What We Can Gain from the High Holy Days

“Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle… The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.”  

So said Albert Einstein he stared out into the vast universe in wonderment. The person who seeks religion, who yearns for God, is no different than the scientist who is on a quest to discern the underpinnings of the world.  Both the religious and scientist gaze outward toward the universe wide-eyed; they are openhearted feeling overwhelmed by its largesse and hoping to understand better how it works and what their place is in it.

Perhaps awe is the first step in apprehending what our purpose is in life. In fact, the, kabbalah echoes the sentiment when it says that the initial question every inquiring mind must ask as he cranes his neck up at the stars at night is ‘Who created these?’ Once a person can make such a declaration they become open to all possibilities no matter how sublime or pedestrian.

Another of the greatest minds of this past century, Abraham Joshua, Heschel, wrote passionately about how critical it is for every person to be full of wonder. He wrote, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

Why was Heschel so insistent on being child-like, full of wonder? ? Perhaps because wonder, aside from being the pathway to knowledge and the foundation of connecting with God, is also the cornerstone of love.

Wonder and love is looking and accepting. Wonder and love is astonishment and awed silence. Perhaps that is why so many people who have had a deeply, profoundly religious experience find themselves buffeted by quietude. Absolute peace.

To not accept the outside world as it is, to dismiss all things as mundane, is to ignore the cream of life.  And who would want to be absent from the greatest, most thrilling adventure that life has to offer?  The now.  The universe pulsates with abundant love.

In the aftermath of these High Holy Days (also known as the Days of Awe) my deepest hope is that you found a moment to be touched by God and feel the radical awe. I pray that you take many moments to look into the eyes of love and be amazed by what you see there.

Where Growth Begins

 Two Chelmite scholars were debating how people grow: Do they grow from the feet up of from the head down? 

The first said, “From the feet up, of course.  Last year, I bought my son a suit for his Bar Mitzvah, and at that time the pants were just the right length.  Now the pants only reach his ankles.   That proves that people grow from the feet down!”

“Fool,” snapped the second scholar.  “It’s obvious that people grow from the head down.  If you see a group of soldiers marching their feet are all at the same level.  But, if you look at their heads you will see that they are at different heights. That proves that people grow from their heads down.”

Both Chelmites were wrong.  We neither grow from the bottom up or the top down.  We grow from the inside out.

      In these waning moments of summer, I wish you growth.  Read Jewish books.  Come study with me.  Challenge yourself to climb new heights of spirituality.   Light your Shabbes candles.  Enjoy yourself, your loved ones and God.

Spaces

We read Torah in order to better understand what God wants from us as well as learn values and lessons from Jewish history.  In other words, Torah unfolds the past and future.  In understanding both, we apprehend our present.  Understanding where we stand today is critical but the key to that door is unlocked by foresight and hindsight.  Enter the world of Torah. 

Put differently, if we know the expectations of our ancestors as well as their actions, i.e. how they lived their lives, we better understand ourselves.

Glancing into the holy Torah we see seemingly endless rolls of white parchment.  The hide is scored so as to form a horizontal grid upon which black ink spells out a cryptic script revealing the past.  The letters stand out from the parchment in shimmering black.  We read the black letters on the white, indistinct background.

Yet there is another tradition which speaks of the same text, although very different.  The letters are identical, the spaces between them measured.  The reader, however, sees the page as white set down over a black background.  They reverse what we normally see.  For them, there once was a sea of black.  Imposed over this great darkness was a massive field of white allowing some black shapes to take form through it.  Not black on white.  White on black.

It is said that when one perceives the interstices (the spaces between the letters) with meaning they are on the verge of understanding All. 

While I am still wrestling with the meaning of what I have written, I know that life is comprised almost wholly of the spaces, not the “planned important events”.  The stuff of life happens when we are not looking.  It is the soft prayer we utter before we eat.  It is not the vacation, but the long ride getting there.  It is not the birthday present but the card.  Not the wedding, but picking out the tuxedo and going through the pictures afterward.  

“Man proposes and God disposes.”   So goes the Yiddish expression.  Actually the Yiddish really goes like this: “Man plans and God laughs.”  The spaces.

Commercialism would have us believe that we create magic moments.  “Buy this,” they tell us, “and you’ll be happy.”  I can say after having conducted a personal test; it is a lie.

Torah wants us to understand that life is punctuated with spaces.  Or was that spaces are punctuated by life?  In any event, join us for our synagogue spaces.  Daven at shul.  Or just sit there and let it happen.  Sing at the top of your lungs.  Or shut your eyes.  Do a mitzvah in the coming year you have never attempted before.  Eat kosher.  Put on tefillin.  Build a sukkah.  Serve at Lunchbox.  Then, as you are doing it, sit back and let the real magic happen.  It’s in the spaces.

Unetaneh Tokef

One of the great photographs that imprinted itself on my mind is the one of a smiling Harry Truman holding up a newspaper declaring that Dewey (not Truman) was the new president.  I understand the dilemma of the newspaper.  They have a deadline and they need to print news while it is still news!  So, they hedge their bets, make their best guess, and now and again they get it wrong.  Like with Truman.

I think of this as we approach the Days of Awe.  I particularly am drawn toUnetaneh tokef, which tell us that our personal sinfulness does not have to be meted out as punishment. “How many shall leave this world, and how many shall be born; who shall live and who shall die, who in the fullness of years and who before, who by fire and who by water… but teshuva, tefila, and tzedaka can avert the harsh decree.“  These are powerful, resonant words that stir the soul. 

Yet, it is a bit like declaring before the ball game or all the ballots are in, who is the winner.  How do we know that teshuva, tefilla and tzedaka will avert the harsh decree?  Maybe our cousin will get cancer.   Good people may starve or otherwise be made to suffer.  Anti-Semitism seems to grow stronger every year!  Isn’t the Unetaneh tokef, a bit presumptive?

Look closer.  The concluding words state, “But teshuva (repentance), tefilla (prayer), and tzedaka can avert the severity of the decree.”  This is the most hopeful statement of faith one could ever find.

There are no sureties in life.  None of us is guaranteed anything- not health, money, care, or even life.  And still the Unetaneh tokef asserts that we still have a choice in what happens to us, or at least how we choose to live through the ordeals of life.  We CAN choose to lead a life of introspection; one where we regret the bad choices we made and vow to do better next time; where we pray to God for illumination, blessing and wisdom to lead a decent life; where we choose to love nobly by enhancing the lives of others.  This is the real meaning of that prayer- “teshuva, tefilla and tzedaka CAN” make a difference.

It rains on picnics.  That is reality.  But the rain does not have to decide how we choose to live.  Nothing dictates our attitude or the choices we make unless we willfully abdicate that responsibility. 

May God’s blessing be upon you in the coming year.  And may you bow your head in humble and joyful acceptance of this gift.

Do Not Let Your Kids Read This

Do not let your kids read this article.  In this sentence I am going to mention a VERY dirty word, carbohydrates.  The diet de jour is abstaining from carbohyrates. Atkins must have died a very rich - if thin- man.  So many people throughout America are now skinny, thanks to him.

In every generation a new diet arises that the previous generation knew not.  Personally, I would like to make my own (copyrighted) suggestion for America.  I recommend fasting.

Actually, I read in the news that people are already catching on to the idea that fasting can reduce weight.  As the New York Times reported recently, "While millions of high-fat, low-carb devotees are gorging themselves on steak and butter, a small group of the body-conscious have opted to eat nothing at all."   No doubt in paying many dollars for instructions on “how to fast”, some gurus will get fat, thick wallets.

I fast for about 25 hours each year.  So do you.  I guess that puts us on the cutting edge of the latest fad.

I also fasted for other people; those throughout the world for whom hunger and thirst are features of everyday life.  Isaiah instructs that the fast is valueless without alleviating the horror of everyday hunger.

True, there was a moment or two during services on the morning of Yom Kippur when I prayed for a large cafe latte... Even a cup of joe from the 7-11 would have been welcome.

But then I pushed the idea from my mind as we stood once more for the al cheyt. Spiritual hunger is a stronger force than stomach rumbling.  The great vacuum of the soul is far more compelling than any physical discomfort.  As my teacher, a survivor of Auschwitz, was told by his father “We can survive food and water deprivation but not loss of hope.”  In the absence of all material need, we find wholeness.

Once a year, we forgo the worry about the next meal and join in a communal act of contrition.

“We don't do this to lose weight, or "detox" the body of all sort of imagined, invisible intrusions. We don't pay thousands of dollars to expensive spas to eat virtually nothing at all, or to nutritional consultants who promise to coach their clients in the "art" of prolonged self-denial. We're not living on nut butter and apple-chard juice and pretending to be healthy,” as one commentator put it.

Health, for Jews, transcends the physical realm.  What good is a healthy body inside a mind of skewed values?  Mind you, I am not advocating obesity or callousness about one’s health but the body houses the pinnacle of every human being, not vice versa.  In other words, we are soulful beings, not lusting animals.

An anomaly: Only the rich can afford to indulge in this kind of purging the body.  While thousands will hungry tonight and many die of starvation, thousands of others will pay for the privilege of fasting.

What humanity needs continual reminding of is to feed and nourish the soul.  Too often it is left out to shiver in the cold.  Life is meaningful....  As we say on Pesah, “Let all who are hungry, come and eat...”.  This time, the food is of a different sort.

And best of all, there are no dishes.

Hope

Hope emerges for that which is left undone.  We do not, after all, hope for things which we possess.  It is a rare individual who even  can express thanks for the things we have.  For example, how many people do you you suppose wake  in the morning saying, “Thank You, God for not giving me cancer today?”  Most of us travel unexpressionless throughout life.  Except for uttering words of hope when we are needy.

We are the people of hope for at least two reasons,  We are hopeful because of all the abuse we have suffered throughout the millenia.  That suffering has made us look heavenward to gain succor in an often cruel world.  We are also hopeful because we are bidden to yearn and work for a better earth, a more whole world.  So much of our liturgy is consumed with improving life for others.  Also, think of the great emphasis Judaism places on tzedaka.

King Solomon began  and completed building the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.  Privy to God’s  confidence, Solomon understood that the future world  would bring destruction to Jerusalem, so he ordered his craftsmen to carve out a double cave beneath the city.  The double cave would house both the Ark and the original Tablets of God. 

On the day of the siege four hundred and ten years later, the Babylonians converged on Jerusalem.  The Jewish King Josiah  ordered the Ark and Tablets placed into the cave before sealing it.  There they remain today.

According to  the Masora ancient tradition, these sacred objects will be revealed when the Lord reveals the Ultimate Peace.

In the meanwhile, they remain hidden because of the fear that the Ark and the Tablets inscribed on Mt.  Sinai would be misused.  Only when humanity is ready to receive them again will the hidden location be divulged.

Hope keeps the dream alive.  It makes us believe in ideas as attainable possibilities.  Hope also demands work.  After all, if we hope, we must work for our goals.  That is the mystery and grandeur of life.