A Concerned Life

Long ago Baba ben Butti would visit the Holy Temple in Jerusalem every day.  He'd bring with him sacrifice to be offered on the altar.  

Baba knew that his life was filled with doubts and so many opportunities to unintentionally offend his fellow.  In his heart he wanted nothing more than to cause no hurt so he brought this atonement "just in case."  Perhaps, he thought, I accidentally ignored someone and they were deeply offended.  Maybe my prayers were done imperfectly, without real intention.

The kohanim, priests, to whom he brought the animals, told Baba ben Butti that his sacrifice was not welcome the day after Yom Kippur as Baba emerged from the Day of Atonement cleansed of sin.

Consider the life that acknowledges the pain we can bring unwittingly.  How much kinder would the world be!

Reach Out Across the Aisle and Then Up

Back in 1984 in the small community of Eastvale Texas, things went awry.  Big time.  Potholes were so numerous that the police stopped giving tickets for drunken driving (everybody swerved).  Water was in extremely short supply to the extent that the fire department had to “borrow” water.  Even automobiles threw fenders, mufflers and tires randomly, indiscriminately. Car parts littered the streets.  They just fell apart all over the place.  To misuse biblical terminology, ‘the septic tanks runneth over.’

Leaders from the community got together and decided the best way to get some coveted financial relief from the government was to call themselves ‘blighted’.  Said then Mayor Bert Eubank, “All I need is just a couple of million.”

These modern-day Jobs figured they could attract a lot of attention by drawing the national media to view their open wounds (anticipating sympathy in the form of dollars).

The story reminds me of the beggar in Fiddler on the Roof.  With his hand extended, he begs for money from the usual characters.  Offered one kopec, the beggar complains, “Because you had a bad week I should suffer?”

As life progresses, good and bad come unexpectedly.  How we react to these occurrences defines us.  A large segment of the deepest meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is coming to terms with how we have responded to the ordinary events of life, the day-to-day stuff.

A prayer we recite on the Holy Days reads that we should be blessed by “never having to be dependent upon the charity of others.”  At the same time, we pray that God should be charitable to us in judging our lives. In other words, we ought to feel dependent upon God, not upon humanity. 

Who would disagree?  Of course we ought to be independent of people!  Closer to the truth is that we invert the Judaic notion: we form intricate webs of dependency and inter-dependency with people while distancing ourselves from God. 

One of the realizations of the global warming phenomenon is that we are swiftly understanding how much we are need of one another for survival.  We are dependent on people.   We cannot get along without them.  We need to galvanize one another and work on tandem to assure that the world will sustain us in the near future.  We need people in other ways too.  They are our employers; we wait for words of encouragement, paychecks and raises.  They are our customers; without them we are out of business.  We are connected to humanity at all levels.  Our lives are spent depending on people.

And yet.  It is not supposed to be this way.

At times of searing personal pain, our attention goes elsewhere.  Wisdom from the battlefield: “There are no atheists in a foxhole.”  Our tradition says the same thing using the metaphor of life.  Long ago, Eliezer ben Durdaya was a man who reached the height of personal achievement.  He was rich, successful… and hungry.  Eliezer had an insatiable desire for more and more.  His life slowly became twisted and his contorted by his want and the intolerable emptiness inside.

Nearing the end of his days Eliezer ben Durdaya screamed to the mountains, ”You are great  --Plead for me!” They remained silent.  Eliezer then turned to the sun and moon asking their help and intervention.  They too, remained unmoved.  Finally, Eliezer understood the blanket truth: he had to do the final reckoning.  No one, no thing would come to his defense.

Judaism does not believe in finger pointing, unless the finger is directed at the self.  Even if events or people have contributed to our present condition only we can make the ultimate difference; change.  The Talmud sums it up this way: When a person dies, nothing accompanies him before the Almighty, except his deeds.  

Thinking About the High Holy Days

Back in 1984 in the small community of Eastvale Texas, things went awry.  Big time.  Potholes were so numerous that the police stopped giving tickets for drunken driving (everybody swerved).  Water was in extremely short supply to the extent that the fire department had to “borrow” water.  Even automobiles threw fenders, mufflers and tires randomly, indiscriminately. Car parts littered the streets.  They just fell apart all over the place.  To use biblical terminology, ‘the septic tanks runneth over.’

Leaders from the community got together and decided the best way to get some coveted financial relief from the government was to call themselves ‘blighted’.  Said then Mayor Bert Eubank, “All I need is just a couple of million.”

These modern-day Jobs figured they could attract a lot of attention by drawing the national media to view their open wounds (anticipating sympathy in the form of dollars).

The story reminds me of the beggar in Fiddler on the Roof.  With his hand extended, he begs for money from the usual characters.  Offered one kopec, the beggar complains, “Because you had a bad week I should suffer?”

As life progresses, good and bad come unexpectedly.  How we react to these occurrences defines us.  A large segment of the deepest meaning of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is coming to terms with how we have responded to the ordinary events of life, the day to day stuff.

A prayer we recite on these Holy Days reads that we should be blessed by never having to be dependent upon the charity of others.  At the same time, we pray that God should be charitable to us in judging our lives. In other words, we ought to feel dependent upon God, not upon humanity. 

Who would disagree?  Of course we ought to be independent of people!  Closer to the truth is that we invert the Judaic notion: we form intricate webs of dependency and inter-dependency with people while distancing ourselves from God. 

One of the realizations of the Y2K phenomenon was that we swiftly understood how much we are need of one another for survival.  In the worst case scenario, they told us back in 1998, Y2K would mean that computer lines will not function, the electrical grid of the world will not work; there will be food stoppages too as transportation suffers. 

The runup to Y2K proved to us that we are dependent on people.   They are our employers; we wait for words of encouragement, paychecks and raises.  They are our customers; without them we are out of business.  We are connected to humanity at all levels.  Our lives are spent depending on people.

And yet.  It is not supposed to be this way.

At times of searing personal pain, our attention goes elsewhere.  Wisdom from the battlefield: ‘there are no atheists in a foxhole.’  Our tradition says the same thing using the metaphor of life.  Long ago, Eliezer ben Durdaya was a man who reached the height of personal achievement.  He was rich, successful… and hungry.  Eliezer had an insatiable desire for more and more.  His life slowly became twisted and his contorted by his want and the intolerable emptiness inside.

Nearing the end of his days Eliezer ben Durdaya screamed to the mountains, ”You are great  --Plead for me!” They remained silent.  Eliezer then turned to the sun and moon asking their help and intervention.  They too, remained unmoved.  Finally, Eliezer understood the blanket truth: he had to do the final reckoning.  No one, no thing would come to his defense.

Judaism does not believe in finger-pointing, unless the finger is directed at the self.  Even if events or people have contributed to our present condition only we can make the ultimate difference; change.  The Talmud sums it up this way: When a person dies, nothing accompanies him before the Almighty, except his deeds.  

Do Not Let Your Kids Read This

Do not let your kids read this article.  In this sentence I am going to mention a VERY dirty word, carbohydrates.  The diet de jour is abstaining from carbohyrates. Atkins must have died a very rich - if thin- man.  So many people throughout America are now skinny, thanks to him.

In every generation a new diet arises that the previous generation knew not.  Personally, I would like to make my own (copyrighted) suggestion for America.  I recommend fasting.

Actually, I read in the news that people are already catching on to the idea that fasting can reduce weight.  As the New York Times reported recently, "While millions of high-fat, low-carb devotees are gorging themselves on steak and butter, a small group of the body-conscious have opted to eat nothing at all."   No doubt in paying many dollars for instructions on “how to fast”, some gurus will get fat, thick wallets.

I fast for about 25 hours each year.  So do you.  I guess that puts us on the cutting edge of the latest fad.

I also fasted for other people; those throughout the world for whom hunger and thirst are features of everyday life.  Isaiah instructs that the fast is valueless without alleviating the horror of everyday hunger.

True, there was a moment or two during services on the morning of Yom Kippur when I prayed for a large cafe latte... Even a cup of joe from the 7-11 would have been welcome.

But then I pushed the idea from my mind as we stood once more for the al cheyt. Spiritual hunger is a stronger force than stomach rumbling.  The great vacuum of the soul is far more compelling than any physical discomfort.  As my teacher, a survivor of Auschwitz, was told by his father “We can survive food and water deprivation but not loss of hope.”  In the absence of all material need, we find wholeness.

Once a year, we forgo the worry about the next meal and join in a communal act of contrition.

“We don't do this to lose weight, or "detox" the body of all sort of imagined, invisible intrusions. We don't pay thousands of dollars to expensive spas to eat virtually nothing at all, or to nutritional consultants who promise to coach their clients in the "art" of prolonged self-denial. We're not living on nut butter and apple-chard juice and pretending to be healthy,” as one commentator put it.

Health, for Jews, transcends the physical realm.  What good is a healthy body inside a mind of skewed values?  Mind you, I am not advocating obesity or callousness about one’s health but the body houses the pinnacle of every human being, not vice versa.  In other words, we are soulful beings, not lusting animals.

An anomaly: Only the rich can afford to indulge in this kind of purging the body.  While thousands will hungry tonight and many die of starvation, thousands of others will pay for the privilege of fasting.

What humanity needs continual reminding of is to feed and nourish the soul.  Too often it is left out to shiver in the cold.  Life is meaningful....  As we say on Pesah, “Let all who are hungry, come and eat...”.  This time, the food is of a different sort.

And best of all, there are no dishes.

A New Day

There is no such thing as “having no choice.”  There is always an alternative.  In fact, the choice we make in any situation says something about us to others and something about us to us.

The first part of that last statement is pretty clear: if we are short-tempered people will be wary of us.  If, on the other hand, we are kind and generous, those around us will respond in kind.  The second part of the statement sounds confusing but it is as obvious as the first. Let me explain.

How we act creates self-definition.  We form an opinion about ourselves based on what we do.  Psychoanalyst Erving Goffman tells the story of a man who walks on the beach determinedly not looking at anyone.  He walks with a stride that says, “I do not see any of you.  I am busy doing something very important.  You can tell by my gait, by the way I gaze at distant objects, by my indifference, that I am outstanding.”  While striding along the seashore the man dons a mask that causes him to imagine that he is above all. 

And he wonders later why everyone is so distant.

Here’s another example. A woman wears the persona of a sharp businesswoman.  Her words are terse.  She does not tolerate idle conversation.  She is methodical and critical of anyone who says anything “stupid” or meaningless.  When she looks in the mirror she ties her hair tightly back without looking to closely at the reflection she does not like.

The Mishna tells of the great sage Hillel who passed a stream one day and saw a skull in the water.  He remarked, “As you have done to others, so others have done to you.”  Hillel was commenting that the way we treat others will come back to us.  Yet, I suspect he was saying something even more profound: Hillel was sounding a warning.  If we behave cruelly we will come believe in cruelty as a way of interacting with others.  The way we are seen is the way we will ultimately see ourselves.

That is why our faith places such a strong emphasis on how we behave, the way the talk, how we treat one another, and the way we approach God.  All these things impact others and the world.  But they also impact us.   Nasty words spoken by us make us feel nasty, unclean.  For many, there is only one thing to do when feeling dirty by our deeds, do more of it, which is a downward spiral.

We have a Mikveh which is a demarcation point where we go to divest ourselves of the accumulated psychic grime.   We have a daily “confessional” where we strike our breast and beg for a new beginning (new self-definition).  And, of course, we have Yom Kippur as a grand, large scale, opportunity to change.

I like to think of the many holy days that dot the Jewish calendar as moments of potential transformation too.  Shavuot is coming.  Least appreciated of all the festivals, Shavuot celebrates God’s ultimate gift to the Jews, Torah. We pray, sing, and study into the long hours of night as we seek an encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He.  Such an experience would alter the trajectory of our life.  Perhaps every mitzvah is an invitation to change how we are viewed and how we perceive ourselves. 

There is a tale about a man who once rigged an electric battery to his doorbell.  He was happy when he heard a loud ring when someone pushed the button.  He then connected a wire from that same battery for a light in his bedroom.  However, the light did not work.  So he called an electrician who examined the contraption and said, “Don’t you know that it takes more power to shine than to make a noise?”

It may take more power to shine but when we do we are radiant.