Getting over the hump

It sounds so simple.  Yet, it speaks volumes about who a person really is.  The Stanford Marshmallow Test conducted in 1972 went as follows:  it took four year olds and placed a marshmallow in front of them.  The children were promised a second if they could wait twenty minutes and refrain from eating the first.  Some children could control their impulses and some couldn’t.  Particularly noteworthy, was the fact that the children were followed over the next fifteen years, and those children who had self-control scored significantly higher on various measurements of aptitude throughout.  Given the importance of this idea, it is no wonder this was the first lesson given to the Jews right after they walked triumphantly through split seas. 

                It is subtly hidden in the verse, as it says in verse 15:25: ‘And He cried out to Hashem , and G-d threw him a tree and he threw it in the water, and they became sweet, there he gave them irrational and rational laws, and they were tested’.    The context of the verse resides on the heels of the split sea where the Jews were without water for three days.  And finally, when they reach water, it happens to be bitter and undrinkable.  So Moses is given a tree by G-d which he throws to sweeten the water.  The verse above then concludes the episode, almost parenthetically, that the Jews were then taught parts of Torah and they were tested.  Bear in mind that is forty nine days before the Torah was given.  Why are the Jews given a sneak preview of what is to come, and particularly, at the bitter waters?  

                The reason is as follows.  There are two types of satisfactions in life.  Satisfaction number one is the satiation one gets after many hours in the desert sun, on the verge of real dehydration, when he stumbles upon cold water.  His parched mouth and lips savor every drop of water.  Imagine, in the same situation, that a person stumbles upon a freshly made \crème brule.  Granted, there is some pleasure there, but compared to simple glass of water, this is a huge disappointment.  Crème Brule is something that is meant to be appreciated only as a result of previous satiation. In other words, this is the second type of satisfaction- a pleasure that comes from an inner drive to be there, but not because there is a need.  A person does not need to eat dessert because he is hungry and feels a bodily need for it. Rather, there is higher faculty involved that wants to appreciate a refined and sweet taste unlike the staple foods used to keep him alive.  In the first pleasure, it is because he is so empty that the water is so tasty- it comes from need.  In the second pleasure, it is because he is so full that the crème brule is so tasty.  

                The catch is that life’s crème brule’s come at the end of what is often a bitter opening process, or at the very least, a comparatively dull opening meal.  Anything internal works this way.  Any intellectual subject matter works this way.  Any math professor will speak glowingly about the fascination of his subject, but what he won’t mention is that his current groundbreaking  research is piggy backed on years of grunt work that he did not want to do, but needed to do.  This is the lesson of the bitter waters.  G-d wanted the Jews to approach Mount Sinai with a taste for spiritual wisdom already developed in their mouth.  So G-d had to take care of their initial need for spiritual wisdom, and filled them with certain laws.   However, when coming from a place of need, the results tend to be bitter.  But, after the difficult start, comes the possibility of real pleasure-growth because of want rather than need.   The beauty of this satiation is that it knows no limits. To the extent that a person wants to grow he can, since it is intrinsic and not bound by fulfillment of a need. All we have to do to get the real pleasure is get over the initial hump, and  then we can wait for that second marshmallow to come. 

Women's Rights

Great concern about women’s rights has erupted in Israel over several incidents- some inexcusable while others seemingly innocuous. There are two aspects to the issue.  First, does the separation of men and women imply discrimination against women, as Bill Gates commented in a recent interview on the BBC?  Secondly, should the separation and cover up be enforced in the public domain? The second issue is fairly simple, no, and especially not in the way certain situations have been handled.  To be clear, those responsible are not really religious.  The press fails to report that these same ‘religious’ fanatics have also spit on the leading Rabbis who have policies against their beliefs.  Clearly, the secular media wants to use the zealots to tarnish the entire religious community.   They are fanatic personalities that would be fanatic in any arena.  Further, that is the reason there is a large camp of Jews who are not traditionally Zionist for if you define a State as Jewish you are then forced to define Jewish- to do so results in an uncomfortable mixture of ‘synagogue’ and state that forces the issue.  So back to the first issue, does separation equal discrimination?

In truth, it is hard to justify answering questions, as if from a defensive position, about discrimination from a secular society that lags far behind in protecting its women.    Let me site a few statistics that will highlight the point.  As many as one in four women will be involved in some type of rape during their college careers.[1]   Anorexia is the third most prevalent chronic illness among teenagers, mostly women of course.[2]  And finally, it is now expected that nearly 50% of married couples will engage in infidelity at some point in their marriage, and mostly it will be the man that strays.[3]  To say that each of these items is destructive is an understatement.  Just take the last statistic, the amount of depressed spouses and destroyed children that come about from this behavior is not included in the data.  In the religious world, the comparable statistics are virtually negligible.              

 

What accounts for the difference?  Perhaps, it is the moral ideology that adultery and rape are morally reprehensible. The problem is that moral abhorrence of rape is similarly strong in the university world, but it still happens at an unacceptable rate (adultery is no longer necessarily considered wrong by secular standards despite the terrible consequences).   So if it isn’t ideology, then what is it? Likely, it is the cultural norms and actions that make a difference, namely separation of the sexes.  Ideology is never enough when trying to enforce action; knowing that something is wrong will not help unless a tangible action tags along.  For example, a person on a diet does not spend time in a fresh bakery.  Likely, during the duration of the diet he avoids all places that may tempt him.  It is not that he discriminates against unhealthy food; rather, he has other values that override his desire for the food, health, and so he places barriers between him and the food to lessen the chance for a mistake.  The knowledge that sweet smelling baked goods will ruin his diet won’t guarantee success.   

Granted, this a crude analogy, but it works over here.  To deny that there is a natural magnetism between men and women is to deny a biological reality.  There is a real force in the world called attraction between the sexes and it is among the more powerful forces created in this world.  Ideology alone that this force can only be acted upon in the proper situation is not enough given the extent of moral failures in this area.   Clearly, simply mind over matter does not necessarily apply here- a person may be playing Russian roulette with his and his family’s well-being. 

                Therefore, the recognition of this force neither places the blame nor targets just women.  It does not hyper-sexualize women, as one Rabbi wanted to claim, nor desexualize them completely.  The norms in place reflect a force that exists and ensures that this force of attraction is kept at bay in the wrong situations. And from a spiritual perspective, both parties are equally boosted internally by the separation- it is spiritually destructive for a man to view a woman as an object, as it is for the woman to want to be viewed that way.   Separation of the sexes is not discrimination, but an intelligent way to ensure strong families and communal spiritual growth.

for two excellent articles on the matter, written by a woman, please see:
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/can-ultra-orthodox-culture-go-overboard-in-its-quest-for-modesty-1.408262
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=251336

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[1] 1 Hirsch (1990). National Victims Center. Retrieved August 16, 2000, from the World Wide Web: http://www.ncvc.org/ index.html

[2] http://www.anad.org/get-information/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infidelity

In the midst of slavery

The comparison between American capitalism to slavery is common.  However, for many the link may be nebulous.  Meaning, it is a cute comparison, but everyone knows that slavery and late hours in the work place are ultimately different.  For one, a worker receives compensation, and technically, a person in American society is free to do as he chooses.  But perhaps, the link between the two is deeper than we think.  Capitalism does enslave in a way that circumscribes it next to slavery. 

                Shortly after Joseph’s generation passed away, enslavement began in Egypt.  It says that they were given ‘crushing’ labor.  However, it was not only physical pain, but they were also encumbered with spiritual pain.  In other words, much of the work was meaningless and the jobs were not dispensed according to people's strengths.  Finally, G-d took note of what was happening to His people and it says, ‘And G-d saw the children of Israel, and G-d knew (וידע)’. [1]  Apart from the strange dichotomy between vision and knowledge, what does it mean that G-d knew?  Obviously He did not gain a new knowledge, so what type of knowledge was it and why did we need to know about it?

                There are various types of knowledge in the world. One type is general wisdom or ‘chochma’.  This is informational wisdom, an input from a higher source.  Then, there is the ability to take that information and abstract it to other situations for application.    It finds commonality between things that seem unrelated  This is a knowledge that is built and is thereby called ‘bina’.   Finally, there is the knowledge of where the abstraction ends, and a thing is defined as its own thing and not related to anything else, and this is called ‘daas’.  In other words, this final knowledge is the ability to distinguish between two objects, two periods of time, and two people.  It is the knowledge that not everything is monolithic, but that there is a time and place for everything. For this reason, the blessing we make to distinguish between the Sabbath and rest of the week is placed in the prayer where we ask G-d for this type of knowledge.  Which begs the question, why is this the knowledge we so desperately seek, the ability to distinguish?

                The reason is because growth necessitates that there be a realization of what a person really is and what he really is not; the first step in growth is to distinguish.   In other words, if a person is on a sports team with an all-star, and a lesser player with latent potential views the all-star as similar to him but more experienced, then he is poised to fail.  What the lesser player needs to see in the all star is a player that is fundamentally different than him so that he can strive for that other level.  Without that initial recognition, then the hard work to move levels will not be there.  

                This is precisely the danger of slavery- the loss of identity both internally and externally.  Every day is the same and the work monotonous.  There is nothing to look forward to and it becomes difficult to mark changes in time.  Slowly, our ability to have the knowledge to distinguish between the mundane and the holy is impaired.  We have trouble with respect as everyone who is a slave is on the same playing field- we lose the ability to distinguish between people.   If everyone is the same, there is no room for growth, no levels to aspire to.  So why did we need to know that G-d 'knew'?  Because it was a sign that as slaves we lost our ability to have this knowledge and in order for redemption to take place, we needed G-d to restore it to us as a gift.  Without this knowledge, growth is impossible and there is no reason to give a Torah to a people who cannot grow with it.  And that is the danger of a modern capitalist world.  The smart phone has blurred the boundaries between work and home, and the competition has blurred the boundaries between the weekend and the work week.   Therefore, perhaps the comparison between capitalism and slavery is accurate.  In a capitalist environment, we are losing the ability to distinguish between what really matters, and what doesn’t and who we really are and what we are not, but could be.   

               

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[1] Exodus 2:25

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.