Own It

I have a question to ask.

In some form, the question has been forming in my mind for a very long time. Just now it seems to be taking enough shape so that I am finally able to give it a voice. Let me begin by sharing with you to brief vignettes.

Long ago, I was engaged in interviewing at different Synagogues around the country. For the purposes of becoming their rabbi, the congregation and I needed to first agree that there was a mutual interest. I would be invited to a visit with them and answer assorted questions. A standard question that each “Rabbi Search Committee” would ask, “Will you eat in a congregant’s home if they do not keep kosher?”  Hmmm.  The question was posed, and my mind would swing into gear; for underlying each question is a subtle dilemma for the congregation. Surely, they would not ask about kashrut if it were a meaningless issue. Therefore, it was reasonable to assume that there was some recent event in the committee or Congregation’s mind or experience that compelled them to pose the question.  Furthermore (talk about crossing a rabbi’s eyes!) it can be then inferred that there was some infidel around the table who does not actually keep it kosher home and will either cringe or easily jump on any suggestion that he or she is any less valid citizen of the community when the rabbi admits that he will not eat at this fellow’s table.

Second vignette: Time ago, shortly after I was ordained, I was invited to a Christian colleague’s home for dinner in my first pulpit. Together with my wife and our children and we went over to their home on a Sunday afternoon to join them for a lively evening. Now, you must be anticipating the problem: where was the food coming from? After all, can hardly be expected of a Christian ministry to keep the laws of kashrut. “Don’t tell me the rabbi has double standards!”

As it happens, this minister and his wife purchased glass plates, new utensils, shopped for supervised foods at the local market, called me with some questions about the permissibility of fish purchased at that market and excitedly inquired about whether it was correct to cook the food in their non-kosher oven. After weeks of preparation, fact-finding, and research at the library we were invited to sit at the table with a tacit validation of our Jewish customs.

Why is it that Jews seem to be undeterred in their own lack of observance, demanding of the rabbi that he recognize the lowest standard of practice as legitimate?  Call Christians will weather brimstone to preserve the integrity of our traditions and mitzvot?

Now to my opening question, why? Why are we so hard on Jews who observe their faith, Judaism? I know many observant members of lots of Conservative communities or often intimidated and made to feel backward and somehow in validated by the friends whose own practices are lax.

There are 613 mitzvot in the Torah-many more and ancillary writings. No human being can ever compass all of these. They are too many and too diverse to hope to fully bridge the chasm between observance and mitzvah. Yet we must attempt. He as Theodore Herzl put it, “Even though it may lie beyond us we have no right to stop trying.”

It is my guess that many of us have ceased trying.

Just as maturation is lifelong processes that cannot be condensed or minimized, Jewish growth must also be on a continuum. The moment we attempt to force environment to fit into our preconceived mold is when we stop growing. When Judaism is made to conform to our existing mold of practice, we atrophy. Imagine doing that in our business: when we are satisfied with sales, we keep everything maintained exactly the same for the rest of our career.  Such a business model is ridiculous. “Where there is no development,” says the Talmud, “there is regression.” No one stands still. No human being stops studying, analyzing, learning and retaining his mental acumen. In life, we either gain or lose.

If Jewish observance is too daunting, we must make no attempt to negate Jewish practice or reduce it to a lower level.  We would do such a thing with our children: we demand continual advancement for them. Why should we expect anything less of ourselves?

Let me put it another way, if we are in the same place that we were five years ago in our Jewish commitment and observance, is that not a betrayal of the best we have to offer and be?  Is that not shortchanging our ability to grow and learn?

Our religion is a gift to the world that keeps on giving, but only if first we take it and own it.

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 Lab Where Creation Takes Place

     A little boy was watching his father, a 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: nobody has to see the original text.  We can write and rewrite the wording.  Which is fine. Being creative requires imagination with lots of room for experimentation and errors.  While I am sure that God helps, we have a definite proclivity  for making errors. Thus, the scratch-outs.

     Now, the Talmud used to be a simple, terse text of Jewish Law and Lore. With so much of it needing clarification, great Sages would scribble notes, questions, answers and diagrams in the margins (used to be that paper was scarce). That’s how the marginal commentaries on each folio of the Talmud was born.  Some printer saw the scribbling and had them inserted as permanent marginal notes. That is how Rashi’s commentary (among others) has come to be found in the Talmud.

     Mistakes are an inevitable and part of process. Mistakes means that you are trying. They are living proof of personal growth. A colleague, Harold Kushner, said “people do  not learn  from their successes. They grow from their failures.”  The scratches in the margins.

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