Rabbi Zeitlin

Life isn’t fair. We’re not all graced with the same skills and talents. Only some of us received the Bracha (blessing) of a strong lip and good lung capacity, giving us the ability to coax a sound out of, and thus elevate to a Mitzvah (a action miraculously binding ourselves with The Creator) a discarded ram’s horn, a Shofar.

Those of us who can function as a בעל תקיעה (Ba’al Tekiah), a Shofar-blower or, more literally, a Master of the Tekiah, the long, pure tone which begins and closes each musical phrase, begin a full month early, on Rosh Chodesh Elul. Those who attend daily morning services also hear the Shofar every day that month, previewing the “real” blowing on Rosh HaShanah itself. Ideally, this month of Shofar builds our inspiration for Tshuvah.

For most people, however, this special sound hasn’t been heard for almost a full year.  The entire Rosh HaShanah service is designed to peak with the Shofar service, this unique music whose piercing tones stir us, hopefully inspire us to rededicate our lives to higher purposes, and can remind us that it’s never too late to begin repairing some of the damage we’ve wrought in the previous twelve months. The challenge for daily Shofar blowers, even for occasional blowers who are practicing and rebuilding their embouchure, as well as for daily minyan-goers, is to retain the ability to be moved by the “official” Shofar-blowing on Rosh HaShanah. However, even those of us who hear the Shofar for the first time each year on Rosh HaShanah, often find that staying inspired for the entire Shofar-service can be a challenge. Familiarity, as we all know, breeds if not contempt, at least complaisance.

Commonly, I find two major Shofar styles which discourage our staying focused long enough, the “hunt” and the “flatline”. The first, the “hunt”, approaches the Shofar with raw emotion. Usually sharply rising cries, it’s filled with the drama of a call to battle, a call to chase down the Yetzer Ha’Rah, our perverse, self-destructive instinct to sabotage ourselves, hopefully to fully slay it and leave us pure for the new year. In the hands of a master Ba’al Tekiah this can be very inspiring…..for the first voice or two. But, remembering that each day’s Shofar “quota” ideally contains one hundred blasts, I tire of it quickly.

The second approach, which I call “flatline”, obsesses on mathematical precision. Starting with the shortest note, the Tru’ah, likened to uncontrolled wailing, contains exactly nine very short (1-beat) blasts. The next longest, the Sh’varim, deep sobs, is made of three blasts, each lasting exactly three counts, totaling nine, the same total as the T’ru’ot. Tekiah, the long, deeply moaning sound which begins and ends each line, needs to be at least slightly longer than the total of what it contains, i.e. 9+ for Tekiah Sh’varim Tekiah or Tekiah T’ruah Tekiah, and 18+ for Tekiah Sh’varim T’ruah Tekiah. Tone, melody and feeling are not only not emphasized, but often considered a distraction from the mathematical precision. Personally, I find one hundred of these very dreary.

Shofar has potential far exceeding our emotional response to it. Not only should it motivate us to better our ways, its sounds rise to the highest levels of Sh’mayim where it awakens God, as it were, to pour His  אור אין סוף (Or Eyn Sof) Infinite Light into our universe to energize, animate and elevate every corner of existence, to refine all Yisrael and also to receive each of our individual efforts at Tshuvah.

For all that to realize, I want to offer the purest, most beautiful, most spontaneously relevant Shofar voices I can produce. Within the basic halachic guidelines, I otherwise have no preconception of what each should sound like. Every breath, נשימה (Neshima) (obviously related to Neshama, Soul) is unique. It has its own voice, it’s own longings and passions, it’s own song. Rather than trying to model my breath to force the sound, I try to let each breath model its own sound, its own tone, timbre and pitch. I listen to how my breath, passing through the chamber of the hollow Shofar, enters the world of sound. While, of course, there is “only so much” anyone can do within the framework of the 9=3×3=9×1 and all blasts on any Shofar will sound substantially the same, the subtle differences, beyond style, always remain.

How wonderful when the Ba’al Tekiah brings each note, each phrase, to life! We need remember that the Bracha he makes (in all our names) for this Mitzvah is לִשְׁמֽוֹעַ קוֹל שׁוֹפָר (L’Shmo’a Kol Shofar), that we all hear the voice of the Shofar, and not that he, alone, makes them. May that voice be as richly complex, as deeply harmonious, as vibrant and alive as all of our souls together.

Between last year’s Gaza war (complete with US diplomatic pressure on Israel to capitulate), ever-reaching incursions of BDS into American campuses and other attempts to infiltrate everyday life, the Iran Nuclear Surrender and the Obama Administration’s increasingly vocal antisemitism, I can’t not lend my voice to protest and combat. Fighting for Israel and the Jewish People is not optional. But quite often I resent the time and attention those efforts take from my preferred work as a man. I love to explore, share and inspire fellow Jews with the complex beauty and compelling lessons I have discovered in our Torah. I would be a happy man if I could, indeed, spend all my hours within my own “virtual yeshiva“, concerned only with Torah.

Happy, perhaps, but irresponsible and, so, not truly happy. First, of course, I must also earn a living for myself and family, (יָפֶה תַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה עִם דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ (אבות ב:ב (Yafa Talmud Torah Im Derech Eretz (Avot 2:2)), “Torah Study is (becomes) beautiful (only) with earning a living”. Just as much a responsibility, actually an integral part of caring for my family, I also must fight for the survival of our people and our country.

Shir HaShirim addresses this dilemma, (שְׂמֹאלוֹ תַּחַת לְרֹאשִׁי וִימִינוֹ תְּחַבְּקֵנִי (שיר השירים ב:ו (S’molo Tachat l’Roshi U’y’mino T’chabkeyni (Shir HaShirim 2:6), “His Left Arm cradles my head; His Right Arm embraces me.” Traditionally, the right arm represents qualities of חסד (Chesed), “love”, as well as פנימיות (p’nimiut), “interior”, so it embraces/loves us and fills our Neshamot (souls) with sweet Torah. The left, on the other hand, evokes גבורה (Gevurah), “strength” and מקיף (makif), “surrounding/encompassing”–it cradles and protects us from all sides. Together these arms make the two-way embrace of God-to-Israel and Israel-to-God, which bind us as one ,אחד (Echad) and, thus, complete, שלם (Shalem).

We all prefer love to fighting–that’s not a sectarian/partisan issue. But as Shlomo HaMelech taught us, (עֵת מִלְחָמָה וְעֵת שָׁלוֹם (קהלת ג:ח (Eyt Milchamah v’Eyt Shalom) (Kohelet 3:8), “There is a time for war and a time for peace (wholeness)”. Torah, without the Jewish People to fulfill, love and develop it, has little value. The Jewish People, and that includes the State of Israel, has little value without the Torah.

Both sharing Torah inspirations and fighting for the survival and safety of Israel and The Jewish People are necessary. Neither is sufficient without the other. While I prefer doing one much more than the other, until a point in history where the latter is no longer needed (במהרה בימינו, may it be soon, in our days), I will never quit doing both.

Although it should have been immediately obvious, it took me a number of years, reading Tefilla (Prayer) 33 (from תקט”ו תפילות (Taktu Tefillot) “515 Prayers” of the Ramchal) many times, until my eye caught his point that מקוה (Mikvah), a gathering of waters in which we become pure, and קוה (Kaveh), hope/trust are closely related.

קַוֵּה אֶל־יְהוָה חֲזַק וְיַאֲמֵץ לִבֶּךָ וְקַוֵּה אֶל־יְהֹוָה, (Psalm 27:14), (Kaveh El Adonay, Chazak v’Ya’ametz Libecha v’Kaveh El Adonay) is often sung/chanted as an aid to meditation and in many liturgies it introduces Ein Keloheinu towards the end of Shacharit every day. “Trust/Hope in God, Be strong and fortify your heart and trust/hope in God.”

Are we really ready to trust so deeply? Are we willing to fully plunge into God, to immerse ourselves completely in His Oneness, holding nothing back? Can we believe the words of Jeremiah  (17:13), מִקְוֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהֹוָה (Mikvah Yisrael Adonay) God is Israel’s Mikvah. Do we even want to?

One of the reasons this became an “unleapable leap of faith” for many of us is because we’ve spent generations understanding God through a medieval, anti-Jewish Christian lens that sold even many of our greatest leaders on the image of a “wrathful” and “vengeful” “Old Testament God” who, according to this viewpoint, was replaced and repudiated by a later “God of Love”. God, as too many of us conceive of Him, is threatening rather than welcoming. Especially now, still reeling from the horror of the Shoah (Holocaust) and witnessing constant existential threats to the State of Israel, do we really want to seek comfort and security in this God? More likely, we’d rather fly under the radar and escape His notice altogether than to have any relationship with Him at all.

Unfortunately, that’s frequently reinforced with the often-well-meaning, yet damaging, rabbinic emphasis on rules and the consequent punishments for violating them. Shabbat, rather than a day to enjoy the closeness of family and friends, of prayer and words of Torah and, by extension, The Creator, is instead filled with anxiety and obsessiveness over possible “violations” of artificial stringencies that aren’t actually required in the first place.

Our Talmudic tradition should train us to examine and analyze phenomena in great detail and accuracy, allowing us to use our minds with precision, great joy and with gratitude to The Creator Who graced us with it. All too often, though, it has become distorted, building a framework for worry and distress. Theoretical possibilities, so important to sharpen our analytical skills, are misinterpreted (and misrepresented) as absolute baseline requirements, thus becoming anxiety-filled obstacles to any observance, let alone faith, at all.

Even the gradual, lifelong approach to God becomes fraught with increasing anxiety as we mistakenly are taught to define ‘יראת ה, (Yirat HaShem), which really means Awe-Awareness/Respect of God rather as panic/fear of Him. After all, if we worship the “Old Testament God”, we’re wise to fear Him and give Him a very wide berth, indeed. We’ll never even get started with ‘אהבת ה (Ahavat HaShem), Loving God.

The challenge for rabbis (and I include myself since I, all too often, also fail) is to inspire fellow Jews to passionately seek God, to realize that there is nothing more desirable in this life than to have a deep, loving relationship with Him.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we drop all the rules and structure that God gives us (which actually are both a means to pepare and fortify ourselves, and also the path we travel to actually reach Him). It does mean, however, that we clarify what these rules really are, that we scrub away the “rust” of defensiveness and obsessiveness which not only separate us from Him, but which makes Him appear so repulsive to many whose connection is already so tenuous.

The prohibitions in halacha are “warning/danger/don’t-go” signs that tell us that this path leads away from, rather than towards God. If we trust our leaders, that is if they can re-earn our trust, we don’t personally need to know all the details of these highly complex paths but we can rely on those who both have greater knowledge and also have our best interests, rather than their own glory or political/financial power, in mind. Then our internal struggle with our unique Yetzer Haras (illicit desires) becomes, “Why would I want to distance myself from a deeper communion with The Creator? What possible benefit can I gain from this prohibited activity or object-of-desire that is greater than my loss from subsequently dimming the Infinite Light in my life?” Positive commandments, no matter how difficult and consuming, are seen as taking steps closer to the Source of All Light (keeping in mind the “inverse square rule” of physics, each step we take closer multiplies our benefit exponentially!) rather than marching to someone else’s arbitrary drumbeat.

We need to inspire with our own growing sense of joy at our own accelerating journey towards God rather than attempt to either scare or coerce our people. And, of course, we need to keep ourselves always moving forward, never falling into the temptation of the guilt-and-force modality.

Especially the generations since the European “Enlightenment”, but even our entire Biblical age, are filled with our frequent temptation to either to freeze and fossilize our dynamic journey or to flee to the opposite extreme of chaos, תהו ובהו (Tohu v’Vohu). Each of these extremes is Godless, and thus, ultimately, lifeless.

But we know better and as rabbis we must teach the truth, עץ חיים היא (Etz Chayim Hi), The Torah is a Tree of Life, a vital, bursting-with-life-energy fountain which nourishes us with the אור אין סוף (Or Ein Sof), the Pure Infinite Light which is the animating/motivating/sustaining energy of all life.

We must present God as our destination rather than trying to sneak “under the radar” past Him. May we immerse ourselves in the Mikvah that is really God, filled with and animated by our trust in Him.

As a Torah-observing, orthodox rabbi, it pains me to say that the greatest obstacle to Torah observance in today’s world does not come from antisemitism and it does not come from assimilation. Rather it’s the result of a usually well-meaning, but highly inadequate (and, unfortunately, occasionally corrupt and often politicized) Rabbinate, especially in Israel where immense political power beckons. The establishment Rabbanut in Israel is mired in the past, committed to a modality of galut (exile) halacha which, certainly critical for our survival in the past, is now an obstacle to our future geula (redemption). In galut (the diaspora) we needed, and still need, self-protection to maintain our wisdom and traditions when faced with both active and passive attempts to remove Torah from us (and/or us from Torah). Thankfully, that is not the primary battle in today’s sovereign Medinat Yisrael (in spite of some media and political opposition).

I often ask why the “establishment” Rabbinate is not enthusiastically leading the efforts to mold and discover this new modality. Why isn’t active the engagement of the entire Jewish people in Israel in “bringing the Mashiach” (itself a problematic, and perhaps obsolete, way of thinking about Geula, Redemption, since, in the final analysis it remains passive–having someone else do it for us), creating Geula, rebuilding the Holy Temple so the Infinite Divine Energy, the Or Ein Sof, can flow with all its strength and vigor into our world, the goal of our leading rabbis?

I’ll accept that some, in deep knowledge, feel that the time is not yet ripe, that we’d be acting disastrously prematurely. But I suspect that the great mass of resistance and inertia comes from those who don’t know how to move forward. After all, with a two-thousand year momentum of maintaining a “holding pattern”, we’ll all be operating in new territory. Not only is this unsettling to many (although exhilarating for others), but it’s inevitable that we’ll make mistakes along the way. (Do our rabbinic leaders sufficiently trust God that He will surely guide our way?)

Even our wisest and best trained rabbis today lack the connection, the devekut, possessed last by our Talmudic sages. At some point, immediately due to Roman persecution, “real” smicha ended. Smicha, not to be confused with modern rabbinic ordination, meant much more than rights to a title and authorization to teach and to make halachic rulings. In it’s original form in meant receiving the deepest truths of Torah as first transmitted from Moshe to Yehoshua, through the Nevi’im (Prophets) to our earliest generations of sages, in a direct transmission even including the physical gesture of laying on the hands of the rebbe, the teacher, to the student. Whatever we have now, and there have been many wise rabbis who have vigorously taught brilliant students, it’s just not the same.

Perhaps it’s the self-awareness of every rabbi that regardless of the greatness of our own rebbe, regardless of our dedication and success in learning, there is a missing link and that there is infinitely more Torah we don’t know than we ever will know, that leads to their fear of unveiling what we may call Torat Eretz Yisrael, the Torah of today’s and tomorrow’s Land of Israel. Not only might we find that some protections we required in the hostility of galut, what some call “defensive halacha“, are no longer needed (and, some might have even become a burden and obstacle to our next steps), but we’re also on unchartered territory renewing the mitzvot of Eretz Yisrael for a future which includes a Bet HaMikdash (which quite likely might not be based on bronze-age technology), a return to Karbanot (sacrifices which might or might not include animals), the immediate and universal experience of The Shechina, the Divine Presence (perhaps even in a tangible, or at least semi-tangible awareness) and all the other wonders described and promised by our ancestors.

Even our greatest rabbis will be, at first, inadequately trained. That self-knowledge is terrifying and inhibiting. It’s going to be a “whole new ballgame” and we’ll all need to learn anew how, in this ultimately enhanced mode, to live in direct connection with The Creator.

אני מאמין באמונה שלמה (Ani Ma’amin b’Emunah Shlema), I believe with perfect faith, that The Creator is waiting for us, waiting to lead us through this great unknown.

כן יהי רצון, May it be His Will

If you read the previous post, “Can This Be Love”, you might easily conclude that all God wants from us is to “follow the rule book”. After all, if He expresses His Love by giving us “Torah, commandments, rules and regulations….” and we express our love by fulfilling His expectations, isn’t our role rather simple, albeit perhaps degrading?

Rather, the almost total indefiniteness of the Mitzvot as they appear in the written Torah, necessitating the accompanying Torah Sh’Ba’al Peh, the Oral Torah, gives us a much better insight into the nature of God’s love (and expectations) for us. Although the Torah lists 613 mitzvot, even that list is unclear and our greatest sages don’t all agree on what’s included. Beyond that, scripture provides few, if any, hints how to fulfill most of these commandments. Without further discussion, we are unable to determine exactly what Tefillin, for example, are, how to make them and exactly when and how to wear them. There are no clues how to prepare meat to make it kosher or even what Shabbat really entails. Not only that, our sages rarely share identical visions and interpretations. Relying on the written words rather than how our Oral Torah explains them, we’d be led towards brutal savagery (i.e. not realizing that עין תחת עין (Ayin tachat ayin) “An eye for an eye” means monetary compensation rather physical vengeance).

The point of all this is that the “Torah, commandments, rules and regulations….” we’re so thankful for does not include a mindless “rule book”. God hasn’t expressed His love for us with the request that we live as brain-dead automatons. Rather, The Creator, in His love, offers us a method to live hyper-aware, to be constantly thinking, always challenged and evaluating just what our best next action will be. This Torah we’re so thankful for is a gift to lead us to become as fully human as each of us, uniquely can be.

For when we love someone, be it a child, a spouse or a friend, our primary interest is their welfare and growth, not how they satisfy us.

Through the ages, philosophers have proposed many seemingly unique qualities which separate Man from the animal kingdom. After a while, each proposal is disproved when we find examples of other animals doing the same thing. Opposable thumb and tool-manipulation? Sorry, not only do many primates have one, but so do pandas, opossums and even a variety of frog. Speech/Communication? We’re all familiar with how even honeybees, using dance, can tell others in the colony where to find nectar and pollen. Whales sing for, seemingly, the pleasure of it.

What makes us most human is the ability and often-troublesome obligation to make value judgements. Free-will, בחירה (Bechira) decisions based on ethics and morality, is not an instinctual skill but, rather, it requires extensive learning and practice. Our “Torah, commandments, rules and regulations….” provides that training which enables us to develop, both individually and societally, our humanity. God loves us through His high expectation, His preventing our complacency and His constant challenges.

If that isn’t true love, I’m afraid I’ve never experienced nor expressed it.

Tu B’Av, the sixteenth of Av, is described in the Mishna (Ta’anit 4:8) in terms of romantic love, with the maidens of Yisrael, wearing borrowed (so no one would feel embarrassed) white dresses, dancing in the vineyards to attract a husband. Coming less than a week after Tisha B’Av, our national day of mourning, it’s always associated with Parshat V’Etchanan (Devarim 3:23-7:12), which begins with the heart-break of Moshe’s unrequited love and unfilled desire to lead the Jewish People into the Land of Israel but then transitions into demonstrations of God’s Love for us. It restates the Aseret HaDibrot, The Ten “Commandments” (Devarim 5:6), i.e. the giving of Torah to the Jewish People, and later features the Shema (Devarim 6:4-9) whose second verse (6:5) begins, ….וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ (V’Ahavta et Adonay Elohecha b’chol l’vavecha), “And you will love God with all your heart….). In between there are even more references to love.

The emphasis on love is not confined to this one day or even one parsha of the year, but, rather, is integrated into our daily services as well. The evening Shema is introduced (Sephardi nusach (liturgy)) with the words אַהֲבַת עוֹלָם בֵּית יִשְׁרָאֵל עַמְּךָ אָהָבְתָּ, תּוֹרָה וּמִצְוֹת, חֻקִּים וּמִשְׁפָּטִים, אוֹתָנוּ לִמַּדְתָּ, “You love Your nation Israel with Eternal/Infinite Love, You taught us Torah, commandments, rules and regulations….”

Wait a minute! What’s going on? Have we suddenly jumped from a holiday of love and comfort and even a daily reminder of infinite love to “the rule book”? Is this the original “bait and switch”? Are we being bribed with words of love in order to be bamboozled into mindless obedience? Something seems very much off.

Or does it?

Most therapists, marriage counsellors and, yes, rabbis identify one of the leading causes for couple-failure as communication breakdown. While our desires and expectations of our mate, and hers of us, don’t change, they become unfilled because we no longer know what they want us to do. Committed love is more than initial passion, but an ongoing process of pleasing each other, of putting the other before oneself. While pop-psychology has become expectation-averse, we sell ourselves and everyone around us short when we assume that expectations oppress. Not having the capacity to read minds, we need to be told out loud what is expected of us and we also need to explicitly express our expectations. Confidence in our lover’s ability to fulfill our (legitimate) desires is an expression of love and respect.

This is the secret to why we consider the Torah, often defined as a “garment” for the 613 Mitzvot themselves, an expression of God’s Love. Just as we want our beloveds to grow, to fulfill themselves, to rise to every challenge, God wants us experience the self-respect that is only generated when one pleases their lover.

Discussing the requirement for kosher-supervised cheese, the Mishna (Avoda Zara 2:5) discards one proposed reason after another until concluding with a seemingly irrelevant verse from Shir HaSirim (Song of Songs), the Megilla (scroll) Shlomo HaMelech (King Solomon) wrote to describe the love between God and the His Nation. The inference is that even when we’re not presented with a satisfying reason, pleasing our lover is itself more than sufficient motivation. We’re taught that concretizing our warm feelings into action, and for this we’re guided by the mitzvot, is how we actualize the אור אין סוף (Or Ayn Sof), God’s Infinite Light, into our material world.

So, yes, the Torah, Mitzvot, Chukim and Mishpatim, the instruction, commandments, rules and regulations express God’s love by presenting us with a path to, beyond glibness and lip-service, love God back.

Read the sequel to this article, Is This All Love Is?

There seems a special urgency this year, recalling the urgency our parents/grandparents must have felt during the Holocaust. Although there have been more evil regimes in the world than I’d care to count, this time, blood-thirsty fanatics are on the verge of being handed a capability to threaten all mankind. As is almost always the case, Israel is the front-line, but the danger extends to rival Moslem nations in the mideast, to Europe and, yes, to the US (The Big Satan) as well.

When Nebuchadnezzer and his hordes sacked Jerusalem, slaughtered our people, exiled our survivors, and destroyed Bayit Rishon, people cried out wanting to know where was God….

Continue reading on Times of Israel Blogs

For many years I’ve taken a rather minority stance and have fasted on Tisha B’Av only until noon. While I haven’t advertised it, I haven’t hidden it either. It seemed to me that closing my eyes to the re-establishment of a sovereign Jewish state with her capital, Jerusalem, in our eternal Holy Land was showing ingratitude to our Creator. However, while I still hold this position, I plan on Sunday to fast the full twenty-five hours.

In the Jewish year there are only two mandatory fasts, Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, and they serve totally different functions. Yom Kippur‘s fast frees us from physicality so we can focus on the spirit. Tisha B’Av breaks the spirit so we can focus on just how out-of-balance is our physical world, lacking the Bet HaMikdash, a “house of prayer for all nations”.

Although there are a number of rabbinically ordained fasts, most of them mourning other tragic disasters throughout Jewish history, there is also another, entirely different class of fasts. The Talmud Ta’anit centers on fasts that coalesce Am Yisrael,  the Jewish People, when we face an existential threat, represented in these discussions, but not limited to, draught. As the threat grows, so do our prayers, our cries to the Almighty and our communal fasts.

This year, Israel, Jews worldwide, and, indeed, all of humanity face the existential threat of suicidal international enabling nuclear weapons, weapons capable of wiping out huge swaths of humanity, to be acquired by those who truly are Amalek, the polar opposites of human compassion, people who are the descendants of the evil Haman who swore to destroy the entire Jewish People. The savage, brutal despots who rule Iran (and it must be emphasized that they do this while brutally suppressing the resistance of many, perhaps even most Iranian people) are closer now than such malignant fanatics have ever been to acquiring the means to slaughter many of our fellow Jews as well as many fellow humans around the world.

If ever in my lifetime there has been a call for a Ta’anit Tzibur, a public fast where we cry out for God’s Mercy, it is this Tisha B’Av. I will still acknowledge the fragile miracle of Medinat Yisrael, reishit tz’michat geulatenu, The State of Israel, the first bloom of our Ultimate Redemption, once the sun passes overhead. But I will continue fasting this year as part of an endangered Am Yisrael throughout the remainder of the day.

Our tradition teaches us over and over and over that Am Yisrael B’Yachad, a united Jewish People, will always thrive. This year, let’s ignore our differences if for just a day and join our hopes and cries and prayers together.

It’s not uncommon that one of the most anticipated moments of becoming a parent is the first Shabbat you bless your child. Not only do you form an additional bond with your own child, but also with generation after generation of Jews who came before.

As the years pass, children become increasingly independent, eventually leave home and move further and further from your orbit. You can count yourself lucky if you maintain a Friday ritual of at least giving the blessing over the phone….

Continue reading at blogs.timesofisrael.com/blessings/

“How can God award a violent, impulsive murderer with eternal access to Himself?” is exactly the wrong question to ask at the beginning of Parshat Pinchas. וְהָיְתָה לּוֹ וּלְזַרְעוֹ אַחֲרָיו בְּרִית כְּהֻנַּת עוֹלָם תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר קִנֵּא לֵאלֹהָיו וַיְכַפֵּר עַל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, “And for him and his descendants shall be the eternal covenant of priesthood because he was passionate to his God and he atoned for all Israel.”

Is violence condoned and rewarded? Do we learn that only one who knows violence can truly understand peace? הִנְנִי נֹתֵן לוֹ אֶת־בְּרִיתִי שָׁלוֹם (Hineni, notan lo et briti shalom), “…herewith I give to him My covenant of peace.” Do violent people such as Pinchas require the strongest, deepest connection to God in order to overcome their innate evil? We have no better answer to this question than we do to why are the ashes of a Para Aduma, Red Heifer, a rare and unnatural occurrence, when mixed into fresh spring water, the only complete remedy for the most severe ritual impurity (not to mention why does contact with a dead human body create this spiritual flaw).

In the case of Para Aduma, we’re taught there is no logical explanation. Indeed, it is the paradigm of חוק (khok), which is the root of the word חקק (khakak), to engrave. In other words, it’s etched (hard-wired) in the very nature of existence, regardless of our ability to understand. More mystically stated, it’s an example of רצון ה׳ (Ratzon HaShem), Divine Will. There simply is no profit to question why.

However, accepting that something is Divine Will doesn’t mean passively conforming with no higher involvement than mere obedience. Rather, we’re commanded to study Torah, even to the point that (וְתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה כְּנֶגֶד כֻּלָּם (פאה א:א (v’Talmud Torah k’neged kulam), “Torah study is equivalent to all of them” (i.e. all of the mitzvot combined) (Mishna Pe’ah, 1:1). If we aspire to more than rote memorization, and our tradition clearly states that this is never adequate (הָעוֹשֶׂה תְפִלָּתוֹ קֶבַע, אֵין תְּפִלָּתוֹ תַּחֲנוּנִים (ברכות 4:4  (Ha-oseh tefilato keva, ayn tefilato tachanunim) (Mishna Berachot 4:4), “…as for one who prays by rote, his prayer is insincere…”) and if it’s worthless to ask why did God create the world the way he did, what are we supposed to learn when we study Torah?

The questions to ask are no longer “why”s, but rather “what”s. Given the fact that this is Divine Will, that God created the universe the way He chose, what can we learn from that reality in order to better live our lives? What can we learn from the fact that in our Oral Torah a unanimous answer/”opinion” is rare indeed?

Definitively, it doesn’t imply that God’s Will is whatever we want it to be. No, God’s will is eternal and not conditional. Rather, exploring the question in each case, in every story and every halacha of the Written Torah presents us with multiple lessons, many of which admittedly are paradoxical. We don’t have a voice in choosing God’s Will for Him. However, we do have a choice to either blindly obey/rebel or to mine as many lessons, ethical, logical, psychological, epistemological, analytical, integral, mystical as our unique neshamot, souls/hearts-and-minds are capable.