"It Was a Very Good Year"

"Rebbe Eliezer taught,'Repent one day before you die'." His students asked him "But how can we know when we will die?". He responded "Indeed treat every day as it might be your last. That way your whole life will be focused on right living and repentance".

Rebbe Eliezer's teaching, while making much sense to me, is not the way everyone sees things. I remember when I was a teenager the late Frank Sinatra released a song called "It Was a Very Good Year". The lyrics were of a man reminiscing on his life beginning from when he was 17. The entire focus of the man's life, through all the different passages was pursuit of pleasure.
Now I could understand that looking back at his younger years and his youthful indulgences he might claim "it was a very good year". But I remember, even as a teen, I was shocked that when Sinatra, in the song, is already an old man, reflecting on his later years, as his life is ebbing away,there too, rather than repent or refocus, he remains equally committed to the pursuit of pleasure, just of a more refined type. There too, near his end, he proudly claims the pleasures he pursued and pronounces them "a very good year".

Knowing he has but little time left, he feels no impulse to to 'tshuva', repent, and devote his remaining time to worthy endeavours. Living his 'last days' does not impel him to the mandate of Rebbe Eliezer quoted above. Instead he remain committed to his agenda, drawing from life every last pleasure it has to offer.To the end, he affirms and blesses his self-indulgent focus.

And thats not the only time I found myself surprised that life's end did not lead to change. For many years I worked as a hospital chaplain. I visited the frail and dying and spent hours upon hours at their bedside. Rare indeed was the case where a person, knowing his/her end was near used their last days and months to make ammends, repent, express remorse, make the kind of changes that Rebbe Eliezer envisioned for those who know time is short.

I came to realize that there are two kinds of people in the world. If told they had but a month to live, the first kind would go out and live it up, pursue all the pleasures available to them, take advantage of every opportunity to enjoy life before it was gone. Knowing they were dying would not motivate them to repent. On the contrary it would inspire them to intensify their pleasure seeking agenda.The second kind of person would use their last month to make a difference. They would seek to improve themselves though intensive prayer and sudy. Or they might invest their last days trying to improve the life of others through acts of hesed and voluntarism.

It is to this last group and only to the last group, that Rebbe Eliezer's teaching has relevance. Sadly, I suspect, this group represents the minority.

We stand now only a few days before Rosh Hashanna. It is almost always the case that the last Shabbat of the year we read the parsha of Nitzavim. Prominent in Nitzavim is Moshe's challenge to the People of Israel to the mitzvah of Teshuva, Repentance.
The end of the year, the time of judgement, and the mitzvah of Teshuva, for some of us, the contiguity of the mitzvah and season is propitious.Knowing we are coming to an end, knowing we face a judgement, knowing that our future is at stake, moves us to introspection and return. This is the season of return.

Question is, into which group do we fall? Are we of the Frank Sinatra variety, who, while we may not live a life as hedonistic as his, nonetheless share with him the attitude that when faced with our end, we refuse to change and instead insist til the last, that all of our life and behaviors reflect "a very good year".
Are we, like so many I visited, determined to remain true to the way we have always been, unwilling to adapt, change, or alter our values, and practices.

Or are we students of Rebbe Eliezer. Will we seize the moment and remake ourselves. Will we have the courage and the smarts to change for the better and move ourselves along the road to real 'shlaimut', wholeness, a shlaimut that inevitably requires change and acknowledgement of wrong-doing.

Two kinds of people... Which are we? How we respond to knowing an 'end' is at hand makes all the difference in determining whether we are essentially persons of the spirit or of the earth.
We can bless the past and cleave to it saying "it was a very good year" or we can say "the year past may have had many good things about it, but it cannot be my model for the future. I need to change!"

As another one of those immortal crooners sang "Its now or never".
Lets make it now!

Ktiva V'chatima Tova!
May you and all those you love and all Israel be inscribed and sealed for a life of blessing, meaning and growth.

Shabbat Shalom

Happiness in Marriage

"If a man should marry a new wife he is exempt from serving in the army and from all manner of compulsory service. For one year he is free to engage solely in domestic matters and to make his new bride happy" (Devarim 24:5).
So we read in the Parsha of Ke Taitzay, the portion of this week.
But here's the rub, how indeed does one make one's wife, or for that matter husband, happy?

Husbands and wives will tell you that they have been trying to make each other happy for years without real success. Divorce rates continue to soar. Unhappy marriages are the norm. Yet so many a man and woman will tell you that all they wanted was to make their spouse happy. In the end, the failures outnumber the stories of success. What goes wrong?

Their is a well known passage in the Talmud that implies even G-d struggles to find the key to a happy home. In the Gemara Sota a difficult pasuk in the Psalms is interpreted to teach that making successful shiduchin is as difficult for Hakadosh Baruch Hu as was parting the Red Sea at the time of the Exodus.

Question is, while we can understand the message here underlying the complexity of making successful matches, the connection between parting the sea and forging a marital union seems strange. In the one case, G-d needs to make a miraculous separation, dividing the waters so the Israelites could cross. In the other, G-d needs to bring already separate entities together, in making a marriage. How are they related? One is dividing, the other uniting.

Through coming to understand this passage in the Talmud we may discover some great truths about marriage and intimacy. I suggest that the Rabbis of the Gemara already knew that finding love was no great feat. Falling in-love is easy and natural. It happens to nearly everyone sometime or other.And for many of us it happens over and over.

But that love, the love based on the sense of identity with another is the easy part of real love. We discover someone we feel much in common with and our hearts sing.The hard part of a loving relationship is the the part in which we recognize how our partner is not like us, how we and they are different. That part of relationship is grounded in respect. It's focus is on the appreciation of another with their differences from us. Unlike the loving part based on similarity, here we celebrate them for who they are in their 'otherness' from us.

Scott Peck in his classic self-help book "The Road Less Travelled" precedes the section on love with a section on respect. He argues that no real love can happen without the foundation of respect. Respect is always based on the recognition that my partner is different from me with unique interests, tastes, likes and dislikes and opinions. Only when we accept and validate the other for who they are, and not try to change them to be like us, can intimacy blossom. Intimacy is always the dance between nearness and distance, between love and respect, between seeing the other as a reflection of us and seeing them as unique and individual.

In truth most marriages fail and most relationships lose their joy, not because their was not enough nearness and love. Rather what kills relationship is the lack of respect and the appreciation of the other for their distinctness from us. Too often we spend a lifetime in relationship either trying to change our partner to be like us or lamenting how hopeless they are because they refuse to accept our way of thinking and doing.

In this backdrop the Talmudic passage cited above makes sense. Forging a successful union is very much like parting the sea. In parting the sea G-d divided the sea which was essentially one body of water into two distinct parts, and kept them that way. They remained all the Yam Suf, yet they were two individual components and unique. On reflection, that is quite a task. A marriage union requires the same effort to be successful and joyous. The man and woman need to indeed be one. Yet at the same time they need to be divisible and distinct with each having their own uniqueness celebrated and affirmed by the other. Intimacy is the miracle of a oneness consisting of two affirming and loving each other in their respective differences as well as similarities.

And so we return to where we began. How do we make our partner happy? Staying home from war and burdensome obligations gives us the means but not the method.

If we take what our Sages taught seriously than we will know that happiness in marriage is not lacking because we don't sufficiently love or feel enough in common with our spouse. That's not the problem. The problem in our relationships is that we do not sufficiently celebrate our spouses uniqueness from us. We don't respect him/her enough. And worse still, we try to change him/her to be the way we think s/he should be.

I am fortunate enough to be a new chatan, and not for the first time. Last Friday I married. It devolves on me the mitzvah to make my wife happy. Its our first year. But in truth the mitzvah applies to every married man and every married woman. Our work is to make our partner happy.

I know and hope you know that the happiness we aspire to will not be gained by bringing some new gift to your husband or wife.Rather it will be gained in showing them respect for who they are and encouraging them to be most truly themselves. Their is no greater gift one can give another than saying and showing "You are different from me. And with those differences I love you as you are!"

Shabbat Shalom

Living as an Innocent

I recently read a news item where it was reported that the noted basketball super-star Lebron James paid a rabbi, reputed to have mystical abilities, a 6 figure fee so he would advise him on business decisions. According to the article, the rabbi, who heralds from Israel, and speaks no English, sat-in on investment proposals made to James and counselled him on where to place his money.

Making use of religious personalities,symbols,and amulets as a means to discern the future and influence the course of our lives is not new. But is it kosher? Just because we make use of items within the tradition rather than say tarot cards and rabbis instead of fortune tellers, does that in itself make it okay?

The Talmud teaches that one is not permitted to use 'psukim', verses in the Torah,repeated over and over, as a kind of religious device to, by dint of the 'magic' in the verses, bring about healing and prosperity.

This week the Torah is explicit in forbidding us from making use of soothsayers and fortune tellers to predict our future. But the Torah goes one step further. It tells us "Tamim t'hiyeh eem Hashem Elokecha", freely translated that means "You shall be innocent with the L-rd your G-d". The Haamek Davar explains the Torah's call to be 'tamim' by saying that even where we feel the need to know, we should remain innocent and trusting. And G-d will do as He sees fit for us.

The implication of the Hamek Davar's understanding of the verse is that its not enough that we do not make use of secular powers to know and direct the future. Even utilizing sources within the faith towards that end compromises our challenge to be 'tamim' and trusting in G-d and His direction.

So many who embrace the outer clothes of religion do so with the idea that religion will serve as some kind of magical potion to ward off evil and protect.They use prayer, study, rabbis, as if they are simply charms to guarantee against unwanted things. Sometimes they even become passionate in observance and most meticulous. Yet their practice feels almost primitive in its expectation that somehow if one does this or that one can be certain of his/her future.In their minds, Judaism provides the ingredients, which if rightly combined, can control the course of events.

Now its true that the Torah itself encourages us to pray for our needs. But prayer is not meant to manipulate the heavenly forces but rather to put ourselves in a new place with G-d, so that his mercy will devolve on us. Prayer is never meant to force the hand of G-d. And so too when we seek the counsel and prayers of great Rabbis. We do not expect them to be witch-doctors, with the powers of demi-gods. We simply ask for their prayers to be added to our own in beseeching G-d's, in whose hand our future rests, help.

Neither of the above practices compromises Hashem's call to us to be 'tamim'. We remain innocent and trusting in Hashem's will and decision. We simply are doing what He told us to do, appealing to Him so that he may give us the 'good' He intends for us.

Lebron James's Rabbi seems a far stretch from the 'tamim' of which we speak. The rabbi is not giving a 'bracha' to this Black basketball super-star. He is using his mystical powers to tell him what he otherwise would not know. And not about his moral conduct, but about investments that will make him money.It seems to me, he is using religion as a magical tool rather than as away to enhance one's spiritual self and draw near to Hashem. It is using religion against itself and its purpose.

It is not easy to be a 'tamim'. It is not easy to surrender ones natural instinct to want to both know and predict the future. The Torah tells us that in the ideal we will be given a 'Navi', a prophet so Hashem can tell us what we need to know. But for the rest, for all those personal matters of consequence not on the national agenda, we need to find the courage and faith to let go and let G-d be G-d.

Religion practiced as a means to manipulate the forces out of our control that they be good to us is a tainted religion.In the ideal, the goal of the religion we practice should be to give us the strength to live with all the unpredictability of life as an innocent, as a 'tamim', and be happy with our G-d.

Shabbat Shalom

Are the Religious Happy?

Gene Simmons, a lead vocalist with the rock band Kiss, and one who in both lifestyle and music gave expression to the joys of hedonism, was born in Israel. He emigrated to the United States while still a boy. Nearly all of his mother's family perished in the Holocaust. Once when interviewed, he acknowledged that growing up he had considerable contact with the Orthodox Jewish community in Israel. Yet he rejected religious life entirely in favor of the totally secular which he came to represent with his gaudy costumes and shameless antics. When asked why, he responded by noting that for all the certainty and fervor in the Orthodox Jewish world there was a noticeable lack of joy! How could he believe in Torah values and be part of a Torah community absent of joy!

Is he right? Do the religious experience less joy than the secular?
Do those who follow worldly pleasures, like they use to say about blonds, indeed have more fun?

Some years ago I attended a Siyum Hashas, a celebration of the completion of learning through the entire Talmud, together with near 20,000 men who completed the 7 year cycle of Daf Yomi study.
It was held in the largest indoor venue in New York, the fabled Madison Square Garden. It was an awesome spectacle. All these men, and many more who could not attend or could not get tickets, studied a page of Talmud a day. They were not rabbis or scholars. They were accountants and plumbers, diamond merchants and teachers. In short they were every-day people. Yet they were devoted to studying Torah, so much so that they gave at least an hour a day to learn Talmud and the daily page. Here they were in the home of the New York Knicks, and concert venue for the Grateful Dead, and they filled it, not to cheer or smoke pot,but to celebrate the gift of Torah study.

The evening was punctuated by addresses from the leading Roshai Yeshiva in America, scholars all and most revered. Yet as I sat and listened to address after address it was not the profundity of the remarks that struck me. Rather I was struck by how little spontaneous joy seemed evident in each speech. Encouragement? Yes! Challenge? Yes! Admonishment not to forget the learning? Yes! There was lots of those themes in the addresses. But where was the joy? I thought the Roshai Yeshiva should be dancing with glee. What a Kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of G-d. Committed Jews filled the Garden, the bastion of the secular! A cycle of learning was completed by more Jews than ever before in Jewish history. Why were there so few smiles on the faces of the spiritual leaders? Why did the ambiance feel more serious than happy!

I repeat my earlier question. Are those who take the Torah lifestyle seriously less happy than those who reject it? Does observance compromise our joy?

Its worth noting that in this weeks parsha, that of Re'eh, whilst we are charged in no uncertain terms to a total commitment to keeping the commandments and embracing the life of Torah, we are also mandated to be joyous. No less than 7 times in this week's portion we are charged with the call to be happy.

But lets be honest here. All the expectations that we keep the mitzvot, and they are many and intricate, and that we dare not sin gives us reason to be serious and hesitant to rejoice. If we take the Torah and our G-d given obligations to heart we are more likely to forever be concerned if we are getting it right! We are likely to be more anxious than happy, more sober than exuberant. With all the details of proper observance from the complexities of the laws of Shabbat and making the right bracha to having true 'kavana' when we daven we are forever likely to be self-doubting. Self-doubt rarely leads to joy.

And the confessions we make in our own prayers seem to mitigate against us feeling happy. If one davens nusach Sefarad, twice a day one recites the 'ashamnu' list of sins. And even if one does not, over and over we recite that we are essentially unworthy of the kindnesses we receive from G-d. All that we get and all that we ask for we do acknowledging we are undeserving.If one believes that even the blessings in his/her life come to him/her undeservedly, its hard to be happy. Grateful, yes! But happy, no! In the end, no one can be truly happy with gifts that come to him/her if s/he feels s/he is not really deserving of them.

And yet the Torah commands us to be happy. How can that be?

There is a brilliant and pithy model that someone once used to describe levels of spiritual maturity. They divided the process into 4 components. When one has a totally undeveloped spiritual sense they live life for their own sake. When they get early spiritual yearnings, in the second stage, they pursue G-d centered ends but for their own sake and benefit, meaning because of the rewards G-d promises for keeping and/or the punishment for neglect. At the third level, one pursues a G-d-centered agenda, that means the focus of one's life is on the spiritual, and for G-d's sake. At this level, one's desire to do mitzvot is so as to bring nachas to G-d. And mitzvot are indeed the center of one's life's work. I would think this is the highest level. But there is one stage yet beyond.
And that is to pursue one's own life's agenda, not G-ds, but not out of selfish motives. On the contrary, if you were choosing you would pursue the spiritual agenda entirely. Rather you choose what is good for you, even though you prefer to focus on G-d, because Hashem wants you to, that is Hashem wants your pleasure and joy!
The highest level is choosing to do what is for you but for G-d's sake!

It is in this context that even the most religious person can know,and indeed must know,total simcha. Rebbe Nachamn taught "mitzvah gedola l'hyot b'simcha", "its a great mitzvah to be happy always". What did he mean its a "mitzvah"? Mitzvah is a commandment! Rebbe Nachman should simply challenge us to be happy.
The answer is that Rebbe Nachman knew that for the truly spiritual person its so hard to be happy. S/he knows how lacking s/he is and how undeserving. If one simply is seeking to serve G-d for G-d's sake one is more likely to be serious than joyous, and self-doubt will reign. But simcha is a mitzvah. G-d wants us to be happy! We need to be happy not for our sake but to do G-d's will for us.
That kind of happiness can happen even for the one most skeptical of his/her worth, because that happiness is not about them but about Hashem's desire for them.

Gene Simmons was right. Religious people, those who take their obligation to Hashem most seriously tend not to be as naturally happy as their counterparts who are secular. How can we be truly happy when we feel ourselves so lacking.

But we are called upon to be happy. Its a mitzvah oft repeated in the Torah. It takes a level of great spiritual maturity to forgo our own self critique and be happy because Hashem wants it for us.
Yet that is our mandate. To be candid,I think even great Roshai Yeshiva miss this call. They remind us of our limitations. They talk to us at stage 2 and 3 of our spiritual continuum. But they do not challenge us to attain stage 4 nor do most in themselves reflect the joy it should auger. Too bad!

You and I will have to get it on our own....To be spiritual and full of joy is not only not inconsistent. They go hand in hand. To the extent we lack the joy is to the extent we have not yet matured sufficiently in our spiritual process.
True we have no right to be happy. All we are given is a gift undeserved. But G-d wants us to be happy...And even if I feel unworthy I need be happy because He wants me to know joy!
"Mitzvah gedola lhyot b'simcha tamid!

Shabbat Shalom

Paying the Price

What does it mean to be an adult? In what way is the grown-up different from the child? How do we recognize emotional maturity?

We may have many answers to those questions but surely any will include the idea that to be grown-up, to attain maturity means to recognize that all our actions have consequences. In the life of the child mistakes are made and forgiven with a simple "I am sorry".
S/he realizes that at times s/he has done the wrong. But nothing is so consequential that it is beyond redemption with an apology and, perhaps, a parental punishment. What s/he does not realize is that his/her actions have enduring consequences. S/he,as a child, does not yet know that one's actions can never be undone no matter how many apologies. We pay for what we take in life. Nothing is really free !

Truth be told, many of us, as would be adults, have yet to fully accept the same lesson. We go through life often realizing we are making mistakes, but we are unwilling to pay the price for them.Like children, we assume we can just say we are sorry or that we try our best and that will be enough. If you doubt the truth of what I say, just ask the smoker who is surprised to get lung cancer as if s/he didn't think s/he would ever pay the price for his/her choices. Or ask the person who does not exercise and over-eats and too early in life has a heart attack. Or the parent who fails to discipline his/her child when they are young and then finds him/herself with an unruly teen. Its not that the choices we make guarantee the consequences but they make them both predictable and likely.

The Torah this week in the parsha of Eikev makes clear that our choices have consequences. From the portion's beginning where Moshe tells the Israelites that if they keep the Torah and do the commandments they will be blessed with prosperity and peace to the end of the reading and the second paragraph of 'shma', the theme of action and consequence is repeated over and over. Indeed this is the recurring theme of the entire book of Devarim.

But we might ask, if G-d loves us why isn't it enough that He reward us for our commitment to Torah. Why does He need to punish us if we fail to observe? The Rabbis taught "The Holy One Blessed be He wanted to merit Israel therefore He gave us Torah and Mitzvot." We can understand that we are given the many many mitzvot so we can earn reward. But why punish us if we fail. True there are many opportunities to earn blessings, but one might wonder if its worth it with all the waiting reproof when we fail and, with all the commandments, there is so much opportunity for failure!

I was thinking about this when I went to visit an elderly and infirm man whom I learn with each week. You may recall him from an earlier blog. Well, I had called his wife earlier in the week and advised that I needed to reschedule our learning time. She said the new time was perfect for him and they would be delighted to see me.
When I got to the apartment I discovered, to my surprise, that he was not home. He had an eye doctors appointment and they had forgotten about our learning appointment. She apologized to me several times for the error and repeated over and over how meaningful the learning time was for her husband!

Now why did the wife of my weekly chavruta need to repeat over and over that the learning time her husband and I shared was so important to him and her? She could have just explained the mistake, as she did, and moved on?

The answer is that she knew what we all know. We don't forget things that have consequences for us. When my chavruta, even at 91 years, has a physicians appointment, he writes it down in his little book. He will neither forget it nor miss it. But our learning does not have that kind of 'chashivut', importance to him. It does not get noted in the book. And do you know why? Because it does not have immediate consequence in his mind. I do not get paid to learn with him. Our learning is a gift! When anything is a gift, with no apparent cost, no matter how precious, in the end it goes unappreciated and typically it gets neglected.

Please don't misunderstand.I am not meaning to be critical of my chavruta. On the contrary, my chavruta taught me something about me, and you, a lesson perhaps more valuable than the hour we would have spent learning. He helped me understand why it is that Hashem had to not only attach reward to keeping the mitzvot, but also attach punishment for failing to keep. If mitzvot only engendered reward with no negative consequence they would go under-valued and neglected. We simply would prioritize our lives so that other things, things that have negative consequences, would dominate our routine. We would miss our purpose in life!

I suspect that its for this reason the father makes the blessing of 'baruch she'ptarani', blessed is He who freed me from the consequences of the punishment for my son's 'avairot', sins, at his son's Bar Mitzvah. The blessing seems most peculiar for a happy time and one filled with hope for the future. Yet, in accord with what we have come to see, the blessing makes sense. To become a Jewish adult is to take responsibility for the consequences of one's actions, to be what is called in tradition a "bar onshin", someone who will be punished for his/her failures. No acceptance of mitzvot can be real and meaningful without knowing that it does not come free! The bar mitzvah, the boy, now man, son of commandments must accept that reality lest all the promise be lost in neglect.

The father makes the blessing so the son can hear! He makes the blessing so his son can fully comprehend that from now on he, the boy, is liable for his own deeds. If all Bar Mitzvah meant was reward and blessing then mitzvot would become cheap and observance a nicety, rather than a commitment. In this backdrop, is it any wonder that for so much of the Jewish world bar,bat Mitzvah makes so little impact on a boy's or girl's life. No matter how big the splash of how lavish the gifts if the young adult does not accept consequences for being a Jew the rite of bar/bat mitzvah will be empty of impact.

Whether in our own lives or in the lives of the children we are raising we must come to terms with the reality that our actions have enduring consequences. Its not enough to just claim the blessing in doing the right. We must acknowledge and accept that failure is more than sad, warranting an apology. Failure is tragic!

Whether in saying the hurtful word to another or failing to keep Shabbat as we need to, we must know that its not enough to mean well.
Meaning well does not help if you drive under the influence and harm someone. Meaning well does not undo the wrongful spiritual act either, whether to another or to Hashem. Knowing that, for sure does not make life easier. But it does make it more likely that we will toe the line and indeed live a life that will be called blessed rather than tragic!

Shabbat Shalom

Some Thoughts on Hate and Redemption

We have just passed the period of mourning on our national calendar. Tisha B'Av 5770 is a memory. We enter the weeks of 'nechama', consolation. Yet we remain as a people mired in the 'galut' and painfully incomplete. The yearning for Mashiach is as compelling as ever.

In the search for comfort, this week I want to look back with you at what got us here. How have we gotten stuck for so long in this state of brokenness? What can we do to finally bring it to an end?

The Talmud teaches us that the sins of our People committed during the time prior to the destruction of the second Temple were more severe than the sins committed at the time of the destruction of the first. We know this because the first exile lasted but 70 years, while we remain 2000 years later waiting for the culmination of the current exile.

How surprising that is, when we we know the first Temple was destroyed because the Nation violated the three cardinal sins, idolatry, murder, and sexual lasciviousness. The Jews of the second Temple, in the period prior to its destruction, kept the Torah and even were learned. Their sin, the cause of the destruction was, according to the Talmud, that of 'sinat chinam' unwarranted hatred one Jew for another. Could the sin of 'sinat chinam' be more pernicious than the sins of totally forsaking the principles of the Faith?

The mystery goes further. The Talmud also teaches that the power of Torah learning is so great that it can save a person/nation from the awful consequences due them because of commission of the three cardinal sins. Torah protects! If the Jews of the first Temple had studied Torah, even with their terrible 'aveirot', they would have been spared destruction. Yet, the Talmud notes, that as great as the power of Torah to protect is, it cannot protect nation or person from the consequences of the sin of 'sinat chinam'.

Why is this sin of hatred undeserved so consequential as to be irredeemable? What makes it beyond pardon?

I think if we reflect on the sin of hating another we may find clues to the answer. Lets explore hatred. The Talmud calls the 'avaira', "'sinat chinam'",literally that means "hatred for no reason". We might ask, is there such a thing? Does anyone hate for no reason. I mean lets think about the worst kind of hate, say
racism. Every racist has a reason for his/her hate. Hitler, in his own mind, evil as it was, thought he was doing the world a favor in getting rid of the Jews. He perceived us as a blight on humanity.
Those who hate always have reasons.

When the Talmud gives us the famous story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza and how the host of a major event who thought he invited one, his friend, and to his chagrin found that mistakenly he had invited the other, his enemy, refused to allow this enemy any saving dignity, and caused his humiliation by throwing him out, did that host have no reason to hate one of the Kamtzas? I bet you if you gave the host half an hour he would fill you with reasons why the Kamtza he hated was slime and totally undeserving of compassion.
He would tell you why he was right to expel him from the party, maybe even a mitzva.

Ask anyone why they hate someone and they always have a reason. In their own minds the hatred is justified. No, more than justified, typically they will tell you the hatred is indeed a mitzvah. Moreover they will tell you that you too should hate the other.

So then why does the Talmud refer to this sinful hatred as 'sinat chinam' "hatred for nothing". Its not a hatred with no reason? All hatred has a 'reason'. And how can we distinguish this 'sinat chinam', the hate which brought about our destruction and continues to cause us to languish in the galut from hatred that may truly be warranted?

I would like to suggest that the 'chinam', the "for nothing" that the Talmud uses to characterize this hate has not to do with the motivation for the hatred. All hatred has a basis and for that matter a cause, if not a reason. When the Talmud refers to the sinful hate as 'baseless' it means that the base for the hatred is rooted in the hater not in the hated. 'Sinat chinam' is when we hate another not for who they are, but rather because of who we are!

Yes, Hitler would tell you he had a reason to hate the Jews. He would name all our vile characteristics. It was not a hatred with no base. Problem was that the base for his hatred of the Jews lay inside his psyche, not in us. That's the problem with all prejudice. Sure we may give it reasons. But the essential source of our prejudice is rooted inside us, not in the other. No matter how hard we may try to project the reasons for our hate on the other, at the deepest level the hate starts with us, our issues our baggage, our fears.

The reason 'sinat chinam' is so irredeemable, beyond even the worst sins in our Tradition is because we think our hatred is not only not a sin, but, in fact, a good and noble thing. We idealize our hatreds. No matter how bad the sin of idolatry and murder etc are, no one makes them into Torah values! To sin in them is horrific. But the perpetrator knows he has gone against his/her Faith. Bring him/her back to the fold and s/he will do teshuva.

Hatred is not like that. We hate while we eat our b'datz meat. We hate while we learn hours each day. We hate while go make extraordinary sacrifices to raise our children frum and committed.
We hate and never feel guilty about it. We hate and believe our hatred a mitzvah !

We fool ourselves to believe the hatred is deserved and based on the wickedness of the other. We never see that core source of the emotion emanates within us. Perhaps the other is not perfect either. But the hate for them is not earned by them but rather the product of our projections, rooted in our fears and anxieties!

The sad part of the story is that now 2000 years after the Temple's destruction we are no closer to remedying the causes that brought it about. Learn more Torah? That won't help. They were learned then!
Daven more? observe more? None of that will help. We pale before the generation of the Destruction in our Jewish observance.

Its 'sinat chinam' we need to remedy. That's the only way to bring about the 'g'eula', redemption. Yet we remain self-righteous in our prejudices, believing them not only warranted but in-fact mitzvot to maintain!
When we will ever learn?

Are we at least on the road to the true 'nechama', consolation? I fear we have taken every road but the one that leads to the promise of our destiny!

Lets you and I ask ourselves, where does 'sinat chinam' reside in us? Who do we hate where the basis for the hatred is not in them but in our fears, anxieties, and at times self-loathing. Be honest with yourself! If we are, I will guarantee that 90% of the hatred we carry is 'sinat chinam". Oh sure the other isn't perfect! But 'hate', that comes from us!

The first step in the teshuva process is recognizing the sin! That's the one we miss entirely here. And that's the one redemption calls for. Simply recognizing that the hate we carry for another is a sin, and that it is rooted in our flawed character will speed the arrival of Mashiach and make real 'nechama' possible.
Oh when will we ever learn!

Shabbat Shalom

Our Standard Deviation

In recent years there has been much debate around Global Warming. No one disputes the fact that in recent decades the average temperature on our planet has increased. No one disputes the fact that if the trend continues warming temps can have devestating consequences on the eco system and on life in general. What is at issue is whether the increased temperatures we are seeing reflect a new reality perhaps caused by the infamous Greenhouse Effect or whether what we are seeing is simply within what statisticians call the Standard Deviation. By Standard Deviation we mean that in the course of any length of time, say perhaps 250 years, we may see fluctuations in temps for a period, either up or down. Those deviations from the average are normal and not reflective of any change in pattern. To us it may look like a significant move, but thats because we are looking at the temps within too limitted a time frame. If we had a larger perspective we might see that the rise or fall is normal within the larger cycle of years and not reflective of a real deviation from the mean. And so the debate rages.

Why do I share this here? I do so because standard deviation, in contrast to real change, is as much an issue in our personal lives as it is operational in global conditions.

This week we begin the 5th book of the Torah, the one we call Devarim. Unlike the other books, Devarim is not the word of G-d transmitted through Moshe but the words of Moshe spoken to the People of Israel in the month before his death and mandated by Hashem to be written as Torah. While the Book has many components, essentially it is a book of Musar, admonishment and challenge. Moshe reviews the journey of the people through the wilderness with the goal of making the people conscious of their vulnerabilities and strengths.

The great Hassidic Rebbes would talk of Devarim as this indespensable guide to living. One Rebbe made it his practice to read each day from it as his source for Musar. What's the magic in the text? Why is it so profound and important?

The answer I believe is that in speaking the message of Devarim to the nation Moshe gave us the greatest of gifts. After all who were those enterring the Promised Land? A whole new generation. They were the children of those who left Egypt. The story of their parents was not theirs. They did not refuse the Land of Israel. They did not worship the Golden Calf. They did not partake of rebellion and murmur. Why should they be reminded of these stories?
Why does Moshe review the past with them as if it belongs to them?

The answer is because indeed it does belong to them! True, they did not commit the sins mentioned. But its part of their legacy, indeed our legacy! If we contextualize the sins in the framework of standard deviation Moshe might say, "Yes you did not sin. Your parents did. But you are just as capable of sin as they are. Its just that in the pattern of life, in the cycle of events, your temptation was not theirs, your circumstances not theirs. But if their situation arose for you, you might fail just as miserably.
You have not outgrown the issues that they succumbed to. You simply are living in a different part of the cycle of the nation's story."

To see this in perspective we might talk of the pattern of relationship between husband and wife. Sometimes the husband (simply used as an example here) may get angry at his wife. He will shout or be mean verbally. Shortly thereafter he will be full of remorse and apologize to his wife with a deep sincerity. He says "I am so very sorry. I won't behave that way again. I am changed."
But has he, really? His 'change' lasts all of three weeks.Then something triggers his rage and again he has an explosion. And again, shortly therafter, he does the apology routine with heartfelt sincerity.

What happened here with the husband (and wife, who is part of the story). Did he change and regress? Did he actually become different and then lapse? The answer is "not at all". While it looked like teshuva,his outburst and apology is part of the pattern, part of the standard deviation. Its the story of his life (and hers). Sometimes the 'change' may last for a few weeks longer or even last a few months longer, but in reality its no change at all. Its simply part of the pattern.

I dare say if most of us had a real perspective on our lives we would sadly see that so much of what we consider growth and change is nothing but playing out a life pattern within our standard deviation. Rav Eliyahu Dessler in his classic Michtav Mai'Eliyahu talks about real change. Real change moves us up to a higher plateau so that we are no longer vulnerable to the same 'nisyanot'.
When we really have grown that which once could tempt us no longer has influence over us. Indeed we have a whole new subset of issues to confront, but they are not the ones we had prior, or at least not in the same way as prior.

Only when the husband in our story above stops entirely from acting out his tantrum on his wife would say he has changed. Though now, at his new level, he might be tempted to be less giving to his wife in moments that formerly made him wrathful. He remains challenged. But at a higher level. Indeed he has changed.

Thats the gift Moshe gives Clal Yisrael in the Book of Devarim. He offers them the perspective that helps them see where they have changed and where their behaviors still fall within the standard deviation and they remain vulnerable. True, they did not commit the sins of the Golden Calf and the 'Meraglim'. But inasmuch as Moshe knew them and saw their patterns he knew the sins belonged to them as much as to their parents.

If an issue like Global Warming about which we have data and some distance engenders such heated debate and remains obscure as to whether we are seeing real change or a recurring pattern, how much more so is real change obscure to the individual who seeks to gain perspective on his/her life. Who of us can be certain if they have really grown or simply are living out the pattern of their life with its ups and downs over and over.

Alone, without the help of another who knows our life and story and who we confide in, its near impossible to have a true perspective. Sadly, without help, all our lives we may go around the same bush, never having made progress despite our intentions. We, like the husband in our story, have much drama, but no change.

Its not enough to be mindful of our individual behaviors. We cannot make improvement unless we know our patterns as well in all their subtlety and complexity.

Moshe gave a gift to our ancestors. He provided them the pespective to see themselves with clarity. We need a husband, a wife, a Rebbe, a friend, another. We need someone who we can tell our stories to and who can speak to us with the straightforwardness of Moshe. We need to ask for our truth.

Shabbat Shalom