that is required by the soul is not about finding voices that agree with what we already know, our preconceived opinions. Instead, it is about being open to new possibilities, including the fact that we may be wrong.

George Washington wrote, "it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." Why would the first president of this nation make that claim? Perhaps he meant to suggest that we need to always be vigilant to the possibility that we may be in error. A true guide is one that challenges our beliefs. That guide has the potential to move us out of complacency and into real growth. That is why scholar and philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that ‘the Bible is meant to be our critic, not we its critic.’ With an open heart and mind we are supposed to open up the holy Torah daily and find signs that are meant to challenge, uplift and afford us the possibility of understanding ourselves and the world better.

"Do not make up your own interpretation and laws of Judaism or else you open the door to great sin and ultimate destruction into the cosmos." Introduction to the zohar
Open your heart and mind.

Scratch-Outs

A little boy was watching his father, Rabbi, prepare a sermon. “How do you know what to write?” he asked. The rabbi said, “Well, after I think for a while God tells me what to write.” The boy was quiet for a moment before saying, “Then why do you keep crossing out so much?”

Privately, it is easy to make corrections: no one has to see the original text. We can write and rewrite the wording. Being creative requires imagination with lots of room for experimentation and errors. Well I am sure that God helps we have a definite proclivity for making errors. That is why we have so many scratch outs.

The Talmud uses a simple and terse language.  It leave so much in need of clarification, that the great sages with scribble notes, pose questions, graft answers and even draw diagrams in the margins (as it used to be the paper was scarce). Some printer later saw the scribbling and had the notation inserted as permanent marginal notes. That was how Rashi’s commentary, among many others, came to found on each page of the Talmud.

Mistakes are inevitable part of the process. Mistakes mean that you were trying. They are living proof of personal growth. A colleague, Rabbi Harold Kushner said, “People do not learn from their successes. They grow from the failures.” These failures represent the scratchers in the margins.

If it were not for the marginal notes of Rashi and others, the Talmud would not be the Talmud.  It is with all scientific studies that take place in labs were failures always exceed successes.

I look forward to the scratch-outs of life.

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.

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.

Working Through the Wreckage

            We all “come clean” sooner or later.  The realistic fact of life that touches everyone is that we pick up some pretty nasty habits along the way.  It is difficult, nigh impossible, to not follow some of the false leads we have been shown.  Or have gotten away with.  People in various forms of recovery speak of becoming “clean”.  Drugs, alcohol or sex muddied former lives.  With desire to “clean up their act” comes the hope of scrubbing away the filthy barnacles that have attached themselves to the psyche.

            Around that same period we spiritually fell asleep.  The earth lost its luster, its vibrancy.  The hues of the grass and luminescence of the moon were reduced to monochrome.  With age, and practices that took us away from the awe and splendor which we once knew, comes a bleakness which makes the soul want to cry, “Is this all there is?  Somehow, I remember more...’

            While Judaism is concerned with “cleaning up one’s act,” it aspires to something far greater. 

One of my favorite writers, John Steinbeck records a dialogue between some people on a ranch.  One of them approaches a foal and remarks, “Starts fast when it starts, doesn’t it?  Did it all come at once?”

“Oh no, you just stopped looking for a while.”

            Amazing the things we see when we wake up.

            It seems to me that a lot of what our faith emphasizes is about waking up.  You know the feeling when you arise on one of those warm, bright argent mornings.  The suns warmth touches everything and even dirt appears to be animate.  The world sings.  We are the audience.

            I am ever humbled by the beginning of every berakha “Barukh Ata HaShem Elokaynu Melekh haOlam asher kidshanu...” Who has made us holy.  Each time we utter a blessing, we say that we are in process of accessing our holiness.  Chutzpa? 

           I would like to think that our sights can be set on a consecrated life, one which perceives a joy and excitement in living.  If our tradition stresses any great ideal it is this: Practice the art of consecrated living by approaching the world through then lens of God.

Where Growth Begins

 Two Chelmite scholars were debating how people grow: Do they grow from the feet up of from the head down? 

The first said, “From the feet up, of course.  Last year, I bought my son a suit for his Bar Mitzvah, and at that time the pants were just the right length.  Now the pants only reach his ankles.   That proves that people grow from the feet down!”

“Fool,” snapped the second scholar.  “It’s obvious that people grow from the head down.  If you see a group of soldiers marching their feet are all at the same level.  But, if you look at their heads you will see that they are at different heights. That proves that people grow from their heads down.”

Both Chelmites were wrong.  We neither grow from the bottom up or the top down.  We grow from the inside out.

      In these waning moments of summer, I wish you growth.  Read Jewish books.  Come study with me.  Challenge yourself to climb new heights of spirituality.   Light your Shabbes candles.  Enjoy yourself, your loved ones and God.