The Problem of PS 22

בס’‘ד

Parshat Masei

25 Tammuz, 5771

July 27th, 2011

     PS 22 of Staten Island is the world’s newest celebrity chorus. Now a de rigueur stop for any musician on an album tour, P. S. 22 has performed at the Grammys, is an Internet sensation, and has achieved stardom’s holy grail: being on Oprah. But the members of the PS 22 chorus are not what you might expect: they are 10 and 11 years old.

     These kids are good. They sing multi-part harmony with no apparent effort. Unlike most of the kid-centered performances we attend, listening to them is more than just cute. Their talent is awe-inspiring.

     Now, it isn’t like prodigious feats in childhood are foreign to us. However, our stories about childhood stardom involve scenes of unrelenting, Soviet-esque training, megalomaniacal parents, and intense break–point pressure. What astonishes every celebrity and journalist (writing in The Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, etc.) is how much fun these particular kids have when they sing. They are so relaxed, so into their groove that I find myself envious of the good time they’re having.

     Here is the problem of PS 22: their existence proves that extraordinary things are possible. Yes, children can create beauty while increasing their self-worth. Yes, to be both excellent and carefree is achievable. And when a group of underprivileged grade-schoolers breaks the boundaries of the possible while giggling, how can we deny that such things are in our grasp as well?

     “HaYipale meHaShem davar?” God says to Sara, “Is there anything too wondrous for God to do?” Would that we saw ourselves as a little more divine.

Judaism vs. the Jews

בס''ד

18 Tammuz, 5771

July 20^th, 2011

           Rabbi Max Arzt was one of the most successful and influential pulpit rabbis of the 20^th century. Widely respected, Rabbi Arzt was once asked by a group of recent seminary graduates about the secret to a successful career in the pulpit. “Ahavas yisroel” (love for Jews), he responded. When the young rabbis started laughing, he looked at them and said, “What? You think it’s easy?”

            I have to admit to mixed feelings about this story. On one hand, I am convinced of Rabbi Arzt’s wisdom. All my best moments are inevitably tied to accepting those I serve for who they are and letting love grow. My failures spring from the opposite mentality.

            However, for people of my generation there is a dark side to what Jewish pundits proclaim as, “peoplehood,” which is this: it is characteristic of American Jewish synagogues to love Jews, but not Judaism.

            Many people tell me that the purpose of synagogue is the connection of Jews with other Jews preferably (but not necessarily) with the celebration of Jewish culture. Many will openly state that they find the Judaic function of a synagogue secondary, tertiary, or irrelevant.

            There are a number of problems here. First, people like me who fell in love with Judaism have no home. Being a rather assertive (or obnoxious, as some people call us) group, we choose to defect, form our own groups, and leave extant communities behind.

            Second, I have reluctantly been convinced that the rest of humanity does not have to agree with me. People have the right not to like religion. But using davenning to create peoplehood is like using a turkey baster to fix a computer: even if you can get the job done, the tool has lost its purpose.

            There is much to say on this topic, and I welcome your thoughts. But please, friends - ahavat torah (love of Torah), ahavat HaShem (love of God) created ahavat yisrael. The child is bereft without its parents.

History

בס''ד

Parshat Pinchas

11 Tammuz 5771,

July 13, 2011

“When the historian tries to depict the spirit of bygone times, it is usually his own spirit that makes itself heard.” - Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History

     I was once in a lecture by Doreen Seidler-Feller, a psychologist and expert on sex therapy, about marriage and relationships among contemporary Jews. In the middle of her talk, a participant made suggestion that raised my eyebrows: “we should go back to the way of the shtetl,” she said, “You know, arranged marriage - things were simpler then.”

    Now, it wasn’t the suggestion of arranged marriage that shocked me -- I’ve heard that one before - but rather the idea that things were easier back in shtetl days.

    I’ve encountered many Jews who invoke the “Fiddler on the Roof” effect. It seems that dancing milkmen and seamstresses are waiting in the alleyways of our minds, just waiting to burst to into song.

    The truth of shtetl life, despite its beautiful glow, was much harsher and immobile than our cultural memory tells us. What this women was remembering, as so many of us do, was not true history.

    I believe Hegel is right: what we see in the past is most often the reflection of our present longing. The answers to our problems are not to be found in a longing for past times which per force distorts what truly happened, but in the invigoration of our present.

Prisca iuvent alios: ego me nunc denique natum gratulor.

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.

-Ovid, Ars Amatoria III  

Time to Volunteer

בס''ד

Parshat Balak

4 Tammuz, 5771

July 6^th, 2011

What confuses people is that tzedakah is not voluntary. Unlike the English “charity,” from the Latin caritas, implying voluntary affection or love, tzedakah is from the word tzedek – (obligatory) justice.

 For our ancestors, tzedakah meant a communal obligation from which they were not free to desist. Often the village court determined what it thought each person was able to give, and then sent gabaim to collect. (Tur Yoreh Deah 348) Rabbi Eli Schochet tells the story that his grandfather, a community rabbi in Lithuania, would stop at each house in the village for the purposes of tzedakah: either you gave or you took; those were the only two options.

The money from the tzedakah collection was used to provide soup kitchens and food for poor families, trousseaus for orphan brides, and clothing collections. It made sure that people had the basics. And it was not a choice.

Which is why I am devastated by the new state budget, driven by our financial reality, which cut somewhere between $7 and $15 billion to social services to the needy, elderly, and disabled, public education, and national parks (in Jewish communities, taxes were levied for education and civil defense/maintenance). I understand these cuts to violate foundational communal mitzvot of the Torah, which teach that it is our first responsibility to protect the weak, “lest there be a nasty thing in your heart…and your eye is evil upon your needy brother and you do not give to him…and you bear sin because of [how you treated] him” (Deuteronomy 15:9)

Since the deed is done, I believe it upon us to compensate for these changes in another way.

It’s time for us to start volunteering.

We need to fill the money gap with our volunteer hours. We need to help them with that for which they are unable to pay. We all need to become volunteers, and in the areas that need it most: the needy, the elderly, the disabled, or education.

We American Jews possess unrivaled professional talents, and by giving of them we can make a difference. It’s time to change. I am personally committing to volunteering at least twice a month to serve. I invite you to join me on the way.

Great Los Angeles Volunteering Opportunities:

Jewish Family Services – www.jfsla.org

The Midnight Mission – www.midnightmission.org

Volunteer Los Angeles (a great website with multiple volunteering options) – www.volunteerlosangeles.com

Meals on Wheels – www.mowaa.org

The Current

בס''ד

Parshat Hukat

27 Sivan, 5771

June 29^th, 2011

            On the boat ride out to our dive site, the divemaster mentioned that the current around Cozumel (it’s an island) was stronger than usual, and that we should be prepared.

            I’m not much of a scuba diver, but the Mexican Carribean is considered to have some of the best diving in the world. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

I did not, however, grasp what the divemaster was telling me.

            As my guide and I descended, the current grabbed us and basically threw us along the ledge of the trench that lies between Cozumel and Cancun. When we surfaced forty minutes later, we had traveled so far our starting point could not be seen.

            Please know that I wasn’t in danger. I am not trying to convey the appearance of risk. It was the experience of being pushed along by the current that I want to share.

            It felt like nothing so much as flying. Sixty feet under the water, I was flying.

            Every once in a while, we are blessed with the experience that we are connected with something infinitely greater than us. This experience of the numinous gives extraordinary perspective on life; we understand in an instant the great forces that propel us forward, so large that we were unable to see them for their vastness. We realize that much of who we are and who we become is in hands much larger than our own.

            Some reject these great hands that push us and would rather the choices over our fate be left to individuals, but in them I have found a surprising freedom and beauty. I often pray that they sweep me up along their way. Without them I would not be able to fly. 

Do The Heavens Sing?

 בס''ד

Parshat Shlah

13 Sivan, 5771

June 15th, 2011

     A friend and I have been cracking our teeth over some Medieval Jewish philosophy. It’s a good metaphor, cracking teeth; we leave every session with our heads ringing.

     The book is An Essay on Teshuvah, and the author Rabbi Menahem Meiri - a brilliant student of Maimonides whose work on the Talmud was recovered after being lost for centuries.

     And here is the question he poses.

     Are the heavens (in the physical sense: stars, constellations, comets and such) beautiful simply because they exist, or are they beautiful because human beings recognize them as beautiful?*

     This question is part of a central philosophical disagreement between essentialism and nominalism: do things like beauty and love actually exist, independent of us? Would they be there even if we were gone? Or does beauty only exist because a human mind names something beautiful?

     To be honest, I have always preferred the purity of the first way of thinking. I would like to think that the Grand Canyon is just as grand without us having to call it so, and that the majesty of so much of God’s creation remains majestic whether or not we’re around to say such. I believe that the stars sing praise to God of their own accord.

     But I also have thought how lonely and quiet the universe would be without us to stick our minds in every nook and cranny of it, asking, judging, chattering, arguing. Whether or not beauty exists independent of humanity, beautiful things are best enjoyed in company. The world is a warmer place because we are here to love it.

* The literal phrasing of the question is more religiously elegant, but more philosophically abstruse : do the heavens sing praise to God simply by through their existing, or is it through our recognition of their movements that the song of praise is created. The first understanding he attributes to the Rambam, the second to Ibn Ezra. Proposition 2, Ch. 2

Knowing Everything

בס''ד

Parshat Naso

29 Iyyar 5771

June 2^nd, 2011

45^th Day of the Omer

A story was once told to me about the famously brilliant founder of Agudath Israel in America, Rabbi Eliezer Silver. In the early 1900’s, Rabbi Silver came to America and found work as the rabbi of a congregation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One night the president of his shul walked by his house one evening and saw him learning Torah.

The president convened a meeting of the board, which promptly fired Rabbi Silver. The reason given was that Rabbi Silver was, apparently, still a student. A real rabbi would know everything.

Part of the inheritance of American intellectual history is, when it comes to learning, an impatience with the space between novicehood and mastery. This is certainly not unique to us, but as the first of the modern democratic nations, we have a heaping dose of it. The time between starting along the path of learning and reaching its apex is considered a waste of time. We would certainly shorten the road could we manage it successfully.

Our impatience with the discomfort of learning has particularly unfortunate side effects for contemporary Jews. A person can come to Shabbat, every Shabbat, for 30 or 40 years and feel no more knowledgeable about our tefillah than when she came in, nor feel that he really knows the content of Torah despite hearing it read every week. Something is amiss.

Patience, my friends, I urge patience. Rabbi Silver had it right – the process of learning is so fine a thing, even if prickly at first, to be worth stretching out over an entire lifetime. Our desire to learn quickly and be done with it has brought us to the place where we never have the time to learn anything. We deserve better than the freneticism of our culture.

“In those old days it was different. For then faith was a task for a whole lifetime, not a skill thought to be acquired in either days or weeks.” Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling