Understanding and Becoming

Understanding is the path to becoming.

For example, when someone is in great pain and you have experienced that same pain, you feel deeply for them. It is called empathy. If you have a broken leg you know how to speak to someone whose had the same misfortune. Understanding how the person feels is living inside of that person, however briefly.   We become them in a sense because we are empathic.

The same is true for everything that looks confusing.  If we have gone through it, travelled the same path, we understand.  If, on the other hand, someone behaves in a manner that appears like nothing we have ever experienced, we do not understand them or what motivates their actions.

 When we try to look at the world and wrestle with the complexities of reality, one thing is most helpful to bear in mind: silence apprehends more than words. We can understand a person better if we just relied upon our senses. Biology would never be necessary if we pay better attention to nature. Mathematics would be redundant in the world we all do their own accounting. The same is true of human nature.  If we take responsibility to listen and try to understand, empathy becomes easier. True, we may never endure what someone else lives through but we can still draw parallels and hope to gain insight and understanding.

While our parents may not beat us we know what is like it is going to suffer.  If we listen with our hearts with our ears, we can understand.  Understanding leads to empathy.  Empathy leads to becoming.

Advice to Graduates

           Shimon, the son of Gamliel, thought hard.  When asked this question he could not help but search through years of lessons, discussions, and arguments.  “Sometimes,” he reflected, “they embraced each other; other times they stormed off in a discernable anger.”  He saw the greatest scholars of all time scratch their heads in wonder.  And now here he was being asked the question, “What is the greatest truth that you know?”

Shimon understood, after all the learning he had been exposed to, that this was the hardest question he had ever been asked.  Slowly, Shimon opened his mouth.  “All my life I have been raised with Sages.  What I have learned is that the best to learning the truth is silence.  When I am quiet and do not rush to make others hear my opinions I am free to hear the full story first.”

They nodded, listening.

Shimon drew in a breath and continued.  “Practice is more important than study.  After all, you can memorize facts galore but what a person does is more important than what he knows or says.”

A cool breeze blew through the orchard as if agreeing with the young scholar.  No sound was heard as Shimon continued.  “One who speaks too much brings sin into the world.”

Shimon, son of Gamliel, really lived in Israel two thousand years ago.  These words were actually spoken by him.  He said three things that I want the graduating class of any time or year to absorb.

1. Listen.  Do not make snap judgements.  If you are too busy speaking or contemplating what you will next say your mind will not be open to what is being uttered by others.

2. Be good.  Do good.  Words are cheap.  They can be spewed forth and be meaningless.  If you really want to make a difference in the world, follow the mitzvot.  Be a Jew.

3. If you prattle on and just let words gush out, sooner (rather than later), you will hurt someone.  It is so easy to wound another by careless words.  Think first.

Now make these words and truths yours and we will always be proud of you.

Rabbi Jonathan Case

Listen

“…With signs and wonders…” always vexed me.  The phrase is tried and tired.  I have long lost track of what it means.  The first word, ‘signs’, is otot in Hebrew.

According to the great Master, Rebbe Yehuda Leib Alter of Ger, otot comes from the same root as the word otiyot, letters.  Kabbalah informs us that the universe was spawned from a mixture of the holy letters uttered by God at Creation. 

An old argument amongst theologians, cosmologists and logicians is the debate as to whether the universe was created from something, or from nothing.  According to some, scientific theory has it that the universe came from something.  That is the universe contracted upon itself until it exploded spewing its infinitesimal nothingness into the void.  According to other scholars, it is inconceivable that something can emerge from nothing, so something must have existed to have caused the universe.  In our mysric tradition, the matter of the cosmos emanated from the letters or words of the Holy One, blessed be He.  Note that the Torah describes God as using language to create (like: “Let us make Man….”).

One reason why Hebrew is labeled as the lashon ha-kodesh – the holy tongue- is precisely because the strung-together letters, forming words, resulted in Creation.  We hold that words are holy creations and, in turn, create.  Avtalyon, an early Sage, warned that a misuse of words could lead to the worst types of destruction (Pirkay Avot 1:11).  Ill-spoken words cause the world to plunge into a terrible irredeemable dark abyss.  Many centuries later, Rabbi Israel Salanter commented that people do not die of hunger; they die of being ignored.  That is, everyone can have enough food to survive but humans will often suffer and collapse at the spoken or withheld, word.  Perhaps then, the Kabbalists are correct in calling the otot, powers that have the strength to create or destroy.

Remember Tevya and Golda in Fiddler on the Roof?  When Tevye asks Golda if she loves him (“Do you love me?), he is essentially begging for the kind of nourishment that makes life worth living when all else looks bleak.  Words.  Holy words.  Words of love that can restore Tevye’s aching soul.

In the real version of Fiddler on the Roof, Golda is dying.  Her last words to Tevya are, “Tevya, ich gey ois.  Tevya, ver vet dir machen vetchera? – Tevya, I am dying.  Who will prepare supper for you?”  Sholom Aleichem, Tevya’s and Golda’s creator, understood the import of such words.

Otot, otiyot.  Then there is simply ot, sign or letter.  We sing on Shabbat about the Sabbath being an ot he l’olam, an eternal sign.  What is the eternal sign of Shabbat?  That we are intimately connected to God and the rest of Creation.

What were the “signs” in Egypt?  Not merely the plagues.  Not simply the sea.  Not the staff of Moses.  Or the manna raining from the heavens.  The “signs” were the moments of recognition that there is a captain at the helm.  In those ineluctable moments of clarity, the universe comports.  Everything makes sense.  The otot are the moments of inner understanding when the communication of God finally reaches our ears.

Pesah (Passover) is not about the Haggada as an end; it is about the Haggada as a means of connection.  The passages in that narrative are the nexus between heaven and earth.   To be frank, there was no need for “signs and wonders” at the time of the Exodus.  It was enough that they were released from slavery.  What is the point of those “signs and wonders?”  They are the words that course the boundaries of time.  They seek our minds and souls and receptors of the otot and otiyot.

We are told to set a place for Eliahu HaNavi – Elijah the Prophet -- at our seder table. May we find that his seat is filled by the Presence of the Holy One, whom we have invited.  And heard.  Just like all the other signs and words He leaves for us.