Rabbi Zeitlin

The smoke has cleared and the good guys won, but rather than any sense of justice done or victory over evil, I’m tense, depressed and waiting for the other shoe to fall.  In case you missed the news, the anti-semitic “Stop Israel’s War Crimes” bus-side billboards were pulled just a few days before they were scheduled to debut here in Seattle.

Seattle is one of the most liberal cities in America with almost limitless tolerance for everyone.  It goes out of its way to be inoffensive.  It surely tops 11 on the pc-o-meter!  If you hadn’t already read about it, it was deliberately chosen (along with Albuquerque, Houston and several other cities)  as a test-market, purchasing side-of-bus and free-standing billboards depicting a presumably war-demolished building and terrified Palestinian children, along with the accusation that Israel receives thirty billion dollars of US taxpayers money in order to commit war crimes.  Seattle, just because it is a bastion of free-speech and relativism, seemed a perfect place to try to sneak vile hate-speech under the radar of those “freedoms”

Although the county bus authority finally showed the courage to pull these ads, the episode revealed a level of hate I, naively, never imagined was possible in post-war, post-civil-rights-act America.  That it was ever even conceived of as acceptable has been one of my life’s most painful moments.  Several good-hearted county council members had the courage to denounce these ads for what they were, but the decision to pull them only came when the possible threat of inciting local violence was invoked.  If, like all of us, you have a short memory, it was only a couple years ago that a local terrorist decided to kill some Jews and broke into the local Federation office and started shooting, killing one woman and injuring several other people.

I’m scared and depressed, unable to transform this article into something positive and hopeful, as is my wont.  I’m shocked that any American entertained for even a moment that this kind of public hate-speech is ok.  That this was initially approved, not to mention cancelled for any reason other than it was just, plain unacceptable, terrifies me.  It’s only a matter of time until this sort of message pops up, spreads and becomes acceptable as “a valid narrative”.

This, of course, is the reason a city like Seattle is such fertile ground.  Going out of our way to be “non-judgmental”, as radical philosophy dictates, there is no longer any such thing as truth, only “competing narratives”.  Once you are able to camouflage your agenda as a “narrative”, it’s now equal to all other “narratives”.

It all sounds so polite, until you remember the ancient Jewish wisdom, “He who is kind to the cruel is cruel to the kind”.  Maybe not yet, thank God, today, but tomorrow our villainization will become an acceptable “narrative”, even here in America.

Each wind around my arm of the tefillin strap should activate one of the sefirot points in my body and in my soul.  They should connect with the sefirot of the Olam Gadol, the transcendent universe, joining my Olam Katan, the “small”, personal and unique world of myself with the universal, eternal network of energy.  Each morning, as I encircle my head with the transcendent light of the strap of my tefilla shel rosh, holding that box on my forehead, I should be overwhelmed with the light that bathes me.

It’s not that these things don’t happen each and every day, but, rather, that I’m too distracted, too disengaged, too alienated to even notice, let alone wonder.  Like all too many fellow Jews, I don tefillin and daven shacharit every morning focused on all the “important” things ahead of me that day, just as soon as I get this out of the way.  I’ve become very good, too adept, indeed, at the rituals and practices of orthodox Judaism.  I can mumble my tefillot with the best of them and have gotten the time it takes to either put my tallit and tefillin on (I’m usually running late to shul and have to speed to “catch up”) or take them off to “start my day for real” to under a minute.

Curiously, I’m not bragging about this; rather I’m lamenting and confessing.  With all good intention in the world, I’ve become just another “by rote” Jew.  I’ve had conversations with enough friends to know that I’m not alone here, and I suspect there are many more of us than any of us suspect.

Something is seriously wrong when we’ve taken the unique and sacred opportunity of regularly attaching our finite selves to The Infinite, to connect ourselves to the energy of the universe, and have, instead, slid into a “just going through the motions” mode.  Part of this problem is, I think, hard-wired into us as humans–we’re built to get used to things and to then take them for granted.  It’s hard work to overcome this self-dulling we all seem to do, but fighting complacence is an individual struggle I believe we’re meant to face and win.  It’s called growth.

I’m afraid that there is another significant, institutional component, and as a rabbi I have to take my share of responsibility for the breakdown.  As much as I think and teach and write about the need for unique, “custom fit” halacha, we all rely on a supposed “normative” halacha and get hung up, both as practitioners and as teachers, with a check-list mentality.  Did I pour water over my hands in the right number and right pattern?  Check.  Did I mumble the bracha?  Check.  Did I put my shoes on in the right order?  Kippah? Check.  Tallit?  Check. Tefillin? Check.  Daven? Check.  Learn a schtickel?  Check.  Then it might extend to black pants? Check.  White shirt?  Check.  Hat?  Check.  Make sure someone can see a significant part of the kippah where the hat isn’t covering?  Check.  Tzitzit out?  Check.  Am I a great Jew or what?  But, before we dislocate our shoulders patting ourselves on the back……

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo makes the distinction between “observant” and “religious”.  The very word “observant”, I realize, means that you’re looking at something from the outside, not experiencing it inside.  It can also mean behaving in a way that someone else can “observe” that you’re “observant“.

I’ll say it very simply and clearly.  There is, in many circles, too much emphasis on collecting “mitzva points” rather than in experiencing even one mitzva deeply.  The entire goal of this system of Torah and Mitzvot is to connect each unique Jewish neshama to its source in The Creator himself.  Yes, it’s a group project, if you will, of the Jewish people, but it isn’t helped by muddying the waters through making mitzvot artificially more difficult, by enforcing arbitrary uniformity or by giving the illusion that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is gleefully waiting for us to mess up when the reality is that Avinu Malkenu, like all fathers, is anxiously anticipating His children’s ultimate success.

Maybe it’s just the nature of the process.  I’ve played guitar for close to fifty years.  When I first started I felt every note, literally–my fingers would burn and ache.  Over time, I developed calluses on my fingertips.  Somehow, though, these calluses eventually allowed me to coax real sound, real feeling out of a vibrating string.  Take the analogy a little further, it is only now starting, with years and years of repetitive movements, to be able to create the forms, almost automatically, in order to be able to devote my real thought, my deepest kavvanah, to letting the force and energy of the music flow through me, into my fingers, into the guitar, into the air and, hopefully, into the hearts.

Likewise, perhaps the time is right, wherever you are in your journey, to rely on “muscle memory” to perform the rituals and to devote your real hearts and minds to experiencing them from the inside out, radiating beyond ourselves and configuring with each Jew’s unique energy, to join together in a veritable symphony of holiness.

On Chanukah we begin by lighting one candle, the next night, two, the following night, three, until all eight are shining.

Although there are opinions that the real mitzva each day is just the new candle, an important reason we’re taught to continue adding light each day is to teach us to not become complacent.  What you did yesterday is fine, but if you merely repeat it today you’re no longer growing and will eventually start to shrink.  Rather, at this time of year we kickstart ourselves with the knowledge that we have to always move forward and upward, to add today to what we already achieved yesterday.

With love and blessings on this new month where kedusha, holiness, is added to kedusha.

Source: Rebbe Nachman, Likutei Hilchot Chanukah, Orach Chayim, Halacha B:1.

לקוטי הלכות חנוכה אורח חיים, הלכה ב”א

I think there’s a general consensus within centrist orthodox world that it’s fine for someone to be מחמיר, extra stringent, on themselves, but not to impose this on others. For many years I repeated this mantra, but now I’m not so sure.

The second chapter of ברכות, Berachot, contains a running dialogue about whether or not one is פטור, excused, from reciting the Sh’ma on one’s wedding night.  The fifth Mishna both establishes this principle and then describes Rabban Gamliel, the head of the academy, reciting it nonetheless.  The reason given for this blanket excuse from an otherwise strict twice-daily requirement is that the groom, and remember we’re talking about an often fourteen or fifteen year old boy who hasn’t been exposed since the cradle to the pervasive sexuality of television, internet and advertising, worrying about consummating the marriage.  We’re also basing this ruling on the principle of עוסק במצוה פטור מן המצוה, someone who is already engaged with one mitzva is freed from having to engage in an additional one (unless they’re easily combined). When challenged, Rabban Gamliel replies that he never taught that one can lose the consciousness of the the supremacy of God for any length of time at all.  Presumably, Rabban Gamliel is also declaring that he is able to maintain acute awareness of both obligations at the same time.

The chapter ends with the eighth Mishna stating that whoever wants to recite the Sh’ma on their wedding night is free to do so, although Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Rabban Gamliel‘s own son, disagrees.  He says that not everyone who might wish to honor The Holy Name is necessarily capable of doing it.  The underlying principle is that properly reciting the Sh’ma requires such a high level of  כוונה, kavvana or concentration, that other driving concerns (such as one’s wedding night) make it almost impossible to achieve this kavvana.  Although Rabban Gamliel and, perhaps, a very few others of his day were able to maintain their kavvana under the pressure of worrying about their wedding nights, most others who would, nevertheless, recite the Sh’ma were really just falsely boasting of their own piety and thus should be discouraged.

Now it becomes interesting, because already in the thirteenth century, the Tosefot, a group of Talmudic commentators centered around Rashi’s sons-in-law and grandsons, ruled that “in our days”, i.e. already by the mid-thirteenth century, most people say the Sh’ma without such a high level of kavvana.  Thus we should all, from then on, say the Sh’ma even on our wedding nights.  In fact, they go on to say that one who, beginning with that historical period, refrains from the Sh’ma is actually bragging that even though no one else can, he says the Sh’ma with what’s considered no-longer-achievable kavvana.

In other words, at least in this case, publicly going beyond the halachic norm, whether in ancient days by reciting the Sh’ma or in modern times, by refraining from it, is no longer about the mitzva, the binding oneself to the Infinite (צו, the root of מצוה, really means to bundle or join) but rather about making a narcissistic show of one’s “piety”.  Leaving aside the argument that artificially raising the bar seriously discourages many from even entering the world of מצות, anything that draws awareness to the self, and therefore away from God, runs counter to the entire point of performing Mitzvot.

My late rebbe, Rabbi B.C.S. Twerski zt”l more than occasionally reminded that our generation is not so strong.  In the spirit of Tosefot, perhaps we should all step back a bit and make sure we’re getting the basic mitzva right rather than finding value in making mitzvot more and more difficult.  God wants our love, not our showing off.  This is authentic Torah, not Judaism Lite.

I wanted to let my previous article percolate over Shabbat, settle in the heart.

At first glance, pre-Shabbat is a strange time to send out that message since the Shabbat Amida doesn’t contain the שמע קולנו (hear our voices) prayer at all.  But that, actually, gives us a hint to open our exploration of the deeper experience of prayer.

We don’t ask for anything on Shabbat because we try to live and experience a consciousness of completion and perfection.  Shabbat is a weekly unveiling of the deepest reality into our finite lives.  The Ramchal writes, after warning us that we really can’t fully grasp any concept of God at all, that one of the very few facts we can rely on is that “God is perfect/complete in every conceivable manner of perfection/completeness and that the very concept of lack or deficiency makes no sense at all in regards to Him.”  Or, as I like to say, the only thing that God lacks is lack.

The other part of our reality, however, is the finite, the world in which we dwell, the lives which we live.  We are, by our very natures, incomplete.  We daily require food and water, every moment we require an infusion of fresh air.  We are driven mainly by desire.

Desire isn’t a bad thing, it’s just the nature of being human.  Just as we can desire wealth and comfort and fame, we can also desire justice and truth and closeness with the Almighty.

Returning to the two sections of the Amida, שמע קולנו (hear our prayers) reflects the material side of our being.  But our spiritual side, our נשמה, is, literally, a fragment of the Infinite Divine that forms our essence which is only clothed by our physical bodies.  Like the Infinite Divine itself, it is perfect and complete, needing nothing.  When we say מודין אנחנו לך (we thank You), we balance our needy physical with our potentially, at least, perfect spiritual.

These two prayers are very close to one another in the Amida, separated only by the final request, to return the שכינה, the feminine divine to ציון, to Zion, the center of our focus in the physical realm.  Perhaps through this medium we’re able to learn to alternate our awareness between those two sides of ourselves, the needing, wanting, finite and the already filled and complete infinite.  On Shabbat we have to potential, at least temporarily, to focus entirely on our highest, spiritual selves.  If nothing else, it can recharge us for the return to the week, perhaps even remind us of our eventual goal.

Tefilla, prayer, needn’t be an empty ritual, an arbitrary obligation, a quaint artifact from a less-sophisticated period in our development.  It doesn’t need to be replaced with a more “user-friendly” substitute.  It merely has to be experienced with an open heart, studied with an open mind.  Not only to each generation, but to each individual at each moment, the Torah unveils a methodology, a technique, to take that next step towards reaching our potential.  Prayer, like the other mitzvot, commandments, is not there to close off our thinking and feeling, to arbitrarily regiment our behavior.  Rather,  הלכה, Jewish Law, is a הליכה, a path, a walking, designed to continuously open us.

Finally, perhaps our best strategy is to return to simple expression, simple actions.  Rather than intellectually contemplating the very nature of the finite and the infinite, let’s at least try to balance our שמע קולינו consciousness with our מודים אנחנו לך.

Shavua Tov

I try to spend at least as much time and focus every day on מודים אנחנו לך (We Thank You–i.e. acknowledgement and gratitude for the many blessings we daily enjoy) as I do on שמע קולנו (Hear our voices–i.e. our “shopping list”).

Shabbat Shalom

Over the years, I’ve read many explanations and interpretations of the three types of leaving,  מארצך “from your land”, ממולדתך “from your birthplace” and ומבית אביך “from your father’s house”.  While I’m sure that others have as well, Rabbi Twerski zt”l emphasized the final part of the command, אל הארץ אשר אראך “to a land that I will show to you.”  He points to the intentionality of the indefinite destination.  A spiritual journey, that is a journey of spiritual growth, is by its very nature unbounded.  Any preconception or expectation will limit our efforts to that “goal” and, thus, make it impossible for us to actually reach our fullest potential.  Rather than continuing to grow, we’ll fool ourselves into complacently thinking we’ve already arrived and then stop.

I’d like to add into our consideration four seemingly simple words from Derech Hashem, The Way of God, by Luzatto, the Ramchal.  Discussing the soul’s development within a person, he tells us that as we age our intellect strengthens and begins, little by little, to counterbalance and, eventually, overpower our materiality.  As the soul comes to dominate us, he uses the phrase בכל אחד כפי ענינו, every individual according to their make-up.

Judaism, in addition to being more interested in questions than answers, i.e. growth rather than acquisitions, is most definitely not a one-size-fits-all religion.  Each of us is comprised of a unique soul, or a unique complex of spiritual roots.  And each soul has its unique strengths and weaknesses, its unique path to the Creator, its unique function in the world.

This is analogous to the many individual components which must be produced and refined and conditioned to work with all the others in order to, for example, manufacture a car.  We wouldn’t have much of a vehicle if it were comprised of a thousand identical wheels or a thousand identical fan-belts or a thousand identical bolts.  Likewise, we wouldn’t amount to much of a civilization as humans or much of a society as Jews if we were identical to each other.

In the specific world of Judaism, this translates to each of us having our unique path which is optimized just for us.  We each have an individual array of mitzvot which are prioritized for who we are and continuously updated to reflect what we’ve achieved to now.  We likewise usually find one or a small group of verses or psalms or prayers or teachings that especially attract and engage us.  Some of us are drawn to study, some to prayer, some to communal and charity work (not that we can avoid entirely engaging in each general aspect, but each of us do that with quite different levels of commitment and energy).  That’s the way it’s designed.

Our entire legal/halachic/ritual system is based on the Talmud, and the structure of the Talmud is one of multiple insights.  At a basic level, we usually start with conflicting opinions.  Rashi and Tosefot generally expand this array of opinions by introducing different fragments of phenomena each authority is describing.  Later commentators further the process until what seemed a simple reality has fractalized.

Add to that the underlying principle in Torah study that up to a certain point, at least, everyone in the discussion is right.  This leads to being able to imagine a surface with many facets, each facet being accurately described by one of our sages.  Each description is part of the whole, necessary but sufficient in itself.

Likewise, each of us will have our unique facets with which to join ourselves to the overall effort.  The way I daven or the way I dress doesn’t have to look identical to what someone else is doing–in fact, if it does we can be assured that something is not right, that at least one of us is doing it wrong for their specific being.

Traditional Judaism never had central authorities and chief rabbis, but rather local rabbis, authorities not only on the basis of their text training, but on the basis of their intimate familiarity with each member of their community.  Working together they can devise, and constantly revise based on progress, a plan of how to grow and develop.  This is because each of us is unique at each moment.

There’s nothing more beautiful for me than the noisy chaos of a traditional Bet Midrash.  Rows and rows of tables with study partners sitting across from each other, yelling at the top of their lungs to explain their understandings and insights.  Usually, no two pair are working on the same subject at the same time.  There is a warmth, a fire an energy that is all constructive, all loving, all cooperative.  Together, everyone is participating in the ongoing evolution and revelation of the Oral, infinite aspect of, Torah.

There’s little that profoundly pains me as a room or a shul or a city or a nation of clones, everyone wearing an identical suit, an identical hat, an identical shtreimel, an identical beggishe.  Even worse, voicing identical opinions, identical pieties, identical outlooks.

A principle I gleaned from Complexity Theory is that there is a narrow bandwith, but a bandwidth nonetheless, where life is possible.  Too little organization and we dissipate into chaos, but too much and we’re frozen, unable to grow and adapt and evolve, in short, too inflexible to live.

The Torah gives us a definite framework.  Not everything is within the framework, not everything is part of the cooperative enterprise we call Judaism.  But within this framework there is infinite possibility, complete freedom to explore and discover exactly who we are, how we fit in, and how we can individually function together as Clal Yisrael, to best bring the Divine process of Creation to its fullest completion.

I often imagine God as a composer and us as the orchestra.  I have faith that God isn’t going to write over-simple, dumb music, but rather the richest sonic tapestry imaginable.  We each have to prepare, practice and also be able to improvise on our parts.

A thought came to me about the transition of Moshe reviewing his life’s work, the new Nation of Israel, a work in progress (as it remains to this day), followed by the Creation itself.  “Sof Ma’aseh b’Machshava Techila”–Creation is aimed at the future beings, mankind, who will fully be able to receive the energy of Divine Love (with the Jewish people perhaps a vanguard, a Light Unto Nations, to show the possibility of perfecting the connection to the Creator).

There’s an oft-cited (but not unchallenged) opinion that one shouldn’t look into the mystical tradition until one has reached a certain maturity (often stated as age 40), mastered the Talmud (which means have highly developed the mental skills to see both linearly and associatively, empirically and intuitively, both the surface and the depths) and, most importantly raised a family.

When I was younger I mistakenly saw that opinion as restrictive and elitist, but as I’ve aged and gained my own experience, I’ve come to see that it is a way of accentuating the value of the parenting experience.  Especially following the Ten Days from Rosh HaShana to Yom Kippur where we focus on the twin aspects of the Creator as father and king, Avinu Malkenu, the motivation behind Creation becomes more apparent.

The Zohar treats Creation as a complex process of hyper-concentrated energies, first creating a place for something new to exist and then the emission of specially conditioned and prepared lights to give birth to the universe.  The Ramchal, among others, reminds us that behind this is the tremendous force of Love which cannot remain static, but must have a beloved to which to flow.

So when we look back on our own individual experiences we see ourselves just starting out, a reflection of the Creator, bursting to overflowing with love and creating a baby, a new life.  And then life takes over with all its challenges and travails.  Along with the joys and celebrations there are the trials of raising a child–the stubbornness, the contrariness, the fights and the reconciliations, the stupid mistakes and rebellions which, hopefully, they survive and learn from.  And after a number of years we see them about to enter their own independence, knowing that it won’t be smooth sailing then either, but filled with love and satisfaction we send them on their ways with our blessings and final guidance, seeing that if we had to do it all over again, we’d still be filled to overflowing with love and the desire to create.