Shavuot 101

בס''ד

This post was written for the Schusterman Foundation's REALITY Network. 

Shavuot is one of those Jewish holidays that got lost.

In America, for most of the last century, celebrations of Jewish holidays have revolved around children. Until recently, most parents wouldn’t go to a synagogue for holidays unless their kids had some program. So, almost without exception, the popular Jewish holidays fall within the school year. But Shavuot typically falls in late May or early June – just after school lets out. Unless you’re real hardcore, it’s not a holiday of which you’ve heard.

Which is a shame. It’s a good one; you don’t even have to eat matzah.

Shavuot’s meaning is straightforward.* It’s the day on which God gave us the Torah: 1.3 million people, all standing around a not particularly impressive mountain called Sinai, and the voice of the Divine came out of thunder and lightning, speaking the Ten Commandments. Even in our CGI world, the spectacle would have been impressive.

We were already a people; we had suffered together in Egypt; we were redeemed together at the first Passover; we knew each other in joy and in pain. But on that day, we became a people with a purpose: “I, God, have called you in justice; I have grabbed you by the hand; I created you, and set you to be a people of covenant, a light to the nations.” (Isaiah 42:6) From that day, we have held the responsibility to carry and live by a book in which is written the eternal message of justice and compassion.

Jews are not alone in this. Everyone has an obligation to the right and the good. But its particular expression through the Torah – that is our birthright and our responsibility.

The giving of the Torah happened first thing in the morning. In testament to the goofiness of human nature, the Jews overslept and almost missed the whole thing. The midrash** teaches that God showed up to give the Torah, and Moses had to wake up the whole camp. ***

To make up for that embarrassing oversight (it’s a lot worse than missing that 8am meeting with your boss), many Jews have taken on what is now the practice that defines Shavuot. On the evening of the first night of the holiday, we spend all night studying Torah ‘til the sun rises in the east. And in that moment we will be awake, ready to hear God’s voice, and receive wisdom.

Then we’ll pass out for the better part of the day.

People will sometimes respond to this unusual practice by commenting that it’s very nice that the party animals (of a strange sort) want to stay up all night, but that they prefer to be tucked comfortably in bed, thank you. However, there is magic in those midnight hours. Before the invention of modern lighting, people would regularly wake at midnight for study and reflection.**** Maimonides, a medieval Spanish philosopher and physician, teaches that a person acquires most of her wisdom at night. In the wee hours of the morning, the secret self emerges. Hidden truths manifest. Revelation becomes possible.

If you can manage it, this Tuesday night, May 14^th, find your way to a tikkun – that’s what we call this holy all-nighter. But even if you can’t make it this time, know that the experience of engaging Torah study is radically egalitarian. Everyone is capable; everyone is welcome. Teachers help a lot, but they’re not required. All this kind of study requires is a good book (Elie Wiesel’s Souls on Fire would be my personal recommendation), perhaps a likeminded friend or two, and the willingness to open up to what’s on the page. Something essential just might be waiting for you, ready to be revealed.

Shavuot Opportunities Around DC:

—EntryPoint DC and DC Beit Midrash, 6:30PM

—DCJCC 1529 16th St., NW

—Tikkun Leil Shavuot with Moishe House MoCo and Congregation Beth El Montgomery County 7:00PM

—Congregation Beth El, 8215 Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda

—Shavuot with Rosh Pina, 7:45PM

—The Flats at Dupont Circle,

—Four Corners Shavuot @ Adas Israel, 8:00PM

—2850 Quebec Street, NW

—Kesher Israel Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, 8:00PM,

Tiffereth Israel/Ohev Shalom 9:30PM

—2801 N St., NW

*As much as anything in Judaism is straightforward. Which isn’t much.

** A kind of commentary on the Torah, dating back ~2000 years. Considered canonical, and near importance to the Torah itself

***Shir haShirim Rabbah 1:57

**** Check out a really fascinating book, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, by A. Roger Ekirch

The Sweet Truth

בס''ד

Behar-Behukotai

23 Iyyar, 5773

May 3^rd, 2013

38^th Day of the Omer

A person experiences something extraordinary: fights in the war, saw the peace treaty signed, heard Hendrix play that electric National Anthem. When she returns to the rest of us, we have one inevitable question: what was it like to be there?

Shavuot is around the corner. Its meaning is straightforward – on Shavuot, God gave us the Torah.

Our Rabbis were gripped with the same question that seizes us: what was it like? What was it like to hear God’s voice? How did the sky and the mountain look? How did it happen? Tell us what it was like.

And what some of them said was, “when we heard God’s voice speak the first word of the first commandment, God’s voice was too much to bear, and we died.”

Weren’t expecting that one, were you?

The midrash* teaches that God spoke the “I” of “I am the Lord your God,” and the souls of Bnei Yisrael left their bodies. The Torah, embodied, comes back to God, and says, “Master of the World, I exist, I live! You exist, You live! Yet you have sent me to the dead!!!”

And the Blessed, Holy One does two things: revives all the Israelites, and – here’s the kicker – sweetens God’s own voice so that each individual can stand it.

For those of you midrash nuts out there (legions, I’m sure), this is why the verse in Psalm 29 (before Lekha Dodi on Shabbat) says, “kol HaShem bakoah” – “God spoke in strength,” – according to the listeners’ strength – and not with God’s strength (koho). God spoke to every individual differently, such that everyone had the strength to hear the Divine. God sweetens the Truth.

As a person who, by temperament, is full of fire, I need this lesson. Some of you may feel the same. Every person holds a small piece of the Divine truth. I know because I see those truths splashed all over Facebook. But the trick is to speak the sweet truth to others. Through my work with alcoholics, I’ve learned this gem: before you speak, ask yourself – is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Then open your mouth.

The point is not to avoid difficult truths; Torah speaks both to who we are and to who we could be. The point is that spoken truth should point towards sweetness and healing, not humiliation and destruction. Torah’s sweet truth gives people back their lives.

“God’s Torah is pure; it revives the soul.”

Psalm 19

*Shir haShirim Rabbah 6:3

VOTE HERE

Seeing Is Believing

בס''ד

Parshat Emor

15 Iyyar, 5773

April 24^th, 2013

30th Day of the Omer 

A lot of Torah is learning how to see.

I suppose this is true for any area in life requiring depth; doctors, lawyers, teachers, parents, artists, judges, professors, analysts, marketers, actors, writers – all learn to see what is before them in light of their concerns: are these symptoms a disease? Is this action legal? What does this child need? Why was that historic event significant? From learning to look well, they gain an added measure of usefulness and worth.

And when their sight is especially clear and exceptionally penetrating, we share their vision with the rest of the world, and record their names in the annals of the great.

Paradoxically, the first step towards clear sight is learning what to ignore. “Do not be led astray after your hearts and your eyes, which you prostitute yourselves by following after them.” (Numbers 15) The verse is obviously true – all of reality television is a testament to its wisdom.

But there is a deeper meaning: when it comes to human beings, sometimes one must look beyond a whole lot of external detritus to see the goodness of the soul underneath.

This ignoring-in-order-to-see is a mitzvah: “See – today I am setting before you blessing and curse.” (Deut. 11:26) “…and choose life, so that you may live.” (Deut 30:19) It is a wise requirement, for there is great pain waiting for those who can only see the shmutz in those around them.

It’s also damn hard. We all present plenty of distractions to the people in our lives – reasons why they should not see the goodness in us. Some days, those distractions are very hard to ignore.

Luckily, in my life, I have my colleague and friend, Rabbi Shira Stutman.* If there were ever a master of the choice to see the good, it would be her.

So choose for yourself a sighted companion, someone who can guide you in the art of seeing well. It is the secret to a blessed life.

*Rabbi Shira is also my supervisor. She was recently voted one of the Forward’s most inspiring rabbis in America. For these gifts and talents, I have taken it upon myself to torture her mercilessly. It’s my special way of showing affection and appreciation.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE

Dr. King's Sword - Responding to Boston

בס''ד

Parshat Aharei Mot-Kedoshim

9 Iyyar, 5773

April 19th, 2013

24th Day of the Omer

The Onion said it best. It always does. “‘Seriously, can we wrap this up already?’ Maryland resident James Alderman told reporters, echoing the thoughts of all 311 million Americans, who have just about reached their weekly goddamned quota for carnage, misery, confusion, heartbreak, and rage. “Because, you know, I’m pretty sure we’ve all had our hearts ripped out of our chests and stomped on enough times for one seven-day period, thank you very much.”

Someone set a bomb off at a marathon. An eight year old and two others died there. Two cops were shot last night.

There were heroes. And there was shame. What bothers me most is how not at all unusual all this seems.

But what reassures me is that it seems that the American people have changed.

We have changed. We are not the same people yanked out of our overripe naïveté 12 years ago when the towers fell.

Not all of that change has been good: we’ve frittered away a decade in pointless wars; we have a strange, dangerous, addiction to assault weapons; our politics are so polarized that one party should just call itself Antarctica and be done with it.

But when the bomb went off, and ordinary people ran towards the blast to help, and runners added 2 miles to their staggering 27, just to reach the nearest hospital and donate blood, we saw who we want to be.

In the Song of Songs it says, “Here is the bed of Solomon, with sixty warriors around it, of the heroes of Israel. All grasped a sword learned in war; every man, his sword strapped to his thigh – out of fear of the nights.” (3:7-8)

We are these verses. We know fear in the night, and we are learned in war. Perhaps the great tragedy is that we live an infinitesimal inkling of what large swaths of the world experience daily.

I am cautious of using war imagery because it makes people feel like it’s ok to go out and shoot someone, or, on a whim, invade a nation. But here is what King said about nonviolence:

“We had to make it clear that nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice. It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil that he is standing against as the violent resister but he resists without violence. This method is nonaggressive physically but strongly aggressive spiritually.”

We have reluctantly assimilated the idea that we do not live in times of peace. Peace is not the tenor of our age. We live in a strange age in which the terror of the few is perpetrated upon the wellbeing of the many. Those who set the bombs are not waiting for the right moment to take our hand in friendship. Peace is a fervent dream; it is not reality.

And if that is the case, then we must become – we already have become in some ways – spiritual warriors. It is time to choose an aggressive spirituality, just as the good doctor taught us. 

Among the reasons that Dr. King was a great man was that he knew how to choose his weapon. Every weapon has a recoil: when used, it kicks back at the one who used it; it is immutable Newtonian physics. The weapons we choose inexorably affect us in return. We cannot ignore how weapons that cause death and destruction change the nature of their wielders. This is why terror is insidious: not to respond is irresponsible; however, to respond with violence is to run the risk of furthering our dehumanization.

In his book, Why We Can’t Wait, King writes, “Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”

I am glad that there are trained, armed police officers all over the country whose job it is to protect us. But our societal response cannot be to up and grab a gun. Those guns end up pointed back at us. We want a different kind of weapon. We need King’s sword.

As a society, we are not perfect, and there’s really no cause for our triumphalism. But what we have built in this country is a model for dealing with intractable ideological conflict that does not necessitate beating the other guy with a tire iron, or assuming that the guy with the dark skin is the enemy. America is not a peaceful place; we war over ideas and values constantly and grimly. But we do it in front of the Supreme Court, within inches of each other  (I saw it) – and here’s the good part – no one dies for it. The fact of civil response to ideological war is not all of our reality. But that it exists at all is worth everything.

Rabbi Barry Katz, quoting the psychoanalyst Alan Phillips, teaches that part of adulthood’s maturity is surviving and integrating the destruction of childhood’s fantasy. Our fantasy, that everyone desires peace and goodwill, is destroyed. We live in a world of violence. Unlike 9/11, let’s not go invade somebody. Rather, let us be the warriors who fight for that kind of peace, despite the threat of violence to us, to our families, and to our society. That is our Torah. We are to be the warriors who fight for that kind of peace, despite the threat of violence to us, to our families, and to our society. 

I have said nothing new. A thousand sermons and op/eds tell us to fight back by preserving the good in our way of life. All I have to add is a reminder, and some hizuk (strengthening): warriors keep fighting. They accept the necessity of struggle as a personal responsibility. They fight, even while they fear.

Will Joyner wrote a beautiful review of Wounded I Am More Awake: Finding Meaning after Terror, the story of a Bosnian physician who lived through Bosnian concentration camps, and his subsequent work.* The article ends with the haunting words of the poet Mak Dizdar, from which the book’s title was taken:

They whisper around to me that my life has been in vain / They do not know that so wounded I am more awake.

*Again, I am thankful to Rabbi Katz for directing me to this reference.

How Not To Say Something Dumb

בס''ד

When I was a rabbinical student, our class was visited at school by a number of parents who had suffered the worst loss possible: the loss of a child. They taught us a lot, but there was one message that they felt was imperative to ram home: when you approach someone in crises, or someone who has suffered terrible loss - don't say something stupid. They then gave us a list of things others had said to them:

"Well, at least you have other children."

"Are you sure you did everything you could?"

"Everything happens for a reason."

Please read this unbelievably important LA Times editorial, which gets it right.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407,0,2074046.story

America: When People Are Paid to Smile

Parshat Shemini
25 Nisan 5773
April 5th, 2013
10th Day of the Omer

בס''ד

My problem with America is that here, people are paid to smile at each other. 

I just rented a car. The woman at the counter was lovely. She bustled. She beamed. And it was as clear as day that her kindness was part and parcel of the corporate image she was entrusted to project.

Don't get me wrong - the smiling works. Oh, does it work. Her smile lifts up that mundane transaction. I leave with the feeling that, you know, the world is an alright place to be. Maybe Ward and the Beaver are waiting for me at home?

But deep down lies the knowledge that we only transacted. We connected through commodity, and it goes no deeper than that. This is the darkside to our commercial courtesy: here, when someone smiles at me, suspicion grips me: I am sure that she's about to sell me something.

To my chagrin, the Talmud sides with Enterprise Rent-a-Car. In Brakhot 6b, Rabbi Chelbo says in the name of Rav Huna, "If one knows that another person will always say hello...and does not return that person's greeting, s/he is called a thief..."

I concede that greeting is a currency. It is passed from one person to another. One's greeting has value; therefore, we possess the power to honor, or manipulate, that value.

What bothers me that is that, in American culture, we spend our greetings mostly in order to make currency of another kind, which is green, and rhymes with the word 'subprime real estate/mortgage-backed securities'. We smile to make money.

We should spend our greetings on other things as well. It is important. An order of "It's just a beautiful day," or "You look like you need a smile," or even a simple "I see you," may be worth the expenditure. For if our smiles are only for the sake of another's usefulness to us, what will we do in the moments when their utility fails?