Jewish History

Professor Simon Rawidowitz scanned the pages of Jews history and noted that there was no generation that did not fret over the demise of Judaism.  Every time, each era, deals with its own issues and then wrings its hands over what might be lost.

In the years following the Hurban, the destruction of the First Temple, circa 70 c.e., the leading rabbis agonized over the death of the Judaism that they knew.  The last Mishna in the tractate of Sotah (Talmud) records the demise of the best, most erudite students; the expounders of Torah that would witness the termination of the glory of Israel.  Even Maimonides in the Middle Ages bemoaned that the Torah was no longer being studied and practiced in the distant Ashkenazic lands.

On the one hand, they were wrong.  Judaism did not wither and die; it survived each time its demise was predicted.  Even genocide did not halt our progress or deter us from our mission. 

On the other hand, each generation was the last.  Traditions changed.  Customs were added of deleted.  Ideas were lost in the long marches of exile.  In a sense, with each catastrophe came a recreation of our existence.  It was a rebirth.

The recent past decades of American Jewish life has seen an atrophy of Jewish connection through it observances.  Our families and leaders have watched the decline of synagogue affiliation and practice.  All the while, the rabbinate and laity continue to counterbalance this phenomenon by creating new programs.  Novel ideas and approaches continue to crop up all over America.  It is exciting to witness these new idea touching millions of lives.

Here is what you can do: this summer do something Jewish.  Send you child or grandchild to a Jewish camp like Ramah.  Give them an experience to cherish and treasure always.  Honestly, they get their fill of secularism during the year.  Give them the gift, which will continue to pay dividends for decades.  If they are older, a trip to Israel can spiritually nourish them more than all else.  When you are done with them take a spiritual holiday yourself.  There are Jewish getaways for grown-ups including to Israel.

Staying around?  God does not go on holiday.  The Shul is always open.

Grow.  Become what you are.

 

Truth

There is a Yiddish expression, der emes iz der bester lign, Truth is the safest lie."

Listen to these two ideas:

1) Everyone must be willing to entertain change for the sake of growth.

2) All must be consistent with their inner self; to do what make sense to the soul and not heed the outside voices.  "But," you interject, "aren't they conflicting statements?"  Yes, they are.  And still they are both true.

There are two kinds of truth - the immutable and the ephemeral.  Ephemeral truth is based on the needs of the moment.  It is the kind of statement found in the "Dear Abby" columns. It seems right.  Abby uses common sense based on circumstance and time.

For example.  There is the old Jewish line about the kid who murders both parents.  The boy then throws himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he is an orphan.  He speaks a truth.

For example.  It is a modern truism that character is developed largely through the media of sorts and the arts.  Growth patterns then follow after what they see and learn at music, art, little league and the rest.  And the best time to hone these skills is during the weekend.  It is also a truism that music, painting and sports collide with Shabbat and Holy Days as they vie for the same time slot.  So how can we reconcile that conflict?

All this reminds of the rabbi's dilemma.  Two entrepreneurs vehemently insisted to their spiritual leader they they were correct in their business venture and the other was at fault.  One at a time the present their arguments.  After the first states his case,  the rabbi turns to the first litigant and says, "You are right."  The other then states his case and the rabbi grudgingly said, "And you are right."  The rebbetzin, listening by the door, burst into the room and said, "How can they both be right?"  The rabbi responded, "You too are right." 

Ephemeral truth is like that.  Contradicting statements can be simultaneously ne true.  A dog can be both smart and dumb at the same time.

Immutable truth differs from ephemeral truth in one dramatic way: it never changes and cannot be contradicted by time or circumstance.  Whereas children “need” to learn how to play trombone, it is not essential for them or an adult to know how to play.  Similarly, it is important to call friends often so that they know we care, but it is not essential that we do so.

Immutable truth is grounded in being.  The Aseret haDibbrot (Ten Commandments) is one example or Immutable Truth.  There are no extenuating circumstances for shaming parents or for committing adultery. Everyone understands the inherent evil in these acts. Likewise, even though we have lacunae or doubts there is God, always.  Job, the improbable theologian, does not doubt God’s existence or His goodness. Job simply says, “God knows.”  There is a helmsman at the wheel. This is what we need to know, accept and understand.

There are three major Jewish festivals during the year, Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot.  Sukkot is our time of uncertainty.  It gives rise to all the ephemeral truths of our lives birth, death, wealth, change, despair and hope.

It is hard to think much between reading labels and mopping the floor. Still, the overriding message of Pesach is freedom, which is more of a call than a truth. Pesach is the holiday that calls to our soul, “wake up.”

Shavuot, however, is the holy day of Immutable Truth. It beckons and we understand the depths of its eternal truth.  But Immutable Truth, unlike the truths of the moment, is difficult to accept. It leaves no room for negotiation. It just is.

This is, by the way, why I believe Shavuot Is always “forgotten holiday.” Strangely, Shavuot is the most power-laden holiday on the Jewish calendar. God speaks on Shavuot. His voice echoes from Sinai and Truth is heard. There’s no getting around the Law or Voice. It spans the epochs and is unchanging.

Broyges

Broyges

Broyges can be a throttling, unsettling kind of silence in an atmosphere so thick it seems impenetrable.  Broyges can also be an argument that blows up and out of control throwing those nearby into a nightmarish frenzy.

Broyges begins with pettiness.

One of my favorite anecdotes is the first time I was called to be a counselor for a floundering marriage. From the time they both awoke in the morning until sleep carried them away in the blackness of night, husband and wife would pick at each other to pieces. Explaining the torment across my office desktop, I asked them to give me an example of how their fights began.

After a pause she blurted out, “He never closes the toothpaste cap!”

I had to keep myself from falling off the chair from laughter. How ridiculous!  And yet how tiny pain grows into mammoth malignancies.

I am familiar with two distinct types of broyges.  One is when is when it concerns family, the other friends.

With family there is no escape. We scream, we yell. We level invectives and charge at our family members with epithets. Some of us become rabbis giving long pious monologues on truth and morality. Others silently sulk through the house with a deep, dark cloud hovering about them.

Who will swallow their pride first? Who will give in and break the impasse?

The one who broods  -- the so-called stronger one -- or the other whose body is laced with fierce indignation while mutely except in the anguish of their spouse or parent?

Either the family will dissolve or someone will attempt reconciliation.  The one who opens the door a crack and allowing for healing at the risk of sacrificing their own pride is the stronger and the bigger of the two.

With friends, estrangement is much more common and difficult. We do not have to see the drooping corners of their mouths at breakfast time.  We do not have to share the same toilet or attend the same parties. “These,” we say, “are not worth the pain or risk to the ego in order to remedy.” So friendships come and they disappear.

Some of is treat family like friends—we alienate and chase them away to the West Coast or to another continent.  Some of us confuse friends with family and fight with them as we would our own blood and then with a full heart make up with them later. Most of us, however, fall in the middle.

And these dark months of winter we have an opportunity to reflect upon our lives and the people around us. Staying indoors against the harsh winds of winter and yet bolstered by the soothing glow a warm home, we have a chance to renew and read discover love. He is a moment to invite a friend over to share the joy of the Hanukkah lights with us.

This is an opportunity to renew the vibrancy of a life that has known too much broyges.

Got to Feel It

You can mask your feelings through words. You can obfuscate the truth through clenched teeth. It is possible to blur of the distinction between that which lies at the center of our self and that which our mind dictates to our mouth. In other words, we lie.

Not necessarily malevolent lives. Not the kind of which thrust themselves like poison darts toward the hearts of the people we hate.  Most lives are more pedestrian; they are more like self-deception.

Purim for example is not fully understood.  Purim is not one of those holidays that bears up to close analysis. We can find a myriad of reasons for the lack of historicity of the event, the non-clarity of major players in the almost goofy nature of the tale. Purim must be felt.

A group of students approached a great poet to discover the secret of his art. Visiting him at his home, they asked to see the place where inspiration came to him. The poet pointed to a small splash of green fence stop in buying unsightly wall in his backyard. The students blinked unbelievingly at the sight. They asked, “This is where those great poems came from, while you were sitting facing your ugly lawn?”

“You are looking in the wrong direction,” the teacher responded. “Do not look around you-look up. Then you will see what I see.  Look,” he said pointing to the sky, “see how high it is!”

I think most of life is like the artist’s depiction - it is to be felt. 

The founder of the Conservative movement, Solomon Schechter, said more than 100 years ago, "Pleasures are the manifestations of God's love."  Absorb the joy. Feel the wonder of another season of hope and life.

The Mikveh

A mikveh is a pool of water.  In fact, the word mikveh literally means pool, or collection (of water).  The very first time it is used is in the opening passage of the Torah, Genesis 1: 9-10, where God commands the waters be gathered together (mikveh) to reveal land.

The primary stipulation that separates a mikveh from say a swimming pool is that a mikveh must be composed of “living waters.”    The “living waters” have to flow from some naturally occurring source of water:  It cannot be static. 

Water purifies.  It is the source of our being.  After all, our body mostly made of the stuff.  We instinctively recognize that the intrinsic qualities of water as where we all came from.  For all those months of gestation we were rocked in fluid, protected in a soft cocoon of water inside our mother.  Just hearing the sound of water calms infants and loosens up the mental calluses from adults.  That is why so many of us head for the beach during vacation.  We are soothed and buffeted by the return to the primordial waters.

Judaism recognizes the need for a return to the place of our beginning as well as renewing the ground of our being.  One beautiful midrash tells of Adam’s deep pangs of loss after the exile from Eden.  He wept.  What did Adam do to ease his angst?  He went to one of the rivers that shot from the center of the Garden and immersed himself in the waters as an act of teshuvah, repentance.  And later, in Temple times, the kohanim, priests, used to dip themselves into the waters of the mikveh before their religious rites.  The waters helped to transform the mundane into the holy.

Travel through Israel and Europe and visitors will be astonished to find mikvehs appended to or close by all the ancient synagogues.  It was the practice of our ancestors to immerse in its cleansing waters before approaching the Holy One in prayer.  Each morning they would arise, place themselves into the cool waters and pray for a clean and whole heart before approaching their Maker.

Eating is a holy endeavor.  So many folks bring their new pots and pans to the mikveh to immerse them in the unique “living waters” to make them suitable for blessing and consuming the foods prepared on them. 

Those who convert to Judaism are required to immerse themselves into a mikveh.  The act of submersion in the waters becomes a moment of transformation; of leaving the old self behind and taking on a new identity. 

Blood is a powerful force in our faith too.  After their period, many women attend the mikveh as a demarcation line between death (blood, represented by the body’s flushing of a potential birth) and life.   In this sense, the mikveh represents the difference between the grave and the womb.  The laws governing this immersion are called “Family Purity” or Taharat haMishpacha.   In a similar way, people who have experienced bodily trauma also visit the mikveh as an act of renewal.

None of this is sensible in ways that can be logically explained or that are scientifically meaningful.  The mikveh is not about cleanliness or staving off infection or germs.  The mikveh is about comforting the soul.  It is about having personal time with God.  It is about acknowledging that we have a part of us that yearns to be set free from the mind-set that cements us to our real or imagined past.   We are soulful beings that need to be whole.