Boundaries

בס''ד

Parshat VaYetzei

2 Kislev, 5771

November 9^th, 2010

If you pass by my office on particular mornings, you’ll see me studying Talmud with a good friend. It may also look, at first glance, like we’re trying to kill each other.

There is a kind of learning relationship that, superficially, doesn’t make any sense: it involves a lot of pacing, contradicting, occasional shouting. Our body language would say to any outside observer: “conflict;” unless, of course, you watch our faces, which are often smiling.

That hour that we spend together is one of the most life-giving of my week. It’s space for unfettered curiosity, where every question is fair game; it’s a space of honesty, where opinions are not held back for fear of offending one’s partner – when we think the other is right or wrong, we say so, when there is evidence to contradict, we do so; it is a time to work together to answer difficult questions, to be intellectually and spiritually creative, not to hold back. It is, in short, amazing.

But relationships of this intensity are also exceptionally fragile, and the only way that havruta (learning partners) are able to sustain them is by creating boundaries that keep the interaction, as well as the two people interacting, safe. One of the biggest is that the relationship is about Torah, not about our individual selves – being in shared service to a larger ideal places ad hominem attacks outside the pale. The other is learning partners strive for radical equality within the boundaries of learning – hierarchy doesn’t work when one isn’t holding back.

The point is that real relationships – in which the content is authentic and alive – require real boundaries. The center cannot hold when such interactions have no frame. Respecting the boundaries of another person or of an important relationship is a precious gift, and it is the only true way to let real connections grow between people.

Why Country Music is Amazing

בס''ד

Parshat Toldot

27 Heshvan, 5771

November 4^th, 2010

I have absolutely no natural connection to Nashville. I am everything that a country music fan is not supposed to be: a pure-d, citified, left-coast, Hollywood-bred, not-making-living-with-his-hands kind of guy. I do not own a truck. But I absolutely love country music.

Let me explain.

            Country music has a special kind of Torah. It, as well as bluegrass and the blues (my true favorite genres), makes an art of the plain. It celebrates the beauty of the simple and the emotionality of everyday life: how much he loves his truck; the view of his wife and kids from his front porch looking in; being young and dumb, driving fast and in love; the pain of heartbreak.

            Country music celebrates real things. It believes that everyday things are deserving of song.

            The insight that the everyday can be made holy is the root of a powerful spirituality. For those of us who hold on to this mode, realizing the holiness of simple things is more than a suggestion – it is an imperative. More Torah and mitzvot and prayer than most people realize are grounded in this realization. The challenge of this path is to turn the time we spend in holy community into a crucible for the everyday, in which the basics of our lives are questioned, exalted, transformed, celebrated. “…take your shoes from off your feet for the ground you are standing upon is holy” (Exodus 3:5)

            May we all be blessed with a country kind of life.

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Bullying

בס''ד

19 Heshvan, 5771
October 27th, 2010   


I believe that we live in a time of anger. It is not, I think, that the beliefs that people hold are so radically different than those they’ve held in ages past, but that the expression of those beliefs is quick to extremism, that it flares hard and with vitriol. Every day I hear politicians screaming at each other. I see religionists whose finest expression of faith is to cause as many deaths as possible. I see a church whose divine messages are: “God hates fags,” “God hates Jews,” “God hates Muslims” grow popular. You can see its members too, mocking the funeral of an American soldier near you. These are some of the signs of our times.
 
 In the past month, three gay teenagers have committed suicide, all as a result of either school bullying, or, in the case of Tyler Clementi, massive public humiliation. Though such bullying has been around for a long time, I believe that their deaths are connected with the cycle of our anger. Collective anger is acted upon by a society’s youth, who have far fewer inhibitions about putting what they’ve learned into practice. When kids and teenagers abuse and demean they are enacting what they’ve absorbed from a broader society.
 
When the mark of our times is that we are quick to anger, lacking in patience (the opposite of God’s virtues, as an aside), we have a special responsibility. Our Talmud calls us rahmanim bnei rahmanim – the compassionate children of compassionate parents. We also say that one who is compassionate to cruelty, will end up being cruel to those who deserve our compassion. The arc of our compassion must increase dignity and deny cruelty. As long as there are gay and lesbian young people who feel that death is their only option, we are not as we have been blessed to be. 

Symbols

בס''ד

14 Heshvan, 5771

October 22nd, 2010

Two scenarios.

Scenario the first: a non-Jewish man is engaged to a Jewish woman, and has been flirting with conversion but cannot seem to pull the trigger. During the wedding itself, said man wears a tallit during the ceremony because it is personally meaningful.*

 

Second scenario: a group in Israel, known as Women of the Wall, regularly meets at the back of the Western Wall plaza. These women, as a sign of their deep commitment to Torah and God, wear tallit and tefillin, and read from the Torah. Their presence often incites the Ultra Orthodox Jews around them to throw both animal and human feces at the Women of the Wall, and occasionally to attempt physical violence.

These two scenarios are not alike - the second defaces human dignity - but they are linked by a central symbol and they ask the same question: to whom do powerful symbols belong?

There are two truths about symbols that we should recognize. The first is that every symbol that means anything at all is honored by a community, not just by an individual. Symbols take on profound meaning precisely because they are shared between people. To publicly claim a symbol in a way that grates against its common understanding can be quite painful for the community which loves it.

But it is also true that communities do not own their own symbols - they live in the public domain. Almost every creative, inspiring advance in Torah or religion at all has come through the reinterpretation and re-expression of central symbols. The dictation of their expression by force or by degradation is an anathema.

There is always another person on the other end of a symbol that we find meaningful, another set of eyes, another heart. They join us together, join us to God. These are the things we have to remember to use them well.

*Tallit, in Torah, is specifically a sign of the acceptance of all the commandments laid upon Jews.

Baggage

בס''ד

8 Heshvan, 5771

Jerry Springer's career just won't die, destroying the possibility of rational thought in the universe. He has a new dating show called, "Baggage," whose hook is that people choose partners not by what's most attractive, but by the baggage and hang-ups that they bring into the relationship. 

 This show is evilly brilliant, and not only because it expands the frontier of how gleefully people will humiliate themselves in front of a camera. It also exposes a truth of life: that baggage is really important. Much of loving another person means accepting their baggage. Indeed, it reveals just how much our own issues and trauma set the course of our lives.


The Rambam teaches in the Eight Chapters that all human beings are free, that none are born either good or evil but have the obligation to direct themselves; but how can we be free knowing that what is imposed upon us from the outside, especially when we're young, has so much to say about how we live our lives? Especially when those impositions are negative and hurtful, they leave an imprint upon us forever.

 

Freedom lies in how every person responds to his or her own trauma. What hurts us demands a response, but it does not dictate what that response will be. What is put upon us is not in our hands, but our response to our baggage is. Our baggage is what we make of it.