New & Then

(A recent sermon. Skip it if you like – you won’t hurt my feelings.)

THERE IS AN OLD STORY about a rabbi who was so engrossed in his Talmudic studies that he didn’t pay attention to the weekly Torah reading. When he was asked by his congregation to deliver a sermon, he ascended the bimah and said: “A good sermon should be about the week’s Torah portion. It should also be true and concise. I do not know what this week’s Torah portion is. That is the truth, and it is concise. Shabbat shalom.”

Not yesterday or tomorrow – but today.

Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses our Teacher – has a similar concise moment in this week’s Torah portion from Deuteronomy. The book is Moses’ recounting and personal perspective of the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. According to the 13th-century Torah commentator Nachmanides, our portion finds Moses wrapping-up the mitzvot – the 613 commandments incumbent on all Jews. Nachmanides says that Moses finishes this long and winding list with Deuteronomy 26:16-17, which reads: “Your G?d Adonai commands you this day to observe these decrees and laws; observe them faithfully with all your heart and soul. You have affirmed this day that Adonai is your G?d, in whose ways you will walk, whose decrees and commandments and laws you will observe, and to hear [G?d’s] voice.”

Notice the repetition of the phrase “this day” – “hayom hazeh.” In verse 16, G?d commands us to keep the mitzvot. In the very next verse, we affirm our willingness to do just that. And what is the upshot, the payoff? That we will hear – “shema” – G?d’s voice. Not yesterday or tomorrow – but today.

One understanding of this could be that doing the mitzvot will add a perception of the Divine to our lives. Keeping Shabbat, welcoming the stranger, paying our employees on time, and observing the festivals – including the upcoming High Holidays – might not bring us material success. But the mitzvot might benefit us in other, more subtle and transcendent ways. They help us become better people by keeping us mindful of the fragile interconnectedness of all things – and in turn, by making us more appreciative of life’s great and small miracles.

But that’s harder than it sounds. After all, keeping hundreds of commandments is a heavy responsibility. And having to keep them every day for the rest of our lives? Help!

However, one of our most famous Torah commentators proposes a solution. Rashi – wine merchant by day, devoted scholar by night – speaks to us from 11th-century France. He says: “The mitzvot should always seem as new to you as on the day you were first commanded to observe them” – this day!

Time can be experienced in two different ways. Sometimes, it’s linear – each day slipping from the future into the past. Sometimes, it’s cyclical – with different seasons bringing their own special blessing, including birth, life, death, rebirth. Jewish time is both linear and cyclical. For example, we celebrate the holidays in the same way every year. But each year finds us in a different physical, intellectual and spiritual place. We grow more mature and – we hope! – more wise, or at least more experienced.

But all we really have is “hayom hazeh” – this day, which has never been before, and will never be again. So my question today is, “How do you make your observances fresh and new, and meaningful to you?“

5 Thoughts: Extended Identity

0. IT TAKES A PROTRACTED MOVE to realize how much of one’s sense of self is tied up in one’s Stuff.

1. After 26 years within the same walls, circumstances – specifics are unimportant – have forced us to find other lodgings. But the same circumstances have dictated that our upcoming relocation actually necessitated packing our Stuff some months ago. Thus, we have spent a long time in box-cramped quarters with all but a sparse assembly of representative possessions.

We have spent a long time in box-cramped quarters with all but a sparse assembly of representative possessions.

2. This decidedly isn’t a complaint: at least I still have all my Stuff. Some of my friends lost all theirs to different iterations of NorCal’s sporadic and frightening wildfires, including one friend who was iterated twice. (He likes to say that all his Stuff “overheated.”) And there are refugees around the world whose circumstances have included war, flood, famine, earthquake… I won’t belabor that point, because it’s not the one I’m addressing. What I want to say is something quite else: it’s very disorienting to live without what reminds me of who I am – and which embodies my memory and identity.

3. Chiefly: books.

4. As a student and teacher in our local Jewish community, books are essential not only to my work, but also to my sense of self. Although we all live in a digital Golden Age of Jewish study, thanks in part to Sefaria and My Jewish Learning and the Academic Torah Institute, all my sixty-three years of curiosity-reflexes are geared toward finding answers (as well as more interesting questions) by laying hands on and flipping through books.

5. It’s funny how temporary deprivation can heighten one’s experience of reality, much as the Yom Kippur fast can reveal one’s relationship with food. Before we packed my library, I used to think of books as my friends. Now I think of them as part of my soul. What of your Stuff reminds you of who you are? And: why?

Cool Exchange

DESPITE ITS MANY FLAWS, I still use Facebook every day to keep in touch with good friends without which and from whom I would otherwise fall out of contact. As I seek to entertain and uplift, most of my usual posts are questions or tasks for my friends to play with (“Who was your first crush?” or “What local sights would you insist visitors see?” or even “Picture silence.”), Good Shabbos messages (many of which also appear on this blog) and other Judaeocentric-but-universally spiritual items, and the occasional random observation.

Today is the second anniversary of Paul Rubens’ death. His humor was and still is a big part of my life, and I have nothing but warm feelings for his most famous character, Pee-wee Herman. I was a never-miss viewer of his 1980s Saturday morning “kids” show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse; Pee-wee epitomized for me the importance of play, silliness, and innocent but subversive fun. As my longtime friends have roughly the same tastes I do, I posted the following this morning:

If I had a patron saint, it would be Pee-wee, whose second yahrzeit is today. May his memory continue to be for a blessing, and may his laughter never cease.

This prompted a friend of mine to say:

I recognize two secular saints,
St. George Carlin and
St. Frank Zappa.
(There is room for my pantheon to increase.)

To which I responded:

I respectfully beg to differ. Prophets don’t get to be saints; saints are universally loved, but prophets “comfort th’ afflicted and afflict th’ comfortable” (as newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936) put it). Being a saint is easy – just do the right thing for the right people at the right time – but a prophet’s job is a much harder one: Bring The People The Truth. Most folks don’t want to hear that sort of talk; if they did, the world would be very different – and wouldn’t continually need prophets _or_ saints. MTC; YMMV.

Don’t get me wrong – I think this most interesting of all possible worlds needs both saints and prophets – but let’s be clear on who has what job, and why. Dig?

G?d’s Hamsters

(With welcome help from special guest star Ann Autumn.)

“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.” – Samuel Beckett, Endgame

You can’t know who you are without knowing where you’ve been.

Mr. Beckett, most famously the author of Waiting for Godot, was not Jewish. By all accounts, though raised in a religious home, he identified as atheist. Yet the above quote could have been describing this week’s Torah portion, Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22), the first parasha of the Torah’s final book.

Moses begins “his” book – a 14,294-word Mosaic monologue – by recalling in some detail the Israelites 40-year desert trek; i.e., the events of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

In doing so, our greatest prophet reveals an important truth: You can’t know who you are without knowing where you’ve been. What do you see when you reflect back on your journey? As with Torah’s cast of characters from Genesis forward, along the way there have been others shaping your path – your malachim (“angels,” or “messengers”), your pharaohs, even the occasional stranger pointing the way. As someone once said, “I promise you that along your path you have been helped by people whose names you will never know.”

May we each and all continue forward, looking back when necessary, recognizing that – just as Deuteronomy takes us directly to Genesis – endings are also beginnings, and yet: we go on.

Bargain Abasement

Sermon delivered last night (2507.25). I won’t be offended if you sit this one out.

HERE’S A LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: Not every Israelite settled in the Land of Promise – but then again, that was by choice.

The Torah this week, in Parshat Matot/Masei (the final portions of the Book of Numbers, 30:2-36:13), lays out the scene. The adult children of the redeemed Israelite slaves are poised at the border of Canaan, on the Jordan River’s eastern bank, about to enter the land G?d had gifted to Abraham and his descendants. They are fresh from a 38-year wilderness-wander, and are aching to become Divinely sanctioned farmers, herders, and tradesfolk.

However, there’s a small hitch…

However, there’s a small hitch: the tribes of Reuven and Gad, and half the tribe of Manasseh, want to stay put. They are cattlemen – cowboys, if you will – and the east bank of the Jordan is prime cattle country. They’d rather remain there than take their tribal portion with everyone else in what’s soon to become the Land of Israel.

As he often does in such circumstances, Moses gets a bit … peeved. “Are your brothers to go to war while you stay here?” he cries. “This is what your fathers did, when they spied out the land and brought back tales of giants and unconquerable cities. They took the heart out of the people, and caused them to wander for decades in this desert wasteland. You’ll do the same!”

Unfazed, the tribes counter Moses’ rebuke by agreeing to give in order to get. They promise they’ll enter Canaan first as shock troops, and only return to their beloved ranches once the land is duly subdued. On hearing this, Moses is mollified. He even says that if they do what they say, they will thus win G?d’s approval.

These two-and-a-half tribes are fine exemplars of the principle of negotiation – giving up something to get something greater in return.

Torah is rife with negotiation, especially negotiating with G?d: Jacob vowed that if G?d saw to Jacob’s basic needs, the runaway patriarch would build G?d a holy shrine and tithe all Jacob’s belongings to his Boss. Abraham famously argued with G?d over the fate of the cruel Sodomites. And Moses talked G?d out of destroying the Jewish people in the wake of the Golden Calf incident by saying, in essence, “What would the Egyptians think?”

So my question tonight is: Have you ever been willing to give up something in order to get something else you wanted? Perhaps even for a greater cause?

[pass the mic: many comments, including one woman’s tale of giving up a well-paying job she hated in order to pursue right livelihood, and another woman’s account of choosing her heartthrob over the scholastic life]

Thank you, everyone. May all our deals, especially for our ideals, turn out at least half as well as they did for our ancestors. Shabbat shalom.

Talk Shop

DUE TO THE Hebrew calendar’s complexities, we sometimes double up on the weekly Torah readings. The first of this week’s two portions, Matot (Numbers 30:2-36:13), concerns the laws of vows. Words are supremely powerful in Judaism – after all, our Torah holds that G?d created the universe by speaking it into existence – and how we use them matters. Our words can hurt or heal, create or destroy, bring people closer or push them apart. As the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” May our words be truthful, kind, and uplifting, each and all when necessary – and don’t forget to add a little humor!

Reluctant Shepherds

OUR TORAH PORTION this week (Pinchas; Numbers 25:10-30:1) contains a powerful lesson in leadership dynamics. G?d reiterates to Moses that the mistake the prophet made a few chapters ago – smacking a rock instead of commanding it to produce water for the thirsty Israelites – will keep him out of the Land of Promise. But Moses doesn’t rationalize his mistake, complain about G?d’s unfairness, or otherwise try to change the divine verdict. Instead, Moses pleads for a successor (Numbers 27:16-17): “Let Adonai, Source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community who shall go out before them and come in before them … so that Adonai’s community may not be like sheep who have no shepherd.”

Leadership is a difficult thing for one who wields it. It can too easily become an ego-trip, and it can be challenging to put ego on hold and act for the greater good. Such ego-less leadership is a gift that few possess, and those who do possess it tend to use their precious gift as did Moses and his successor, Joshua. An unattributed saying can be applied here: “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” So let it be with leadership; so let it be with life.

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