Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote:

"The summer is drawing to its close. The earth receives the final glow of the sun and its fruits approach their full maturity. Everything that grows and lives seeks to extract the maximum benefit from the last rays of the year. the apple paints itself with its final shade of red, the wine receives its richest sparkle. The ground gives its last sap, the cornstalks grow to their limit. The bee seeks the last drop of honey in the flower before it vanishes. The squirrel drags the last grain of corn to his winter store. The returning swallow carries the last straw to its nest. There is no time to be lost; the end is in sight. The One will soon call..."   (Collected Writings, Volume II.)

What "One"? Which "One"?  Sh'ma Yisraeil, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. God is One.  "The One will soon call."  The month of Elul is drawing to a close. Five more days till the new moon of Tishrei, and Rosh HaShanah will be here. 

In the flurry of Labor Day weekend, school having started, a possible hurricane and last visits to the pool or the shore please do this also:  Please try to remember the dreams you have for yourself. What is left undone to reach your dreams? What needs to be done over again? What do you need to admit you will probably never accomplish? To where do you need to return to pick up the silver thread of a forgotten dream? 

The One who knows your dreams is waiting for you. This is the season for remembering.

Rabbi Landau

Recently I have enjoyed a brief but thoughtful email exchange with a congregant on topics relative to the High Holidays. Somehow, this very brief exchange touched on some very big ideas: the ridiculousness of believing that God has a body and looks like a human being, and the role of guilt and shame in teshuvah/repentance. Perhaps most interestingly, I was posed this thesis: that "our names initiate our estrangement to the world."

I have received permission to share with you the reply I made. I give it to you in its rough and unresolved form, edited only to protect personal details.

Yom Kippur must be exceptionally sweet and nostalgic for you, and awfully intellectually problematic, being as it is completely about self-subordination, regret if not shame, and the construct of redemption. I do personally make the translation between the anthropomorphized process the words describe, and a deeply internal process of transformation, a process which of course does not exist entirely in separation from the external world. I think the deeply personal experience of transformation is one of the definitions of the divine. And this process too is there right in the liturgy, and widely in the classic commentaries. Unless I misremember, even Rambam does not use the word boshet/shame to describe the interior experience of the "sinner," but rather words that mean regret and remorse. I have to double check that. I hope so. [Later: Rambam, in his chapter on accomplishing complete teshuvah, does not use the word for shame, though the Ra'avad, his most respected and accepted contemporaneous commentator, does.]

The commentators also do say specifically that God does not have a body, but rather that the Torah speaks in human language so that we humans can understand. This implies that Torah is poetic, a giant metaphor. I only wish that it was taught as such more widely.

Your question regarding naming is fascinating. Naming something makes it separate from Ein Sof in some way, largely because it limits it, or tries to limit it. [Ein Sof is one of the names of God, connoting infinitude in time and space.] Ein Sof itself means "without limit" or "without end," so anytime you name something you necessarily define its limit: "apple" is not "honey," it is apple. But the Source of apple and honey are the same. (Even bio-chemically.) Name also carries with it not only estrangement from the world, but also the very Source of the world, and the inherent possibility of reconnection to the Source that Aviva Zornberg dwells upon.

I believe Aviva Zornberg, an academic (psycho-analysis and literature) as well as a Hasid and a Torah Scholar, mentions Lacan [the coiner of the phrase "estrangement from the world] in the introduction to her latest book, Murmurings of the Deep. She tends to reconcile this personal estrangement from the world (which we all feel for one reason or another) with something I believe she would call God, by looking deeply at personal transformation and seeing the divine in it as I do. And as a Hasid and a profoundly observant Jew I know that she holds that names are alive, names of people and of things, carrying "spiritual DNA" much as our physical bodies carry physical DNA.

[…]

Shanah tovah!

Rabbi Stephen Landau

We read in this week's Torah portion, Ki Tetzei, that "If a guilty man (rasha'=Lit. "evil man") deserves to be beaten"...then there is a limit to how many lashes can be given. If he is lashed more then "your brother will be degraded in your eyes." First the offender is referred to as an evil one, but after punishment he becomes "your brother" once again. Thus we find that Torah is concerned with the dignity of even offenders, and we find in later Torah law that the rehabilitation of offenders is a controlling value.

When an offender has repented and suffered his properly administered punishment, one may not ever refer to him as an offender again. It is a violation to do so. This of course calls to mind the same law regarding referring to converts' former lives or religious affiliations. It is another example of the Torah's fine concern for human beings themselves, rejecting an overbearing preoccupation with their deeds, or misdeeds.

This moves us, at this time of year especially, to consider the meaning of forgiving others, as well as ourselves. Do we have what it takes to truly forgive someone who has apologized, to allow them as a new start with us? Do we have what it takes to forgive ourselves for the many ways we have fallen short of our own aspirations for ourselves? Will we allow ourselves a fresh start, returning to our highest selves? Will we allow ourselves the freedom to begin anew?

In fact, every moment is a new beginning. By the power given into us by God, we ourselves create our experience in every moment. God is the force that m'chadeish b'tuvo kol yom tamid ma'asei vereishit. God is the force that creates from nothing every single moment continually, and God has placed this force and this power within each of us. Each moment the choice is ours; we create the same experience we have always had, or we create a new one. That power of choice is one of the ways we participate with God in creating the world, and repairing the world.

It is in our hands, our hearts and our minds to choose and to create. Will we degrade ourselves and others by continual punishment, reprimand, remorse, grudges, vengefulness; or will we choose dignity for ourselves and others by a new creation, one of serenity, spiritual surrender, forgiveness, greater connection to each other, understanding, support, and love?

Shabbat Shalom.

Rabbi Stephen Landau

Excerpted from the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture...

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached -- their fundamental faith in human progress -- that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith -- if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war andpeace -- then we lose what's best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr.King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."

Let us reach for the world that ought to be -- that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.

For full text of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, visit http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/president-obama-we-can-build-a-just-and-lasting-peace.php?ref=mp

Who Should We Take Care Of ?

On Sunday December 14, 2008, about 120 Jews from Greater Hartford gathered at Tikvoh at the invitation of the Federation and JCRC. Our mission was to begin to face the suffering of our neighbors in poverty in Hartford. This is a version of the remarks I made at that meeting.

My charge is to try to explain--in 5 minutes or less, of course--why we're here as Jews. What can we say about our tradition which mobilizes us as Jews to solve the problem of poverty in Greater Hartford. As Jews-- not as businesspeople, or teachers, or any other identities we might carry--but as Jews.

This question of identity is central to our conversation this afternoon. When it comes to our caring, who is In, and who is Out? The questions are: Who do we take care of, how, and why?

Let me first set this in its broadest Jewish context. Our tradition unequivocally establishes the absolute inherent value of the life of every human based on our creation b'tzelem elohim-- in the image of G-d. This value is in fact absolute, meaning not relative. M.Sanhedrin 4:5 asks:  Why was humankind created "singular"? That is: the animals, plants, and even the lights in the heavens were all created in multiples, but not so humankind. Why? Answer: So no-one could say "my father is greater than your father." This mishna is teaching that we all are brothers and sisters of one father. Answer #2:  To tell the greatness of the Kadosh Baruch Hu (G-d).  Explanation: this first and singular human, adam harishon, is the mold from which G-d makes all other people. Still, from this one primordial human mold comes the infinite variety that is humanity.

These three ideas taken together--that all humans are created in the image of God, that we are all brothers and sisters with a single Father, and that we are all both the same and unique--these three combine to give us a most precious Jewish value: Respect for Human Dignity. The Hebrew is Kavod HaBriyot, grammatically plural. I render the phrase: Respect for the plurality of created beings. This implies that we ascribe Human Dignity to all humans, even if they are different from us.

But so what? So what if we think they're dignified and divine? How does affect how we act? What do we do?

We all know V'ahavta l'rei'cha kamocha--Love Your Neighbor As Yourself. But Elie Wiesel fleshes this out:

    The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.

    The opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

If we are to love our neighbors, we cannot be indifferent to their lives. And our Torah puts it like this: al ta'amod al dam reicha.  Do not stand idly by as your neighbor's blood is shed. Meaning: Do not be indifferent to the danger threatening your neighbor.

What danger? In our context today, this is the danger: It is taught that poverty causes death in six ways, among them: by threatening health, safety and learning. So we learn that we cannot stand idly by, indifferent to the threats which poverty poses against our neighbors' health, safety and learning. Further, we learn from Rabbi Akiva that if we are able to protect someone and we do not, it is as if we spilled their blood actively.

So far, I have purposely stayed away from the question of responding to poverty with money. This is because we must understand that it takes more than money to solve the problem of poverty as a social issue. Clearly, we are commanded to share our wealth and this takes many forms: tithing 10%, giving first fruits, leaving the corners of the fields and the fallen fruit in the vineyard. But this is tzedaka, not charity. Charity comes from the word caritas in Latin, implying a voluntary donation from the heart. Tzedaka is not voluntary; it is commanded. Tzedaka is justice, righteousness. The force of this commandment is that the giver learn justice, not just that the receiver get money. Maimonides taught us that  the highest form of Justice/tzedaka is to help another become independent of the need for charity. We are advised to partner with them in business, to help them get a job. This level of justice work requires us to become involved with someone, to know them, touch them, risk some kind of a relationship with them.

Consider this Talmudic story:  Rabban Gamliel was the aristocratic and somewhat autocratic Nasi--the leader-- of the Jewish people in the 2nd Century. He had a character flaw: he humiliated people he was entrusted to teach. Once, after he had humiliated Rabbi Yehoshuah yet again, the students rose in revolt and deposed Gamliel.  To his credit, Gamliel sought out Rabbi Yehoshuah in order to make amends.  He arrived at Yehoshuah's very humble home and was let in. He was somewhat surprised that the walls of the place were black. He said to Yehoshuah: I see by the black walls of your home that you must be a charcoal maker. Yehoshuah's reply is telling: Woe to generation over which you are the Nasi! You have no clue how your students live, by what means they support themselves, what trials they go through to succeed at the learning. The story helps teach that we'd benefit from tempering the tendency to superiority with a dose of really getting to know how the Other lives. We would benefit from relating to them.

We humans have a tendency to make many Others, both close to us and more distant. Yehoshuah was a member of Gamliel's closest circle, his Beit Midrash. If we can turn our close companions into Others, how much more so those from the other side of the tracks. Therefore we are directed specifically to also care for the stranger, the other, the non-Jew. The Talmud teaches that we support non-Jews as well as Jews, we visit their sick and we bury their dead.

One question still remains: Why? Why go to all this trouble of caring for others, especially distant or different others. Many reasons are given: we are commanded to care, we are taught to make peace with our neighbors, and we're reminded that we were strangers in mitzrayim, in Egypt, and so we should have compassion on those who are strangers to us.

But consider Leviticus 23:22:  

And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I the Eternal am your G-d.

Why does it end with ani HaShem--"I am the Eternal your G-d?" To teach that when we carry out these acts of tzedaka, we learn justice--tzedaka--and grow into our highest and best selves. This is the spiritual reason for caring. When we are "forced" by our obligation to our tradition to step outside of our comfort zone, we bump up against our resistances. We are lovingly pressed into confronting our own misconceptions, ego, demons, character traits which may not serve us in the best way. It becomes a spiritual practice. We learn that those Others are not so distant or different after all, and that their difference becomes interesting, fascinating, exciting, welcome.  

I'd like to conclude with Elie Wiesel's elaboration from his April 12, 1999 Millennium Lecture at the White House, The Perils of Indifference.

    To be indifferent to suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.

    [ ... ]    

    Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the "Muselmanner," as they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were, strangers to their surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.

This is the danger we ourselves face if we give in to our comfort zone, staying secluded in the familiar, safe behind the gates of our isolation on our own side of the tracks. As Rabbi Telushkin wrote:

    Don't ever get used to other people's suffering.

    Don't ever get used to other people's suffering.

    Don't ever get used to other people's suffering.