Dvar Torah Shmot - Am I alive?

Am I alive?

Dvar Torah- Shmot, 5773/2013

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

In my high school years, years of staying up late doing homework, listening to Monday night football on the radio while pretending to go to sleep, dragging out of bed to get to school at 7 every morning, my brother Jeff would often do the ‘job’ of the older brother and try and ‘wake me up’ a little by saying, “Hey, are you alive?”

On days even when we have a good night’s sleep and we are fully functioning, we may wonder what it means to ‘be alive’ other than simply moving through time and space as we function as human beings, working, interacting with others, exercising, listening to music. 

To discuss ‘the meaning of life’ is a question that usually leads to nowhere since it is so vague, but to discuss the question of what it means ‘to be alive’ has real potential for relevance to us.

We hear the words of Moses speaking to his father in law in the opening lines of this week’s parsha, Shmot, the first in Sefer Shemot, the Book of Exodus.

“Moses went to Jethro his father in law and said, ‘I would like to go and return to my people in Egypt, and to see ha’odam chayim – whether they still live.’”

Whether they still live?  Moses may be aware of Pharaoh’s  sinister plans he carried out once against the Israelite children, events that occurred when he was just a baby himself.  However, God has told him to return to Egypt already to free the people.  It seems unnecessary for Moses to say, “I need to go and see if they are alive.”  So, what might Moshe Rabenu, Moses our Teacher, be teaching us in what he says to Jethro his father in law?

Saadiah Ga’on reads ha’odam chayim, whether they are alive, as ‘whether they are still living there in Egypt’ - surviving, thriving.  Moses is asking not about whether they are physically alive, but whether they are full of life and spirit, wondering whether they may be open to God’s message or closed-down, depressed, and in the mind-set of the slave whose only hope is to live out the day, whose only conception of being alive is mere survival at the whim of Pharaoh, a ruler who is a god to his own people and has absolute power over slave and citizen alike.

‘Whether they are alive’ is also a poignant allusion to the moment when Joseph, some time ago, asks his brothers whether his father Jacob is still alive, a moment that, as with Moses, seeks to reaffirm a loving relationship despite the distance of a long elapsed time and geography.(See Robert Alter, 5 Books, p. 329)

We find inspiration for answering ‘what it means to be alive’ in Jewish thinking, “Choose life, that you may live,” It is up to us to not only survive but to register connection with the world, to be aware, to feel the pain of the suffering, to join in the rising music of celebration, to feel the conflict of salty tears shed in a moment when doubt turns certainty and predictability into question marks that fill our hearts. 

We could all benefit from asking ourselves every day, ‘Am I alive?’ Am I alive to those I care about – fully present and engaged, hitting the ‘stop’ button on my own internal monologue long enough to hear and appreciate their beauty, wonders, interests, and dreams?   Am I alive to myself, honest with myself about how I am feeling, what I value and whether I am doing something about what I value, whether I am doing something about the world in which I wish I could live?  Am I alive to my community, interested and engaged in its hopes and struggles, patient with its idiosyncrasies and struggles, with its projects?  Am I alive to God, aware of the colors and sounds of the winter wind, the way the Torah story catches my attention and draws my eyes back each time from the cacophony of petty distractions that surround us.  Can I hear the call to justice that rings out every moment?

When Moses speaks to his father in law, following God’s commission of Moses as co-ambassador to Pharaoh with his brother Aaron, we have a key turning point when Moses himself takes up the mission and does something proactive to get it started, the first step in the journey of a thousand miles.  In this dialogue with Jethro, Moses affirms that he is alive, that he is aware of what he must do and is now determined to begin.

May this Shabbat be the energizing step forward into being alive that will circulate through our souls what we have discussed so that each day, whether it is covered in the hard shells of despair, or sparkling and sending light into the world, will be a day when we choose to be fully alive.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dvar Torah Vaera - Stubborness

Stubbornness

Dvar Torah Parshat Va’era

2013/5773

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

I told this story a few years ago on the High Holidays – now given the recent semi-paranoia about the ‘End of the World’-in the-Mayan-calendar predictions, I will re-tell the story accordingly.

Two friends were driving fast along a country road.  As they turned the corner, they noticed a couple of guys standing on the side of the road holding up signs, waving their hands, and shouting out, “Stop now! The end is near!”

The two friends slow down, lean out of the car and yell back, “Leave us alone you religious nuts!”  They continue speeding around the corner and a moment later the two guys with the signs hear a huge splash.

They look at each other, shrug their shoulders, and one says to the other, “Do you think we should have just said ‘The bridge is out?’”

A stubborn unwillingness to listen, as with the friends in the car who do not hear the warnings from the side of the road, is a prime quality of Pharaoh, King of Egypt.  As it happens, a similar quality emerges in the People of Israel, though not with destructive consequences against another innocent people.  Six times in the Torah, four times in Exodus and twice in Deuteronomy, the Israelites are ‘Am K’sheh oref’, a stiff-necked people, and the first time they receive this name, Ibn Ezra explains to us what stiff-necked means, listen for echoes of our ‘Bridge out’ story…

[The meaning of stiff-necked] may be explained by this teaching:  A person speeds along on her way and she does not turn around to hear the [other] person who is calling out to her.(Ibn Ezra to Exodus 32:9)

We might think that after suffering under the hands of a hard-hearted ruler, we might choose to act differently towards the benevolent One in Heaven who frees us from slavery.  Moses even has to beg God not to get too angry with us and to forgive us, to lead us to the Promised Land despite our stubbornness since God is ultimately and inherently forgiving and compassionate.  How can it be that we become so ungrateful and difficult?

While the Torah tends to teach us that God dislikes stiff-necked people, can we challenge this perception?  Can we argue that a certain strong will, a sense of singular purpose and resolve may have kept the people alive through their oppression?  Even as the groaning of the people under the heavy weight of Egyptian taskmasters and heavy labor reaches up to God, is it possible that the Israelites, inheritors from Jacob of a plucky and shrewd will to live, are able to survive (at least in part) from being stiff-necked?

It is not surprising to us that the same emotion can at one moment help and at another moment hurt.  To this day, I recall my driving instructor teaching our class not to drive when we are excessively happy.  A strange instruction?  A realistic one.  Great happiness is good, but it can also grab our attention from what is practical and necessary to do as we ride the emotional high. 

Looking at our emotional state and reactions to great events, whether happy or sad, can help us think about the debate on gun violence that has been in the forefront of our minds since the tragedy in Newtown.  If we are to move forward on this issue, and with many other issues that confront us in 2013 and beyond, we need to balance our strong wills and beliefs with the considered opinions of others.  We need to challenge assumptions, think creatively, and be open to change while staying true to the principles that guide us in life. 

Despite the stubbornness of the people, the dialogue between Israel and God never stops.  The people eventually do reach the Promised Land.

My fear though is that in the current climate of debate, a healthy middle ground on a variety of issues appears to not be possible.  Are we as individuals, as a country, so set in our ways that we cannot pause to read the signs on the side of the road, to turn around when the voices of reason call out to us from behind?

If we cannot begin to have debates, whether at the community level or national level in which the rightly strong-willed sides are willing, as in a Bahai meeting, to release their views to the group and yet still be active, then we must recast the story where we started. 

In this re-written story, it is precisely the unwillingness of the friends in the car to give any credence to anyone suggesting they do something different that causes the bridge to collapse. 

We must not let this happen.

Shabbat Shalom.

"I dreamed a dream" - Dvar Torah: Vayeshev

Dream-marks

Vayeshev 2012/5773

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

With Les Miserables on the way, again, toward the silver screen, I imagine that the songs like “I dreamed a dream” will be back in our mouths and in our ears.  “I dreamed a dream” is a powerful song with a powerful message, a message of hope with a reality that hope may be left unfulfilled.  Fantine’s daughter Cosette will one day live a better life, but for the moment she does not know it and has no reason to expect it. 

When Joseph ends up in jail on Potiphar’s estate,  I imagine him in the same situation.  He was living the life of promise as head servant in the household, and now he loses his freedom again, now he is thrown into the jail, also called ‘the pit’, again – remember that his brothers toss him into a pit before they sell him as a slave.  At this point, while he gets notice and responsibility in the jail, his only potential help – the cupbearer’s good word to Pharaoh – does not happen and he remains in the ‘pit’.  The cupbearer forgets about him, chooses to forget, in the same way a new Pharaoh will one day also ‘not know Joseph’.

The future seems to be bleak, and this is the moment where the parsha ends.  A cliff-hanger.

Is the cupbearer behaving in an unethical manner by not advocating for Joseph who was his fellow prisoner, who shared with the cupbearer the prophecy that he would return to his post?

Avishai Margalit argues that there is an ethics of memory.  “One’s remembering a person now,” he writes, “is a strong indication that one cared at the time, at the very least, if not still.  If the cupbearer has forgotten Joseph, then we the readers of the story across the centuries begin to feel that he does not care for Joseph.  And our Jewish thinkers teach us that the cupbearer does not mention Joseph to Pharaoh at the time, and so, as time goes by the memory begins to fade as he returns to routine and Joseph continues to languish in jail.

Let’s give the cupbearer the benefit of the doubt.  He is just out of jail and does not want to ask for something right after he has received Pharaoh’s kind pardon.  Can we excuse, though, the forgetfulness afterwards? – the forgetfulness that he only overcomes when Pharaoh himself is in need of dream interpretation. 

Clearly, dreams in the Joseph stories leave marks both on the dreamer and those around him.  They dictate fate but not the way that the characters negotiate the events that they experience along the way.  And those marks that the dreams leave cause the cupbearer and Joseph’s brothers to have revelations that reflect back their own flaws as well as their teshuvah, their maturation and newfound awareness of responsibility.

As we get ready to celebrate Chanukah, the Les Miserables story of protest and a search for a more perfect freedom, the story of a parent who wishes a better future for his children, echoes for us in the stories of the Matitayu and his sons, the Maccabees, our ancestors in Israel.  They decided to keep the memory-marks of living under foreign rule in their hearts for inspiration so they would not forget their connections to their identity.  They believe that the ethics of memory demands a revolutionary response, that just as God remembers us when we cry out from slavery in Egypt, God will guide the people of Israel when we, the descendants of the Maccabees, continue to agitate for freedom, for respect, for the tradition that shapes us and that we have the privilege to continue to shape.

As the Zionist thinker AD Gordon once said, “Light will never defeat the darkness until we understand the simple truth, that instead of fighting the darkness, me must increase the light.”

Tomorrow night when we light the candles, let us look within to find the strength and courage that are the both the real gifts and the challenges of Chanukah.

Shabbat Shalom.

Post-Jewish Holidays Fatigue

Shabbat Braysheet 5773/2012

“Holiday Fatigue”

Rabbi Neil A. Tow ©

Slichot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Intermediate days of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, Simchat Torah

The fall holiday line up is full to overflowing.  It is an extraordinary time of self-reflection, re-connection to nature, family time, singing, praying, remembering, eating, building – deconstructing…

In all, between the holidays and weekdays in between required for preparation, some 3 weeks of sacred time that feels like a non-stop flight of hectic and haimishe holiness all in one.

Doctors and Rabbis in the US and Israel refer to the post-holiday feeling as ‘holiday fatigue’ – not an official term yet, but hopefully there will be an article in the American Medical Association journal soon.

There is a feeling, every year, that once the major fall holidays have passed that both individuals and Jewish communities feel exhausted, worn out, and cannot focus on upcoming events for a period of time until everyone has taken a deep breath and returned to routine.

This holiday fatigue has a mirror image as we pick up with the beginnings of the Noah story. 

God does not have holiday fatigue, rather, humanity fatigue is the condition.  God’s heart is hurting as God observes that human beings are evil from birth, that there is no good in them, except in Noach.  God regrets creating human beings and makes a plan to wipe out all humanity --- except for Noah and his family.

God has watched generations of humanity be born, live, and die, and we conclude that God’s decision comes as a result of observation, and our great thinkers like Chizkuni remind us that God did not create people knowing they would be lifelong sinners, since fear of God is not in the hands of God as the Talmud teaches, it is in human hands.

God holds off on the decision to wipe out humanity until fatigue appears to set in, until there appears to be no other choice, and no one to advocate for humanity either.

Our holiday fatigue is less consequential when compared to ending one stage of creation and re-creating the world, but we should not minimize either the positive feelings from the holidays or the holiday fatigue that we and our community may feel.

The fact that we feel something in the first place is crucial.  Good fatigue comes with intentional and meaningful activity.  We are not tired of the holidays, we are tired because we have put ourselves and our souls through a challenging process of review, because we have poured out our hearts in sincere prayers, because we have remembered and built together, strained our voices celebrating and made our feet sore carrying and singing with the Torahs.

The best way to ride the wave of post-holiday feeling is to not let the cord of energy break – to hang on and continue the journey into the New Year with everything we gained from the holidays in our spiritual toolbox.  As with muscle, we may strain muscle, but then it grows stronger.  The same is true for our Jewish lives and spirits – the holidays strain us and ask us to stretch ourselves beyond our comfort zones so that we might have a new perspective when we look back.

God holds onto the cord of holy energy by linking with Noach to bridge the generation of the flood with the generations of Abraham.  We hold onto the cord of holy energy by linking with messages, memories, and community.

How will we all navigate the post holiday letdown that makes us feel that we cannot stand through one more Amidah?  First we recognize it and appreciate that we made it to this point, that the simple truth still holds that worthwhile goals require effort, and that we need not shut down but keep our good humor and push off from the holidays from one strength to the next.

Shabbat Shalom. 

All You Might Eat - Ki Tetzte 2012/5772

Ki Tetze 2012/5772

All You Might Eat

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

It has become a family tradition the past few years to go apple picking on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend.  At the orchard where we go, the rules are that inside the site visitors can eat as many apples as they like.  To take the apples home, though, costs about $20 for a big bag. 

For the few hours that we spend there, if it is clear and dry, I might have two or three apples off the tree at most – and that usually is due to minor hunger and a major love of fruit and vegetables right off the branch or vine.

I think the orchard got its rules from the Torah, from our reading for this week, that reminds the Israelites that when they enter the Holy Land and plant vineyards, all Israelites may enter the vineyards that belong to others and eat from the grapes there to their fill – but they may not stock grapes into their own basket or other vessel to take home.

We can appreciate the taste of freshly picked produce, but we cannot hoard it.  There is tzedakah in making this food available and there is a limit to this tzedakah.

The Talmud clarifies the Torah’s teaching:  A person may take some of the grapes that he or she may be harvesting for the owner of the vineyard while in the process of harvesting. 

The original teaching does not stress that we are in the midst of a harvest.  The teaching sounds similar to the teachings about peah and leket, leaving the corners of the fields and the produce that drops to the ground available to anyone in need.  The Rabbis take the word for basket or vessel to suggest that we are in the midst of a harvest and we are referring to the workers.  And so we can assume that the Torah is telling us that the workers get hungry out in the fields and are in need themselves.

How much though does it take to be full, to feel full? 

On Thanksgiving, when there is an expectation that everyone will eat heartily from the feast, I tend to eat about as much as a regular dinner serving.  It feels as though I eat very little.

On an average night, when we cook just enough for the few of us at home, I believe I eat more, or it seems like I eat more, since I am satisfying a real need for food as fuel as we get ready for the evening’s activities.  There is a purpose to eating beyond the eating itself.

A commentary from the Korban Ha’ani teaches us that when we eat to our fill, we should eat according to the desire of our souls, meaning, we will know not only when we are full but when we feel good, energized, balanced, ready for the next step in our lives.

With just over two weeks until Rosh Hashanah, it is my prayer that the holidays will help us feel spiritually full and satisfied, that there will be meaning and moments that move us to tears and to dancing, that we will feel the holidays will point us in a good and positive direction this year.

I also pray, at the same time, that the holidays will challenge us to stretch our minds, our hearts, and our actions to fulfill the message of tzedakah that the Torah shares in the case of the vineyard – how can we share the best of ourselves with those in need?  Where are the people in need?  Who are they, whether right here among us or beyond the borders of our towns? 

May the days ahead, like the figurative grapes that we collect from God’s world during this time of reflection and renewal, be filled with sweetness and hope for a year of blessings.

Shabbat Shalom.

  

The Empire State Building Shootings - A Reflection

I tend to associate the Empire State Building with the mystique that is New York City.  It is a landmark and an icon that deserves credit for its design and for offering an amazing view of the city from its tower.  

Today, though, it joins the list of the places where those with guns and other lethal devices have turned their weapons on innocent people and caused terrible harm to others.  The wounds of Aurora, Colorado are for sure still fresh in our hearts and we will never forget the tragedies at schools such as Columbine and on college campuses and federal buildings, in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson, at the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11, and the list, tragically, goes on and on here and abroad as in Norway and too many other places around the globe...

The big picture question that wells up within me today after the incident at 34th St. in New York is why aggressors target innocents whether it be in attacks such as the one in New York or anywhere else? Is there some other way for people who are angry against a certain group, against the world, against some other religious group or country, to get out their 'angries' without harming the life of innocents?  

In the Hollywood comedy flick "Analyze This", Billy Crystal's character tells Robert DeNiro's character to 'hit a pillow' instead of going after other people.

While this example seems trivial, it suggests a simple premise that, ideally, we could provide ways for people across the world to manage their anger by directing it in non-lethal directions.  Angry at 'The West' for its 'degeneracy'?  Help us demolish homes and structures in festering slums in order to make room for new housing and sanitation projects.  Angry at the government for its inability to 'turn the economy around'?  Here is a free membership to your local boxing gym where an instructor will train you until you get exhausted and stop or until you become a contender in the ring.  Angry at the inability of social change organizations to create real and lasting change?  Help us by coming in to tear up old and dusty mission statements and strategic plans that you can then drop into the shredder for recycling.  I now understand that the initial murder in this shooting spree was a former employee shooting a boss or supervisor who fired him a year ago.  Angry about being fired or downsized?  You will now be an athletics training partner with paralympians and special olympians who may never have had the same abilities or opportunities to work as you, and we'll see how you feel after trying to keep up with their skills and spirit.  The possibilities are endless.

All these strategies are, I believe, rational approaches to a human tendency toward violence and conflict.  The inherent problem with such strategies, then, is that the people who commit the violence against innocents are not necessarily rational and we cannot necessarily identify them in advance.

And so the approach must be an approach that is educational and preventive.  Perhaps we might envision "Get Your Anger Out" centers on college campuses and in workplaces.  We might imagine character curricula in schools that teach and model ways to express anger in productive and constructive ways.

And in this educational effort we might wish to teach a Jewish teaching that I return to often.  'How do we know a person? -- By one's anger, one's pocket, and one's cup."

Working in reverse order:  We know someone by their 'cup', literally their drinking cup, meaning their temperance, their ability to make decisions about setting limits and their ability to set up a healthy relationship with both the people and things of the world.  We know someone by their 'pocket', by the way they use and spend their money and resources.  

Finally, we know someone by their 'anger':  What angers the person and how does he-she express that anger?

I challenge all of us to find ways to allow anger to be expressed in a healthy and constructive way in our country.  

The lives of innocent people depend on our efforts.

Parshat Va'et'chanan: Being #1

Parshat Va’etchanan 5772/2012

Being #1

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

In my love of both the Olympic message and Olympics competition, I have been watching as much coverage from London as I can.  If only the broadcast would come to the television without commercials!

To my pleasant surprise, there are a few commercials this year that share a positive and constructive message, despite the obvious, or not so obvious, sales pitch attached to them.  There is the message that we all have the potential to be ‘great’, to experience ‘greatness’ in our lives.  There is the message that we should set goals for ourselves to achieve our dreams, and that often the difference between winning and losing comes down to fractions of a second – or perhaps to minutiae for which we cannot necessarily predict or prepare.

It does also occur in the messages surrounding the Olympics that we recognize the extraordinary feats that the gold medal, #1 competitors achieve – that we recognize the hard work that each athlete puts in, the sacrifices they and their coaches and their families make to put them in position to be #1. 

It is this message that resonates and is in tune with the message of Shema Yisrael, the familiar prayer that comes from the holy words of this week’s Torah reading in parshat Vae’tchanan – the message that neither the world, nor God in fact, can be one, unified, whole until we create a world that makes the perception of that one-ness, unity, and wholeness visible, just as athletes, their families, and coaches are part of an effort to seek the often elusive #1 spot.

We do not control God and it is clear that we cannot control the world or the people in it such that we all might at once hear the unifying words of the prophet Zechariah saying, “Everyone will take upon themselves the recognition of God’s authority…”, familiar words from the Alenu prayer.  Also, God does not seem to want to impose strict control over us such that we lose our humanity.  Instead, we carry the Torah in our minds and in our back pocket as we search for guidance, much the same way as a traveler in an unfamiliar place turns to a guidebook to show the way through a place’s space and history.  The great Rashi teaches us that “Ado-nai Echad” is not descriptive but prescriptive – “God is One” is a hope, a vision of the future that will come to life only if the right pieces are placed at the foundation of our souls and our societies.

This lesson is also a foundation of the Olympic games themselves.  An athletic competition including representatives of 204 countries of the world is not a given, not something that would happen on its own much as we might hope for such an organic and natural event.  It takes an enormous investment of people power, time, energy, money, construction, planning, and significant obstacles of all kinds to put together.  When the flame passes from the host country to the next host at the end one wonders about the symbolism.  On the one hand the flame passes courteously from one host to the next, on the other hand the host country receives fire – fire that is hot and that can burn.

I would like to engage in a meditation with you, to develop a vision of a unified world, to inspire us to create it, and we will use the Olympics as the basis….Imagine that the population of the whole world walks through the gates and around the track at London’s Olympic stadium, million after million, billion after billion, every person fits into the stadium and everyone carries a torch and everyone gently puts his or her flame into the central cauldron, and everyone who is able contributes a few dollars into a tzedakah box whose base is on land and whose top touches the atmosphere as it fills up.  And then, as the games begin, we notice that every person is involved in one game or another, all pick up games, no medals, no one notices color of skin or gender, no one notices differences of dress, language, or culture.

How will we create a world that reflects the hopeful spirit of the Shema today, this Shabbat, through the end of this year 5772 – as we look 7 weeks ahead to Rosh Hashanah.  Let’s get a head start now so that by the time the fall holidays arrive, our best efforts will already be underway.