Heart vs Head

 Lev means “heart.”  It has the numerical value of 32 (each Hebrew letter corresponds to a number).    The word yachid also has the numerical value of 32.  Yachid means “alone.”  A powerful lesson inheres in those words and the connective tissue between them. 

What happens in the heart, how we feel, takes place only within us.  It is not an alone event.  It does not impact the world in any meaningful way.

Rabbi Leo Baeck wrote that, “one can always find warms hearts who in the glow of emotion would like to make the whole world happy, but who have never attempted the sober experiment of bringing a real blessing to a single human being.”

Do you like to being around positive people?  I do.  Being with people who grumble and grouse continually makes us feel sour.  Those who speak sprightly of sunshine and hope, on the other hand, makes us feel buoyant and light.  Yet there are times when it is preferable to have the sour than the sweet.  What good is it to have a person buzz happily around the room and turn away from someone or something that needs help?  Perhaps they represent a danger to their joy?  A downer?

As Jews, we are commanded and blessed because God trusts us enough to levy responsibilities.  That is why we say when we perform a mitzvah ….”asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav…”  “….Who has made us holy by acting on His commands…”.  God’s brit, covenant, with us is the task of putting order to an incomplete universe.  More, our religion holds that when we act in accord with God we become holy vessels.

Good intentions are good but they are, after all, only intentions.  They are not actualized until it brings about a physical response.  Talmud states, “Matters of the heart are not matters.”  They do not count until we are moved to action.

Sometimes we feel energized to do the right thing and other times our heart is hard.  For the Jew, it is not irrelevant how we feel but ultimately what matters is what we do.   This is mitzvah.

Perhaps that is why the word mitzvah is equivalent (gematria again) to the word, emunim, faith.  When we enact a mitzvah it is an act of faith.  A mitzvah is a movement of faith because we acknowledge that we are not final word on anything: there is a God beyond us who knows that the heart is not enough to change the world, to perfect that which is incomplete.

That Which is Difficult is Easy

 That which is difficult is easy, the easy is difficult. Why is this so?

We get through most of life's challenges by making snap decisions, knee-jerk reactions or having honed responses so finely that we do not linger over them. 

But present most people with an easy question like, "What is life for?" "What is your purpose in living?" And they begin to stutter and mumble.

"Oh," you say, "those are not simple questions!"  

I counter, "If every day we make decisions that are hinged upon our response to those questions we should know the answer.  Well, you go to work, open savings accounts, put money away for vacations, tell your kids they need more education, do all these things and so many more and you would never think to ask what is our purpose? The answer to that question should inform the rest of our lives.  The reason why we do everything in life should be our response to the question, "What is our life's purpose?"

 Nu?

The first man and woman in the garden had a single task: to maintain what had been created in Eden.  As we know that simple charge ended in failure. 

Noah was assigned seven commandments for his heirs.  As the Torah and history reveals, this experiment also failed. 

So what is the ultimate lesson that curtails humanity's appetite for wrongdoing?  How does Torah configure the destiny of humanity?  It answers, make him responsible for more than himself.  While this may seem counterintuitive, read on.

In the Talmud, we learn of one of the students a rabbi who became ill.  As the student was new to the Academy and not very well learned or known no one went to visit him.  When the master, Rabbi Akiva, heard that his student was sick he ran to his home to pay him a visit.  The brief tale ends with the student rising out of his sickbed and thanking his teacher profusely for restoring him back to life. The lesson? Everyone is obligated to visit the sick.  This is not a good deed. It is a mitzvah, a commandment.

"Those who do not visit the sick are guilty of spilling blood," declare our sages.

There is another story of a ship floundering in a fierce storm. One companion said to another, "This is the worst thing to ever happen!"  His companion replied, "No. Something far worse would be when someone asks you for bread and you have none to give." 

In these instances and one thousand more examples just like them, our responsibility in life, to God and to the world is not to hoard but a gift to be taken and shared. Giving gives life meaning.

Returning to the initial question posed at the beginning of this message, "that which is difficult is easy, the easy is difficult" is simple to understand. We fight against doing what we feel is imposed upon us (mitzvah).  That makes it difficult. But once we self obligate to do God's will we find it is very easy and our actions breathe meaning into life.  And on the other side of the equation, when we do that which is most expedient it provides no sense of real achievement.  In the final analysis, it leaves us empty.

So, what is the meaning of life? What is your answer?

Wonderful

“Wonderful” starts with wonder.  Can anything be truly wonderful if we do not feel the well of amazement when experiencing it? 

The most deeply religious men and women of history were consumed by “radical amazement.”  They peered at the world through lenses that saw the miraculous in the mundane.  This is the primary difference between the religious and the non-religious.

A colleague tells the story of a child looking up to her father, pointing to the heavens and asking, “Daddy what is up? Beyond the sky?”

“Ether, my child.”

At this the little one crinkled her nose and turned her attention to other things.

The task of an educator (and who is not an educator to a child?) is to enlarge her horizons, not to limit inquisitiveness or crush curiosity.

Make no mistake: Wonder is not the sole purview of children or tzaddikim.  It abides in each of us and must be allowed to swim in the endless ocean of life.  Stand by the shore of the sea or smell a fragrance, the rabbis tell us, and say a blessing.  Why?  Such an utterance allows us to give way to jaw-dropping inspiration.

Albert Einstein wrote that, “The supreme task [of scientists] is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.  There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them…”

Sit back, gaze at the stars and feel awestruck.  You have not forgotten how to do that, have you?  No, it is like riding a bicycle.  Once you know, you always know.  What draws us away from feeling amazement are the pulls on our time that want to make us believe that they have something more important to tell us.  There is nothing more meaningful than being still, saying a single prayer with kavanah (meaning), hugging love and hanging on to them feeling your emotions overflow, tasting your food, not questioning helping another or being thankful for your eyesight.  That is why the ancient ones tells us that we must utter one hundred blessings each day.  In being aware of the multitude of miracles that surround us we become elevated.  And happier.  Much happier.

The Pathless Path

There is no answer.

There never has been an answer.

There never will be an answer.

That’s the answer. 

~Gertrude Stein

Isn’t that wonderful?

It's Adar!

It is so easy to let events overtake our lives.  The calls on our time are innumerable.  How then do we live a meaningful life when the phone rings incessantly?  How do we focus on love when the “text” function dings again?  The stock market does another nose-time.  Time to sweat.  But, wait, the children are crying….

We tend to think these things are new.  They are not.  Time is finite.  The calls on our time are infinite.  It has always been that way.

But I have good news.  This is the month of Adar (this Hebrew month according to the lunar calendar).  So what does Tradition tell us about Adar?  It says, “Be happy!”  So, Judaism says to be happy.  How do I do that?  How do I lay aside the annoyances of e-mail and bills and be happy?

Let me share a story from the great Maggid of Dubno:

Once a great ship was proudly sailing the seas.  She carried many important merchants bringing huge quantities of merchandise.  Far out in the ocean, a violent storm arose and the ship was in danger of sinking. The captain called the passengers together and asked that they throw any extraneous cargo overboard or else they may all drown.  The merchants, anxious to save their lives, began to bring out their precious possessions and toss them overboard.  One of the merchants, however, who was known to have with him considerable wealth, was about to cast over his valuables along with his tallit and tefillin.  His companions protested, “Fool!  Throw the precious gems over because you can do without them, but not those!  They are our life!”

            What the Maggid was telling his audience is that we determine what is valuable and what is not.  We decide the importance of all things.  In other words, we can actually make the decision to be happy.  So in a few weeks we will celebrate Purim.  We can come in masks and drink.  We can shout and parade.  We can eat and laugh raucously (March 24).  And it is all good.  You will choose to participate and make merry.  Or not.

Look at what the Talmud says: 

“If your head aches, study Torah.  If your throat aches, study Torah.  If your stomach aches, study Torah.  If your bones ache, study Torah.  The Torah is the cure for all ailments.”  (Eruvvin 53) 

Is this true?  Of course it is.  You know in your heart that it bears holy truth.  When we elevate pain (physical or psychological) it sharpens.  When we focus on G-d earthly demands fade.  They may not disappear but they no longer occupy all our attention and so become less important.

Talmud study happens every Shabbat (shh! Don’t tell too many people), adult education is ongoing, services are held every day and , best of all, God is always present.

“Slow me down, Lord, I am going too fast,

I can’t see my brother when he’s walking past.

I miss a lot of good things day by day;

I don’t know a blessing when it comes my way…

Slow me down, Lord, so I can talk

With some of your angels –

Slow me down to a walk.” -author unknown

Make of you days what you want them to be.  Choose the Rock of Ages.  And “don’t worry be happy. “ It’s Adar.

Insight

Vision is not about what we see but what we allow ourselves to see.

A remarkable new book, Blind Spot, demonstrates many times over how we refuse to see what is in front of our eyes. Instead, what we see is what our mind wants us to see. 

One famous example of this comes from Wilbur Wright who wrote, “I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years…  Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.”  What is beyond our vision generally lies beyond our imagination.

We all have biases that distort vision.  From remembering certain groups of words while forgetting others, to actually not seeing something in front of our face, we program ourselves to not notice certain things.  Did you ever try to point something out to a person who could not see it?

That is why the ancient sages teach us to continually question what we think we know.  Prejudice blinds us to truth.

In fact, the word “invent” comes from the Latin, invenre, meaning “to find.”  When people look to the ordinary and perceive that which they have refused to see before they find, discover, and invent.  Eyes open and newfound vision comes.

Torah strives to continually give us new perspective on the world and ourselves.  Think of it: Every time we read Torah (and we have been reading the same thing for the better part of four thousand years) we see novel thoughts, nuances and approaches to life for the first time.  “Examine it thoroughly for everything is in it,” declares the Mishna. 

It is almost as if new sentences are scripted into the ancient text each night.  How else could these new ideas suddenly appear?  Of course this is not true.  What is fact is that with fresh eyes we find new insight.

On vacation with his family, Dr. Edwin Land’s small daughter, Jennifer, complained that she could not see the picture her father just snapped.  Within one hour, Land had the solution in his head, which eventually became the Polaroid Land Camera.

Don’t like what you see?  Time for change?

All we need is vision to make a new reality.