Listening with the Heart

The woman had blond hair, neatly tied into a bun on the top of her height head. Hands fiddled nervously as she sat down across from the desk and said, “Thank you for making time to meet with me.”

At the time I did not know Sheila.  She was not a member of my congregation and, to my knowledge, had never come to a service.  She simply walked in off the street and asked to talk.

In a very small voice Sheila said that she had trouble with God and that she desperately needed to see a Rabbi.

”My father left when I was child,” she began.  “Mother told me he was a gambler and an alcoholic. For all of my life we struggled to be together and keep it together. My mother worked so hard - she had no time for herself. She was both my mother and father. More, she was my friend, cook, confidante and even my date.  She held me up all those long years.  But I still missed and wanted my father …”

Sheila continued telling that her life was brutish and tough. She had recently come off a relationship with an abusive man.  After taking lots physical and mental pain, he finally walked out on her.  Just got up, left and she has not heard from him since.

She paused. “I do not think God cares about me. He does not help. Where is the kindness he is supposed to give?  I feel so alone.”

Gently, I questioned Sheila. 

God, she revealed, was always a kind and good force that had always sustained her. Now she wanted to know if all those years of trust had been misplaced. Was God uncaring?  Spiteful? Aloof?

Sheila is not unique. Many of us express deep doubts about God and mercy at painful moments in our lives.   At those times we need to hear that our faith, our religion, has not betrayed us and that we have not been fools throughout our lives.

To Sheila, and all those who have filled the terrible white heat of pain I offered a compassionate ear and understanding.  God hears.  He listens. God, being compassionate, feels the intimacy of our internal angst.  He experiences the marvelous uplifting joy of our achievements and the despair of our crushing defeats.

And yet.  He also weeps as his children are bent, wracked by pain. As the good suffer, the Holy One understands their pain intimately in the same measure that they do. In the celestial vault, God is witness to the traumas, injustice, capriciousness and wicked fate of this world.  Can a father not cry when his children are afflicted?

Why, you ask. Why does God only feel your pain and not do anything to assuage the anguish?

The Torah is explicit. Man’s job is to govern in this world, to follow God’s laws and ease the burdens of our fellow.  Were God to intervene in this world, enacting justice, punishing, rewarding the good, healing the sick, we would cease to exist as human beings. God governing our lives, pushing the buttons of existence means, by extension, that we are no longer in charge of our own destiny. We would have lost our independence, our ability to choose right from wrong. If wrong is removed as an option, choice is removed.  We are then no longer free.

For example, if God stopped cars from running over innocent victims we would cross streets without glancing in either direction. After all, God would save us, wouldn’t He?

Or maybe He should just save the pious, the righteous and blameless?  Then when someone was run over we would at least know they deserved it. Should only the pure be saved?  If that were true there would be no opportunity to do teshuvah.

God rescuing the good and punishing the wicked is something we should not want. We aspire and covet the freedom to choose. We want the ability to be able to do wrong. Even it will break God’s heart. Through it all, the door is always open to teshuvah.

In my mind’s eye I can see God dancing when our yetser ha-tov(our good side) makes the world a more wholesome place. I picture God proud as his children become healers and dispensers of goodness. There is also the image of the Holy One, blessed be He, ceaselessly weeping as the innocent are hurt and moral decay consumes the fabric of society.

Sheila touched my hand.  She dabbed her eyes with a tissue, got up from her chair and said, “Thank you,” and then “goodbye.” 

Tehillim

Once upon a time, there were Jews known as Tehillim Yidden, “Psalm Jews.”  They were called by that name because they were passionately devoted to the words of the books of Psalms. 

Those passages were forever on their tongues, in their hearts and hands. A teacher of mine was once asked a series of questions by his disciples, “What do you do when death is imminent?”  “What do we do when someone comes to us with psychic pain that torments them?”  “How do you comfort a nervous bride?”  “What words do we utter when Israel is in danger?”

The master simply replied, “Recite Psalms” to each of the questions.

People read Psalms for different reasons and for different ends. Some read it for scholarly nuance that reveals origin and authorship.  Some scan the words for hidden meanings, allusions and rhythms.  Those who in need or pain read for entirely different reasons. They are in search of comfort and hope. In wars and pressure-laden moments Jews recite tehillim daily in the hope that danger across the miles, or in our backyard, would be averted.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel told of a woman who approached him after a lecture.  She said, “Isn’t it a shame that we do not have in our Bible beautiful poems like the psalms?”  

How embarrassing for us all to not know that the treasure is in our Tanakh, our Bible!  It is a vast and rich repository of knowledge and faith in our homes and we never see it.

We recite tehillim every day as a part of our davenning.  They form the backbone of our daily prayers.  Further, we use them for specific needs.  When we need protection from danger psalm 11 is recited; for healing we say psalm 20, success psalm 17, strength to maintain integrity, psalm 38, etc.

A legend:

The angels on high sing praise to the Lord, God. What do they sing? Psalms.

Another legend:

It is said that the king David crafted the Psalms. He was the author. If one looks closely at the words, threads of a lifetime begin to emerge. We can see youthful vigor, unconquerable strength. There are the places we witness a deep sense of dread, even terror. Thankfulness gushes at times and other moments, venom or zeal.  Every kind of emotional state can be found in the books of Tehillim. No wonder they recited the beginning of every morning service. No wonder we savor them and sing them at grace after meals or weddings or funerals. We sing Psalm 29 when feel a storm raging about us with God in the center. Read it. I bet you will not recognize it in the English, despite the fact that we sing it every Sabbath, Friday and Saturday.

Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav believed that tehillim has the power to bring about refuat ha-nefesh, healing of the soul, and refuat ha-guf, healing of the body.  Reciting them causes connections vertically and horizontally. It connects us to God, the universe and one another.

Maybe you are one of the Tehillim Yidden.

On Abortion

Halakha means “law” specifically Jewish law.  Halakha governs the way we approach God, how our courts function, rules of relations, what we wear, commerce and how to tie tzitzit.  The basic Jewish viewpoint is either nothing matters or everything matters.  Needless to say, we take the second opinion.

Halakha is the practical application of the Written Word.  Now, mind you, we do not rest solely on what is written in the Torah.  We “turn it over and over for everything is in it,” as a second century scholar said. So centuries of erudite scholars examining each nuance of the Torah find halakhot that deal with every practical subject you can imagine.

Through America, especially in the south, we are engaged in determining what the civil law should state about abortion.  Right and left-wingers have stated their polar positions.  

What is the Jewish halakha on abortion?

We believe that therapeutic (as opposed to spontaneous) abortion is never good and sometimes is wrong.  For example, having an abortion because of the sex of the child is incorrect.

The Torah itself is quite clear.  Where the fetus represents a danger to the mother, the mother’s life takes precedence. Termed a “rodef” the fetus is viewed as a pursuer threatening a life much as a would-be murderer chases after a potential victim.

The expansion of this thought is where the mental wellbeing of the mother is concerned.  If the mother experiences immeasurable emotional trauma as a result of the birth that also constitutes a reason for allowing abortion. In that instance the birth would cause emotional wreckage that is not too dissimilar from a “rodef.”

Elsewhere in the Torah (Exodus 21) a pregnant woman has an abortion as a result of being pushed or punched.  In that cited case, the halakha determines that there must be a monetary fine. In other words, an unborn child is a life “in potential,” not a fully realized life.  Otherwise it would have been rendered a capital case. In no instance in Jewish law is abortion murder. 

In arguing for civil law to make concrete legislation banning abortion there are many side issues that arise that make the argument for more complex than the presenters argue.  For example, terminating a pregnancy that is non-viable takes time and may well exceed the so-called six week window, let alone earlier.  Often a woman will not even recognize that she is pregnant before six weeks. And in the instance where there is rape or incest court cases can years.  This presents an unfair burden on the victim.

I hope that clearer minds and visions will prevail among the states that like Alabama are moving toward a virtual outlawing of abortion.  Abortion is not a black and white issue.  It has lots of gray, as the halakha teaches us.

Writing a Torah

Picture everything Jewish – its festivals, learning, celebrations, and life’s myriad events – occurring at a single place. Wherever Jews lived in the world, they would focus their attention to this one singular location. Thousands of years later we still turn eastward when we daven, as a reminder of the holiness that inhered in the space and still radiates from there. In their own time, Jews from Babylonia, Egypt, the Far East would travel for weeks, three times each year, to participate in a spectacle and glory of the holiest place on earth. This place was the focal point for prayers, the locus of all that was sacrosanct. Jews could not conceive of their faith without the Beit haMikdash (Temple).
There was only one Jewish house of worship, the Temple; there were no synagogues. World Jewry depended upon that Temple as its lifeline to G-d. All worship took place there. Communal and religious leaders gathered there to witness the Glory. The Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, was the most powerful and influential person as he was in charge of the sacred place and service.
When the Beit haMikdash was destroyed Judaism found it self-staring blankly into an abysmal future. One writer vividly described a scene after the Destruction:
Fathers drew the children close to them, and in trembling voices, described how the High Priest

would seemingly float down to bless the people of Israel within those sacred walls. A little boy went down, picked up a small stone from among the ruins, and clutched it tightly to his heart. A young man, the tears streaming down his face, raised his eyes to heaven and moved his lips without uttering a sound.
Despair. Groups and individuals helplessly roamed, dazed by how quickly their religious life was crushed beneath the foot of the invaders.
One man emerged undeterred from the still smoldering rubble, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai. Instead of succumbing to depression, he taught, “My children, do not let this evil overwhelm you for we have something even greater than the Beit HaMikdash. We have G-d’s Word!” He established Beit Midrashot, Houses of Learning, and Synagogues to pray. It took a man of Rabbi Yohanan’s stature to help the people find the ground and reason to live again he went everywhere speaking words of consolation and Torah. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai soothed the people and soothingly spoke to them, picking up the pieces of peoples shattered faith and bringing them back to the well of their faith and their beginning.
Rabbi Yohanan’s secret was knowing the preciousness of our greatest possession, Torah.
We access the most powerful force in the universe every time

we read from the holy Torah. At Beth Shalom Synagogue we have the mitzvah of restoring and revitalizing two sacred Texts, which, until now, have been unusable.
613 Mitzvot color our lives and give us direction. Participating in the writing of a Torah is the last one of them, number 613. As recorded in the Book, “And now, write for yourselves this song, and teach it to the Children of Israel.” This is the commandment to every Jew to contribute - at least once in their lifetime - to the writing of a Torah scroll.
For most of us, this is our unique opportunity to fulfill this Mitzvah.

Pesach

Pathos is understanding feelings, particularly disease (think pathology) and  the root causes of sadness.  Empathy is related to pathos but is more about feeling what other people feel, understanding them on an emotional level.  Both are commands on Pesach.

-On the holy day we open ourselves to understanding the pathology of hatred, the superiority of one people, or class, over another.  Were our ancestors slaves in a distant land?  Yes, historians have located the time and name of this people from ancient Egyptian documents.  These are your ancestors.  They were untermenschen, subhuman, ignored and abused.  Our concerned God heard the pitiful cries and sent His deliverance releasing them from the lash of their overlords.  

The pathology of understanding the past should lead us back to God and knowledgeable enough to recognize those same signs of raw discrimination emanating from hatred in our day.  And those signs are present now.

-We are commanded to feel as if we were personally liberated from bondage.  This is empathy.  We need to feel the empathy of being on the side of the oppressed.  Everyone understands pain.  We have all felt oppressed and abused at some point(s) in our lives.  We used those reference points to feel the prize of liberation.  It is a great gift that we should not take for granted.  We are free here.  We have a Jewish homeland.

Virtually every day we learn of some group in the world that is being oppressed.  We have to make a decision to be on the side of the victim or victimizer.  Who would dare to stand with the victimizer?  Every time we are silent we are providing fuel for the victimizer to carry on their path of hatred.

Empathy is two sided.  As Hillel pointed out millennia ago, “If I am not for myself who will be for me?  And if I am only for myself what am I?”  

We are not fulfilling our mandate if we do not stand up for ourselves, our people.   And we are woefully inadequate when we do not stand in solidarity with the other. 

Us and Torah

A Midrash reads, “In the beginning” means that “God looked into the Torah and created with world.”  Torah preceded the Creation.  The ancient sages believed that just as any good building must have an architectural plan so too the universe required an outline so that Hi idea would resemble the end product.  The Torah came first!  It was the “blueprint of the universe.”  Does this sound far-fetched?

Think of the thousands of years of human existence and look with amazement at how our lives, the entire world - has been shaped by Torah.  We base our jurisprudential system of justice of Torah.  We learn how to be merciful to the needy through Torah (it is not just giving but how to fairly distribute).  We gauge our relationship to God, our relationship to others, our connection to Israel, even our language is determined by the holy Writ.  The mitzvot run the gamut from the Ten Commandments to burying our dead.  There is not an aspect of civilization that has not been informed by Torah.

And we are its guardians.

“…I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation.  If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations…”.  Written by John Adams in 1809, Adams misses the most critical aspect of our contribution to the world; it was not us that deserve the credit for changing the world’s landscape; it was God’s Torah.

Without Torah we would be as any other people. There would be no Christianity or Islam and the world would probably have remained much more savage.  

We often celebrate ourselves, particularly in this post-Holocaust generation.  Perhaps this is misplaced.   While the victims of the Shoah demand that we remember them (and the world often seems insistent on forgetting its murderous assault) the most gratuitous victory we can claim after Auschwitz is our heritage, the sacred Torah.  This is the real secret power and invincibility of the Jew. As pointed out in the new book Black Earth the real danger perceived by Nazis, nihilists and despots is what makes us unique, Torah.

“All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains.  What is the secret of his immortality?” asked Mark Twain.

The secret is lying out in the open for everyone to see. It is not our charitable gifts; it is where we learn what tzedakah means.  It is not our insistence of evenhandedness or whether we are active Democrats or Republicans; it is the source that sustains our belief in the primacy of mishpat, righteous justice.  It is not that we have excelled in professions but our insistence on lifelong learning, which comes directly from Torah.

Left to our own discernments we would likely choose the path that hurts us the least or benefits us the most.  Torah lengthens our reach beyond self-interest.  That is the real secret to our immortality.

Celebrate the lifeline of the ages, the blueprint of the universe, the reason why we are still here after millennia, and the reason why the Jew will still be informing the world two thousand years from today. Torah.

The Torah Carries

Kiddush HaShem.  We associate it with giving your life for God but it literally means the “Sanctification of the Lord.”

We do Kiddush HaShem every time we learn a word, even a single letter of the holy Torah.  I remember an old man who carried the Torah through the throngs of shul. Each person reached out with his tallit or her siddur to touch the sacred Word as it passed.  It was taking a long time to pass through the crowd. The congregation began to worry about the old man carry the rolled parchment.  One eager young person ran up and said, “Here, let me take that from you, old man.  Let me carry it for a while”  

“Young man,” he replied, “you think I am carrying the Torah?  You could not be more wrong.  The Torah is carrying me.”

So has it been through the ages.  The Torah has carried the Jewish people wherever we traveled or were sent.  Wrapped in garments of fine cloth it travelled in the backs of wagons, in the arms of the young, and sometimes hidden away in a trunk far from eyes that would want to destroy it. I know of one such Torah that was hidden away in a toy chest in Berlin 1939, disguised as a child’s plaything to escape the scrutiny of the Nazis.  This tiny Torah sits in an Ark today, testimony to our faith in God.

The Zohar, the mystic tradition, tells that Torah, God and Israel are one.  They are indivisible. And eternal. There are times when adversity feels like is going to overwhelm us; and when the great prophets speak of moments when the Divine Face is hidden; and Israel is threatened.   Yet, then comes regeneration when we renew our commitment to God, Torah and Israel. Blessing follows.

The renewing of our Torahs is such a time of blessing.

Today we carry the Torah by repairing it letter by letter, word by word.

Tomorrow the Torah will carry us, and future generations, into a limitless future.