The Greatness of Pain

There are many things that we share in common that could unite humanity.  There are far more similarities than differences.  In fact, we have to work hard to find differences.  Often prejudice arises out of that search to define how we differ.  In one sense when we proudly state that we are from South Carolina and people from other places, say New Hampshire, have habits and attitudes that are grossly different we are engaged in that process of differentiation which is a mild form of prejudice.  On a more obvious scale, when we declare that Americans are better than the French, men are superior to women, Europeans are nicer than Africans or Christians are better than Buddhists, Jews are better than Muslims…

 

It takes consideration and serious thought to develop these specialized prejudices and often we do them at convenient times (football games) and unacceptable times like the Holocaust.  The salient point is that we are more alike than different and when we take time to point out differences between people we are putting energy, work, into trying to define someone, a political party, a religion or nationality.  It takes little or no effort to try to find how we are similar.  One of the many ways in which we are much alike is our woundedness.

 

We are all broken.  Some suffer from disease, some from addiction.  Others bear the scars of physical or mental abuse.  All are wounded by ignorance, indifference and the spoken word.  That is the great commonality that humanity shares - we have all been hurt.

 

What do we do with our scars?

 

1.     Forgive yourself. When you have been on the “giving end” apologize and then issue a formal apology and follow with an acceptance of that apology to self.  To continually carry that suffering we have caused others is to be burdened by a weight that will affect our future relationships and impede our progress to growth.

2.     Forgive those who have harmed you.  Some will apologize, others will not.  For your sake, not theirs, let it go. It does them no harm for you to carry this grudge.  You are only harming yourself.

3.     Ask G-d.  Tell G-d what you need and ask to be relieved of those past shortcomings, wrongdoings.  Find a quiet place where you can speak openly and freely.  Many like to find themselves alone in the Sanctuary to open their hearts.  Any place will do.  Just make it real and speak from your heart.

4.     Learn. Camus wrote, “In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”  Remember that scars are stronger than the original skin they have healed.   You are stronger than you think. 

Viktor Frankl experienced the worst side of humanity’s brutality.  Here is what he learned:

“But pain is a great teacher. Just as physical pain can mobilize our defenses and alert us to deeper problems, so can emotional pain. It has the function of awakening us to the realization that there is something wrong in our lives, something that needs attention. If we ignore inner pain, it will surely grow out of control.”  

 Allow the lessons of pain to make you a better person, more apt to really listen to the broken   hearts around you, be empathetic just as you would want for your self.

5. Embrace your gifts.  You are not an accident.  The life you were born into is not incidental.  The    faith you were born into yields fine fruits but they must be plucked, learned and practiced.  It is not too late: in fact it is right on time.

6.  Accept that you and everyone is imperfect.  Or as Joe Torre phrased it, “How to catch a knuckleball: ‘Wait ‘til it stops rolling, then pick it up’.”  When life throws at you the unexpected, wait.  The ball will eventfully stop rolling.  Or as Solomon the Wise put it, “This too shall pass.”

 

Pain has its purpose and should never be used as a tool against others.  Instead, it presents itself as a grand opportunity for growth and change.

 

Reimagining the Vision of Pesach

Often we do know what is missing until it is taken away.  We miss what we had.  In a similar vein we do not understand the significance of what is not missing from our lives because it was never there.

 

For this reason, tradition dictates that we recite a litany of blessings each day; acknowledging the critical value of our eyesight, the ability to be mobile, our breath… The Talmud teaches that we need to say at least one hundred blessings every day.  The underlying rationale is that we need to learn how to appreciate all the things that are not wrong in our lives.

 

A man was hospitalized and nearly died from toxins backing up in his body.  When I sat with him during his surgical recovery he passionately told me, “Rabbi, I will never take that blessing we say for moving our bowels for granted!” (p. 63 in Sim Shalom)

 

Each morning as I wrap myself in my tallit preparing to daven, I thank the Holy One for a new day, making me in G-d’s image (with nearly unlimited untapped potential), restoring my soul, my vision, blessing me with legs that work, a functional mind, a body that works as it is supposed to… and for not being a slave.

 

When we make Kiddush on Shabbat we say, zecher l’tziat mitzrayim, “remember the liberation from Egypt.”  We sing those words often as it expresses gratitude for being freed from slavery. Freedom is essential and needful for all people.  That message is reinforced time and again throughout our prayers so that we feel the gift of freedom, G-d’s beneficence and the critical importance of emancipating the oppressed, the enslaved.

 

Passover is upon us and we retell the great story of our liberation.  Why do we read of the great miracles, the Ten Plagues, the parting of the Sea, and the manna in the desert as gifts from G-d?  We recite them because it reinforces the meaning of our existence in the world, imatio Dei, behaving like G-d.  Rabbi Moshe, a Hasidic sage, was known to say, “If someone comes to you and asks your help, you shall not say pious words like, ‘Have faith and take your troubles to God!’ You shall act as if there were no God, as if there were only one person in all the world who could help this person - only yourself.”

 

Appreciation our freedom allows us to understand G-d’s great gift and the need to insure that no one is a slave today.  What moves us to work to unshackle the enslaved (think of children and women bought and sold and consider the slave labor camps of North Korea and in China)?

 

As we approach Pesach we are compelled to face the reality of the ultimate cruelty that humans do to one another. Those who survived the Holocaust understand the ramifications of the brutality of forced labor and labeling people as sub-human and therefore expendable.  In America, and virtually every part of the world, human trafficking and enslavement have been part of its history.

 

Abraham Lincoln said, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”   He, who saw the savagery of slavery, was empathic enough to realize that the pain caused to human beings by enslavement has no cost benefit; it only poisons the soul.   The scholar Hillel also understood the power of pathos for another human being when he pronounced, “What is hurtful to you do not do to others.”  

 

On Pesach we reawaken to the painful realities of life.  We are free and that is a gift not to be taken for granted.  Others still suffer under the scorching heat of servitude.  I hope that we can find meaning in our freedom this year as we sit and celebrate the marvelous gift we have been fortunate to be born into.  At the same time I hope we will speak at our seder tables and commit work to unbind the fetters of those who are still not free.

 

May this be our focus and prayer of the holy night of Pesach.

Pharaoh vs Moses

History is the story of humankind told and retold through epochs of pain and liberation.  This is how we were taught to read and understand history.  We learned to memorize the dates when people slaughtered one another over imagined slights, petty disagreements, unchecked hunger for riches, self-aggrandizement and a thirst to demean and then destroy those who are different.   We also were taught when people rose above their basest instincts and courageously acted for the betterment of humanity.  On the one hand we all know the stories of pogroms, the World Wars, Babi Yar, the Crusades, Vietnam, the Revolution….  On the other hand, we are also familiar with Maimonides, Martin Luther King, Moses and Gandhi.

 

Knowing the behavior of humanity we have the choice of taking the side of the victim or victimizer.  There is no such thing as remaining neutral.    As Rabbi Akiva framed it, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I am only for myself, what am I?  And if not now, when?”  Akiva reminds us that we have to make a conscious decision to care for ourselves while working to help the stranger.  We know what happens when we make the wrong choice.

 

The story of the Exodus is recounted every year at this time.  There is not a story more powerful told through the ages than this.  It is the narrative of a supreme power that was totally concerned with the powerless.  God showed us which side to take, the side of the victim.  “In every generation….” the Haggada begins, reminding us that the date changes but the humanity proclivity to enslave and master has not.  

 

The eve of Pesach is not about telling stories; it is about feeling them.  We reach down into our souls to access the part of us that has known pain and understand the pain of others.  At the same time we spiritually reach outward to the Holy One who has demonstrated what we must do to lift up those who suffer.

 

Liberation from the grip of Pharaoh did not happen 4,000 years ago….it is ongoing.  The task remains before us and so we must tell the story again.

MORE Justice

In typical Talmud style a story is told of two camels ascending a hill.  If they go up at the same time one of them will tumble down.  One must precede the other.  The question raised is, “How do you choose which one will go first?”

The one carrying the lighter load will let the other go first.

 

Talmud teaches an important lesson about justice.  Even with animals our sages teach us that we are to treat them justly and with care. Our faith demands, for example, when an animal is in our care, i.e. dependent upon us, we must care for their needs before our own.  It is no great leap of logic that our children’s needs must precede ours, as they are not capable of fulfilling their requirements independent of us.

 

What then comes to mind are questions of other people’s animals and children.  Do we have any responsibility toward them?  “If you find another person’s animal, you must return it to them.”  (Deut. 22). The Rabbis go on to expand that if you find any lost item you must return it to the owner and if they cannot be found you must care for the object until they can be located.  It is logical that the rabbis go on to teach that if this is true for an animal, how much more so must it be true for children?!  We have a responsibility (read: mitzvah) to help children return home- whether that means literally bringing them home when they are lost or returning them home by teaching, feeding or even housing them if they are homeless.  I have met such people in my life who have taken children into their homes when their family of origin could not, or did not, care for them.  This too is justice.

 

“A judge must be guided by what he actually sees.”  -Talmud, Sanhedrin 6b

 

This is an axiom of Torah.  Hearsay, prejudice and whispers are disregarded.  

 

For those who have lived through the fifties and sixties we are painfully aware that African Americans were oppressed, discounted because their race.  They did not enter a store or conversation without a predictable and undeniable bias. We are now witnessing with the spiraling rise of anti-Semitism prejudice is passed on from generation to generation.  The suffering at the hands of Nazis, and Cossacks before them, can still be found widely available in the media.  So it is with African Americans, Asians and Muslims today.  Hatred is not limited to any group.  And we are insistently taught to judge each person on their own merit, “by what s/he actually sees.”

 

An apocryphal story is told about Mayor Fiorello La Guardia when he was serving as a night court judge. A woman was brought before him on charges of stealing food to feed her hungry children.  La Guardia heard the case of the victimized storekeeper and the hungry mother.  He declared, “I fine you,” he said to the woman, “ten dollars for stealing the food.  And everyone in the courtroom are fined as we are responsible for living in a city where a mother is forced to steal to feed her family.”  The extra money was then given to the poor woman.

 

La Guardia was not Jewish he was emphasizing a Jewish principle: we have a responsibility for the people who live in our community.  That too is justice.  The homeless, mentally ill, and hungry are our responsibility.  They are the woman squatting down late at night next to the closed store, the veteran who holds up a cardboard sign at the corner, the children wandering aimlessly through dark alleys, the children and women forced into slavery, another Columbia victim of gunfire…

 

That is why I am insistent on working with MORE Justice.  We have the means to fix all these ills.  They are not insurmountable.  In fact, many of them are as simple as getting our public officials to acknowledge what we propose (training our police officers, allotting money for affordable housing, improving gun control…) MORE Justice has “on the ground” proposals that are simple to implement and only require our elected officials to pay attention and put into action what will benefit our entire community.

 

The culmination of a year of research to determine best practices are now reaching their climax and we will be approaching those who wield the power to make real change at our Nehemiah Action on April 4.  Contact Nina Grey or me if you wish to be part of the change.  As Elie Wiesel taught, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.”

Food

When Noah sent the dove from t he Ark to find land, it returned with an olive branch.  The Midrash records the dove saying to the Almighty,”Ribbono Shel Olam!  Let my food be as bitter as the olive branch from Your hand rather than the sweetest of honey from the hand of a human being.”  (Sanhedrin 108)

 

Have you ever seen customers in a restaurant arguing over who is going to pay the bill? Both insist on playing the host.  Sometimes there are compromises, like, “I’ll pay the bill this time.  You get the next,” or “Let’s split it.”

 

However tasty the food is, it is inevitably tastier when the dinner is “on us.”  Whether at home or in a restaurant, we all prefer self-sufficiency to relying on others.  As we say in the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after meals), “May I never be in need of gifts from human hands…”.

 

Eating is a sacred act.  In Judaism, we understand food as a product of God’s continued goodness.  Appropriately enough, several customs revolve around the table to elevate the thrice-daily event.  Here are a few:

 

Ø  Some have the tradition of placing salt on the table.  Salt, for the Jew, is not a condiment but a reminder of the days when sacrifices were offered as a means of connection to the Divine.  When our ancestors brought their sacrifices to the altar the meat was salted.  Mimicking their heartfelt act of being proximate to God we place salt on our altar (the table which has replaced the idea of thanking God for our bounty).

Ø  Unlike other foods, salt does not totally disappear even though it dissolves in a liquid or melts into food it will, sooner or later, crystallize.  That is why we call people who fully embrace their humanity, “salt of the earth.”  We recognize them as an integral part of the universe.  Salt, which is ever-present, is also a sign of God’s eternal existence.  

Ø  Washing one’s hands is the way of hygiene but for the religious Jew, netilat yadayim, literally lifting of one’s hands, transcends simple cleanliness.  In the same way, the ancient priests (kohanim) used to wash their hands before beginning their scared duties, we rinse hands before commencing a holy act.  Only then is the Ineffable One’s name pronounced over bread.

Ø  It is said that all ten fingers are to be placed on the bread that we bless just as there are tens separate labors that are involved until the seeds are nurtured to be baked into a loaf, and there are ten words in the ha-Motzi.

Ø  The Talmud also advised, “the one who prolongs his meal prolongs his life.”  If the sixties were the Age of Aquarius, the next decades were the age of McDonalds and the delivered meals by box.  The gobble down food so swiftly, we might eat anything and never know the difference.  The dictum of the Talmud is universally applauded by people of medicine and healthcare providers everywhere.  But this advice is not just a digestion technique.  Tasting the food we eat brings appreciation.  Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav was known to say, “A person should eat slowly and with etiquette even if you are alone at the table.”

Ø  A final custom: Many people keep some bread on the table throughout the meal, even when saying Birkat HaMazon. The ancient ones used t say that even after completing a meal, a poor person might come to our door, asking for sustenance and we must have something to give them.  Our home, our table, is set for anyone who may be hungry.

Ø  It is true that we are most comfortable feeding ourselves and others than being dependent on others for our food.  The natural extension of that feeling is to elevate our meal, heightening our appreciation that we are obligated to no person.  We eat because of God’s grace and mercy.

Talking to God

I grew up in a medium-sized Conservative congregation in Massachusetts.  I listened intently to my rabbi when he spoke.  He was always articulate and thoughtfully considered when he rose to the lectern.  I admired him so much that I modeled myself after him after I was ordained.  I kept his modulation and speaking style inside of me all those years until the time I began to speak as a newly minted rabbi.  I was delivering words but the thoughts and ideations were not mine; they belonged to my teacher and mentor, my rabbi.

 

Yet one thing I began to note as I took my first post - also in Massachusetts – was that I cannot remember a single time when my rabbi referred to God from the bima.   Of course he spoke on tzedaka, kindness, Jewish history and philosophy, current news that affected the congregation and Jewry as a whole, coping with life’s pain and the ever-present theme of the threat of assimilation.   God was left outside the Sanctuary doors as the congregation was led in familiar tunes, but not understood, by the cantor.

 

Not surprisingly, I followed the example of the man I admired.  It was not until I started frequenting hospitals, nursing facilities and homes where my congregants asked me to pray for them that I began to realize that I had grown to be a community-minded, historic proud Jew but one who had yet to establish a relationship with God.  Now, my members taught me the need to reach deep within myself in order to bring to them the healing they desperately wanted.

 

I spent the next years learning how to speak to God, pray with people in distress, and listen to the Voice that was seeking me but the one I had not yet acknowledged. 

 

So what have I learned?

 I have learned that each person develops his or her own relationship to God.  No two are alike.

I learned that many people, maybe even most, have had personal experiences when they felt touched by God, what is called a personal revelation.

 I learned how to feel the prayers instead of saying them, sometimes lingering over a word or phrase for long stretches of time.

 I learned that kavannah means meaning what you say, not saying words.  An example is Atah, an almost ubiquitous word meaning, “You.”  When I consider that I am opening my heart to the Master of the Universe directly I can become filled with awe.  Or the word “Olam” which means “world,” “universe,” “cosmos” and that which is “hidden.”  This word “Olam” is sated with power.

 I have learned that praying while holding someone’s hand for much needed healing can bring welcome tears of joy and want.

 I have learned that children understand God intimately when they are introduced to the Holy One and that when we draw close to death we come to that same place of understanding once again.

 I learned that talking about God is one of the most intimate things two people can do.

 I learned that meaningful prayer for me is less about asking and more about my appreciation of what I have (clothes, food, a home, freedom from slavery…) and what is not missing (I have arms, stomach, breath, a functioning heart…).

 I learned that God answers prayers in the form that we need, not want.

 I learned that God may appreciate my Hebrew but He understands my English just as well, if not better.

 I learned that sometimes just calling God’s name is enough (Ribbono shel Olam is my preference).

 I learned that God also weeps for us.

 I learned that I am never alone.

Relearning Life

The Fifth Commandment “Honor your father and mother” is universally well-known.  But a question that needs to be asked, “Are there obligations of a parent to the child?”  According to Torah, are there things that a parent must do for their offspring?  The sacred Writ is silent on this issue.

The Talmud however fills the gap when it lists items that a parent must do for a child – brit milah (bring them into the covenant with G-d), food and shelter, education (so that they can learn a trade to be self-sufficient), ensure that they have the opportunity to have a mate with whom they can traverse life, and swimming (survival skills).

Note how few items are in the list of parental obligations.  In our times we tend to overreach.   In previous generations children were given ample opportunities to explore life as it presents itself; a bug on a leaf, watching the patience of a spider spin its web and tossing a small object into the web to see how the spider reacts,  sitting quietly while contemplating the multiple layers of colors that emerge out of a burning candle, running and playing in the street with friends (unplanned playdates that just spontaneously occur), boredom (which has its own unique gifts) and creating magical places that emerge out of one’s imagination.  Modernity has stripped us of these unique opportunities to experience life as it is meant to be, full at times, empty at others.  Joy and pain are part of growth and learning.  Perhaps that is why the Talmud does not fill its pages with suggestions of how children are to be raised.

At the end of this past month, I was forced to slow down and do a lot of self-care as I had surgery and was required to rest and be still.  This uninvited opportunity gave me the opening to relive sitting quietly and contemplating the stars at night, the gathering of storm clouds and the quiet solitude of healing.  It brought back many childhood memories of exploring the deep woods for hours on end, mowing the lawn in summer, shoveling snow in wintertime, and rolling in the soft mosses of the forest.

At every funeral the twenty-third psalm is recited.  In it are the well-worn words, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”  These are powerful and intentional words.  When death snatches away someone we love we meander in a blank darkness.  We feel lost, perhaps hopeless.  Yet the psalm reminds us that we are “walking through” the valley.  The pain will not last forever.  Eventually we emerge on the other side, and we will find ourselves bathed in new light, with renewed hope having grown from the experience of loss.  The reference to “shadow” also serves to remind us that a shadow can only exist where there is light. When darkness seems to extinguish all light, look for your shadow and you will be reminded that there is still hope.

Death is also a gift, not one that we invite or desire but one that comes with opportunities to reflect quietly on the pathway of our life and the impermanence of things and people.  It provides a fresh perspective that even tears cannot deny.  Each breath is a gift, even the ones that leave us gasping for more air.

There is a story told about a large naval vessel plowing through turbulent seas.  When the captain of the ship sees a light looming ahead, he radios ahead and tells them to change course.  He adamantly demands,” I am the captain of a naval vessel: change your course immediately!”  A response comes back, “No, you must change course.”  This infuriates the captain who yells at the obstinate person at the other end to immediately adjust his course.  “No,” again comes the reply.  “It is you who needs to change direction. I am a lighthouse.”

Forever we are in the process of learning which means taking into consideration that we might be wrong, that there is light beyond the darkness and leaving time to “simply be” may be the healing that we have desperately needed.  Give yourself and your children that gift.