Some Post Rosh HaShanah Thoughts on Judgment

Ever since Rosh HaShanah I have been thinking about judgment. Not God’s judgment, but our own human judgment.

On Rosh HaShanah we read the story of Hannah’s prayer for a child. I have always thought this story is related to Rosh HaShanah because it is an example of someone who cries and whose prayer is answered by God. This year, though, what struck me was the theme of judgment – the High Priest Eli falsely judges Hannah. He sees her praying silently, her lips moving but without a sound, and he judges her – wrongly – to be drunk. One can almost hear the self-righteous thoughts going through his mind – Imagine the nerve of that woman, to come into this holy place so drunk! Who does she think she is!

But the truth was otherwise, of course. The truth was, and often is, that this person we see acting strangely and often irritatingly before us, this person is suffering. We judge them harshly; our blood pressure goes up as we feel the anger mount – the nerve! How could they! But the truth is – they’re simply in pain. Like Hannah, what makes them act in this unusual way is an inner suffering that only God has access to.

Which is why, this time of year we remind ourselves that there is really only one Judge, and it isn’t us. We are all humans, limited and wrong-headed in our judgment of one another. We are faulty judges.

We are faulty judges because we don’t really know what is going on for another person. Our first response is often not to be curious or open to hearing the truth – we are quick to assume the worst.

We are faulty judges because we judge from our own self-centered vantage point. Perhaps Eli was particularly sensitive to slights to his honor as a priest and considered drunkenness in the sanctuary to be a personal affront to his own honor. We know this scenario. We are engrossed in our own tallying of personal honor and shame and see everyone else’s actions through this prism – we feel hurt and therefore we judge, without being able to get out of the blindness of this self-centered perspective to see the reality of the person in front of us.

But the Hannah and Eli story has a happy ending. Eli is humble and open enough to hear Hannah when she explains herself, to allow his first impression to be corrected. And once he hears her, he blesses her – go in peace and may God grant your request. And, after she leaves this encounter, the verse says that Hannah was no longer downcast. Where there was judgment, there is now understanding, compassion, and the ultimate antidote to judgment – blessing.

In a way, the story can be conceived then as story of Eli’s teshuva, his repentance from the sin of judging another harshly. This is the task then --- to turn our feelings of judgment into compassion and blessing, to learn to see the suffering inside those whom we would naturally judge, and find it in ourselves to bless them with peace and good wishes. To feel their need for blessing in place of our need to judge them. We will feel better about ourselves as well as others in the process and all be blessed with peace.

Parashat Nitzavim and Rosh HaShanah: On Stability and Repentance

Atem Nitzavim Hayom. You stand today. Rashi says these words are meant as words of comfort. The people have just heard all the possible curses and terrible outcomes if they don’t keep all of God’s laws and they say, with despair – How can anyone do this? We are not capable. Moshe responds – Here you are standing today. “Today,” like the “day” itself which has both darkness and light and yet still exists. You still exist. You have angered God before, you have failed many times already and yet here you stand today, still standing, still in existence. You have and will always have the darkness and the light and yet you still stand. And yes, there will be changes – the people are going through a transition of leadership right at that moment, from Moshe to Yehoshua – so yes, changes will occur, but always remember --- atem nitzavim hayom, you are like a matzevah, a statue – you stand and remain.

The Zohar says that this hayom, this “today”, refers to “the ultimate day,” which is the Day of Judgment, Rosh HaShanah. It was on this day all those years ago that Moshe gave this comforting speech to the people of Israel as they entered into a second covenant with God.

That is the nature of covenant, of brit, itself – it is a contract we make with God that is permanent -- God swears He will be our God and we swear we will be His people, no matter what happens. Rashi also says that God gives them all these curses precisely because of the permanence of His agreement with them – God can’t get out of it; He is stuck forever, and so He has to find ways to get the people to obey, because, the bottom line is – God is in it for the long run.

This is a comforting message as “the day” of Judgment approaches. That feeling of despair is familiar – life often feels simply impossible – it is impossible to fulfill all of one’s obligations and ambitions and all that life and Torah seem to tell us we ought to be doing and accomplishing. Some days one simply feels overwhelmed by what one has not done or by what one has done not quite in the right way. This time of year we take stock of our imperfections and fallibilities. And so it is this time of year that we also need to be reminded that atem nitzavim hayom -- you/we are still standing here, before God, still in the covenant, stable, permanent, continuous, no matter what happens. Light and dark, good and bad – it’s all part of the parcel of the being human, and in spite of it all, we are still standing.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t work to improve ourselves. But there is an important balance here between despair and repair, between the feeling of hopelessness that one simply cannot succeed and the sense that it is still worth trying. And I think that what fuels an attitude of repair and repentance is not just awareness of what is wrong, but also and perhaps even more essentially, a sense of security about the relationship. We will always stand here before God – God promises to remember His covenant no matter what we do, and it is out of this relationship, in the context of this relationship that we have the security and the confidence to try harder.

Like a good marriage or a good parenting relationship, our relationship with God can provide just such security – a loving safe space in which to grow and transform ourselves. Atem nitzavim hayom -- we stand stable today and every day, secure in the knowledge that though we, like the day, will have darkness and light, God will continue to sustain and love us.

Parashat Ki Tavo: Simcha (Joy) Squared

Samahti veSimahti bo (Rashi on Devarim 26:14). “I have enjoyed it and caused others joy through it.” The “it” here refers to the gifts of a bountiful harvest out of which one was to give certain tithes. After the completion of these tithes, the farmer had to declare that he had done “all that God had commanded him” to do with his produce. Rashi comments that what the reciter means is: Samahti veSimahti bo. “I have enjoyed it and caused others joy through it.”

Maybe that’s the bottom line. So simple. We are given many gifts – life, health, family, food, shelter, a beautiful world, gifts of talent and intellect. This time of year we are thinking of the reckoning we are to do with God – maybe that’s the account we must give – all those gifts we were given – did we enjoy them? And did we use them to serve others, to bring others joy?
This concept of enjoying the gifts God grants us is not as simple as it sounds. There is some hesitation, some sense of ascetic guilt which stops us from fully enjoying what we are given, stops us from jumping up and down with joy at the sight of our children growing, our dinner plates bountiful. We hold back. We don’t notice.

The message here is that it is a religious obligation to enjoy the gifts God gives us. God is like any other gift-giver: When you give someone a gift, when you go to the trouble of actually thinking what that person might like and spend the time and the money and/or the energy to obtain the gift, what return do you want for your gift? What you most desire, what is most gratifying, is to see the receiver of your gift truly enjoying it – wearing the necklace or using the bowl. So it is with God – God wants to see us enjoying His beautiful world, being happy in the life bestowed upon us, knowing how to celebrate.

Often even our “blessings” come with aggravation and stress – it’s as if we are overwhelmed by “blessings” -- too much good work to do, too much food to cook, too many children to drive around and attend to. One of my mother’s friends has a policy – she never complains about something that is essentially good, no matter how stressful. To see the negative, to complain and feel down-trodden is a kind of affront to the Gift-giver. Strange as it sounds, we have to remember, in all the stress and turmoil of our every day lives, to actually enjoy our gifts.

The second part of the obligation – causing others joy through our gifts – only enhances the first, our own joy. We see how we are like an overflowing cup, with gifts to spare and share, and we feel the bounty and joyousness of our own gifts even more so. The Torah speaks often of the simchah, the joy of the worshipper who comes to Jerusalem to eat his tithed produce, and the joy is always communal – you will enjoy this produce, you and the Levite and the poor in your gates. Together the joy is magnified. Samahti ve’simahti bo. The words sound like simchah squared. Like the noise and energy of children put together in a room, joy is something that grows exponentially when shared.

And so, in this time of serious, guilt-ridden heshbon nefesh (self-accounting), we should remember the bottom line – what we owe God is primarily joy – our own and that of others. May this be a year of great joy for us all.

Parashat Ki Tetze: On Parenting and the Mother Bird

The Torah commands us, if we wish to take for ourselves some eggs or young chicks, to first send away the mother bird. In this command to send away the mother bird, what the Torah is acknowledging is the deep pain a parent experiences in witnessing the suffering of her children. The pain the children will experience is one thing and the Torah allows it, but the pain of the parent in witnessing that pain, that is of a wholly different order.

We parents know what this pain is. Someone once said to me that being a parent is like having your heart walk around in someone else’s body. Indeed, that is often what it feels like. We cannot stop our children from suffering. They will come to some harm or difficulty in this world and we cannot prevent it. So it is that we are often left merely to witness it, to bear the sadness in our hearts and carry that sadness with us as we once carried their tiny bodies.

Perhaps that is our role, a sacred essential role – to learn to suffer with another human being. A parent is the face of God on earth. Last night as I sat holding one of my children, who was crying over a sad lonely day in a new school, I was keenly aware once again that all I could do was be present to this suffering. And I thought to myself – I want him to know that at least no matter what happens, he is not alone in this sadness, but that others are always with him, all those many who care about him, including God. How will he know, I thought, that God, too, cares? Perhaps one learns about God, feels the care and protection and empathy of God, through one’s parents. That is our job – to be God’s ears and heart on earth.

In commanding us to send away the mother bird so that she does not witness her children’s suffering, the Torah has, in a way, defined the role of parent for us as a witness to suffering, as the very divine act of simple Presence.

My Father's Coat

My father always bought quality products – things that would last and do the job properly. This week, in the extremely cold weather, I have been wearing my father’s down coat. It is long and well-made, with thick down stuffing and pockets and zippers and flaps in all the right places. You put it on and, no matter how cold you were a second before, you are immediately wrapped in a toasty blanket of warmth.

Each time I put on that coat this week and felt that immediate surge of warmth, I felt not just physically warmer, but emotionally buoyed. My father’s love was reaching out from beyond and continuing to nourish and warm me. No matter what happens around me, I can walk around the world wrapped in its warmth and protection.

I wonder whether this isn’t also how we are meant to experience God – we say that God spreads a sukkah, a shelter over us, that we dwell in His shadow, that He is mahsi umetzudati, “my shelter and my refuge” (Psalm 91). To walk with God -- to keep God’s presence constantly in one’s consciousness -- is to live with a great warm overcoat of love and protection and to walk through the world enwrapped by this feeling.

Hanukah: Learning to See the Miraculous

A story is told about R. Hanina ben Dosa (Talmud Taanit 25a). One Shabbat afternoon, seeing that his daughter was sad, he asked her what was the matter. She answered that she had mistakenly put vinegar instead of oil into the Shabbat lamp and was worried there would be no light for Shabbos. R. Hanina said to her: What do you care? Don’t worry. The One who told the oil to burn can also tell the vinegar to burn. (And so it was – the vinegar burned all through that Shabbat).

Rabbi Hanina has an interesting perspective on life. For him there is no difference between oil burning and vinegar burning. They are both acts of God. They are both miracles. It is with the same sense of awe and gratitude and amazement that he approaches the everyday miracle of oil light as the extraordinary miracle of vinegar light.

Maybe this is the message of Hanukah. The word we keep using for miracle on Hanukah is nes, a word that also means “banner” or “sign.” What are the miracles of Hanukah, the military victory and the oil miracle of 8 days? They are signs – messages to us about the miraculous nature of life in general. In their very extraordinariness, we see clearly the hand of God in the world, and with this light shining, we start to see it in the ordinary as well. That light we just lit to remember the oil miracle – that light we lit is itself miraculous with its sparkling flame born out of nothing and filled with a magical energy. God is in light, in the flame all the time, yet we don’t see it. It takes the miracle of Hanukah to point us back to the miracle of light and of life in general.

Oh, to be like R. Hanina ben Dosa! To see clearly the hand of God in the ordinary. To see the flicker of divine light in the child before us and the husband beside us and the snow on the ground. This Hanukah that is what I pray for – that we can understand the signposts as witnesses to the divine not just in the extraordinary but also in the ordinary. We thank you God not just al hanisim ve’al hapurkan . . . , for the special miracles of Haunkah, but also al nisekha shebekhol yom imanu, also for the miracles that are with us daily.

Parsaht Vayeshev: To be Like A Rock in Times of Trouble

Steadfast. To be like a rock through trouble, through the ups and downs of life, of our own changing moods and the constantly changing environment around us.

Sometimes we have the urge to run away when we are feeling down, to quit, to turn away from trouble, even to jump out the window and end it all, just to escape.

But what makes us strong is the ability to simply survive through it, to be like a rock that cannot run or be washed away, but simply sits and witnesses.

In the Torah this week, we are entering a period of great trouble for Yaakov and his family. The midrash says on the first verse of the parsha that Yaakov wanted, after all his earlier troubles, now to simply live in tranquility and it was this desire that brought the face of trouble back – there is no rest in this world; only in the next one.

And so begins the painful saga of the brothers’ cruel treatment of Yosef and his slavery, and Yaakov’s great suffering over the loss of his favorite son.

How do Yaakov and Yosef and all of us reading along get through it? Yaakov is associated with rocks. When he leaves his parental home, he sleeps on a rock, then lifts a rock off a well and finally makes a treaty with Lavan with rocks. I have always understood these rocks as a metaphor for the hardness of Yaakov’s life, for the troubles themselves, but now I think perhaps the rock is also a metaphor for the ability to get through those troubles. He is like a rock, surviving the rushing waters around him.

This week we talked in my middle school class about the phrase tzur hayenu, that God is “the rock of our lives.” One student came up to the board and drew a picture of a waterfall with some stepping stones along the way to hold on to. That’s what God is – the stones that we hold on to along the way that keep us from falling headfirst into the raging waters.

Later in life, Yaakov continues to speak of the harshness of his life, but he also speaks about a sense of protectedness, of the angel that protected him from all evil wherever he went.

How did Yaakov survive? He lay on a rock, on the hardness of life, and in the rock he found God standing above him, helping him to be, like the rock, steadfast through the difficulties.