What Do I Really Want?

Have you ever found yourself humming a song and you don't know why? Maybe its a popular tune from long ago or some jingle from a television commercial you thought you hardly noticed. You wonder, why is this melody playing for me today? Why does this song I have not thought of in many a year come up in my head right now?
There is a folk wisdom that says that what you find yourself humming spontaneously will reveal what matters to you now in this moment of your life. Through the song's title, its lyrics, its message, your unconscious is revealing the current drama of your life and what you really want.

That folk wisdom,while intriguing, has been debunked by many and found to be untrue.
But the question it prompts remains. How do we know what we really want? How do we know our heart? There was an article this week in the Maariv about a young chatan, groom, from a charaidi background, who left his kallah, bride right after the chuppah and all the wedding guests. He fled and was not found for a month. A 'get' quickly followed. But what prompted the chatan to marry and then so quickly opt out? Did he not know his own heart?

And while the above example may be extreme how many of us have felt ambivalent about what we want in terms of career, family, level of Observance, community. Who has not felt certain of what they want only to feel very much unsure shortly after? We make choices and then choose again. Some of us remain so paralyzed by our ambivalence that we don't choose at all. How indeed do we know what is our true desire? Would that we could so easily look at the song of the day and find a solution.

From this week's parsha of Korach perhaps we can get some insight. You recall Korach, a man of stature, from the same tribe as Moshe, the tribe of Levi, stirred up a mutiny against Moshe. He questioned whether Moshe and Aharon had not taken too much of the responsibility for communal leadership unto themselves. His motivation was jealousy and self-agrandizement. He couched his challenge as a call to equality.
He said "For the whole nation, all of it is holy.And why have you raised yourselves above the congregation of Hashem".

The results of the mutiny of Korach are legendary. After a test by means of the firepans of incense in which only the firepan of Aharon was chosen, the earth opened up and swallowed Korach and all his mutineers died with him.

What is interesting to note is that Moshe called for the test of the true by means of the firepans of incense not on the day of the mutiny but rather the next morning.
Moshe said "Tomorrow morning G-d will reveal who is truly his and who is holy that He wants him near, and who He has chosen to be near to Him."

The commentaries wonder why the delay? Why does Moshe wait a day to bring the mutiny to closure? Why did he not immediately call for the test and validation of his leadership?

The answers are many, including several in the Medrash. In keeping with the concept of the blog, that is, understanding the Torah through the window of our self, I think Moshe was telling Korach and his followers something profound. Moshe was telling them, "Look I know you think you are motivated by holy desires and that you believe you are really only interested in the welfare of the People. Wait then. Wait til the morning, til the next day, after the heat of the moment of challenge has past. Tell me then, when you are calm and serene and all the passion has cooled, in the morning when you wake, do you still want this revolt? Are you still committed to it? Is it your ego compelling you in which case you will find less enthusiasm for your agenda come next day, or is it really a matter of conscience that you cannot desist from, something you truly feel called to, no matter the consequences."

Many years ago I had a teacher who was taken by my ability to get very excited about a particular issue, express strong feelings, only later to quickly forget about it and move on to something else. He said to me, "Israel, you are a mile wide and an inch deep." Indeed not all passion reflects depth. We can feel something very strongly and with emotion and yet it will not leave a trace a few minutes later.
To feel deeply, for something to really matter to us and at the core of our being, it needs to leave a residue. It needs to effect us in some significant way and for more than the passing moment.

If I want to know what really matters to me, what I really want, the lesson Moshe is teaching me is that I need to wait. If what I want continues to hold importance in the light of the new day, when I am calm and serene, then I know what I want is core to my real self. If the passion and yearning passes, now matter how strong it seemed in the individual moment, it is driven by forces external and maybe even impure. No matter how many times the passion may return, if it does not hold force in the 'morning' of my life when all is calm and quiet, it does not warrant a place of importance and in many cases it should command no place at all.

So many questions lie before us. So many decisions. What do we do about our marriage or our work? In what do we invest our self? Where do we put our energies? To answer those questions and so many more, we need to know what we really want, what matters to us. And to know that we will have to get past the emotional moments, the moments of passion and look towards the morning, the moments of serenity, when our heart speaks to us and we have the capacity to listen.

Then, in the morning, we will know our truth. Then, in the calm,when the passions have quieted, we will know what we need do.

Shabbat Shalom

"Where Am I ?"

A short time before my father died I asked him where he saw himself in the context of his life. I said, "Dad, if you drew a line and the starting point of the line represented your birth and the line's end symbolized your passing, where are you now?" My father's response was somewhat startling. He said "Now, I see myself as a little past the middle."

My father's sense of self in the context of his life's journey at the age of 84 contrasts markedly with the wisdom we find expressed by one of our great sages who taught us to view every day as if its our last,no matter how old we may be, so that we will always be in a state of 'teshuva', repentance.

"Location, location, location!" In the world of real estate, all that matters is location. The emphasis on location can be equally compelling in our spiritual journey. Nowhere does that become more clear than in the parsha this week of Shlach Lecha. Our ancestors were in the wilderness, on the threshold of the Promised Land. Moshe sent the spies, all men of distinction, to explore the land and bring back a report in anticipation of the invasion. Ten of the twelve men brng back a disheartening report. They speak of the difficulty of the conquest and of the harshness of the country. In response, the People lose heart. They cry and lament their situation. They despair of enterring Israel. And with that the fate of the Generation of the Wilderness is sealed. They are condemned by G-d to wander and ultimately die in the wilderness, never to enter the Promised Land they rejected in their cowardice.

The core error made by the spies and the people who believed them was that the wilderness offerred an alternative home, and a safe one at that. True, they were a nation in transition, but they had so many comforts. They had the manna to eat and waters to drink. They were protected by G-d's pillar of fire by night and Cloud of Glory by day. They had Moshe and Aharon to lead them and the Mishkan as a house of worship. Why risk enterring the Land of Israel? Why compromise a good thing for something that seemed risky at best?

Israel's mistake was a mistake in location. They did not realize where they were. They thought they were in a spiritual haven in the wilderness. They thought "what we have is plenty good." They did not understand that as good as the 'midbar' seemed it was never meant to be their dwelling place. Israel the people need Israel the land. Just as their could be no nation without the Torah, their could be no nation without its homeland of Israel.

The Torah, in the first part of the book of Bamidbar focused on forming the People's identity. All the emphasis on the counting, according to family and tribe, the travels by position and flag, the order of society including the Levites and their tasks, were meant to help the Israelite define in clear and certain terms "who am I?"
"Who am I?" is a question of deep and abiding importance for a nation and its constituents. One needs to have an unequivical sense of one's own identity to fulfill ones purpose in the world.

But "who am I?" is only one of two compelling questions vital to our People's health and wholeness. The other, equally significant, is "where am I?". Unless a nation and its members know where they are in the context of their life and history they will be equally compromised in fulfilling their call. Israel knew who they were. But the sin of the spies indicates they did not know where they were!

In the sections of the Torah that follow the story of the sin of the spies and its horrific consequences we have several laws given to us. All involve knowing our location. The first two deal with the laws of donating wine and oil for libations for individuals who bring a sacrifice, and the taking of challa from the dough to give to the kohain. Both laws only apply once the people are in Israel. In the wilderness, where this generation was to die, the laws were irrelevant. Knowing where one is is central to the mitzvah's observance.

After those laws we are told of the requirement to bring special sin offerings if we violated a Torah law unintenionally. In each of those cases, the sin typically occurs when a person does not know where s/he is. S/he is missing some vital information on their situation that causes the unintentional sin. And then we have a story of the man who violated the Shabbat in the wilderness and who, in the end, was stoned to death for his sin. Here too, the man did not recognize his location, in this case, his location in time. He failed to accept that he was living in the Sabbath.

And finally the reading ends with the portion of Tzizit, which we say twice a day in the sh'ma. Tzizit are not like tefilin. Tefilin are holy, they contain the name of G-d on parchments. We wear them on our head and opposite our hearts. They are meant to remind us who we are. Tzizit are not holy. Our Sages taught the blue dye, the 'techailet' of the tzizit is meant to remind us of the blue of the sea, and the sea of the sky, and the sky of our call to fulfill G-d's laws. Tzizit are meant to remind us as to where we are, our fragility in life and our calling. They answer the question "where am I?"

Where am I? is a question we need to constantly be asking ourselves throughout our life. We need to ask it in terms of our physical space and in terms of our space in time.

In terms of our physical space how tragic that those who live outside Israel build a home and life without even feeling the absence of Eretz Yisrael. The comparison to the Generation of the Wilderness and their willingness to forgo settling the land with its challenges for the spiritual and physical comforts of foreign soil is too compelling to dismiss.

And even those of us who live here in the Holy Land, do we realize its kedusha. I see litter everywhere. Garbage on the street. Yes, people desecrating Yerushalayim with schmutz. How can that be? How can we live here and be so mindless. We too fail to comprehend where we are!

And just as important we need to ask "where am I?" in the context of our lives.My father's optimism about life as he neared death is inspiring, but it won't serve us well if we delay doing what we need to do in our lives because we feel we have time.
Life moves on, years pass. We have work to get done, growth to accomplish. We cannot postpone the changes we need to make, our improvements forever. The time for most of us is here and now. For most of us the excuses of youth are past. We need to know our location and respond with the urgency it warrants.

"Where am I?" is a question each of us has to ask ourselves and grapple with on a regular basis. To live well and meaningfully we need to know our location, both in space and time. Its the way to the Promised Land, both for us as individuals and for us as a People.

Shabbat Shalom

It's Unfair !

Last week my wife and I were all set to see Aida, the Verdi opera that is being produced at Massada. It is a huge spectacle that has drawn attendees from around the world. Knowing the opera would end very late and that it would be a long ride home, we decided to take advantage of special bus transportation from Jerusalem organized for the event. The tickets were expensive. The anticipation high. We talked about how special this would be for weeks. This was to be an experience!
We got to the designated pick-up spot 45 minute early. We were eager and excited.
And we waited..and waited..and waited. We saw no others who looked like they were going to the opera, and no trace of the bus. Finally, exasparated, we tried calling others who might know. No one could be reached. And then, then we took a second look at the tickets, and we realized. We had made a mistake, a terrible mistake, a two hour mistake. We misread the times. The bus left two hours before the time we anticipated!

Missing events is a theme this week.It is one we find in the parsha of B'haalotcha. There the Torah tells us of the Passover that was celebrated the second year after the Exodus, the only one marked by our ancestors in the wilderness. The Torah tells us that their were those who had a problem with the Passover. They were ritually impure and prohibitted from bringing the Paschal lamb. They came to Moshe and complained, "why should we be held back from bringing the sacrafice of Hashem in its proper time together with the People of Israel."

Moshe brought their complaint to G-d and indeed we received the laws of Pesach Sheni, the Second Passover, a month after the first. Pesach Sheni was designated specifically for those who, for good reason, could not bring the Passover at the
time of the initial holiday. They are given a make-up date, to bring the offering and celebrate a dimension of the chag.

The Talmud in tractate Succah tell us that those who came and complained about being left-out of the Passover experience were,in fact, ritually impure because they were caring for a 'met mitzvah' a dead person who had no one to bury him/her. Their ritual impurity was not a matter of choice but rather an obligation, as the Torah insists we defile ourselves to care for the dead who have no one to bury them.
Moreover the Talmud tells us that they had completed the purification process prior to the time of the Passover. They were simply waiting for nightfall to be able to enter the sacred space and partake of the holy.

Question we might ask is, from where does the Gemara know those who were insistant that they not be excluded were defiled through a 'met mitzvah'? How do they see it in the verses? The Talmud derives from the language of the 'pasuk' that those who wanted to partake of the ritual already had completed their purification. But what's the source for the idea that they were involved in doing another mitzvah?

I think to understand the intent of the Gemara we need to take a second look at the story of the Pesach Sheni. At first glance it appears that the complainants got what they wanted. They wanted to be included in the Passover rites, despite their ritual impurity and they we given the opportunity, albeit a month later. But on keener reflection the truth is the complainants did not in fact get what they wanted. In the verse we quoted above we read that those ritually impure wanted to mark the Pesach "...together with the People of Israel". They did not want to be excluded. They felt it unfair that they miss this time to join with their brothers and sister in partaking of the special rites. When Hashem gives them the make-up date its some solace but only partial. They remain unable to bring and eat the Paschal lamb with the nation marking its first anniversary of the Exodus. They remain excluded in the celebration of the People. Pesach Sheni indeed gives the ritually impure a chance to fulfill the mitzvah of the 'korban pesach', the paschal lamb, but now its a private celebration, without the joy of solidarity with all Israel.

Whats the message here for you and me? What was Hashem telling our forebearers in the wilderness and, by extension, us? For me the message here is that all life, even religious life, has rules. When rules are in place even though they may feel unfair, they nonetheless are operable and the consquences are in force. The laws of ritual purity and impurity are Torah principles that effect our relationship to the holy.Yes, it may be true that to be excluded from a national celebration because of such rules seems unfair, is unfair. Yet thats the way it is!

The Talmud in Succah was stressing this crucial point. They told us that those who came wanting to be included in the Passover rite with their brothers and sisters might well have become impure because they were doing G-d's will in caring for a 'met mitzvah' and might even have virtually completed their purification process. Still, while they were given a chance later to bring the offering, they remain on the sidelines as the rest of Israel brought the Passover on the 15th of Nisan. Was it unfair, as they argued? Very much so! But life, and yes, even Torah law in particular situations can be unfair. Our task is to accept the reality, bitter as it may sometimes feel, as the will of the Divine. Sometimes loving G-d, loving the life He has given us, and loving His Torah, when it feels unfair, is the greatest expression of devotion.

A hasid once came to his rebbe and in tears shared what he felt was a terrible problem. He said," Rebbe help me! Whenever I daven to Hashem I have unbidden thoughts that enter my mind. No matter how much I try I can't seem to keep my 'kavana', my intentions, focused on the holy." The Rebbe told him in response, "Who said G-d wants your intentions. Maybe G-d wants your struggle!"

Life is unfair. We missed Aida and our tickets were wasted (though it could well be argued we had only ourselves to blame). Those ritually impure, no matter how noble the reason for their being in that state, cannot celebrate the Passover meal with their People. Over and over, day after day, we experience the unfairness of life, and yes, even in matters of faith and Torah law.

The challenge for us is not to waste useless energy cursing our fate or invested in anger over our circumstances. Rather we are called upon to see the unfair that befalls us as part of the Divine plan and to use it as an opportunity to love G-d even when our experience feels unjust. Who knows if that is not the very reason that which feels unfair befalls us.

Unfair, yes. Now let's love our G-d in the unfairness!

Chag Samayach
Shabbat Shalom

"I'll Get Smaller"

When Audi Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of the Second World War, was asked what prompted him to take on so many acts of bravery in the face of death, he is reputed to have answered, "I was young. I never imagined I could die."
No wonder then that those targeted to be drafted or recruited for the army are the young, between 18 and 26. Its not that they are wiser at that age than those older. Its simply that they may be more willing to express courage in battle, since they feel a sense of invincibility.

Its interesting to contrast the make-up of a nation's fighting force with the make-up of the spiritual army of the People of Israel, in this context, the Levites. This week, in the Parsha of Bamidbar, we are told that the Leveyim, Levites, were to replace the First-born as the designees of G-d to work in the Temple and assist the Kohanim, the Priests in the service. The Torah tells us that their were three Levitic families. Each was assigned a different task. What they had in common was that, unlike the army dedicated to a nation's physical struggles, where soldiers were recruited at the age of twenty, the Levites served from the age of thirty and then only til they reached the age of fifty.

Rashi, in his commentary on the requirement that the Levites be thirty, as first told to us with reference to the recruits from the family of Kehat, explains that
the Levitic family of Kehat had to carry the holy components of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary the Israelites carried with them in the wilderness, on their shoulders. They had to be strong. Strength maximizes for a person once they reach thirty.

While far be it from me to challenge Rashi's rationale, I do find it difficult as a total explanation as to why the Levites could not serve until they were thirty. What about the other two Levitic families. They used wagons to transport the items for which they were responsible. Why were they unable to serve until reaching thirty? And moreover the requirement to be thirty did not only apply in the wilderness and with the Mishkan. It was the rule in the permanent Temple , the one erected once the Israelites settled in the Land. Then the Levites had no longer the responsibilty to carry. Why was the limitation that under thirty was excluded from service still in force.

And still further, the Rama in the Shulcah Aruch, the code of Jewish Law, tells us that a chazan for the High Holidays should not be less than thirty years of age. The commentaries there explain, since our prayers are in place of the Temple service and the Levites, who represent us, could not do the worship if under thirty, so too a Cantor representing the community in prayer should be at least that age. Problem is, if the only reason the Levites were ruled out if less than thirty is because of a lack of physical strength, what has that got to do with a Cantor leading a community in prayer?

In keeping with the context of this blog, that is, looking at the Torah through the window of our self, I want to share a story that helps me understand the Torah's age requirement. I once heard Rabbi Eliezer Kaminetzky, the now retired Rav in Highland Park, NJ, tell of his interview weekend for the post of rabbi of his synagogue.
Then a young man, he noticed that while everyone seemed impressed with him, there was one old-timer who appeared to have his doubts. Rabbi Kaminetzky approached him at the close of Shabbat and told him, "I see you have some reservations about me for your Rav. Perhaps it is because you feel I am too young and a bit too sure of myself." He went on,"While I respect your concerns, let me tell you this. My father owned a Jewish book store in which he sold all types of ritual objects. Once a man came in to the store and was looking at the array of havdalah candles. He came over to my father and said ' I really like this one. But its a bit bigger than I wanted'. To which my father replied,'Don't worry. It will get smaller'." The Rabbi went on to tell the old man,"Me too, you don't need to worry about my smugness. You can give me the position.For sure I will get smaller."

Life has a way of humbling us. We start out so confident of our talents so sure of our beliefs, brimming with self assuredness. The older we get, the less sure we become, the less confident, the more introspective. Life knocks us off our pedestal.The challenges and yes, the failures teach us how little we know, how little we really are.

It is for this reason the Levites may well have been told they cannot serve in the Temple before the age of thirty. Until thirty most of us are still too large to have the humility necessary to stand before G-d. We have not yet had the failures and disappointments sufficient to show us who we really are. Like the High Holidays chazan, we need to get smaller before we are worthy to enter the sacred spaces representing the community. We need to know that we do not know. We need to have the self-doubts that make truth possible for us. We need to have the inner uncertainty that leaves room for the spiritual to find presence within us.

Often times I will have a conversation with the young. Now, myself a man mature of years, I stand in wonder before the cockyness and self assuredness I experience in them. They have no doubt about the correctness of their positions. They carry little doubt about their calling. At times I feel like the old-timer in Rabbi Kaminetzky's story in dealing with them. And then I remember, this is the way its supposed to be. They are young. I too was once like them. With time, like with me, life will teach them. They will become smaller.

And for you and me who, like the havdala candle, have burned down some in traversing through life, its good to know that our journey has made us smaller. The problem for most of us is not that we are not big enough for the tasks we most need to do, but rather we are not small enough!

Shabbat Shalom

Live Relationship or Dead Marriage ?

Have you ever wondered, what makes marriages go cold? Men and women typically start off so much in love, so much excited by one another. Yet all too often, in a few years, they are virtually strangers living as one. Couples who at the outset were full of conversation, sit across the table from each other with nothing to say except as it concerns the children they share or matters of the home, like bills that need paying or repairs that must be made. No one shares matters of the heart.
What happened?

I think that a verse in this week's parsha of B'chukotai may give us some insights.
The Torah at the outset tells us of the reward and punishments that will devolve upon the People of Israel for adherence to or disobedience of the mitzvot. After a long list of wonderful blessings that G-d tells us that He will bestow on us, including victories over our enemies, bounty of the field, peace and security, etc, the verse reads, "And I will place my sanctuary in your midst and I will not detest you." It continues "And I will be for you for a G-d and you shall be My people etc."
Now what's surprising here is that in the midst of a wonderful litany of gifts all of a sudden we read, "and I will not detest you".
Why should G-d detest us? We are keeping the Torah? We are doing His will? And what kind of blessing is not being detested? Being detested would indeed be a terrible, curse but that doesn't make its opposite a blessing. Why should we expect to be detested?

I think the answer here tells us something profound about relationships and intimacy.
When we marry someone we are attracted to the wonderful qualities they posess. We also may love many of their ways, the way they smile, the way they express themselves, the way they dress. We find them beautiful both inside and out, both the spiritual and the physical.
As we get to know someone we discover parts of them we do not like. Sometimes we are turned off by what we perceive as a character flaw. Most often we find ourselve not liking personal mannerisms, maybe they laugh too loud, or maybe they are a bit sloppy, or maybe they are forgetful etc.

Most of the mannerisms of our partner that we discover we don't like we knew when we married them. They are not really surprises. What we didn't know is how much those behaviors would bother us. When we were dating or even in the early stages of marriage we over-looked the pieces of our partners behavior that displeased us. Only after we married and lived in an intense intimacy of husband and wife did we find that the very things that we found cute, or at least non-offensive, now become hard to take.

Why is that? The answer is that intimacy places a focused lense on every aspect of our significant other. It magnifies both the good and the bad, the desired and that which we don't like. As we grow together, over time we find that increasingly we have difficulty tolerating certain dynamics of our spouse, dynamics that we thought would not bother us, at least not to this extent. So what happens? In some instances the mannerisms of our spouse become to us so abhorent that we say we cannot live with them any longer. We then go on to get a divorce with all the heartache that entails.

More commonly, in order to mitigate the effect of the behaviors of our spouse that we don't like, we reverse the process. We become less intimate, less connected. Bit by bit we detach. Once we are emotionally detached the behaviors of our spouse are no longer under the microscope. We no longer react to them with a heightened sensor. But at the same time in our detachment we lose that which gave life to the marriage, the intimacy between us and our husband or wife. The cost of preserving the marriage is the death of the relationship. It's a pretty steep price to pay.

This is what the Torah is telling us in the 'bracha' that "I will place my sanctuary in your midst and I will not detest you." Israel, G-d's beloved, may keep the Torah and perform the mitzvot, but they will inevitably have their flaws. No one is without unattractive aspects of their personality. Thats why Hashem gave us the Torah in the first place, to help us with our defects. G-d is telling us that even though He will live in our midst and we will have a profound intimacy, yet He will not be negatively affected by our character lackings. Yes, we will have shortcomings but they will not compromise the intensity of G-d's relationship with us. Unlike the husband and wife in our vignette, Hashem will maintain the closeness and not be turned off. Our intimacy with the Divine will remain fresh and alive.

Would that it were so easy for us to make a similar pledge to our life's partner.
If only we could tell our husband or wife that no matter what we find we don't like in them, we will never experience their behavior intolerable and never grow distant to preserve the marriage.

No, for us to make such a pledge it would require more from us than a good will. We would have to confront our own attitudes as much as those of our spouse. We would have to talk about things we don't like about them and listen to what they have to say about us. We would have to reflect together on the mannerisms and nuances that seem so small at the outset and yet, like a cancer, grow and ultimately rob a marriage of its life energy.

People always say communication is the key to a good relationship. But the question is communication about what. The Torah this week teaches us that what we need talk about is the hard stuff, the stuff that gets in the way between us and our spouse.
The very things we are afraid to talk about is the stuff we need to discuss to preserve our marriage. And that kind of talk, while scary, is a matter of life and death for the relationship.

Do we want intimacy? Of course, both with Hashem and with the one we love. Hashem is perfect. There is no flaw in Him to distance us. And He promised to remain intimate with us even with our shotcomings. To maintain intimacy with our love, will require us to recognize that its natural to find aspects of the one we are married to intolerable. Our choice is whether to grow distant in silence so as to preserve the marriage or risk openning up so as to assure the relationship has life.

I, for one, would prefer a live relationship to a dead marriage and I am willing to do the work, uneven and scarey as it may be. What about you? Its never too late!

Shabbat Shalom

"You Only Hurt the One You Love"

Do you remember growing up when we commonly used the refrain "sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never harm me". Of course it wasn't true. Too often most of us felt the woundedness caused by harsh and critical words. And they left marks more deleterious and longer lasting than any physical blow we might have sufferred.

The Torah this week in the parsha of B'har makes clear that abuse through words is unacceptable and a sin. The Torah teaches "'v'lo tonu ish et amito'" " and do not wrong one another". The Sages in the Talmud point out that here the text is referring to verbal advantage/abuse. It cannot be addressing financial wrong, as in cheating or deception, since the Torah, in an earlier verse, already taught us that we may not take financial advantage of a fellow Jew by deceiving or cheating him/her. This commandment then is teaching us that we must watch how we speak to another, that we not cause him/her emotional hurt by putting him/her down, by teasing, or by knowingly giving him/her bad advice.

The Torah edict makes perfect sense. We know that we can be hurt and hurt another worse with words than with money. What is surprising is what the Talmud goes on to say about the parameters of the prohibition. The Talmud wants to understand the word 'amito',literally, "his peer" as it is used in the verse above where we are forbidden to cause hurt. 'Amito' is an uncommon term to use when referring to another. Typically the text will use the word 'ish' meaning,
a person, or 'acheve', meaning, his brother, as occurrs often in the reading of B'har. What does 'amito' mean here?
They go on to say that the word 'amito' is an abridgement of several longer words. It stands for "'am she'itcha b'torah umitzvot'", "persons who are similar to you in that they keep the Torah and the commandments".

Yet can that be? Can it be that we are only forbidden from verbally abusing Jews who are Observant, Jews who are faithful to the law? Can it really be that we are permitted to be cruel to a non-religious Jew or a non-Jew, to put him/her down, to be verbally abusive? That hardly makes sense. The Torah is clear, we are forbidden to cause physical harm to all Jews. And stealing is unacceptable even from a non-Jew. We are commanded to be sensitive to the pain of animals. How can we be granted license to cause emotional pain to others, even be they other than us in Torah adherence?

The question that troubles me is one that troubled Rabbi Baruch Epstein and he sought to makes sense of it in his commentary "Torah Temimah". In the end, his response seems unsatisfying even to him. In keeping with the concept of this blog, that is, personalizing the Torah text to see what it has to say to us in the context of our lives, I shared this vexing problem with my wife. And she, out of the context of her life, came up with an explanation for the Talmudic understanding of 'amito' that felt true and compelling.

Lindy said that perhaps the Rabbis were not using "'amito'", "persons who are akin to us in keeping the Torah and mitzvot" to limit the prohibition of verbal abuse and cruelty and to give license to hurt those outside of ourselves. What they were doing was simply noting a fact. The persons most likely to get hurt by our words are the people we are closest to, those in our family and our community. What they meant to say was that cruel words for the most part don't really cause hurt to strangers. For them it is true the adage "sticks and stones...but names can never harm me".We have little power in their lives. What we say or feel matters little to them. But thats not true for those we are closest to. For them, as the refrain in the song goes, "You only hurt the one you love". Indeed the ones we love can be more severely hurt by our words than by our actions. Yet the oddity here is that the ones we are closest to we are typically least careful not to hurt with our words. We take license with our spouses, our children, our friends in ways we would never do with a stranger. We assume they won't take offence or worse, if offended, they won't complain.

It is to us the Torah is speaking. "Don't hurt with words he who is 'amito', the one you are so comfortable with you fail to respect." Yes, its true,its never right to be cruel in speech and with anyone. But the ones you have to worry about are the ones more similar to you, Observant like yourself, in your community, part of your family. It is them who we can most hurt. It is in addressing them that we need be most attentive to what we say and how we say it.

"You only hurt the one you love". Its a good thing to remember! Its a much more useful refrain then "sticks and stones may break my bones....".
Our task is to never minimize our capacity to hurt the ones we love with our words, so that we never cause them to suffer!

Shabbat Shalom

When is a Holiday Not a Holiday?

A friend recently wrote me from the US. He reflected on the just concluded holiday of Pesach. He noted that many of his friends in the community where he lives, were quite eager for Passover to end. They had had enough of the matzah and enough of the Yom Tov meals and enough of the long days spent in shule. They were ready to get back to life as normal. He, my friend, wondered why men who were observant of the mitzvot, commandments, and invested in them would be looking forward to moving on.
He remembered when he was a boy and living in Brooklyn amongst hassidim, how when the Passover holiday drew near its close the men shared in a communal 'oneg yom tov', a joyous holiday gathering at the shteible. They sang together and danced, trying to draw every last gift the holiday had to offer. They were sad to see the sun set on the chag.

He wondered what changed. Why do so many of his friends today feel so different from the way the men he looked up to as a boy felt as Yom Tov ebbed.

After reflection, my friend concluded that many of the modern Observant Jews of today keep mitzvot out of a sense of obligation. They hold on to the tradition but see it as a sacrifice, albeit a worthwhile one. They are committed to Torah, but out of duty.
The Hassidim he knew growing up kept the mitzvot out of love more than duty. They cherished the opportunity to fulfill G-d's commandments. For them no holiday was ever long enough, no call to observance too difficult.

I would like to embelish the insight of my friend. And I do so from the vantage point of the Torah reading of this week, the parsha of Emor. In Emor we are given the most detailed call to the observance of the holidays of our year. Not only is each holiday enumerated, but the mitzvot associated with the holiday are detailed and defined.

As the holiday section opens we read "These are the festivals of Hashem, holy convocations, that you are to proclaim at their appointed times." The verse, while well known is mystifying. In the beginning it refers to the festivals as G-d's. If that be true, then why do we need call them anything. They are G-d's holidays, they don't belong to us.
The Rabbis of the Talmud understood the enigmatic verse by changing the way we read the word "otam" meaning "them" and to read it instead as "atem" meaning "you". The verse then would be interpreted "...which you alone will call at their appointed times". They explain that even though the holidays were indeed Divinely ordained, they do not come to life except through the calendar as decided by the Beth Din, the Jewish court. It decides on the length of the lunar month and when to add a month for a leap year. The Sages point out that even if the court erred in its decision, in example, it made a leap year, adding a month, when it was uncalled for, the decision is effecacious. The chag, G-d's chag, will occurr based on our calendar dates be they right or wrong in reality. While the holidays are G-d's, they are given to us to actualize.

I compared the attitude of my friends friends in the galut with what I experienced as Pesach concluded here in Eretz Yisrael. Here there was a genuine sadness when the Passover holiday was slipping away. At the synagogue I attended we sang and danced before saying goodbye. And this was not a shule of hassidim. Why? Why is here different?

The answer I believe is that here in Israel the holiday is not G-d's holiday alone. It feels like it belongs to us. The chag is part of the fabric of our life. Even secular Jews mark Passover as a time of vacation, trips and outings. There is no mail, no bus service during the days of chag. We look forward a whole winter to this season of family and community gathering. There is no Sunday here. There is no Presidents Day weekend. This is it! Pesach is not an addendum to our life, something extra. Pesach and all the Jewish events are integral to our life and calendar.
When holidays are "atem", belonging to us, meaning they are intrinsic to our lifestyle their can only be sadness when they depart. Indeed the hassidim of my friends youth lived Jewish life, even in the galut, like we live it today in Eretz Yisrael. For them there was no Sunday, no 4th of July, and Succot was an eight day h Thanksgiving, minus the turkey. No wonder they were loathe to see the holidays leave.

And the same could be said for Yom Hashoa, The Day of Holocaust Remembrance. In America in order to feel connected to this important day of identification with our brothers and sisters who perished at the hands of the murderous Nazis, we have to go to a special service of remembrance. Otherwise the day will feel just like any other. Here in Israel, no service is necessary. Sirens go off all over country for two minutes at exactly the same time. Everyone stops what they are doing. Even those in cars on the highway, pull-over. Everyone stands, wherever they are in a common time of silence and sadness. The same will be true this coming week with the day of remembrance for the soldiers who fell in defence of our country, and later in the joyous celebration of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence day. Here these event are part of the tapestry of our lives. They are not obligations. They are consistent with who we are , expressions of our national self.

The Jerusalem Talmud teaches that the day a person brings a sacrifice to the Temple is for him/her a holiday, a personal holiday. And because its a holiday for him/her s/he is forbidden from work. Note the sequence of events. Its not the prohibition from work that makes it a holiday. On the contrary, because it's for him/her a holiday that no work should be done.

There lies the key. If the holiday or feeling of a special occasion precedes the call to the observances sorrounding it the event will forever feel fresh and desired.
If the observances are the base for the holidays existence in our life it will likely,at some point, lose its flavor.

The truth is really simple here. Jewish life is meant to be lived in a Jewish state.
Nowhere is that truth more compelling that on a Yom Tov, Jewish Festival, or a day of reigious and national meaning.

Shabbat Shalom