Tag: Learning Jewishly

“A little Torah is all anyone knows.”

Temple of the Holy Reruns

HAVE YOU EVER SAT IN a theater after the movie ended so you can see it again? Then you’ll understand Simchat Torah.

Simchat Torah, or “Rejoicing of (the) Teaching,” will be celebrated by the worldwide Jewish community beginning tonight through tomorrow. It marks the end of the yearly Torah-reading cycle and the beginning of a new one. We’ve been doing this for at least (best guess here) 2,569 years; when we reach the last words of Deuteronomy (“Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses … [with] all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel”) we immediately rewind to “In the beginning of G?d’s creating heaven and earth…” To paraphrase a line from Guys and Dolls, among other things Judaism can be called the oldest established permanent floating book club on Earth. Continue reading “Temple of the Holy Reruns”

Day of At-Onement

IT’S HARD TO DESCRIBE THE feeling I get around 1 or 2 p.m. on Yom Kippur afternoon with no food since the previous evening. It’s an intellectual, buzzy sort of consciousness: colors are brighter, outlines sharper, and an almost euphoric state of clarity sets in. At our synagogue we take a service-break from about 12:30 until 4:30 p.m. — some people go home to nap or introspect, others hang out at the sanctuary to pray or meditate or just sit in community. As for me, I go home to feed the cat, engage in (what I hope is) honest self-criticism, and study something appropriate. Continue reading “Day of At-Onement”

Why I Hate Jay Michaelson ;-)

IT’S THAT ANYTHING I CAN do, he can do better. It’s his unaffected, artless prose. It’s his vast non-dualist scholarship and experience. It’s his light touch. It’s his unpretentiousness. It’s that he neither talks down to or over the heads of his audience, but speaks directly to their hearts. It’s that he makes what he does look so damned easy. It’s his open-faced sense of humor. It’s his genuineness. It’s that he knows a lot, but doesn’t come off as a know-it-all. It’s that I’ve been avidly following his career almost since he began writing professionally. It’s the anticipatory glee I get when I see his byline. Continue reading “Why I Hate Jay Michaelson ;-)”

The Right Sort of Vision

To gain a yirah[awe]-inducing glimpse of the transcendent, you must sharpen your inner awareness to perceive divine Oneness wherever you look. You can practice shifting your inner vision to apprehend the scintillating divine presence in an apple, a table, a car, a baby’s eyes, anywhere in this world. When you make that choice and adjust your perception in this way, you have placed HaShem [that-which-some-people-call-G?d] before you, and yirah is sure to overtake your heart as if the floor beneath you had suddenly fallen away.”
–From the monthly YASHAR newsletter)

Grudge Match

THE GOLDEN RULE OF INTERFAITH colloquy: Don’t Confuse The Levels.

A few years ago, a “JewBu” (Jewish Buddhist) friend of mine told me a story that he felt illustrated the superiority of Buddhism over Judaism, or at least the limitations of Judaism compared to Buddhism. It goes something like this:

A rabbi once met a Buddhist monk, who invited the rabbi into his temple. The rabbi refused, saying, “I cannot enter a house of idolatry.” The monk said, “If I can prove to you that you are an idolater, will you study under me for a year?” Continue reading “Grudge Match”

Literal Myths

DOES IT MATTER WHETHER OR not our sacred writings are historically accurate?

This question comes up every year at our synagogue Torah study, as people go to great lengths to try and explain the fantastical events of the text, especially the Book of Exodus, by relating them to natural events. Somebody is bound to mention that the Nile’s fish were killed by a blood-red tide, that locust swarms were a common (and in the Torah’s case, well-timed) occurrence, that Mount Sinai was a volcano, etc., etc., etc.

I feel that these good-natured and well-intentioned attempts at explanations may be unnecessarily missing the point. My own point of view is that what matters is the story. Continue reading “Literal Myths”

Minute Mitzvah: Put It Back

Today: Return lost items.

Explanation: The Talmud tells us that an item is only and truly “lost” when its owner despairs of its return. Your job is to not let that happen. Granted, this is one of those mitzvot which depends for its fulfillment on specific circumstances — but to a certain degree, don’t they all?

Exercise: If you find someone’s missing property, and there’s no identifying name or address, place it conspicuously near where you found it; the person it’s attached to may come looking for it. If this is not feasible, take it to your local police station.

Minute Mitzvah: Stuff & Nonsense

Today: Don’t crave someone else’s stuff.

Explanation: One of modern life’s biggest distractions is feeling materially inadequate, especially in a gotta-have-it society like our own. Why dwell on your deficiencies? As Pirkei Avot says, “Who is rich? One who is contented with his lot.”

Exercise: Take a moment (or two) to be happy with and grateful for what you have, no matter how much or how little that is — let it be enough.

Why I Love: Torah Study

IT’S THE ENDLESS INTELLECTUAL PUZZLE. It’s that Hebrew writing closely resembles Klingonese (well, it does; come to think of it, so does some of the sentiment). It’s belonging to the 3,000-year-old Permanent Floating Book Club. It’s the spectra, vagaries and levels of meaning. It’s the idea of “seventy faces of Torah,” meaning that each word (even letter!) can be looked at in multiple ways. It’s engaging with the minds of long-dead people who live on in your study. It’s the level playing field (“Only a little is all anyone knows of Torah,” quoth the greybeard rabbi). It’s seeing how far the Sages can stretch a metaphor. Continue reading “Why I Love: Torah Study”

365 Names of God: King

KING A translation of the Hebrew word “melech” (מלך), this Name has fallen out of favor in Liberal Judaism circles due to two factors: 1) It’s male-gendered, and thus anthro/patriomorphic (and conceptually inaccurate); and 2) as people who live in a democratic republic, we’ve lost touch of what being a king entails: his word is law, he submits to no one, and he wields the power of life and death over his subjects. Since the word “melech” is present in all classical Jewish blessings and in many prayers, some Liberal siddurim (prayerbooks) substitute “Sovereign,” others “Source.” As my first philosophy professor was wont to say, “You pays your money, you takes your choice.” Continue reading “365 Names of God: King”

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