For Sukkot: On Fear and Joy

One of the things that stops us from being happy is fear, and also the twin sister of fear, worry or anxiety, which in their own way are forms of fear – fear of what will happen next. We are normally consumed by fears, whether they be on a large scale, the worry over the destruction of the earth through greenhouse gasses and Iran’s nuclear weapons, or on smaller scale, worries over our children’s health and education, our careers and our personal economic situation.

To be truly happy, sameach, as we are called on to be during this holiday of Sukkot, zman simchateinu, requires us to leave these fears behind. But how?

The Sefat Emet says that yirah amitit, “true fear or awe” mevi simchah, actually “brings joy.” This is why Sukkot follows the “Days of Awe.” On Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur we are meant to lose our ordinary fears by acquiring a true sense of awe for the ultimate King. All else pales in comparison. Why fear other humans when they are here today and gone tomorrow? The only thing to fear is God Himself, and this is a fear which brings liberty and joy.

We step out into the world on Sukkot, in our little sukkahs, vulnerable to the elements with our open roofs. But we do not fear our ordinary fears because we are secure in the knowledge that God protects us. Hosha Na, “Please Redeem Us” we say again and again to God, reminding ourselves that it is only God’s protection we seek. And this knowledge brings us joy – the kind of joy reserved for only the truly faithful, who, like dependent children secure in their trust of their parents’ providence, do not worry the ordinary worries, but go out in the world, confident and secure. May this be a holiday of joy!

For Yom Kippur: On the Power of Speech

“Keep your lips sealed like two grinding stones that cleave to each other” (Rabbi Hayim Vital, as quoted by Hillel Zeitlin in God in All Moments).

We say a lot of things that we wish we hadn’t -- hurtful words out of irritation or anger or an attempt at humor (or even, I’ve noticed in my children, out of boredom), gossipy words out of idle curiosity or a desire to connect to one person by speaking about another, untruthful exaggerated words out of a desire to impress, and interrupting words out of our greater need to be heard than to hear others. Sometimes the moment the words go out, we regret them, sometimes even while we are saying them. Hillel Zeitlin was wise to take this statement of Rabbi Hayim Vital’s as one of his personal hanhagot, his daily habitual practices – to keep his lips firmly sealed.

Yom Kippur is a time when we are particularly preoccupied with the power of the mouth to do wrong. We begin Yom Kippur with Kol Nidrei, a prayer about vows sworn that have not been fulfilled. And in the list of Al Het’s, prominent among the sins enumerated are those done with one’s mouth; there are at least seven listed, many of which include the word peh, “mouth” or the equivalent -- sins of slander, scorn, and foolish speech. It seems that the mouth is a major center of wrongdoing.

It is also, thankfully, a major center of rightdoing; the mouth has power, in both directions. After all, it is through our mouths that our sins are forgiven on Yom Kippur. What do we do on these High Holidays other than use speech to beseech God -- to forgive us, to be merciful, to grant us life? We say a lot of words on these holidays, as testified by the need for two separate (thick!) prayer books! Shma Koleinu, we say, “hear our voices.”

Our need to beware of what our mouths say – to generally have our lips cleave to one another – comes from the Torah’s respect for the power of speech to do both good and bad in the world. Barukh She’Amar, goes the morning prayer – “Blessed is He who Spoke” VeHayah Ha’Olam, “And the world came to be.” Creation happened out of a series of speech acts – speech is a powerful tool -- and our daily acknowledgement of that creation is itself done through our own powerful speech act of prayer. We honor God’s use of speech through own proper use of it.

And so at this time of year, we practice keeping our mouths both open and shut, learning to respect the power of the mouth and its essential dignity and holiness. The daily Amidah prayer concludes with Elokay Netzor Leshoni Mera , “My Lord, keep my tongue from evil,” and it begins with: Hashem Sefatay Tiftah Ufi Yagid Tehilatekha, “God, open my lips so that my mouth can speak your praise.” May we know when to speak and when to remain silent.

Rosh HaShanah Thoughts: On the Line Between Despair and Self-Reflection

Ivdu et Hashem B’Simchah. “Worship God with joy.” Even during this time period of serious reflection, worship God with joy, not sadness.

Repentance – a thoughtful process of self-assessment of one’s faults and shortcomings – can be depressing. I’m still mired in the same issues as last year. The situation is hopeless, one feels.

That isn’t the task – to feel hopeless. The Piaseczner Rav, in a work entitled Hovat HaTalmidim, “The Responsibility of the Students,” outlines some common human faults and ways of overcoming them. He pauses to explain the delicate balance of emotion involved in such self-improvement:

“Do not become saddened, young one of Israel, and do not let your heart drop inside you from the enormous responsibility, for sadness is itself a bad trait which destroys the mind and the heart, and even leads to laziness. “

Instead of sadness, the Piaseczner Rav proposes a kind of gentle motivating worry -- an awareness of one’s enormous potential and of one’s responsibility to fulfill that potential. He paints a picture that expresses the difference between sadness and this state of heightened concern. The person who is sad is like one who has lost his fortune and has no hope of ever retrieving it. He is despairing and depressed. Not so one who knows that there is treasure buried deep, deep under ground. He feels a gnawing urgency to begin the work and a constant worry about how to dig and reach the treasure, but the worry merely propels him to action; he remains essentially positive about his future.

Despair has no role in repentance. On the contrary, one needs to feel inspired and secure that there is indeed a treasure buried deep deep inside oneself and that it is just a matter of work to retrieve it.

Rosh HaShanah is a time of inspiration, not despair. The call of the shofar is not a cry of sadness, but a call to arousal and action, galvanizing the people like the ancient trumpet call to war; there is energy and optimism in this call.

You will be punished, said last week’s parsha, for “not worshipping God with joy,” tahat asher lo avadeta et Hashem Elokekha besimchah. Sadness and despair, as the Piaseczner Rav says, lead to non-action. What we are looking for this time of year is a joyful optimism that inspires us and gives us the energy to do the digging we need to do.

Some Thoughts for the Month of Elul: Taking the Initiative

This is a time of awakening from below. In Hasidic thought, there are two kinds of awakenings -- that from above, when God initiates and causes something to happen inside us or in the world, and that from below, when we humans take the initiative in the divine-human relationship. This period of 40 days between Rosh Hodesh Elul (the fist day of the month of Elul) until Yom Kippur (the 10th day of the month of Tishrei), a period of teshuvah, repentance, is a period of awakening from below, a time when it is we who attempt to awaken ourselves to the service of God and to awaken God Himself to be our partners.

That is why, says the Sefat Emet, the rabbis say that the word for this month, Elul, stands for Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li. “I am for my Beloved, and my Beloved is for me.” It is we who must start – must take the first step in feeling that “I am for my Beloved.”

Historically this time-period is understood as the time period in which the first national sin was repented for, the Golden Calf. This is the 40 day period of repentance at the end of which, on Yom Kippur, God sent Moshe down with the second set of Tablets, showing His complete forgiveness of the people. These second set of Tablets, says the Sefat Emet, thus represent the Torah as it is won by the people’s own spiritual work. The first set of Tablets came down purely as a gift from heaven. For this reason, they could not last. But the second set of Tablets were earned by the people’s sincerity and devotion, and so this is the Torah that remains with us to this day, the Torah that we earn through our hard work. No wonder, then, that it is at this time of year that we celebrate Simchat Torah, the joy of Torah; what we are celebrating is our ownership and participation in the Torah that we have brought down to earth.

Open miracles don’t happen anymore. God does not cause plagues to reign on our enemies (at least not in obvious ways) nor do we see Him revealed at the top of a mountain filled with thunder and lightning. Our experience of the divine, of revelation, our understanding of Torah, comes only through our own hard work. As the Sefat Emet often says, the more you put in, the more you get out. The more you believe, the more will be revealed, the more you work on yourself spiritually, the more you will be conscious of the divine in the world. Religious sensibility is a muscle like any other; the more you work out, the more fit you are.

What a good message for the beginning of the school year! Learning is not a gift that descends from above. It is hard won. And yet, it is also a gift; we should not forget the end of the verse – V’Dodi Li, “And my Beloved is for Me.” If we put in the energy, if we take the initiative, then God, too, will play His part; we will also receive – from above – more than we put in. As the ancient rabbis put it in God’s voice, “If you make an opening for Me as narrow as the eye of the needle, I shall make the opening wide enough for camps full of soldiers and siege engines to enter it (Pesikta deRav Kahana 5.6).

Parashat Matot-Masei: Stopping Along the Way

When I finish this walk, I will go home and eat breakfast. After I finish putting the kids to bed, I will have a cup of tea and go back to my work. We think these thoughts all day long. While we are in the midst of one activity, we are waiting for it to be over, so that we can move on to the next activity. Are we ever present in the activity of the moment, not thinking about where it’s leading us, what will happen next, but simply engrossed in the moment?

I think that may be the message of the Torah’s detailed description of the people’s encampments in the desert, the long list of the places they stopped along the way from Egypt to the land of Israel (Num 33). Why list every single place name (42 in all)? Because the Torah values every step along the way; each point is precious, a tiny moment of redemption.

The Torah itself doesn’t even tell us about the destination point, doesn’t describe the people’s entry into the land of Israel. That is the goal they have been moving toward the whole time, but that is not the point; the point, it turns out, is all those little stops along the way; the point is the journey itself, the life that was led on the way to the land.

We humans are strivers; we live a life in constant motion, trying to achieve something, to get somewhere, to do something. It does indeed feel like vayisu . .. .vayisu . . . vayisu . . . “They travelled . . . They travelled . . . They travelled . . . “ This is as it should be; we have a job to do in this world. But at the same time, we should not forget the value of the process itself, the fact that every single moment – every single place along the way -- is a moment of redemption. The value of this moment does not come from the fact that it leads to a certain destination; we might very well not get to that destination; each place along the way has its own value.

That may be why the Torah takes the time to write, of each place along the way, not just Vayisu, “They travelled,” but also Vayahanu, “They encamped.” We are travelers, but we also need to learn to stop and be present at each place along the way; today, right now, is the moment of redemption.

Haftarah for Parashat Pinhas: On Jeremiah and Empowerment

Who said these words? “Don’t say you’re too young to do it.” “Don’t be scared of them.” “Good job [seeing what there is to see].” “You’ll be as strong as a fortified city or an iron pillar.”

Who said these words? A life coach? A parent to a child? No. God to Jeremiah. All those words are quotes from this week’s haftarah, the first of the three haftarot of rebuke we read during this three week mourning period for the destruction of the Temples, culminating in Tisha B’Av. This week we read Jeremiah 1-2:3, and we hear God say all those words to Jeremiah at the start of his career as a prophet.

The theme of these haftarot is ostensibly rebuke – God’s anger at the people for various sins and in general, for abandoning His worship. But here, where we begin in Jeremiah, we find another undertone – not so much rebuke as chizuk, personal “strengthening” and encouragement.

The question is one of identification. With whom do we identify in the passage? With the people of Israel, immersed in sin, being blamed and punished here by God, or with Jeremiah the prophet, being initiated into a task to fight evil in the world? The focus of the text in this chapter is primarily on Jeremiah, and begs us to identify with him. We are a nation of prophets, every one of us called to stand strong and fight evil in the world. From this perspective, the message becomes less blame and more empowerment, less rebuke and more chizuk.

This three week period is the designated time to think and mourn over the destruction of the Temples along with the many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people throughout history. One can easily be swallowed up in negativity, in the sense of gloom and doom of many of the prophetic passages, and in the sense of hopelessness that also often attends our thinking about our own world – from climate change to the Taliban to the ever-increasing economic gap in our society.

That’s why I think it is no accident that the haftarot for this period begin with Jeremiah 1-2:3, with a message of encouragement and empowerment to fight the evil. The answer to negativity is not hopelessness, but empowerment to demand change. God understands that what stands in the way of prophetic action – not just for Jeremiah, but for most people – is fear and a lack of confidence – I am just a na’ar, “a young lad,” says Jeremiah; I’ve never done this before; I don’t know how. The message from God is: I am with you; you will be strong; you are good and capable at doing this. This is a message not just for Jeremiah, but for each of us in our own way, a message that leads not to guilt and blame and depression, but to empowerment to create change and a positive future.

Parashat Balak: Seeing the Whole

It seems that cursing works better if done while having in sight a part of the curse’s object, but not its entirety. The Torah emphasizes that Balaam, in his first two attempts to curse the Israelites from a mountain top above them, did not view the whole nation, but only a small portion of them, from the side. This incomplete, side view seems somehow important to the attempt to curse, as King Balak, frustrated by the results of the first attempt, tells Balaam before the second attempt that he will take him to a different place from which he “will only see a small portion of it [the nation],” and “not the whole” (Num 23:13). What is it about not seeing “the whole” that Balak thought would help Balaam to damn the nation?

The nation as a whole, as a unified entity, a kelal, cannot be cursed, says the Netivot Shalom. When the people come together as Balaam finally viewed them on his third attempt – “He saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe” – then curses, judgments, all forms of evil have no power over them. The power of a unified nation is the power to thwart curses, to turn evil intent into blessing. Evil can only rest on the individual if he is unattached to the whole, the source of life, the tree trunk of connection to others. The individual’s job is to learn to cultivate this kind of attachment to the whole.

In many meditative practices, there is the concept of interdependence; the goal is to learn to step beyond the false barriers that separate us as individuals and to see how interdependent and interrelated everyone and everything in the world is. I think this may be what Balaam learned, according to the Netivot Shalom – to view things not piecemeal, but as a whole.

Partly this view comes from being up high (Balaam viewed the Israelites from atop various high points). We went hiking this week and climbed a mountain. From the top, the world does look more integrated – you can see whole fields and whole mountains, whole roads and towns; the trees suddenly form themselves into forests. The world makes more sense, seems more of a single piece from up there, and you can feel how you, as a little person amidst it all, are a part of this whole. This is the view that leads to blessings and to goodness, because it is the way of connection. The way of cursing relies on the disjointed view that separates us all, the illusion that we are separate. Balak was right to suggest that cursing required the view of only a small portion of the people, but it is ultimately the Balaam eye view – a view of the whole – that we are after.