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September 26, 2023

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Is Failure the Greatest Teacher? – Yom Kippur 5784

“The greatest teacher, failure is,” we learn from the great Rabbi… Yoda.

Popular wisdom would seem to affirm this.

In its early years, Facebook was famous for the motto “move fast and break things.”

The bestselling book, Grit, by Angela Duckworth, showed how the most successful people embody qualities of passion and perseverence that enable them to stay focused on their goals and overcome the obstacles that rise in their path.

In the realm of parenting, The Blessings of a Skinned Knee, followed up by The Blessings of a B Minus, by Wendy Mogel, turned to Jewish teachings and psychology to emphasize how letting our children make mistakes and figure out how to deal with the repercussions leads to them becoming resilient and confident adults.

And of course, we must not forget Thomas Edison, who famously said “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” That’s lovely. Inspiring. The problem is, most of us are not Thomas Edison.

We do not particularly like to fail. In fact, despite it’s inevitability, we try to avoid it at all possible costs. Failure is unpleasant. As much as we might like to think that failure is the best teacher, the truth is quite different.

Professors Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach conducted a study[1] in which they gave participants a series of ten questions. The questions were multiple choice, and had only two possible answers. 

Subjects were instructed to learn as much as possible from the results of the tests. With only two possible choices, they learned the true answer, whether or not they got the question right.

And the questions were impossible to know ahead of time, having to do with obscure data about customer service call center statistics. For example: “How much money, anually, do US companies lose due to poor customer service?” Is it A. over $90 billion, or B. over $60 billion?

After completing the test, the subjects were given the results with instructions to learn the answers so that they could do better when they took the test a second time.

Half of the group were told which questions they had gotten correct. The other half were told which questions they had gotten incorrect. Because there were only two possible answers, both groups now had all the information they needed to learn the material.

Then they took the test a second time.

The participants who had been told which answers they got correct, the “success feedback” group, did better the second time. In other words, they learned from their “success.”

The “failure feedback” group, which had been told which questions they answered incorrectly, did not do as well, many recording no improvement and not even remembering the answers they got correct the first time. In other words, “failure” was not an effective teacher. Interestingly, when a third party observed the “failure feedback” group, they were able to learn the material just as effectively as those who observed the “success feedback” group.

Failure prompts us to shut down. When I get something wrong, I internalize that there is something wrong with me. It is much harder to learn and grow when I feel this way about myself.

If failure is our greatest teacher, it seems that we may be sleeping through class.

Don’t worry, we are not the only ones.

The Israelites had completed the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle that they would carry with them through the wilderness. Moses is set to turn over control to the priests, under the leadership of his brother, Aaron. He instructs him

Come forward to the altar and sacrifice your sin offering and your burnt offering, making atonement for yourself and for the people; and sacrifice the people’s offering and make atonement for them, as the LORD has commanded.

Leviticus 9:7

This is to be Aaron’s first formal act of worship. The problem is, Aaron already knows that he is supposed to come forward to offer his sacrifice. Why does Moses need to tell him a second time?

According to a midrash, (Sifra, Tzav, Mechilta d’Miluim 1:1; Sifra, Shemini, Mechilta d’Miluim 2:8; Rashi on Leviticus 9:7, Ramban on Leviticus 9:7) it is because Aaron panics. He suddenly thinks about the sin he had committed with the Golden Calf. If you recall, not knowing what had happened to Moses after he went up to Mt. Sinai, the Israelites ask Aaron to make an image of God to lead them through the wilderness. Aaron collects their gold and forms the Golden Calf.

This is one of the most disastrous episodes in the Israelites’ forty years of wandering in the wilderness.

Now poised to become High Priest, Aaron, overcome with shame and embarrasment, freezes.

Understanding what is going through his brother’s mind, Moses turns to Aaron and exclaims, “Why are you ashamed? You have been chosen for this very purpopse.”

The function of the Mishkan is to enable the Israelites to seek atonement. Sin is going to happen. Impurity will interfere with the relationship between God and the Israelites. Aaron, the High Priest, plays the central role in mending that relationship.

As an outside observer, Moses sees what his brother cannot: that Aaron’s failure with the Golden Calf makes him perfectly suited for the job. In the ritual of Yom Kippur, the High Priest must first bring an offering of atonement for himself and his household, before he can facilitate the people’s atonement. The High Priest was never expected to be perfect.

One version of the midrash adds a twist by suggesting that it is Satan who shows Aaron the pointed horns of the altar. This sends Aaron’s mind straight to the horns on the Golden Calf, provoking his moment of shame.

Our tradition identifies the Satan, the Adversary, with the Yetzer Hara, literally the “evil inclination.” A more modern understanding of Yetzer hara is the ego.

The ego, the Yetzer Hara, is our sense of self, the part of us that seeks to expand in the world. It is the source of desire and self interest, and drives our instinct for self preservation. Our Yetzer Hara compels us to go on the defensive whenever we perceive a threat, real or imagined. Without the yetzer hara, we would not survive.

Viewing the midrash through this lens, it is Aaron’s ego that causes him to freeze.

Ashamed by the greatest mistake of his life, he is unable to learn. Instead, it immobilizes him. The prospect of having to go out in front of the people threatens him with reliving his failure again and again.

This is similar to what the researchers who developed the Facing Failure Game found. Our egos are implicated by our successes and failures. It is not that I made a mistake: I am a mistake.

So we avoid situations which remind us of our past errors, which is what Aaron tries to do. Alternatively, we pretend the failure did not happen. Consider the Sour Grapes Effect and the Ostrich Effect.

First, the Sour Grapes effect.

Remember the story of the fox from Aesop’s Fables.

One day, Fox is walking along and spies a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine that has wound itself up a tree branch. The grapes are bursting with juice, and the fox is so thirsty. Fox jumps grab the grapes, but misses by a mile. Stepping back a few paces, Fox takes a running leap, but still misses. Over and over again, Fox tries to get the grapes, but falls short every time. Finally, Fox sits down, frowning. “What a fool I am. Here I have been wearing myself out, when these are nothing but sour grapes.” With that, Fox stands up and walks away scornfully… and thirsty.

The Sour Grapes effect is our tendency, when we fail, to change our beliefs about what we wanted in the first place. 

After altering the story, Fox no longer failed to get the grapes. Fox decided that they were not worth it. “I didn’t fail, I just decided to stop trying.” The ego is safe.

The Ostrich Effect refers to our tendency to avoid evidence of our past mistakes. We bury our heads in the sand. As an example, investors whose stocks are doing well tend to check their portfolios more often than investors whose stocks are doing poorly.

If I do not have to look at the evidence of my mistakes, maybe they will go away. Perhaps they do not even exist. 

Fox could have potentially learned a lesson about how to reach something that is out of reach if they had been willing to take a good look at what went wrong. I might learn to be a better investor if I paid more attention to my losing stock picks. 

In both cases, my self-defense instincts kicked in to make me feel better in the short run, but actually made me worse off in the long run. I failed to learn from the greatest teacher: failure.

We would be so much better off if we could train ourselves to separate our actions from our egos. The Book of Proverbs teaches: 

Seven times the tzadik (righteous person) falls and gets up, while the wicked are tripped by one misfortune.

Proverbs 24:7

One Rabbi, responding to an inquiry from a student, explains that

Foolish people think that this [verse] means, “Even though a righteous person falls seven times, he will rise.” The wise know well that the meaning is: “Because a tzaddik falls seven times, he will rise.”

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, Pachad Yitzchak: Igrot U’ketavim No. 128

In other words, a person only becomes a tzadik, develops qualities of righteousness, if they continually pick themselves back up after they fall. In other words, if they make a habit of learning from their failures. This is something that any of us can achieve, but most of us do not. 

Why seven times? Seven are the days of week. Falling down is a daily occurrence.  

A story is told in the Talmud (Gittin 43a) about Rabba bar Rav Huna. He issues a halakhic ruling, but another Rabbi comes up to him with an objection. It turns out, Rabba bar Rav Huna is wrong.

So now he has to deal with his error. First, he appoints a spokesperson to help him get the word out. Then he offers a short drash. Quoting Isaiah, “And let this stumbling-block be under your hand,” Rabba bar Rav Huna explains that a person cannot understand matters of Torah unless he stumbles in them. Then he issues a public retraction of his earlier ruling, setting himself up as the case in point. 

The Talmud records this entire incident, including the details of Rabba bar Rav Huna’s mistake. This humble man does not conflate his error with his ego.

He is not afraid of publicly owning his failure and taking responsibility. The result is that he comes across as someone of great character and wisdom. 

It can be so empowering to admit our failures, but this is often difficult for us. 

Maimoinides, the twelfth century Rabbi, physician, philosopher, and community leader, provides great insight into the human condition in his discussion of the laws of teshuvah, repentance. 

He teaches that the first step is the vidui – the confession. We cannot begin to repent without first acknowledging that we have made a mistake, that we have failed in some way. 

We ritualize this in our liturgy, with our alphabetical Ashamnu and Al Chet. We recite long lists of sins that we — first person, plural — have all committed, striking our chests as we proceed from alef through tav.

But let’s be real. These are not actual confessions. They are just examples. For a confession to count, it must be personal — first person singular. 

Maimonides emphasizes that our confession must be public, in front of other people. He acknowledges that pride often prevents a person from confessing their sins, but reminds us that full teshuvah cannot happen while a person keeps their sins to themself.

This makes sense. If I am still holding on to my shame, how can I learn, grow, and move on?

What are we to do? How can we begin to separate our actions from our ego?

The truth is, it is much easier to talk about our successes. It feels so much better to feed our egos with all the things that make us great. Consider the “About Me” section of a blog or web page.

What is listed? Typically, the degrees that a person has earned, the boards they serve on, the awards and certifications they have received. Maybe it lists their hobbies and interests.

The “About Me” page rarely lists a person’s failures. And yet, to truly get a full picture of a human being, we should know something about what did not go according to plan. After all, if this person is truly great, “righteous” to use the language of Proverbs, they must have fallen and gotten up again on a regular basis.

A recent trend in some academic and business circles has been to compose a “Failure Resume.”

It is the opposite of a typical resume, where a person lists all of their professional accomplishments.

A Failure Resume lists the schools to which a person applied and did not get in, the numerous journals that rejected papers, the classes failed, tests and essays bombed, jobs fired from, and so on. If we are honest, it should be a long list.

Such a resume could really help us learn from the failures which we tend to repress.

What would my Rabbinic Failure Resume look like? People often ask me how things are going at Sinai. I tend to mention the successes.

What do I not mention? The sermons that fell flat. I do not talk about the former congregants who left the synagogue because of something that I did, or failed to do. I leave out the sick and suffering people whom I did not call when they needed to hear from me. 

In the context of Yom Kippur, I suggest that we include some additional categories in our Failure Resumes:

We all have relationship failures, including marriages, children and parents. Friends we let down.

Obligations to community, the tzedakah I did not give. The people who needed support whom I did not assist.

Failures to God: mitzvot I did not fulfill that I could have, opportunities to study Torah that I did not embrace. 

When I have assembled my Failure Resume, what next?

First of all, it would be a great exercise to share it with someone I trust. And what an honor it would be for the recipient of such sharing.

Second, beating ourselves up over our failures is not very productive. It may even be harmful. I suggest a different approach. Pick something on the resume.  What advice would I offer to someone who is struggling with the same failure?

A person who has been trying to quit smoking for twenty years does not need to be reminded how unhealthy cigarettes are. They know. What they could be really good at, however, is coming up with advice for someone else who is trying to quite smoking.

In one study, middle school students were asked to offer suggestions for an incoming student about how to overcome a lack of academic motivation. The other group of students was given written advice from the teacher to do a better job completing their assignments. Over the next four weeks, the students who came up with the recommendations procrastinated less and completed more of their own homework assignments than the group who were told to do better by a teacher.

If we allow ourselves to really reflect on our mistakes, we can often figure out the solutions on our own.

One final point. We tend to be really bad about receiving criticism. Negative feedback is perceived as a direct assault on the ego which drives us straight into self defense mode.

As my late father-in-law, Gary, zikhro livracha, used to say, “unsolicited advice is never appreciated.”

Here is my unsolicited advice: refrain, as often as possible, from offering advice unless it is asked for.

Nevertheless, all of us are frequent recipients of criticism, most of it probably unsolicited. Might I suggest we adopt a model from synagogue. During the Torah reading, there are two gabbaim up here on the bimah, positioned on either side of the reading table. Their job is to supervise the Torah reading, offering corrections and cues whenever the Torah reader makes a mistake or gets stuck.

Sometimes, Torah readers get flustered by the gabbaim. They can be intimidated by the prospect that the gabbaim will be standing next to them, checking their work, so to speak, and pointing out all of their failings.

But the role of the gabbai is not to spring an embarrassing, public “gotcha” on the poor Torah reader. They should properly be seen as partners. We are all part of a team whose goal is to give honor to God and the Torah through a ritualized study of sacred text. The gabbaim are there to help the reader do their best possible work.

What if we treated every interaction like this – particularly the difficult ones? This person before me, full of complaints and criticism, is actually my gabbai, here to support me and make me better. My job is to figure out what it is that they are here to teach me.

This Yom Kippur, as we reflect on the year that is past and prepare ourselves for the year ahead, help us truly understand that our failures do not define us.

Instead of burying them in shame, grant us the courage to acknowledge our mistakes to ourselves, and share them with trusted companions. When we fall, may we rise despite the certainty that we will fall again, confident that this is the only path towards righteousness. May we recognize those who point out our mistakes as our gabbaim, our partners who are there to help us learn and be better. May we embody the teaching that the only way to understand Torah is to stumble through it. 

May the year ahead be filled with constructive failure, learning, and growth.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach – Not Learning From Failure—the Greatest Failure of All

Tim Herrera – How Early-Career Setbacks Can Set You Up for Success

Hidden Brain Podcast – Learning From Your Mistakes

Jeremy Adam Smith – How to Learn from your Failures

 

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797619881133

[2] Sifra, Tzav, Mechilta d’Miluim 1:1; Sifra, Shemini, Mechilta d’Miluim 2:8; Rashi on Leviticus 9:7, Ramban on Leviticus 9:7

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September 19, 2023

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Sarah’s Howl – Rosh Hashanah II 5784

How did the ram’s horn get its name?

Because you can hear it from shofar away.

Now that we have firmly established the linguistic origin of the word shofar, where does this tradition of hearing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah come from? What might that origin teach us about the meaning and purpose of the shofar?

The Maftir Torah reading, from our second Torah scroll, is identified as the source of the obligation.

In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a sacred occasion: you shall not work at your occupations. A Day of Blasting it shall be for you.

Numbers 29:1

This is the Torah’s name for today: Yom Teruah, “A Day of Blasting.” Other than a few typical sacrifices, blasting the shofar is the only specific action that the Torah commands.

Nowhere is our holiday called Rosh Hashanah. It is never acknowledged as the new year, nor is it claimed to have anything to do with creation. Teshuvah is never mentioned.

It would seem that Rosh Hashanah’s significance, in the Torah, is in respect to Yom Kippur. We sound the shofar as an announcement of the upcoming Day of Atonement. In contrast, Yom Kippur does have great significance and lots of detail in the Torah. 

The deeper meaning of our holiday is revealed through our rabbinic traditions. It is Rosh Hashanah: the new year. It celebrates creation and the enthronement of God as king. It is the Day of Judgment, the first step in what will eventually result in our souls being purified on Yom Kippur. It is the day when we eat apples dipped in honey and make our challahs round.

Through multiple layers of significance, the shofar remains the most iconic element of Rosh Hashanah, the most unique and special ritual of the holiday.

But what does it mean? Maimonides acknowledges that the Torah provides no explicit reason for the shofar, but suggests that there is a hint as to its purpose. The sound announces:

You who sleep, bestir yourselves from your sleep, and you who slumber, emerge from your slumber. Examine your actions, return, and remember your Creator. Those who forget the truth in the vanities of time and waste all their years with vanity and emptiness, which is not effective and does not save, look inside yourselves. Improve your ways and your actions, let each one of you abandon their evil path and their thoughts that are not good!

Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 3:4

For Rambam, the shofar is a moral alarm clock, meant to awaken us to what is really going on with our lives. Most of us devote most of our energies to tasks that are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. If we are paying the right kind of attention, the shofar blast shatters our complacency, and reorients us to what truly matters. In other words, the sound of the shofar is an important step in the process of teshuvah, repentance.

While Maimonides offers us a psychological explanation, the Talmud offers something more theological, imagining a conversation between God and the Jewish people. God says:

Sound a blast before Me with a shofar from a ram, so that I will remember for you the binding of Isaac, son of Abraham, and I will consider it as if you had bound yourselves before Me.

Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16a

The Torah reading from this morning, the Binding of Isaac, ends with Abraham offering up a ram as a burnt offering in place of his son Isaac. This story was chosen for today as a testament to Abraham’s total and complete faith in God, as well as Isaac’s willingness to go along with the Divine command.

Sounding the shofar is our way of symbolically participating in that act. It is a way of offering up our faith to God, putting our lives in God’s hands, so to speak, so that God considers us with mercy on the Day of Judgment.

Of course, the story itself never claims to have taken place on Rosh Hashanah, nor does the Torah ever make a connection between the Binding of Isaac and our holiday.

Maimonides’ explanation characterizes the sound of the shofar as a call to us to perform teshuvah. The Talmud says that it is a reminder to God to remember the Binding of Isaac and have mercy upon us.

A midrash provides a third explanation for the origin and the meaning of the shofar that digs even deeper. It suggests a deeply emotional origin for our beloved ritual.

This midrash picks up on the juxtaposition of the story of the Akeidah with the death of Sarah in the subsequent chapter. It addresses Sarah’s absence in the story. Did she know what Abraham was doing with her son? Did she ever find out afterward? Did she wake up the morning they left to pack them a lunch and see them off? “Bye honey, be back in time for dinner.” The Torah is silent.

This midrash brings in Samael, an evil angel who serves as God’s adversary. Samael expects Abraham to chicken out at the last minute, revealing the weakness of his faith. But Abraham’s commitment to God is so strong that an angel has to call out his name, not once, but twice to get his attention and stop him from slaughtering Isaac.

His plan frustrated, Samael sets out for revenge. Hastily, he rushes to Sarah with a message:

“Sarah, Have you not heard what has happened?”

“No.”

“Your old man (Yes, he calls Abraham ‘old man.’) took your son Isaac to sacrifice as a burnt offering. The boy was crying and howling that he would not be able to be saved.”

[Then Sarah] began to cry and howl. She cried three cries, corresponding to the three tekiot. Three howls corresponding to the three yevavot.[Then] her soul departed, and she died.

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 32:8

A few words of explanation.

The three tekiot and three yevavot refer to the required number of blasts that one is required to hear on Rosh Hashanah. A tekiah is an uninterrupted note. A Yevavais a broken note, what we call teruah. The Rabbis translated Yom Teruah, a “Day of Blasting” into Aramaic as Yom Yabava.

This remarkable midrash provides a very different origin story for our shofar.  Instead of representing the willingness of a father to sacrifice his son, it expresses the grief and utter loss of control of a mother who discovers she has just lost her child. As Aviva Zornberg explains, the word for howl, yelalah, is

a wordless sound made by women particularly at moments of birth or death, at extreme moments when all normal patterns and understandings of the world break down.

“Cries and Whispers: The Death of Sarah” in Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holidays, p. 185.

It is pure emotion, uninhibited and unrestrained. When the Rabbis in the Talmud argue over what the broken short notes, the yevavot, are supposed to sound like, they compare them to the yelalah – the raw cry of motherly grief. There is no discernable message in the yelalah. No reminder for self reflection, no call for Teshuvah, and no appeal to Divine mercy. Just honest, unfiltered emotion.

We encounter another weeping mother in today’s Haftarah. Picture the scene in your mind’s eye.

A cry is heard in Ramah—wailing, bitter weeping—Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, who are gone.

Jeremiah 31:15

While the passage continues with God’s words of comfort and promises to restore her children to their land, Rachel’s crying reverberates.  She refuses to be comforted. In this haunting scene, we are reminded that sometimes, before we can embark on a path of introspection and repentance, we need a moment to howl, to let out our rage and grief.

The howl of the shofar echoes the sorrow and despair in our world: mothers and fathers who have lost children to violence and suicide; families and communities devastated by earthquake, flood, and fire; humans suffering from poverty and oppression, addiction and depression; as well as many of us whose lives have not unfolded as we had hoped. 

If we allow it to penetrate us, the cry of the shofar can awaken the compassion and empathy necessary to truly evaluate our own lives and pray for Divine mercy, not only for ourselves, but for all who suffer. As we open our hearts to the shofar’s call for personal growth, let us also extend our hands. May the echoes of Sarah’s howl and Rachel’s bitter weeping, along withthe cries of all who grieve, inspire us to be agents of healing, kindness, and transformation in the year ahead.

May the pure sound of the shofar serve as a beacon of hope, reminding us that even in our moments of deepest sorrow, we can find the strength to move forward, to mend, and to repair our world.

Shanah Tovah, may we all have a sweet and meaningful new year filled with love, compassion, and positive change.

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Be The One to Take the First Step – Ki Teitzei 5783

One of my personal favorite mitzvot appears in this morning’s Torah portion. It is called hashevat aveidah – the return of a lost item.

I love it so much because I know what it is like to lose something that is important to me, and to despair about ever getting it back.

When someone, out of the blue, brings that lost item back to me, the feeling transcends the mere restoration of an item of value. It is a reminder of the potential goodness in a random stranger. What a gift to be able to be that stranger for someone else.

Parashat Ki Teitzei is notable for containing the most number of mitzvot, commandments, of any portion in the Torah: 74. Like many of the Torah’s law codes, the topics range widely, covering ritual obligations, business law, criminal law, as well as personal and family ethics. 

One of these laws is hashevat aveidah. This is how it is introduced:

If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your fellow. 

Deuteronomy 22:1

The Torah continues to specify that we have an obligation to take the lost animal home and care for it if the owner cannot be immediately identified or located. It then expands beyond animals to include garments, or any other item that we may find.

Twice, the Torah emphasizes that we are not allowed to remain indifferent, using the expression v’hit’alamta mahem – which literally means “and hide yourself from them.” If I find a lost item, I must return it.

A corollary mitzvah follows this one, also with instructions to not “hide yourself from them.”

If you see your fellow’s donkey or ox fallen on the road… you must help him raise it.

Deuteronomy 22:4

I have always liked these two mitzvot. Being part of the covenanted community of the Jewish people means more than just treating one another properly. Our obligations extend to one another’s possessions as well. Consider for a moment what these mitzvot are saying. I incur an obligation simply for my discovery of an item, even when I do not know to whom that item belongs. I am obligated to a mystery person such that I commit a sin if I do not step up.

I recently discovered a commentary by a medieval Spanish sage, Rabbi Baḥya ben Asher. Rabbeinu Baḥya, as he is known, wrote a commentary on the Torah that offers allegorical, midrashic, and mystical interpretations. In his discussion, Rabbeinu Baḥya offers three explanations for these commandments to take responsibility for the property of our neighbors.

First, he cites the Talmud. The Torah repeats Hebrew words hashev teshivem, “Return you shall return.” This does not merely emphasize our obligation to return a lost object. It conveys that we must keep returning it, even 100 times in a row, if necessary.

Imagine my neighbor has a donkey that keeps wandering on to my property. As many times as it wanders over, I must still make the effort to bring it back home, however annoying or inconvenient it might be. That is a fairly conventional midrashic interpretation.

Rabbeinu Baḥya then explains that this kind of behavior is midarkhei haḥesed v’haraḥamim – among the ways of kindness and compassion. This is how people who are all descended from the same human ancestor ought to treat one another. We each have an interest in the success and well-being of one another, he says. As such, we must go beyond the obligation to merely care for the “things” belonging to our neighbor. It is not just about stuff. If I find myself in a position in which I have the ability to protect another person from financial loss, I must do so. I may not “hide myself.”

The principal behind this responsibility, says Rabbeinu Baḥya, is v’ahavta l’re’ekha kamokha, which we usually translate as “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But here, Rabbeinu Baḥya understands it as “You shall love that which is your neighbor’s as if it were your own.” It is quite an extension of the principle.

His second explanation is a theological one, focusing on the warning against “hiding yourself.” He notes that it is easy to look the other way and pretend not to have seen a wandering donkey, or a lost item. Who is going to know?

The answer is “God knows.” And just as we are commanded to return that which is our neighbor’s, God will one day return that which is ours.  That is to say, God will return our souls to our bodies. And here, Rabbeinu Bahya goes into a description of the Jewish concept of the resurrection of the dead, which will occur after the coming of the mashiaḥ. The point is, how can we expect God to return our souls to us if we fail to return that which is our neighbor’s?

The third explanation is the one that most took me by surprise. Rabbeinu Baḥya notes that these mitzvot in Parashat Ki Teitzei are a reiteration of mitzvot that first appear in the the book of Exodus, but with a significant distinction. Where Deuteronomy uses the word aḥikha, “your brother,” to describe the person whose donkey has wandered off and gotten into trouble, Exodus uses the word son’ekha, “your enemy.”

That is a pretty significant difference. What does it mean? At first, we might think that this merely indicates that it does not matter whether or not I like the owner of the donkey. I am still obligated.

Rabbeinu Baḥya suggests that there is a deeper lesson to be learned. If I assist my enemy with their fallen donkey, they may come to see me differently, and my enemy may transform into my brother. The assistance I offer may be the very thing to cause the hatred to be forgotten and the love that unites us to be remembered.

What an inspiring—and difficult—observation.

I suspect Rabbeinu Baḥya may be talking about more than just a wandering donkey. When there is conflict, it can be really hard to be the one to take the first step at reconcilliation. Our egos get too involved.  How often do we get into fights with other people when we forget the reason for the conflict in the first place, and it becomes all about the hatred, the negative feelings which are reinforced every time I hear that person’s name.

What would be so terrible about swallowing my pride and taking that first step to do something that helps out my enemy? Perhaps that is the very act to shatter the hostility.

As we prepare for the new year, this is the time when we are supposed to be examining our relationships, reviewing our deeds. We engage in teshuvah, repentance. Our tradition teaches us the only way to do teshuvah for sins between ourselves and another person is to appease that person directly.

Rabbeinu Baḥya offers us an approach to repair broken relationships. Swallow my pride, do not wait for them to apologize first. After all, they are probably waiting for me to apologize first. Just take the first step. Perhaps this will be the year that my enemy becomes my friend.

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The Earth Doesn’t Care Whose Fault It Is – Yom Kippur 5782

Mi va’esh u’mi va’mayim.  Who by fire and who by water?

We are halfway through what is already one of the worst fire seasons around the globe. More than 2.2 million acres have burned here in California so far, exacerbated by drought. Large swaths of land around the Mediterranean burned. In July, the town of Lytton, British Columbia, in Canada, reached a record 121 degrees Fahrenheit and literally burst into flame.

Less than one month ago, Hurricane Ida wreaked devastation from Louisiana to the Northeast, leaving at least 115 people dead and causing more than fifty billion dollars in damage.

Two months ago, record rainfall in Western Europe caused massive flooding, killing at least 220 people, and washing away an entire town in Germany.

Mi va’esh u’mi va’mayim. Who by fire and who by water?

The most urgent issue facing humanity is our imbalanced relationship with the earth. It outweighs every other concern: Covid, freedom, democracy, racism, poverty, education, and Israel.

Our out of balance relationship with the earth puts our species at risk of extinction. If that happens, nothing else matters – at least from humanity’s perspective.

Every one of us must do better when it comes to the ways that we utilize the earth’s resources. And since none of us can do everything, we can direct our efforts towards those issues which seem most urgent to us and which we have the greatest capacity to influence.

There are so many ciritical issues, including for those who do not believe human beings cause climate change. Much of the western United States is in extreme drought conditions. Microplastics are everywhere, from the deepest seas to the highest mountains. Humanity’s encroachment into unoccupied areas, called WUI, the Wildland Urban Interface, puts people at greater risk from disasters like fire. The oceans are acidifying.

I plead with all of us.  Pick at least one thing that you care about and do more than you are already doing.

Who is to blame for how things have gotten to be the way they are?

You may recall a famous ad that appeared regularly on television in the 1970’s. The scene opens with a Native American man paddling down a bucolic river in a canoe. His hair is in braids and he is wearing a leather “Indian” outift. The camera turns to the water. A single piece of trash floats by.  Now we see an industrial nightmare.  Large factories, container ships, and pollution spewing smoketacks dwarf the small canoe.The Native American drags his boat to the shore, where more trash litters the ground.  As he begins walking, a voiceover proclaims:

“Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country.”

He is now at the side of a busy highway. As the traffic zooms past, a driver carelessly throws a bag of rubbish out the window. It lands, scattering garbage across our hero’s feet.  The voiceover continues:

“And some people don’t.”

As the camera zooms in on the Native American’s face, a single tear rolls down his cheek and we are admonished,

“People start pollution, and people can stop it.”

This ad, which came to be known as the “The Crying Indian,” is considered by the Ad Council to be one of the “50 greatest commercials of all time.”

By every measure, it was super effective. 

Part of a campaign by a nonprofit organization called Keep America Beautiful, it helped lead to the reduction of litter by 88% across 38 states. But that was not the real goal of “The Crying Indian.” As they say: follow the money.

The nonprofit Keep America Beautiful was not founded, as its name might suggest, by a bunch of do-gooder hippies. It was created in the 1950’s by the American Can Company and the Owens-Illiniois Glass Company, which were later joined by the likes of Coca-Cola and the Dixie Cup Company.

The goal of Keep America Beautiful was to oppose the influence of environmentalists.  Prior to its founding, packaging was typically reusable.  If you bought a Coke, you paid a deposit and then returned the bottle so that it could be sterilized and reused.  In the 1950’s, as the plastics industry was taking off, bottlers and container manufacturers began to aggressively – and successfully – push single use packaging.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s there were increasing moves to enact legislation to limit the production of throwaway containers.  So Keep America Beautiful began to sponsor ad campaigns like “The Crying Indian.”

The cynical strategy was based on the simple economics of supply and demand.  If we want to do something about litter, we basically have two options: focus on the people who make the stuff or focus on the people who use the stuff.  The suppliers, or the demanders.  Supply or demand.

“The Crying Indian,” with its final message, “People start pollution, and people can stop it,” places responsibility on the demand side of the equation.

The suppliers of all of this packaging would shrug their shoulders and say, “we are just giving our customers what they want. It’s not our fault.”

In fact, it was their fault.  Through a decades-long marketing strategy, they shifted public consciousness to center all of the blame and responsibility on the demand side. The result is that there were few limits placed on supply. The companies avoided having to pay the costs of pollution and disposal, and they earned billions and billions of dollars while the plastic accumulated.

I go to Costco and discover apples on my shopping list. Organic apples.  But those apples come in a plastic clamshell.  Now I, the consumer, am stuck with this piece of plastic that I do not want, but that is now my responsibility to deal with.Does it go in the trash or the recycling bin? Well, it’s got the triangle thing on it, but I recently heard that those triangle thingies are not reliable.  Plus, the third world countries to which we used to ship all of our plastic are starting to say, “no thank you. We don’t want your trash.” As it turns out, much of that plastic heading for recycling was just being dumped in open air landfills.

Who is the manufacturer of that plastic clamshell?  Who knows. What is their legal responsibility? Nothing whatsoever.

It is because Keep America Beautiful‘s ad campaign worked.  Our economy does not include the price of disposal in the cost of manufacturing. The suppliers are off the hook.

By the way, the Indian who appeared in the ad was an actor who went by the name “Iron Eyes Cody.”  His real name was Espera De Corti. He was a second generation Italian American. 

What is your personal carbon footprint? How much CO2 and methane do your actions put into the environment? This is a question many of us have asked ourselves in recent years.

I can easily go online and find a website that will ask me to estimate the number of square feet in my home, my annual vehicle mileage, the number of airplane flights I take per year, and so on.  Enter all the data, click next, and presto – my carbon footprint!

Where did the idea for the carbon footprint come from? Follow the money.

The ad agency Ogilvy started the campaign in 2005 on behalf of its client, British Petroleum. Just like “The Crying Indian,” BP wanted to keep the moral responsibility for oil production on the demand side rather than the supply side of the equation.

So BP encourages us to calculate our carbon footprint and then offers suggestions for how we can reduce it, knowing that we will not actually follow through in any economically substanative way.  Meanwhile, BP will be there for us to supply all of the oil that we demand.

For its part, BP has made no effort to reduce its own carbon footprint. Quite the opposite – it has continued to expand its oil drilling, including a current multi-billion dollar project called “Thunder Horse” to construct an oil platform 150 miles south of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico. When all eight wells are completed sometime this decade, it will produce 250,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of gas per day.

But it is our responsibility.  After all, BP is just meeting our demand.

This strategy has been used over and over again – by the petroleum industry, tobacco companies, sugary beverage producers.  “It’s not our fault. We are just giving the people what they want.”

But it is their fault.

Or maybe not entirely.

One of the most prominent sections in our Mahzor is the Vidui, the confessional. We recite Ashamnu and Al Chet. For the sins we have committed, forgive us and pardon us. We strike our chests in contrition. 

Both of these prayers are alphabetical.  The Ashamnu lists a single verb for each letter. Al Chet is a double acrostic, with two sentences per letter. We recite a litany of sins. Some are specific actions, while others are general attitudes of selfishness or duplicity.

All of the verbs end with -nu, which is the 1st person plural.  We did all of these things. Surely not! I have definitiely screwed up a lot this past year, but I’m not that bad.  I didn’t commit every sin on the list. For example, I know with certainty that I did not charge interest to anyone in 5781. I categorically reject that characterization.

We Rabbis will often explain this expression of collective guilt as a way to provide cover, to help those of us who might actually be guilty of one of these sins to face up to it. 

Or maybe, in another sense, we actually are accountable for each other’s sins. These confessions are not personal admissions.  We, as a collective entity, take responsibility for all that has happened in the lives of our congregation.

Or perhaps we, as Jews, take collective responsibility before God for all that the Jewish people have done.

Or if we widen the lens further, perhaps humanity is in some sense collectively responsible for all that we do as a species.

After all, we cannot avoid the consequences of each others’ actions. This has been made devastatingly clear during the Covid pandemic. Maybe the language of guilt and innocence is not the most helpful paradigm. Maybe it would be more constructive if we framed it this way:

There are actions that individuals and groups take which impact the lives of others. That is an unavoidable fact. When that happens, like it or not, we become responsible.

Humanity is responsible for humanity’s relationship to the earth.

As much as we might like to assign blame, the fire and the flood certainly don’t care whose fault it is.

Whether from a theological, ethical, or self-interest perspective, we are responsible for treating the earth appropriately.

Unfortunately, traditional Jewish law is somewhat deficient as a source of practical guidance. The basic categories developed two thousand years ago, at a time when there was no awareness of an interdependent global environment. Human beings did not know about chemicals that could not be seen or that could dissipate into the upper atmosphere.

Also, Jewish law tends to focus on the actions and responsibilities of individuals, not governments or corporations. In other words, on the demand side of the economic equation.

Nevertheless, our present situation is not entirely without precedent. In his twelfth century law code, Maimonides includes a section called Hilkhot Sh’khenim, Laws of Neighbors. He addresses a situation in which a person wants to build a feature or conduct business on his property that produces pollution that would travel beyond its borders. 

If a person constructs a threshing floor in the midst of his (property), or builds an outhouse, or does work which raises dust, particles of earth, etc., he must move far enough away so that the pollution does not reach his neighbor and cause harm. Even if the pollution is carried by the wind, he is obligated to move far enough away…

Rambam, Laws of Neighbors 11:1

Jewish law deals with directly identifiable harm. And we can see from the examples that Maimonides gives that the pollution in question is all what we would characterize as “natural” byproducts.

But when the harm is indirect, such as plastic in the ocean or CO2 in the atmosphere, Jewish law has no explicit prohibition. And the earth itself has no standing to sue.

I wonder, if he was writing today, what other forms of pollution Maimonides would have included in the law.

The lack of specific legal precedents does not mean that Judaism is ambivalent. A famous midrash expresses humanity’s ideal relationship with the natural world.  

When God created the first human beings, God led them around the garden of Eden and said: ‘Look at my works! See how beautiful they are — how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.’

Midrash Kohelet Rabbah on Ecclesiastes 7:13

Notice a few details. Human beings are the purpose of creation, but the world still belongs to God.

Detail two – All of the beautiful and excellent things in the world can be destroyed, but the damaged world itself will continue to exist.

Detail three – there is nobody else to repair it. We are on our own here. God will not step in to save the earth from our mismanagement. 

Let’s take this a step further. In the Torah’s language, adam, humanity, is created in God’s image. That is a theological statement.

A scientist would ask if homo sapiens is fundamentally different than any other species. The answer is no and yes.

Every living thing is comprised of the same chemical materials, and is formed and behaves according to its DNA encoding.

We share the same survival instincts as all life forms, from the great whale to the spot of mold on a rock. We are drawn to that which helps our particular genetic material reproduce and repelled by that which puts it at risk. Most animals know instinctively that fire is dangerous and it is best to run away from it. We would call this “biological knowledge.”

On the other hand, homo sapiens is the only species that can understand how the combination of dry conditions, heat, heavy winds, and a lightning storm increases the chances of a forest fire. A philosopher or scientist would call this “explanatory knowledge” – the ability to tell stories or develop formulas or ideas that explain why things are the way they are.

Those explanations may or may not be true, but they do enable a human being to approach a choice and consider, for example, “What is the ethical thing to do?” Religion, science, the arts – these are all made possible by humanity’s capacity for explanatory knowledge.

This is what makes us unique among living creatures on earth, if not the universe. Shifting back to theological language, we might say that our capacity for explanatory knowledge is what it means to be made in God’s image.

That capacity has made it possible for us to develop civilization and technology, to learn how to live in environments in which our bodies could not survive with biological knowledge alone.

This quality has enabled us to spread out across the world, to reach a global population of nearly 8 billion people, to harness the natural resources of the planet such that humanity has thrived beyond what its mere biology would allow.

This quality is also what puts our continued survival on the planet at risk.  And it is the quality that makes us the only ones who can restore the balance and save ourselves.

Whether from a theological or a scientific perspective, we are the ones who must radically change directions. Can we do it?

This afternoon, we will read the story of Jonah, the most successful prophet ever. 

Although he tries to escape his mission, Jonah eventually realizes that there is no avoiding God. Reluctantly, he marches off to the giant metropolis of Nineveh, a city so large it takes three days to walk across. He climbs up on his soap box and proclaims, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overturned!”

The people respond immediately.  They declare a fast, and put on sackcloth and ashes. When word reaches the king, he gets off his throne and he joins them, ordering everyone to participate, humans and even animals. God sees and forgives.  Disaster is averted. 

Can you imagine?

An entire society, top to bottom: the rich, the poor, the politicians, people of all ethnicities and religions – everyone recognizes the danger, accepts responsibility, and fully commits to change – overnight.

If only.

My children are really worried about whether the planet is going to be livable when they are adults.

While it would be nice to hold the greatest polluters accountable, I am afraid that it is up to humanity collectively, and us individually.

If you are in a position to make a difference on the supply side of the equation, you are our best hope. If you can influence the decision makers in government or are in government, or if you are in a position in your company to change policies and practices to be a better environmental steward, our children and grandchildren are counting on you.

Most of us are on the demand side of the equation. Whatever you are already doing, do more. If you can, install solar panels on your roof. Get rid of your gasoline powered car. Ride your bike or take public transit more. Rip out your lawn. Buy less stuff. Eat less meat. Move into a smaller space. Protect undeveloped land from human encroachment. We each have capacity, and we know best what we are capable of. Let others know what you are doing and celebrate each other’s actions. That is how we will make a difference.

May we be worthy of the trust given us by God to take care of this beautiful world with all of its excellent creations.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.

https://www.sinai-sj.org/rjb-sermons/the-earth-doesnt-care-whos-at-fault-yk-5782

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September 22, 2020

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The Locus of Control – Rosh Hashanah 5781, First Day

The Sinai Men’s Club has an annual poker tournament.  I play a few times a year on top of that.  There is an important rule upon which my participation is conditioned.  No praying allowed.

So I go by “Josh” around the table… until there is a particularly big hand.  At that moment, I embrace my clerical role and become… Rabbi Berkenwald.

In 2009, the economist Ingo Fiedler crunched the data of 55,000 poker players, comprising several million hands, from an online gambling site.  He was trying to determine whether, and to what extent, skill plays a role in poker.

One question he asked was: What percentage of the winning hands do you think were the best hands? In poker, the winning hand and the best hand are not necessarily the same thing.  To win, you have to stay in the game.  That is to say, not fold.

90 percent?

75 percent?

50 percent?

12 percent.  In only twelve percent of pots was the hand that wins the best hand at the table.

In a recently published book called The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win, Psychologist Maria Konikova set out to teach herself to play poker, No Limit Texas Hold-‘Em, and enter the the world of professional gambling.  She chose poker because, more than any other game, it is most similar to the world as we experience it.

In Texas Hold ‘Em, I get two cards. There is absolutely nothing I can do to change any of the cards on the table.  Furthermore, I have limited information. I know what I am holding, and I can see what is face up on the table. The rest is a mystery.

All I can do is fold, call, or raise.

Whether I am Josh or Rabbi Berkenwald, whether I pray or curse, I have zero ability to change the cards. What do I think, God is going to reaarange the deck for me?

All of those elements that I cannot control and do not know are external to me. One reason that poker is such a difficult game to be good at is because we get these things confused.

In helping to describe her experience, Konikova uses a psychological concept called the “Locus of Control,” first developed in the 1950’s by Julian Rotter. In each of our individual experiences as human beings, where does control over events seem to reside? There are two possibilities: internal or external.

Internal means that I determine what happens.  External means that something other than me controls my fate. Each of us tends to have either an internal or an external locus of control in a majority of cirumstances.

Internals tend to be optimistic about their abilities to determine their future. If I get a good grade, or a promotion at work, it is because of the effort I put in. As a result, those with an internal locus of control are more confident in their abilities to change their situation, and are therefore more willing to act and take risks.

Externals tend to attribute failure or success to outside factors like luck, fate, circumstances, or the prejudice of others. They tend to take a more passive approach to difficult circumstances because they are less confident of their abilities to affect change, and are therefore less likely to act. They also experience more stress and higher rates of depression.

5780 has been a year in which we have been made painfully aware of how out of control we are.

That I am delivering this D’var Torah in front of a camera while you experience it on a screen epitomizes what we have experienced in every dimension of our lives.

We entered this pandemic with so little knowledge of how to protect ourselves and each other.  Two hundred thousand people in this country alone have died, including the loved ones of members of our community.  Many of us have been unable to be present with sick or dying loved ones.

We have been physically isolated from one another, which takes such a high mental toll. Anxiety levels are high, raising risks of psychological illness and suicide.

With a shrinking economy, dedicated workers have lost jobs. Record numbers of people are relying on food banks.

Our country has erupted in civil unrest over the still-unresolved racism in our society. And we have felt helpless in the face of police violence, rioting, and a general feeling of social unrest.

Whatever our personal politics, we have felt exasperated at the seeming lack of understanding compassion, and common sense demonstrated by our opponents.

And for the last month, we have faced fires and dangerously unhealthy smoke that prevented us from even going outside.

So much is out of our control!

…or at least it feels that way. Arguably, we are no more or less in control than ever. We have always been subject to the laws of nature. Biology, physics, chemistry, human nature – none of these has changed. The universe continues to behave exactly as it always has since the beginning of time. Our perspective has caused the locus of control to shift towards the external.

The awesome, terrifying prayer, Unetaneh Tokef, captures this sense of powerlessness. After reading a list of our actions over the past year from the Book of Remembrance, God assembles us like sheep before a shepherd. As we pass by, God counts us and determines our fate for the year to come.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed:

How many will pass on, and how many will be born;

who will live and who will die…

who by fire and who by water…

who by hunger and who by thirst;

who by earthquake and who by plague…

who will be impoverished and who will be enriched…

But the book, with its sentence, is closed to us.  We did not know, one year ago, that plague and fire had been written down. Nor could we have. We do not know what is written for next year.

If we read closely, we see that there is no explicit connection between our deeds, the judgment, and the sentence. While there may be a spiritual ledger of our actions, our destiny in the upcoming year is independent. The locus of control in the prayer is entirely external. Our actions do not determine our destiny.

But wait. There is an asterisk. When we finish listing the possible fates that await us, we shout out our response:

Uteshuvah utefilah utzedakah ma’avirin et ro’a hagezeirah.

“Repentance, Prayer, and Charity turn aside the severity of the decree.” 

I cannot change fate, but I can make a difference in how it impacts myself and others. The deck has been shuffled and the cards dealt, but I can still control how I play them.

While we are living through a time in which we feel that we have very little control, our history should offer some comfort. This is surely not the first time we have faced such challenges.

In countless ways, human beings are better suited to coping than ever before. Researchers around the world are racing to develop vaccines in what will be, if expectations are met, record time.

Just 10 to 15 years ago, we did not have the technological capacity to shift school, work, and even religion online.

Medicine, science, and history have taught us so much about how to keep each other safe. Health care workers on the front lines, along with public health experts, have quickly learned and adapted to better care for those who have become sick.

Human beings are resilient, and the the Jewish people especially so. We have experienced so much external adversity, faced persecution beyond our control. We are still here because we have never given up on our ability to have an impact on our destiny.

Our Jewish tradition has always emphasized free will, that we are not supposed to be the objects of history, but rather its subjects. And, that we have a role to play in the world’s redemption.

Teshuvah, Tefilah, Tzedakah – Repentance, Prayer, and Charity. None of these will make the virus go away. They will not bring about a cure, nor hasten its development.

But they do offer answers to how we can control our fate.

Teshuvah – Repentance. I can always be better. I can work on my flaws and correct my mistakes. How I behaved yesterday does not have to determine how I will behave tomorrow. This is a lifetime project, but it is one that puts me in control of how I experience that life – whatever unexpected things may befall me.

Tefilah – Worship. This is deeply personal. Reaching out, spiritually, to that which is beyond us. God, the Divine, the universe, however you conceive It. Jewish worship combines elements of gratitude, self-reflection, petition, and penitence. It is how we develop a rich inner life and offers a way to be more centered. 

Tzedakah – It means charity. It means righteousness. And it means justice. Fundamentally, tzedakah is about taking care of each other. I have responsibilities to my fellow human beings – those who are part of my community and beyond. Especially at times of great crisis such as we are experiencing, I have the ability to effect not only my own experience, but that of others.

Right now, there are so many who are far worse off than I am. I would suggest that taking care of others’ needs leaves us feeling more empowered, more in control even, than taking care of ourselves.

While it may feel that we have no control, there is so much that we can do avert the severity of the decree.

God willing, we have all been written for life, health, success, prosperity, and love for the coming year.

But whatever the decree—whether the dealer has dealt us Pocket Aces or a 2 and 7 of mismatched suits—let us dedicate ourselves to affecting change in our own lives, the lives of others, and even the fate of the entire world. 

Shanah Tovah Umetukah. May we all be sealed for a good and sweet new year.

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Five Sets of Clothes and 300 Shekels of Silver – Vayigash 5779

This morning’s Torah portion takes place in Egypt.  Joseph’s brothers have returned to Egypt to buy food.  This time they have brought Benjamin with them, following the instructions of the Viceroy, who happens to be their long lost brother Joseph in disguise, although they do not know it yet.

Once again, Joseph tests his brothers to determine if they have changed since they were kids.  He hides a silver goblet in Benjamin’s sack of grain, accuses him of theft, and declares that he will keep him imprisoned.

As Parashat Vayigash opens, Judah steps forward to make an impassioned plea on behalf of his youngest sibling.  News of Benjamin’s captivity would surely bring about their father’s death.  And furthermore, Judah has pledged his own life for the lad’s.  Judah begs Joseph to take him captive and release Benjamin.

Convinced that the brothers have sincerely repented, Joseph finally reveals his identity in an emotional, tearful reunion.  Joseph instructs his brothers to go back to the land of Canaan, gather up their belongings, and move the entire household down to Egypt, where they will be provided for.

Then, Joseph sends them away with gifts for the journey.

(כב) לְכֻלָּ֥ם נָתַ֛ן לָאִ֖ישׁ חֲלִפ֣וֹת שְׂמָלֹ֑ת וּלְבִנְיָמִ֤ן נָתַן֙ שְׁלֹ֣שׁ מֵא֣וֹת כֶּ֔סֶף וְחָמֵ֖שׁ חֲלִפֹ֥ת שְׂמָלֹֽת׃

To all of them he gave each man changes of raiment; but to Benjamin he gave three hundred shekels of silver, and five changes of raiment.  (Gen. 45:22)

What is Joseph thinking?  What possible reason could he have to give Benjamin favorable treatment?  Is this not the exact kind of behavior that led to so much suffering in the past?

When they were kids, Jacob favored Joseph over all of the others.  He loved him more.  He did not make him work out in the fields.  Jacob even gave Joseph the infamous “Coat of Many Colors,” which symbolized everything that the brothers hated about him.

Joseph is now repeating the exact same provocations.  Not only does Joseph favor Benjamin, he does so with clothing.  That detail had to have registered with their siblings.  What is going on?  Is Joseph naive, or cruel?

Neither.  It is another test.  Joseph is not done with his brothers.  So far, he has applied the pressure directly to see if the brothers will take responsibility for each other when confronted with an outside threat.  They have passed this test.

Now Joseph sends them back into the wilderness, unsupervised, with a brother who has been given special treatment.  It will be easy enough for Benjamin to get “lost” or “eaten by a wild animal” on the way.  He has recreated the conditions under which they sinned many years earlier.

But Joseph does not want them to fail.  Two verses later, he undermines the purity of his test by warning them to behave.

וַיְשַׁלַּ֥ח אֶת־אֶחָ֖יו וַיֵּלֵ֑כוּ וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֔ם אַֽל־תִּרְגְּז֖וּ בַּדָּֽרֶךְ׃

As he sent his brothers off on their way, he told them, “Do not be quarrelsome on the way.”  (Gen. 45:24)

But that does not tell us why Joseph chose to favor Benjamin in this particular way. Why does Joseph favor Benjamin with these specific gifts?  Why five sets of clothing and 300 shekels of silver?

The Talmud (BT Megillah 16b) asks about the clothing.  “Is it possible that Joseph would stumble in the very thing that had led to his own suffering?”  The Talmudic Sage Rav teaches that Joseph has a very good reason to present Benjamin with five sets of clothing.  Through prophecy, Joseph knows that many generations in the future, a famous descendant of Benjamin will appear before a King wearing five articles of clothing.  Do you know who it is?

וּמָרְדֳּכַי יָצָא מִלִּפְנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ בִּלְבוּשׁ מַלְכוּת תְּכֵלֶת וָחוּר וַעֲטֶרֶת זָהָב גְּדוֹלָה וְתַכְרִיךְ בּוּץ וְאַרְגָּמָן וְהָעִיר שׁוּשָׁן צָהֲלָה וְשָׂמֵחָה.

And Mordecai went forth from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue (1) and white (2), and with a great crown of gold (3), and with a rob of fine linen (4) and purple (5); and the city of Shushan shouted and was glad.  (Esther 8:15)

By giving him five sets of clothes, says the Talmud, Joseph offers this hint to Benjamin.  Your offspring are destined for greatness.

What about the 300 shekels of silver?  A medieval Spanish commentator named Rabbeinu Bahya offers a creative answer.  Once again, Joseph is sending a hidden message, this time to all of his brothers.  In this case, it is a message about their guilt.  Bear with me, as his argument is built on several details and involves a math equation.

Here is the first detail.  The Talmud (BT Gittin 44a) rules that if a Jewish slave owner sells his slave to a non-Jew, he can be forced to pay a penalty of up to ten times the price of the slave in order to redeem him, and then he must set the slave free.

Since slaves owned by Jews were obligated to observe many of the mitzvot, selling such a slave to a non-Jew who would not permit their continued observance would be particularly harsh.  That is why the Rabbis of the Talmud impose such a harsh penalty.  That is the first detail: a tenfold penalty for selling a slave to a Gentile.

The second detail is from the Book of Exodus.  

אִם־עֶ֛בֶד יִגַּ֥ח הַשּׁ֖וֹר א֣וֹ אָמָ֑ה כֶּ֣סֶף ׀ שְׁלֹשִׁ֣ים שְׁקָלִ֗ים יִתֵּן֙ לַֽאדֹנָ֔יו וְהַשּׁ֖וֹר יִסָּקֵֽל׃

But if the ox gores a slave, male or female, he shall pay thirty shekels of silver to the master, and the ox shall be stoned.  (Exodus 21:32)

This sets the value of a slave at 30 shekels of silver.

Joseph was sold into slavery by ten of his brothers.  Who did they sell him to?  A wandering band of Ishmaelites, i.e. non-Jews.  If the value of a slave is 30 shekels of silver, and the penalty for selling a slave to a non-Jew is ten times the sale price, what is the total penalty?  It is basic math.  30 x 10 = 300 shekels of silver, payable by each of the ten brothers.

Benjamin, Joseph’s younger brother, was not involved in the sale, so he has no obligation to pay the penalty.  When Joseph, in his joy at being reunited with his family, decides to give gifts to all of his brothers, he settles on the convenient number of 300 shekels.  This erases the ten brothers’ debt to him.  Benjamin, who has no debt, winds up with 300 shekels in his pocket.

This is a creative answer to why Joseph would place such a potential stumbling block in his brothers’ path.  It was no stumbling block at all.

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September 11, 2018

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The Ship of Theseus – Rosh Hashanah 5779

You may recall the stories of the ancient Greek hero, Thesesus.  He is the legendary founder of Athens.  Among his many adventures, Theseus’ most famous exploit is his defeat of the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull beast that dwelled in the labyrinth created by Daedalus on the Isle of Crete.  

He returned home with the rescued youth of Athens on a ship with thirty oars.  The people of Athens, to commemorate Theseus’ great victory, preserved the ship in the Athenian harbor to serve as a memorial.

According to the ancient Greek and Roman historian, Plutarch, the ship was maintained for several centuries.  As we all know, things age, especially ships kept in the salty water, and humid air of the Mediterranean.  Over times, the wooden planks of Theseus’ ship began to rot.  They were replaced, as needed.  This went on for years, then decades, and then centuries.

Eventually, Plutarch explains, the ship gave rise to a question posed by the philosophers: If every single plank, oar, rudder, and piece of rigging from Theseus’ original ship has been replaced, can it still be considered to be Theseus’ ship?

This question came to be known as the Ship of Theseus paradox.

Let’s extend the paradox to rock and roll.

Quiet Riot is a heavy metal band from my childhood.  I remember listening to their 1983 hit, Bang Your Head, on the school bus with my friend Brian when I was in second grade.  We would bank our heads against the padded seat in front of us whenever they got to the chorus.

When Quiet Riot plays Bang Your Head today, they sound just like I remembered them, even though the only band member that was with them in 1983 is the drummer, and even he was not part of the founding lineup.  Are they still Quiet Riot?

It is a deep philosophical quandary.

Let’s shift the question to the human body.  We each are made up of about ten trillion cells.  It is often claimed that it takes seven years for every cell in the human body to regenerate itself.

It turns out, that is not quite true.  Our cells die and are regenerated at different rates.  The cells of the stomach lining, for example, are replaced every couple of weeks.  The same is true of our skin.  The liver takes about two years.  Bones take about ten years to regenerate.  Cardiomyocytes, in the heart, regenerate at about 1% per year, but the rate slows as we age.  A seventy five year old person would still have more than half of the heart cells that he had at birth.  For some parts of our body -Tooth enamel, the cells on the inner lens of the eye, and the neurons of the cerebral cortex–the cells we are born with have to last our entire lives.

On average, though, we could say that we are approximately eleven to fifteen years old.

I am in my 40’s.  Does that mean I am on my third life, or does who I am transcend the physical parts of which I am comprised? 

These are really questions about the nature of identity.  Am I the collected sum my parts?  If so, perhaps the gradual replacement of those parts transforms me into a new person.  Or maybe, since the same DNA directs the regeneration of each of my cells, I remain the same person.  My DNA is the genetic algorithm that defines me.

Or, perhaps identity has nothing to do with the physical body.  Perhaps identity is rooted in consciousness, summarized succinctly by Descartes’ Cogito ergo sum – “I think, therefore I am.”

Although still in the realm of science fiction, we could imagine the future possibility that a person’s consciousness could be uploaded into a computer, or into an artificial body.  Would this be the same person?

Might consciousness have something to do with the soul?

Maybe each moment in a person’s life is a distinct slice of existence, a solitary point in space-time, with no two slices being the same.  We are constantly changing and reforming into new entities.

Or, we could go four-dimensional, and imagine a series of slices stacked together, forming a river through time in which each individual slice is distinct from a three dimensional perspective, but identical from a four-dimensional perspective.

It is enough to make you want to “bang your head.”

Our Jewish tradition asks a similar question.  Am I the same person, year after year, throughout my life?  The answer: it is up to me.

The great medieval Rabbi, physician, philosopher, and community leader, Maimonides, suggests a number of practices that those who are truly serious about teshuvah, repentance, might undertake.  Those practices include: crying out loud to God with real tears, going out of one’s way to avoid situations in one has earlier sinned, and even possibly going so far as to pick up and move to a new city.  Finally, Maimonides suggests that a would-be-penitent might change his or her name, as if to say, “I am a different person.  I am no longer the one who perpetrated those misdeeds.” (Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah, 2:4)

This is kind of the opposite of the Ship of Theseus.  The person’s physical body has remained exactly the same, but the identity is new.

These practices that Maimonides mentions are really just superficial changes.  Real teshuvah, he explains in detail, involves a much deeper transformation.

In 1944, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote a book called Halakhic Man.  In it, he connects a human being’s capacity to create to teshuvah.  He says that repentance is itself an act of self-creation.

The severing of one’s psychic identity with one’s previous ‘I,’ and the creation of a new ‘I,’ possessor of a new consciousness, a new heart and spirit, different desires, longings, goals—this is the meaning of that repentance compounded of regret over the past and resolve over the future. (110)

In short, a person who achieves teshuvah creates herself as a new individual.

Imagine a sinner.  In other words, every one of us.  That person is characterized by the term rasha – wicked.  What does it take for that person to no longer be a rasha?  Two things: regret and resolve.  The first step, regret, is about the past.  It is when I recognize and feel shame about something I have done.  

The action itself cannot be erased.  The question is: what does the action mean in the story of my life?

If I do not change, I will continue on my course as the same person, as the same rasha.  My past behaviors, personality traits, and desires will continue to direct me.  It is as if I have lost my free will.  I will continue to sin, and my sins will accumulate and become harder and harder to shed.  Rav Soloveitchik describes this person “as the random example of the biological species.”  (127)

The second step in teshuvah is resolve.  Resolve is about the future.  It is “an absolute decision of the will and intellect together” to “terminate [a person’s] past identity and assume a new identity for the future.”  (112)

With resolve, something miraculous occurs.  The future changes the past.  That sin, which prompted such feelings of regret, no longer continues, through inertia, to its inevitable conclusion.  I am no longer trapped in destructive patterns of behavior.  “Such a man is no longer a prisoner of time but is his own master.”  (127)  He creates a new universe.

My regret for the sin I have committed has become the catalyst for self-transformation.  The ability to change meaning of the sin in my past through teshuvah, says Rav Soloveitchik, is the essence of human free will.

Now, when I tell my story, I look to that low point as my wake-up call to change my ways.  My sin becomes a merit.  This is what the Talmud means when it teaches: “Great is repentance, for it causes deliberate sins to be accounted to [a person] as meritorious deeds.”  (BT Yoma 86b)

Think about this from a parent’s perspective.  We have to allow our children to make mistakes.  We have to recognize their need to test limits, even if we want to throw them out the window.  It is an essential part of their development.  We even need to allow them to behave in ways that can be harmful to other people.  

We also have to make sure that our kids face the consequences of their actions.  That is the only way for them to mature into resilient human beings with a solid ethical foundation.  If we shield our children from errors, they will grow into weak adults, unable to take charge of their destiny.

It is only by making mistakes that we have the opportunity to grow.  The Talmud teaches “in the place where repentant sinners stand, the wholly righteous cannot stand.”  (BT Berakhot 34b)

The midrash (Genesis Rabbah 1:4) teaches that, even before the creation of the physical world, God created teshuvah.  It is built-in to human identity.  Rav Soloveitchik adds that teshuvah is the key to a human’s ability to create as a partner with God.

A person is creative; he was endowed with the power to create at his very inception.  When he finds himself in a situation of sin, he takes advantage of his creative capacity, returns to God, and becomes a creator and self-fashioner.  Man, through repentance, creates himself, his own “I.”  (113)

This sounds great.  But is it true?  Can we really stop the inertia of destructive behavior and transform ourselves? ?

If I look at my resolutions from previous High Holidays, can I honestly say that I have succeeded?  Am I a new person from the person I was one year ago, five years ago?  Have I created a new “I?”

Every night, the Hassidic Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev would examine his heart.  He would review the day, considering everything he had done, every interaction, every moment.  As he was only human, he would inevitably discover a flaw of some sort.  Then he would announce out loud: “Levi Yitzchak will not do this again!”

Then he would pause and reflect: “Levi Yitzchak said exactly the same thing yesterday!”

To which he would add: “Yesterday Levi Yitzchak did not speak the truth, but he does speak the truth today.”  (Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, Vol. I, p. 218)

This sounds a little more realistic.

The first instance of teshuvah in the Torah occurs between brothers.  Joseph is the Viceroy of Egypt, tasked with guiding the nation through seven years of famine.  He is in disguise when his brothers come begging for food.

To test them, Joseph accuses his brothers of being spies and throws them in jail for three days.  Then he keeps Simeon as a hostage, and sends the others back to their father in the Land of Canaan.  “Do not return,” he says, “unless you bring your youngest brother, Benjamin, with you!”

When they eventually come back for more food, Benjamin in tow, Joseph continues the test.  He plants a silver goblet in Benjamin’s sack of grain and has them arrested.  “Return to your father in peace,” he orders, “but Benjamin must remain here in Egypt as my prisoner!”

Joseph has reproduced the exact circumstances from twenty years earlier when they returned home to their father without their brother.

You will recall that it was Judah who devised the plan to sell Joseph into slavery.  Now, it is again Judah who steps forward.  “Take me as your prisoner and slave, and let Benjamin return to our father.  For I cannot bear to return to him without the boy.”

Maimonides defines teshuvah gemurah, complete repentance, in the following way:  When a person is found in the same circumstances, able to commit the same crime, and yet does not–that is complete repentance.

Judah has become a new man.  He, along with the other brothers, are not the same people that they were twenty years earlier.  Perhaps that is why Joseph, after revealing himself, says “it was not you who sent me here, but God.”  (Genesis 45:8)

Regret leads the brothers to resolve to change.  They rewrite the meaning of their earlier mistreatment of Joseph in their own narratives.  They are not the same siblings who banished their brother.  Since these are different men standing before him, Joseph cannot hold them accountable.  He forgives them. 

The Ship of Theseus paradox is not an analog for a human being.  The ship was placed in the Athenian Harbor to remind future generations of what Theseus once did.  Its meaning and memory is static.  Regardless of how much a philosopher bangs his head against the problem, those tasked with maintaining the ship do not want it to change.

We are the opposite.  Our bodies may remain basically the same from one moment to the next, but our purpose, as human beings fashioned in God’s image, is to be dynamic.

Rosh Hashanah celebrates Creation.  While most of our liturgy focuses on God’s Creation of the World, there is another aspect of Creation which is at least as important.  We often describe human beings as partners with God in Creation.

This rolls off the tongue easily, and sounds inspiring.  But what does it really mean for a human being to create—to produce something out of nothing—to change the nature of reality?

That is what teshuvah can be.  An opportunity not only to create a new “I,” but to create a new world.  That is the aspect of  being human that is God-like.  It is the possibility to create.  But to be Creators, we must look at what we have done with open eyes and brutal honesty.

I note those moments when I could have been better.

I discern the patterns of repeated mistakes.

I feel regret.

Am I prepared to change?

Can I resolve to become a new “I”?

Am I ready to create a new world?

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

David P. Goldman, “The Jewish Idea of Freedom” in Ḥakirah 20, 2015 – (http://www.hakirah.org/Vol20Goldman.pdf)

Ilana Kurshan, If All the Seas Were Ink

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Birth of Forgiveness (Vayigash 5775) – (http://rabbisacks.org/birth-forgiveness-vayigash-5775/#_ftnref2)

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man

Neal Stephenson, Anathem

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October 1, 2016

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Shimon Peres, z”l: Did I bring more good to the world today, or bad? – Nitzavim 5776

The entire world this week mourns the passing of Shimon Peres, alav hashalom, who died Wednesday at 93 years of age.  Many obituaries have been written in the past few days about him, which I encourage all of us to read.

Peres was involved in the creation, building and flourishing of the State of Israel more than any other person.  As a young man, Peres was active in the Haganah and became a close advisor and protege to David Ben Gurion.  He was responsible for breaking the siege and acquiring military equipment in the War of Independence.  Peres built up the military during the early years of the state.  He led behind the scenes diplomacy with France leading up to the 1956 Suez war.  Then, he was in charge of creating Israel’s nuclear program in the 1960’s.

In the years after the Six Day War, Peres encouraged Jewish settlement in the West Bank, although he eventually came to see it as an obstacle to peace.  He, along with Yitzchak Rabin, was an architect of the Oslo Accords, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Peres was an early and constant promoter of technology.  He saw economic growth and cooperation as the path towards closer relations and eventual peace with other nations, including Israel’s enemies.

Shimon Peres served in the Knesset for nearly five decades, and held every major position in government, including Prime Minister and President.

In his last public interview, conducted on August 31, Peres spoke about the exercise of power.

You have to decide either to be a giver or a taker. The biggest mistake is if you’ll use the power to take. The greatest wisdom is if you give.

That, he explains, has been the secret to America’s great success.  And it is has driven his approach to building stronger connections between Israel and other nations.  Peres shared a story in which he was recently meeting with Vladimir Putin, whom he described as a very good friend.  Peres rebuked him for being a taker rather than a giver.

“You behave like a czar,” [he] said…

“What did the czars do? They developed two cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow, as a showcase. Whatever you want, you will find there. The rest of Russia is like Nigeria covered with snow. Your people are dying. You don’t give them life. You think they’ll forgive you?”

“Why is America great?” I asked him. “Because they were givers. Why is Europe in trouble? Because they are takers. America is giving; people think it’s because they are generous. I think it’s because they are wise. If you give, you create friends. The most beneficial investment is making friends.”

“America had the guts to take the Marshall Plan, a huge piece of their GNP that they gave to this dying Europe. And in this way, they have shown that this is the best investment in the world.”

A cultural Zionist, Shimon Peres nevertheless believed strongly that Zionism had to be rooted in timeless Jewish values, and felt that the current generation had gone off track from that ideal.

But Peres was always an optimist.  Respected by everyone across the political spectrum, he has been Israel’s chief visionary for peace for the last two decades.  It was a hope that he never gave up.

Peres recently reached out to meet with Micah Goodman, a philosopher and teacher at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.  Goodman is the most prominent writer on Jewish philosophy in Israel today.  A few years ago, he wrote a best-seller entitled The Secrets of the Guide for the Perplexed about Moses Maimonides.  (Only in Israel would a book like that be a best seller.)  It was recently translated into English as Maimonides and the Book that Changed Judaism.

Peres wanted to meet with Goodman, whom he described as his teacher, to discuss Maimonides.

“I find myself in his apartment in Tel Aviv,” Mr. Goodman recalled. “He is wearing his jeans. He wants to understand Maimonides.

“He told me that before he goes to sleep he thinks to himself, ‘Did I bring more good to the world today, or bad?’ He kept a balance sheet. He was like a 16-year-old idealist. At 93.”

That question, “Did I bring more good to the world today, or bad?” summarizes the entire theme of the High Holidays.  For a 93 year old man to retain that sense of mission and responsibility is incredible.  Shimon Peres’ entire life is evidence that this question has always driven him, from earlier times when he was building up Israel’s capacity to survive and thrive, to more recent times when it had achieved power and found itself in a position from which it could strive for peace.

I suspect that the teaching by Maimonides to which Peres is referring is from the Mishneh Torah, in his section on Teshuvah.  (Hilchot Teshuvah 2:1,3-4) Maimonides writes:

Each and every person has merits and sins. A person whose merits exceed his sins is [termed] righteous. A person whose sins exceed his merits is [termed] wicked. If [his sins and merits] are equal, he is termed a Beinoni.

The same applies to an entire country. If the merits of all its inhabitants exceed their sins, it is [termed] righteous. If their sins are greater, it is [termed] wicked. The same applies to the entire world.

Just as a person’s merits and sins are weighed at the time of his death, so, too, the sins of every inhabitant of the world together with his merits are weighed on the festival of Rosh HaShanah. If one is found righteous, his [verdict] is sealed for life. If one is found wicked, his [verdict] is sealed for death. A Beinoni’s verdict remains tentative until Yom Kippur. If he repents, his [verdict] is sealed for life. If not, his [verdict] is sealed for death…

And this is the teaching which I believe Peres found so inspirational:

…Accordingly, throughout the entire year, a person should always look at himself as equally balanced between merit and sin and the world as equally balanced between merit and sin. If he performs one sin, he tips his balance and that of the entire world to the side of guilt and brings destruction upon himself.

And so Peres, to his dying day, asked himself, “Did I bring more good to the world today, or bad?”

Is this a question that each of us can ask ourselves?  Maybe it is only a question for great individuals.  The rest of us can be free to go about our lives day by day, just trying to get by.

This morning’s Torah portion, Parashat Nitzavim, would suggest otherwise.  It opens with Moses leading the Israelites through a covenant ceremony.  He begins:

Atem nitzavim hayom kulkhem lifnei Adonai Eloheikhem.  You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord you God

It is important to note that Moses begins with the general – “all of you.”

He then specifies the leaders: “your tribal heads, your elders and your officials.”

But then, to underscore the point that this message is not reserved for the elites in society, Moses continues: “all the men of Israel, your children, your wives.”

Finally, even those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder are included: “even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer.”  (29:9-11)

Moses goes on to specify that it is not just the generation about to enter the Promised Land that stands there.  Rather, all of their descendants, up to and including us, are present to affirm the Jewish people’s covenant with God.

Parashat Nitzavim is always read on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah.  It is no accident.  We are meant to hear this opening line.  The word that stands out is hayom.  Today.  Moses’ instruction is delivered in the second person, in the present tense.  He is addressing us, in this moment.

He then tells a story of sin, punishment, exile, and then return, invoking the word teshuvah seven times.  The parashah ends with Moses’ exhortation to us: “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Choose life…”  (30:19)

The question that guided Shimon Peres’ life, “Did I bring more good to the world today, or bad?” can be traced back to Maimonides, and even further back to Moses in the Torah itself.  It is a question not just for the great among us.  But truly, it is a question that each of us must ask ourselves.

And not only as we approach the new year.  It is a question for hayom.  Today.

I wonder if we might take this lesson from the great Shimon Peres and make this a regular question that each one of us reflects on at the end of every day.  “Did I bring more good to the world today, or bad?”  Did I tip the scales of my own life towards merit, and thus save the world?  When presented with the choice, did I choose life?

Shanah Tovah.

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Feeding the Wolf – Rosh Hashanah 5776

Every year, as I prepare for the High Holidays, I struggle with how to make our experience here together transformational in some way.  Because I know that, for myself, and probably most of us, we come back year after year with mostly the same sets of issues and concerns.  So I ask myself :  What can I, as a Rabbi on Rosh Hashanah, say that will help us to become the human beings we would like to see ourselves as?

The great prayer which the Cantor chants during the repetition of the Musaf Amidah, Unetaneh Tokef, creates an impression of human powerlessness.  We appear before God on Rosh Hashanah, described as Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment.  God is judge, prosecutor. expert, and witness.  God knows all, every forgotten thing, reading it out of the Book of Remembrance.  The imagery shifts, and now God is a shepherd, and we are sheep, passing underneath the staff.  A final shift, and God is decreeing the fates of every living thing in the coming year.

These three scenes convey an impression of our utter lack of control.  There is nothing whatsoever that we can do to determine our destiny.  Everything is in the hand of God.

As frightening as this imagery might seem to many of us, it does convey a truth of human existence.  So much of who we are, our personality and characteristics, are pre-determined.  Whether by genetics or the family and community into which we were born, i.e. nature or nurture – we do not get to decide our core personalities, our innate strengths and weaknesses.

Even the ability to make choices is something of an illusion.  Much of our mental activity takes place on a subconscious level, determined by neurohormonal loops that regulate our emotions.  While it seems to us that we have free will and are making choices for ourselves, in reality the outcome is predetermined by our biochemical makeup.

Religious language that speaks of our utter lack of control over our fate and our total dependence on God would seem to reinforce this notion.  Drawing upon biblical imagery, our machzor describes human life as insignificant, using terms like “a broken shard, withering grass, a shriveled flower, a passing shadow, a fading cloud, a fleeting breeze, scattered dust, and a vanishing dream,” in contrast to God, who is “the sovereign, living God, ever-present.”  All that we can do is appeal to God to be loving and merciful with us.

We come into the new year wrestling with ourselves.  We have spent the past month inspecting our deeds, focusing on where we have gone off course, and striving to make amends with each other, with ourselves, and with God.  And it is hard work.  To approach someone we have wronged with openness and honesty takes tremendous courage.  Our tradition provides us this annual opportunity to face our imperfections.

However, even when we have bravely performed real teshuvah, there is little we can do to change our core personalities, to affect the neuropathways in our brains that regulate all behavior.  Pathways that we have spent a lifetime establishing.  It is not a simple thing to rewire the brain.

The fact that we return annually to recite the same prayers and make the same confessions would seem to reinforce the notion that from year to year, most of us are the exact same people, struggling with the exact same character flaws.

So how can we make the celebration of the new year personally transformational?

A Cherokee legend teaches of a boy who got in a fight.  His parents send him to go speak with his grandfather.  The two of them go for a walk on a path through the forest.  The leaves of the trees and the soft breeze protect them from the heat of the noonday sun.  The two walk in silence, holding hands.

After a time the grandfather interrupts the silence.  “Grandson, there are two wolves fighting in my heart.  One wolf is good and does no harm.  He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended.  He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.  But the other wolf!  Ah!  He is full of anger.  The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper.  He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason.  He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great.  It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.  Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.”

Hearing the words of his grandfather the grandson is filled with fear.  With a tremor in his voice he asks, “Grandfather, which wolf will win the battle of your heart?”

To which he quietly responded, “The one I feed.”

We have Jewish terms that mirror these two wolves: the yetzer ha-tov and the yetzer ha-ra – the good inclination and the evil inclination.

A Talmudic sage teaches a similar lesson about what happens when we continue to feed our yetzer ha-ra.

Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri taught:  A person who tears his clothing in anger, or who breaks his utensils in anger or who throws coins in anger – consider him like someone who worships idols, for such is the art of the yetzer ha-ra.  Today it says, “Go do this.”  And tomorrow, it says “Go do that.” until finally it says “Go worship idols,”  And he goes and worships them.  (BT Shabbat 105b)

For the Rabbis, idol worship is the paradigm of evil and immorality.  It is the ultimate sin towards which the yetzer ha-ra drives us.  This midrash draws a causal connection between simple, everyday expressions of anger and the ultimate descent into depravity.

Another midrash teaches that Adam and Eve were created today, on Rosh Hashanah.  The Torah describes this moment using the verb vayyitzer ha-adam.  (Genesis 2:7) “God formed Adam.”   A Rabbi in the Talmud noticed that that the word vayyitzer is written in the Torah with two letter yud‘s.  This hints at the creation of two yetzer‘s.  Two inclinations, one for good and one for evil.  (BT Berachot 61a)

Thus the two inclinations, the two wolves, are part of us.  In both the Cherokee legend and the Jewish concept of two yetzarim, we have outsourced agency.  It is not we who personally direct our behavior.  External forces, which happen to reside within our hearts, are at fault.  But those forces cannot be eliminated, for as soon as we did so, we would cease to be human.

A another midrash teaches that after forming humanity, God looks at all creation and declares v’hinei tov me-od.  “Behold, it is very good.”  “Good” refers to the the good inclination.  “Very good” refers to the evil inclination.  “How can this be?” asks the midrash.  Because without the yetzer ha-ra a person would not build a house, get married, have children, or engage in commerce.  (Genesis Rabbah 9:7)

From a Jewish perspective, our goal must be to harness and control our inclinations, not to destroy them.  We are not expected to deny who we are, to utterly eliminate aspects of ourselves.  Neither are we allowed to complacently say, “this is just how God made me.  There is nothing I can do about it.”

Short of brain damage or a lobotomy, we cannot ever banish parts of our core personality, but we can encourage certain traits and discourage others.  As the grandfather acknowledges, while both wolves are always with us, it is we who feed them.

Let’s carry this metaphor a little further.  For each one of us, our wolves have unique appetites.  Some of our evil wolves feed on anger.  We are quick to lose our temper, to shout at family members or friends, to swear at drivers who do not signal before merging, or to judge others harshly without first pausing to consider their perspectives and motivations.

Some of our wolves feed on jealousy.  We compare our lives to others, and hold ourselves to unrealistic external standards.  We want what our neighbors have: their homes, cars, families, bodies, full heads of hair.

Some of our wolves feed on low self-esteem.  We downplay our successes and dwell on our failures.  We strive too hard to be liked.

Some of our wolves feed on lust, or addiction, or greed.

What do our good wolves like to eat?

In the middle of Unetaneh Tokef, in just seven words, the Mahzor hints that our fates may not be quite as out of our control as we thought.  Uteshuvah, utefilah, utzedakah ma-avirin et roa ha-g’zeirah.  “But repentance, prayer, and tzedakah can turn aside the severity of the decree.”

Although the decree cannot be erased, it can be redirected.  Perhaps therein lies the answer to our quandary – three actions that feed the good wolf, that can encourage our yetzer ha-tov to take control and direct our yetzer ha-ra.

First:  Teshuvah, repentance.  The path of teshuvah begins with being self-reflective, being willing to admit our weaknesses without blaming others and do the work that is necessary to repair our brokenness.  Teshuvah is ultimately an expression of hope that our loves ones can take us back, and that God will allow us to return.

Second:  Tefilah.  Prayer, but I would suggest that it is really about humility.  We are asked to recognize that there is more to existence than our own egos, to acknowledge the typically ignored blessings in our lives with a sense of gratitude, to turn to God with a sense of wonder and awe at a world that is simultaneously both accessible and unfathomable.

Third:  Tzedakah.  Translated alternately as justice, righteousness, and charity.  We act with the knowledge that what we typically consider to be our possessions do not fully belong to us.  Tzedakah asks us to be generous to others with our time and our resources, to accept that we have obligations to one another, a duty to bring justice and righteousness into the world, and ultimately, to place the needs of others ahead of our own.

Teshuvah, Tefilah, and Tzedakah:  three feasts for the good wolf.

So although our personalities and characters may be sealed, our strengths and weaknesses determined for us by some complicated mixture of nature and nurture, even our fate in the coming year out of our control, our tradition teaches us that we have a say in the outcome of the battle taking place in our hearts.

It is about conditioning.  Through the small, seemingly insignificant choices from day to day, we in fact have the ability to train our characters.  We can cultivate qualities that make us better people and redirect qualities that separate us from each other and from God.

So as we celebrate Rosh Hashanah and enter the Aseret Y’mei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance leading up to Yom Kippur, let’s each ask ourselves: What do my wolves like to eat?  How have I been feeding them?  And what can I do in the year ahead to give the good wolf the upper hand in the battle for my heart?

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September 16, 2015

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For the Love of Israel – Rosh Hashanah 5776

I am a lover of Israel.  And so it is with great love that I share the following:  This summer has been a tough one for Israel.  I am not talking about the Iran deal.

It started in June, when the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes, one of the holiest sights in Israel for Christians, was burned down in an arson attack.  Spray-painted on the wall were the words, in Hebrew, v’ha-elilim karot yikareitun – and their gods will be cut down, lifted out of our siddur from the prayer Aleinu.

On July 30, at the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade, an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed six people, one of whom, a teenage girl named Shira Banki, died.  The murderer had been released from prison just three weeks previously after finishing a ten year sentence for stabbing several people at a gay pride parade in 2005.

The next day, Jewish arsonists firebombed the home of the Dawabsheh family in the Palestinian town of Duma, killing 18 month old Ali, and both of his parents.  Four year old Ahmad is the only survivor, with burns covering 60% of his body.  Hebrew graffiti was found on a nearby wall with the spray-painted words nekamah – “revenge,” and y’chi hamelekh ha-mashiach – “long live the the king, the messiah.”

These are not just stand-alone incidents.  Over the last several years, there has been a rise in Jewish extremism and terrorism.  Although often cloaked in religious garb, it is classic right-wing nationalism.

Without a doubt, these actions do not represent the attitudes of the vast majority of Israelis, or of Jews around the world.  Politicians and national leaders from all parties, as well as leading Rabbis, were quick to publicly denounce violence, call for the criminals to be brought to justice, and pay condolence calls to the families of the victims.  The Israeli public was appropriately outraged.

But when it comes to taking action, it is a different story.  Israel has been slow to address the problem of Jewish extremism and racism.

Over the past three and a half years, more than forty churches and mosques have been burned in Israel, usually accompanied by biblical passages scrawled on a nearby wall.  Until this past June’s attack, Israeli security services had not arrested a single person.  No arrests have been made for the murder of the Dawabsheh family.  Not a single Rabbi was detained for encouraging students to commit violence.

Do any of us have any doubts whatsoever about the capabilities of Israeli security services to take these kinds of Jewish hate-crimes seriously?  Where were the task forces and undercover informants?

Just this summer, under pressure, the Shin Bet began using “Administrative Detention” to apprehend Jewish terrorist suspects.  It is a tool that has been using against Palestinians, with great success, for many years.  Why did they wait so long?

It did not happen earlier because there was no political will to do so.  Policies by every single Israeli government for the past thirty five years to settle the West Bank with 400,000 Jews has quietly fanned the flames of Jewish nationalist extremism.  The perpetrators are widely known to come from extreme religious nationalist settlements which often have a lot of political clout.

We cannot complain about moderate Muslims’ failure to take on Islamic extremism while we ignore our own Jewish extremism.

I know that some of us are thinking, ‘but what about all of the Islamic fundamentalism around the world?  How can we even compare what a few religious wackos are doing to what is going in Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, and many other parts of the Muslim world?’  You are right, there is no comparison.

But they are not our own people.  We are talking about family.

How do we, the American Jewish community, react when we hear about Jewish racism and Jewish terrorism?

There are some in the Jewish community that will never say anything critical of Israel, at least not publicly.  Others have bought in to the anti-Zionist rhetoric that portrays Israel as a gross violator of human rights.

These two groups tend to be made up of the people who yell the loudest, creating what I suspect is a false depiction of a divided American Jewish community.

Anyone who says that Israel has a perfect human rights record is either blind or does not know what ethics is.  Anyone who claims that Israel is one of the worst human rights abusers in the world is either naive or antisemitic.

Both extremists are guilty of the same assumption – that Israel must be perfect.  Those who don’t see the blemishes and those who only see the blemishes are both blind.

But we can admit it: there are blemishes.  Israel has some serious challenges.  It struggles with poverty and unaffordable housing costs.  It faces sharp social divides between different ethnic and religious streams.  It has a problem with large numbers of immigrants trying to cross the border illegally.  There is deeply-felt racism, conflict, and distrust between ethnic and religious groups.  Hundreds of thousands of people who had lived on the land for generations were displaced when new immigrants arrived.

These problems should all sound familiar, because these are all challenges that are faced: here in America, as well as in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and Australia.  In other words, nations, by definition, struggle to balance the pursuit of security and prosperity with the pursuit of justice and morality.

We don’t give up on America because it is not perfect.  Nor should we give up on Israel because it is not perfect.

The Torah reading for this morning, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, begins with Isaac’s birth.  Abraham circumcises his son on the eighth day, and then, at his weaning a few years later, throws a party on his behalf.  At the party, Sarah, Isaac’s mother, sees Ishmael, Abraham’s other son, playing – m’tzachek.  Something bothers her, and she tells her husband to banish Ishmael and his mother Hagar from the household, “for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

Abraham is distressed, but God reassures him that all will be okay.  ‘Do what your wife tells you to do.  I will make Ishmael the father of a great nation as well.’

Sarah and Abraham represent two distinct parental concerns.  Sarah looks at Ishmael and sees in him a threat.  One midrash explains that Ishmael was bragging that he, as the eldest son, would receive a double inheritance.  Other commentators suggest that the word m’tzachek implies that Ishmael was involved in idolatry, and that Sarah was concerned that he would be a corrupting influence.  Sarah is the mother who will protect her son from any perceived outside threat, regardless of collateral damage.

Abraham, in contrast, is concerned about the effect that favoring Isaac will have on Hagar and Ishmael.  He knows that that there will be a personal and moral toll if he defends Isaac at all costs.  He understands Sarah’s desire to protect her son, but he also sees the suffering that will ensue on the part of Hagar and Ishmael.  So he is paralyzed, unable to take action until God breaks the stalemate in his conscience by assuring Abraham that Ishmael will not only survive, but will thrive.  In the end, God affirms both Sarah’s protectiveness of Isaac and Abraham’s concern for Ishmael.

When I think about Israel today, I hear Sarah and Abraham’s voices arguing in my mind and in my heart.

We have got to look out for the Jewish people, because if we do not, nobody else will.  And, we have to be concerned with morality in our treatment of the other.

In a perfect world, there would be no contradiction between these two values.  In a perfect world, Sarah and Abraham would be of one mind when it came to matters affecting their son.  In an almost perfect world, God would step in to offer a solution when our self-protection conflicts with our ethics.

Alas, we do not live in a perfect world, or even a near-perfect world.

As I said earlier, I am a lover of Israel.  But there are different kinds of love.

Any good love affair begins with infatuation.  Our beloved glows.  Everything she does is perfect.

After Israel gained independence in 1948, Jews around the world were infatuated.  Israel could do no wrong.  What was the narrative?  Israel had risen out of the ashes of the Holocaust.  The New Jewish soldier-farmers fought a scrappy war of Independence against all odds to enable the Jewish people to come out of exile and reclaim our place in history.

In 1967, Israel’s sneak attack and victory against menacing Arab armies created an illusion of invincibility.  It was David against Goliath, and we were David.

In 1982, that image began to crumble.  Israel invaded another country in a war that was optional.  It was not, like the others, a fight for survival.  The IDF found itself an occupying power in Southern Lebanon.  Atrocities were committed.  While Israeli soldiers looked the other way, Lebanese Christian Phalangists murdered over two thousand civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut.

International condemnation followed, and the Israeli public was furious.  Ariel Sharon, the Defense Minister at the time, was found to be personally responsible by an Israeli commission of inquiry, and was forced to resign.

The Lebanon war was followed a few years later by the First Intifada, Oslo, the Second Intifada, The Gaza pullout and subsequent wars with Hamas.  You know the stories.

It has been a complicated thirty years in which Israel is no longer David to the Arabs’ Goliath.  Israel has struggled to balance security and morality as a powerful nation with dangerous enemies and sovereignty over people who refuse to accept it.

And all of this occurs in the spotlight, under a magnifying glass.  I do not need to tell you this.  So what kind of love do we bring with us?

For those of you (I do have to exclude myself) born before 1967, your foundational memories of Israel are of a nation that can do no wrong.  The American Jewish community, especially after the Six Day War, was infatuated.

But for those of you born after 1982 (again, I have to exclude myself) – the only Israel you have known is one that has struggled, in the most public way, with being depicted as an immoral aggressor.  You never had a chance to experience infatuation and fall in love.

In recent years, the rise of the BDS movement on many college campuses has created such an oppressive atmosphere for Jewish students, that some feel the need to hide their identity, and not get involved in Jewish life altogether.  The rest are put in the position, as 18-22 year olds, of defending Israel on behalf of the rest of the American Jewish community.  It is a tremendously unfair burden.

Some American Jews are so turned off by all of the attention that they check out.  Why should I care?  Why should I get emotionally invested in something that attracts so much conflict?  For those Jews, Israel does not play much of a role in their identity.

That is unfortunate.  Israel has been central to the Jewish people throughout our existence.  When God first spoke to Abraham, it was to send him to an unknown Promised Land where his descendants would one day constitute a nation that would serve as a blessing to the world.  When our ancestors left Egypt, their destination was Israel.  At the Covenant at Mount Sinai, we committed to accepting the Torah and the mitzvot and God committed to settling us in the land of Israel in peace and prosperity.

And so, Ahavat Yisrael, the love of Israel, both the people and the land, has been central to Jewish identity from our formation as a family, as a religion, and as a nation.

But what kind of love?

Not infatuation that blinds us to seeing our beloved as she truly is.  Real love is not blind.  Real love requires our eyes to be wide open.  Real love is conditional.  I love you because of who you are, not regardless of who you are.

So what would a mature, lasting love of Israel look like?

On Rosh Hashanah, as we celebrate the beginning of the new year, we engage in Cheshbon HaNefesh, taking stock of our souls – not just as individuals, but also as a people.  What does Cheshbon HaNegesh mean on a national scale?

It means lively and respectful debate about where we are as a Jewish people, here in our local community, in America, and as a global Jewish community.  Israel, as our eternal homeland, must be part of that debate.

Unfortunately, so many aspects of Israel have become polarized.  If you are a Republican, then you are against the Iran deal, against Obama, and for Netanyahu.  If you are a Democrat, you are for the Iran deal, for Obama, and against Netanyahu.  We have to reject this kind of “issue packaging.”  A person can be against the Iran deal and still like Obama.  A person can be for the Iran deal and against the settlements.  It is possible to be disappointed in both Netanyahu and Obama, or to be fans of both (not very likely).  We have allowed the loudest voices to polarize the Jewish community in a very unhealthy way.

Let me tell you about the Israel I love.  As you may know, my family and I recently returned from a five month sabbatical, most of which we spent living in Israel, so I’ve had a lot of time recently to think about this.

I love that Israel provides an opportunity for the Jewish people to bring the values of our tradition into the real world.  When we read the Bible and pay close attention, we realize that Jewish sovereignty in the Bible ultimately failed.  The Torah presents a model of a society that, in addition to an elaborate system of ritual worship, emphasizes justice, ethical social and economic interactions, and righteous treatment of all members of society, including resident non-Israelites.  The biblical Prophets are constantly railing against both the leaders and the populace for failing to live up to the standards established by the Torah.

The modern State of Israel, as a democratic Jewish State, offers us an opportunity to bring Jewish values into the world, with all of the messy challenges that are entailed.  And while not perfect, I think Israel’s record is pretty strong, especially considering how many challenges it faces.

I also love the expansion of interest in Jewish life that has been taking place in Israel in recent years.  More and more secular Israelis are turning back to our religious tradition and our texts for spiritual fulfillment.  In contrast to a shrinking non-Orthodox Judaism in America, the liberal movements in Israel are growing.

I love all the ways that usually go unreported that different groups interact with each other positively.  In June, Dana and I participated in the Zarzir Night Run.  Zarzir is a Bedouin Village in the Jezreel Valley close to where we lived in Kibbutz Chanaton.  Our kids drove through Zarzir every day on their way to and from school.  On full moons during the summer time, a running store on the outskirts of Zarzir hosts a night run on paths through the fields.  Well over a thousand men and women showed up, including religious Jews, secular Jews, and Arabs.

I love that Israel is expanding it’s national parks, and making them more accessible.  I love that Hebrew has been revived as a spoken language.  I love that Israel has an entire month dedicated to books.  I love Israeli pop music.

There are also ways in which I wish Israel did better, and it is love that makes me care so much about where Israel is off the mark.

I am horrified that there are racist Jews, and even more so that there are members of our people who commit terror.  And I am disappointed that Israel’s leaders have been so slow to do anything about it.

I wish that the government supported education equally for all Israelis.  Currently, there are different funding levels depending on which public school system a child is learning in.  Arab Israeli students receive far less education spending than their Jewish counterparts.  That is wrong.

I cannot stand that the Rabbanut is allowed to impose its will on the rest of the country in matters pertaining to marriage, divorce, and conversion.  I wish the Israeli government recognized the rights of non-Orthodox movements so that, for example, a wedding officiated by one of my Masorti colleagues would be recognized by the State.

I wish the government did not continue to encourage new Jewish settlement in the West Bank.  I think it makes peace more difficult and sends unspoken messages that encourage extremist behavior.

Israel is a complex country that is far from perfect.  And yet, to me, it is special and unique.  I think it ought to be that way for all Jews.  So I am not asking any of us to love everything.  I am asking all of us to find what it is that we love about Israel, and love it even more.  And if we can identify aspects of Israel that we think are off the mark, it is ok to disagree, as long as we are not disagreeable.