Bikkur Holim

 It is a mitzvah to visit the sick.  What that means in legalistic terms is that we must do this command from Above: God ordained it.   The problem is frequency.  The Torah does not reveal its hand when it gives the mitzvah.  How often must we visit the sick?  Every day?  Every month?  One a year?  Do we go when called?  Or do we seek out the ill?

Also, who are the sick?  There are many varied kinds of illnesses.  Is mental illness included?  What about someone suffering from addiction…is this considered sick?  What about a woman in childbirth or a person going through a divorce – do these count as illness?  If so, we may want to include job loss and infirmity like old age and change of life.  There are days – you know the kind – when the car gets flat, the water heater breaks, we get a pink slip….

Who could forget the myriad issues that children bring?  Each day brings fresh problems to solve, some worse than others.   Parents provide their own obstacles to the ever-expanding heap of things that could be called sick.   

If all these life circumstances could be labeled as sick we are all frequent visitors to that realm.   We may be sick for months or several times a day.  

“It is taught: On visiting the sick there is no fixed amount.”   ~ Nedarim 29b

Perhaps the reason why the Sages do not set the amount of time we need to address the ill is because the need is ongoing and universal.  Make the call you have been putting off, send the letter that you have been thinking about, go spend time with someone who needs you.

On Prayer

 "God will support him on the bed of illness ..." Ps. 41:4

Rav Dimi taught, “All who visit the sick infuse them with life.  Ana all those who refrain from visiting the sick bring about death.”  Nedarim 40a

Does Rav Dimi’s teaching mean that prayers contain the power of healing to make people well?  When we offer our prayers on behalf of the ailing do they shoot straight up to God and cause the Hand of the Universe to move saving them from their affliction?  

Are prayers that powerful?  Do they also prop up the living to the extent that people die from lack of people praying for them?

Perhaps those who are so unfortunate to have no one pray for them are forgotten by God?  Or maybe if they are too ill to pray for themselves and no one will pray for them they will die a silent spiritual death?  The universe will not note their passing.

Rav Dimi may also mean that prayer galvanizes the dwindling spiritual energies of the sick.  With our added words and focused prayers they become stronger as their prayers ride on the backs of ours.  Could this be true?

It may be that our prayers reinforce their waning strength.  The real power of prayer would then be that it sends to the weak an invisible message of hope that enables them to surmount the obstacle of illness.  Prayer is almost a tactile weapon that directly impacts the person prayed for.

So which one is it?  One of the above?  All of them?  None?

 

I suggest it does not matter.  The only thing that counts is it changes both the one who prays and the one who is prayed for.  What else matters when prayers said for another are enough to change lives?

Stand for God

 An old proverb has it: position is everything in life. Muslim prostration reflects the belief of Islam that God is everything and humans are nothing. Christian kneeling reflects the belief of Christianity that humans need help in being reconciled with God, that God has to get down to our level in order to forgive human flaws. And Jewish standing during prayer reflects the assertion that even sinful, flawed humans possess a basic dignity that we don’t need to discard in order to become one with God. 

When the great early-20th century philosopher Hermann Cohen rediscovered his Jewish heritage, one of the things that most impressed him was this point: that Jews stand during Yom Kippur.  That God doesn’t want us to come to him without dignity, facing the earth.  Rather, God forgives us while we’re standing erect, with our faces looking ahead towards the future, and with our eyes directed towards heaven. 

 

I hope that during Neilah you will appreciate this truth. Confessing what we’ve done wrong and asking for forgiveness doesn’t mean throwing away our self-respect.  It means affirming our self-respect. That is why we stand, assuming the physical position that affirms our dignity as human beings. They used to tell how the old Modznitzer Rebbe would sing the confessional of the Al Het to a waltz tune. When people asked him why he used a happy melody rather than a sad one, he replied:  “If the king asked you to clean up his throne room, wouldn’t you be happy for the honor to do it?” 

 

What we can Achieve

 A rich and poor child attended school together. One day the wealthy one brought in a fine leather wallet. The other students gaped and were envious of the beautiful object. The other children began to their save money so they could buy one just like it. The poor one had no chance; it was hard enough to just get fresh pencils and a backpack. That child felt miserable…

The child went to the local storekeeper, put his meager change on the counter and said, “This is all the money I have. Can I please have that wallet?”

“So you do not have another penny?” asked the owner. “Tell me, if you have no more money, what good is the wallet to you? You have nothing to put in it.”
 
The storekeeper makes sense. As adults we would say the same. And yet, there would be a small inner voice that understands the cry of the child who yearns to be like everyone else, wants to have what they
have, and does not wish to stand out as different.  The child has grown up but still struggles over the same issues. We want and cannot always have what want.

 It has been said by many pundits and economists that the economic slump that we are in is largely due to living beyond our means. We wanted the lovely wallet, could not afford it, but got it anyway.  Everybody felt the same way, including the banks. We went out and bought what we should not have purchased.

 Looking around it is easy to fall prey to desiring what others have.  Just watching television is an exercise in restraint as commercial
after commercial tells us “If we order now….” We are barraged by billboards, ads on radio and on the Internet that imply satisfaction and contentedness if we -- along with the rest of the country -- buy what they are selling.
 

 Sociologist George Ritzer has called this phenomenon the “McDonaldization of America.” In this new world everyone gets the same car, same house, same TV, and the same everything. One city  looks like another and states lose their individuality until all America looks alike.
 
On an individual level, Talmud has a distinctly different idea. “Man strikes many coins from one die and they are all alike. The Holy One, blessed be He, however, strikes each person with the same die as Adam but not one is the same as the next.”* Not only does our faith tell us about the uniqueness of our formation but it declares we each play an indispensable role in the universe. In other words, we have special gifts that only we can give to the world. In the absence of that gift the world is incomplete.

 What this all means is that we are not supposed to look for ways to be like one another. Instead, we are called by God to seek out our own destiny. Certainly, others will play a role in that process but it is our journey towards becoming whole, not theirs.
 
 “According to the effort is the reward.”** Our task is to bring about the fullest self we can achieve. There is no one who can do this but  you: you are one of a kind since the inception of Creation.

 *Sanhedrin 38a
 **Avot 5:26

Hanukkah: A Primer

 Hanukka (also spelled Chanuka and other ways) comes on the twenty-fifth day of Kislev.  While the English date varies, the Hebrew date remains the same.  Eight days long, the holiday concludes on Tevet 2.

Hanukka means “dedication.”  The holiday is a celebration of the date when the Temple in Jerusalem was recovered, cleaned, and rededicated to God.  Hanukka is also called the Festival of Lights for that is the main observance of the holiday.  

In 165 BCE a heroic group of Jewish warriors called the Maccabbes triumphed after a long war against the Syrian-Greek king, Antiochus Epiphanes.  Despite the fact that Hanukka recalls a military victory over an enemy who wanted to eradicate the Jewish faith, Hanukka celebrate the lights, not the conquest.  

As related by the Talmud, the Maccabees recovered a single jar of oil that had remained intact throughout the years of the Helenizers still retaining the seal of the Kohen Gadol, high priest, from many years before. Expecting the oil to last for a day it burned for eight nights, enough time to manufacture oil to keep the Lamp of God burning uninterrupted.

Finding Light

 "A person is obligated to say, 'The world was created for me’."  This statement from the Talmud is our instruction on how we are supposed to look at the world.  On the face of it the sages are telling us to view everything through the lens of personal needs.  Doesn’t this advice seem a bit arrogant and egotistical? 

 

Actually, the sages are trying to convey the opposite.  If we view our surroundings, taking personal responsibility for all that is, we will be more appreciative and deliberate about how we treat it.  After all, who would throw dirt or empty containers on their carpet?  Who would treat their personal possessions with derision?  And we see this kind of indiscriminate behavior around us.  The Talmud is advising a different attitude.

 

We are not supposed to see the world through the lens of selfishness but responsibility.  The world was not created to absorb our abuse but garner our appreciation. Thus, we acknowledge that “the world was created for me’” as a reminder that everything that exists is a gift.  Just as we repair our car, paint the house, mow the lawn, so too we are supposed to treat every encounter as if it belongs to us.  Nobody will come along with a lawnmower and do it for us!  We take care of our possessions because we are responsible for them.  Likewise, we have a unique responsibility to the world.  It belongs to us.

Legend:  Two Angels were dispatched by God to gather sentiments and bring them back to heaven.  Descending to earth the first angel was instructed to gather complaints and criticisms while the second collected thanks and gratitude.
When the two Angels completed their assignment and returned to their Maker the first Angel carried a basket overflowing while the other was almost empty.  

 

Hanukkah is a time of celebration, the uplifting of light and illuminating dark days with rays of hope.  Who does not feel the lightness and joy touch their soul during these days of celebration? 

 

And yet. How do we merge with the joy of the season when there is so much evil in the world?  When we are overwhelmed with evil carried out by the nefarious enemies of Israel?  Does this sound like we are speaking of the Maccabean revolt against the virulent hatred of the Syrian--Greeks?  Or the wicked Hamas bent on abuse and murder?   

 

History does have its way of repeating itself because people give vent to their worst impulses.   What Hamas did to us has happened before.  That is why the brilliant minds of centuries ago taught that from life’s inception we are to cultivate gratitude for everything.  With an attitude of appreciation, we develop different insight: we see life as full of opportunity and meaning even when it is dark….or especially when darkness descends over the world.

 

Our task is to never release our grip on hope.  That is why we light candles on Hanukkah. That is why we refuse to canonize the wars of the Maccabees.  War is not glorious.  Instead, we tell tales of light; we speak of defeating evil even when the odds are against us; and we bless God even as we mourn.

 
A prayer: Let me be in Your eyes and in mine, Lord, a vehicle of goodness and generosity and not of despair.

Taking Responsibility

 Blame is easy.  All we have to do is shirk responsibility.  

The Torah speaks of the victim of a murder being found near a city.  In that instance where the killer cannot be found the Torah demands that the elders of the closets city gather at the place where the crime was committed and say, "Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done.”   ~ Deuteronomy 21:7.  In other words, even though they did not know the perpetrator or perhaps even the victim they are called to take responsibility for a crime that occurred in their vicinity.

While the natural human reaction to being blamed is to pass it on or make excuses for what happened, the Torah tells us to take responsibility.

A story is told of the famous Rabbi Hayim Brisker who had a Hasid as a teacher.  The Hasid trained Brisker from a young child in the ways of Torah.  One day the Hasid took the young lad to see his rabbi.  At that time, the young man took a fruit from his bag and began to nibble on it.  The elderly rebbe was surprised that the young man did not say a blessing first.  “You should have taught him how to say the proper blessing before he eats!” he scolded the Hasid.

The boy looked up and retorted, “You should have taught him to teach me!”  ~ told by Rabbi Louis Jacobs

 

Perhaps if we take greater responsibility for the  things that happen in our family and community we wil become more responsible.