The Mendy Logs 2008
Mendy is my Chabad rabbi, and for the few years that I've had the pleasure of being in his congregation, I have initiated a one way dialogue through weekly letters to him about what I have learned from his Shabbat comments and my reactions to what he has said. In this way I let him know that someone in his congregation is really listening to him and taking what he has to say seriously. For me, each letter is a "thank you" note for his wisdom and education.
June 14, 2008
Parsha Beha’alotkha
There are only three holidays in the Torah that mandate that sacrifices be brought to the Temple: Passover, Succoth, and Shavuot. Both Passover and Succoth have their own symbols and blessings associated with each, namely, for Passover, the telling of the story, the sacrifice, and the bitter herb, while Succothhas associated with it the waving of the lulov, and the succah itself. Only Shavuot, possibly the most important holiday on the calendar (if not for the giving of the Law which the holiday commemorates there would be no religion or culture to begin with) there are no symbols or specific mitzvot (actions/blessings) to be used or taken. Of course, the Rabbis questioned this and came up with a remarkable answer. On all other holidays on the Jewish calendar, we do things to honor G od or we do something to satisfy a need in ourselves. I’m not exactly clear about the latter because I can’t take notes. Also, Mendy speaks very fast, and very passionately. So while he is on to some other point, or off into an extended and related tangent, I am trying to absorb and internalize the teaching just made. Therefore, I do not recall the connection and rationalization between what precedes this teaching with what came after it. It may have something to do with not being deterred from the focus of the holiday by the usual symbols and commandments that are part of other holidays that possibly refocus us from the concept underlying the holiday. But what follows is the core of the holiday and very important. The core concept of Shavuot is this: Shavuot is to honor the moment, to appreciate fully the life you have been given, to really see the people around you, and really hear what they are saying to you. It is a moment to be involved with other people spiritually; not only with G od.
I recently saw, “Our Town,” by Thornton Wilder, and realized today that this core concept enshrined in Shavuot is exactly the same concept presented in the third act of this Pulitzer Prize winning play. Emily, the heroine, dies in childbirth and finds herself among the dead up on the hill. In a conversation with them, she discovers that she can return to observe a day in life, but they warn her against the pain and longing she will feel by doing by returning. But she insists and goes back to what she insists is an unimportant day. She is both the girl she was and the spirit of woman who has just died. Initially she is delighted with seeing the things as they were before she became an adult, but then she discovers the helpless and the sadness of life’s reality, and how we do not appreciate each other or even see one another as we move through our lives.
From Act III of the play:
EMILY(in a loud voice to the STAGE MANAGER.) I can’t. I can’t go on. Oh! Oh! It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. (She breaks down sobbing.) I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back-up the hill– to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, good-by, world. Good-by Grover’s Corners...Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking...and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. (She looks toward the STAGE MANAGER and asks abruptly, through her tears) Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?– every, every minute? He tells her that they do not. Perhaps saints and poets, but not regular people.
Later, after returning to her grave, another man, SIMON STIMSON, says, “That’s what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those ...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you ha a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.” For me, one of the wonderful thing about Judaism as a religion is that insists you can’t be ungrateful because of the system of blessings that have been set up to guarantee appreciation. Every moment asks us to recognize our here and now and the blessing that goes with that moment. The berchot system is designed to enhance your life by making you aware that you have a
life. And if you buy into it and you live a truly Jewish life, you cannot help but be grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy people, and cannot see or hear what is truly going on in the moment.
June 21, 2008
Parsha Shelah Lekha
Mendy’s teachings this past Shabbat, dealt with the conflict between the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel, both Rabbis of the first century, I think. Both are featured in the Ethics of the Fathers. Mendy started off by asking what happened when a pagan came to Shammai and asked him to explain the Torah standing on one foot. Shammai threw him out of the synagogue. Hillel was asked the same question and responded, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary. Now go and learn.” Two very different responses. (Note: For me, Hillel’s response is right on target, because it teaches that everything in the Torah is geared to decent behavior when it comes to our fellow creatures.)
The story created the mind set for another conflict between the two schools. Shammai said that we are not to think of ourselves as great because we are devout and study because we were created for that purpose. You don’t congratulate someone for not abusing his wife. You are not supposed to abuse your wife. Hillel teaches that if you fail, you are not to be too hard on yourself. One said that you are not to praise yourself for what you have accomplish in your studies, and the other tells you not to be so hard on yourself if you fail [I can only assume with are talking her about study, too]. Again, I cannot fully recall the details and I’m leaving out a great deal because it just goes by so fast, but I came away with the impression that ego and self-engrandizement must not be at the root of a person’s behavior, and self-deprecation and self-pity are also not acceptable. Is there a middle of the road here?
(Note: For me, if you can act well 85% of the time, you’re doing better than most, and this maybe the most honest assessment. Any extreme view regarding behavior, especially religious behavior, will often lead to indecent treatment of people who do not believe what you believe. Ultimately, it could lead to evil in the name of G od.)
If you are a person who is pious so people will look at you and say, “there goes the most pious man in the community,” Shammai says you are missing the point. It would seem from the lesson, that there is a level of honesty and humility one must attain in his relationship with G od and with his community in order to be a truly religious person. Praising yourself for what is expected of you, doesn’t do it.. For me, a G od centered life is reflected in one’s behavior towards others, and not in observance. Nice if you can get both. I’d prefer to be among decent people who will behave well even though they are not observant, than among the most observant people who will behave towards me despicably because I do not follow the law the way they follow the law. Self deprecation, because you have not fallen in line with “the Chumrah of the Week,” (a new rigidity that some feel prove that their piety is greater than your piety) also is not acceptable because the negative feelings engendered might ossify you into non-action and a feeling of inadequacy.
Along these lines there was something said (and I wish I could remember the connection,) that brought me back to something the Rebbe said that has stayed with me and has given me great comfort. He taught, “think of Judaism as a ladder with 613 rungs on it. Do not consider yourself a good or bad Jew based on where you are standing on the ladder, but whether you are ascending or descending.” (Note: I like to think that the Rebbe would have been part of the House of Hillel.)
Mendy skillfully connected the Torah portion this week with the Ethics of the Fathers. by asking a series of questions, none of which I remember. (Note: I love when a Rabbi will teach from the reading platform, but back in junior high school I learned that most teachers, including Rabbis play a game entitled, “Guess What Is In The Teacher’s/Rabbis’ Head.” As a teacher myself, I don’t play that game because it frustrates my students and generates annoyance in them when they are told that they are wrong.) So the story was related about the spies sent to scout out the land. But these spies, the foremost head of the tribes, saw themselves as being so important that they believed that their opinion and their will had to be expressed. It was the ego in each that moved each man to speak. They are referred to as evil, and they forfeited their lives for their actions.
(Note: But that merely confirms for me that the concept of the Yetzer Hara does not mean the evil part of us but the part of us that is our ego and where we feel our sense of our importance. And I for one believe that the ego is absolutely necessary if there to be any forward movement for humanity. Creative people, inventors, artists all say, “Hey, world, I’m here!” I believe this because somewhere in the Talmud it is written that “without the Yetzer Hara a man would never have a child or build a house.”
There is nothing evil in either of those things, but ego is involved in both. A man’s ego demands that he send his genetic material into the next generations so he can live on. It is this psychological imperative which may be very egotistical but certainly not evil. A man builds a house and fills it with stuff as a reflection of who he is and what he has accomplished. It is for his comfort and for others to admire. That is egotistical, not evil. But if a religious Jew believes that the great wealth he has amassed or his status because of his lineage makes him in some way smarter than another or that he should receive more honor because he is a greater contributor, then his ego is running his life and he is missing the point of what his religion should have taught him. Here, Shammai would “get in his face.”
In the middle of this story is a digression where G od tells Moses that in 40 years when the Children of Israel inherit the land, the challah or bread offering to the Kohanim (Priests) must be made. It must also be from the first bread made, not left overs. The teaching is that the people must not think of only of themselves first. They have responsibilities to think of others. This strange inclusion was to remind the people that the spies thought of themselves and not of the ramifications of what their opinions were, nor of the exhortations of Joshua, Caleb, or Moses. There was more, but I’m drawing a blank. I’m glad I was able to remember this much.
June 28, 2008
Parsha Korah
Mendy again began with a teaching from The Ethics of the Fathers which said that a person should pray for the welfare of the government, because without it, “we would devour one another.” The immediate response was that the quote referred to physical safety. Were there is no government, there is anarchy, chaos, etc and no one is safe. That’s the obvious. But Mendy, pointed to a deeper meaning. If I am not mistaken in recalling, I believed he equated the “government” with any powerful individual who takes or is given sway over the lives of others. He asked us to consider what happens when such a person’s ego is so enormous, that he demands the total compliance and subjugation of another who has fallen into his or her power. He asked us to consider what happens to that individual when he is so overwhelmed by another person or governing body so completely, that the individual gives up his own sense of self and becomes diminished in his own estimation that he or she loses the sense of self and becomes totally subordinate to the person in power. Again, as in other drushes, the core concept to be learned is that the ego, if not tamed and brought within the limits of kindness and reason, has the potential for overwhelming and destroying other people.
The Torah portion, as I make the connection, also deals with individuals with poor self images, people whose images were based on years of slavery. Such people are vulnerable and easily brought under the sway of powerful men such as the spies. The people had lived in servitude in Egypt for hundreds of years and had been “swallowed up,” by the power of Egypt, and now, again, they were being “swallowed up” by the power they ascribed to the spies. They would take direction from anyone who promised them immediate delivery on survival. Sadly, they had very short memories, and immediate gratification seemed to be the only way they could stay the fear they felt. These frightened people gave support to powerful men who delivered a bad report. I am sympathetic to them, but they should have been steadfast considering what they had seen for themselves.
Korah, a man of monumental ego, took the opportunity to impose his will on a people devastated from the news that they would have to wander in the desert for forty years. They were in pain, vulnerable, and they were “swallowed up” by Korah. Ironically, Korah is actually swallowed up by the earth, a fitting and just end and one that set the balances right. This idea of being “swallowed up” by people and governments more powerful than ourselves has been happening to us from antiquity. Just citing one example, I give you the “Decree of Omar, ” the seventh century Muslim edict that proclaimed the concept of the “dhimmi.” The dhimmi is either a Christian or a Jew who has not converted to Islam. Because they were considered “People of the Book,” they may or may not have been killed as the pagans were. If left alive, they were permitted to live among Muslims, but were seriously restricted. All their houses of worship had to be hidden, no symbol or book could be sold publicly, a badge of identification had to be worn at all times, no Jew or Christian’s head could be above the head of a Muslim, and a heavy tax was also imposed. To exist in Muslim countries, non-Muslims had to be subservient; be “swallowed up.” And need I say anything about the laws promulgated by the early Church, the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc., etc., etc., that supported murdering us, diminishing us, swallowing us, and keeping us subservient.
Once again, I am forced to question G od’s omniscience based on the Korah story. G od always seems to be angry at the responses to His miracles. And well he should be! I for one would have believed way back in Egypt had I been there. So I can certainly understand His annoyance and frustration with these descendants of Abraham and Sarah for not seeing let alone appreciating what was being done for them. But why doesn’t G od know that this is what their response will be? Moses keeps begging, prodding, cajoling, and using the “what will people say” argument to get G od to relent. This reinforces the idea that you can argue with G od and G od will sometimes mellow his wrath. Still, while he continues to repent His choice of people, He continues assuage Himself with the occasional plague or fiery serpents to dissuade future disbelievers. But it doesn’t seem to work. Why doesn’t He know that this won’t work either? I suspect G od doesn’t know because that is the nature of His gift of free will. If free will is one of the inviolate laws of nature such as gravity, and that the nature of free will is such that it cannot be predetermined, then it stands to reason that even G od does not know what is going to happen despite what we are taught. G od is bound by his own laws as are we. That may challenge the idea that G od is omniscient, but it does explain why G od is reactive and often annoyed. It may also explain why G od responds after the fact than before it in the Torah.. It would seem to me that one of the common themes that moves throughout The Ethics of the Fathers and the Torah, deals with the egos of strong men getting in the way of how they are expected to treat other people.
July 5, 2008
Parsha Hukkat
Mendy explored the three types of Mizvot: the obvious ones that need no explanation, those that need an explanation and are immediately understood once the explanation is given, and those that cannot be logically explained but are acted on because one’s faith is strong enough to accept the commandment with out a rationale. The answer that is given and accepted is that when the Messiah comes, the reason will be revealed and we are to just do it. That’s real faith. The commandment concerning the red heifer falls into the latter category. The red heifer is a very interesting story because it creates a paradox that I think demands to be understood, but Mendy did not ask anyone to explain the paradox. I thought this unusual because he always asks the congregation for input, but I think he demurred this time because the Rabbis themselves are still be in a quandary over this and assign this mystery to the pile of other mysterious commandments that will also be explained after the Messiah arrives.
So here is my take on the story: The ashes of the heifer, when used properly, makes one clean or pure, yet the person who administers the ashes becomes unclean by touching them. This is indeed one of those mitzvots that require pure faith to perform because how can the thing that makes for purity also make one impure?. I look for meaning in what ideas might lie beyond the mitzvot itself. If the ashes are the vehicle that makes you pure again, what can be learned from the fact that it is also the thing that makes the pure person touching it, impure? For me, the concept to be learned underlying the rite is that the solution to any problem may also contain the seeds for another problem and one must be very careful to see the effects of one solution on other elements in play. For example, during the Vietnam War, Agent Orange was introduced to defoliate the trees to reveal where the Viet Cong were. This worked, but Agent Orange also turned out to be a carcinogen that caused the deaths of both Americans and Vietnamese. Thus, a solution to one problem causes a different problem. The Red Heifer Quandary. Another example would be the use of a pesticide to get rid of bugs destroying crops of vegetables. The pesticide works, but the pesticide effects the birds who also eat the crop because the pesticide causes the shells of their eggs become so thin, the chicks die. That’s why DDT is no longer used. It almost wiped out the bald eagle. Again, something to be learned from the red heifer story.
I think this is a valid piece of learning from the Torah, but it would not be accepted as valid by the Rabbunum because I didn’t die eighteen hundred years ago. The Reform Movement gives me permission to think and be creative. Chabad Lubovitich allows me to be spiritual and to wonder at the mysteries of the universe.
July 12, 2008
Parsha Balak
Continuing with the Ethics of the Fathers, Mendy began with a passage that spoke to giving and the different types of people who give. The last type was the person who not only doesn’t give himself, but doesn’t want others to give either. I am not clear on why this person was even included since giving was not part of his life.
I know such resentful and angry people and why they are stingy with their time or their money is a wonder to me, but some have been treated badly in a congregational setting and that is their rationale. They allow the individual experience to encompass the total experience. Of course the attitude of “What have you done for me lately” is no way to keep congregants happy and helpful. I can see these people being angry with synagogue politics and the “chuckum” who abound, but what is also a wonder to me is why they are so angry with Judaism, and cease participating in Jewish causes, or supporting Jewish institutions. The latter are all separate from synagogue politics and should not be a rationale for their parsimonious stance.
The fact that I have received several affronts over the years at the hands of my fellow congregants has not caused me to close my check book, but has caused me not to want to work with adult Jews. I’ve put my energies into working with Jewish kids who rarely disappoint, and those who do, eventually grow up and learn. But Jewish adults who feel they have more to say because they are rich or because they have some power as head of a committee, often take the opportunity to lord it over others because they honestly think their ideas are better because of their money or position. So much for committee work.
Over the years I have been disappointed by board decisions, personally insulted and my efforts discounted by congregants, lied to by a Rabbi, threatened by a president of a congregation, and worst of all, betrayed by a rabbi to whom I was devoted. But none of these people got between me and my Judaism. G od's and Torah's expectations of how people should treat one another l have little to do with organized religious organizations and the people who people them. I merely changed my focus, volunteer for nothing, and help if I am asked to help out. I’m happy to do it, but don’t invite me to be on a long term committee where I will have to deal with Jewish adult egos and be disappointed in how Jews treat one another.
Again, I’m not recalling the transition, but Mendy made a point that for me was the most important awareness of the learning. Mendy told us that the Rebbe looked at all Jews as members of a great family, and accepted each where he or she stood in their Judaism. The Rebbe's quote bears repeating here: “Consider Judaism as a ladder with 613 rungs. Do not consider yourself a good or bad Jew depending on where you are standing on the ladder, but whether you are ascendening or descending.” In effect, this quote and this man gave me permission to accept where I was, see the level as ok, and invited me to continue the climb at my own pace. The Rebbe, in making this statement was saying that we should not loose sight of the forest because of all the trees.
If I recall, this idea of looking at all the people as a whole was one of the teachings to come out of the story of Balaam in this week’s Torah portion. Balaam kept moving from place to place until he could see the entire congregation of Israel spread out before him. They were one. We are all one. Yes, there are stragglers, and nogoodnicks. Yes, there are the petty and the cruel. But which group in the world can boast of their group as totally righteous? But as a whole, we are a people of great worth and worthy of blessing. I have always looked at my fellow Israelites with pride and silent affection just because we are part of the same people with the same G od, and share common values. Yet despite of how I view them, some of my fellow Jews look at me as a “goy.” Sadly, I have encountered Orthodox Jews who do not see me as worthy because I am not like them. Such people give the lie to the concept of Kal Yisroel and do more to hurt our people with their condemnation than help our people with all their piety and rituals.
For me, there is no one correct division of Judaism. All were created by sincere people who were creating vehicles that would move them closer to G od. The more Jews in this world, the better, and if one movement works better and enables you to return to Judaism, I’m in favor of that movement.
The story of Balaam comes late in the sojourn of our ancestors, yet his hatred for the Jewish people is ripe. I was wondering why, and asked Mendy. His response almost suggested that hatred was genetic. I disagree. Hatred is taught by powerful people who give messages to less powerful people, and the less powerful conclude that to have the support of the powerful, they’d better follow suite. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote a song about just that in South Pacific. But Jew hatred goes deeper and begins in Egypt and is revealed at Sinai. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the Talmud states forthrightly that “The Hatred Comes From Sinai.”
If you can understand what happened in Egypt and what happened at Sinai, you get an inkling of why Jew-hatred started in the ancient world. The Jews turned the world and society up side down when they walked out of Egypt. Till that time it was believed by everyone that those in power were meant to be in power and those who were enslaved were meant to be enslaved. This was divinely decreed by their gods, and every ancient society bought into it. Then the Jews and their G od come along and not only bring low a great Pharaoh and his army, but declare to the world that what is doesn’t necessarily have to be. Things can change. Slaves can become free people. Potters and brick layers can become priests and doctors. Nothing is ordained. We were not on a wheel that kept turning. Time moved forward. The Jews changed how time, society, and the world might be viewed. All ancient kings saw this and the ramification to their own little worlds. They came to fear these ragtag people and the fear turned into hate. Baalam was part of that society and liked the status quo.
But the Talmud says that the fear came from Sinai. What happened at Sinai that caused Jew-hatred? What happened was the revelation that there is one true G od who demands that all people, kings included, be moral and obey certain laws of decency. This sought of took the fun out of life as the pagans knew it, and the licentious, pagan pleasures became judged by a higher Supreme Being. The fact that Christianity with it’s Jewish morality became the dominant faith centuries later, further exacerbated the problem, because you can’t be angry with your G od, but you can be angry with the people who posited this G od. Balaam was a product of his world and hated the Israelites for what they were imposing on his happy pagan world.
I was hoping Mendy would talk about one other concept in the Balaam story: the character known as “ha satan.” If I am not mistaken, this “ha satan” is the concept of that which gets in the way to keep you from your purpose. I also believe that this concepts later evolves into Satan, the angel who appears in Job as the accuser, but I am not sure when this actually happens. Somewhere I recall reading that the personification takes hold during the reign of King David but again, I’m not sure. Certainly by the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes, the concept has become a proper noun and ripe for incorporation into Christian theology/mythology. Thus, the accusing angel of Judaism becomes the Devil of Christianity. Don’t you just love midrash?
July 19, 2008
Parsha Pinhas
Mendy was all over the place this Shabbat beginning again with Ethics of the Fathers and ending with the story of Phinneas, a man who was praised for murdering two blasphemers and guaranteed that his descendants would be great men. I don’t recall any comments on this. Still, Mendy was his usual rapid and passionate self, and again I confess I could not follow or remember everything so I’ll be as desultory in my comments as he was with his topics. In fact, there were so many tangents covered, that I started to become overwhelmed by all the words.
One piece of the commentary began with a story of the Bal Shem Tov when he was a student and overheard a conversation between two older students of what they would do to the world if they were G od. One said that he would make the world stricter so people would come to believe, and one said he would make the world a kinder place so people would come to believe. I think “belief” was their objective. When the future Bal Shem Tov was asked by the two what he would do, he replied that he would do nothing because G od had made the world just as it should be. Now this is where it gets a little hazy. I think I remember that the Bal Shem Tov said that the world was in perfect balance and G od made it this way so people would have to search for Him. I think the balance was to be between belief and doubt.
To achieve the balance, G od would not reveal himself as He once did. G od would do something impossible and that is hiding and revealing Himself at intervals so the power of faith and belief is tested constantly. Thus, one may have a glimmer of G od at work in the world and the faith would result. Then, G od would go for long periods of time hiding Himself and faith had to be sustained by that former glimmer. God hides and God reveals himself. It’s a test of faith. To believe in G od when G od is hiding, is true faith. We have the power to believe or not to believe. We are given free will. Despite what goes on in the world, we still believe because there are periodic glimmers of G od at work in the world. It is what sustains our faith. It is so easy to fall into disbelief as more and more of the world goes insane daily. Glimpses of G od’s handiwork and the ensuing faith, despite the actions of humanity, are what keeps the balances. It’s always about keeping your balance. At least that’s what I think he was saying.
It would be helpful if Mendy had a web page were he wrote out the key points of his teachings. Then I could be absolutely sure, and those of us who actually take what he says to heart, would have something to think about and reflect on with certainty.
Somewhere he also spoke of leadership and the most important thing a Rabbi should be able to do. My cynical mind leaped to “schmoozing the wealthy congregants,” but I didn’t say it. Lot’s of people responded, and of course, they could not guess what was going on in the Rabbi’s head. So eventually Mendy said that the most important thing a Rabbi can do is to know what to say to a particular person that will enable him or her to move beyond the place where they are. This procedure may open a Rabbi to ridicule and cries of hypocrisy if one congregant is told one thing and one another, but I can see what he means. Sometimes people need to be told what they don’t want to hear, and sometimes people need to be told what they need to hear and a smart Rabbi can read the person and tell the difference. Another part of the talk dealt with the “Exponent’s” page naming all the presidents of all the local Jewish organization. Mendy pointed out one organization that was clearly targeted at secular Jews. Not only was the question raised as to what was meant by “secular,” but the question was raised as to what was meant by “Jewish.” Also, can one be a secular Jew or is the paradox just too far fetched? A question and answer period followed and no one guessed Mendy’s conclusion as to what makes a Jew, Jewish. Mendy’s answer is that we are each born with a Jewish Nahsumah, or soul and we either strengthen it or we allow it to whither. Still, it is always there and once you are born a Jew, you are always a Jew. Hitler used that teaching against us in his racial policy of “once a Jew, always a Jew.” I have serious reservations about that idea, having people in my own family who were born Jews and deny that they are Jews or do not participate in any aspect of being a Jew. Their “neshumas” are so withered, they have become the universalist nothings they say they are. They claim they are not Jews and do not support Jewish causes or Israel’s existence. Being “Jewish” is unique, because it is the only word that denotes a religious affiliation and an ethnicity at the same time. It may sound paradoxical, but one can be a “secular” Jew and Jewish. It has to do with a disconnect one makes in his mind. The concept of G od is pervasive in Judaism, that aspect of “Jewish” that pertains only to the religion. Judaism is composed of four core concepts: G od, Torah,Israel, the people, and Choseness. Peoplehood speaks more to the secular piece of the puzzle because it refers to being part of a separate and distinct people with a evolving culture all its own that can exist separate from G od, Torah, and Chosennesss. Secular Jews cling to the latter aspect of “Jewish” rather than the former. A secular Jew will walk into a synagogue or be a member of a synagogue because that is where he feels comfortable and feels part of a community of people who share the same values and aspiration. The fact that those values and aspirations come from the Torah and ultimately, G od, does not factor in. Secular Jews feel disconnected from G od. Perhaps it is because G od has hidden from them at crucial moments in their lives. Perhaps they find the concept illogical. Secular Jews may be too cerebral to experience the spiritual. Their educations and focus have always been rational and observable things. But who can say? A secular Jew can read words in a prayer book, but they are just words. He or she may be there for the people who around him and the comfort such a community brings.
Now from where I sit, being Jewish is ultimately a decision and a deeply personal decision. And if anyone wants to be part of the Jewish people, I say “welcome,” and I wouldn’t send them away three times. That formula is a holdover from when it was dangerous to convert. We are pass those times. I also think that wanting to become a Jew because you love a Jew is a very valid reason if the Jew you love is a serious Jew and not just a secular Jew. For people to love Judaism, they have to live Judaism, and secular Jews who have removed G od and Torah from their plates, leaving the chicken soup and chopped liver are not people who will strengthen a convert. I have found that converts are more Jewish than the Jews they married because it was a choice they made as adults. The more people we can get, the better the world will be, and the better off we will be because the more Jews, the less Jew-hatred. Besides, if your daughter or son chooses to become Jewish, the non-Jewish family may not feel as great an antipathy towards us. As I said before, a Jew by choice, as I have seen them, are sometimes more committed to Judaism than Jews born to a Jewish mother. That’s why I support patrilineal descent in addition to the traditional way one becomes a Jew. If you are raised to believe you are a Jew, act as a moral human being, believe in G od, participate in Jewish causes and rituals, you are a Jew and it makes no difference how you got to be that way. It’s the outcome that counts. Of course, Orthodoxy denies any procedure or rite that goes against what it believes is the “truth” and the only way which is their way. And the result is, at least in Israel, that more people claim to be “secular” than observant. I for one would be glad to see the doors open wide, and not just to lapsed Jews. There are millions of people out there with no religion and we have kept our “light” hidden for centuries. Of course this was forced upon us by the early church who decreed that any Jew caught converting a pagan or a Christian to Judaism was to be put to death along with the convert. So we stopped being a “light unto the nations.” That was very sad, because the world needs a lot of people believing in a faith where you don’t have to abdicate reason and you don’t have to accept the doctrine of hating others because they worship G od in a way that is different from yours. Of course, I think as a Reform Jew, and I am viewed as a heretic for my opinions in Orthodox circles. Chabad is wonderful in that it seeks to bring Jews back to Judaism. Reform is wonderful because, among other things, it seeks to reach out to non-Jewish spouses and invite them to convert and become part of our people. A Reform conversion is as valid as an Orthodox conversion, and a viable choice for people who freely choose to become part of us and do not wish to follow all the traditional ways. Alternatives are needed. What we also need is a movement like the Mormons who make the heroic effort to bring people into the faith who were not born to the faith. That was one of our charges centuries ago. It’s time to get back to the task, and it can be done by all denominations of Judaism because all seek to bring people closer to G od, and no one effort is more authentic than another.
August 23, 2008
Parsha Ekev
Mendy opened his drush with a story about a friend who said, “I don’t understand my wife.” I did something that hurt her, I apologized, we went out to a wonderful dinner, and the next day she was all over me for what I did. Mendy asked us what we would have told the man. I thought of referring to the book, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, but I didn’t give that as an answer because it was glib and I didn’t know how an Orthodox congregation would respond with references to pagan gods on Shabbos. So I suggested that he ask her, “How long she was going to be angry with him?” Mendy said that if he said that, she would say, “forever.” Because there is no time to explain that my intention was for the man to connect with the part of the angry spouse that was free of the anger, and since Mendy didn't ask why I said that, I demurred and listened for other responses regretting that I had gotten sucked in by the topic and could not guess the correct answer. What I could not explain to Mendy is that anger is a secondary response from two places in the human psyche: the “Child” in us or the “Parent” in us. If his wife yelled back, “forever” she was still operating out of her “Child.” If she said sternly that “it will take me a very long time to forgive you,” she was responding from her “Parent”. Ultimately, this man has to connect with his wife’s “Adult,” the only place where there is unemotional reason, and ask her to think about a time reference which would put her in a very different place. But if her answers were either of the above, she was not ready to discuss the matter. Of course, he might have just said, “What I did caused you a great deal of pain, didn’t it?” That would have opened up the conversation because she would recognize that he was hearing what was underneath the anger. But for most spouses, reading the feelings underneath the message is not natural and must be taught.
But the bima is not the venue to walk through this process. Mendy referred again to the Ethics of the Fathers where we are taught not to try to comfort someone who is in a rage. He later clarified the matter when one congregant asked if the Rabbis of the Talmud were suggesting that you just walk away at that moment. Mendy encouraged an “I’m sorry” first before backing off.
My take on this was that the key thing that Mendy was talking about was that unless someone hears the pain underneath the message of anger, the issue will never be resolved. Anger is a secondary emotion, and we frequently share the anger without stating the deeper feelings that cause the anger. Few are taught or give themselves permission to express honest feelings at the moment they are feeling them. But I maintain that in order to get past that anger, you have to connect with the “Adult” part of the angry person’s personality so they can hear your statement in their rational mind and can come out of their “Parent” or “Child.” Only in the “Adult” can you talk about feelings without feeling them. That’s the place where rational discourse takes place as well as negotiation. Certainly, there needs to be a “cooling off” period between the initial “I’m sorry” and the conversations between two “Adults.” I think that was Mendy’s key point. If this conversation never takes place, it is possible that this anger will fester and be brought up for years after the initial infraction. When that happens, we know the issue has never been resolved and forgiveness and getting past the pain has never happened. Such anger is like collecting stamps in a book and when you have enough pain and annoyances, you can cash them in on a well deserved explosion or an accusation much the way people used to save green or King Korn stamps books for a gift. Here, the gift is the guilt free explosion. After all, the person has been bearing up under all the sights, pains, and hurts, but has been collecting anger stamps all the while. Perhaps this person has not expressed his or her feelings to the spouse, preferring to feel the hurt while registering the anger. Perhaps pain and the ensuing anger are familiar feelings and is psychologically comforting. Such a phenomena exists outside a person’s awareness. Any spouse who continues, year after year to pull up old hurts, painful events, and inadequacies for hurling at the spouse, has unresolved issues that causes continuing pain to a spouse who may be at best unaware and at worse, totally ignorant of the workings and feelings of the person with whom he or she is living. If cashing in on the same anger “stamp collection” continues year after year, the big prize may be a divorce that will seem totally justified because of what the spouse has suffered that was real or imagined..
I lost the connection between the Ethics and the Torah portion. The teaching for the Torah portion I think dealt with blessings and how G od responds to us collectively and individually. Since all people are different, the rewards for following the mitzvot are also different and depends on the needs of the individual. I for one consider my skills as a teacher a blessings and I have never gotten up one day of my life regretting my professional choice. I feel blessed. There are also collective blessings if the people follow the commandments, but because not everyone follows the commandments, all blessing do not flow on to the collective group. There are those who are given action “A” to perform and those who are given action “B” while some are given “C”. Collectively, if everyone does his or her part, the blessings will come. Here I lost the connection because history intruded, my critical self took over, and Mendy’s comments faded. In my own reverie, I asked myself, “If someone is righteous and does the mitzvot required of him to the best of his ability, why might he or she still suffer?” We see this all the time. It’s the eternal question in Job. The only response to this paradoxical irony I could come up with is that G od deals with us as a collective, and a promised remnant will always be saved. This led me to conclude that some tzadicks aren’t in a place where the remnant that is being saved is located. This collective saving also causes me confusion with this concept of individual blessings. So I continue to be confused while not being satisfied with my own answer. I can go with, “We just don’t know.” Do you have a better response?
September, 2008
Mendy started with a statement that we would not be studying from the Ethics of the Fathers because he may have lost track and covered more than he was supposed to cover. I am confused. If something is of such value and worthy of study, why put a limit on it? By the way, I did purchase my own copy of Ethics. I couldn’t believe that in my library, I couldn’t find a copy.
Mendy did begin by talking about his childhood and described a child who was creative, playful, disruptive, inquisitive, and bored in school. I identified fully. He did say that he had created an alias and he would use the name of his alter ego whenever he was caught by someone who did not know him. This was so he would not bring shame to his family. It seems everyone knew his father.
Mendy probably does not know the expression, “Caesar’s wife.” Simply put, it means that anyone who is closely associated with a well known person, does not have the luxury of bringing shame to that person. Anyone who is “Caesar’s wife” must not bring shame to Caesar. In effect, they must behave to a higher standard. Mendy knew that he carried an honorable name. This got me to thinking about the obligation that children have to their parents to behave well. It also got me to thinking about religious people who do not behave well. This is my point. When a person dons a kippah or black hat and wraps himself in the aura of chassid or serious Jew, that person to the world is in effect a representative of G od and of Judaism. They are “Caesar’s Wife” wherever they go, and do not have the option of behaving badly. Right now I am thinking of the Aggirprocessor people and the numerous laws they broke. Their behavior reinforces negative stereotypes of Jews in business. They, especially because they are Orthodox, should adhere to a higher power, and they only had to review the laws in the Torah regarding honesty in trade and the treatment of workers to see the damage they were doing. And of course, there is my former Rabbi who wrapped himself in a tallit and betrayed and devastated his community. Again, Jews who chose to overtly identify themselves as serious Jews are all “Caesar’s Wife” when it comes to the outside world, only in their case, G od is Caesar. And this brought me to another thought about the second commandment. No one knows G od’s name, so it really cannot be taken in vain, so it has come to mean referring to G od when swearing an oath or just swearing. So swearing using the word “ G od” has become associated with breaking the second commandment. So serious Jews don’t swear using the word “G od.” Fine! But what about behavior? When you wrap yourself overtly in your religion and do something despicable, aren’t you giving G od a bad name. So I think people who are overtly religious and aspire to higher plains of religious practice and spirituality and still act despicably, are breaking the second commandment. They are giving the lie to G od’s expectations for decency. What do you think?.
September 21, 2008 through October 30, 2008
Slichot through Rosh Hashonah,
First, a joke: A Cabbalist walks over to a kosher hot dog vender and says, “Make me one with everything.” OK, so it’s not a real knee slapper, and it’s humor rests in some prior knowledge as to what a cabalist is and the cabalist’s effort to become unified with G od. But for those who do have that understanding, it’s worthy of a smile or at least a smerk.
So I learned that Cabalah is the search for oneness with God, and I can relate to that because I’ve been searching for that oneness since I lost it back in the fifties. When I was young, I just knew that G od existed and I could feel the Presence all around me, especially in the night sky and in the rustling of autumn leaves. Who knew that I felt daily what Cabbalist ache to experience through study. But like the story that says we knew the entire Torah before we were born, I, too, lost the direct connection with G od when I was in my late teens. I re-glimpsed it when I went to college and read Wordsworth’s “Ode to Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” I literally had tears in my eyes because it so beautifully gave expression to the feelings of spiritual loss and emptiness that I was feeling and so beautifully gave expression to the thought that what was once, must always be. I also realized that I was not alone in my loneliness and that others had experienced the same loss. But such feelings and awarenesses are not expressed to fraternity brothers so I kept my silence except for speaking to one professor, Marjore Coogan, who told me that I was fortunate to have experienced it for so long. That’s when I decided to change my major to English literature. The poem tells us that our “birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.” It tells us that “the soul that rises with us, our life’s star, hath elsewhere had its setting...not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from G od who is our home.” This is all very Cabalistic and it was written by the father of English Romanticism who was steeped in Pantheism and possibly, knew of Spinoza’s who also said that everything in nature was G od. The poem continues by saying that “shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy, but he beholds the light and whence it flows. He sees it in his joy.” So like the Bal Shem Tov who lived a world away from the Lake County in England, we find that the light from G od shines best at our joyous moments. Therefore, for me, at some spiritual level, the Cabalists, Wordsworth, Spinoza, and the Bal Shem Tov share a degree of understanding of what true spirituality is. This gives me a sense of well being, because I, too, have thought and felt such things and I like the company in which I find myself. I also like the idea that I can see such connections among giants. I am happy with my education and happy that I can still remember enough of it to see similarities. I think it was Mendy who taught that four Rabbis went into the pardis or garden. The garden is “Spirituality or Cabbalah. Only Akiva came out whole and sane. The other three met tragedy. One became an apostate, one went insane, and one committed suicide. Reason? Only Akiva went in with the intention of truly encountering God while the others went in with the intention of self-engrandizement. Again, the ego must be kept under control or it will destroy us. I sat with another Chabad Rabbi in Margat who was talking about why people show up in shul. He mentioned three thing: love of God and the need to pray, fear, and Jewish guilt. I found his idea regarding the source of guilt, especially where Judaism is concerned, comes from the inborn knowledge that we each have a G od given soul. Since every soul needs to be fed (spirituality is food for the soul), the soul needs to connect with G od. If it does not, the yearning that the soul feels produces guilt. The soul is saying, “I’m here. I want to connect.” Attendance at the high holiday services assuages the soul. Guilt is an opportunity to make ourselves better. This Rabbi Rappaport spoke of something called “tanya” or two levels of love and fear. The lower level of fear is G od punishing us. The lower level of love is “I’ll do it and get something.” He said we need both, but I can’t recall why. He also spoke of hell or gehenna. He never mentioned shoel, and I didn’t ask because I couldn’t think of the term. He said that the objective of going to Heaven is for our soul to reconnect with G od, but before we can do this, every soul needs to be cleansed. Gehenna is this cleansing process. It is a process of revelation. It is painful and healing. Some are in pain more than others because of their behavior. The soul is purified for eleven months and thus we say kaddish for eleven months. Tradition teaches that saying kaddish enables the soul to climb higher. But for the truly evil, they are not allowed into Gehenna. They experience Kafakella. That is where the demons that this person created on earth chases and torments them from one place to the other. (The concept is very similar to the Greek Furies who pursue the evil doer.)Human beings are put on this earth, given free will, and asked to make this world a better place.(Tikun Olam) Our life has a purpose. Everyone goes to heaven eventually, and everyone goes to gehenna. Only the truly evil do not. Reincarnation: There are mitzvot that we must perform while we are on earth. If we do not, we come back to perform them. Some have more to perform and some fewer. Our return is really a way of perfecting our souls. Perhaps we do this to get it right. Once that is achieved, heaven awaits. Heaven is experiencing G od and infinity. Once you’ve lived your life and have been to gehenna, you are assigned a space in heaven. The only way to elevate a soul in heaven is for those who live to do good works in the name of that person. Only down here can we make a difference. The Jewish concept is that the action is on earth. The goal is to bring in the era of the Messiah where heaven and earth merge.
Personally, I’m not buying into this concept of the afterlife. I recognize the need for it because the nature of the human ego is that it cannot conceive of a time when it will not exist. But it goes against my grain to accept the idea that souls rise from one heaven to a higher level based on good deeds done in that person’s name. What of all the souls who do not have people saying kaddish for them or are not even remembered.
Someone once told me that the heaven you believed in is the one you will go to. So I have created my own heaven, and if anyone is interested in it, you can ask me. But I tell you that it is composed of the best that this world has offered us since the beginning of civilization and only the people I like are invited in.
One lesson that Mendy taught from the Ethics of the Fathers was based on the teaching regarding who should be rewarded and praised. He used education as an example, and the lesson was that the one in the class who has the farthest to go is the one who should be praised for his or her slight achievements. They were not granted the portion of being academically astute. For those who were granted that portion, achievement is expected. Chaim Potok explored a similar theme in The Chosen only here the Rabbi’s son was ignored by his father because the son had an ego that was potentially too great because of his brilliance. My problem as a teacher is that though one child is endowed with great ability, that child also need praise for his or her achievements. Recognition is a hunger, just as food is, and bright children, if they are ignored, will act out to get attention which is often negative. Any attention is better than no attention at all. I believe Mendy was given a great academic and spiritual portion, and because he was a very bright, very inquisitive and a very spunky kid of whom great things were expected, I bet he chose to get his attention by being a noodnick. Perhaps his choice was a response to the burden of his yichchas ( Jewish pedigree).
Mendy’s talk on the second day of Rosh Hashonah dealt with the sacrifice of Isaac. I have some very intense feelings about this tale, but will not share them now. Mendy’s point was that a man was being tested. Abraham could have been told to sacrifice his son before his people to demonstrate the depth of his faith, but he was told to take a three day trip and to perform the act in a place where no one would see. The question is why? I think the answer is that we each are tested, and the test of our true natures comes when we are tested alone with out the encumbrances of society. Who we really are is revealed in private with no one but G od watching. I know I am not recalling the entire truth of the lesson. That’s why I wish Mendy would post the jist of his comments on line. I can’t take notes and my memory tends to fail. A joyous year.
October 22, 2008
Simchat Torah
This is the first year I did not attend M’kor services for any of the holidays following Yom Kippur. I could say that something is happening, but that might sound a bit dramatic. I can best explain it by referencing the two sermons delivered on Rosh Hashonah at M’kor and at Chabad. If the holidays are to be taken seriously, there should be some sort of call to spiritual awakening on a very personal level. It should be a moment when my soul is asked to interface with its Creator. That’s what I need my Rabbi to address on Rosh Hashonah. At M’kor, Rabbi Barry spoke brilliantly of the need to appreciate diversity in America. He conjured up the turbulent 60's and the legacy of Martin Luther King. Jr. He was articulate, elegant and it left me with the definite feeling that I had just experienced a lyrical pean to the democratic party. I later learned that I was not alone in my assessment. It was a moving speech for a civil rights rally, but it wasn’t what I needed for a better connection with the infinite. While the call to social action, one of the pillars upon which Judaism rests is important, I personally feel should better have been left to a sermon given at another time. So the second day, I went to Chabad, and Rabbi Mendy spoke about Abraham taking Isaac off on a three day trip and why he was instructed to perform the sacrifice where no one would be able to see or measure the patriarch’s devotion to G od. I understood this teaching to mean that we reveal who we truly are when we are alone with G od and not burdened by social expectations or judgment from without.. This was a meaningful lesson and while it did not evoke the turbulent 60's I’d like to forget, it was what my soul and intellect needed.
I am finding at Chabad something I have not found at M’kor in the twenty-five years I’ve belonged there and it has nothing to do with the people at either place. My support group and my dearest friends are at M’kor, and I am tremendously proud of M’kor’s philosophy that not only the Jewish world needs to be made whole, but wider world needs attention, too. I honor M’kor’s outreach into the non-Jewish community in order to raise the awareness level of the wider community as to who Jews are and what they value. The social action programs at M’kor are beyond those of any synagogue in the area and I’m proud to be associated with this organization. Certainly, there I people there I avoid because I neither like nor respect their opinions or extreme liberalism, but people with whom you’d prefer not associating can be found in other synagogues as well.
I have met very nice people at Chabad, and I have also met a few people there whose responses to certain items in conversations during kiddish discussions revealed that they were condescending of other Jewish visions, and closed to any ideas that were not politically conservative. But I have learned to look at all Jews as part of one family, and in every family, there are members you don’t particularly like or with whom you don't agree, but you still invite them to the simcha.
What I am saying is that the comfort I feel at Chabad comes from the sound of a service that is chanted in Hebrew that seems to seep into my soul. Perhaps it is the hum of sincere faith, and there are times I will stop reading and just allow the sound to engulf me and warm me. And it’s not only the sound of Jacque’s chanting or the diverse off key murmerings of the men around me. It’s seeing Albert put his tallit over his Adam's head and bless him. It’s seeing men rise to congratulate those who have had honors, and those receiving the brief comments kissing their hands after each handshake. It’s seeing Sephardic men sincerely greet others by kissing them on both cheeks. It seeing men dress to honor the place where they are, and the best dressed of them all, Nate, standing at the reader’s platform in the back totally involved in his devotion. It’s seeing men raise their tallis draped hands in unison when the Torah is lifted. And I am always happy to be greeted by Evan, and I take enormous pleasure watching Mendy’s eyes shine with pride whenever Lazer davens or when he invites all his children under his talit. I look forward to listening to Michael’s high pitched voice soaring above all the others. I feel good when Mendy speaks because I know his spiritual resolve and his ability to inspire, and I whether I re-experience G od as I knew G od as a younger person, I can at least connect to G od through Mendy’s passion.
But most of all, "my heart leaps up" when I see those beautiful little children clinging to their father’s and then sliding onto their grandfather’s laps, while others run around or lay on the floor playing with action figurines. Their screeches and giggles are their own kind of prayers, for these little souls are there being tuned to hear the same sounds that I hear, and they are comfortable from birth with both the language and with the sounds. It’s this transfer of soul-sounds at Chabad that gives me some assurance that from generation to generation, Jews will continue.
These are reasons why I attend. I feel good when I am among these people even though I know we shall never become friends. And yes, I feel good when just reading the Torah and the commentaries made by my ancestors.
G od and I have issues, and I doubt if they will ever be resolved. Perhaps the doubts and incredulity are what makes the search for a relationship with G od meaningful. Perhaps it is the journey that is the relationship. There are many ideas I read in the traditional service I cannot accept because of the reality of the world and the history of my people, but I take pleasure in the sound that the words make in the mouths of others. Perhaps it is through the absolute faith of others that I will begin to come to terms with my own. Till that time, I will content myself with the idea that what I once felt of G od directly is still part of my life, and though those very real feelings faded, those feelings were very real and the loss is still felt. Perhaps I am too reluctant to suspend disbelief. Perhaps I need to let go of my experience and education. Perhaps I need to let go of myself. But what will I be if I let go? I am my education and my experiences. The risk may be too great, so for now, I will content myself with the lines: “...we will grieve not, rather find, strength in what remains behind. In the primal sympathy, Of having been, must ever be. In the soothing thoughts that spring, Out of human suffering, In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind...”
October 29, 2008
Parsha Bareshit
Mendy was giving an explanation about the creation of Adam and why he needed a helper. It was very interesting, but filled with so many tangents, that I lost track of the jist of his talk. One thing he said did stick and it was very meaningful. The key image he used about us as individuals and as Adam as an individual was that each of us is a puzzle part, but we do not see our value until we see the whole puzzle picture. We have to see ourselves as a piece of the whole. It would seem that seeing the whole when you are just a piece is an impossibility, since you are inside the box with all the other pieces and the picture of the whole is on the outside of the box. So life becomes a series of hits and misses as you try to see which part of you fits in with which part of someone else. I guess you continue doing this until enough of a picture is formed that you can begin to see yourself as part of a whole. Key to this is seeing ourselves in relation to other people. It took me back to my college days when I first read the following written by the English poet, John Donne. “All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated “... No man is an island entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less...Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” We know that a bottle of water is made up of billions of drops, but we see it as water, not the individual drop. This idea of seeing ourselves as part of the totality is G od’s objective for us, and experiencing this totality of all life as connected and as one is what the Messiah times will be like.
For me, Live Aid, back in the eighties, was a glimpse of it Under the leadership of Bob Geldoff, the world came together to feed the hungry. It was a beautiful picture. In effect, the idea that Mendy is talking about is the same vision that Cezanne, the great French Impressionist, was after and achieved in his later paintings. All elements, sky, earth, water, buildings etc., are all composed of the same forms and colors, and while you can see the distinctions, the overriding impression is that everything is one with everything else and relates to everything else. I think that the key lesson Mendy was teaching was this: One must, in some way spiritually dissolve into the world in order to truly embrace humanity and become one with the universe. I think we sense this whenever we loose ourselves in another’s pain or joy to feel true empathy with another human being or with humanity. That is an ideal, but an ideal that cannot be reached or at least maintained for an extended period of time. For an individual to embrace the world, become one with it and therefore one with G od, and empathize with the needs and pain in this world, an individual would have to struggle with maintaining his or her individual identity. Total selflessness would be total sacrifice and total destruction. Sacrifice of the self to that extent is unhealthy even if it is godly. If that is the expectation of the Messianic times, I think we shall only glimpse it as we did with Live Aid, and if that is the truth, I therefore must conclude that good people, in small or large groups, who are empathizing and doing something to make the world a better place, are the Messiah. The best we can hope for is to become part of such a group to experience what it is like to become one with others for tikkun olam.
Now as far as an answer as to why G od created a single being initially who was hermaphraditic and then had a change of heart is anybody’s guess. (Throughout the Torah, G od often regrets His initial decisions). Frankly I am somewhat confused that after Mendy spoke of this unisex being, I then re-read that Adam and Eve were created as separate beings simultaneously in one part, and soon after I re-read that Adam was created from dust in another section. Either these events are compilations of several literary traditions put together, or G od was feeling his way because he was very new at this game. That I can appreciate. Mendy said something that a successful marriages should be stressed from time to time and that no marriage should be perfect because then there is no challenge or opportunity to grow. Well, Adam, Eve, and G od were all very stressed out in the garden and everyone did grow. Adam and Eve learned that what might be an innocent and seemingly minor infraction can be greeted with an outrageous and unfair response from the parental unit. And G od grew in His knowledge that if you leave children on their own and expect them to do the right thing just because you said so, you will be disappointed.
October 25, 2008
The whole creation story raises a question that Mendy might have addressed and I wasn’t keeping up because I was trying to process the relationship thing. Why would En Sof, the name given to the Eternal Cosmic Mind and Process, bother with creating in the first place? Now Julian Huxley wrote that “Man is that part of reality, through which and by which the Cosmic Process has learned to apprehend itself.” I think of En Sof as the Cosmic Process. My leap of faith is that the Cosmic Process, in addition to being the creative force in the universe, must, at some level, also be sentient. That’s the leap of faith I must make in order to believe.
So why would this sentient, non-corporeal Being choose to create life on this little blue dot in this endless universe? I think there are two reasons: He was curious to experience the physical world through a physical manifestation of Himself, and secondly, we are an experiment in free will and the reason that He remains interested in us is that he has absolutely no idea what we will do next. But since we are each aspects of His spirit, and we are all made of the same stuff as are the stars and every other thing in the universe, we are all connected and all one. (Again, it's that basic unity theme of everything in the world being connected.) So G od learns through that aspect within us and each of us brings to Him a totally unique experience. Thus, a totally spiritual Being experiences living in a physical world through his creations. But how did that inclination to move towards Unity come into us? How did G od get into us? Why is the idea that we see unity with other human beings and with nature, one of the great philosophical impulses that seeks and finds unity in expressions in art, scientific theories, literature, religion, and psychology? Could it be that our built into our makeup is this inclination to move towards unity with one another and with nature since we come out of the Perfect Unity that created everything? Could this inclination to merge as one and see all as one come from the fact that at one time we were all one? Mysticism teaches that En Sof withdrew so the universe would be created. That would leave a void. What if En Sof itself exploded and not the vessels. That would explain why everything in creation is composed of the same elements, and why we seek the original Unity. What if we ourselves are all those sparks flying around trying to come together again to make the En Sof whole again and we glimpse the Unity in meaningful efforts and our understanding of nature as one?. Is this our instinctive inner most motivation? This movement towards unity begins with our ourselves trying to achieve self-awareness. Then we seek unity with our families, then spouses, children, and then extends into our community and the works we do. When we do this fully, in good cheer, and feeling good about ourselves and others, we are glimpsing Messianic times. DilemmaIf there is no sentient Being but only Process, then what is the authority behind moral law? If there is a sentient Being as the authority behind creation and moral law, the by what right can we disobey?
November 1, 2008
Parsha Noah
This Shabbat, Mendy spoke of Noah. Too much to process, so the one thing I took away was that Noah was considered a failure by our Rabbis because he did not go out into the world and bring his neighbors to righteous behavior. We need to do this as Jews. We need to proudly assert who we are. We need to take back our original mandate of “being a light unto the nations,” for that is indeed what the Prophet Isaiah told us our mission on earth really was. Prior to the last two millennia, we were a proselytizing faith and we were doing a good job of bringing the pagans over to Judaism. But after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and had to deligitimitize us because you can’t have two correct faiths in one place, the church fathers past legislation stating that any Jew caught converting a pagan or a Christian to Judaism was to be killed along with the convert. That took the wind out of our sails, and we had to give up a piece of our core mission. Of course, Tikkun Olam, the second part of our core mission on earth has held, and we have done wonderful things on our journey through the centuries.But back to Noah. For some reason, Noah is condemned for planting a vineyard and getting drunk. Well from where I sit, I’d have a little more compassion on this man. Had I seen the entire world drown, and everything familiar suddenly disappear, I’d be a little traumatized also and need a drink. And don’t forget being locked up in that dark boat with all those stinking animals. Let’s have a little rachmunis on this guy. So he gets drunk and is found naked. His son, Ham, reports to his brothers that his father is naked and drunk and they dutifully and respectfully cover him. But the next thing these same noble brothers do is to bring to Noah this evil report which generates a terrible curse on their brother Ham and his descendants. This curse is as over the top as was G od’s curse on Eve and Adam. None of them deserved what they got for their behaviors. Ham is made to be the villain, but is he the villain because he will be the progenitor of the Cananites, and the Cananites will ultimately have to be displaced and the justification for this displacement is supported by the fact that they are descendant from an evil person. Is this political? I’m thinking this because Adam and Eve had Seth, because it seems to me that for us to be descendant from Cain is to be descendant from a murderer and the Chosen People should not be descended from a murder. Those who antagonized and tormented us are always descended from Cain. Is this also political? Did the men who ultimately wrote down the version of the Torah that we have take some liberties to justify past and future events? People do things like that. Look at the liberties taken by those who codified the Christian Testament. Lies were told about Jews to justify what they would ultimately to do us to prove that we had lost G od’s favor.
November 8, 2008
Parsaha Lekh Lakha
Mendy began by speaking about the roles we play in our daily lives and whether or not we can keep them separate. He spoke of his role as a father, a husband, a rabbi, a child, and as a sibling. He did not speak of himself as a friend. That got me thinking about the roles we all play, and it also got me thinking of the appropriateness of our behavior as we play those roles.
Years ago I learned about the three basic levels of personality each of us has within that we present to the world as we play the daily roles we need to play: There is the playful Child and the crazy Child within us, the nourishing or critical Parent within us, and the analytical Adult. Only the Adult in us does not feel. Only the Adult in us is dispassionate and can monitor the behavior of the other two levels. Each of these three levels of personality is vitally important. You don’t want your surgeon in his Child when he is operating on you, you don’t want your spouse in his or her critical Parent or Adult when you need a hug or want to make love, (Making love is done from the Child in us) but you do want your flight attendant to be in his or her nurturing Parent as much as you want the pilot in his Adult. It’s what is appropriate at the particular moment that counts. Biological adults in the role of parent must be in their Child if they are to giggle and tickle their own kids on a Sunday morning when the kids climb into bed. Child-Child transactions are the most fun.
Note: ( It is sad for me to see a biological child with not enough Child but with an over abundance of critical Parent or Adult. I met a few like this at the yeshiva. They were so into their judgmental Parent that they lost their Child. Generally, I did not care for these kids. Give me a spunky, creative Child any day. I would have liked Mendy had he been a student in my class. You can still see the spunky Child in his eyes.)
Mendy recounted how he went home and told his children that he was under a lot of pressure and needed their cooperation. His Adult was trying to connect with his children’s Adults in order for them to hear his need. Of course, he may have been coming from his Child in the request, trying to connect with the nurturing Parent in his children, but only he would know that. Only we really know “where we are coming from.” I don’t know how his children responded. I hope they heard him. Sometimes the Child in us even looks to the nourishing Parent for understanding and support from our own biological children who are always in the role of the child. We do this especially when we are desperate for understanding and nourishment.
Religion is a Parent thing, and basically G od moves between nurturing Parent and critical Parent. G od is the paragon of both. Blessings are from the nurturing side of G od, and the curses are from the critical side. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah were very critical Parent reactions. G od making man in his own image and clothing them after cursing Adam and Eve are nurturing Parent behaviors. G od is always in the role of G od and appears always to operate out of His Parent. Occasionally, He will operate out of His Adult as exemplified by his negotiation with Abraham regarding the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and when He establishes His covenant with our ancestors. I think f G od does operate out of His Child, and I’m sorry to say that it might be out of His crazy Child, because some of His responses are really over the top and. It is sometime difficult to know, because the crazy Child is often like the crazy Parent or critical Parent. Again, only an honest patient and a trained therapist would be able to decide the truth.
While G od was put on trial at Auschwitz, I doubt if His ever been put on a therapist’s couch. It would make an interesting play. The Parent in us is the repository of religion and culture. We go to a Rabbi for Parental guidance. They listen from their Adults, analyze, review the Parental messages in their own heads, and give parental advise based upon their educations. Right and wrong are Parental judgments. Religion teaches that the eternal Parent sits in judgment over everything we do, and during the high holidays, we are cast in the role of children even though we are biological adults. We speak to G od’s Parent from our Child. It’s a parallel transaction that goes on indefinitely. When our people do not behave as Go d demands, we have here a crossed transaction such as we had in the Garden of Eden. But rather than G od going into His Adult and analyzing what happened and whether He should have been clearer in His instructions and clearer in explaining what “death” meant, G od reacted from his critical (and perhaps His crazy Child) Parent and cursed them and the earth. Eventually, G od’s Adult does struggle to the fore and He regrets what He has done and makes amends with humanity as He did with the flood, but it’s a little too late for His first kids who now suffer pain and sweat, and for those who died in the deluge. This was really an interesting exercise.
Mendy spoke of mountains and asked why Sinai was less important than Mt. Moriah. At Sinai we learned and were passive. At Moriah we committed as a people to G od.
There was a tragedy in India were a Chabad rabbi, his wife, and several visitors were murdered by Muslim terrorists. The question raised was “Why go out into a place that is dangerous to teach?” Mendy said that we are to “Throw light into the dark places” and he recounted the tale where Jacob finds a well in the middle of nowhere, and the shepherds have to wait until everyone is there to move the rock. They waste the day. Chabad takes this story and builds a rational for their world wide effort. It is easy in places where there are many of you, but the challenge is when you go to places in the wilderness to bring yiddishkeit and the word of God. “Be a light unto the nations” was our charge and the only way you can do that is to go among the nations and bring the light.
When darkness comes upon us or the people, bring the light back to the world by lighting sabbath candles, doing mitzvot, gathering family and friends in joy and modeling righteous behavior. Build something. Throw light at the darkness.
Three things to do when confronting tragedy:
1.- Do not ask why? There is no answer. Chalenge God to live up to the justice and mercy that he demands of us
.2. Be silent. We cannot understand, and we cannot speak to a bleeding heart. There is no immediate comfort.
3. We must channel our outrage into a passion for the good. Negative feelings are the potent fuel for creativity. Channel the anger to goodness. Take all feelings and convert them to action. Do mitzvot. Hurl light at the darkness. Do this is the memory of those who have been slain so that they may ascend through your good deeds.
December 13, 2008
Parsha Vayishlah
The Torah portion dealt with Jacob returning to his brother Esau after many years of absence and the palpable fear he experiences when he finds out that his brother is coming towards him with four hundred men. Jacob’s first response is to pray to G od for protection. The second is to send booty as a peace offering, and the third is to divide his camp into sections so in the event that there is a battle, the most loved may escape unharmed. Even here, Jacob lays the foundation for the resentment his other sons will have for Rachel’s little boy, because Joseph and his mother are place way in the back. Jacob is still the schemer and survivor and perhaps that is why he is so revered in our tradition. He survives through his wits rather than his might, and maybe that is why God is pleased with him. As a persecuted minority, we have had to survive through our wits. That may be something we learned from the Patriarchs.
His story also teachers us that what goes around, comes around and the deception he and his mother perpetrate on Isaac and Esau is duplicated on him at the hands of Laban and later at the hands of his own sons. What I do like about the Jacob story is that he introduces romantic love into the mix of relationships by his willingness to work a total of fourteen years for his beloved Rachel. Now that’s love! The story continues with Jacob wrestling an angel, winning, and receiving the name Israel which means “struggle with G od.” It is a fitting name for our people, because the most interesting Jews I know or have read about, struggle with their beliefs and doubts. Mendy says struggle is a good thing, and I can see why he teaches that. I think he means that the struggle is good because it gets one to think about his relationship with G od, what that relationship is, and what it does in the world. People who have no doubts may not do anything constructive. I would like to have focused more on this struggle, but a congregant took Mendy to task for raising the issue that the Jewish soul is somehow unique, with five levels it can achieve. I must have missed the statement that triggered that response. But Mendy responded by saying that it takes hard work to move up the ladder of soul life. He said that we are each born into the world and placed in a place that will challenge us to climb to the next level. He was born into an Orthodox family, so not eating tref was not something that was a challenge to his soul. My choice of removing tref from my table was a choice I made in my forties, so according to Mendy, my soul grew in a way that his could not. I took some comfort in that. But this same congregant took umbridge with the idea that the Jewish soul is somehow better in its distinctiveness because we were “chosen.” Mendy seems to hold this to be true, but insisted that choseness has nothing to do with superiority. This is where I have to partially part company with Mendy and Chabad if the teaching is that our souls are more expansive than that the gentile soul. As I see it, G od created all people have the same soul potential, and that we each have an aspect of G od within us. That aspect of G od is the soul. But as Mendy taught, we are put on different rungs of the ladder when we are born. For me, G od, views all the machinations of this world as the great experiment in free will, and what we do with what we are given is always delights and saddens Him. I can apply that to the concept of the soul. If we are place on a soul rung, we each have the opportunity to climb or descend. It’s the good inclination and the bad (or ego inclination as I view it) in us that determines the direction, but it is also the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Mendy found himself in the circumstances of a scholarly Chabad family, and I found myself in the circumstances of a blue collar, religiously schizophrenic home where ghosts of Orthodoxy clung to one parent along with eastern Europen superstitions and ecumenicalism, while the other parent was basically an agnostic and uninterested in all intellectual and spiritual pursuits.
Jews were given the Torah as the guide for our soul journey, and others, recognizing the concept of the soul, took our Torah and made it their own so they could climb, too. Sadly, they’ve come to believe that there is only room for them on the ladder, and have tried to push us off. But we won’t leave. So I believe that the Jewish soul is not unique to only Jews, but to all. If not, what do we say to people who choose to align themselves with us and convert. Are we to tell them that they can never achieve a higher level of soul light? Ruth, a convert, is the ancestor of David, and out of David will come the Messiah. Certainly Ruth’s soul would be able to shine as brightly as Miriam’s. G od made us the chosen people to be a light unto the nations. That means that our primary task is to tell the world of a single creative God whose primary expectation of his human creations is to treat one another well. Our task was to model this behavior and in doing so, lead the non-chosen soul to higher level of existence.
All people are hard wired into the potential for soul growth, and we were or are to lead them. Chabad has the right idea in going out to the Jewish world and trying to teach them about Yiddishkeit and about soul expansion. The problem is that Chabad and the rest of the Jewish world remains unwilling to go out into the non Jewish world as do the Christians and Muslims to invite others to join us. We were once a proslytizing people, and that is how the values of Judaism became the foundational values of Western and Middle Eastern Civilization. We stopped that effort under the treat of death because Judaism was a threat to Christian and Muslim legitimacy. Perhaps if we reached out to those in this world who had no religion and invited us to join ours, the world would become a better place. Mendy’s talk this Sabbath, was applause worthy.
P.S. The underlying message of Hanukah is freedom of religion. Normative Judaism celebrates concepts rather than the events in the lives of specific people.
December 20, 2008
Parsha Vayeshev
I’ve been thinking about something Mendy has said on several occasions. As best as I can understand this message, it has to do with working against your own basic nature to grow in spirit. It would seem that such growth takes place only when we are acting outside of our comfort zones. This of course presupposes a conscious awareness of our own natures, and a willingness to confront what is lacking in us it for the good. People know what makes them uncomfortable, but leaving the comfort zone for spiritual growth is something that I do not think is generally known or understood. To stretch one’s self, to go beyond one’s self for just that purpose is a path not easily walked.
Mixed in with this is also the idea of self-awareness, an acceptance of your darker places, and a willingness to confront yourself at very basic levels. That takes strength. One of the things I have always liked about Judaism, is that it is a philosophy that recognizes that the person has both animal and spiritual instincts, and both are normal because we are created in the image of G od, and we live in the bodies of creatures called animals. As Jews we know that we are capable of both the heights and the depths. Both are accepted, and what comes to our minds from our animal natures can be accepted as natural and therefore not sinful unless we act on the thought. My take on Judaism teaches that thought is not a sin. Sin comes into the world through action. If thought were a sin, who could stand and live?
Happily, we are given the Torah as the guide to what is acceptable actions and what are not acceptable actions. If we know what is not acceptable, and choose to go against that, that is our right as people with free will, but we must also recognize that we are sinning. Accepting responsibility for what we choose to do is an indication of our integrity level. Everyone has a comfort level, and everyone has darkness within. To recognize both and to act against both speaks to our humanity and to our spiritual aspirations. People with self destructive darkness know exactly what acting on the darkness will get them, and if they act against the darkness, they may be uncomfortable, but they are not going to injure themselves or others. Acting in such a way is responsible if not satisfying. People are not born with darkness or nor are they born with light. People are born neutral, and experience teaches them who they are and what they can expect our of life as far as recognition is concerned. There are those who conclude that they can get their recognition through darkness because growing up, darkness got noticed. Others learned that light will garner recognition. It’s all about recognition. Any recognition is better than no recognition at all. Changing our patterns for recognition is working against our natures and allows growth.
December 27, 2008
Parsha Mikertz
The attached bar mitzvah ritual was written several years ago after I attended a Jewish men’s retreat sponsored by Aytz Chaim. It taught me the importance of ritual and the need for it in our lives. Judaism provides us with that and that’s one of the reasons I like being Jewish. Since then, I’ve done some reading on how boys become men around the world, and I realized that our bar mitzvah tradition is right up there in recognizing the need for such a rite of passage. Yet I think we fall short. Jewish boys need Jewish men to tell them the meaning Judaism. Sometimes this can happen in a classroom, but that only works if the student has ascribed the same power to the teacher as he has to his father and grandfather. What does the average Jewish father actually have to say about Judaism to his young son? We have always been an intellectual people and our bar mitzvah ritual reflects that. Yet there is little mystery in the passing of Jewish knowledge from one generation to another, and it must be passed from men to boys. But who actually does the passing of that knowledge and is it accepted? I think it is the father’s job to pass this wisdom one. I am not anti-feminine. I just feel that there is a time for women to educate their sons and a time for fathers to educate their sons. When I first offered this ritual to a friend for his son’s bar mitzvah, his wife became outraged that she was excluded. She did not understand.
What being a Jew is, does not miraculously descend upon a young man after he is called up, but being told how a Jewish man acts by powerful men in the boy’s life and by men of the community will go a long way in his education. I would have this ritual performed in the vestibule of the mikvah, and then have the young man step into the mikvah and receive his Hebrew name for the second time. Ritual needs to be dramatic and memorable. I am just sharing this ritual with you because I trust you. There are no expectations. As a Jew living in two worlds, I had the pleasure of wishing you and your family a happy and healthy new year for 5769. Now I have the pleasure of wishing you a happy and a healthy new year for 2009. Blessings on you for all the good you do and all the love you have shown.
June 14, 2008
Parsha Beha’alotkha
There are only three holidays in the Torah that mandate that sacrifices be brought to the Temple: Passover, Succoth, and Shavuot. Both Passover and Succoth have their own symbols and blessings associated with each, namely, for Passover, the telling of the story, the sacrifice, and the bitter herb, while Succothhas associated with it the waving of the lulov, and the succah itself. Only Shavuot, possibly the most important holiday on the calendar (if not for the giving of the Law which the holiday commemorates there would be no religion or culture to begin with) there are no symbols or specific mitzvot (actions/blessings) to be used or taken. Of course, the Rabbis questioned this and came up with a remarkable answer. On all other holidays on the Jewish calendar, we do things to honor G od or we do something to satisfy a need in ourselves. I’m not exactly clear about the latter because I can’t take notes. Also, Mendy speaks very fast, and very passionately. So while he is on to some other point, or off into an extended and related tangent, I am trying to absorb and internalize the teaching just made. Therefore, I do not recall the connection and rationalization between what precedes this teaching with what came after it. It may have something to do with not being deterred from the focus of the holiday by the usual symbols and commandments that are part of other holidays that possibly refocus us from the concept underlying the holiday. But what follows is the core of the holiday and very important. The core concept of Shavuot is this: Shavuot is to honor the moment, to appreciate fully the life you have been given, to really see the people around you, and really hear what they are saying to you. It is a moment to be involved with other people spiritually; not only with G od.
I recently saw, “Our Town,” by Thornton Wilder, and realized today that this core concept enshrined in Shavuot is exactly the same concept presented in the third act of this Pulitzer Prize winning play. Emily, the heroine, dies in childbirth and finds herself among the dead up on the hill. In a conversation with them, she discovers that she can return to observe a day in life, but they warn her against the pain and longing she will feel by doing by returning. But she insists and goes back to what she insists is an unimportant day. She is both the girl she was and the spirit of woman who has just died. Initially she is delighted with seeing the things as they were before she became an adult, but then she discovers the helpless and the sadness of life’s reality, and how we do not appreciate each other or even see one another as we move through our lives.
From Act III of the play:
EMILY(in a loud voice to the STAGE MANAGER.) I can’t. I can’t go on. Oh! Oh! It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. (She breaks down sobbing.) I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back-up the hill– to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, good-by, world. Good-by Grover’s Corners...Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking...and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. (She looks toward the STAGE MANAGER and asks abruptly, through her tears) Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?– every, every minute? He tells her that they do not. Perhaps saints and poets, but not regular people.
Later, after returning to her grave, another man, SIMON STIMSON, says, “That’s what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those ...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you ha a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.” For me, one of the wonderful thing about Judaism as a religion is that insists you can’t be ungrateful because of the system of blessings that have been set up to guarantee appreciation. Every moment asks us to recognize our here and now and the blessing that goes with that moment. The berchot system is designed to enhance your life by making you aware that you have a
life. And if you buy into it and you live a truly Jewish life, you cannot help but be grateful. Ungrateful people cannot be happy people, and cannot see or hear what is truly going on in the moment.
June 21, 2008
Parsha Shelah Lekha
Mendy’s teachings this past Shabbat, dealt with the conflict between the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel, both Rabbis of the first century, I think. Both are featured in the Ethics of the Fathers. Mendy started off by asking what happened when a pagan came to Shammai and asked him to explain the Torah standing on one foot. Shammai threw him out of the synagogue. Hillel was asked the same question and responded, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary. Now go and learn.” Two very different responses. (Note: For me, Hillel’s response is right on target, because it teaches that everything in the Torah is geared to decent behavior when it comes to our fellow creatures.)
The story created the mind set for another conflict between the two schools. Shammai said that we are not to think of ourselves as great because we are devout and study because we were created for that purpose. You don’t congratulate someone for not abusing his wife. You are not supposed to abuse your wife. Hillel teaches that if you fail, you are not to be too hard on yourself. One said that you are not to praise yourself for what you have accomplish in your studies, and the other tells you not to be so hard on yourself if you fail [I can only assume with are talking her about study, too]. Again, I cannot fully recall the details and I’m leaving out a great deal because it just goes by so fast, but I came away with the impression that ego and self-engrandizement must not be at the root of a person’s behavior, and self-deprecation and self-pity are also not acceptable. Is there a middle of the road here?
(Note: For me, if you can act well 85% of the time, you’re doing better than most, and this maybe the most honest assessment. Any extreme view regarding behavior, especially religious behavior, will often lead to indecent treatment of people who do not believe what you believe. Ultimately, it could lead to evil in the name of G od.)
If you are a person who is pious so people will look at you and say, “there goes the most pious man in the community,” Shammai says you are missing the point. It would seem from the lesson, that there is a level of honesty and humility one must attain in his relationship with G od and with his community in order to be a truly religious person. Praising yourself for what is expected of you, doesn’t do it.. For me, a G od centered life is reflected in one’s behavior towards others, and not in observance. Nice if you can get both. I’d prefer to be among decent people who will behave well even though they are not observant, than among the most observant people who will behave towards me despicably because I do not follow the law the way they follow the law. Self deprecation, because you have not fallen in line with “the Chumrah of the Week,” (a new rigidity that some feel prove that their piety is greater than your piety) also is not acceptable because the negative feelings engendered might ossify you into non-action and a feeling of inadequacy.
Along these lines there was something said (and I wish I could remember the connection,) that brought me back to something the Rebbe said that has stayed with me and has given me great comfort. He taught, “think of Judaism as a ladder with 613 rungs on it. Do not consider yourself a good or bad Jew based on where you are standing on the ladder, but whether you are ascending or descending.” (Note: I like to think that the Rebbe would have been part of the House of Hillel.)
Mendy skillfully connected the Torah portion this week with the Ethics of the Fathers. by asking a series of questions, none of which I remember. (Note: I love when a Rabbi will teach from the reading platform, but back in junior high school I learned that most teachers, including Rabbis play a game entitled, “Guess What Is In The Teacher’s/Rabbis’ Head.” As a teacher myself, I don’t play that game because it frustrates my students and generates annoyance in them when they are told that they are wrong.) So the story was related about the spies sent to scout out the land. But these spies, the foremost head of the tribes, saw themselves as being so important that they believed that their opinion and their will had to be expressed. It was the ego in each that moved each man to speak. They are referred to as evil, and they forfeited their lives for their actions.
(Note: But that merely confirms for me that the concept of the Yetzer Hara does not mean the evil part of us but the part of us that is our ego and where we feel our sense of our importance. And I for one believe that the ego is absolutely necessary if there to be any forward movement for humanity. Creative people, inventors, artists all say, “Hey, world, I’m here!” I believe this because somewhere in the Talmud it is written that “without the Yetzer Hara a man would never have a child or build a house.”
There is nothing evil in either of those things, but ego is involved in both. A man’s ego demands that he send his genetic material into the next generations so he can live on. It is this psychological imperative which may be very egotistical but certainly not evil. A man builds a house and fills it with stuff as a reflection of who he is and what he has accomplished. It is for his comfort and for others to admire. That is egotistical, not evil. But if a religious Jew believes that the great wealth he has amassed or his status because of his lineage makes him in some way smarter than another or that he should receive more honor because he is a greater contributor, then his ego is running his life and he is missing the point of what his religion should have taught him. Here, Shammai would “get in his face.”
In the middle of this story is a digression where G od tells Moses that in 40 years when the Children of Israel inherit the land, the challah or bread offering to the Kohanim (Priests) must be made. It must also be from the first bread made, not left overs. The teaching is that the people must not think of only of themselves first. They have responsibilities to think of others. This strange inclusion was to remind the people that the spies thought of themselves and not of the ramifications of what their opinions were, nor of the exhortations of Joshua, Caleb, or Moses. There was more, but I’m drawing a blank. I’m glad I was able to remember this much.
June 28, 2008
Parsha Korah
Mendy again began with a teaching from The Ethics of the Fathers which said that a person should pray for the welfare of the government, because without it, “we would devour one another.” The immediate response was that the quote referred to physical safety. Were there is no government, there is anarchy, chaos, etc and no one is safe. That’s the obvious. But Mendy, pointed to a deeper meaning. If I am not mistaken in recalling, I believed he equated the “government” with any powerful individual who takes or is given sway over the lives of others. He asked us to consider what happens when such a person’s ego is so enormous, that he demands the total compliance and subjugation of another who has fallen into his or her power. He asked us to consider what happens to that individual when he is so overwhelmed by another person or governing body so completely, that the individual gives up his own sense of self and becomes diminished in his own estimation that he or she loses the sense of self and becomes totally subordinate to the person in power. Again, as in other drushes, the core concept to be learned is that the ego, if not tamed and brought within the limits of kindness and reason, has the potential for overwhelming and destroying other people.
The Torah portion, as I make the connection, also deals with individuals with poor self images, people whose images were based on years of slavery. Such people are vulnerable and easily brought under the sway of powerful men such as the spies. The people had lived in servitude in Egypt for hundreds of years and had been “swallowed up,” by the power of Egypt, and now, again, they were being “swallowed up” by the power they ascribed to the spies. They would take direction from anyone who promised them immediate delivery on survival. Sadly, they had very short memories, and immediate gratification seemed to be the only way they could stay the fear they felt. These frightened people gave support to powerful men who delivered a bad report. I am sympathetic to them, but they should have been steadfast considering what they had seen for themselves.
Korah, a man of monumental ego, took the opportunity to impose his will on a people devastated from the news that they would have to wander in the desert for forty years. They were in pain, vulnerable, and they were “swallowed up” by Korah. Ironically, Korah is actually swallowed up by the earth, a fitting and just end and one that set the balances right. This idea of being “swallowed up” by people and governments more powerful than ourselves has been happening to us from antiquity. Just citing one example, I give you the “Decree of Omar, ” the seventh century Muslim edict that proclaimed the concept of the “dhimmi.” The dhimmi is either a Christian or a Jew who has not converted to Islam. Because they were considered “People of the Book,” they may or may not have been killed as the pagans were. If left alive, they were permitted to live among Muslims, but were seriously restricted. All their houses of worship had to be hidden, no symbol or book could be sold publicly, a badge of identification had to be worn at all times, no Jew or Christian’s head could be above the head of a Muslim, and a heavy tax was also imposed. To exist in Muslim countries, non-Muslims had to be subservient; be “swallowed up.” And need I say anything about the laws promulgated by the early Church, the Crusades, the Inquisition, etc., etc., etc., that supported murdering us, diminishing us, swallowing us, and keeping us subservient.
Once again, I am forced to question G od’s omniscience based on the Korah story. G od always seems to be angry at the responses to His miracles. And well he should be! I for one would have believed way back in Egypt had I been there. So I can certainly understand His annoyance and frustration with these descendants of Abraham and Sarah for not seeing let alone appreciating what was being done for them. But why doesn’t G od know that this is what their response will be? Moses keeps begging, prodding, cajoling, and using the “what will people say” argument to get G od to relent. This reinforces the idea that you can argue with G od and G od will sometimes mellow his wrath. Still, while he continues to repent His choice of people, He continues assuage Himself with the occasional plague or fiery serpents to dissuade future disbelievers. But it doesn’t seem to work. Why doesn’t He know that this won’t work either? I suspect G od doesn’t know because that is the nature of His gift of free will. If free will is one of the inviolate laws of nature such as gravity, and that the nature of free will is such that it cannot be predetermined, then it stands to reason that even G od does not know what is going to happen despite what we are taught. G od is bound by his own laws as are we. That may challenge the idea that G od is omniscient, but it does explain why G od is reactive and often annoyed. It may also explain why G od responds after the fact than before it in the Torah.. It would seem to me that one of the common themes that moves throughout The Ethics of the Fathers and the Torah, deals with the egos of strong men getting in the way of how they are expected to treat other people.
July 5, 2008
Parsha Hukkat
Mendy explored the three types of Mizvot: the obvious ones that need no explanation, those that need an explanation and are immediately understood once the explanation is given, and those that cannot be logically explained but are acted on because one’s faith is strong enough to accept the commandment with out a rationale. The answer that is given and accepted is that when the Messiah comes, the reason will be revealed and we are to just do it. That’s real faith. The commandment concerning the red heifer falls into the latter category. The red heifer is a very interesting story because it creates a paradox that I think demands to be understood, but Mendy did not ask anyone to explain the paradox. I thought this unusual because he always asks the congregation for input, but I think he demurred this time because the Rabbis themselves are still be in a quandary over this and assign this mystery to the pile of other mysterious commandments that will also be explained after the Messiah arrives.
So here is my take on the story: The ashes of the heifer, when used properly, makes one clean or pure, yet the person who administers the ashes becomes unclean by touching them. This is indeed one of those mitzvots that require pure faith to perform because how can the thing that makes for purity also make one impure?. I look for meaning in what ideas might lie beyond the mitzvot itself. If the ashes are the vehicle that makes you pure again, what can be learned from the fact that it is also the thing that makes the pure person touching it, impure? For me, the concept to be learned underlying the rite is that the solution to any problem may also contain the seeds for another problem and one must be very careful to see the effects of one solution on other elements in play. For example, during the Vietnam War, Agent Orange was introduced to defoliate the trees to reveal where the Viet Cong were. This worked, but Agent Orange also turned out to be a carcinogen that caused the deaths of both Americans and Vietnamese. Thus, a solution to one problem causes a different problem. The Red Heifer Quandary. Another example would be the use of a pesticide to get rid of bugs destroying crops of vegetables. The pesticide works, but the pesticide effects the birds who also eat the crop because the pesticide causes the shells of their eggs become so thin, the chicks die. That’s why DDT is no longer used. It almost wiped out the bald eagle. Again, something to be learned from the red heifer story.
I think this is a valid piece of learning from the Torah, but it would not be accepted as valid by the Rabbunum because I didn’t die eighteen hundred years ago. The Reform Movement gives me permission to think and be creative. Chabad Lubovitich allows me to be spiritual and to wonder at the mysteries of the universe.
July 12, 2008
Parsha Balak
Continuing with the Ethics of the Fathers, Mendy began with a passage that spoke to giving and the different types of people who give. The last type was the person who not only doesn’t give himself, but doesn’t want others to give either. I am not clear on why this person was even included since giving was not part of his life.
I know such resentful and angry people and why they are stingy with their time or their money is a wonder to me, but some have been treated badly in a congregational setting and that is their rationale. They allow the individual experience to encompass the total experience. Of course the attitude of “What have you done for me lately” is no way to keep congregants happy and helpful. I can see these people being angry with synagogue politics and the “chuckum” who abound, but what is also a wonder to me is why they are so angry with Judaism, and cease participating in Jewish causes, or supporting Jewish institutions. The latter are all separate from synagogue politics and should not be a rationale for their parsimonious stance.
The fact that I have received several affronts over the years at the hands of my fellow congregants has not caused me to close my check book, but has caused me not to want to work with adult Jews. I’ve put my energies into working with Jewish kids who rarely disappoint, and those who do, eventually grow up and learn. But Jewish adults who feel they have more to say because they are rich or because they have some power as head of a committee, often take the opportunity to lord it over others because they honestly think their ideas are better because of their money or position. So much for committee work.
Over the years I have been disappointed by board decisions, personally insulted and my efforts discounted by congregants, lied to by a Rabbi, threatened by a president of a congregation, and worst of all, betrayed by a rabbi to whom I was devoted. But none of these people got between me and my Judaism. G od's and Torah's expectations of how people should treat one another l have little to do with organized religious organizations and the people who people them. I merely changed my focus, volunteer for nothing, and help if I am asked to help out. I’m happy to do it, but don’t invite me to be on a long term committee where I will have to deal with Jewish adult egos and be disappointed in how Jews treat one another.
Again, I’m not recalling the transition, but Mendy made a point that for me was the most important awareness of the learning. Mendy told us that the Rebbe looked at all Jews as members of a great family, and accepted each where he or she stood in their Judaism. The Rebbe's quote bears repeating here: “Consider Judaism as a ladder with 613 rungs. Do not consider yourself a good or bad Jew depending on where you are standing on the ladder, but whether you are ascendening or descending.” In effect, this quote and this man gave me permission to accept where I was, see the level as ok, and invited me to continue the climb at my own pace. The Rebbe, in making this statement was saying that we should not loose sight of the forest because of all the trees.
If I recall, this idea of looking at all the people as a whole was one of the teachings to come out of the story of Balaam in this week’s Torah portion. Balaam kept moving from place to place until he could see the entire congregation of Israel spread out before him. They were one. We are all one. Yes, there are stragglers, and nogoodnicks. Yes, there are the petty and the cruel. But which group in the world can boast of their group as totally righteous? But as a whole, we are a people of great worth and worthy of blessing. I have always looked at my fellow Israelites with pride and silent affection just because we are part of the same people with the same G od, and share common values. Yet despite of how I view them, some of my fellow Jews look at me as a “goy.” Sadly, I have encountered Orthodox Jews who do not see me as worthy because I am not like them. Such people give the lie to the concept of Kal Yisroel and do more to hurt our people with their condemnation than help our people with all their piety and rituals.
For me, there is no one correct division of Judaism. All were created by sincere people who were creating vehicles that would move them closer to G od. The more Jews in this world, the better, and if one movement works better and enables you to return to Judaism, I’m in favor of that movement.
The story of Balaam comes late in the sojourn of our ancestors, yet his hatred for the Jewish people is ripe. I was wondering why, and asked Mendy. His response almost suggested that hatred was genetic. I disagree. Hatred is taught by powerful people who give messages to less powerful people, and the less powerful conclude that to have the support of the powerful, they’d better follow suite. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote a song about just that in South Pacific. But Jew hatred goes deeper and begins in Egypt and is revealed at Sinai. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the Talmud states forthrightly that “The Hatred Comes From Sinai.”
If you can understand what happened in Egypt and what happened at Sinai, you get an inkling of why Jew-hatred started in the ancient world. The Jews turned the world and society up side down when they walked out of Egypt. Till that time it was believed by everyone that those in power were meant to be in power and those who were enslaved were meant to be enslaved. This was divinely decreed by their gods, and every ancient society bought into it. Then the Jews and their G od come along and not only bring low a great Pharaoh and his army, but declare to the world that what is doesn’t necessarily have to be. Things can change. Slaves can become free people. Potters and brick layers can become priests and doctors. Nothing is ordained. We were not on a wheel that kept turning. Time moved forward. The Jews changed how time, society, and the world might be viewed. All ancient kings saw this and the ramification to their own little worlds. They came to fear these ragtag people and the fear turned into hate. Baalam was part of that society and liked the status quo.
But the Talmud says that the fear came from Sinai. What happened at Sinai that caused Jew-hatred? What happened was the revelation that there is one true G od who demands that all people, kings included, be moral and obey certain laws of decency. This sought of took the fun out of life as the pagans knew it, and the licentious, pagan pleasures became judged by a higher Supreme Being. The fact that Christianity with it’s Jewish morality became the dominant faith centuries later, further exacerbated the problem, because you can’t be angry with your G od, but you can be angry with the people who posited this G od. Balaam was a product of his world and hated the Israelites for what they were imposing on his happy pagan world.
I was hoping Mendy would talk about one other concept in the Balaam story: the character known as “ha satan.” If I am not mistaken, this “ha satan” is the concept of that which gets in the way to keep you from your purpose. I also believe that this concepts later evolves into Satan, the angel who appears in Job as the accuser, but I am not sure when this actually happens. Somewhere I recall reading that the personification takes hold during the reign of King David but again, I’m not sure. Certainly by the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes, the concept has become a proper noun and ripe for incorporation into Christian theology/mythology. Thus, the accusing angel of Judaism becomes the Devil of Christianity. Don’t you just love midrash?
July 19, 2008
Parsha Pinhas
Mendy was all over the place this Shabbat beginning again with Ethics of the Fathers and ending with the story of Phinneas, a man who was praised for murdering two blasphemers and guaranteed that his descendants would be great men. I don’t recall any comments on this. Still, Mendy was his usual rapid and passionate self, and again I confess I could not follow or remember everything so I’ll be as desultory in my comments as he was with his topics. In fact, there were so many tangents covered, that I started to become overwhelmed by all the words.
One piece of the commentary began with a story of the Bal Shem Tov when he was a student and overheard a conversation between two older students of what they would do to the world if they were G od. One said that he would make the world stricter so people would come to believe, and one said he would make the world a kinder place so people would come to believe. I think “belief” was their objective. When the future Bal Shem Tov was asked by the two what he would do, he replied that he would do nothing because G od had made the world just as it should be. Now this is where it gets a little hazy. I think I remember that the Bal Shem Tov said that the world was in perfect balance and G od made it this way so people would have to search for Him. I think the balance was to be between belief and doubt.
To achieve the balance, G od would not reveal himself as He once did. G od would do something impossible and that is hiding and revealing Himself at intervals so the power of faith and belief is tested constantly. Thus, one may have a glimmer of G od at work in the world and the faith would result. Then, G od would go for long periods of time hiding Himself and faith had to be sustained by that former glimmer. God hides and God reveals himself. It’s a test of faith. To believe in G od when G od is hiding, is true faith. We have the power to believe or not to believe. We are given free will. Despite what goes on in the world, we still believe because there are periodic glimmers of G od at work in the world. It is what sustains our faith. It is so easy to fall into disbelief as more and more of the world goes insane daily. Glimpses of G od’s handiwork and the ensuing faith, despite the actions of humanity, are what keeps the balances. It’s always about keeping your balance. At least that’s what I think he was saying.
It would be helpful if Mendy had a web page were he wrote out the key points of his teachings. Then I could be absolutely sure, and those of us who actually take what he says to heart, would have something to think about and reflect on with certainty.
Somewhere he also spoke of leadership and the most important thing a Rabbi should be able to do. My cynical mind leaped to “schmoozing the wealthy congregants,” but I didn’t say it. Lot’s of people responded, and of course, they could not guess what was going on in the Rabbi’s head. So eventually Mendy said that the most important thing a Rabbi can do is to know what to say to a particular person that will enable him or her to move beyond the place where they are. This procedure may open a Rabbi to ridicule and cries of hypocrisy if one congregant is told one thing and one another, but I can see what he means. Sometimes people need to be told what they don’t want to hear, and sometimes people need to be told what they need to hear and a smart Rabbi can read the person and tell the difference. Another part of the talk dealt with the “Exponent’s” page naming all the presidents of all the local Jewish organization. Mendy pointed out one organization that was clearly targeted at secular Jews. Not only was the question raised as to what was meant by “secular,” but the question was raised as to what was meant by “Jewish.” Also, can one be a secular Jew or is the paradox just too far fetched? A question and answer period followed and no one guessed Mendy’s conclusion as to what makes a Jew, Jewish. Mendy’s answer is that we are each born with a Jewish Nahsumah, or soul and we either strengthen it or we allow it to whither. Still, it is always there and once you are born a Jew, you are always a Jew. Hitler used that teaching against us in his racial policy of “once a Jew, always a Jew.” I have serious reservations about that idea, having people in my own family who were born Jews and deny that they are Jews or do not participate in any aspect of being a Jew. Their “neshumas” are so withered, they have become the universalist nothings they say they are. They claim they are not Jews and do not support Jewish causes or Israel’s existence. Being “Jewish” is unique, because it is the only word that denotes a religious affiliation and an ethnicity at the same time. It may sound paradoxical, but one can be a “secular” Jew and Jewish. It has to do with a disconnect one makes in his mind. The concept of G od is pervasive in Judaism, that aspect of “Jewish” that pertains only to the religion. Judaism is composed of four core concepts: G od, Torah,Israel, the people, and Choseness. Peoplehood speaks more to the secular piece of the puzzle because it refers to being part of a separate and distinct people with a evolving culture all its own that can exist separate from G od, Torah, and Chosennesss. Secular Jews cling to the latter aspect of “Jewish” rather than the former. A secular Jew will walk into a synagogue or be a member of a synagogue because that is where he feels comfortable and feels part of a community of people who share the same values and aspiration. The fact that those values and aspirations come from the Torah and ultimately, G od, does not factor in. Secular Jews feel disconnected from G od. Perhaps it is because G od has hidden from them at crucial moments in their lives. Perhaps they find the concept illogical. Secular Jews may be too cerebral to experience the spiritual. Their educations and focus have always been rational and observable things. But who can say? A secular Jew can read words in a prayer book, but they are just words. He or she may be there for the people who around him and the comfort such a community brings.
Now from where I sit, being Jewish is ultimately a decision and a deeply personal decision. And if anyone wants to be part of the Jewish people, I say “welcome,” and I wouldn’t send them away three times. That formula is a holdover from when it was dangerous to convert. We are pass those times. I also think that wanting to become a Jew because you love a Jew is a very valid reason if the Jew you love is a serious Jew and not just a secular Jew. For people to love Judaism, they have to live Judaism, and secular Jews who have removed G od and Torah from their plates, leaving the chicken soup and chopped liver are not people who will strengthen a convert. I have found that converts are more Jewish than the Jews they married because it was a choice they made as adults. The more people we can get, the better the world will be, and the better off we will be because the more Jews, the less Jew-hatred. Besides, if your daughter or son chooses to become Jewish, the non-Jewish family may not feel as great an antipathy towards us. As I said before, a Jew by choice, as I have seen them, are sometimes more committed to Judaism than Jews born to a Jewish mother. That’s why I support patrilineal descent in addition to the traditional way one becomes a Jew. If you are raised to believe you are a Jew, act as a moral human being, believe in G od, participate in Jewish causes and rituals, you are a Jew and it makes no difference how you got to be that way. It’s the outcome that counts. Of course, Orthodoxy denies any procedure or rite that goes against what it believes is the “truth” and the only way which is their way. And the result is, at least in Israel, that more people claim to be “secular” than observant. I for one would be glad to see the doors open wide, and not just to lapsed Jews. There are millions of people out there with no religion and we have kept our “light” hidden for centuries. Of course this was forced upon us by the early church who decreed that any Jew caught converting a pagan or a Christian to Judaism was to be put to death along with the convert. So we stopped being a “light unto the nations.” That was very sad, because the world needs a lot of people believing in a faith where you don’t have to abdicate reason and you don’t have to accept the doctrine of hating others because they worship G od in a way that is different from yours. Of course, I think as a Reform Jew, and I am viewed as a heretic for my opinions in Orthodox circles. Chabad is wonderful in that it seeks to bring Jews back to Judaism. Reform is wonderful because, among other things, it seeks to reach out to non-Jewish spouses and invite them to convert and become part of our people. A Reform conversion is as valid as an Orthodox conversion, and a viable choice for people who freely choose to become part of us and do not wish to follow all the traditional ways. Alternatives are needed. What we also need is a movement like the Mormons who make the heroic effort to bring people into the faith who were not born to the faith. That was one of our charges centuries ago. It’s time to get back to the task, and it can be done by all denominations of Judaism because all seek to bring people closer to G od, and no one effort is more authentic than another.
August 23, 2008
Parsha Ekev
Mendy opened his drush with a story about a friend who said, “I don’t understand my wife.” I did something that hurt her, I apologized, we went out to a wonderful dinner, and the next day she was all over me for what I did. Mendy asked us what we would have told the man. I thought of referring to the book, Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, but I didn’t give that as an answer because it was glib and I didn’t know how an Orthodox congregation would respond with references to pagan gods on Shabbos. So I suggested that he ask her, “How long she was going to be angry with him?” Mendy said that if he said that, she would say, “forever.” Because there is no time to explain that my intention was for the man to connect with the part of the angry spouse that was free of the anger, and since Mendy didn't ask why I said that, I demurred and listened for other responses regretting that I had gotten sucked in by the topic and could not guess the correct answer. What I could not explain to Mendy is that anger is a secondary response from two places in the human psyche: the “Child” in us or the “Parent” in us. If his wife yelled back, “forever” she was still operating out of her “Child.” If she said sternly that “it will take me a very long time to forgive you,” she was responding from her “Parent”. Ultimately, this man has to connect with his wife’s “Adult,” the only place where there is unemotional reason, and ask her to think about a time reference which would put her in a very different place. But if her answers were either of the above, she was not ready to discuss the matter. Of course, he might have just said, “What I did caused you a great deal of pain, didn’t it?” That would have opened up the conversation because she would recognize that he was hearing what was underneath the anger. But for most spouses, reading the feelings underneath the message is not natural and must be taught.
But the bima is not the venue to walk through this process. Mendy referred again to the Ethics of the Fathers where we are taught not to try to comfort someone who is in a rage. He later clarified the matter when one congregant asked if the Rabbis of the Talmud were suggesting that you just walk away at that moment. Mendy encouraged an “I’m sorry” first before backing off.
My take on this was that the key thing that Mendy was talking about was that unless someone hears the pain underneath the message of anger, the issue will never be resolved. Anger is a secondary emotion, and we frequently share the anger without stating the deeper feelings that cause the anger. Few are taught or give themselves permission to express honest feelings at the moment they are feeling them. But I maintain that in order to get past that anger, you have to connect with the “Adult” part of the angry person’s personality so they can hear your statement in their rational mind and can come out of their “Parent” or “Child.” Only in the “Adult” can you talk about feelings without feeling them. That’s the place where rational discourse takes place as well as negotiation. Certainly, there needs to be a “cooling off” period between the initial “I’m sorry” and the conversations between two “Adults.” I think that was Mendy’s key point. If this conversation never takes place, it is possible that this anger will fester and be brought up for years after the initial infraction. When that happens, we know the issue has never been resolved and forgiveness and getting past the pain has never happened. Such anger is like collecting stamps in a book and when you have enough pain and annoyances, you can cash them in on a well deserved explosion or an accusation much the way people used to save green or King Korn stamps books for a gift. Here, the gift is the guilt free explosion. After all, the person has been bearing up under all the sights, pains, and hurts, but has been collecting anger stamps all the while. Perhaps this person has not expressed his or her feelings to the spouse, preferring to feel the hurt while registering the anger. Perhaps pain and the ensuing anger are familiar feelings and is psychologically comforting. Such a phenomena exists outside a person’s awareness. Any spouse who continues, year after year to pull up old hurts, painful events, and inadequacies for hurling at the spouse, has unresolved issues that causes continuing pain to a spouse who may be at best unaware and at worse, totally ignorant of the workings and feelings of the person with whom he or she is living. If cashing in on the same anger “stamp collection” continues year after year, the big prize may be a divorce that will seem totally justified because of what the spouse has suffered that was real or imagined..
I lost the connection between the Ethics and the Torah portion. The teaching for the Torah portion I think dealt with blessings and how G od responds to us collectively and individually. Since all people are different, the rewards for following the mitzvot are also different and depends on the needs of the individual. I for one consider my skills as a teacher a blessings and I have never gotten up one day of my life regretting my professional choice. I feel blessed. There are also collective blessings if the people follow the commandments, but because not everyone follows the commandments, all blessing do not flow on to the collective group. There are those who are given action “A” to perform and those who are given action “B” while some are given “C”. Collectively, if everyone does his or her part, the blessings will come. Here I lost the connection because history intruded, my critical self took over, and Mendy’s comments faded. In my own reverie, I asked myself, “If someone is righteous and does the mitzvot required of him to the best of his ability, why might he or she still suffer?” We see this all the time. It’s the eternal question in Job. The only response to this paradoxical irony I could come up with is that G od deals with us as a collective, and a promised remnant will always be saved. This led me to conclude that some tzadicks aren’t in a place where the remnant that is being saved is located. This collective saving also causes me confusion with this concept of individual blessings. So I continue to be confused while not being satisfied with my own answer. I can go with, “We just don’t know.” Do you have a better response?
September, 2008
Mendy started with a statement that we would not be studying from the Ethics of the Fathers because he may have lost track and covered more than he was supposed to cover. I am confused. If something is of such value and worthy of study, why put a limit on it? By the way, I did purchase my own copy of Ethics. I couldn’t believe that in my library, I couldn’t find a copy.
Mendy did begin by talking about his childhood and described a child who was creative, playful, disruptive, inquisitive, and bored in school. I identified fully. He did say that he had created an alias and he would use the name of his alter ego whenever he was caught by someone who did not know him. This was so he would not bring shame to his family. It seems everyone knew his father.
Mendy probably does not know the expression, “Caesar’s wife.” Simply put, it means that anyone who is closely associated with a well known person, does not have the luxury of bringing shame to that person. Anyone who is “Caesar’s wife” must not bring shame to Caesar. In effect, they must behave to a higher standard. Mendy knew that he carried an honorable name. This got me to thinking about the obligation that children have to their parents to behave well. It also got me to thinking about religious people who do not behave well. This is my point. When a person dons a kippah or black hat and wraps himself in the aura of chassid or serious Jew, that person to the world is in effect a representative of G od and of Judaism. They are “Caesar’s Wife” wherever they go, and do not have the option of behaving badly. Right now I am thinking of the Aggirprocessor people and the numerous laws they broke. Their behavior reinforces negative stereotypes of Jews in business. They, especially because they are Orthodox, should adhere to a higher power, and they only had to review the laws in the Torah regarding honesty in trade and the treatment of workers to see the damage they were doing. And of course, there is my former Rabbi who wrapped himself in a tallit and betrayed and devastated his community. Again, Jews who chose to overtly identify themselves as serious Jews are all “Caesar’s Wife” when it comes to the outside world, only in their case, G od is Caesar. And this brought me to another thought about the second commandment. No one knows G od’s name, so it really cannot be taken in vain, so it has come to mean referring to G od when swearing an oath or just swearing. So swearing using the word “ G od” has become associated with breaking the second commandment. So serious Jews don’t swear using the word “G od.” Fine! But what about behavior? When you wrap yourself overtly in your religion and do something despicable, aren’t you giving G od a bad name. So I think people who are overtly religious and aspire to higher plains of religious practice and spirituality and still act despicably, are breaking the second commandment. They are giving the lie to G od’s expectations for decency. What do you think?.
September 21, 2008 through October 30, 2008
Slichot through Rosh Hashonah,
First, a joke: A Cabbalist walks over to a kosher hot dog vender and says, “Make me one with everything.” OK, so it’s not a real knee slapper, and it’s humor rests in some prior knowledge as to what a cabalist is and the cabalist’s effort to become unified with G od. But for those who do have that understanding, it’s worthy of a smile or at least a smerk.
So I learned that Cabalah is the search for oneness with God, and I can relate to that because I’ve been searching for that oneness since I lost it back in the fifties. When I was young, I just knew that G od existed and I could feel the Presence all around me, especially in the night sky and in the rustling of autumn leaves. Who knew that I felt daily what Cabbalist ache to experience through study. But like the story that says we knew the entire Torah before we were born, I, too, lost the direct connection with G od when I was in my late teens. I re-glimpsed it when I went to college and read Wordsworth’s “Ode to Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” I literally had tears in my eyes because it so beautifully gave expression to the feelings of spiritual loss and emptiness that I was feeling and so beautifully gave expression to the thought that what was once, must always be. I also realized that I was not alone in my loneliness and that others had experienced the same loss. But such feelings and awarenesses are not expressed to fraternity brothers so I kept my silence except for speaking to one professor, Marjore Coogan, who told me that I was fortunate to have experienced it for so long. That’s when I decided to change my major to English literature. The poem tells us that our “birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.” It tells us that “the soul that rises with us, our life’s star, hath elsewhere had its setting...not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from G od who is our home.” This is all very Cabalistic and it was written by the father of English Romanticism who was steeped in Pantheism and possibly, knew of Spinoza’s who also said that everything in nature was G od. The poem continues by saying that “shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy, but he beholds the light and whence it flows. He sees it in his joy.” So like the Bal Shem Tov who lived a world away from the Lake County in England, we find that the light from G od shines best at our joyous moments. Therefore, for me, at some spiritual level, the Cabalists, Wordsworth, Spinoza, and the Bal Shem Tov share a degree of understanding of what true spirituality is. This gives me a sense of well being, because I, too, have thought and felt such things and I like the company in which I find myself. I also like the idea that I can see such connections among giants. I am happy with my education and happy that I can still remember enough of it to see similarities. I think it was Mendy who taught that four Rabbis went into the pardis or garden. The garden is “Spirituality or Cabbalah. Only Akiva came out whole and sane. The other three met tragedy. One became an apostate, one went insane, and one committed suicide. Reason? Only Akiva went in with the intention of truly encountering God while the others went in with the intention of self-engrandizement. Again, the ego must be kept under control or it will destroy us. I sat with another Chabad Rabbi in Margat who was talking about why people show up in shul. He mentioned three thing: love of God and the need to pray, fear, and Jewish guilt. I found his idea regarding the source of guilt, especially where Judaism is concerned, comes from the inborn knowledge that we each have a G od given soul. Since every soul needs to be fed (spirituality is food for the soul), the soul needs to connect with G od. If it does not, the yearning that the soul feels produces guilt. The soul is saying, “I’m here. I want to connect.” Attendance at the high holiday services assuages the soul. Guilt is an opportunity to make ourselves better. This Rabbi Rappaport spoke of something called “tanya” or two levels of love and fear. The lower level of fear is G od punishing us. The lower level of love is “I’ll do it and get something.” He said we need both, but I can’t recall why. He also spoke of hell or gehenna. He never mentioned shoel, and I didn’t ask because I couldn’t think of the term. He said that the objective of going to Heaven is for our soul to reconnect with G od, but before we can do this, every soul needs to be cleansed. Gehenna is this cleansing process. It is a process of revelation. It is painful and healing. Some are in pain more than others because of their behavior. The soul is purified for eleven months and thus we say kaddish for eleven months. Tradition teaches that saying kaddish enables the soul to climb higher. But for the truly evil, they are not allowed into Gehenna. They experience Kafakella. That is where the demons that this person created on earth chases and torments them from one place to the other. (The concept is very similar to the Greek Furies who pursue the evil doer.)Human beings are put on this earth, given free will, and asked to make this world a better place.(Tikun Olam) Our life has a purpose. Everyone goes to heaven eventually, and everyone goes to gehenna. Only the truly evil do not. Reincarnation: There are mitzvot that we must perform while we are on earth. If we do not, we come back to perform them. Some have more to perform and some fewer. Our return is really a way of perfecting our souls. Perhaps we do this to get it right. Once that is achieved, heaven awaits. Heaven is experiencing G od and infinity. Once you’ve lived your life and have been to gehenna, you are assigned a space in heaven. The only way to elevate a soul in heaven is for those who live to do good works in the name of that person. Only down here can we make a difference. The Jewish concept is that the action is on earth. The goal is to bring in the era of the Messiah where heaven and earth merge.
Personally, I’m not buying into this concept of the afterlife. I recognize the need for it because the nature of the human ego is that it cannot conceive of a time when it will not exist. But it goes against my grain to accept the idea that souls rise from one heaven to a higher level based on good deeds done in that person’s name. What of all the souls who do not have people saying kaddish for them or are not even remembered.
Someone once told me that the heaven you believed in is the one you will go to. So I have created my own heaven, and if anyone is interested in it, you can ask me. But I tell you that it is composed of the best that this world has offered us since the beginning of civilization and only the people I like are invited in.
One lesson that Mendy taught from the Ethics of the Fathers was based on the teaching regarding who should be rewarded and praised. He used education as an example, and the lesson was that the one in the class who has the farthest to go is the one who should be praised for his or her slight achievements. They were not granted the portion of being academically astute. For those who were granted that portion, achievement is expected. Chaim Potok explored a similar theme in The Chosen only here the Rabbi’s son was ignored by his father because the son had an ego that was potentially too great because of his brilliance. My problem as a teacher is that though one child is endowed with great ability, that child also need praise for his or her achievements. Recognition is a hunger, just as food is, and bright children, if they are ignored, will act out to get attention which is often negative. Any attention is better than no attention at all. I believe Mendy was given a great academic and spiritual portion, and because he was a very bright, very inquisitive and a very spunky kid of whom great things were expected, I bet he chose to get his attention by being a noodnick. Perhaps his choice was a response to the burden of his yichchas ( Jewish pedigree).
Mendy’s talk on the second day of Rosh Hashonah dealt with the sacrifice of Isaac. I have some very intense feelings about this tale, but will not share them now. Mendy’s point was that a man was being tested. Abraham could have been told to sacrifice his son before his people to demonstrate the depth of his faith, but he was told to take a three day trip and to perform the act in a place where no one would see. The question is why? I think the answer is that we each are tested, and the test of our true natures comes when we are tested alone with out the encumbrances of society. Who we really are is revealed in private with no one but G od watching. I know I am not recalling the entire truth of the lesson. That’s why I wish Mendy would post the jist of his comments on line. I can’t take notes and my memory tends to fail. A joyous year.
October 22, 2008
Simchat Torah
This is the first year I did not attend M’kor services for any of the holidays following Yom Kippur. I could say that something is happening, but that might sound a bit dramatic. I can best explain it by referencing the two sermons delivered on Rosh Hashonah at M’kor and at Chabad. If the holidays are to be taken seriously, there should be some sort of call to spiritual awakening on a very personal level. It should be a moment when my soul is asked to interface with its Creator. That’s what I need my Rabbi to address on Rosh Hashonah. At M’kor, Rabbi Barry spoke brilliantly of the need to appreciate diversity in America. He conjured up the turbulent 60's and the legacy of Martin Luther King. Jr. He was articulate, elegant and it left me with the definite feeling that I had just experienced a lyrical pean to the democratic party. I later learned that I was not alone in my assessment. It was a moving speech for a civil rights rally, but it wasn’t what I needed for a better connection with the infinite. While the call to social action, one of the pillars upon which Judaism rests is important, I personally feel should better have been left to a sermon given at another time. So the second day, I went to Chabad, and Rabbi Mendy spoke about Abraham taking Isaac off on a three day trip and why he was instructed to perform the sacrifice where no one would be able to see or measure the patriarch’s devotion to G od. I understood this teaching to mean that we reveal who we truly are when we are alone with G od and not burdened by social expectations or judgment from without.. This was a meaningful lesson and while it did not evoke the turbulent 60's I’d like to forget, it was what my soul and intellect needed.
I am finding at Chabad something I have not found at M’kor in the twenty-five years I’ve belonged there and it has nothing to do with the people at either place. My support group and my dearest friends are at M’kor, and I am tremendously proud of M’kor’s philosophy that not only the Jewish world needs to be made whole, but wider world needs attention, too. I honor M’kor’s outreach into the non-Jewish community in order to raise the awareness level of the wider community as to who Jews are and what they value. The social action programs at M’kor are beyond those of any synagogue in the area and I’m proud to be associated with this organization. Certainly, there I people there I avoid because I neither like nor respect their opinions or extreme liberalism, but people with whom you’d prefer not associating can be found in other synagogues as well.
I have met very nice people at Chabad, and I have also met a few people there whose responses to certain items in conversations during kiddish discussions revealed that they were condescending of other Jewish visions, and closed to any ideas that were not politically conservative. But I have learned to look at all Jews as part of one family, and in every family, there are members you don’t particularly like or with whom you don't agree, but you still invite them to the simcha.
What I am saying is that the comfort I feel at Chabad comes from the sound of a service that is chanted in Hebrew that seems to seep into my soul. Perhaps it is the hum of sincere faith, and there are times I will stop reading and just allow the sound to engulf me and warm me. And it’s not only the sound of Jacque’s chanting or the diverse off key murmerings of the men around me. It’s seeing Albert put his tallit over his Adam's head and bless him. It’s seeing men rise to congratulate those who have had honors, and those receiving the brief comments kissing their hands after each handshake. It’s seeing Sephardic men sincerely greet others by kissing them on both cheeks. It seeing men dress to honor the place where they are, and the best dressed of them all, Nate, standing at the reader’s platform in the back totally involved in his devotion. It’s seeing men raise their tallis draped hands in unison when the Torah is lifted. And I am always happy to be greeted by Evan, and I take enormous pleasure watching Mendy’s eyes shine with pride whenever Lazer davens or when he invites all his children under his talit. I look forward to listening to Michael’s high pitched voice soaring above all the others. I feel good when Mendy speaks because I know his spiritual resolve and his ability to inspire, and I whether I re-experience G od as I knew G od as a younger person, I can at least connect to G od through Mendy’s passion.
But most of all, "my heart leaps up" when I see those beautiful little children clinging to their father’s and then sliding onto their grandfather’s laps, while others run around or lay on the floor playing with action figurines. Their screeches and giggles are their own kind of prayers, for these little souls are there being tuned to hear the same sounds that I hear, and they are comfortable from birth with both the language and with the sounds. It’s this transfer of soul-sounds at Chabad that gives me some assurance that from generation to generation, Jews will continue.
These are reasons why I attend. I feel good when I am among these people even though I know we shall never become friends. And yes, I feel good when just reading the Torah and the commentaries made by my ancestors.
G od and I have issues, and I doubt if they will ever be resolved. Perhaps the doubts and incredulity are what makes the search for a relationship with G od meaningful. Perhaps it is the journey that is the relationship. There are many ideas I read in the traditional service I cannot accept because of the reality of the world and the history of my people, but I take pleasure in the sound that the words make in the mouths of others. Perhaps it is through the absolute faith of others that I will begin to come to terms with my own. Till that time, I will content myself with the idea that what I once felt of G od directly is still part of my life, and though those very real feelings faded, those feelings were very real and the loss is still felt. Perhaps I am too reluctant to suspend disbelief. Perhaps I need to let go of my experience and education. Perhaps I need to let go of myself. But what will I be if I let go? I am my education and my experiences. The risk may be too great, so for now, I will content myself with the lines: “...we will grieve not, rather find, strength in what remains behind. In the primal sympathy, Of having been, must ever be. In the soothing thoughts that spring, Out of human suffering, In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind...”
October 29, 2008
Parsha Bareshit
Mendy was giving an explanation about the creation of Adam and why he needed a helper. It was very interesting, but filled with so many tangents, that I lost track of the jist of his talk. One thing he said did stick and it was very meaningful. The key image he used about us as individuals and as Adam as an individual was that each of us is a puzzle part, but we do not see our value until we see the whole puzzle picture. We have to see ourselves as a piece of the whole. It would seem that seeing the whole when you are just a piece is an impossibility, since you are inside the box with all the other pieces and the picture of the whole is on the outside of the box. So life becomes a series of hits and misses as you try to see which part of you fits in with which part of someone else. I guess you continue doing this until enough of a picture is formed that you can begin to see yourself as part of a whole. Key to this is seeing ourselves in relation to other people. It took me back to my college days when I first read the following written by the English poet, John Donne. “All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated “... No man is an island entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less...Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” We know that a bottle of water is made up of billions of drops, but we see it as water, not the individual drop. This idea of seeing ourselves as part of the totality is G od’s objective for us, and experiencing this totality of all life as connected and as one is what the Messiah times will be like.
For me, Live Aid, back in the eighties, was a glimpse of it Under the leadership of Bob Geldoff, the world came together to feed the hungry. It was a beautiful picture. In effect, the idea that Mendy is talking about is the same vision that Cezanne, the great French Impressionist, was after and achieved in his later paintings. All elements, sky, earth, water, buildings etc., are all composed of the same forms and colors, and while you can see the distinctions, the overriding impression is that everything is one with everything else and relates to everything else. I think that the key lesson Mendy was teaching was this: One must, in some way spiritually dissolve into the world in order to truly embrace humanity and become one with the universe. I think we sense this whenever we loose ourselves in another’s pain or joy to feel true empathy with another human being or with humanity. That is an ideal, but an ideal that cannot be reached or at least maintained for an extended period of time. For an individual to embrace the world, become one with it and therefore one with G od, and empathize with the needs and pain in this world, an individual would have to struggle with maintaining his or her individual identity. Total selflessness would be total sacrifice and total destruction. Sacrifice of the self to that extent is unhealthy even if it is godly. If that is the expectation of the Messianic times, I think we shall only glimpse it as we did with Live Aid, and if that is the truth, I therefore must conclude that good people, in small or large groups, who are empathizing and doing something to make the world a better place, are the Messiah. The best we can hope for is to become part of such a group to experience what it is like to become one with others for tikkun olam.
Now as far as an answer as to why G od created a single being initially who was hermaphraditic and then had a change of heart is anybody’s guess. (Throughout the Torah, G od often regrets His initial decisions). Frankly I am somewhat confused that after Mendy spoke of this unisex being, I then re-read that Adam and Eve were created as separate beings simultaneously in one part, and soon after I re-read that Adam was created from dust in another section. Either these events are compilations of several literary traditions put together, or G od was feeling his way because he was very new at this game. That I can appreciate. Mendy said something that a successful marriages should be stressed from time to time and that no marriage should be perfect because then there is no challenge or opportunity to grow. Well, Adam, Eve, and G od were all very stressed out in the garden and everyone did grow. Adam and Eve learned that what might be an innocent and seemingly minor infraction can be greeted with an outrageous and unfair response from the parental unit. And G od grew in His knowledge that if you leave children on their own and expect them to do the right thing just because you said so, you will be disappointed.
October 25, 2008
The whole creation story raises a question that Mendy might have addressed and I wasn’t keeping up because I was trying to process the relationship thing. Why would En Sof, the name given to the Eternal Cosmic Mind and Process, bother with creating in the first place? Now Julian Huxley wrote that “Man is that part of reality, through which and by which the Cosmic Process has learned to apprehend itself.” I think of En Sof as the Cosmic Process. My leap of faith is that the Cosmic Process, in addition to being the creative force in the universe, must, at some level, also be sentient. That’s the leap of faith I must make in order to believe.
So why would this sentient, non-corporeal Being choose to create life on this little blue dot in this endless universe? I think there are two reasons: He was curious to experience the physical world through a physical manifestation of Himself, and secondly, we are an experiment in free will and the reason that He remains interested in us is that he has absolutely no idea what we will do next. But since we are each aspects of His spirit, and we are all made of the same stuff as are the stars and every other thing in the universe, we are all connected and all one. (Again, it's that basic unity theme of everything in the world being connected.) So G od learns through that aspect within us and each of us brings to Him a totally unique experience. Thus, a totally spiritual Being experiences living in a physical world through his creations. But how did that inclination to move towards Unity come into us? How did G od get into us? Why is the idea that we see unity with other human beings and with nature, one of the great philosophical impulses that seeks and finds unity in expressions in art, scientific theories, literature, religion, and psychology? Could it be that our built into our makeup is this inclination to move towards unity with one another and with nature since we come out of the Perfect Unity that created everything? Could this inclination to merge as one and see all as one come from the fact that at one time we were all one? Mysticism teaches that En Sof withdrew so the universe would be created. That would leave a void. What if En Sof itself exploded and not the vessels. That would explain why everything in creation is composed of the same elements, and why we seek the original Unity. What if we ourselves are all those sparks flying around trying to come together again to make the En Sof whole again and we glimpse the Unity in meaningful efforts and our understanding of nature as one?. Is this our instinctive inner most motivation? This movement towards unity begins with our ourselves trying to achieve self-awareness. Then we seek unity with our families, then spouses, children, and then extends into our community and the works we do. When we do this fully, in good cheer, and feeling good about ourselves and others, we are glimpsing Messianic times. DilemmaIf there is no sentient Being but only Process, then what is the authority behind moral law? If there is a sentient Being as the authority behind creation and moral law, the by what right can we disobey?
November 1, 2008
Parsha Noah
This Shabbat, Mendy spoke of Noah. Too much to process, so the one thing I took away was that Noah was considered a failure by our Rabbis because he did not go out into the world and bring his neighbors to righteous behavior. We need to do this as Jews. We need to proudly assert who we are. We need to take back our original mandate of “being a light unto the nations,” for that is indeed what the Prophet Isaiah told us our mission on earth really was. Prior to the last two millennia, we were a proselytizing faith and we were doing a good job of bringing the pagans over to Judaism. But after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and had to deligitimitize us because you can’t have two correct faiths in one place, the church fathers past legislation stating that any Jew caught converting a pagan or a Christian to Judaism was to be killed along with the convert. That took the wind out of our sails, and we had to give up a piece of our core mission. Of course, Tikkun Olam, the second part of our core mission on earth has held, and we have done wonderful things on our journey through the centuries.But back to Noah. For some reason, Noah is condemned for planting a vineyard and getting drunk. Well from where I sit, I’d have a little more compassion on this man. Had I seen the entire world drown, and everything familiar suddenly disappear, I’d be a little traumatized also and need a drink. And don’t forget being locked up in that dark boat with all those stinking animals. Let’s have a little rachmunis on this guy. So he gets drunk and is found naked. His son, Ham, reports to his brothers that his father is naked and drunk and they dutifully and respectfully cover him. But the next thing these same noble brothers do is to bring to Noah this evil report which generates a terrible curse on their brother Ham and his descendants. This curse is as over the top as was G od’s curse on Eve and Adam. None of them deserved what they got for their behaviors. Ham is made to be the villain, but is he the villain because he will be the progenitor of the Cananites, and the Cananites will ultimately have to be displaced and the justification for this displacement is supported by the fact that they are descendant from an evil person. Is this political? I’m thinking this because Adam and Eve had Seth, because it seems to me that for us to be descendant from Cain is to be descendant from a murderer and the Chosen People should not be descended from a murder. Those who antagonized and tormented us are always descended from Cain. Is this also political? Did the men who ultimately wrote down the version of the Torah that we have take some liberties to justify past and future events? People do things like that. Look at the liberties taken by those who codified the Christian Testament. Lies were told about Jews to justify what they would ultimately to do us to prove that we had lost G od’s favor.
November 8, 2008
Parsaha Lekh Lakha
Mendy began by speaking about the roles we play in our daily lives and whether or not we can keep them separate. He spoke of his role as a father, a husband, a rabbi, a child, and as a sibling. He did not speak of himself as a friend. That got me thinking about the roles we all play, and it also got me thinking of the appropriateness of our behavior as we play those roles.
Years ago I learned about the three basic levels of personality each of us has within that we present to the world as we play the daily roles we need to play: There is the playful Child and the crazy Child within us, the nourishing or critical Parent within us, and the analytical Adult. Only the Adult in us does not feel. Only the Adult in us is dispassionate and can monitor the behavior of the other two levels. Each of these three levels of personality is vitally important. You don’t want your surgeon in his Child when he is operating on you, you don’t want your spouse in his or her critical Parent or Adult when you need a hug or want to make love, (Making love is done from the Child in us) but you do want your flight attendant to be in his or her nurturing Parent as much as you want the pilot in his Adult. It’s what is appropriate at the particular moment that counts. Biological adults in the role of parent must be in their Child if they are to giggle and tickle their own kids on a Sunday morning when the kids climb into bed. Child-Child transactions are the most fun.
Note: ( It is sad for me to see a biological child with not enough Child but with an over abundance of critical Parent or Adult. I met a few like this at the yeshiva. They were so into their judgmental Parent that they lost their Child. Generally, I did not care for these kids. Give me a spunky, creative Child any day. I would have liked Mendy had he been a student in my class. You can still see the spunky Child in his eyes.)
Mendy recounted how he went home and told his children that he was under a lot of pressure and needed their cooperation. His Adult was trying to connect with his children’s Adults in order for them to hear his need. Of course, he may have been coming from his Child in the request, trying to connect with the nurturing Parent in his children, but only he would know that. Only we really know “where we are coming from.” I don’t know how his children responded. I hope they heard him. Sometimes the Child in us even looks to the nourishing Parent for understanding and support from our own biological children who are always in the role of the child. We do this especially when we are desperate for understanding and nourishment.
Religion is a Parent thing, and basically G od moves between nurturing Parent and critical Parent. G od is the paragon of both. Blessings are from the nurturing side of G od, and the curses are from the critical side. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah were very critical Parent reactions. G od making man in his own image and clothing them after cursing Adam and Eve are nurturing Parent behaviors. G od is always in the role of G od and appears always to operate out of His Parent. Occasionally, He will operate out of His Adult as exemplified by his negotiation with Abraham regarding the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and when He establishes His covenant with our ancestors. I think f G od does operate out of His Child, and I’m sorry to say that it might be out of His crazy Child, because some of His responses are really over the top and. It is sometime difficult to know, because the crazy Child is often like the crazy Parent or critical Parent. Again, only an honest patient and a trained therapist would be able to decide the truth.
While G od was put on trial at Auschwitz, I doubt if His ever been put on a therapist’s couch. It would make an interesting play. The Parent in us is the repository of religion and culture. We go to a Rabbi for Parental guidance. They listen from their Adults, analyze, review the Parental messages in their own heads, and give parental advise based upon their educations. Right and wrong are Parental judgments. Religion teaches that the eternal Parent sits in judgment over everything we do, and during the high holidays, we are cast in the role of children even though we are biological adults. We speak to G od’s Parent from our Child. It’s a parallel transaction that goes on indefinitely. When our people do not behave as Go d demands, we have here a crossed transaction such as we had in the Garden of Eden. But rather than G od going into His Adult and analyzing what happened and whether He should have been clearer in His instructions and clearer in explaining what “death” meant, G od reacted from his critical (and perhaps His crazy Child) Parent and cursed them and the earth. Eventually, G od’s Adult does struggle to the fore and He regrets what He has done and makes amends with humanity as He did with the flood, but it’s a little too late for His first kids who now suffer pain and sweat, and for those who died in the deluge. This was really an interesting exercise.
Mendy spoke of mountains and asked why Sinai was less important than Mt. Moriah. At Sinai we learned and were passive. At Moriah we committed as a people to G od.
There was a tragedy in India were a Chabad rabbi, his wife, and several visitors were murdered by Muslim terrorists. The question raised was “Why go out into a place that is dangerous to teach?” Mendy said that we are to “Throw light into the dark places” and he recounted the tale where Jacob finds a well in the middle of nowhere, and the shepherds have to wait until everyone is there to move the rock. They waste the day. Chabad takes this story and builds a rational for their world wide effort. It is easy in places where there are many of you, but the challenge is when you go to places in the wilderness to bring yiddishkeit and the word of God. “Be a light unto the nations” was our charge and the only way you can do that is to go among the nations and bring the light.
When darkness comes upon us or the people, bring the light back to the world by lighting sabbath candles, doing mitzvot, gathering family and friends in joy and modeling righteous behavior. Build something. Throw light at the darkness.
Three things to do when confronting tragedy:
1.- Do not ask why? There is no answer. Chalenge God to live up to the justice and mercy that he demands of us
.2. Be silent. We cannot understand, and we cannot speak to a bleeding heart. There is no immediate comfort.
3. We must channel our outrage into a passion for the good. Negative feelings are the potent fuel for creativity. Channel the anger to goodness. Take all feelings and convert them to action. Do mitzvot. Hurl light at the darkness. Do this is the memory of those who have been slain so that they may ascend through your good deeds.
December 13, 2008
Parsha Vayishlah
The Torah portion dealt with Jacob returning to his brother Esau after many years of absence and the palpable fear he experiences when he finds out that his brother is coming towards him with four hundred men. Jacob’s first response is to pray to G od for protection. The second is to send booty as a peace offering, and the third is to divide his camp into sections so in the event that there is a battle, the most loved may escape unharmed. Even here, Jacob lays the foundation for the resentment his other sons will have for Rachel’s little boy, because Joseph and his mother are place way in the back. Jacob is still the schemer and survivor and perhaps that is why he is so revered in our tradition. He survives through his wits rather than his might, and maybe that is why God is pleased with him. As a persecuted minority, we have had to survive through our wits. That may be something we learned from the Patriarchs.
His story also teachers us that what goes around, comes around and the deception he and his mother perpetrate on Isaac and Esau is duplicated on him at the hands of Laban and later at the hands of his own sons. What I do like about the Jacob story is that he introduces romantic love into the mix of relationships by his willingness to work a total of fourteen years for his beloved Rachel. Now that’s love! The story continues with Jacob wrestling an angel, winning, and receiving the name Israel which means “struggle with G od.” It is a fitting name for our people, because the most interesting Jews I know or have read about, struggle with their beliefs and doubts. Mendy says struggle is a good thing, and I can see why he teaches that. I think he means that the struggle is good because it gets one to think about his relationship with G od, what that relationship is, and what it does in the world. People who have no doubts may not do anything constructive. I would like to have focused more on this struggle, but a congregant took Mendy to task for raising the issue that the Jewish soul is somehow unique, with five levels it can achieve. I must have missed the statement that triggered that response. But Mendy responded by saying that it takes hard work to move up the ladder of soul life. He said that we are each born into the world and placed in a place that will challenge us to climb to the next level. He was born into an Orthodox family, so not eating tref was not something that was a challenge to his soul. My choice of removing tref from my table was a choice I made in my forties, so according to Mendy, my soul grew in a way that his could not. I took some comfort in that. But this same congregant took umbridge with the idea that the Jewish soul is somehow better in its distinctiveness because we were “chosen.” Mendy seems to hold this to be true, but insisted that choseness has nothing to do with superiority. This is where I have to partially part company with Mendy and Chabad if the teaching is that our souls are more expansive than that the gentile soul. As I see it, G od created all people have the same soul potential, and that we each have an aspect of G od within us. That aspect of G od is the soul. But as Mendy taught, we are put on different rungs of the ladder when we are born. For me, G od, views all the machinations of this world as the great experiment in free will, and what we do with what we are given is always delights and saddens Him. I can apply that to the concept of the soul. If we are place on a soul rung, we each have the opportunity to climb or descend. It’s the good inclination and the bad (or ego inclination as I view it) in us that determines the direction, but it is also the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Mendy found himself in the circumstances of a scholarly Chabad family, and I found myself in the circumstances of a blue collar, religiously schizophrenic home where ghosts of Orthodoxy clung to one parent along with eastern Europen superstitions and ecumenicalism, while the other parent was basically an agnostic and uninterested in all intellectual and spiritual pursuits.
Jews were given the Torah as the guide for our soul journey, and others, recognizing the concept of the soul, took our Torah and made it their own so they could climb, too. Sadly, they’ve come to believe that there is only room for them on the ladder, and have tried to push us off. But we won’t leave. So I believe that the Jewish soul is not unique to only Jews, but to all. If not, what do we say to people who choose to align themselves with us and convert. Are we to tell them that they can never achieve a higher level of soul light? Ruth, a convert, is the ancestor of David, and out of David will come the Messiah. Certainly Ruth’s soul would be able to shine as brightly as Miriam’s. G od made us the chosen people to be a light unto the nations. That means that our primary task is to tell the world of a single creative God whose primary expectation of his human creations is to treat one another well. Our task was to model this behavior and in doing so, lead the non-chosen soul to higher level of existence.
All people are hard wired into the potential for soul growth, and we were or are to lead them. Chabad has the right idea in going out to the Jewish world and trying to teach them about Yiddishkeit and about soul expansion. The problem is that Chabad and the rest of the Jewish world remains unwilling to go out into the non Jewish world as do the Christians and Muslims to invite others to join us. We were once a proslytizing people, and that is how the values of Judaism became the foundational values of Western and Middle Eastern Civilization. We stopped that effort under the treat of death because Judaism was a threat to Christian and Muslim legitimacy. Perhaps if we reached out to those in this world who had no religion and invited us to join ours, the world would become a better place. Mendy’s talk this Sabbath, was applause worthy.
P.S. The underlying message of Hanukah is freedom of religion. Normative Judaism celebrates concepts rather than the events in the lives of specific people.
December 20, 2008
Parsha Vayeshev
I’ve been thinking about something Mendy has said on several occasions. As best as I can understand this message, it has to do with working against your own basic nature to grow in spirit. It would seem that such growth takes place only when we are acting outside of our comfort zones. This of course presupposes a conscious awareness of our own natures, and a willingness to confront what is lacking in us it for the good. People know what makes them uncomfortable, but leaving the comfort zone for spiritual growth is something that I do not think is generally known or understood. To stretch one’s self, to go beyond one’s self for just that purpose is a path not easily walked.
Mixed in with this is also the idea of self-awareness, an acceptance of your darker places, and a willingness to confront yourself at very basic levels. That takes strength. One of the things I have always liked about Judaism, is that it is a philosophy that recognizes that the person has both animal and spiritual instincts, and both are normal because we are created in the image of G od, and we live in the bodies of creatures called animals. As Jews we know that we are capable of both the heights and the depths. Both are accepted, and what comes to our minds from our animal natures can be accepted as natural and therefore not sinful unless we act on the thought. My take on Judaism teaches that thought is not a sin. Sin comes into the world through action. If thought were a sin, who could stand and live?
Happily, we are given the Torah as the guide to what is acceptable actions and what are not acceptable actions. If we know what is not acceptable, and choose to go against that, that is our right as people with free will, but we must also recognize that we are sinning. Accepting responsibility for what we choose to do is an indication of our integrity level. Everyone has a comfort level, and everyone has darkness within. To recognize both and to act against both speaks to our humanity and to our spiritual aspirations. People with self destructive darkness know exactly what acting on the darkness will get them, and if they act against the darkness, they may be uncomfortable, but they are not going to injure themselves or others. Acting in such a way is responsible if not satisfying. People are not born with darkness or nor are they born with light. People are born neutral, and experience teaches them who they are and what they can expect our of life as far as recognition is concerned. There are those who conclude that they can get their recognition through darkness because growing up, darkness got noticed. Others learned that light will garner recognition. It’s all about recognition. Any recognition is better than no recognition at all. Changing our patterns for recognition is working against our natures and allows growth.
December 27, 2008
Parsha Mikertz
The attached bar mitzvah ritual was written several years ago after I attended a Jewish men’s retreat sponsored by Aytz Chaim. It taught me the importance of ritual and the need for it in our lives. Judaism provides us with that and that’s one of the reasons I like being Jewish. Since then, I’ve done some reading on how boys become men around the world, and I realized that our bar mitzvah tradition is right up there in recognizing the need for such a rite of passage. Yet I think we fall short. Jewish boys need Jewish men to tell them the meaning Judaism. Sometimes this can happen in a classroom, but that only works if the student has ascribed the same power to the teacher as he has to his father and grandfather. What does the average Jewish father actually have to say about Judaism to his young son? We have always been an intellectual people and our bar mitzvah ritual reflects that. Yet there is little mystery in the passing of Jewish knowledge from one generation to another, and it must be passed from men to boys. But who actually does the passing of that knowledge and is it accepted? I think it is the father’s job to pass this wisdom one. I am not anti-feminine. I just feel that there is a time for women to educate their sons and a time for fathers to educate their sons. When I first offered this ritual to a friend for his son’s bar mitzvah, his wife became outraged that she was excluded. She did not understand.
What being a Jew is, does not miraculously descend upon a young man after he is called up, but being told how a Jewish man acts by powerful men in the boy’s life and by men of the community will go a long way in his education. I would have this ritual performed in the vestibule of the mikvah, and then have the young man step into the mikvah and receive his Hebrew name for the second time. Ritual needs to be dramatic and memorable. I am just sharing this ritual with you because I trust you. There are no expectations. As a Jew living in two worlds, I had the pleasure of wishing you and your family a happy and healthy new year for 5769. Now I have the pleasure of wishing you a happy and a healthy new year for 2009. Blessings on you for all the good you do and all the love you have shown.