Parshat Toledot 5769: Twin Thinking

I originally wanted to title this portion What is Jewish Thinking, but a death close to home changed my mind. A 53 year old coworker of mine, our electronics expert, went home Thursday night, Tired, he lay down for a nap. He never woke up and was found two days later when another of our employees, his sister, finally checked on him. His death has been a bit of a shock for me in many ways. First of all he was only ten years older than me, and the thought of my own mortality is very much on my mind right now. While my grand parents had the chance to say good bye to us in one way or another, we knew the end was coming and someone was watching them to the very end. Gary died suddenly, and no one was there for him when he did. To die so alone seems so horrible, to live a life where no one notices you are dead for days. That too has been on my mind as I find myself alone, realizing if I died like that, no one would know for days, for no one would check on me.
Last weeks portion Haye Sarah starts and ends with the deaths of Sarah and Abraham respectively. Toledot is about birth, Life, and living. Due to prior business commitments I could not get out of, I missed both the funeral and shiva calls, which also upset me greatly. This week I make my Shiva call here in my words, I dedicate this to Gary and the life he lived. If there was one thing I could most say about Gary, it’s that he thought very differently than everyone else, and it is different thinking that I wanted to talk about this week.
This week Isaac and Rebecca are childless. After some praying, Rebecca gets pregnant with twins, who won’t sit still in her womb.

22. And the children struggled together inside her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord. 23. (K) And the Lord said to her, Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be separated from your bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.[Genesis 25]

After the Birth of Esau and Jacob, the two are as different as can be, each preferred by opposite parents. Once the kids are older, Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. The family then moves into Philistine territory for a while. They are eventually kicked out for Isaac trying the “sister” tactic of his father, though he gets caught when he can’t keep his hands off the lovely Rebecca. There is some trouble at the wells, and then Esau marries a few gals who stress out his parents. Finally, Isaac asks Esau to get him some venison, prepare him a meal, and then Esau will get the blessing. Rebecca helps Jacob trick his father into giving the blessing to Jacob instead of to Esau, which enrages Esau to the point he’s swearing to kill Jacob. Rebecca then makes a timely suggestion to Isaac that it is time to find a wife for Jacob among her family, so Jacob sets out toward Padan-Aram.

There is much to make of Esau and Jacob’s relationship as brothers. A rabbi friend of mine happened to mention an interesting piece in Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s blog

I have no feelings pro or con regarding Anne Rice’s books, but there was something she said in the interview that I found profoundly saddening. I can’t quote her verbatim, but if I heard her correctly she said that she came to a place in her intellectual life where she realized that she will never have the answers to her questions, but that as long as she believed God had the answers she could stop asking the questions.

I can’t imagine a life without questions. A life of answers is dull. A life without questions is dead. The irony of the world’s second most famous author of vampire stories succumbing to questionless and hence lifeless theology was lost on Ms. Rice and her interviewer. But not on me.

Life is all about asking questions. Answers are secondary. They are temporary. But only as long as we continue to ask questions.[rabbirami.blogspot.com]

Judaism is a religion not of answers but of questions. We ask a lot of questions. The word in Hebrew for commentary midrash comes from the root to seek or question. Doing a very quick, rough check there are approximately, 32,000 times in the Babylonian Talmud the words What, why or how are used. God names are approximately 7,000. We are not the people of the book, but the people of the question.
In my Shlomo’s Drash from four years ago for Toledot, I made an interesting use of Esau and Jacob:

We are all Rebecca. Jacob, who will be Israel, is our yetzer ha tov, Esau our yetzer ha-ra. Esau is a force within all of us, and like Rebecca, we feel the pain of that force. Like the passive Isaac we may find it attractive because Esau is so visibly active and outwardly strong, hunting and bringing home the venison. But like the wily Rebecca, we see that the true good is in the one who sits in quiet study.

In that piece I related the rabbinic tradition of Jacob and Esau representing two nations. Jacob, whose name will change to Israel, represents the Jewish people. Esau on the other hand will found the nation of Edom. While the Edom in the biblical text is areas to the east of Israel, the Talmud has different ideas:

The hands are the hands of Esau [Gen 27:22] this is the Government of Rome which has destroyed our House and burnt our Temple and driven us out of our land.[Gittin 7b]

Rome eventually was replaced in later generations with Christianity as the Esau symbol. In our own minds these two, Edom and Israel struggle. Jacob is our Jewish thinking, Esau our western Christian and Roman influenced thinking. Ann Rice and Rami Shapiro once again reflect that. Thing is they both have a point, both ways of struggling with existence. One starts with certainty about everything, one starts with the spice of uncertainty. Their actions are based on those assumptions.

27. And the boys grew; and Esau was a skilful hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.[Genesis 25]

Esau, being Rome, handles things like Romans. He’s a man of his weapons, of strength, and of force. He’s also a man of certainty. Questions are not his thing. He makes a decision and then does it. Note Esau’s impulsiveness trading his birthright for stew. The world of Edom is black or white, you are either hunter or prey. Esau’s grandson Amalek would be known in the bible for his people’s attention to hurting the weak. Of course one of the most notorious Amalekite of all is the genocidal Haman. Although it is not written anywhere in the text, there is a hint in “breaking the yolk” of Isaac’s fondness for him. Esau is physically strong enough to resist others. The text tells us that Isaac favored Esau for his venison. Isaac may favor Esau because if Isaac had been Esau at the Akedah, things would have gone differently. Esau believes in winning and losing, and can be a sore loser and complainer. Esau reacts to the world. He lets the world happen to him. When the world does not go his way, he can react with violence.

Jacob lives in tents. Note that the biblical text says tents and not one tent. The rabbis claim it meant he studied at two different schools, but I would go farther, based on the blessing in Deuteronomy. Isaac uses the phrase a field that the Lord has blessed.[genesis ] Deuteronomy, the only other place where a field is blessed, reads Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field [Deut. 28:3]. He moved around, and knew how to move around from place to place. He knew the city and the field and had the pragmatism of both.
In next week’s portion, although he left with nothing, we read none of the problems of surviving in the wilderness that accompanied Hagar. Indeed he finds a rock and makes himself a comfy bed. When informed of Rebecca’s plan, he rattles out a series of questions, yet in the midst of the deception and possibly found out by Isaac due to his voice, he still gets the blessing.
While Esau may be a hunter, its likely Jacob was a farmer and shepherd, and probably knew the genetics trick he pulls on Laban back in Cannan. While his brother doesn’t stop complaining, what you never hear from Jacob is blame, he just moves on and tries something else. On the other hand he has no problem bargaining with God either, even after God guarantees his safety. Jacob may not be strong physically, but he certainly was streetwise. He was proactive, not thinking in winning or losing, but in how he can improve and how he can get around the stumbling blocks of his life.
While the Esau in me would say there is only one right way to think, The Jacob in me strongly believes there are infinite. Jacob and Esau the twins struggling in the womb of the mind, providing us with many views of different thinking. Esau is in many ways Anne Rice’s perfect faith. If that perfect faith is feeding the poor there is no one who could object. If it is perfect faith to murder innocent people in a hotel, that is very disturbing. Jacob Is Rami Shapiro’s need to question. It works to bring ethics and creativity in to a situation, but it also can cause one to fall into analysis paralysis and do nothing at all. There are many ways to think, none completely bad or completely good. It requires that qualitative side of Jacob to understand this, for the quantitative Esau cannot get there. There are times that even the polarity falls short of explaining some people’s thinking.
My co worker Gary was a genius of a sort. None of what I just said describes him. As our electronics expert, he worked with me on occasion while I was trying to fix some of the computer systems in our office. He had circuit boards running around in his head. By that I mean you mention something that you want to do and he’d picture the whole board almost instantly. That is not to say he got the entire thing working right, and once he had that board in his head he’d work on making a physical one that worked to specs to the exclusion of everything else he was supposed to do. I learned early on not ask to borrow his soldering iron because he’d end up obsessing about fixing one wire or finding one plug. He’d often come by my office looking to borrow my infra red thermometer. On more than one occasion instead of checking volts or amps or ohms on equipment to diagnose it, he’d use my infra red thermometer to check the temperature of the circuit boards and connected equipment. Against any logic I could use, by looking at the temperatures he’d know what was wrong. He had his challenges in life, things that has destroyed many a human being, but he prevailed against them. Sometimes our ways of thinking clashed and it was hard to communicate, but somehow we got projects done.
I have my own way of thinking, very influenced by the Talmudic sages. In the face of the great tragedies of the destruction of the temple and the Bar Kokbah rebellion, they did not think they lost, but went about thinking differently. That way of thinking continues to this day. Note I used their thinking in this piece. It is not logical to take two verses of Torah and make a conclusion from it in Western logic. But in their minds such things were part of the fabric of the text and allowed them to come up with such ides as twenty three people need to judge a capital case. [M. Sanh 1:5]

There are many ways to think. Some add to the world, some destroy it, which makes this difficult to end this piece. As I’ve been writing this, there of course has been another example of Esau thinking at his worst. My condolences to all the families of the victims of the Mumbai terror attacks.

Haye Sarah 5769: What is Real?

I read an article last week about a divorce. This by itself should not be big news, but the circumstances of this divorce and even where I heard it from was a bit disturbing. I thought of this week’s portion and how in the story of a marriage we find some answers about that divorce.

This week’s portion named the Life of Sarah ironically starts with her death. Abraham does some land deals to find a proper burial place for his late beloved wife, and then tells his trusty servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac back in the old country. Eliezer, seemingly not having a clue what to do decides the best thing to do is pray and to ask for a sign from God.

13. Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water; 14. And let it come to pass, that the girl to whom I shall say, Let down your water jar, I beg you, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give your camels drink also; let the same be she whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that you have shown kindness to my master.[Genesis 24]

Almost immediately the sign comes to pass, as Rebecca comes to fetch water.

17. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Let me, I beg you, drink a little water from your water jar.18. And she said, Drink, my lord; and she hurried, and let down her water jar upon her hand, and gave him drink.19. And when she had finished giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for your camels also, until they have finished drinking. 20. And she hurried, and emptied her water jar into the trough, and ran back to the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels.[Genesis 24]

After repeating this entire story, he eventually brings her back to Isaac where she is so blown away by him she falls off her camel. Isaac and Rebecca get married, move into Sarah's old digs, and Isaac is comforted from the loss of his mother. Abraham remarries, (some rabbinic sources say he marries Hagar), and has a few more kids. Even with the death of Abraham, which Isaac and Ishmael bury jointly, everybody acts like one happy family until the twins show up next week.

A friend of mine wrote a quick note stating she was disturbed with an article about an UK couple that had divorced over the husband cheating on the wife in the internet game Second Life, though never meeting his mistress face to face. Second Life is a game where you make up a character and live and explore a virtual world. These two had actually met on-line in the game, had a small real wedding then had a large wedding in the game itself. When she caught her husband cheating on her not in real life but in the confines of the game, she hired a detective in the game to find out if he had been cheating more, eventually finding he had a relationship with an American woman. He claimed he would not have needed to entertain himself this way if his wife wasn’t so involved with another similar though more violent game, the World of Warcraft. After the divorce, it was reported in the press that the two are getting remarried, he to his on-line mistress, and she to a guy she met on World of Warcraft. I wrote to my friend:

Living one's whole life in SL is disturbing. What's really disturbing is, given all that, she's dating a guy from WoW.

This started a group discussion my friend hadn’t planned on getting into. I got philosophical rather quickly:

I think the issue is misrepresentation. The question is: at what point does the potential to misrepresent make it imaginary?

At what point does the lie, regardless of the media make something unreal?

I was getting self reflective too, wondering if I was real. This conversation, just like Second Life and Warcraft happened online in the social media system known as Twitter. Twitter however is far different than those games in several respects. Primarily it is not a rich 3-d environment meant to be played on the best computer systems available. Instead it is a communication tool allowing very limited communication to accommodate anyone’s computer or cell phone. The limitations are so great that your comments, known as tweets, can be only 140 characters long. Pictures and other media need to be referenced to other systems. There are none on the system, except for a small postage stamp sized picture for an avatar. Avatars are essentially representations of the person talking. Second Life has avatars too, but the object of the game is to dress up and act the part of your avatar in glorious 3-d graphics and animation.
While I do have a photo of myself for an avatar, both of the people I was conversing with didn’t, but illustrations instead. One of them is an author I admire, though he is reluctant to publicly identify himself given the nature of his writing. To have a false name and picture protects himself and his family from any backlash against his work. Yet even photos can lie. An avatar can be a photo of someone else besides the person communicating as I quickly remembered when I got mail from some internet dating site. E-dating sites are notorious for people lying about their age or putting a picture of someone else. I’ve been on a few dates when the picture doesn’t match the person I get to meet. A friend of mine even went on a date with what he thought was an attractive woman, only to find a morbidly obese woman waiting for him. She had gotten her best friend to pose for her picture on the profile. Some articles on the Second Life divorce case showed picture of the avatars of the couple, and also their actual pictures. The lie showed well here, the avatars were very different than the real people.
Back in Genesis 24 by the well outside Nahor, Eliezer is in the same dilemma. While many of the rabbis of the Midrash believe he said something careless in his little prayer, I’m not so sure. As we will definitively learn in later dealings with Rebecca’s brother Laban, these are not the most truthful people. Deception is a way of life. As we will learn in next week’s portion, not even Rebecca is completely immune. What's a trusted servant to do?

10. And the servant took ten of his master’s camels, and departed; for all the good things of his master were in his posession; and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor. [Genesis 24]

Why did he take that many camels? It would seem literally that he took a lot of goods with him. Was that ten camel’s worth? In Genesis 13:2 we know that Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold. Much of Abraham’s wealth from both Pharaoh and from Abimelech was in the form of cattle and sheep. While he did have gold and silver, the bigger wealth of cattle and sheep could not be transported on camels. If that is true, what were the good things that took on the camels? There are two answers: one would be the camels themselves as invaluable transport. Yet the second is more intriguing: that all the good things for Abraham was the ability to comfort Isaac. To take all the good things means to take this mission very seriously.
Eliezer thus may not have taken this frivolously as the Rabbis claim, but took this very seriously. He took ten camels intentionally for a test. Each camel drinks up to 30 gallons, so ten of them can drink up to a total of 300 gallons. For someone to give a passing stranger say 20 ounces of water is not a big deal. Yet, for someone to volunteer to pour out 300 gallons of water is no easy feat. It requires not just an action but a commitment to continued action until the task is done.
I asked my Twitter friends an important question. What is real enough on the internet to be trusted enough to be considered reality? I can expand this to any media really, including life. While they didn’t answer me, my answer comes from Perkei Avot. Rabbi Akiba once said:

The world is judged with goodness, and everything is in accordance with the preponderance of [man's] deed[s]. [Avot 3:15]

While Akiba was discussing how God relates to us, it is true of interpersonal relationships as well. We have choices, and how we are judged by other individuals is by our deeds. While his methods and motivation may be debatable, the Midrash is clear in what Eliezer’s mission really was. The only thing that would comfort Isaac is someone to replace his mother – Isaac’s wife was to be the next Matriarch, with the commitment and the force of will that Sarah had during her life. To make sure that was the right person for this important task some beauty contest and interview with prospective brides would not do. Whoever was able to water the camels was the real thing because they acted like the real thing. It was Rebecca that passed such a test.
While I have no problem with people entertaining themselves for a few hours in a game, I do have a problem with people taking the game as real, and living their lives in this imaginary world, being someone they are not. Rebecca gave a drink to a passing stranger who asked and gave water to camels until they had their fill. Eliezer, Rebecca, and ten camels benefitted from her actions. The world of the game does not produce anything that betters anyone else except the profits of the companies running or selling merchandise in the game. While some might use Twitter in the same way as a game, many of my author, artist and even Rabbi friends use it to promote what they created. Sometimes they ask for support from the community for what they are working on. I often listen to those more experienced voices as I learn from them their tricks of the trade, and contribute some of my own at times. We may communicate via electronic communication, but we go back to the real world to do our crafts.

In the end what makes us real is we make or do something in this world which affects others. The first life is not a game like Second Life; it is about changing our world for the better, not just for ourselves, but for others. It may be a work of art, some social action, or even a smile for someone who is having a bad day. Unlike the relationships on-line, love in the real world may even make a baby or two. Next week, we’ll look at two babies and how they represent two different models of perceiving the world.

Vayera 5769: Sarah laughed, I laughed, We Succeeded

I have a disability, yet almost no one knows it. It is a limitation in my life. In this week’s portion we read about Sarah’s limitations. This week we read:

12. Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I am grown old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also? [Genesis 18]

This is not the first time we have heard this. Abraham as well said so
17. Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born to him who is a hundred years old? And shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear? [Genesis 17]

Ancient rabbinic thought does not comment on the one thing that I been thinking about in these passages, probably because it was so obvious. Sarah and Abraham both laughed because she thought that a son at this point was impossible. Of course, God can do anything, so it shouldn't be so impossible, hence God’s impatience concerning Sarah

13. And the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old? 14. Is any thing too hard for the Lord? At the time appointed I will return to you, at this season, and Sarah shall have a son. 15. Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, No; you did laugh.[Genesis 18]

On a very personal level I understand Sarah laughing. Not only was there the issue of conceiving, but of carrying and giving birth to a child. Physical limitations seem to be insurmountable. Sarah, more than Abraham, has to be intimately involved with the creative process. In my own creative work, I’m also familiar with physical limitations. I’ve discussed my color blindness before, but I never have gone into the other limitation in my life.
The first signs of a problem came in early grade school. My handwriting was terrible, and I was doing terribly in Physical Education. Besides picking the wrong colors, when using coloring books I could never color within the lines. I would often, when trying to write my homework completely zone out, what the teacher wrote on my report card as “daydreaming.” Due to a series of fortunate circumstances, My parents were able to get me tested for what was going on. It turns out my brain is working faster than my motor nerves. These two working at conflicting speeds mean I cannot control my body as easily as most people do. This might not seem to be that big of a deal but think about all the things that need coordination of those two systems. The reason I did so rotten in virtually any sport wasn’t a matter of strength, but coordination. Trying to catch a ball or swing a bat becomes a nightmare when there is even a fraction of a second delay between what you see and your arm moving. I failed Drivers Education the first time I took it because trying to get my arms and feet to control the vehicle was near impossible. By the second time I drove sufficiently well to get my license. But the worst of all was putting a pencil in my hand.
Nothing is so subtle and precise in its movements than handwriting. I had to concentrate intensely to write a single letter. It took a while, and my brain meanwhile flooded those same muscles with thirty more ideas or letters that needed to be put down. In that clog of ideas my hand would go on strike and shut down, hence the day dreaming. One teacher ever figured this out, and she did something that I’m indebted to her forever. She put me on a typewriter, and let me type my lessons. The ideas flowed much easier, though even here I had an incurable problem with typographic errors. Unfortunately in the years that followed I didn’t have a typewriter and I suffered in my classes from having to write my homework. As much as Blue books were bad for most students, for me they were a total terror. Even in graduate school, things were problematic with writing. Trying to take my handwritten comprehensive examinations for my first Master’s Degree, I almost failed because my writing was so bad as to be unreadable. I would start writing one sentence and then pick up with the end of the next sentence, skipping dozens of words in between in my incomprehensible scrawl. Fortunately my advisor knew about my problem, and was merciful in his grading. He knew if you put me in front of a key board, the words just start streaming out in incredible prose – my only problem was that pencil and pen.
Word processing has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. Without it I would have had nothing of what I have today. I seriously doubt I would have graduated High School. Yet now I have two graduate degrees.
One thing that I always wanted to do was art. I wanted to draw and paint. But between my color blindness and my lack of motor control that was a laughable dream, as laughable as two senior citizens having children. Yet it was a dream I really wanted.
Shortly after I finished my Masters in education and that comprehensive exam, I did something very scary for me. I took a drawing class. Like that typewriter in first grade, it was a moment of enlightenment when John, our teacher stuck two Chinese takeout cartons and a Styrofoam cup in the middle of the room, and told us to blind contour draw what we saw in front of us. Blind contour, for those not familiar with art is a way of drawing where you never look at what you are drawing; your eyes are instead always looking at the subject you are drawing. But there was one other instruction I was given, and that was the breakthrough in my art. I was told not to draw by movements of my fingers but to use my whole arm. That suggestion changed everything, and within three weeks I was drawing the cups and take out cartons, along with watering can and milk pails as recognizable objects. Removing the hundreds or motions of my fingers for the few muscles of my arm meant I gained far more control of my body than I ever had with a writing instrument in it.
After graduating college I got a job that had me on the road six days a week. Although I was still very rough in my driving, in the nine months I worked that job, I put on 80,000 miles on that car. By the time I left that job for another, no one could ever tell I ever had trouble driving. In the twelve years since I started drawing and painting, I have filled dozens of notebooks, almost every day of the last twelve years I’ve painted or drawn. And something amazing happened. I could draw and paint. My ability today is the result of a few teachers who set me in the right direction and a ton of practice. I’ve learned to use my hands and the rest of my body properly despite my disability. Repetition has been a huge part of that.
Had someone handed me one of my acrylics or watercolors and told me I painted that, I would have laughed as much as Abraham and Sarah. It seemed inconceivable I could do anything like that. Yet staring at the work which covers the walls of my apartment I’m reminded of how much one can accomplish.
Miracles happen, but they happen when both God and humanity take them seriously. We may laugh at the prospect of something incredible happening, be it a child in one’s old age or painting a beautiful woman at a beach bar. I thought of all this recently when I was given a few new physical challenges by a friend of mine, and once again my hands feel like they are made of lead, and I find my self fighting not to shut down. It’s made me realize what is necessary to get me to function like a normal human being, something unwritten into the text of the story of Abraham and Sarah. In stories of infertility we usually have no gap between God promising and God fulfilling. Yet here there’s a three-month gap. It took a year for Sarah to have a baby, while if she had gotten pregnant immediately it would wold have been sooner. We have no idea how long she was kept captive from Abraham by Abimelech in the second “she is my sister” episode. Yet it would seem a lot less than three months. Since it is clear also that it is Abraham’s son, there is only one conclusion about those three months. Any time they were together, they copulated. Abraham and Sarah did the human physical acts that made the miracle true. God supplied the rest.
The laughingly impossible is possible if only we try and try again. I rode tens of thousands of miles in my first car, and have become a good driver because of it. I have painted thousands of paintings, each one better than the last. When I learned how to throw pottery on the potters wheel, my ceramics teacher told me how to make a good pot: you make a lot of pots. I realized how powerful that advice to me twenty-two years ago was when last year when for the first time in fifteen years I sat down at a potter’s wheel and threw a perfect pot to my total surprise. Muscle memory is different than conscious memory, it never forgets.
But there is the other part we cannot forget. God will do miracles and blessings, if only we look for them. I had no control of which teacher I got in different parts on my life, but those who were particularly memorable were blessings from God. I would not have succeeded without them. That is the stuff we need to thank God for.
My disabilities are mostly inconveniences. I’m not blind or paralyzed, as others are who are presented challenges I can not even imagine. Yet I believe anyone who has a limitation can expand themselves into places that they or others might laugh about, if only they put the hard effort of practice in. When they do that, God will provide for them blessings. We all have limitations that make a dream laughable. Though I can strum a few chords, with my fingers I very much doubt I will ever be able to play Flight Of The Bumblebee on my guitar. My fingers just can’t move that fast.
Or can they? If I had the desire, put in the practice, and looked for the miracles that would help me get there, even that may be possible. If you really had the desire, the discipline to do something thousands of times, and the willingness to let God give you a few gifts along the way, what could you accomplish?

Parshat Lech Lecha 5769: Two Songs, Two people

This week we read Lech Lecha, with its famous words

“And the Lord had said to Abram, Get out from your country, and from your family, and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).

Abram, along with wife Sarai, Lot, and the “souls that they made” leave for a place unknown. Along the way, they stop in Canaan, until a famine forces them to Egypt where Abraham half-lies about Sarah to save his own life, only to benefit in a huge financial apology by the Pharaoh of Egypt. Then he returns to Canaan somewhere around Hebron, only to end up leading a military alliance with Sodom and Gomorrah to save Lot from a hostage situation. Abram then refuses to take any war booty, but Lot decides to live in Sodom. Abraham then does a rather strange sacrifice, getting a promise and a prophecy about the Exodus from Egypt. He half-lies again about Sara, this time to the Philistine king Abimelech. Then he has a son Ishmael by Sarai’s handmaid Hagar. God tells his to change his name to Abraham, his wife’s to Sarah. Finally God literally “cuts a contract” for Abraham, Ishmael and all of Abraham’s male descendants: circumcision.

I tried several times this week to write something. I had a lot of ideas but could not get any of them work. I thought about Abram and how he views the issues of the king and his religion. I looked at Milchizedek, and the King of Sodom trying to figure out why Abram accepted one tribute and rejected another. I had lots of good sources, but it just wouldn’t come together. Thus I went back and decided to update an old Shlomos Drash, this one from 2004, because like the Torah reading themselves sometimes we need to re-vist issues we’ve looked at before.

When reading a Torah scroll, at the beginning of this chapter there is an interesting letter pattern: LCh LCh. The same word seems to repeat, though vocalized it is read Lech Lecha. Literally, Lech is the command to walk or go in the masculine, and Lecha is to you or for you. When read, this becomes go to yourself or go for yourself, but really it is just a very emphatic go. In Tanach, this phrase occurs only twice in the text. Once here and once in relation to the Sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:2). In the case of the Akedah, it is not exactly the same. In that case there is a Vav in front of Lech, the word looking like a cane an old man is carrying with a boy running after him.

Debbie Friedman, in her song Lech Lecha, alternates verses with the feminine version of the same phrase: L’chi Lach. L’chi Lach also occurs only twice: in the Song of Songs [2:10-13] where it begins and ends a poem where the male lover adjures the female to come out and play:

My beloved answered [and spoke] to me:
Arise, for yourself my love my beautiful one,
Go for yourself
For, here, the winter passed over
The rain passed on
Blossoms appear on the land
The time of song (bird) arrives
The voice of the turtledove is heard on our land
The fig tree makes spicy the early fig
The blossom of the grapevines gives fragrance
Arise for yourself, my love my beautiful one,
Go for yourself

The Song of Songs is read in the spring, while Parshiot Lech Lecha and Vayera are read in the fall. The feminine and masculine versions of the same command are read in opposite seasons. In the season of increasing darkness or bright colors becoming gray we have the male. In the season of increasing brightness, or gray becoming bright colors again, we have the female.

A long time ago, I was involved with a distance relationship, spending hours on the phone with this woman. Instead of a romantic time at our first face to face meeting of a distance, I broke up with her, knowing full well that the breakup was completely my fault. Walking around with that guilt and pain I walked into Friday services that week, not to be consoled, but to be ordered around like a slave, not a human being with feelings. Instead of sympathy, I got scolding. I decided that night to Lech Lecha to another Synagogue, preferably as quietly as possible. However for one or two individuals, for the next two months, they delighted in kicking me while I was down. One of these people expressed their opinion that I left because I hated women. Although completely untrue, for a guy still getting over a breakup, nothing hurt more. But it confirmed my feelings: it was time to go, and like Abraham and Haran, I was never to return there. As of this writing I’m definitely in a different place, a different chapter to say the least, one of far more hope than that time.

Back then, sitting with my coffee on an appropriately gray and gloomy day, I read that passage from the Song of Songs, illustrated with several rather bright, beautiful paintings I did even more years ago. I remembered something. Lech Lecha, although directed to a single person, was not just one person, but two- Abraham and Sarah. Abraham took Sarah with him, and as the Midrash explains she is an important part of the journey. The Midrash explains that the “souls they made” meant converts, and Sarah converted the women just as Abraham converted the men. This was a partnership of equal but not quite the same as the two words Lech and Lecha look alike on the torah scroll but are not quite the same in sound or meaning. One cannot be without the other. Together each makes the other better.

In the Song of Songs Lechi Lach is a calling out from the male lover to the female to be in the world of the male lover. It is followed by this (2:14)

My dove is in concealment of the cliff
In steep hiding places.
Show me your appearance
Let me listen to your voice
For your voice is sweet and your appearance is beautiful.

The male makes this second call to come out, this one not to the call of nature, but to the beauty of her appearance and voice. Here the male uses the term my dove to address the female. Doves are one of the most strongly monogamous birds. Many dove species do everything together with their mate, unlike other bird species, denoting their monogamous connection. They will only take one mate, then live alone when that mate dies. I learned how much so while once walking to get my morning coffee in Providence Rhode Island. A mourning dove had flown into a window of a store and smashed its skull. Its mate could do nothing but walk around it cooing, not paying the slightest attention to me. It could not leave its mate, even at its death.

Through everything in Abraham’s and Sara’s trip, much of which could easily derail a relationship, Abraham and Sarah stay together. Sara is that dove. Abraham says to Sara “you are beautiful in appearance” [Genesis 12:11] Her voice is sweet in its wisdom, as the text and God remind us “in all that Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice” [Genesis 21:12]

In the Song of Songs, L’chi Lach is not enough to get to that relationship. It will require the entire Song of Songs for them to be completely together. Like it did when I first looked at this topic back in 2004, I’ve been thinking about that lately. What my journey, indeed all of our journeys is about, is to get to the relationship at the end of the Song of Songs, both with a wonderful partner and with God. Like the story of Abraham and Sarah or the Song of Songs, it will require many trials, a few losses, a few gains to get to my land. I’ve moved along from where I was many years ago, yet Like Abraham who will do more journeying. I’ve made mistakes, like he did with Pharaoh and Abimelech, well intentioned or not. In time, we learn to love. We learn to receive love and we learn to give love.

I think in the fall, many have depressing thoughts as the world begins to turn dark and cold. But the time of light and warmth will come. Maybe it will take a very long time, but it will happen. Even though as things get dark in the fall, spring will follow. In this time of the male of the fall, the female of spring will be there too; we just have to be patient.

Rashi Script handout available

Just a quickie before I get out the Shlomo's Drash for the week. Many texts use Rashi script as a way to cite biblical quotations, though many people don't know how to read these. I have written a handout about Rashi script, Hebrew numbering and a reference guide to the names of the books of the Tanach in Rashi script. It is available for download at http://www.shlomosdrash.com/rashi_numbers.pdf

Parshat Noah 5769: Prophet, Wimp, or Artist?

This week we come to the story of Noah and the flood. God becomes dissatisfied with all flesh on the earth, and thus plans to destroy them. But he does save one family, that of Noah, who was the most righteous of his generation. Noah is commanded to build an ark that will house male and female of every species and a few extra of the clean species. The floods come; all land life is wiped out except that preserved on the Ark. After the Flood subsides, God promises not to do that again, sealing the covenant with a rainbow. Noah, unable to deal with the new world, gets drunk and stupid. After the unpleasantness of this incident, a few more generations are born. With only a rainbow as a contract, these later generations don't completely trust God. They decide to make a tower at Babel to prevent a flood from happening again. God intervenes, and soon no one can communicate with one another. These peoples are scattered across the world, becoming the various nations of the world. Following the genealogy of Noah's son Shem, we end the portion introduced to some interesting characters: Abram, his wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot.

The first line of this week’s portion reads:

9. These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a righteous man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

Many commentaries discuss the phrase in his generations. How righteous was Noah really? Some argue that he was, in comparison to everyone of his generation more righteous, but in comparison to those of later generations like Abraham or Moses, not really that righteous. Others argue the opposite. To be righteous in such a quagmire requires an inner strength later generations of righteous people did not need. Noah walked with God, as his great grandfather Enoch had. No one else walked with God directly in the biblical text, though often the Israelites are admonished to walk with the commandments.

Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book The Prophets starts with a question I’ve been mulling over for the past week: What manner of man is the prophet? In this week’s portion, was Noah some kind of prophet as he was walking with God?
There is some evidence there was some form of prophetic activity going on. The Midrash states

For a whole one hundred and twenty years Noah planted cedars and cut them down. On being asked, ‘Why are you doing this? ‘He replied: ‘The Lord of the universe has informed me that He will bring a Flood in the world.’ [Gen R. XXX: 7]

The hundred and twenty years comes from the following verse:

3. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for he also is flesh; yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. [Genesis 6]

The verses plain meaning is that a human life span will never exceed 120 years. Yet in Genesis 9:29 we know that Noah lived nine hundred and fifty years. Noah’s son Shem’s descendants after the flood listed in Genesis 11 often exceed 120, contradicting the statement above. However, given the context, the rabbis concluded that this was God setting a time limit of 120 years before he wiped everything off the planet.

This however sets up a bit of a problem. We also read:

6. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. [Genesis 6]

Which implies that Noah was 480 years old when he started growing trees. But we read two verses that aren't far apart from one another.

32. And Noah was five hundred years old; and Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. [Genesis 5]

9. These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.10. And Noah fathered three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

By repeating the phrase Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth in each verse, rabbinic thinking links the verses together. We therefore can infer that whatever follows in Genesis 6 happens in the five hundredth year of Noah’s life.

11. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.12. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.13. And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. [Genesis 6]

This rabbinic tradition therefore concludes Noah was told about the flood and to make the ark when he was 500, not 480. Another Midrash explains it this way:

This alludes to the five hundred years to which he had attained when he gave birth to progeny; as it says, And Noah was five hundred years old; and Noah begot, etc. The reason why he postponed carrying out the duty of procreation was because of the iniquity of his generation which he constantly beheld. This continued until the Holy One, blessed be He revealed to him the matter of the ark. Then it was that he took a wife and gave birth to children. [Num R. XIV: 12]

While it is not necessary to reconcile two commentaries, it does present an interesting perspective of the biblical story. One says Noah began working on preparations for the ark 120 years before the Flood, another 100 years before. What happened in that 20 year gap?
As we already mentioned, Noah walked with God, one of only two people to do so. Of the other, Noah’s great grandfather Enoch, we read

21. And Enoch lived sixty five years, and fathered Methuselah; 22. And Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah three hundred years, and fathered sons and daughters; [Genesis 5]

We are given an important piece of information: Enoch only walked with God after his son’s birth. In the case of Noah, we learn Noah walked with God, then immediately after we have a repetition of

Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

We can conclude from this association Noah too did not walk with God until the birth of his sons. While Numbers Rabbah above believes that Noah first heard about building the Ark and then had a family, I believe it was the reverse. Noah did not hear God’s specifications for the ark until he had a family. This isn’t the only precedent for this. In the case of Moses we read he had his son Gershon [Exodus 2:22] and then The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; [Exodus 3:2]

Walking with God may be some form of prophecy. In its form, it requires a family. It is of course not the only conditions for prophecy. Jeremiah started when he was still in his pre-teens, and ordered by God not to have a wife or children [Jer. 16:1]. Yet, unlike late prophets like Jeremiah, we hear nothing of Noah demanding repentance of the people. Unlike Moses and Jeremiah, we hear nothing of him trying to avoid the role God has for him. All Noah does is build the ark, collect the animals and board. Unlike Moses or Abraham, who when told God was going to wipe out a civilization made forceful objections, Noah does not object. This lack of argument is the usual reason most do not consider Noah a prophet. There is an debate going as far back as rabbinic times, that Noah was too much of a wimp to be a prophet. He obeyed God completely, missing the Jewish iconoclasm in his makeup that marks many of the prophets, particularly Moses and Abraham.

Prior to the verbal prophecy found in abundance in the books of the prophets, Noah might have been a different kind of prophet – a visual one. There are other cases of such. The Plagues in Egypt or the yolk Jeremiah wore [Jer. 27:2] are examples. Visual prophecy never has objections in the biblical text. Like Noah, Moses never lifts a finger of objection to God wiping out the first born. Instead he starts disseminating orders [Ex. 12:21] Jeremiah simply straps on that wooden yolk.

If Noah got the specifications for the ark when he was 500, but the flood did not come till he was 600, there is another possibility for his actions. The ark was the visual prophecy. It begged the question ‘Why are you doing this?’ and then Noah could try to get anyone who asked to repent. God left the 120 years as a time where people could repent. Indeed the rabbis say God gave every chance for repentance possible. According to one midrash as the year of Methuselah’s death equals the same year as the flood, Noah’s Grandfather Methuselah died the same day as the rains began. But God did not flood the world completely for seven more days in order for people to mourn Methuselah. Had they done so they would have been redeemed, [Sanh. 108b] instead they scorned Noah [Eccl R. IX: 17] and so died.

I think Noah was some form of prophet, though not of the same caliber as the Jeremiah, Moses, or Abraham. There was a sequence to his prophesy. God decided 120 years before the flood to wipe out life on earth. Noah, who was righteous in his own way, knew something was different and wrong in the 480th year of his life. His righteousness let him pay attention to signs from God, like Moses was curious about the burning bush. Yet he was unable to truly walk with God until he had a family, which took twenty years. In all likelihood it was very hard to find a righteous woman worthy of the endeavor and of raising righteous children in such a society. Once he did walk with God He got the plans for the ark. Since he had an inkling of what was going on, as a farmer, he had spent the last twenty years growing cedars, and so had wood to begin the project of building the ark almost immediately. The construction brought many curious questions, and when asked he told people of what was to come due to their evil, though they would only scorn him. This went on for a hundred years. When the deadline came, God filled the world slowly with flood waters just to give everyone one last chance in those last seven days, but again they did not repent, while Noah and his family and his cargo of plants and animals survived in the sealed up ark.

Noah was a visual prophet, the only prophet to be completely such. Others would combine words and images. One of the important lessons of the story of Noah is that pure visual prophecy doesn’t work. The work of an artist or a visual demonstration might enhance the verbal rebuke of the prophet, but tends to be ignored. The slow prophecy of a hundred years also presents problems as well. Taking a hundred years to build the ark, and making a statement in its building, lent itself to people forgetting or ignoring the prophecy. All too often today from financial to environmental crises such events still occur. As a visual artist, I look at the statements I make in my own art work, and realize how meaningless they really are. Statements, whether intentionally placed there or unintentionally from the themes of my work, will be misinterpreted or ignored. The effect of a statement in a work of art is like the effect one bucket has on an ocean. It might make a splash, but will disappear quickly.

Noah’s work of art was functional of course, a piece of performance art which allowed the survival of species. Noah’s art made him think differently, much like the Jewish thinking which led me to the story I told in this piece. Such a story is impossible in Greek logic, and is only possible with the thinking of the Rabbis, of biblical thinking. Many times we need to change our thinking to find answers. Next week, we’ll look at the point when thinking really changed.

Bereishit 5769: Who Invented Shabbos Sex?

While there are many mitzvot, none causes so many titters as the mitzvah of having sex on Friday night. While the actual mitzvah is found in Exodus, much of the basis of the mitzvah comes from this week’s portion. There is the passage about Shabbat

1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. 3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made. [Genesis 2]

Not long before this brings a verse that most might suppose is the reason:

28. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.[Genesis 1]

While reproduction is related, the verse of interest to us is really this one.

16. To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply the pain of your child bearing; in sorrow you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you. [Genesis 3]

The Talmudic rabbis link this last verse, often called the Curse of Eve to one in Exodus. In this case, the Torah is discussing the responsibilities of a master to a female slave.

10. If he takes for himself another wife; her food, her garment, and her onah, shall he not diminish.[Exodus 21]

Based on the phrase another wife, the Talmudic rabbis conclude these are the same things for any wife or female slave, with the penalty of divorce for not supplying a wife these three things. While food and clothing are simple to understand, even the rabbis have problems translating the word Onah. The majority opinion however is that it means conjugal duties based on the curse of Eve [Ketubot 47b] as onah refers to the suffering in desire for a woman to her husband. Indeed, she cannot bear having time away with her husband, so other rabbis think onah refers to the interval of time apart from her husband. In the Mishnah for Ketubot, there is even a timetable of how long a man can be away from his wife:

Students may go away to study the Torah, without the permission [of their wives for a period of] thirty days; laborers [only for] one week. The times for conjugal duty prescribed in the Torah are: for men of independence, every day; for laborers, twice a week; for ass-drivers, once a week; for camel-drivers, once in thirty days; for sailors, once in six months. These are the rulings of R. Eliezer [M. Ketubot 5:1]

The rabbis even explain that it is critical to have conjugal relations naked, and the penalty for not doing so.

R. Joseph learnt: Her flesh implies close bodily contact, viz, that he must not treat her in the manner of the Persians who perform their conjugal duties in their clothes. This provides support for [a ruling of] R. Huna who laid down that a husband who said, ‘I will not [perform conjugal duties] unless she wears her clothes and I mine’, must divorce her and give her also her ketubah. [Ketubot 48a]

However, this is not as liberal as it may seem. While the couple must be naked, they also cannot see each other either. Several places in the Talmud require the act to be done in the dark, even on a sunny day. The issue is about physical sensation of the woman. The medieval commentator Rashi makes this abundantly clear in several comments to the Talmudic discussion. Commenting on the advice of R. Hisda to his daughters to act modestly with their husbands, Rashi believes this means how to extend foreplay:

When your husband caresses you to arouse your desire for intercourse and holds the breasts with one hand and “that place” with the other give the breasts [at first] to increase his passion and do not give him the place of intercourse too soon until his passion increases and he is in pain with desire [Rashi to Shabbat 140b]

While Rashi did have daughters, some believe this comment by Rashi was more advice obliquely directed at his male students to know what to do. Rashi also got into a debate with other scholars, including his own grandson Rabbenu Tam over the use of birth control. Not in doubt was cases where a woman’s personal health was in danger from a pregnancy. In these, contraception was allowed. [B. Yavamot 12b & 100b, Ketubot 39a, Niddah 45a, N’darim 35b] However there was still a debate about spilling male seed using contraceptive devices, and that was what Rabbenu Tam and Rashi debated, whether the use of the contraceptive sponge was pre or post-coitial. What is significant about this was the be fruitful and multiply of Genesis 1 gets superseded by her conjugal relations in Exodus 21 by all parties.
But of all the things Rashi mentions regarding sex, it is the timing of onah which most interests us. What is missing so far from our exploration however is the schedule that the rabbis put on themselves. After giving stories about incredible scholars like R. Akiba who went twenty four years without spending time with his wife, they come to the conclusion that not only was it once a week but specifically every Friday night [Ketubot 62b]. Study was considered work, but the moment study stopped, the conjugal duties must be attended to. In his commentary, Rashi adds a sweet tone to this, calling the “Sabbath a night of enjoyment, relaxation and physical pleasure” [Rashi to Ketubot 62b] Elsewhere Rashi advocates that not only scholars, but laypeople also should engage in this practice on Friday night. [Rashi to Niddah 17a]
It was Rashi who connected everything together, and brought the mitzvah of onah to Erev Shabbat for everyone. Later scholars, particularly Kabbalists, would take the concept back to a spiritual meaning, making the coitial act a symbolic act. A parallel thread which eventually would become part of the tradition was the belief found in both the Talmud and medieval writings that if a woman attains sexual satisfaction first and then her husband, any resultant pregnancy would be a boy. This was later amended to a belief advocated in the Sefer Hasidim and by the Ramban in his Iggeret Kodesh that if done in the proper time and place, namely Shabbat, this not only produces a son, but a Torah scholar. Be fruitful and multiply did find its way into sex on Shabbat.
Sex is multifaceted, and the first chapters of Bereishit reflect this. Functionally it is about being fruitful and multiplying. Yet it also is about a sacred time between two people. The function of reproduction was created before eating the fruit, the longings of desire and relationship only after. It is also about man and woman becoming one flesh and completing the other. It is about the creation of gender, which is necessary for complementary completion. The text of Genesis and the ancient commentaries all looked at gender roles rather discretely, as though only women have that curse of Eve of deep desire for their mate, and men do not. Today, we are more aware of the blurred gender roles when it comes to sex. Both men and women feel desire for their mate. Individuals may show it differently, but it is there. In our world, it is difficult to fulfill during the week. Many people substitute more destructive habits for satisfaction of an intimate partner. The rabbis, in declaring for themselves that Shabbat was the time for sexual satisfaction of a wife was declaring something greater. Shabbat becomes the time of relationship when we stop the rest of our busyness and relate to those we love physically, emotionally and spiritually. When people ask me about Valentines Day, I often respond that those who observe Shabbat celebrate once a week, not once a year.
With that in mind, may you have a wonderful Shabbat.

Sukkot 5769: Death, Sukkahs and Christmas

What is it about Sukkot that gets me nostalgic? What I feel in some way for Sukkot, is a lot like some people feel about Christmas. Hanukkah has its merits as a solstice holiday but Hanukkah still pales in comparison to decorating the house and the Christmas tree and having Christmas parties. Yet, for those that observe the mitzvah, Sukkot succeeds in doing what marketers only tell people about Christmas.
The mitzvah of having a sukkah is mentioned twice in Torah:

40. And you shall take on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. 41. And you shall keep it a feast to the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42. You shall dwell in booths seven days; all who are Israelites born shall dwell in booths; 43. That your generations may know that I made the people of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God. [Lev 23]

13. You shall observe the Feast of Booths seven days, after you have gathered in your grain and your wine; 14. And you shall rejoice in your feast, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your manservant, and your maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the orphan, and the widow, who are inside your gates. 15. Seven days shall you keep a solemn feast to the Lord your God in the place which the Lord shall choose; because the Lord your God shall bless you in all your produce, and in all the works of your hands, therefore you shall surely rejoice. [Deut 16]

In both of these passages, it is clear this is a festival for rejoicing. It is also clear we are to live in the booths. Leviticus tells us to make sure to do this every year in every generation. Like Passover, it is reminder of the Exodus from Egypt. While Leviticus tells us it is for Israelites, Deuteronomy makes clear this is isn’t personal holiday, but one that is inclusive of the entire congregation, servants and the underprivileged as well as family. Zechariah includes others as well. In messianic times, everyone on the planet will celebrate in the Sukkah. [Zech 14:16] Yet even Israel did not follow this mitzvah for much of its early history. In Nehemiah we read the fourth passage about Sukkot, the first one after returning from exile:

16. So the people went out, and brought them, and made themselves booths, every one upon the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God, and in the open space of the Water Gate, and in the open space of the Gate of Ephraim. 17. And all the congregation of those who had returned from captivity made booths, and dwelt in the booths; for since the days of Joshua, son of Nun, to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was a very great rejoicing. [Neh. 8]

The people rejoiced because it was Sukkot, but also they rejoiced in restoring a tradition from the time of Joshua. The beginning of the second temple period saw the revival of the Sukkah, even though Torah mandates observance from generation to generation. This provides us with a startling implication: After Joshua, there was never a sukkah when the Mishkan and the first temple stood in Israel.
In those first sukkahs of the second temple period, the Aaron Hodesh, the Holy Ark was not in the holy of holies as it was in the first temple or the Mishkan. The object where the presence of God was found hovering was no longer part of the temple. The best facilitator of the divine-human relationship was gone. So it is an odd, even ironic proposition to state that the fine craftsmanship of gold and acacia wood that was the Ark is to be replaced with a rickety, leaky shack that is a sukkah. From the destruction of the temple, the Aaron Hodesh was taken away and replaced with the sukkah.
Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book The Sabbath describes architecture of time in Judaism instead of space. Sukkot for example is a commemoration of a time when we lived in booths in the wilderness. The Sabbath is a commemoration of the completion of creation, one completely dependent on a time period of seven days and independent of space. Other religions in contrast have architecture of space. The place where something happened is more important than the time it happened. Encompassing Space and Time is relationship. There is foremost our relationship to God. Shabbat is a commemoration of our relationship to Creation and its creator. To rest on Shabbat we take the time to pause and look at creation. But often we observe Shabbat in a synagogue or in our houses, blocked off from much of the original creation by walls, doors, heating and air conditioning. Yet on Sukkot we take that step further, we spend time in creation in a hut so rickety we might as well have nothing. Its decorations are often not man-made but grown. It is to have, for seven days a year a certain experience, one Kohelet writes:

4. For to him who is joined to all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5. For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know nothing, nor do they have a reward any more; for the memory of them is forgotten. [Ecclesiastes 9]

To join to all life is to observe and experience all life. In this time of year we might feel the warmth of the sun on a dry day or the stinging cold wind and rain. It is to see the beautiful full moon on some years, and nothing but clouds on others. Every meal in the sukkah, everything changes. As Kohelet describes, the world is in constant flux, always changing and thus it is vanity to do anything. At the end of Sukkot we will begin Genesis again, and its repeated phrase “and it was evening and it was morning” If a year was compared to a day, then we are in the evening of the year. This is the time before the death of sleep we call winter as geese fly overhead, escaping to warmer climates. To be outside and experience this reminds us of Death and joins us to the living.
As much as the Days of Awe are often masses of people grouped together involved in a very personal event of getting written into the book of life, Sukkot flips this around. The sukkah itself is small but an incredibly social place. Only a few can fit there. In my family we never had our own sukkah. Today I have no where to put one of my own. My dad on many occasions built the synagogue ones, and the experience of building in a back parking lot some rickety construction of chicken wire and pipe, often under the gray overcast skies and snow flurries of Rochester NY, still make my hands chill but my heart warm. From some of my earliest memories to the present I have often been the visitor in another’s sukkah. As the mitzvah requires, it is a week of rejoicing, because one is not only in relationship with Nature, but with people. Sukkahs tend to be as unique as their owners the decorations of the sukkah as personal as the ornaments on a Christmas tree. For most who build sukkahs, what they put in their sukkah is just as important to them as those who decorate Christmas trees. Jumping from sukkah to sukkah tell us a lot about people and our relationships with them, both those who own that sukkah and those who are just visiting.
Sukkot is a holiday of relationship. Kohelet tells us of desiring many things, but all are vain and empty. They are like chasing after the wind. All we can do is enjoy the relationships we have in our lives, however momentary. To make them permanent is chasing after wind. But it is important to appreciate them while they are here. I disagree with Kohelet. There is something new under the sun – the memories of our relationships and our interactions with others. However small, they spread out like the ripples of a fallen leaf on a pond. Yes, some memories will disappear with our deaths, but others will remain, spread throughout the consciousness of those we leave behind.
Like a secular Christmas, Sukkot is about visiting and eating with friends and decorating some ritual object. The sukkah itself, however has a deeper spiritual meaning, a conduit for divine connection, through the experiencing of the world as it goes through it yearly death throes heading into winter. It finds divine connection in our relationship to other people we eat with during Sukkot in our booths with roofs so open we can appreciate the moon and stars. We read the book of Kohelet, which explains how temporary and fleeting our existence is, a lot like a sukkah. To celebrate Sukkot, maybe it is Kohelet who best describes how to celebrate.

Go your way, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works. [Ecclesiastes 9:7]

Yom Kippur 5769: The Art of the Albuquerque Turn

“I knew I should have made that left turn at Albuquerque!”- Bugs Bunny

Bugs Bunny may be an odd choice to teach us about t’shuvah, but that classic quote does much to teach about repentance. Then again, so does Rodin’s sketches and Debussy’s music. Before artists as diverse as Friz Freleng, Rodin and Debussy teach us a lesson in t’shuvah for the Day of Atonement, Let’s look at the word for t’shuvah.
We read in the Netana Tokef prayer that on Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. Yom Kippur is our last chance before that seal is placed on the decree for the year. The prayer concludes with the statement that repentance, prayer and charity cross out the bad decree. So of the three, what is repentance, t’shuvah? In Hebrew, the root word is Sh-V-B, meaning in Biblical Hebrew to turn particularly to turn back or return. Yet the Hebrew does not really tell us where we are turning. Only by context can we tell and thus it could mean either towards God or away from God. It is in the Rabbinic Hebrew more than the Biblical that Shuv means to repent or return to God.
Our lives are like traveling on a road with many exits, entrances and crossroads. It is up to us to figure what is the way to get to our destination and what isn’t. Bugs Bunny’s comment used in many of his short animations presents a good way of thinking about what we are doing on Yom Kippur and T’shuvah for the rest of the year. Bugs in most of these scenes pops up expecting to be somewhere really good and fun like Las Vegas, yet ends up in a situation that is trouble. Invariably, Bugs pulls out a map and then realizes he should have taken that left at Albuquerque. Bugs Bunny being a cartoon character and one who can outsmart almost any opponent can work his way through the situation. For most of us real humans, that is not so easy. Many try with far less successful or funny results than a cartoon rabbit. Instead of being in the conflict that ensues, however funny, Bugs failure is that he does not do t’shuvah, the simpler answer to the problem. The simpler answer is to turn around, go back to Albuquerque, then make that left turn. That the gag line shows up so often tells us he never does.
Every day in lots of small ways and sometimes in big ways we hit a crossroads. We can turn right or left, we can keep going. Sometimes we follow the right path sometimes the wrong one. Often at the crossroads we already know we’re on the wrong path when we make the turn, only to be confirmed later with a bad outcome. Yet the thought of turning around or even changing direction bothers us. Sometimes there is no turning around. In those times we could stop, look at our maps or ask for directions, then find a new path towards our destination. Often we have this commitment to not turning back, which the Talmud describes

R. Assi stated, The Evil Inclination is at first like the thread of a spider, but ultimately becomes like cart ropes,[Sukkah 52a]

While it may be easy at first to break away, the commitment itself to the sin make it difficult. Notice the thinking here. Like Bugs, we try to pull away hoping to break the thread of spider or the cart rope. The thing with rope of any type is it is only good if you pull with it. Push towards the rope’s end makes it meaningless. We can get caught up, but often the solution is t’shuvah, coming back the way we came.
But how do we know when we are in the wrong place, or what we should turn? How do we often miss the turns in our lives? As Bugs keeps making the same mistake, Bugs is no answer here. Artists and musicians do give us answers. A major problem with a lot of people’s ability to draw is, strangely enough, idolatry. Much of the biblical text is about the sin of idolatry, and often that sin leads to all other sins. Yet what really is Idolatry? It is objectification, turning what we see into an object that we venerate. In art, this is a big problem because we venerate the object so much we draw a symbol for the subject of our artwork, not what is really in front of us. When asked to draw a house we invariably draw a pentagon for example. When we draw an eye we draw two curved lines and one or two round ones inside. These are symbols, not something that looks like the house I live in or and accurate representation of my eye. We learn this very young that things are objects. Teachers reward young children for drawing a pentagon as a symbol of a house, not what the house looks like. Like some abstract painting full of symbol, we can read symbols, but there are no recognizable features we see with our own eyes, which is why the caption of MOM, DAD My DOG SPoT always accompanies such drawings. The result according to most art educators is that when people try for more realistic drawing they can’t because they’re stuck in drawing the symbols, the idols before their eyes
The solution to more realistic drawing is one many artists have used over the years. While the sculptures of Rodin are what most people remember him for, he also did a lot of drawings. A friend of mine recently became enamored with those drawings, and in a bit of inspiration I tried my hand at the style Rodin used. Rodin in these sketches was not getting complicated with details but drew the contour and negative space around the figure. Instead of drawing the model, he drew the space around the model. It is one of the earliest exercises in any drawing class, and the idea is to get the budding artist to stop drawing symbols by not looking at the symbols at all – just the place where the air meets something solid. While the picture is also not realistic, the result is a change in how we look at the world. A table is not a rectangular slab with legs but a series of shapes showing where the space is. Similarly, Claude Debussy famously said that great music comes from the space between the notes, a phrase often repeated by many musicians after him. For the artist, it is space around the objects, not the objects in it that tell us more about our world.
We often look at the object and not the space around the object – We objectify things. While this does have advantages, it also makes us not see the picture clearly, because we deal with the object not what is really in front of us. When we do this with people, we believe that behaviors will be according to what that object should do, not who the living person really is.
Often such drawing is an important exercise in contrast. There is a Hasidic story that tells of the Maggid of Kotznitz not giving a rich man a blessing because he eats so modestly. The Maggid explains to his puzzled students that if a rich man eats like a poor man he will have no sympathy for the poor. As long as the rich man eats only bread he might think that the poor can live on stones [Gates of Repentance p.234]. We have to see that a person is in need of help in order to help. Similarly, we often do not understand personal boundaries. Instead of recognizing personal boundaries, we exploit and hurt people, sometimes not even meaning to. That too brings on sin, and we make the wrong turn. To find those boundaries, look at the places where there is space in our relationship with this other person. Crossing that space without permission might lead to a boundary violation. If one understands that space the relationship strengthens.
Looking through the list of confessions in the liturgy, I notice how many of these sins are about making people into objects, mere symbols of their true selves. Not just boundaries happen in space, but all relationships. We relate to people in space, not in form. By knowing space we have the map, the one we can read not to make that wrong turn in Albuquerque. If we see the space of the relationship change, then we can know we need to do some backtracking or diverting to get back on course with that relationship. Yom Kippur is a point where we can look around and check all of those relationships; we can look at that map and decide where we want to go from here. Then we do t’shuvah, we turn from our present course toward better relationship. Unlike Bugs Bunny, when we get to Albuquerque, we know to turn left.

Parshat Vayelech /Shabbat Shuvah 5769: Tashlich, Seagulls and a Mid-Holiday Rant

There is one thing about paying customers, you never want to piss them off. It’s what makes the job of the prophet so annoying – you’re not making money at this gig and no one listens to you. As we’ll read next week at the end on Yom Kippur, only Jonah had some clue of the bind he was put in, and wanted out of such a game so fast, he flees in the third verse of the book. Prophecy or anything where you have to rebuke people is never popular. For that reason a lot of people, like Jonah, avoid it. I really should avoid it too, but I’m going to indulge for two reasons. First anyone reading this is probably not the people I’m talking about. Secondly, part of T’shuvah as I talked about last week is getting a few things off one’s chest.
If anything set me off it was standing on a cold pier on a cloudy day feeding the seagulls. If you live on a very large open body of water, you probably realize that the Tashlich ritual is not about casting away your sins into the water so fish can eat them, as much as feeding the seagulls. Much like the classic scenes in Finding Nemo, those birds as white as angels break that illusion in their stupid single mindedness. I can just hear them saying:

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

I usually do Tashlich alone, the morning of the second day of Rosh Hashanah before I set out for services. This year I was asked by my rabbi to lead. For whatever reason, nobody came. So when I thought I was doing something for the community, I ended up just taking a very long walk to the lake and performing tashlich by myself the seagulls, and a very startled duck. With the bread that was representing my sins, I did not just throw the sins away, but some negative thinking as well. Maybe throwing away such thinking is more appropriate than the mere sins which we ask forgiveness for on Yom Kippur. Tashlich is more about changing the pattern of thinking so we do not sin again. We take something we could eat ourselves, infuse it with the darkness within our selves and throw it away. But will our sin come back? We read in this week’s portion with Moses and Joshua standing before the pillar of cloud:

16. And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, you shall sleep with your fathers; and this people will rise, and play the harlot after the gods of the strangers of the land, where they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. 17. Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us? 18. And I will surely hide my face in that day because of all the evils which they shall have done, in that they are turned to other gods.[Deut 31]

God then tells Joshua:

23. And he gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge, and said, Be strong and of a good courage; for you shall bring the people of Israel into the land which I swore to them; and I will be with you.[Deut 31]

Joshua’s going to need that encouragement; he’s going to do his job only for it to fail. He probably feels a lot like Jonah, knowing how futile his job is. Even someone as optimistic and full of faith on God as Joshua, an optimism that got him and Caleb alone into the land in the first place, has got to feel the pessimism.
There is an environment in a synagogue that I find different during much of the High Holidays. I found a lot of people feel the same way about the High Holidays. Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Admonishment of Conservative rabbis in 1953 rang through my mind the first day of services.

We have developed the habit of praying by proxy. Many congregants seem to have adopted the principle of vicarious prayer. The rabbi or the cantor does the praying for the congregation. In particular, it is the organ that does the singing for the whole community. Too often the organ has become the prayer leader. Indeed, when the organ begins to thunder, who can compete with its songs? Men and women are not allowed to raise their voices, unless the rabbi issues the signal. They have come to regard the rabbi as a master of ceremonies. Is not their mood, in part, a reflection of our own uncertainties? Prayer has become an empty gesture, a figure of speech. [MGSA, 101-2]

On the days where we stand in judgment, we pray the most soulless prayer of all because we don’t pray from our hearts. Avinu Malkeinu and Netana Tokef are performances and recitations not personal gut-wrenching spiritual pleas for our soul. I believe the rabbis cantors, organ players and choir all are in their own way praying their prayer, but lost in their incredible performance and personal prayer is the congregational prayer. Lost even more because the majority of the congregation doesn’t want to pray. They show up because it’s the one thing they do all year. That is all they do all year, yet they expect the same performance year after year. Any change comes with criticism. At my synagogue one of the most emotional moments in the service does not even exist in the liturgy, but is an additional reading from Ezekiel, one that has had a lot of criticism. Yet it is these same people whose dollars keep the synagogue alive. In one sense this empty spiritual day called Rosh Hashanah I in the prayer book is there to let me pray spiritually the rest of the year.
I do not believe like Heschel, that kavvanah, spiritual intention, is near extinction the rest of the year, only on these few days. Even the second day of Rosh Hashanah is such a different experience. Here is a much smaller congregation of people who really want to pray. Even when someone forgets to turn off the air conditioning on a 50°F day, it’s still warmer in the glow of being spiritual. I feel part of the prayer community instead of an audience.
Yet what I do fear is something Heschel did not imagine in 1953. The traditions as they are now might keep those who had gone to services every year once or twice a year for decades coming for those same old traditions and tunes. It is those same people I fear about as the numbers of walkers, wheelchairs and oxygen tanks found in the synagogue increase. Even that source of income for synagogue operations is running out as the Angel of Death does his task. In looking at the lack of spiritual meaning in the Rosh Hashanah service, I wonder if we are replacing the loss. If there is no spiritual value in this, the supposedly greatest moment of the Jewish year, why would the young people come to synagogue the rest of the year? The answer of course is most of the younger don’t return on their own for there is nothing there for them – at least not on that one day they show up. By the time they have families, it's too late.
Like Joshua’s mood getting his new position as leader and telling him he’ll do a good job but things are going to fail anyway, I contemplated this while walking back from the lake on that cloudy cold day. I threw my pessimism into the lake for the seagulls to chew on. Like Joshua, when he was in a minority of two to virtually everyone else, he kept his cool because he knew it was not him but God that would help get the job done. Standing near the banks of the Jordan, Joshua must have felt like this: both pessimistic but optimistically faithful.
Yom Kippur, from Kol Nidre to Havdalah will be only slightly different. There are personal practices that allow us to personally bring meaning. Fasting is of course the most obvious. Fasting is not as much about punishing ourselves, as having the discipline the Kavvanah, the intention not to eat. Yom Kippur I will fast. If I can make myself do something that is required by my body, how much more so can I make myself stop doing things destructive to my body and soul? Yet for tashlich, why did I not have anyone fill the tummies of seagulls and fish? Everyone wanted to fill their own bellies instead. The disciplines that come with spirituality are seen as an inconvenience, not a way of discipline and connection. Yet the prayers will be just as empty, only filling with meaning sometime when my belly is at its most empty.
The most meaningful service for me these Days of Awe will be the one this Shabbat – Shabbat Shuvah. This is probably one of the least attended Shabbat services of the year, since everyone is “serviced out.” It is the Shabbat where we think about our lives and where we are going. We pray an additional liturgy that we do not any other day of the year. For the first time ever, it will be out of a new siddur built on a foundation of Kavvanah. All of this in the deeply personal, intimate environment of the prayer community I have week in and week out. I wish all those young people would skip Rosh Hashanah and come to Shabbat Shuvah instead. For this, they might stay and thrive in the prayer community.
Sadly all I hear instead is those seagulls, young and old, of every movement saying

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Rosh Hashanah 5769: Facebook and the Goy Letter

I’ve been watching with amusement many of the news feeds I have on social networking sites like Facebook all of the rabbis scrambling to write their most important sermon of the year. I am partially amused because I started Shlomo’s Drash for Rosh Hashanah 48 hours before Rosh Hashanah, so I’m in the thick of this too. Fortunately I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and the outcome of my piece doesn't change the course of thousands of lives, unlike those with a smicha. I also want to start in an odd place – Christmas.

I don’t remember the first time I got one, but it was somewhere around twenty years ago. A friend of mine from college, who is an ordained minister, started sending a letter updating everyone about her life over the past year. It was always fun to read and find out what she was up to in her Christmas letter. Yet I was startled one day when I received from a rather non practicing Jew of my acquaintance a Christmas letter again updating everyone on the changes of her life and family. While I understood the letter from the minster, from another Jew it just seemed a bit weird. I’ve never felt completely comfortable with that letter, which until now I often privately called “the goy letter.”

That was until the year I received during the days of awe another letter like the first two from a dear friend and fellow congregant. Strangely enough, it lost its goyishe feel in its timing. It was then I realized what makes this letter comfortable or uncomfortable is the timing. When at the end of a religious year it is a taking stock before the New Year. It is actually a religious act. I would feel just as uncomfortable with my non practicing Jew genuflecting as I do with that letter, yet I don’t with the congregant and the minister.

I think that letter is the whole point of Rosh Hashanah, and my congregant friend had it right on the mark. The Days of Awe are the time when we take stock of who we are. We note what we have done wrong and what we really want to do right in the next round. I have often in this Rosh Hashanah D’var written that I’m not comfortable with a name written in one of two log books called the Book of Death and the Book of Life. Instead I believe we all have our own books. It is neither the book of life nor the book of death but the book of fully living. Everything we do and are exists in this book. The results of the past year are just a chapter in this book. That chapter may be full of stuff to read or boring, it may have cliff hangers or it may contain that rather dread ending THE END. While that might be a bad ending, what is worse is blank pages meaning we never really lived in this past year. I often like to wish someone “may you be inscribed in the book of fully living.”

That letter is particular impacting me this year for a very modern reason. A friend of mine tempted me into starting to use Facebook, and to say the least I’m addicted. For those not familiar with Facebook, it is one of many of the social networking tools available on the internet. Essentially you are given a web page. All you have to do is fill it with stuff about your self. One can log pictures, videos, and of course text. People write about their lives one small thought at a time. The object of all this is to connect with others. The Facebook database allows finding other people you might know in a variety of ways. Then you electronically ask them to be a Facebook friend. Once they agree, you have access to read all the stuff in one’s page, and communicate publicly on their “wall” or more privately via internal e-mail.

Through Facebook I come across a lot of people I used to know including a lot from my college days. Like my friend the minister, I have been writing repeatedly my story over and over again of the last twenty years. Yet after that introductory letter to a new Facebook friend who was an old acquaintance, things get into the swing of reading each other’s status messages. Status messages are nothing more than single sentence messages publicly broadcasted to your friends telling them what you think or what you are doing. It is of course voluntary. Some friends are chatterboxes and let you know a lot, or give their opinion constantly. Others are more silent. But from reading those messages you have a constant stream of seemingly trivial information about a person, which gives a texture different from the update letter. Such texture is so rich there are other services like Twitter which do nothing but update statuses.

I’ve been thinking lately that the holiday letter is much like the High Holidays, while Facebook is our day to day experience of the mitzvot. One is comprehensive, and grandiose the other simple small and very personal. We write not on keyboard or pen and ink, but with actions and deeds. For some their entire experience is that letter. For others, including myself, the richer experience is the status messages, in the periodic prayer of more regular services. It allows me to be in relationship with others. When they need a friendly presence I can be there for them – if not personally at least in communication electronically I can comfort them. When I need someone, there can also be there some one for me.

While I could debate which is better the letter or status messages, there is a third possibility that is so sad and tragic it is the thing we all should work on in some part of our lives.

This year, for the first time I traveled to Israel. While there were many memorable moments, there was one that blew me away – the hippodrome in Caesarea. It was neither the horse races nor the architecture that I was thinking about. It was a man who most likely stood where I stood on the sand of the arena overlooking the Mediterranean. His name is Simon b. Lakish, though known throughout the Talmud as Resh Lakish. Before he was one of the greatest sages in the Talmud, some claim he was a gladiator. If he was, it was on this field he most likely fought, the horse racing field turned into a gladiatorial arena by his time. We also know that R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus spent his last years there as his bier was being carried from this town to his birth place of Lydda. [Sanhedrin 68a] Resh Lakish and R. Eliezer had a lot in common though living about a century or so apart. Both had a brother in law they spent much of their lives getting along with, indeed had a deep friendship. Yet a small matter broke that friendship and they would not talk to one another. Bitterness and pain would curse them till their dying days.

I went into detail about the oven of aknai incident in my Drash for Nitzavim 5766. The short version was over the permissibility of a oven with interchangeable parts, R. Eliezer was excommunicated and all of his judgments made invalid by his brother in law Gamaliel II. There was bitterness between the two, so much so that R. Eliezer’s wife, Imma Shalom made sure her husband was not alone so he could not pray for the death of her brother. Once she was quickly interrupted.

[On her return] she found him fallen on his face. ‘Arise,’ she cried out to him, ‘you hast slain my brother.’ In the meanwhile an announcement was made from the house of Rabban Gamaliel that he had died. ‘Where do you know it?’ he questioned her. ‘I have this tradition from my father's house: All gates are locked, excepting the gates of wounded feelings.’

Wounded feelings were also at the heart of another pair. R. Johanan and Resh Lakish. Their story begins with an act of t’shuvah, the evil Resh Lakish changing his tune:

One day R. Johanan was bathing in the Jordan, when Resh Lakish saw him and leapt into the Jordan after him. Said he [R. Johanan] to him, ‘Your strength should be for the Torah.’ — ‘Your beauty,’ he replied, ‘should be for women.’ ‘If you will repent,’ said he, ‘I will give you my sister [in marriage], who is more beautiful than I.’ He undertook [to repent]; then he wished to return and collect his weapons, but could not.[Baba Metziah 84a]

Resh Lakish becomes an incredible scholar, though one day he and R. Johanan get into a heated argument about the point in manufacture where blades are can become spiritually contaminated. In a crass statement, R. Johanan mentions Resh Lakish’s sordid past, and thing go downhill from there, both men incredibly hurt and unwilling to forgive the other.

Resh Lakish died, and R. Johanan was plunged into deep grief. Said the Rabbis, ‘Who shall go to ease his mind? Let R. Eleazar b. Pedath go, whose disquisitions are very subtle.’ So he went and sat before him; and on every dictum uttered by R. Johanan he observed: ‘There is a Baraitha which Supports you.’ ‘Are you as the son of Lakisha?’[i.e. Resh Lakish] he complained: ‘when I stated a law, the son of Lakisha used to raise twenty-four objections, to which I gave twenty-four answers, which consequently led to a fuller comprehension of the law; whilst you say, "A Baraitha has been taught which supports you:" do I not know myself that my dicta are right?’ Thus he went on rending his garments and weeping, ‘Where are you, O son of Lakisha, where are you, O son of Lakisha;’ and he cried thus until his mind was turned. Thereupon the Rabbis prayed for him, and he died.[ibid.]

Without his friend, brother-in law and colleague, R. Johanan, the redactor of the Jerusalem Talmud, dies in grief so deep it drives him insane. Their relationship made Johanan a better person, one who was able to make the brilliant rulings he is famous for. Without Resh Lakish he falls into nothingness, half of his soul ripped away by his own anger. Such anger is not just for one generation but many. In a corollary to this story, we hear another.

On another occasion R. Johanan met the young son of Resh Lakish sitting and reciting the verse, The foolishness of man perverted his way; and his heart frets against the Lord. (19:3) R. Johanan thereupon exclaimed in amazement: Is there anything written in the Hagiographa to which allusion cannot be found in the Torah? The boy replied: Is then this verse not alluded to in the Torah, seeing that it is written, And their heart failed them, and they turned trembling one to another, saying: ‘What is this that God hath done unto us?’(Gen. 42:28) R. Johanan lifted up his eyes and stared at him, whereupon the boy's mother came and took him away, Saying to him, ‘Go away from him, lest he does to you as he did unto your father’. [Ta'anith 9a]

Resh Lakish’s Son and wife both show their bitterness in their own ways against R. Johanan. The Sister of R. Johanan in a very direct way, and the son and nephew of Johanan in a battle of wits, citing a verse in Genesis about the cruelty of brothers. The bitter feud only ends in death.

These stories are not about poor little shlubs but the best and brightest of the Talmud. They are there to tell us a significant thing one we must think about not only between humans but between ourselves and God. Communication is important. Saying how we feel is important. Most of all, not letting those feelings dwell in silence is important, for they will burn a deep black hole that will only leads to sadness and destruction. We must express ourselves and our stories, our chapters in the book of fully living.

Often the goy letter is superficial, how the kids are doing, how many cars and houses we have, where we went on vacation. It gives us more of a status than the Facebook status message. The problem with the status message, and daily communication in general, is while it often has more of our soul in it, it is in such small amounts it is imperceptible. R. Johanan and Resh Lakish only blew up at one another over a small matter, yet underneath there was something building that needed to explode, and when it was lit by a small spark it ended both their lives. Neither lived in the book of fully living ever again.

The letter to our friends and the letter to God during the High Holiday season need to be the release valve. Often we are clueless about what underneath the surface is dwelling. Sometimes we do but are afraid to admit it. In our very public setting of public liturgy we can try to find and release those feelings that have been building over a year both to Man and God. On a daily basis, like twitter and Facebook, we need to express those feelings, both by really talking to people we have wronged and who wronged us, or to God in our daily or Shabbat prayers. In do so we try to work it our before either become a powder keg.

Imma Shalom noted well that the gates of hurt feelings are never closed. God always hears them. What we do with them is the important thing. We can be destructive or we can be reconciliatory. To work towards reconciliation is not to be weak, but requires a deeper strength to truly resolve the problem instead of placating one party. Placating only buries the problem for an explosion later as the resentment continues and increases

As a writer and speaker, I’m never exactly sure who I have offended or hurt by my works in public settings, in my speech and in my writings. As a prelude to this season of repentance, May I ask for forgiveness to all who I did offend. I’m sorry I hurt you if I did. I’m not prefect, but I will try better next year not to do the same.

And may you all have a great exciting and wonderful chapter in the book of fully living for 5769!