Ruth of La Mancha

I posted a derashah on this topic for Shavuos a few years ago, but I think the core idea bears repeating with this column that appears in this week's Toronto Torah:

Ruth had been ruined by her life with Jews; her wealthy husband had died, along with his brother and father, and the family’s wealth was gone. Now her mother-in-law was preparing to return to a place where Moabites were persona non grata - and Ruth insisted on accompanying her.

Naami was astounded; what practical gain could be in store for an impoverished, friendless Moabite in a Jewish land? But Ruth insisted, “Don’t plead with me to leave you, to cease following you . Where you will go, I will go.” The book of Ruth doesn’t tell us what inspired her, only that she was idealistically certain that this was the nation and the G-d to whom she would commit her life.

Judaism tends toward the pragmatic: We focus on this world rather than meditate on reward in the afterlife. We save lives in violation of most mitzvot. We recognize civil government.

Nonetheless, Judaism has a long history of honouring the quixotic charge of the idealist: Avraham and Sarah welcomed strangers in the name of Gd. The Jews declared, “We will do and we will hear,” pledging obedience to a law they did not yet know. Our vision of Mashiach is of a pauper riding a donkey.

To borrow a passage from Man of La Mancha, “Maddest of all [is] to see life as it is, and not as it should be.” This idealism is a most Jewish concept; Judaism nods to the pragmatic, but it reveres the idealistic.

We have just finished commemorating a seven-week trek during which an entire nation was challenged to metamorphose from slaves into idealists. A slave cannot afford ideology, and throughout the desert trek a slavish pragmatism was quite visible; the constant attention to food and water reflected a mind that could not see past its most immediate needs. But, eventually, this nation stood at Sinai and established that idealism which would become Ruth’s mark.

On Shavuot we read Ruth’s story, and challenge ourselves: Will we establish that idealism, too?

Are you in Toronto for Shavuos?

If you are...





I always said that when I got out of the Shul Rabbinate I would stop staying up all night for Shavuos...

Unschooling and a Culture of Instruction

[Please read this: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper stands up for Israel at the G8]

This morning, toward the end of Psukei d'Zimra, I was invited to give a dvar torah during Musaf. I agreed reluctantly; I don't like to speak without planning, but I also believe it's important to take advantage of opportunities to discuss Torah.

I talked about the classic description (Shabbos 88b) of HaShem holding Mount Sinai over the heads of the Jews, demanding that they accept the Torah, even though they had already volunteered that they would accept the Torah. I offered my own take: That the Jews needed a Culture of Instruction, in addition to the Culture of Volition instituted by their ancestors with their independent pursuit of Gd. Voluntary acceptance of Torah is wonderful, but it must be complemented by a feeling that the will of Gd is compulsory.

The same idea applies to the gemara's assertion (Kiddushin 31a) that there is more reward for fulfilling a mitzvah one has been commanded to do, than in fulfilling a mitzvah one has accepted voluntarily. Certainly, there are several explanations for this idea, but one may be that the Culture of Instruction is critical to service of Gd.

Someone who serves Gd voluntarily, because the ideology resonates with her or because the mitzvos make sense to her, might well reject some particular philosophical point or practical commandment. Volition is wonderful for its elevated use of Free Will, but it must be supplemented with Instruction.

This connects with the end of Parshat Bamidbar (4:19) as well, in which we are told that each Levi was assigned a particular task in taking care of the Mishkan. Sforno comments there that no Levite could rush ahead and take a job based on wanting to do it; each person was given his role. To me, that's part of the same idea; although certain jobs were, indeed, up for those who volunteered, the Culture of Instruction was part of the Mishkan as well.

This afternoon, someone approached me in shul to tell me about a contrasting idea found in an article in today's National Post: Not a Textbook Education talks about "unschooling", or the idea of having children learn through day-to-day life activities rather than through studying required texts. I know little about the field; from the article, it sounds like children are given a lot of latitude, living an unregimented day, and are exposed to different subjects on some level. They then choose what to pursue, and how to pursue it.

I don't know just how extreme this is in practice, so I can't comment on the system. Is it truly open-ended? If a child says, "I don't want to learn how to multiply," or, "I'm not interested in understanding civics", is he left to use a calculator and ignore the political process? If so, I'd be pretty uncomfortable; I do think the Torah's Culture of Instruction is needed, because ignorance of certain fields will make a person a poor citizen.

On the other hand, any parent could tell you that an extreme Culture of Instruction could be just as bad for a child; stifling creativity, mandating a system in which Volition is worthless, will get us nowhere.

So that's what's on my mind this evening.

Staying up on Shavuos night

I always thought that when I left the shul rabbinate I would stop staying up through Shavuos night. The practice wrecks the rest of Yom Tov, it’s hard to really learn anything after a certain time of night, my wife then needs to bring the kids to shul herself the next morning… it really seems like a case of יצא שכרו בהפסדו.

Nonetheless, this year I will be up all night once again, Gd-willing; I’m set to deliver shiurim to several different groups around Thornhill, and so I’ll be teaching or walking all through the night. Assuming my cold lets up and my voice holds out, anyway.

Why in the world am I doing this?

I guess part of it is the standard expectation for my position, just like it was when I was in the rabbinate.
And part of it is that when the emails started coming, inviting me to teach on Shavuos night, I was too flattered to decline.
And part of it is the inertia that comes with minhag; I’ve been staying up Shavuos night for decades already.

But I do wish I could break free of this practice, with its exhaustion and its corrosive effect on Shavuos. Nonetheless, it has stayed, like the beard and the white shirt/charcoal gray slacks/tie wardrobe, things I thought I would drop upon leaving the rabbinate, until leaving the rabbinate meant entering the rosh kollelate. [Re: Wardrobe - I realized the other day that I have worn a button-down shirt, slacks and a tie every waking minute I have been in Toronto since last August. This is frightening, and I use that word precisely.]

And yet, and yet – there is a positive side to the sleepless night, if the shiurim go well: The walk home after minyan in the morning.

That next morning, with the early light and the fresh air and the chirping birds and the fulfilled high that comes from a night well-spent and an untrammeled shacharis/musaf davened with real kavvanah and a sense of genuine kabbalas hatorah and free of the chatter and clutter of a later minyan… that feels right. It feels good. Maybe even better than hitting the mattress afterward.

Maybe that’s also why I keep coming back. And maybe it will be enough to make me do it again next year, in ירושלים.

Genius

[This week’s Haveil Havalim is here!]

Some musings on Genius as we prepare to receive the Torah again at Sinai.

In yeshiva, we often identified certain guys as Geniuses. But what does that mean? The term seems like a double-edged sword to me.

Of course, calling someone a genius can be sincere praise, a way to express admiration for someone else’s acumen or to explain why we trust his assessment/prescription for a given situation. “I’ll side with him, he’s the genius on this.” “She’s just an absolute genius.” And so on.

But there’s another use of this compliment, with an added layer of meaning. Sometimes we call people geniuses – natural talents, blessed with special abilities, gifted, whatever – in order to absolve ourselves of any responsibility to match their accomplishments.

I do this. Sometimes I ask myself, “Why haven’t I accomplished X?”
• Why has that teenager been able to publish a novel?
• Why is he so adept at understanding Rav Chaim Brisker? Why can he cite Rav Tzaddok so smoothly?
• Why can she play the piano so well?
And the unspoken ending of each of these questions is, “and not me?”

And my answer is, “Well, they’re geniuses/prodigies/idiots savant…”

In those cases, “Genius” is not a compliment, but a cop-out. I say, “Well, they’re geniuses,” rather than face the fact that they put in more time than I did, that they attacked their goals with greater focus and energy, that they earned their special abilities with real sweat while I directed my own attention elsewhere.

I’ve long liked to think that my childhood aptitude tests showed I was of normal or substandard IQ. Part of that is because I love the Rocky Balboa narrative of coming from behind and toughing it out, but part of it is because it absolves me of responsibility. “What do you want from me? I’m no genius.”

But, really, that’s a road to nowhere.

The message of מתן תורה, of the Creator coming to give us the Torah, is that we can do it, we can fulfill it, and no special genius is required.

And the message of our נעשה ונשמע acceptance, that Sinaitic commitment of, “We will fulfill it, and we will learn it,” is the hubris of one who is willing to try, who doesn’t write off Avraham and Sarah as untouchable geniuses but instead is willing to go for the goal.

Maybe those other people, the Avraham and Sarah of my day, are geniuses? Maybe their accomplishments are not replicable? Could be. But it won’t hurt for me to try.

Better for me not to write off others’ accomplishments as irrelevant, but rather to draw inspiration from their accomplishments, and use them as a spur for my own.

Four Ruths

Getting really close to the culmination of Sefirah and still counting, I’m glad to say. Hope the same is true for you…

This week I’m delivering a second shiur on Ruth, and as I prepare it I keep mulling the way that we see ourselves, perhaps our best selves, perhaps our wished-for selves, in this heroine. Here are four diverse examples:

Boaz, a person of wealth and generosity, says of Ruth (3:11) כי יודע כל שער עמי כי אשת חיל את – which may be translated, “Everyone knows that you are a woman of generosity.” [For more on translations of chayil, listen to the audio of the shiur I expect to teach tomorrow night, “Ruth as the Eishet Chayil.” Link to appear here when it is available, Gd-willing.]

John Keats was victim of a life of pain and loneliness, and in his Ode to a Nightingale he described those same traits in our heroine: “The sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home she stood in tears amid the alien corn.”

Juan Valera, who adores the greatness of a pure heart, writes in Pepita Jimenez, “I bestowed on them the sweet humility and the devotion of Ruth.”

And Richard Beer-Hofmann, in his Der Junge David (this translation comes from Liptzin’s “Beer-Hofmann’s image of Ruth,” which appeared in Jewish Bible Quarterly 19:4, Summer ‘91), sees Ruth offering advice to her great-grandson, King David. The words he puts in her mouth reflect his own views on Death:
Your end, like the end of all of us, is ultimately to become dung of the earth.
Perhaps a legend, a song, a melody, remembered for a while and wafted away before long.
And yet, like Gd’s stars circling in their assigned orbits above us, you - David - must complete your course here below, carrying on your assigned destiny.

I don’t know that any of these observers overreach; all of their visions are borne out in the woman at the center of the megilah we read on Shavuot. I’m just fascinated by their identification with a person whose moment on the biblical stage is brief, whose lines are terse, and whose role is so veiled in hints and mystery.

Who gave us the Torah?

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

My article in the Shavuot To Go, soon to be published by YU/Center for the Jewish Future [update: now available here], looks at the special association between Avraham and Matan Torah [the presentation of the Torah at Sinai], and what it can teach us about our own relationship with Torah. Before that article sees the light of day, though, I’d like to hear what you would do with the midrash in Shemot Rabbah that was my jumping-off point.

Shemot Rabbah 28 describes Moshe on Har Sinai, and an attempt by ministering angels to deny him the Torah. The starting point of defiant angels appears on Shabbat 88b-89a as well, but there Moshe replies to the angels that the Torah is meant for us, not for them. Here, Gd provides the answer, and it’s rather different:

באותה שעה בקשו מלאכי השרת לפגוע במשה עשה בו הקב"ה קלסטירין של פניו של משה דומה לאברהם, אמר להם הקב"ה אי אתם מתביישין הימנו לא זהו שירדתם אצלו ואכלתם בתוך ביתו, אמר הקב"ה למשה לא נתנה לך תורה אלא בזכות אברהם שנאמר לקחת מתנות באדם, ואין אדם האמור כאן אלא אברהם שנאמר (יהושע יד) האדם הגדול בענקים

At that moment the ministering angels sought to harm Moshe. G-d shaped Moshe’s face to appear like that of Avraham, and G-d said to the angels, “Are you not embarrassed before him? Is this not the one to whom you descended and in whose home you ate?” G-d then turned to Moshe and said, “The Torah was given to you only in the merit of Avraham.”

I was confused by this midrash, on several levels:
• We are taught (Bava Metzia 86b) that the malachim did not actually eat in Avraham’s home; rather, they merely pretended to do so. If that is true, then they owed Avraham no debt.

• We are further taught (Bava Metzia ibid) that the malachim who visited Avraham were Michael, Raphael and Gavriel. The malachim who protested were a set of anonymous “מלאכי השרת, ministering angels.” Are we to assume that the general angels should have felt gratitude for Avraham’s service of their three compatriots?

• What connection is there between offering food to the angels, and forcing them to forego their right to the Torah?

You can go to my article to read my answer, but I’d like to know what you make of this.

Ruth and Barack, the Ideal and the Real, and Jerusalem

Ruth the Moabite had been ruined by her association with Jews; she had married a wealthy young man, and then he had died, along with his brother and his father. The family’s wealth had disappeared. Now her mother-in-law Naami was preparing to abandon her and return to a place where Moabites were persona non grata - and Ruth insisted on accompanying her to that hostile land, without a penny to their names.

Naami was astounded; what could this young girl want with her, and her people? What practical gain could be in store for an impoverished, friendless Moabite in a Jewish land?

But Ruth insisted, “אל תפגעי בי לעזבך לשוב מאחריך, Don’t plead with me to leave you, to cease following you . Where you will go, I will go. Where you will sleep, I will sleep. Your nation is my nation; your Gd is my Gd. Where you will die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May Gd act against me, and may Gd do more against me, if anything but death will separate us.”

The megilah doesn’t tell us what inspired Ruth, only that she was idealistically certain that this was the nation and the Gd to which she would commit her life. באשר תלכי אלך – Where you will go, I will go.


Contrast Ruth’s idealism with the survivalist pragmatism of a man named Barak, a Jewish general of some 3200 years ago.

In Barak’s day, the Jews lived under oppression by the Canaanites. They cried out to Gd, and their prophetess, Devorah, commanded Barak in the name of HaShem to lead a rebellion against the Canaanites. She even gave him a military strategy, instructing him which tribes to take with him, and where to engage in battle.

But Barak, a realist, was intimidated by the task, and he refused to lead alone. Instead, Barak offered Devorah a bargain which reversed the language of Ruth’s idealism. He said, “אם תלכי עמי והלכתי ואם לא תלכי לא אלך, If you will go with me then I will go, but if you will not go then I will not go either.”


Judaism tends toward Barak’s pragmatism:
• We focus on this world rather than meditate on the reward waiting for us in the afterlife;
• We save lives even in violation of the Torah’s mitzvot;
• We recognize the authority of civil government;
• We override Rabbinic law regularly for שעת הדחק, cases of need.

Nonetheless, Judaism has a long history of honoring the quixotic charge of the idealist:
• Avraham and Sarah set up an Eshel inn at the northern tip of the Negev desert, and welcomed travelers in the name of HaShem;
• The Jews at Har Sinai declared “נעשה ונשמע, We will do and we will hear,” blindly pledging obedience to a law they did not yet know;
• Our vision of mashiach is of an עני ורוכב על החמור, a pauper riding a donkey, anointed for his piety rather than for the pragmatic values of wealth or social status.

To borrow a passage from Man of La Mancha, “Maddest of all [is] to see life as it is, and not as it should be. ” This emphasis on idealism, on seeing the world as it should be, is a most Jewish concept; Judaism nods to the pragmatic, but it reveres the idealistic.


We have just completed a seven-week journey from Egyptian slavery to Divine revelation at Sinai, a trek during which an entire nation was challenged to metamorphose from Barak-style pragmatists to Ruth-style idealists.

A slave cannot afford ideology; he is too busy trying to satisfy his master and avoid harm. Through the desert trip that slavish pragmatism was quite visible, too; the constant attention to food and water reflected a mind that could not see past its most immediate needs.

But, eventually, this nation stood at Sinai and established that same נעשה ונשמע attitude which would become Ruth’s mantra. On Shavuos we read Ruth’s story for many reasons, but surely one is her willingness to embrace a Torah about which she knew little, her personal נעשה ונשמע.


Certainly, a Ruth-based yearning for the ideal can set the Jew at odds with the world in which he lives and with which he must make some peace; for an example, look no further than the news of the past two weeks, regarding the international stances on the future of Yerushalayim.

The United States, led by a different Barack, is opting for a pragmatic, survivalist stance; ditto for Europe, as expressed last week by France. They look at Yerushalayim on a practical level: The Arab world will never be satisfied with a Middle East that does not incorporate a state of Palestine, with its capital in Yerushalayim. The wrath of that Arab world, seen from a pragmatist’s perspective, is a lot more dangerous than the outrage of the Jewish world – so guess who wins?

But we know how a Devorah would reply: Yerushalayim is not a random hilltop, it is the ideal of ideals within Judaism!

The walls of Yerushalayim encircle critical elements of Jewish history; just two weeks ago they found yet another shard with an inscription dating back to the period of the first Beit haMikdash, apparently marked with the name of a king mentioned in Tanach.

Those walls also encircle the essence of Jewish unity, a city owned not by any one tribe but by the nation as a whole. To this city, Jews would flock for aliyah laregel every Yom Tov. To this city, Jews would bring their maaser sheni tithe, beautifying the markets with their produce. And to this city, Jews would come every Shavuot with their Bikkurim/first fruits and give them to the kohanim.

And those walls also encircle the essence of Jewish spirituality, the Beit haMikdash and its associated triple-corded bond between individual and nation and HaShem. It is not for nothing that the sages speak of a Yerushalayim shel Maalah, a heavenly Yerushalayim parallel to Yerushalayim here on earth, a city above in which HaShem can be found when we gather in the city below.

For the Jew, descendant of the idealistic Ruth, Yerushalayim is the indispensable ideal, and this sets him at odds with the world’s survivalists, whether the military Barak of Tanach or the presidential Barack of today.

To be a descendant of idealistic Ruth often means to be at odds with the world’s pragmatic Baraks, and we must find a way to mediate between those poles.


Today we celebrate Shavuot, and we also mark the engagement of __________ and _________.

Building a Jewish home requires a blending of the real and the ideal, but the ideal must always reign supreme.

In the beginning it’s all ideal; the thoughts of how married life will look are untempered by real experience, the conversations are about ideas more than they are about reality. Certainly, an engaged couple deals with the specific facts of the wedding, of where to live, of what sort of home to have, but it’s without the nuts and bolts that make up daily life, the price of yogurt, the questions of who will prepare dinner, mow the lawn and take out the trash, the specifics of paying bills on time. Then, once a couple becomes responsible for a home, for each other, for shared life, that’s when reality kicks in and ideology can be a struggle.

To build a strong Jewish home requires both Ruth and Barak, but more Ruth than Barak. Yes, the Jewish family must make concessions to reality, but the ideological commitment of building a Jewish home, of having active Torah study at every meal, of having Shabbat guests and a tzedakah box and sefarim, must remain primary.

[Here I'll cut the web version, since the rest is about this couple in particular.]

-
No notes to add for this one, for lack of time, but there's a lot more to say sometime on Judaism, the real and the ideal...

Titles vs. Substance, and Prayers for Shavuot night

Common sense dictates that marketing is no substitute for substance, but that doesn’t stop people, including rabbis and synagogues, from investing far too much of their time and energy into advertising instead of into תוכן (content).

Example: Fledgling rabbis often give their shiurim provocative or mystifying titles, as a way of drawing an audience. The problem is that if the class isn’t as fascinating as the title, the result is (1) a dissatisfied audience, and (2) an audience that won’t trust your titles in the future.

I learned that lesson early on. In my second year in the rabbinate, I gave a talk before Rosh HaShanah on the 13 attributes of Divine mercy. I wanted a title that would be more engaging than “13 attributes of mercy,” so I billed it as “Diamonds and Water Polo.” The talk did have something to do with each of those (viewing the 13 as 13 facets of a single diamond, or as individual members of a team, a la 13 players on a water polo team, oriented toward the same goal), but it really was not all that relevant, and I recall one couple who were turned off by it.

I was reminded of this when a friend showed me satiric tefillot for Shavuos night; among the practices they pick on is that of the hyper-dramatic and misleading title.

There is a standard prayer upon entering/exiting the beit midrash (Berachot 28b - translation from here):
“It should be your will, the Lord my God, that no mishap should occur because of me, and I should not err in a halakhic matter and my colleagues will rejoice over me, and I should not declare the impure pure or the pure impure, and my colleagues should not err in a halakhic matter and I will rejoice over them."

What does he say when he leaves? "I am thankful to You, the Lord my God, that You have placed my lot among those who dwell in the beit midrash and not with those who hang around street corners. They arise early, and I arise early. I arise early for words of Torah, and they arise early for idle matters. I toil, and they toil. I toil and receive reward, and they toil and do not receive reward. I run, and they run. I run to the life of the world to come, and they run to the pit of destruction.

These prayers for Shavuot night are a comedic riff on those tefillot, with segments of Tefillat haDerech (the wayfarer’s prayer) interspersed as well; the translation is my own:

Before study:

May it be Your will that no mishap should occur because of the gabbaim, that the drinks should be hot and the borekas should be excellent all night, and save me from poor and unidentifiable borekas lest I err and declare the cheese potato and the potato cheese, and lest I stumble and be seduced to attend a shiur with a provocative, promising title like, “Was Goliath a dwarf?” only to reveal that Goliath was actually a giant.

And save me from shiurim which often come into this world, the titles of which end with the word, “Really?” as in, “Yosef the Tzaddik: Really?” the contents of which are not like their exterior, which, counter to their title, are actually frighteningly dull.

And lest I accidentally enter a shiur with an explosive title like, “The historiography of the book of Kings II in the light of deterministic research,” taught by a rabbi who is also a professor or a professor who is also a rabbi, the content of which is like their exterior, and not only is their title incomprehensible, but so is their content.

And may I merit to enter shiurim in which one can sleep from the first sentence to the last, such as, “The laws of borer on Shabbat,” or, “The view of the Ritva in the discussion of Pesach which occurs on Shabbat.” And make available to me a tall person who will sit before me and hide me while I sleep, and I will rejoice over him, and arrange a shorter person behind me, and he will rejoice over me.


And after study:

I am thankful to You, that You have have placed my lot among those who dwell in the back of the beit midrash, and not with those who sit in the first row, for I sleep and they sleep, I sleep for half of the shiur, including snoring, and they sleep for half a second and immediately nod to the speaker as though they are listening. I eat and they eat; I eat whenever I am able to escape to the dining room, and they eat the remnants that I leave for them. I am bored and they are bored; I am bored and read the advertisements in the Shabbat bulletins, and they are bored and they are bewildered by the boring source sheet before them.

And save me today and every day from a bad chazan who sings melodies at 4 AM, and from a bad friend who pokes my shoulders whenever I sleep, and from an abnormal prayer in the Carlebach style. And return me home in peace, speedily in our days, and make my wife’s cheesecake sweet in my mouth, Amen.

Choose Midbar (Derashah Bimidbar 5769)

In books, on stage and in film, the setting of a story is, itself, a character, providing a sense of realism, giving the actors options and limits, and interacting with them.

The same is true in the Torah; every backdrop is part of the story, whether Canaanite territory or Egyptian empire or Har Sinai or Mishkan. And with the start of a new chumash this morning we are introduced to another player: Midbar, Wilderness.


Of course, we’ve met the midbar before; the Jews already hungered for food and thirsted for water back in Parshat Beshalach, right after they crossed through Yam Suf. But that was a cameo appearance; the midbar was quickly subdued by Mun and Miriam’s well and Aharon’s clouds, and then fully eclipsed by Har Sinai and the Mishkan. Only as the Jews move away from Sinai does the midbar, the wilderness, come to the fore.


Watching our ancestors interact with the midbar setting teaches us valuable lessons:


The midbar offers a lesson in humility; in a wilderness, all beauty is natural, all artifice is overtaken by nature, all property is communal.

As the gemara explains, HaShem gives the Jews the torah in a midbar to teach that we need to be humble in order to receive the Torah. Certainly, Moshe already taught the Jews this lesson with his own modesty, but there is a difference between observing humility in Moshe and being enveloped in humility in an environment that declares, “All property is nothing.”


And a midbar offers a lesson in isolation; the Jews receive the Torah in the desert in order to afford them the opportunity to focus on this Divine gift without need to plant their fields, maintain their homes or engage in commerce. Indeed, in the midbar a large group of women established their homes at the Ohel Moed and devoted their days to Torah study.


Third, a midbar is tabula rasa, a blank slate on which our story can be scripted, an open canvas on which we can paint as we choose. In a desert wilderness, a society with neither incumbent wealth nor predetermined heirarchy, Ahaliav from the tribe of Dan can become master craftsman of the mishkan and a nation of slaves can demonstrate spiritual greatness.


No other biblical environment would have suited all of these ends – the humility, the isolation, and the tabula rasa:
• Canaanite Israel lacked isolation; the same was true for Egyptian slavery.
• The Mishkan was the opposite of humility, a grand construction outfitted with beautiful silver and gold and embroidery.

And so, this week, we meet the Midbar environment in which the Jews will work through their growing pains, enduring rebellions and hunger and suspicion while studying the Torah and achieving personal, tribal and national greatness.


Some might compare the midbar to childhood - at what other time in our lives have we accomplished so little, at what other time in our lives are we as unentangled from others, at what other time in our lives does the future lie so pliable before us? We are tempted to believe that childhood is the ideal, midbar-like time for a Jew to embrace Torah.

But I believe the comparison to childhood is a mistake of great consequence; people who believe they missed their chance in childhood abandon hope of change, instead of taking the opportunities that yet lie before them.

It is never too late. Always, we can return to the midbar, if not in practice then in state of mind.
• Always, we can develop humility.
• Always, we can pare down our distractions.
• And, always, we can envision life as a canvas on which to paint afresh and build great things.


Perhaps the best proof of this point is in that Jewish nation which entered the midbar. True, they were newly formed as a nation, but their slate was actually no cleaner than ours; they had a great and complex history behind them:
• They had been Avos and Imahos, patriarchs and matriarchs, a family with wars and treaties both without and within;
• They had been slaves, and they had seen their captors punished;
• They had been heroically persevering families as well as rescued damsels in distress;
• They had been idolaters, and they had stood at Sinai witnessing Divine revelation.

This was not a child-nation, emerging blinking into the sunlight for this time – but it was capable of nonetheless viewing its future as a blank slate, and creating a brilliant and enduring legacy for its descendants.


On the first morning of Shavuot, we precede the Torah reading with the public recitation of Akdamus, an Aramaic poem describing Divine might and introducing the Torah reading itself. Toward the beginning of the poem, we describe Gd creating the universe with the letter ה, a letter which is just a breath, the simplest exhalation, demonstrating that for Gd, creation is simple and the possibilities are infinite.

For us as human beings, creation is anything but simple and easy – but when we, like the Jews in the midbar, look at the world as a blank slate and an opportunity for accomplishment, then for us, too, there will be few limits.

-
Notes:
1. We are honoring an outstanding volunteer couple this Shabbos, and right before the Akdamus closer I will speak about them as people who view life as a blank slate. They are great people. And they also read this blog. Hi, JP!

2. Eruvin 54a comments on the intentional presentation of the Torah in a wilderness.

3. On creation of the world with a ה to signify Divine power, see Midrash Tehillim 62:1 and Bereishit Rabbah 12:2, but also see a different explanation in Menachot 29b that it’s about the possibility of return and repentance.

4. I actually wanted to make the whole derashah about the two different explanations of the ה-based creation, but had to give up late Friday morning when I just couldn't make it work. I am not terribly pleased with this derashah - I don't think it adds much to people's knowledge or gives new perspective, except the idea of setting as character and the point about the Jews not entering the midbar as a blank slate - but perhaps some other year.

Odds and Ends: Shavuos Reading

Shavuos is a tough holiday for being both rabbi and father. I had our older two kids sleep in my office Shavuos night so that they could daven with me at the 5 AM minyan, but after returning home and having a quick family seudah I was then off-limits to the world for a several hours, while the great rebbetzin managed the family. Then I was so thrown off of the old circadian rhythms that the rest of Yom Tov was a blur of naps and shiurim and speeches and davening, and I have to admit that I emerged feeling more than a little guilty about being unable to truly help. I think if I were not the rabbi, I probably wouldn’t stay up all night unless my children were old enough to join me.

During Yom Tov I did catch up on some books that had been waiting for me, though, and found some interesting things:

I finally got around to starting Gilead, and I liked it enough that I hope to finish it. The pace is slow and folksy (think Steinbecky, a Grapes of Wrath turtle crossing the road), not my favorite tempo, but I like the peek inside an old preacher’s mind. It rings true, so far; I could see myself sounding like that someday.

Thumbed through R’ Yitzchak Etshalom’s Between the Lines of the Bible. (I wonder if he realizes how many books on Amazon share this title?) This book surprised me, but not in a good way; I began it expecting to like it, and I just didn’t. His approach to modern commentary, as expressed in his early discussions of “Entering the Characters’ World,” just didn’t work for me. The lessons derived, such as regarding the sale of Yosef, seemed, by turns, either derivative or contrived.

Also looked over Naomi Graetz’s Silence is Deadly, and found that a more rewarding, if frightening, read. I’ll readily acknowledge that I was not aware of a few of the sources she brought to show that wife-beating was, at times, sanctioned by certain rabbinic leaders. Overall, she made a convincing case for the need for stronger rabbinic action to oppose this bestial phenomenon.
Lest this appear an across-the-board endorsement, I don’t agree with some of her premises. For example: At the start of the book Dr. Graetz attempts to read sanction for wife-beating into biblical texts, arguing that these texts influenced social acceptance of domestic violence, but (1) her reading runs counter to the texts themselves, and (2) because her readings are new, they can’t have been an historical influence.
I also don’t agree with her contention that rabbinic sanction could have framed society’s overall view of wife-beating. Given the book-acknowledged fact that the majority weight of the rabbinate came down harshly against this horrific violence, I don’t see how the minority view could be considered the source of this evil. I stick to my view that this violence is more a product of human malfunction than social approval/allowance.

And the new HaMaor came (and with a daring, hot-pink cover!). Although this Torah journal isn’t of my political bent, I find interesting ideas in some of their divrei torah, and I enjoy reading it.

At the end of this issue I found a remarkable letter on the current Conversion Controversy.
The letter itself is forgettable, making foolish, hearsay-based claims about conversion-over-the-telephone, but the opening paragraph, apparently tying together the Conversion Controversy and Global Warming, is what makes it interesting. It reads (rough translation):

The entire world trembles, we hear the greatest and most frightening earthquakes, stormy winds blow and overturn great cities, thousands and myriads are cast from their homes and the place of their dwellings and are killed and die from illness and hunger and thirst, and in general the weather patterns are changing and the places that had been coldest are warming and the ice and snow are melting, there is a great upheaval in the world, in all of its corners, and no one pays attention that new, never-before-seen things are happening. But all of this does not approach the spiritual and physical upheaval that is happening in the Holy Land, when there are those in Israel who accept converts…

I can’t quite put my finger on why I find this entertaining rather than sad. There must be something wrong with me.