Honesty

בס''ד

Honesty

Shabbat Parah

Parshat Shemini

17 Adar II

My friend Rabbi Jacob Fine’s dad, Dr. Lawrence Fine, is a scholar of Kabbalah. I was a rather hardheaded and foolish student (such may not have changed), and derided all things mystical. Hearing Dr. Fine teach was the first step into a now deep relationship with Jewish mysticism.

At the time he was researching mystical fellowships - haburah, they were called - that were created for the spiritual ascension of their members. One feature of these haburah struck me then, and stays with me still: a promise to accept any and all criticism from another member of the haburah, with an open heart and without complaint. 

This sounds like a nightmare. The world is plenty full of people willing to tell others, in excruciating detail, just what they’re doing wrong. 

Nonetheless, something in my soul yearns for this kind of honesty in my life. People believe that morality and a sense of right action are innate in us, but I do not know how find wholeness without recourse to the wisdom of others.

Good criticism is quite rare. Most of our reproof, consciously or not, addresses our own struggles and not the reality of the other’s character. It is also full of blind anger, and to criticize well one must care deeply for the other. Few of us achieve such elevated perspective.

But when it comes, it is a gift. Without the careful corrections of others, we are adrift. Their words set us aright.

Do not criticize a fool, for he will hate you;

Criticize a wise person, and she will love you.

Mishlei (Proverbs) 9:8 

Wear a Costume

בס''ד

Wear a Costume

Ta’anit Esther

Shabbat Zakhor

11 Adar, 5771

March 17^th, 2011

You know, there are still places and times left when adults wear costumes: Carnival in Brazil, Halloween in the Village and in West Hollywood, every time I put on a suit.

Somehow or another, Purim isn’t one of them.

My rabbi, Sharon Brous, is very mahmir (strict) about this. Young and old, you best, shall we say, show up in costume. Not only that, but it had to be a costume that reflected something real inside of you – some aspect that doesn’t get expression in the real world.

She dresses up as a hippie. I don’t get it.

It’s all found in Esther’s name, really. It’s so similar to word hester - hidden – that our rabbis fell all over themselves interpreting the revelation of hiddenness as the deep meaning of the holiday: Purim is where what’s inside comes out.

To be an adult often means to be charged with stability, mostly for the sake of children and productivity. This requires us to divide between the internal and external life, so that others don’t suffer the vagaries of our emotions. But though life may ask us to conceal our inner life, it is not the same thing as saying that the inner life doesn’t exist.

What stays away from the light fades and withers. It’s time to bring the hidden into the sun. Wear a costume.

Purim Sameah

Happy Purim,

Rabbi Scott Perlo   

Disturbed Sleep

בס''ד

Parshat VaYikra
3 Adar, 5771
March 9th, 2011

...בלילה ההוא נדדה שנת המלך

That night, the king’s sleep was disturbed.

Megillat Esther, 6:1

אמר רבי תנחום, “שנת מלכו של עולם”

Said Rabbi Tanhum, “that is, the sleep of the King of the world was disturbed.”

Talmud, Megillah 15b

Megillat Esther is a see-saw.


It’s a strange image, I know, but accurate. The book begins with inanity, chaos, instability, and the threat of death despite the worth of its Jewish characters.


But within Esther is a fulcrum, after which entropy becomes order, hatred is defeated, and our fate rises (can you see the see-saw?) towards redemption.


The verse you see above is that fulcrum. It is roughly the center of the book and exactly the turning point (clearly a term well-fashioned) of the story.


Interestingly, our rabbis rarely read this verse as applying to Ahashverosh; rather, it was God’s sleep being disturbed. The Holy One, finally, decided to wake up and intervene upon our behalf.


This interpretation is shocking. Not only does it imply that Holy One can choose to be absent from human affairs, but that God is also open to changing God’s mind. The Kedushat Levi, a brilliant hassidic commentary, teaches that the righteous in each generation possess the power to persuade the Holy One onto a different course.


In this case, let us be Godly rather than righteous. If the Divine can change opinions, it is certainly human virtue to allow oneself to be persuaded. Sometimes changing our principles is the best evidence that we have them.

It's Obvious

בס''ד

27 Adar I, 5771

March 3^rd, 2011

It seems to me that in order to advance knowledge or create great art, one must be both persistent and really annoying.

That perseverance is necessary to genius has already been beautifully said (you know the quote). So let me explain why insufferable annoyance is required as well.

Imagine a child, about three or four years old. This child asks unbelievable amounts of questions about the world: why is the sky blue? why are tall people tall? why does the sun rise and set? why aren’t there dinosaurs anymore like they showed me in the museum? why do I have to share my toys? Next to this child is a fond if rather exasperated parent responding as best as she can. This scene a treasured experience of every parent I know.

Now imagine a 33 year old asking the same questions at a dinner party. Said grownup generates plenty of exasperation and exactly zero fondness. Ask people such perfectly obvious questions, and blank stares are the sparse reward.

It is of course, the quality of those adults to whom we ascribe genius that they have refused to let such questions go. It was their unseemly questioning of the obvious facts of life as the blue sky, etc. that birthed what we know about physics, genetics, astronomy, evolution, and morality, respectively. Charles Darwin was, I’m sure, beyond irritating until he published On The Origin of Species at age 33.

…lo habayshan lomed, ve’lo hakapdan melamed –

…shy people cannot learn, brusque people cannot teach (Avot 2:5)

May we always have patience for obvious questions.

The Right Place at The Right Time

בס''ד

Parshat VaYakhel

19 Adar I, 5771

February 23, 2011

Last night I met Rabbi David Saperstein, head of the legendary Religious Action Committee – the political arm of the Reform movement.

Rabbi Saperstein gave us the history of the RAC. This took a long time. The RAC was party to the iconic moments of the last half century: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were drafted in the RAC’s conference room. They were the first Jewish organization to oppose the Vietnam War. They provided relief during the Ethiopian famine. They’ve done a lot.

            At one point Rabbi Saperstein was asked how he came to head the RAC. He seemed a little taken aback, and then said, “I was just in the right place at the right time.” Then he regaled us with stories of his activism as a young rabbi.

The Talmud teaches:

R. Joshua ben Levi asked Elijah, the prophet, "When will the Messiah come?" "Go and ask him himself." "Where is he sitting?" "At the gates of Rome." "What will identify him?" "He is sitting among the poor lepers; while all of them untie all [their bandages] at once, and rebandage them together, he unties and rebandages each separately, saying 'I might be needed, so I must not be delayed.' "

--Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a

Mashiah too will be in the right place at the right time, when redemption finally arrives. I think that Rabbi Saperstein will be rather amused by the comparison, but he might grant me that, in every serendipitous moment, there is a piece of our souls that has been waiting a long, long time to be revealed.

Humor

בס''ד

Parshat Ki Tissah

12 Adar, 5771

February 16^th, 2011

A story:

Rabbi Brokah the Seer was often found in the market of Bei Lefet. Elijah the Prophet (maybe a millennium dead by this point) was often found visiting with him (this is a supernatural story).

Rabbi Brokah said to Elijah: “Are there people in this marketplace who are deserving of the world to come?”

Elijah said, “No.”

After a while, two people walked into the market. Elijah said, “those two are deserving of the world to come.”

Rabbi Brokah went up to them and asked them, “What do you do?”

They said, “we are comedians – we make sad people laugh. Also, when we see two people who have a quarrel between them, we work to make peace for them.”

Talmud Masekhet Ta’anit 22a

One great criticism I have of Americans is that we lack a true sense of humor. Our comedy is plentiful, but more corny than insightful (“take my wife please”). Exceptions are Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, but both came out of disliked minorities.

Others have explained it as an American earnestness that brooks no sense of the absurd. Graham Greene, in both The Quiet American (about Vietnam) and The Comedians (about Haiti, and the most serious book you’ve ever read), wrote about our indefatigable belief that everything is fixable with the right know-how and enough elbow grease. This self seriousness frowns at pointing out that we, our bodies, our natures, and our world are in fact flawed – the source of all humor.

There are in our community, at this particular time, too many people who are seriously ill. Let us pray every day for their health, let us support them in their time of need. Let us also remember that real sickness is not something simply solved with the right combination of doctors and drugs. Real sickness is always a painful struggle. What makes us worthy of heaven is to be able to sit with people, to cry with them, and then to laugh with them at the absurdity of this world.

Spiritual but Not Religious

בס''ד

29 Shvat, 5771

February 3^rd, 2011

            I have heard, even in my short career, one phrase hundreds of times, “Rabbi, I am spiritual, not religious.” Many take it even further: religion, in quite a few people’s minds, is the enemy of true spirituality.

            For years I’ve struggled with how to understand and address this division. I got into Torah and then a life of mitzvot because of deep spiritual affinity. I never understood the separation.

            I believe now that I was incorrect, and that religion and spirituality, while they overlap, are divided.

            Spirituality lives in an individual’s direct, personal connection to God. Its foundation is hitlahavut – passion. It is spontaneous, malleable, and paradoxical. It is self-reliant, charismatic, and brilliant. It makes us feel alive.

But spirituality is also self-centered. It tends to ignore bonds between people, and does not know that God’s voice becomes textured when spread over community and time. Though it is smart, it is not wise: it rarely involves a relationship more than a generation old. In a word, spirituality is thin.

Religion, on the other hand, is as thick as it gets. It incorporates generations of learning and has grown wise and thoughtful. Religion is patient in a measure that spans lifetimes, and knows the depth of things. Its foundations are hesed – care and tzedek – justice. Religion helps us understand life.

It is often so thick, however, that it smothers spontaneity and individuality. It struggles to see people as different from one another. Religion does not thrill with its quickness, and prefers rhythm over syncopation.

The two are indeed different.

But remember that the holy Rambam taught us that apex of life is to be found in the middle of extremes. Remember also that each of us has two sides to our hearts. Enough with the idea that they are exclusive: it is a fallacy; we know it not to be so. Let us fill ourselves with both.