The Torah says that Yitzhak loved Esav ki tzayid befiv, “because” of the hunting that Esav used to bring him to eat, while Rivka loved Yaakov. There is no reason attached to Rivka’s love; she simply loved him. The rabbis cite this love as an example of ahavah she’einah teluya badavar, a love that, unlike Yitzhak’s, is not dependent on anything.
The rabbis explain that while love that is dependent on something fades easily, as soon as the thing is gone, love that is not dependent on anything lasts forever. For this reason the pasuk uses the present tense to describe Rivka’s love, ohevet, instead of the past tense as it does for Yitzhak. Rikva’s is a love that is ever present, ever growing, ever constant, not capable of becoming past tense.
The Sefat Emet connects this model of love to God’s love for us. It is forever. It is constant. It is not capable of being annulled because it is not dependent on anything. As he says, God loves us just because we are His; there is no reason; His love is not dependent on a single thing, af lo bema’aseyhem, “not even on their deeds.” Not even on our deeds, not even on the doing of the mitzvot He commanded us to do. Yes, God wants us to live a good life, so He gave us the Torah and advised us how to live, but we need to know that His love for us does not depend on our following His command. We are simply loved.
Do we feel this love? Do we feel its constancy, its unwavering stability, the way it holds us in whatever place we are? Do we feel its present tense – like Rivka, God is ohev – He loves us right now, at this moment, whatever the moment. Do we feel its unconditional nature – how we do not need to earn it or deserve it in any way? We don’t have to measure up. We are simply loved.
Yes, yes, God also has expectations of us and wants us to be good in the world and follow His mitzvot. But it feels to me that the only real way to spread love in the world – our ultimate goal – the only real way is to first of all feel that you yourself are loved totally and unconditionally. It is only out of this place of love that we can let that love spread out in streams to all those who need it. Change, goodness, fixing only happens in such a loving embrace. May we love and feel loved in this Rivka way.
Friday, November 9, 2018
Friday, November 2, 2018
Parashat Haye Sarah: On Pittsburgh, Yitzhak and Love
In the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, what I feel and what I think many of us feel, is vulnerable, insecure. We are suddenly acutely aware of what has always been true – that there are people who hate us and want to kill us, that we may at any time be killed for being Jews.
Looking at the end of last week’s parsha and this one through this prism, I am struck by the realization that Yitzhak must have had a similar feeling of vulnerability. He would have been the first martyr, the first to be sacrificed for the sanctification of God’s name. He was saved from the knife, yes, but that experience of being under the knife, of being so close to mortal danger, surely must have inscribed into his psyche the constant spectre of being killed as a child of Avraham.
But of course he doesn’t die, and nor do all of us at any time. What we are left with is, like Yitzhak, to figure out how to live with this spectre of the knife hanging over us.
When we next see Yitzhak after the akedah, he is standing in a field, “contemplating.” Perhaps he is contemplating precisely this question – how does one continue to live in such a world, where God seems to sometimes want Jewish souls as sacrifices, how does one face the constant fear of danger and annihilation?
The answer comes soon afterwards, as the camels carrying Rivka rise on the scene. The Torah tells us that Yitzhak takes her into his mother’s tent; she becomes his wife; he loves her; he is comforted over the loss of his mother.
The loss of his mother. Sarah, in some ways, ended up being the real sacrificial lamb of the akedah. Her death is told to us immediately after that story, and she dies young – almost 50 years younger than Avraham when he dies. The midrash says she dies when she hears the news that Avraham had gone to sacrifice her son, not knowing that he would be spared.
And so Yitzhak is left with a double burden post-akedah. Like us, he has on the one hand to mourn those that did die, and on the other hand, to figure out how to continue to live in the face of the knowledge of such tragedy and perpetual danger.
The answer is LOVE. I believe that this is the first time in the Torah that the root ahavah , love, is used. Through his encounter with suffering, Yitzhak discovers love. Yitzhak discovers that the only comfort in such a situation, the only way to move forward is to focus on love. He loves Rivka and that love is itself a comfort.
Love is more than a comfort. It is an anchor and a purpose in a tops- turvy, inexplicable and occasionally miserable world. Connection to others – whether in synagogue at a memorial service, in school teaching Torah to students, or at home with my family – these connections, these places of love are indeed what comfort me and give me hope. Not hope for myself, necessarily, but hope for our people and for all of humanity. Love lifts us out of ourselves. We are attached to something beyond ourselves, to other humans and to a force that is stronger than hatred, stronger than death, stronger than any individual’s life. There is nothing that can destroy love.
Viktor Frankl famously recounts how, on one frozen miserable forced march from the concentration camp gates to the inmates’ working trenches, a fellow inmate whispers to him: “If our wives could see us now!” Frankl tells how he is reminded of his wife and completely transported by this thought and his intense love for her:
"My mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love."
Yitzhak knew this. The salvation of man is through love. Having seen the knife, he knew that love was the only answer.
Looking at the end of last week’s parsha and this one through this prism, I am struck by the realization that Yitzhak must have had a similar feeling of vulnerability. He would have been the first martyr, the first to be sacrificed for the sanctification of God’s name. He was saved from the knife, yes, but that experience of being under the knife, of being so close to mortal danger, surely must have inscribed into his psyche the constant spectre of being killed as a child of Avraham.
But of course he doesn’t die, and nor do all of us at any time. What we are left with is, like Yitzhak, to figure out how to live with this spectre of the knife hanging over us.
When we next see Yitzhak after the akedah, he is standing in a field, “contemplating.” Perhaps he is contemplating precisely this question – how does one continue to live in such a world, where God seems to sometimes want Jewish souls as sacrifices, how does one face the constant fear of danger and annihilation?
The answer comes soon afterwards, as the camels carrying Rivka rise on the scene. The Torah tells us that Yitzhak takes her into his mother’s tent; she becomes his wife; he loves her; he is comforted over the loss of his mother.
The loss of his mother. Sarah, in some ways, ended up being the real sacrificial lamb of the akedah. Her death is told to us immediately after that story, and she dies young – almost 50 years younger than Avraham when he dies. The midrash says she dies when she hears the news that Avraham had gone to sacrifice her son, not knowing that he would be spared.
And so Yitzhak is left with a double burden post-akedah. Like us, he has on the one hand to mourn those that did die, and on the other hand, to figure out how to continue to live in the face of the knowledge of such tragedy and perpetual danger.
The answer is LOVE. I believe that this is the first time in the Torah that the root ahavah , love, is used. Through his encounter with suffering, Yitzhak discovers love. Yitzhak discovers that the only comfort in such a situation, the only way to move forward is to focus on love. He loves Rivka and that love is itself a comfort.
Love is more than a comfort. It is an anchor and a purpose in a tops- turvy, inexplicable and occasionally miserable world. Connection to others – whether in synagogue at a memorial service, in school teaching Torah to students, or at home with my family – these connections, these places of love are indeed what comfort me and give me hope. Not hope for myself, necessarily, but hope for our people and for all of humanity. Love lifts us out of ourselves. We are attached to something beyond ourselves, to other humans and to a force that is stronger than hatred, stronger than death, stronger than any individual’s life. There is nothing that can destroy love.
Viktor Frankl famously recounts how, on one frozen miserable forced march from the concentration camp gates to the inmates’ working trenches, a fellow inmate whispers to him: “If our wives could see us now!” Frankl tells how he is reminded of his wife and completely transported by this thought and his intense love for her:
"My mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love."
Yitzhak knew this. The salvation of man is through love. Having seen the knife, he knew that love was the only answer.
Friday, October 19, 2018
Parashat Lekh Lekha: Purity of Heart
Intention matters. Most of our mitzvot we fulfill through physical action. But our heart, our intention, our deepest kavannah, when we do them, also matters.
Avram was already on his way to the land of Canaan with his father. When he continued on his journey at God’s command, he could have thought of it as a continuation of this original journey, an ordinary change of location done for whatever human reasons originally initiated the move.
But the Torah tells us that Avram did it kaasher diber elav Hashem. Literally, this phrase means “as God had told him.” In other words, Avram carried out the command in the way that God had said it should be done. The Sefat Emet, though, reads it differently – he explains that kaasher diber elav Hashem means that Avram did it only because God had commanded it; he abandoned all other reasons for going. Even though he had had his own reasons for taking this journey, now that God commanded it, he did it with the sole intention of fulfilling God’s will.
That is what we mean when we say in the brachah before we do a mitzvah asher kideshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu, “as He sanctified us with His mitzvot and commanded us.” What we are saying is essentially what the Torah says about Avram – we are here, doing this mitzvah, shaking this lulav, lighting these Shabbos candles – we are here right now doing this solely because God commanded us to. We have a pure heart of service, a heart directed not in a million directions as it normally is, but in one direction only. We are here fulfilling Your command.
What happens when you do even one mitzvah in this intense way, with total purity of heart? You become a vessel for divine energy to enter the world. The world is uplifted and you are uplifted. We are normally so distracted and so full of complex motivations for every action; when we stop and direct our hearts, there is a power and intensity that we barely dreamed of, and there is light and there is peace. Doing a mitzvah with total intention, we walk the path of Avram, at one with God and the universe and ourselves.
Avram was already on his way to the land of Canaan with his father. When he continued on his journey at God’s command, he could have thought of it as a continuation of this original journey, an ordinary change of location done for whatever human reasons originally initiated the move.
But the Torah tells us that Avram did it kaasher diber elav Hashem. Literally, this phrase means “as God had told him.” In other words, Avram carried out the command in the way that God had said it should be done. The Sefat Emet, though, reads it differently – he explains that kaasher diber elav Hashem means that Avram did it only because God had commanded it; he abandoned all other reasons for going. Even though he had had his own reasons for taking this journey, now that God commanded it, he did it with the sole intention of fulfilling God’s will.
That is what we mean when we say in the brachah before we do a mitzvah asher kideshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu, “as He sanctified us with His mitzvot and commanded us.” What we are saying is essentially what the Torah says about Avram – we are here, doing this mitzvah, shaking this lulav, lighting these Shabbos candles – we are here right now doing this solely because God commanded us to. We have a pure heart of service, a heart directed not in a million directions as it normally is, but in one direction only. We are here fulfilling Your command.
What happens when you do even one mitzvah in this intense way, with total purity of heart? You become a vessel for divine energy to enter the world. The world is uplifted and you are uplifted. We are normally so distracted and so full of complex motivations for every action; when we stop and direct our hearts, there is a power and intensity that we barely dreamed of, and there is light and there is peace. Doing a mitzvah with total intention, we walk the path of Avram, at one with God and the universe and ourselves.
Parashat Lekh Lekha: To the Land that God continues to Show Us
What God wants from us is continually unfolding. There is not a set, fixed destination point.
That’s why, when God tells Avraham to go on his journey, He says, go “to the land that I will show you.”
The Kedushat Levi asks –how could Avraham have taken the liberty to endanger his life and Sarai’s life by going to Egypt when he was not commanded to go there?
His answer – Avram was commanded to go there. The initial command “to go to the land that I will show you” meant “that I will continually show you.” It did not mean a one-time showing of the land of Israel. What God was saying was that He would provide Avram with guidance on his journey, continually show him the way. Initially, this meant entering the land of Israel – that was the first destination point – but as time and circumstances unfolded, a famine occurred, and Avrahm understood that God was now showing him the next land, the next move on his journey – Egypt.
When we read the story of Avram, we may feel a little distance – well, yeah, if God actually spoke to me and told me where to go and what to do, I would do it, too. But no, it turns out that God’s directions even to Avram, are more subtle than that. Yes, there are direct communications, but there is also a continual “showing” or unfolding. Even the first step is not explicit – how did Avram know that God meant the land of Cannan when He said “the land that I will show you.” How did God “show” him where to go? The text doesn’t explain it, I think, because it was intuitive. Avram searched out what God’s will might be by the signs and circumstances around him, and through his own reflection on what those signs might mean for him.
We are not so different from Avram, then. After all, we know we have a generalized duty to go on some journey in this life, to leave our (childhood) baggage behind and go to a place that God has in mind for us. What, where, this place is – what God really wants from us – that is for us to inuit, for us to search out based on what God “shows us,” based on the clues that continually unfold in our lives.
And at different points we may be led in different directions. Sometimes it may even seem that we are being led to “Egypt,” to the wrong kind of place, in the opposite direction of our destiny. What we learn from Avram is not to hold on to the original destination point or to some idealized notion of what our destination point should be, but to allow ourselves to be continually led, to allow ourselves to be continually “shown” – through all the seemingly random happenings of our lives – the next step and the next step on our divinely guided journey.
That’s why, when God tells Avraham to go on his journey, He says, go “to the land that I will show you.”
The Kedushat Levi asks –how could Avraham have taken the liberty to endanger his life and Sarai’s life by going to Egypt when he was not commanded to go there?
His answer – Avram was commanded to go there. The initial command “to go to the land that I will show you” meant “that I will continually show you.” It did not mean a one-time showing of the land of Israel. What God was saying was that He would provide Avram with guidance on his journey, continually show him the way. Initially, this meant entering the land of Israel – that was the first destination point – but as time and circumstances unfolded, a famine occurred, and Avrahm understood that God was now showing him the next land, the next move on his journey – Egypt.
When we read the story of Avram, we may feel a little distance – well, yeah, if God actually spoke to me and told me where to go and what to do, I would do it, too. But no, it turns out that God’s directions even to Avram, are more subtle than that. Yes, there are direct communications, but there is also a continual “showing” or unfolding. Even the first step is not explicit – how did Avram know that God meant the land of Cannan when He said “the land that I will show you.” How did God “show” him where to go? The text doesn’t explain it, I think, because it was intuitive. Avram searched out what God’s will might be by the signs and circumstances around him, and through his own reflection on what those signs might mean for him.
We are not so different from Avram, then. After all, we know we have a generalized duty to go on some journey in this life, to leave our (childhood) baggage behind and go to a place that God has in mind for us. What, where, this place is – what God really wants from us – that is for us to inuit, for us to search out based on what God “shows us,” based on the clues that continually unfold in our lives.
And at different points we may be led in different directions. Sometimes it may even seem that we are being led to “Egypt,” to the wrong kind of place, in the opposite direction of our destiny. What we learn from Avram is not to hold on to the original destination point or to some idealized notion of what our destination point should be, but to allow ourselves to be continually led, to allow ourselves to be continually “shown” – through all the seemingly random happenings of our lives – the next step and the next step on our divinely guided journey.
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Compassion in a Time of Judgment
Hashem, Hashem, Kel Rachum VeChanun, . . . Oh God, Oh God, O Merciful and Gracious God, . . . This time of year we cry out these 13 divine attributes over and over. Why? What is their message?
Yes, we are reminding God to be kind and compassionate to us, full of mercy, as He sits in judgment over us.
But there is more here. These attributes are not just about God, but also a model for us. Mah hu rachum. Af Atah teha rahum. ”Just as He is merciful, so, too, should you be merciful.”
God is teaching us how to be in this world of judgment, how to be not just with each other, but also how to be with ourselves, and especially how to be with ourselves in our lowest moments, our moments of failure and mistake and transgression. In those low moments, we are to adopt the stance of God here, to embrace ourselves -- all of ourselves, faults included -- with love and compassion.
During this season of teshuva and transformation, we often think the best way to improve is to be critical and harsh, to attack our flaws with a sharp pair of scissors and to “fight” the Evil Inclination. But does such a combative approach work? Does it help to transform us? Think of what happens when you feel attacked by that inner critical voice we all have: “Why did you do that? That was a terrible thing to do!”. Does it propel you to change? Perhaps a little bit. But mostly what it does is to bring your mood low, to make you feel guilty and depressed about who you are and to wear you out emotionally. Without love we don’t have the fortitude, the energy or the desire to change. We are too low.
If, on the other hand, you focus on the problematic part of yourself with gentleness, compassion and a little curiosity, like you would a small hurt child, there is enough space and good energy for things to shift on their own. There is also greater honesty. In an open, loving space, without the fear of attack, truths will out more easily. Perhaps this is why, right along with hesed, loving-kindness, comes emet, truth. Truth can only come forward fully in a space of love.
There is another benefit to a compassionate teshuva process; it allows you not to throw out parts of yourself but to reclaim them for the good. In a self-critical approach there is a tendency to want to identify certain aspects of yourself as bad and try to excise them or at least exile them. But with compassion, we can actually work with them, find the goodness underneath and redirect them for the better. Resh Lakish, a rabbi who in a previous life was a warrior-thief, famously said that teshuva has the capacity to turn sins into merits (Yoma 86a). Perhaps what he meant was that through teshuva we can transform the very aspects of ourselves that we consider most problematic into our greatest strengths.
This is the “return” (teshuva) that we seek – it is a return to the original purity and goodness of our own selves. There is no rejection here, no cutting and removal, but only a loving return to truth and goodness of what has gone astray.
May we feel the loving compassionate embrace from above and learn from it how to turn with compassion on ourselves and our faults. May such compassion help us to truly transform and return.
Yes, we are reminding God to be kind and compassionate to us, full of mercy, as He sits in judgment over us.
But there is more here. These attributes are not just about God, but also a model for us. Mah hu rachum. Af Atah teha rahum. ”Just as He is merciful, so, too, should you be merciful.”
God is teaching us how to be in this world of judgment, how to be not just with each other, but also how to be with ourselves, and especially how to be with ourselves in our lowest moments, our moments of failure and mistake and transgression. In those low moments, we are to adopt the stance of God here, to embrace ourselves -- all of ourselves, faults included -- with love and compassion.
During this season of teshuva and transformation, we often think the best way to improve is to be critical and harsh, to attack our flaws with a sharp pair of scissors and to “fight” the Evil Inclination. But does such a combative approach work? Does it help to transform us? Think of what happens when you feel attacked by that inner critical voice we all have: “Why did you do that? That was a terrible thing to do!”. Does it propel you to change? Perhaps a little bit. But mostly what it does is to bring your mood low, to make you feel guilty and depressed about who you are and to wear you out emotionally. Without love we don’t have the fortitude, the energy or the desire to change. We are too low.
If, on the other hand, you focus on the problematic part of yourself with gentleness, compassion and a little curiosity, like you would a small hurt child, there is enough space and good energy for things to shift on their own. There is also greater honesty. In an open, loving space, without the fear of attack, truths will out more easily. Perhaps this is why, right along with hesed, loving-kindness, comes emet, truth. Truth can only come forward fully in a space of love.
There is another benefit to a compassionate teshuva process; it allows you not to throw out parts of yourself but to reclaim them for the good. In a self-critical approach there is a tendency to want to identify certain aspects of yourself as bad and try to excise them or at least exile them. But with compassion, we can actually work with them, find the goodness underneath and redirect them for the better. Resh Lakish, a rabbi who in a previous life was a warrior-thief, famously said that teshuva has the capacity to turn sins into merits (Yoma 86a). Perhaps what he meant was that through teshuva we can transform the very aspects of ourselves that we consider most problematic into our greatest strengths.
This is the “return” (teshuva) that we seek – it is a return to the original purity and goodness of our own selves. There is no rejection here, no cutting and removal, but only a loving return to truth and goodness of what has gone astray.
May we feel the loving compassionate embrace from above and learn from it how to turn with compassion on ourselves and our faults. May such compassion help us to truly transform and return.
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Collection of Rosh Hashanah Thoughts
This is a link to a collection of my thoughts from over the years on Rosh Hashanah. It is set up so you can print it and read over the holiday. Please let me know if you have trouble accessing it.
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Parashat Eikev: Undaunted
“Perhaps you will say in your heart: these nations are greater, more numerous, than I – how will I ever be able to drive them out (Deut. 7:17)?”
Moshe understands that this is what the Israelites will feel at the prospect of the enormous task of conquering the land. The enemies, the obstacles, are too large and too many for us. We feel small and incapable. How can we possibly deal with them all?
This is a familiar feeling, this feeling of overwhelm and impossibility. We are often in this place, this place of the small self, where we see ourselves – not incorrectly – as vulnerable and limited and surrounded by insurmountable obstacles to our goals.
The answer, Moshe says, is to remember God. “Do not be afraid of them.” Zachor tizkor -- remember, oh, remember God and what God has done for you in the past (7:18). We quell our fears and our sense of inadequacy to the task at hand by remembering God’s part in this drama. If we are doing the work of God in the world – and surely all of our best work is God’s work – then we need have no fear of overwhelming obstacles. We are not small. “You shall not be broken before them, for Hashem your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God (7:21).”
We are not small when we are in touch, when we remember, this connection to God. There is inside each of us that inner point of connection which is infinite and indomitable, like its source. All those nations, all those obstacles, they do exist, but they somehow don’t matter, as Moshe says, they don’t break us, when we are in touch with this infinite side of ourselves. We see them and we persevere and keep climbing. We have work to do and God is with us. We are not daunted.
Moshe understands that this is what the Israelites will feel at the prospect of the enormous task of conquering the land. The enemies, the obstacles, are too large and too many for us. We feel small and incapable. How can we possibly deal with them all?
This is a familiar feeling, this feeling of overwhelm and impossibility. We are often in this place, this place of the small self, where we see ourselves – not incorrectly – as vulnerable and limited and surrounded by insurmountable obstacles to our goals.
The answer, Moshe says, is to remember God. “Do not be afraid of them.” Zachor tizkor -- remember, oh, remember God and what God has done for you in the past (7:18). We quell our fears and our sense of inadequacy to the task at hand by remembering God’s part in this drama. If we are doing the work of God in the world – and surely all of our best work is God’s work – then we need have no fear of overwhelming obstacles. We are not small. “You shall not be broken before them, for Hashem your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God (7:21).”
We are not small when we are in touch, when we remember, this connection to God. There is inside each of us that inner point of connection which is infinite and indomitable, like its source. All those nations, all those obstacles, they do exist, but they somehow don’t matter, as Moshe says, they don’t break us, when we are in touch with this infinite side of ourselves. We see them and we persevere and keep climbing. We have work to do and God is with us. We are not daunted.
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