Life's Path

 What is most important in being a Jew?

If you asked each person you know they would come up with a different response.  We look, study, and integrate what is most important to us and that will differ from person to person. Answers would probably wildly range from being guardians of the earth and protecting the environment, to social justice, to loving people, forgiving those who harmed you, getting close to G-d, showing kindness to strangers, repairing the world and on and on.

 

The ancient rabbis also reflected deeply on what is most critical in being a Jew.  One said, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself:” another stated “If it hateful to you do not do it to others.”  And then there is the old argument about whether if one had to choose one over the other - study or practice- which is preferable?  (Study won that discussion.)  Even “Google” weighs in on the question and determined pikuach nefesh, saving a life, was most important.

 

This is the season when we contemplate the course of our lives.  Inevitably what will come to mind are the places where we veered from our elected path.  It is our judgment call how we assess ourselves and what intend on changing, based on what we think is most important.

 

One question that we should also consider during this auspicious time of year is, “What makes me happy?”  Now do not be deceived into thinking, “Oh, that is an easy question.”  It is not.  It may be the most difficult question you ever ask.  

One writer answered this way; “I want to believe there’s some reason for living….”   This is a wise response.

 

When the day ends, and you lay down to sleep what determines whether it was a good day or one that was wasted?  I suspect we make that determination based on doing what makes us happy.  Can you answer that?  If you can, you hold the key that unlocks the door marked “a contented life.”  Not every day will be contended or happy but if we know that drives us, our reason for being alive, we can then be a whole body and soul, not one that is distracted and unfocused.

 

No two people are alike.  Everyone will come up with a different answer to their life's pathway, one that touches them soulfully.  Of course, there will be similarities, but one core Jewish belief is that we all have something vital and unique to contribute to the world.  Acting on that innate gift not only allows us a genuine sense of contentment but also provides a necessary ingredient to the world’s brokenness that only we can provide.

 

Answering the question of your life’s pathway is exhilarating and liberating as you no longer need be enslaved by what your neighbors, community or world thinks.  You are your own universe capable of greatness and joy. No wonder the psalmist informs, “You have made us little less than angels.” (ps. 8) 

 

Viktor Frankl challenged, “Being human means being conscious and being responsible.”  What Frankl means is that we must work to find our life’s passage, the reason for our being, why we exist and then mete it out.  In its wake, will come contentment.

 

Holy Days

I remember a story told of Baron de Rothschild’s wife going into labor.  She cried out, “Mon dieu, mon dieu!”  Her husband rushed to the doctor and told him to come quickly.

“What is happening?” the doctor asked.  She cried, “Mon dieu, mon dieu!”

“Just wait a bit longer,” the doctor soothed.

Again she cried, My God!”  And again the doctor counseled patience, “She is not ready.”

Finally she moaned, “Oy vey!”  Then the doctor rushed in.

 

The words we say over this next month of Ellul leading to the High Holy Days, the Yamim Noraim, are powerful.  But when they are infused with meaning they become something that transcends the words on the page or anything that can be uttered.  When we cry out in anguish over our internal pain, the ones we have suffered and the ones we have caused, it rises to the highest heights of heaven.

 

The shofar cries.  Shevarim are like the gasps of breath we take between our choked tears.  The teruah discharges throaty cries that consume us. The shofar does not simply blast, it weeps.  One hundred times the shofar cries.  According to tradition, these are the number of tears shed by a mother whose son was killed in battle.  A parent who will never again see their child.  Each shriek from the shofar is a tear.  

 

One tear for the estrangement between you and your relative.

One tear for the friend lost because of intransigence, the inability to forgive.

One tear for the lies told, even the “white” ones.

One tear for the homeless child who waits for his mother to return home from begging or selling herself.  In Columbia.

One tear for the victim of cancer.

One tear for refusing to take five minutes to help someone in distress.

One tear for not rising to our potential.

One tear for love lost.

One tear for saying, “I have no time to help” when what we really meant was, “not interested.”

One tear when we promised to be present but were too preoccupied to be there.

One tear from the promise we made to live Jewishly.

 

Words are insufficient when the shofar cries its staccato sounds.  And words no longer matter when we weep our losses for each tear wends its way to God.  Ribbono shel Olam said through the blinding passion of wet tears of regret and sorrow, is enough to penetrate any space between our Maker and us.  And more.  It is enough to make the Holy One weep alongside us -- just as we once wept on the shoulder of our parent and their heart was ready to burst in compassion.

 

It takes courage to weep for our insufficiencies, our wrongs, and losses.  The shofar and ech meaningful word we shout out to God urges us to take one more step and allow our cheeks to become wet with our pain.  It takes empathy to cry for the wounded world we have made, for the hungry eyes that stare at us from Finley Park, for the Israelis that live in constant fear of a state of war, for the Ukrainians that have needlessly suffered and for the neighbor down the street that returns to an empty, silent home at the end of the day.

 

These yamim noraim are aimed at stopping us from blaming.  We hold ourselves responsible.  Can we be courageous enough to face ourselves?  Are we courageous enough to cry for our pain?

 

During the year we pray for one another.  Now, we pray for us.  We pray for the strength and courage to take a long look at what and who we have become.  And God?  God holds us tightly, enveloping us in celestial arms and weeps at our return.

Knowing, Unknowing and Change

What would we change if we knew what existed beyond space and time?

Have you ever wondered how different your life would be if you knew what you now know?  

 

 

Jacob, father of our people, lived a life of paradoxes.  He and his descendants brought and spread monotheism and morality; they produced marvelous inventions, creations that changed the way the world thinks and imagine, and became the fixed point of the attention for humanity.  Yet, Father Jacob was both a hero and a deceiver. While his story is the foundational point for the world and his life was often adrift in an almost unfathomable series of choices, most of his own making, each one full of adventure, promise, redemption, and terror.

 

“O human race! Born to ascend on wings,

Why do ye fall at such a little wind?” -Dante

 

Jacob’s majestic dream mirrors his life.  He climbs a ladder to unimaginable heights and plummets to earth faster than his ascent.  On Pesach, we say “My father [Jacob] was a wandering Aramean…”  What if those words were exchanged for “My father was a deceiver?”  Choices.  With the whisp of a single breeze he/we are compelled inwardly to choose one way over another, and life is diverted and never be as it once was or could have been had we elected a different track.

 

Life is full, brimming with endless possibilities.  We make decisions, never knowing what might happen if we choose another course.  Endless are the possibilities of what might have been at another college, making another career choice, a different mate, an uttered the word from our heart instead of withholding it before death intervened and took away that opportunity; and far too quickly we become so absorbed in the life we elected that we forget what else might have been.  We sometimes imagine alternate realities in our dreams and thoughtfully reflect on those choices as the years pass come back to us in moments of deep introspection.

 

In Kabbalah it is called the “shattering of the vessels.”  This is the brokenness we experience when we consider the wrongness of the path taken and the harm and pain we feel and relive over and again.  Interestingly though, Kabbalah does not view the cracked vessels we have become as mistakes but as opportunities.

 

If we knew then what we know now how would we change the trajectory of our lives?  What choices would we tell ourselves to avoid?  And which would we opt to take?

 

Jacob made some awful decisions; his tale is one of flight, fall and acceptance.  His life is our own.  It is no coincidence that we are called Israel, which ultimately became Jacob’s name after he realized that life was not about self-doubt but listening to the gentle breeze and accepting what G-d brings to us.

 

Jews are master storytellers.  At Passover we not only share the story of the Exodus but the seders of our youth, yarns about our grandfather, the long nights of the past, the aroma of soup boiling in the kitchen...  Each year we retell the victory of the Maccabees with their inspiring narratives.  We read stories each week at Shabbat services. And we are actors, comedians, and chapters of our lives each telling the story of a different adventure.  Sure, we know the outcome and when telling the story, we cannot help but wonder and imagine what might have been a different outcome had we been wiser.

 

But we are not.  

 

The saga of our lives is like Jacob/Israel.  We are lost and found.  We despair and are galvanized by hope.  Each step taken has been replete with meaning, both intended and unimaginable but not without meaning.

 

Like Jacob/Israel we have travelled to distant places with different outcomes, most of them in our mind’s eye as the stories grow and morph as we learn to view them through the lens of our newfound maturity.  We can see our footprints in the many stories we tell about ourselves.  They have been full, meaningful, and even if some have been missteps we are buoyed by the words of the Kabbalah, the breaking of the vessels has presented us with new opportunities.

 

At any given moment we exist in the summer of our lives, full of expectation and dreams and choices yet to come.  We are the story and each day we write a new chapter.

Time

When we were young a day was an enormous passage of time.  A few hours at the beach would stretch out toward infinity.  It lasted forever.    Thirty minutes at the playground felt like an entire day.  Clocks used to run slower then.  And one moment, frozen in our memory, sometimes informs the rest of our lives.  Who does not have a lasting memory of being told you were thick-headed or stupid?  Or being chosen last at the game?  Or being told how intelligent/beautiful/clever/incompetent you were?  This moment stands out in our thoughts and comes back time and again reminding us of that powerful event that stays with us the rest of our lives. A split second comment we heard at six years old resonates eighty years later.

 

With age, time speeds up significantly as days blur into weeks.  We are still impacted by what happens to us but those moments do not become as calcified in our mind’s eye as earlier, youthful events…and everything happens so much more quickly!

 

Years pass, weeks quicken to months, and ultimately years spin into decades as memories tend to gel and blend into a giant mosaic sometimes resembling more Jackson Pollack than a Rembrandt.  No longer individual pictures, we begin to remember our life’s events as a narrative with large panels depicting the flow of time.

 

Certain ideas become the sole focus that we pursue at specific segments at moments in story of our life.  When were young it was usually mastering some art like running, swimming, gymnastics, creative projects...  School became our primary focus as we grew to understand that much of this learning would eventually develop into an amorphous idea called a “profession” which would yield virtually everything that we needed for the rest of our life.  

 

Responsibilities mounted.  Whether children, relations, dogs, home, car or possessions the amount of energy required to simply stay still is enormous.  We yearn to slow down for time to creep forward the way it used to when we were young.

 

And then one day we are beyond the exigencies of crafting a career, amassing wealth and possessions.  Adrift, what are our priorities as we settle into the winter of our lives?  Have we missed opportunities?    Can we reclaim what was lost?

 

Norman Vincent Peale remarked that when he was young the ticking of his grandfather’s clock was ponderous.  “It seemed to say, “There—is--plenty – of –time.   There—is--plenty – of –time.  There—is--plenty – of –time.   There—is--plenty – of –time.”  But modern clocks, having a shorter pendulum with a swifter stroke, seem to say, “Time to get busy!   Time to get busy!    Time to get busy!    Time to get busy! ” 

Maybe it's time to get a new internal clock, one that covets and savors each precious moment, as when we were young.

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.