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