Beyond boundaries

   

The hallmark of a Jewish male is that he covers his head.  For some, this is all the time, while for others it is at least during prayer.  Strangely, this rule is not found explicitly in the Torah anywhere; yet, it is a custom that has been universally adopted by Jews all over the world.  There are several reasons for why Jews do this, but there is one particular reason that highlights the stark contrast between Jewish thinking and Greek thinking that is appropriate to disseminate in light of Channukah (no pun intended, sort of).  You see, Jew and Greeks share quite a few things.  For one, a Torah scroll can be written in the Greek language, and it is still considered valid.  Further, in the times of Noah, it says about the Greek progenitor, Yafeth, that he will ‘dwell in the tents of Shem’, the Jewish progenitor.  What is the intimate connection shared by the Jews and Greeks, and what is fundamental difference?  The answer is found in that circular cloth that Jews choose to wear.

                Both Greek philosophy and Jewish thinking share an equally passionate reverence for intellectual pursuits.  A Jew pines for hours of rigorous Tamudic study and enlightened Greeks believed that the philosopher lived an ideal existence.   Generally, wisdom is compared to light for just as light increases the scope of one’s reality, so too wisdom.  However, the Greek exile is described as a period of great darkness.  And the main job on Channukah is to increase light to combat what the Greeks introduced to the world.  So what is so dark about Greek Wisdom that not only does it not expand reality, but diminishes it. 

                Back to the postulate that a head covering is the key difference; a kippah represents the limit to our knowledge-  our knowledge is capped so to speak.  The paradox is that recognition of limitation is the key to expanding beyond the limitation.  By recognizing where the boundaries are it is then possible to go beyond them. In other words, a Jew knows that his premises are limited and that there is a world beyond understanding which only through great struggle could be added to the normal parameters of man.  On the other hand,  Greeks viewed the world in a way where man’s axioms were the boundaries with which all knowledge had to neatly fit.  Anything beyond man’s understanding is not real- that is what breeds darkness.  That is also why the Hebrew for Greece is יון.  These letters are all straight lines with no breadth.  The Greeks had no capacity to expand since they were the limits.  Therefore, aside from adding light with candles, Channukah is a time to recognize the boundless that comes with boundary.    

                

Seeing Awesome

              

                 

               There is no question that the world is pretty awesome for my daughter.  Granted, she is limited in many ways: she can’t talk, control her bladder, or even walk without bumping her melon frequently.  But, imagine a world where a hanger could provide a solid twenty minutes of entertainment.  Or where an avocado could be more than just food, but a mushy delight for the fingers.  Or where a simple cupboard is a hidden world of endless mystery.  Depth is everywhere, and that is awesome.  On the other end of the spectrum, the scourge of our generation is boredom.  Nothing is so exciting and every minute requires at least a new and usually a more intense stimulation.  What are we missing, and what skill does my daughter still have? 

                The answer comes from an unlikely place.  A Yale professor spoke at West Point on the topic of leadership.[i]  The title of his speech says it all, ‘Solitude and Leadership, If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts’.  He cites a study done at Stanford that showed that the multitasking generation that is able to facebook, text, and study at the same time has severely impaired thinking.  Multitasking is not a skill, but an impediment to real, deep thought.   The crisis in leadership starts at home, and by home, I mean ones most personal home-his headspace.   Without deep thinking, there is a paucity of ideas, and the ability to see awesome is diminished. 

                This Yale professor was on to something.  This is exactly the idea that Jacob taught the world as the first person to coin the term, ‘awesome’ or נורא.   What did he see that was so awesome and how did he get there?  Jacob was on the way out of Israel, in a desperate plight to seek refuge from a blood thirsty brother.  On the way, he went to the temple mount for a prayer session, and a nap.  During the nap, he dreamed the famous vision of a ladder with angels ascending and descending and none other than G-d staring down from the top.  He awoke and realized that he was in a place of intense holiness, ‘how awesome’! A three letter Hebrew repeats four times during the dream sequence in a view verses, הנה.  The world is commonly translated as, ’behold’.   The English translation is not bad and its etymology is even better.  Behold comes from the old English word, ‘to keep’. In other words, it means to hold on to one thought or observation and take it in.  The intensity of Jacob’s vision and the realization of a higher being depended on his ability to delve deeply into one thought and hone in on his vision of the ladder. 

                That is why G-d is called awesome, or נורא.  He is a Being that can only be reached through deep thought that is dependent on us, not on him.  That is why the world נוראis passive.  G-d can’t make us see His Awesomeness, we need to think it through.  Kids have an uncanny ability to zone in on one thing and explore to its end, and that thing becomes awesome (everything was created with wisdom), even just a hanger. [ii]

               

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[i] For a full text of the speech see William Deresiewicz speech at West point

[ii] Granted, in a different way, kids attentions can be easily swayed, but when in the moment the intensity is great and undistracted. 

The gift of aging

                24: 1 ‘And Abraham was aged ((היה זקן, well along in days and Hashem blessed him with everything’

                The biggest battle of our age is not radical Islam, not a sinking economy, and not cancer, but aging.  We are all in search of everlasting youth, and the great desire of man is to conquer both death and the process that leads to it.  However, it could be we are looking at it all wrong.  A midrashic source from this week’s parsha on the verse above[i] says the following:  Abraham did not age.   He exclaimed to G-d:’ father and sons go to one place and no one knows who to honor.  And if you were to crown us with old age people would know who to honor’.  G-d said to him, ‘you have asked for a good thing, and with you it will start’.  Prior to his time in the book there was no old age and since Abraham stood up (and complained), G –d gave him old age as it says, ‘And Abraham was aged’.  Further, in a different part of the midrash it says that ‘old age’ is a crown and beautiful thing.  In our purview, beauty is associated with youth and vigor.  So why did Abraham feel a lack without wrinkles and a white beard; what was he seeking?

The way to understand Abraham’s request is with the following metaphor.  Imagine if a person worked out his whole life and his muscles never changed.  That would be a cruel state of being- a person has worked hard and has nothing to show for it.  That is what was behind Abraham’s request to G-d.  Abraham’s whole life mission was to bring holiness to the body, which is why circumcision began with him.   He was the first person to understand that spiritual enlightenment lay not with meditative mantras on a mountain, but with real change in this world.  And whenever a person wants to make a genuine change in the world, it has to start at home first, with ourselves, which means making the body into a vehicle that expresses soul.

                After a life time of hard work in making the body into an expression of the soul, Abraham complained to G-d and said, ‘hey, I’ve been working hard my whole life and I have nothing to show for it’.  In response, G-d gave him a wizened body: lines of wisdom and a face of care and compassion.  Why is it that wisdom is associated with a white head of hair and a white beard?  Because white is the idea of clarity, and the idea that the façade is not important, rather what is behind it.  The whiter a person gets the more the inside is revealed.  It shows that what is driving life is not the body itself, as white is actually associated with death,  but an inner light .  It is no surprise then that a beard in Hebrew is called a ‘זקן’ or ‘old man’.  The idea of a beard is that ideas flow down from the head into the body.  Old age should reveal a lifetime of accomplishment  in this area, where the ideas of the soul slowly imprint on the body.   Therefore, think twice next time you buy an anti-wrinkle cream, as those wrinkles may be the product of the best type of growth.

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[i] the midrash is bothered by the words ‘היה זקן’. Why does the verse have to tell us that he was an old man? We already know that he was past one hundred years old

The value of an unknown future

The media is not known for its affinity for the religious establishment. Yet, it could be the media unknowingly will help create a religious revival.  With the constant conjectures of what the future holds: will Greece default, will Israel attack Iran, and what will be with this so called Arab spring, the media is creating a culture of dealing with an unknown future on a consistent basis.  This creates a mentality that the future will be different, that what there is now won’t be.  Used healthily, this creates growth, unhealthily, paranoia. Either way, this mentality originated with Abraham, who popularized an orientation towards the future.

                The first communication that G-d has with the future Jewish nation is as follows: ‘ And G-d says to Avraham, go forth from your land, your birth place, and from the house of your father to the land which I will show you’.  In other words, G-d says to Abraham, get out of your comfort zone, and go somewhere unknown.  So Abraham grabs his wife and nephew as well as his stuff and goes.  Then we have a strange verse that says ‘…and he went out to go to the land of Canaan and he came to the land of Canaan’. That is akin to saying: ‘I took a flight to Chicago and landed in Chicago.’  Well, where else exactly was I supposed to go that I have to tell you that my flight actually landed in Chicago? What this tells us is that when it comes to the land of Canaan, present day Israel, the place is the journey.  The leaving to go is the arrival.  The very nature of the place will always be unknown, and for someone who lives in Israel, this couldn’t be closer to the truth.  The very existence of Israel is consistently under threat because we are not supposed to know what will be. Why? To shed the status quo habitually is growth.

                On a deeper note, this is the foundation of faith.  It is the idea that I live with desire to change the future even if I don’t know exactly how it will turn out.  Why? Because the nature of infinity is that it is always beyond our grasp, therefore, all we have is the striving.   

number seven billion

                We are on the eve of the seven billionth birth. The number seven billion is big.  My second grade teacher had a computer program that had an old Apple flash numbers across the screen as it counted to a million.  As the school day ended, the computer continued at a breakneck pace still caught in the hundreds of thousands.  We were told the next day that it took till five o’clock in the afternoon until the computer final reached its target.  How long would it have taken the computer to reach seven billion? Each billion contains five hundred of these days, or in other words, the computer would have continued to count from second grade, through junior high, and through part of high school.  It’s hard to feel important in such a big world.  That is until we turn to Noah. 

                What brought the deluge?  Strange to think that the final mistake of mankind was stealing.  Sexual immorality and idolatry were bad, but stealing did it as it says, God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with robbery through them, and behold I am about to destroy them from the earth’[1] .   Why did G-d mention robbery when the other two transgressions are at least as wrong and more difficult to rationalize? After all, we all steal a little bit.  Every time we are at work and surf the net a little, or make a short call, or wake somebody by accident, or even if we don’t smile to people on the street we’ve technically stolen (our face is not ours since we don’t see it, therefore, as it is public property we have a responsibility to keep it presentable. If not, we have 'stolen' a smile from a person). 

                The second mishna of Pirkei Avos answers the question, ‘Shimon the Tzaddik was from the remnants of the great assembly.  He would always say, ‘The world stands on the three things: Torah, service (prayer), and good deeds’.  There are two fundamental ideas in the Mishnah that are difficult for the mind.  Hence, Rabbi Shimon needed to say these ideas constantly so that people would internalize the idea.  Two  impediments to spiritual growth are that people don’t realize the manifold degrees of greatness and, more relevant to our discussion of the seven billionth birth, that our actions impact the world at large. 

                A complete life does not require that we only need to be nice to our friends or that we only need to be wise or that we only need to be meditative.   All three important and they represent the three relationships a person needs for fulfillment.  A person needs a relationship with other people, and needs a relationship with himself, and needs a relationship with G-d.  When these relationships are missing, the world can no longer stand, and this is why G-d tells Noah, we need to start over- the world had run amuk with idolatry, sexual immorality, theivery.  Idolatry is an easy one.  Idolatry is a corrupted version of man’s relationship with G-d. Instead of connection to G-d, idolatry reinforces a person’s relationship to himself.  He worships those forces that can help him.  Promiscuity is the antithesis of wisdom, or of connecting to yourself properly.  Why?   Because instead of nourishing one’s essential self, the soul, through wisdom, a person connects to ones non-essential self- the body.  And finally, robbery is the opposite of loving kindness, rather than give , a person takes for free and annihilates his relationship with other people.  Now we can understand why even robbery can destroy the world.  It was the last pillar left, and once it fell, everything came crashing down around it.

                The other idea of the Mishnah is that our actions stand up the world.  Up until now, people thought that scientific law and the sun’s rays kept the world afloat.  But, the idea that is hard to grasp, especially now in this giant world, is that our actions are what cause tsunami, earthquakes, and floods and they are what prevent them.  Even though I seem to be one in seven billion, a blip on the radar, my actions reverberate not just in our world, but also in spiritual ones. The realization that our actions are important, not only in a practical sense, but in a global sense can be what refines them.                      

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[1] Genesis  6:13

Happy as me

                        Of the seven major Jewish Holidays, Pesach continues to impress.  A vast majority of Jews attend a Seder even if the rest of the year there is scant a trace of obvious Jewish behavior.   Next, there are the two heavy weights, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.  Whether it is Jewish guilt at work, or a genuine desire to connect through prayer at least once a year, Jews participate in droves.  Then, we have some light fun with Purim and Channukah.  Drinking and fire, who wouldn’t want to be part of the fun; well, actually, many Jews miss out on these oldies but goodies.   And finally, there is Shavuot and Sukkot, two out of the three major pilgrimages to Jerusalem.   They lag far behind in participation and have been nearly blotted out of the secular Jewish psyche.  What has been lost?         

Pesach is the holiday that tells us there is a supreme being.  That works for most people.  The idea of a G-d gives the world meaning and order.  And how else can we explain a consciousness and our ‘soulful’ values, a G-d makes serious sense.  The problem starts around Shavuot.  There is an alleged transmission of a script from this force that has likely given us consciousness.   Aside from the innate disdain for having to live according to a script that is not our own, this script has lots of ‘chutzpa’ as well- it carries with it a plethora of demands.                         

After this comes Sukkot, the holiday of immense Joy.  What is it about Sukkot that makes us so happy?  We get to be our true self again.  The Jewish word for repentance is ‘teshuva’, to return, and that return is to ourselves.  Now, that we are back to being ourselves we can express it through Sukkos, and this is why it is called the time of our greatest Joy!   Each sukkah is decorated uniquely, and everyone finds that Esrog that is most beautiful to their eye’s and budget.  There is nothing more joyful than being your true self and expressing it creatively. 

                                

Back to Life

There are few things that get on my nerves.  However, one thing that always bothered me is when people would say that watching tennis is a bore.  And if they’d humor me and watch some of the game with me, they‘d want to talk during points or get up right before a crucial juncture in the match. The gall of such people! Can’t they appreciate the unique form that each players uses? Can’t they appreciate the shot selections, angles, and movement of each player?  It can be a thing of beauty.

                 Obviously, from my perspective, their lack of- we’ll call it respect- stems from a lack of appreciation for the details.  What they are watching and what I am watching are two entirely different games.  I see variety, where they see sameness.  I see genius, where they see luck.  And consequently, the way I treat watching the game- with rapt attention and respect- is vastly different than the way they treat watching the game.  This prosaic example can be applied to any field and its experts.  A curator sees a Mona Lisa vary differently than I do, and a cosmologist sees a very different sky than I do.  The difference?  Details- they know how to appreciate how every detail is important and plays a crucial function in creating the brilliant sui generis of the form. 

                Whenever there is a lack of sensitivity, the term we use is quite appropriate.  We say we are ‘deadened’ to the thing. If standing in front of a Van Gogh, I say in front of a curator,’ why are these globs of paint worth so much’, she would likely turn red with anger, pucker her lips in disgust, and say, ‘you fool, you have to be dead not to be appreciate this’.  In a certain sense, she’d be exactly right.  Her whole vitality resides in the angry brush strokes of Van Gogh:  their angles, shades, and texture ignite a passion within her.  On the contrary, for the pedestrian art viewer, it is globs of paint and, after a few of them at a museum, the inclination is to take a seat and a nap.  With this in mind we can begin to understand what are job is on Yom Kippur.

                In general, we didn’t ‘mess up’ in a big way this past year.  We didn’t scam the world out of billions like Madoof, and we probably didn’t violently abuse anyone this year, and we probably may have never  been furiously mad at anyone this year.  Everything we did wrong was vastly more subtle, and to our sensibility, even largely out of our control. How can you not wake up late once in a while if you’re tired?  How can you not get a little agitated when somebody shows up ten minutes late to a meeting?  The reason why many of the little transgressions in our lives show up is because of our sensitivities.  We are not gauged to think that a little anger, a little late is a problem unless we really stop and think about it long enough to realize that, yea, could’ve done better there if I really tried.  However, this is where repentance comes in.  Repentance is the realization that every aspect of life is important.  Why?  Because G-d is one or, to put it differently, all is an aspect of G-d. 

In other words, the more we become connoisseurs of life, the more those little details are treated with a touch more sensitivity, rendering them a big detail, and then we treat them properly - we become curators to our own existence.  It is becoming alive in a real way through an increase in sensitivity to the spiritual side of life which is rapt with detail.  Life and death in Judaism are not defined by a failing body; they are defined by a soul that is alive or dead.  Does our soul pick up all the greatness and detail around us (As the 'rituals' of Judaism beg of us)?  After all, why else would repentance have been created before the world?  Did G-d expect us to sin?  Maybe.  But more than that, the real idea of repentance is not to bang our chest and read out a laundry list of sins.  It is to realize there is always another level of sensitivity I can reach, another level of life.  The fact that G-d created repentance before the world means that G-d made a world where we can always grow and develop to no end- and He expects us to.  So this Yom Kippur, it is time to enter the book of a good life and start to appreciate the details of our actions, for that is exactly where a passionate life is.  Enjoy the service and lay out a blank canvas for the new Year.   

New Year's parade

Red and green glow swords, cotton candy, and a festive mood engulfed our tiny community.  Everywhere children squealed with excitement while the women parked their strollers- singles, doubles, and even triples- on the street in anticipation.  No, the circus had not made a surprise detour to our sleepy mountain village.  Something grander, yet more subtle was happening. With black ink and a feather on some stretched cow hide, one letter was being written in an apartment.   A large group of men clad in black huddled around the table and spilled out onto the balcony.  See, one missing letter renders an entire Torah scroll ineffective. Therefore, upon completion of the last letter of the scroll, a wave of holiness descends upon the whole roll of cow hide and what were once remnants of a cow is in an instant imbued with serious divinity.  Once that letter is written, many new laws take effect, and reality changes.  The room with the Torah instantly becomes a place unsuitable to many activities that would have been permitted only moments earlier.  For a Jew, there is no greater cause to celebrate in the world than the mundane’s elevation to holiness- it calls for a parade.

            Or, it calls for the blast of a shofar.  There are two different types of shofar blasts on Rosh Hashana, a trua and a tekiya.  They are easily distinguished, the tekiya is a smooth long blast and the terua is a series of short bursts.  If we look at the Torah, there are two places where a horn is sounded and each time two different words are used to describe the blast.   In one place the verb used is from the language of trua and it is used in the context of war.  Obviously, during a war unification is broken and the trumpet notes the change with a series of short and broken blasts. In a different place, the verb is that of a tekiya, and that is in the context of a horn blast during a coronation.  That is a long  and unbroken sound for the King is what unites a people and so the blast is accordingly unified.[1]

            On Rosh Hashanah this describes our schizophrenic state of mind, both broken and complete, both happy and distraught.  On the one hand we are in the midst of an internal battle, and our job is to uproot the accumulated stench from the year- an enemy of falsehood has intruded and we need to get him out.  On the other hand, recognition of G-d’s Kingdom is consciously on our mind and the big ‘therefore’ that should engender.  Rosh Hashanah is the day the whole world is recognized as what is called in mystical terms a ‘chariot’, a place that can carry divine holiness.  This change from mundane to divine is marked by the shofar.

Think that there is a King in this world and that you are an indispensible agent of the King and the rest of repentance will be just details. 

           

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[1] See Nesivos Shalom 

The Great Comeback

25:2-3 ‘And if it will be that he will be given lashes for his evil, and the judge will lie him down and lash him according to his wickedness in number. Forty lashes he may give him, he shall not exceed; lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many lashes, then your brother should be dishonored before your eyes.’

Rashi: It is not written the exact number of lashes (in the first verse)  but we learn that this verse is connected to the next verse and that it is forty.  But really it is not forty complete lashes, rather a number that is complete towards forty which is really 39.   

                Elul is here- the final sprint before the finish line. To prod us, the shofar is dusted off and we warm up its coarse voice in preparation for Rosh Hashanah every morning.   Fresh from a summer break, we dig in for one final effort to tie up our loose ends from the previous year.  As we do so, we question why they were still loose in the first place.  Why didn’t we take care of these problems- monies owed, apologies made, character traits refined- right away as we said we would last Rosh Hashanah?  With so many loose ends once again, we begin to ask ourselves, why bother to make the promises in the first place? 

The secret is in the word of repentance, teshuva, whose root is ‘shin and beis’, shav, which means return.  Interestingly, the root of the word teshuva is comprised of the second to last letter of the alphabet and the second letter of the alphabet.  We are going from the near the end, and then back to near the beginning.  That is what repentance is all about, a miraculous return to a previous state of being. However, there is a pressing question (asked by the Maharal), which is shouldn’t the word for repentance really be ‘ta’, the last letter 'tav' and back to the first letter 'alef'- isn’t that an even greater example of repentance? The reason it is not like that is hinted at in the above verse from this week’s Torah portion.

                In this strange mix of verses we have an extra word subtly placed in the text.  It says in the first verse that according to his evil will the number of lashes be, yet a verse later it says that the perpetrator will get forty lashes.  Why doesn’t the first verse tell us this fact?   Rashi explains that the Torah is telling us in a roundabout way, that in reality, the number of lashes is really 39.  But, that doesn’t solve anything because the Torah should have then said directly that a person gets exactly 39 lashes.    In other words, the first verse doesn’t tell me a number, rather, it lets the next verse do the work.  Then, after the Torah finally tells us what the number really is, Rashi intervenes and says it isn’t really true what the next verse says about forty lashes but that in reality it is one less.   There is an interesting interplay between the number 39 and forty here- what is it?

                 The Maharal explains that a fetus is created in forty days.  However, it only gets its soul on the fortieth day.  Therefore, the first 39 days the fetus is a piece of flesh with no real value, and then, on the fortieth day, the soul comes in and makes this fleshy tissue intrinsically valuable.  However, this initial physicality is the source for all of our loose ends, or more simply, our sins.  Therefore, the 39 lashes are a correction for those 39 days in the womb where we were soulless; however, we need the number forty stated in the verse to remind us to look back to the womb to our humble beginnings.

                Now the word for teshuva, ‘shav’, begins to make sense.  We are never completely gone.  We never enter the complete physicality of the ‘tav’, the last and most physical letter of the alphabet.  No matter how many mistakes we make, there is still a soul, a remnant from the fortieth day.  And we can’t return all the way to the most spiritual letter, the aleph, because no matter how great we become after repentance, those 39 days of physicality remain with us albeit subservient to the fortieth day, the soul day.   With this in mind, we can remain steadfast to our promises knowing that we are never too far from a dramatic comeback.  

The real joy of skeet shooting

‘And now Israel, what is the only thing that G-d asks of you?  To fear Hashem your G-d to go in his ways and to full him and serve with all of your heart and soul’  Devarim 10:12

Rashi: The Rabbis learn from here that everything is in the hands of heaven except for fear of Heaven

 ‘Pull’!  This is the skeet shooting command that sends a bright orange disk into the air. An outside observer sees a disk coasting lazily across the field, while the shooter sees an orange disk whizzing by.  It is the job of the shooter to line it up with the barrel of the shot gun. Two tiny notches in the barrel indicate whether the pellets will shoot straight. Now, depending on its momentum and trajectory the shooter needs to aim just above or just below the disk.  If done correctly, the hundreds of tiny pellets disperse towards the orange disk and smash it.  Concurrently, the sound of the gun races across the grassy field and ricochets back even louder from the forest at the other end of the range.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
Surprisingly, I did hit a few of these disks at first before petering out to my real level of complete novice.   But, I knew that if I had the time and energy to put into it, with a few weeks, or at most months, of consistent practice I could be a competent skeet shooter.  It is a matter of refining timing and reflexes, and eventually technique at the higher levels.  A goal, some time and energy, and accomplishment equal joy, right? After all, why else would there be a skeet shooting club in the middle of the woods replete with a  skeet shooting magazine laying on the table in the club house if it didn’t bring people some joy? And joy is a function of personal accomplishment.[3]  

 Now there is a lot of joy in the formula above, but it is missing one crucial ingredient.  In order to have a complete joy, it needs to be accomplished completely by you.  No matter what the accomplishment is in life, whether it is skeet shooting, a job placement, or a degree they are incomplete joys to varying degrees because there is always an outside factor that aids you.  When it comes to a job, you had to be hired.  That means, it was someone else’s decision to hire you and that was dependent on national and world economies and only partially determined by your resume.  Therefore, when you get the job the joy of accomplishment is actually limited.  Or what will take away joy from any accomplishment to some degree is your health for health is largely not in your hands.  Therefore, to the extent that bodily health allows you to accomplish, this is particularly true for any physical accomplishment, again joy is reduced since the ‘you’ in the accomplishment is reduced.

There is only one complete ‘you’- a’ you’ that even G-d can’t touch.  That is the ‘you’ that decides to fear heaven. Fear is opposite of love.  Love is a desire for closeness that creates oneness between two things while fear creates a distance[4].  A healthy distance allows you to ‘see’ something clearly, which is why the word for ‘fear’ in Hebrew is the same as the word to see.  When we are close to things, we can’t see the whole picture, and therefore, there is no clarity. In other words, the whole goal of fearing heaven doesn’t mean to stand shaking in fear all day; rather, it is a desire to see G-d in an objective way, as part of reality.  Even G-d can’t help us, since any help would create closeness, the opposite of distance.  So inherently, it is entirely on us to decide to create that distance in order to see spirituality clearly.  And there is no other task in life that is completely us other than this one. Therefore, the potential for joy from accomplishment in this task is the highest since it involves the most you.  Luckily, in all aspects of life, even skeet shooting.  Even better than hitting the targets, even more joy can come from deciding to clean up the empty plastic shell casings as the range requested even when nobody is watching since with enough distance, a person can see that somebody else always is!

                                                                                                                                                      

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[1] In Hebrew, there are ten different words for happiness or joy since there are many types of joy.  However, perhaps the deepest seated joy is one of personal accomplishment based on a meaningful task.

[2] See Gur Aryeh Devarim 10:12

[3] In Hebrew, there are ten different words for happiness or joy since there are many types of joy.  However, perhaps the deepest seated joy is one of personal accomplishment based on a meaningful task.

[4] See Gur Aryeh Devarim 10:12

A good cry

Importance of a good cry[i]

                Is the following a sign of strength or a sign of deep, deep trouble?  A person puts his hand in a fire and does not flinch.  Or a person sticks a three inch needle deep into his palm without a wince.  I don’t care if the person looks like the hulk; this is a sign of severe nerve damage as he is too numb to feel anything.  This is where the Jews find themselves on the eve of another ninth of Av.  No one really cares, or even feels the lack of missing spirituality.

It all began in the desert a few thousand years ago.  Promised a land teeming with goodness, the Jews faltered and lost trust.  They sent in spies to the land to scope out the scene.  Had the spies come back and reported honestly, the mistake would have ended there.  Instead, the report itself came back largely on the negative side, and the Jews cried out.  The Talmud, taanis 29a, reports that since the Jews cried out for nothing on that day, that they would cry out for something on that day for the rest of history.  What appears to be a harsh condemnation for foolish behavior may actually be the remedy to a deep problem.

It is hard to place pain in a positive light outside the weight room or the doctor’s office, think shot.  However, there is one other place where a person can appreciate pain, and that is certain rehabilitation centers.  Pain after surgery, most people can do without, but the pain that one feels after ulk Hogan , this is not a good sign a possible spinal injury is welcome relief.  With that in mind, we can approach the day of T’sha B’av with one thing in mind- to feel some sort of pain!

                In other words, when the Talmud says that Jews will cry out from now on, it is not a curse that we will be given a reason to cry, rather it is an instruction of what we must do in order to reconcile the damage done.  When exiled, and there is a lack of closeness to G-d within our hearts, the cry of this distance is in itself the fix- the fact that we can cry over the distance!  The heart can then awaken and reconnect. 

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[i] Rav Dessler, Mictav M’eliyahu

Subtle impacts

            Without fail, at times of stress, my baby gets hysterical.  She smells it in the air.  And it isn’t that we ignore her because we are busy because even if she is played with and fed, it is the change in energy around her that throws her into a tizzy.  Not only that, but even when there is a lull in the action, it doesn’t help because the stress was there and is liable to return at any second.  So nearly every Friday, where the time is short and stress high, the Sabbath is welcomed with stirring cries.

            This is a clear demonstration as to how our environment impacts us, even when the change in the air is intangible. And I don’t believe that as we grow older it stops impacting us.  Rather, we are able to control our reaction to the impact, or numb ourselves to the impact, which is then stowed away in our subconscious.  With this foundation, we can understand perhaps the strangest idea in the Torah, purity and impurity.

There are various ways to become impure, but the most serious impurity comes from a dead body.  Even if a person is in the same room with a dead body and doesn’t touch it, he becomes impure and require a purification process.  So what is the problem with a dead body?  What does it represent and how does it impact our lives?[1]  The body of a person hides his soulful reality.  The way to stop hiding this reality is to use the body as a messenger for the soul, rather than a messenger for itself. A problem arises when we die.  The soul goes back to its source and the body is left behind and it no longer has any chance to express soulfulness.  All it has is its physicality and it is now purposeless.  When someone then breathes the ‘air’ of purposelessness, this leaves a subtle imprint that there is purposelessness in the world, and it stains our subconscious.  And because of the extent that our subconscious shapes our actions, the Torah goes to great lengths to ensure that any infringement is remedied.

            So what is the fix?  The fix is to realize that even a dead body has a smidgen of purpose. It is the contrast of death that makes us appreciate life.  An evil person is referred to as dead in this world.  But, his function is to help us appreciate what it means to be righteous, really alive!  Therefore, we take the ashes of a dead cow, the red heifer, and put it into water, that wonderful life-giving substance; it is death, ashes, invigorating life, water.  By doing so, we recalibrate our subconscious that the death we encountered was not a sign of purposelessness, but that it too can help us achieve holiness.

             

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[1] Explanation from Mictav M’eliyahu chelek 5 page 414

Fountain of youth, Found!

           

Made famous by Ponce de Leon’s thorough search for the fountain of youth in Florida, and originating in Greek mythology (please see Wikipedia for a more thorough history), there still is a deep yearning within all of us to find a fountain of youth- an elixir that guarantees long life.  Contrary to popular belief such an elixir does exist, and not only that, everyone can get it.  Even more incredulous, it does not cost a penny. Poor old Ponce could have stayed in Puerto Rico and saved himself lots of trouble!

If we turn to page 28a of the Talmudic trachtate Megilla, the location for the fountain of youth is disclosed: The students of Rabbi Nechunia the son of Kanna asked ‘how did you merit a long life?’  ‘I never honored myself at the expense of another, nor have I taken a curse of a fellow man with me to sleep, and I have not been exacting with money’. These types of actions are the ‘elixir’ that leads to longevity.  On the face of it, these are all great things, but why are these greater than the myriad of other virtues?

Let’s take elixir one- to worry about the honor of a friend.  Honor is called ‘cavod’ in Hebrew.  Strangely enough, the word for heavy in Hebrew has the same root, ‘caved’.   Heaviness is based on density, or in other words, the internality of an object is what gives it weight.  Therefore, the connection is clear; honor is a derivative of internality.  Now, in every person there is something very heavy inside, we call it the breath of G-d.[1]  To the extent that ‘heaviness’ is revealed is the extent that we honor someone.  That being said, there is an aspect that is inherent.  Since everyone actually is ‘heavy’, as we are created in the image of G-d, we all deserve incredible honor.  And that honor serves as the fuel that creates life. Which begs the question, what is life?

Real life is actualization-taking potential and realizing it.  That movement is what we call life.  For example, the Talmud calls a person that has no children ‘dead’[2]. Why? Because the person was not able to take that incredible potential to have kids out to action. If we go back to honor, our true potential is rooted in that internal heaviness, and it is our job to bring it out to action. And honor from other people is the fuel that we need to constantly remind ourselves that we have something great to offer to the world. Then, the second step is to provide the necessary vessels for the other person to bring out the potential.  By doing so, we create life in another person as they actualize their potential. First, the honor helps them recognize their greatness and the second step helps them bring it out- life!  Further, the numerical value of ‘cavod’ is 32, the same as ‘lev’ or heart and the heart is what gives life to our extremities. Not surprisingly, the reward fits perfectly.  Give life to another, and then you yourself get life. 

Now, the place where life is most dramatically given is through parenting. Not only in the physical creation of a child, but in the spiritual creation. It is unclear what a baby understands. She seems to wander around the world curiously, yet aimlessly. And her main tool of exploration, unfortunately, is the mouth, and based on what tends to go in there, it is not clear how much is understood.  But what is clearly understood is honor.   If she is playing with something dangerous and I take it away without explanation, she cries as I’ve dishonored her. However, if I take the dangerous object away with explanation, she is unperturbed.  Why the difference?  She sees that I am honoring her, even if she does not understand what I am saying.  And honor is what gives life to another person.  Not surprisingly, because honor is the source for life, people seek it out to an extreme degree (See this week’s parsha Korach).  The trick is that the best way to receive the honor so desired is to impart it on another. 

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[1] Zohar Terumah 156b

[2] Nedarim 64

Poor vision

Poor Vision

After an intense month of rounds as a vision doctor, I can honestly report that the eyes of American youth have seen tremendous improvements.  Stricken by a variety of ailments - broken home apoplexy that leads to a cynical vision of the world, extreme IPOD usage disorder that leads to a limited vision of the world, impaired reflexive vision that leads to lack of self confidence, and of course the most blinding affliction of all, career now syndrome- various youth are now considering that they may be unique and powerful actors in a beautifully complex and spiritually laden world. Now, these diseases are not unique to American youth, but afflict all people at various times.  In fact, the Torah records the initial visual impairments by the spies sent to Israel to scour the land.  This one episode led to a thirty eight year extension in the desert.  Apparently, Jewish vision always had its issues. 

            After a taste of giant fruit, the spies begin to denigrate the land and its inhabitants despite G-d’s promise that they had prime real estate: ‘The land through which we have passed to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants all the people that we saw in it were men of measures! There we saw the Nephilijm, the sons of a Giant from among the Nephilim; we were like grasshoppers in our eyes and so we were in their eyes’[1].  Now what exactly was the sin?  They were sent to observe the land and this is what they saw!?

            A fascinating insight by the Alter of Slabodka is that there was a problem with vision-[2] the spies denied their own greatness.  How could a human being compare himself to a grasshopper?!  Man must always remember that upon creation, G-d consulted with the angels as it says,’ And G-d said let us make man according to our image’[3].  Lest anyone confuse this line with polytheism, Rashi comments that the verse is a reference to the consultation G-d had with the angels about the creation of man to defuse any potential jealously they would have.  Read it quickly and we miss it! Angels would have been jealous of man.  Now, if we view ourselves as grasshoppers, then what would an angel be jealous about?  Granted, we are after the sin of Adam, and the failings within man are great, but the key is to remember that the sin of Adam did not remove the greatness, rather it covered it with layers of dirt, which means the greatness is still there, but harder to unleash. 

            Aside from denying their greatness, the spies also misplaced where greatness comes from.  They saw the world physically and gave merit to the physical strength of the inhabitants.  Even though war is technically a battle of physical strength, Jews understand it differently. G-d gives strength through merit of action when it comes to Israel as it says, ‘For G-d gives strength to have valor’[4].    

            Hence, the Jews received a seemingly strict punishment to die in the desert over forty year; however, the land of Israel is a place intended to make great people, but that becomes a worthless gift if we don’t have clear what greatness is and that we can achieve it.  And so it was lost for that generation, but the foundation was set.  Throughout history, the Jewish people’s struggles will be to have a proper vision of themselves and the proper notion of what makes people great.  .

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[1] Numbers 13:32- 33

[2] Or Hatzafon chelek beis page 96

[3] Gensis Chapter one

[4] Devarim 8:18

On the Bring of death

On the brink of death

            On the brink of death my step grand-father, who was like a real grandfather to me, sits.  What awaits him? Well, this question is actually not unique to me, but was asked by the all the Jews a few thousand years ago.  For some reason, the idea of even the existence of an after life within Judaism is shrouded in mystery.  Yet, probably more than any other religion, the idea of an afterlife is the most directly understood and even experienced.  Let’s see what the sources say:

At the time of the giving of Torah G-d called to Israel and said to them:’ My child! A great gift I have in the world, and I will give it to you forever if you receive my Torah and guard its mitzvos’.

They answered and said before Him: ‘Master of the world! What great gift will you give to us if we guard your Torah?’

Answered G-d and He said: ‘This is the World to come’.

Answered Israel and they said: ‘Master of the world! Show us an example of what this world is like’

Answered G-d and He said to them: This is Shabbat, which is one sixtieth of the next world which is all Shabbat.’[1]

For certain religions, self-inflicted death, particularly at the expense of other people, is the best way to know the next world.  Jews have it a bit easier, and far less dramatic- Shabbat.   Do it properly, and the next world reveals itself even now.  No death required!

            So what is Shabbat that it is so other worldly?  The idea of Shabbat is that everything has been completed.  It is not that creative acts are not allowed on Shabbat; rather, they are entirely unnecessary!  The world is in a pseudo state of perfection and completion, physically that is.  We need to imagine that nothing is left to be finished.  That is the rest we get on Shabbat, and it is the rest from physical toil that allows the soul an expansive vision, literally, a doubling.  And that is why we have two challahs, two levels of punishment, two sacrifices to bring up, two words of reminder for Shabbat, and two souls.  We are dealing with two worlds simultaneously, this world and the next world.    

            Why is the revelation so clear on Shabbat?  Obviously, G-d did not really work on the first six days of creation, as our childish imagination would seem to have it, and then suddenly stop because he finished.  Rather, each day represents a layer of nature that G-d hides behind.  And on Shabbat, the hiding ends and we have time to look at the mask and take it for what it is, just a mask. 

            So as my step-grandfather teeters between worlds, there is a win-win situation.  Either he goes back to a family that would love to have him around longer or he goes to a world of completion, where the soul sits in what ever level of closeness it achieved with G-d and revels in the revelation.