Uncertainty

בס''ד

Nitzavim-VaYelekh

23 Elul, 5771

September 22nd, 2011

There is this thing called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. You, like me, may have heard a physics professor mention it while you were trying to sleep in the back row of class.

Anyways, the Uncertainty Principle is a foundation of quantum mechanics, and it states something extraordinary: the more precisely one knows a particle’s position, the less precisely one can know that particle’s momentum, and vice versa.

In plainer words, the more we know where something is, the less we know where it’s going. The reverse is true as well.* Uncertainty about one or the other is part of reality.

I find this theorem an elegant metaphor for the life of the spirit. Indeed it is possible to see most spiritual questions as about where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. And about the last two I will simply say: it is impossible to be certain about both at the same time.

Some attempt to write spiritual prescriptions, describing the precise path from A to B in life, guaranteeing success if steps are precisely followed. I reject such attempts with the totality of my being. A spirituality that does not include uncertainty is not worthy of the name.

*Physicists reading this are probably tearing their hair out at the inaccuracy of my description. To them I can only say: you aren’t the first. 

Inconsistency

בס''ד

17 Elul, 5771

September 16th, 2011

I recently heard an unfortunate true story. A Jewish spiritual group met for a weekend retreat at a University retreat center, all ardent and passionate practitioners. At some point during the retreat, the kitchen’s manager stepped out and made a plea. His workers, he said, were coming to him in tears; many had threatened to quit. Apparently the sheer number of exceptional individual dietary requests (kosher, vegetarian, vegan, raw, no dairy, no wheat, no eggs, no cheese, no soy) combined with the lack of kindness with which the requests were made, had made these workers’ jobs intolerable.

It is true that, in the service of holiness, one changes the way one lives, and circumscribes for oneself that which may be part of the lives of others. Kohanim, who performed the holiest of work, keep themselves from graveside funerals (unless for immediate family). 

But even the high priest was required to tend to the dead body of a stranger, should he be the first to find it, no matter the impurity he acquired. To leave a body uncared for violated the very holiness which he served.

Our world is increasingly one of niche living. We find holiness in what we put in our bodies, how we do or do not use them, how we treat and care for them. And we do this as a fiercely individual expression of choice.

But occasionally the truest expression of our holiness will be our inconsistency. Absent of real medical need, we will remember that our personal choices affect others, and we will, for their sake, lower our standards. To understand holiness is to know that sometimes it is found in the breach.

It's The Pray-er, Not The Prayer

בס''ד

Parshat Ki Tetzei

10 Elul, 5771

September 9^th, 2011

We need to talk about the difference between magic and prayer. It’s important. In a few weeks we’re all going to be spending a lot of time together, saying prayer after prayer. We should know what we’re doing.

Behind magic is the will to power. It is the idea that if I say these words, in the right order, with the right emphasis (winGARDium leviOsa), I will make something extraordinary happen. In magic, it is in my control to fulfill my desires.

Prayer is the opposite. Its essence is that the fulfillment of my desires are in Another’s control. It is the acknowledgment that I cannot force the world to do my bidding. Behind prayer is the acceptance of vulnerability.

Now magic sounds a whole lot cooler, which is why we love Harry Potter. Prayer has only the poor pedigree of being true to the human condition. To ask sincerely for what we need, yet understand that we need help in the fulfillment thereof is beautiful and human.

This difference goes beyond theory. If synagogue was a magical place, all that would matter is the recitation of the right words in the right order. Because it is a prayerful place, vulnerability is far more important than words.

Forget your mahzor, bring your sincerity to shul. It’s the pray-er, not the prayer.

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss

בס''ד

Parshat Shoftim

2 Elul, 5771

September 1^st, 2011

A wonderful congregant told me the other day that she folk-dances regularly. We have a number of dancers at the shul – Israeli, square, and otherwise. She mentioned that her particular blend preserves and teaches folk dances from all over the world. One can even attend the annual folk-dance camp in Stockton, CA, where specialists teach various global dance traditions.

What strikes me is that there is an annual conference where dances are learned, and, perhaps more importantly, dance traditions preserved. Of course, when these dances were created, they were simply what everyone did. Dancing grew within communities as the heart of a social experience. There was no conference.

Today, people gather and work hard just to keep those dances alive.

The struggle to preserve local tradition is not limited to dance. I’d argue that it’s a facet of our age. It takes a great deal of time and patience, as well as stability, for local traditions to poke a sprout out of the ground, develop, and accrete the well worn shine that speaks of countless generations.

You and I do not know from stasis. We are rolling stones, more mobile than ever, changing more quickly than ever. Our age moves too fast to permit natural accretion over time.

I believe this is why the best innovation of our age is directed at recovering lost tradition. Farmer’s markets, sustainability movements, community-building – all are about regaining the richness lost in the speed of change.

These efforts are worth the work we put into them. They come neither easily nor effortlessly, but yet retain their gifts to each of us. “Return us, God, and we will return; make our days new like they were in the beginning.” Eicha 5:21  In our time, looking forward means looking back. 

Rootedness

בס''ד

Parshat Re’eh

25 Menahem Av, 5771

August 25th, 2011

    All through my childhood my father refused to take what my siblings and I called “real vacations.” The slightest whiff of ostentation meant instant rejection, and merely saying “Hawaii” would have produced gales of laughter. However, Dad was willingly and equivalently generous on trips that he considered character building.

    This meant that I spent my childhood and adolescence packed into our family motorhome, listening to books on tape, exploring a surprising amount of the western United States: up and down the coast of California, Sequoia, Mammoth, the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion National Parks in Utah, Nevada, Lake Havasu, Yosemite, and one extraordinary trip to Yellowstone and back.

    As is the way of grown children, I am now grateful to my parents for destroying my chance at teenage popularity. I have never seen Waikiki beach, but I feel a rootedness in the land on which I was raised. When I leave town to camp, or simply to drive to a conference up north, I find a part of myself waiting for me in California’s landscape, whether beach, sierra, or farmland. This gorgeous state is my home, and a grand home it is.

    You and I are urbane people. Connection to the land is something that we wonder at, not that we experience daily. 

    But while driving it occurred to me that our disconnection occasions the loss of something essential. Nature and that which comes from it - primarily all that we eat - have lost their depth for us. We are unable to see the seed sown to raise the wheat for our bread. We do not remember the sweat wiped from brows when the grain was harvested, milled, made into flour, baked in ovens. We do not know whether the hands which rolled the dough were treated humanely or abused. All that which comes from the land has deep history indeed. 

    Rabbi Ahai ben Yoshayah stated: One who purchases grain in the market—to

what may such a person be likened? To an infant whose mother died, and they pass him from door to door among wetnurses and [still] the baby is not satisfied. Avot d’Rebbe Natan 31:1

    The danger is seeing the land, and the food which comes from it, as flat - somehow without history - for this builds an insensitivity and rapaciousness. We act as a baby never truly full, caring only about getting more, not where that “more” comes from. 

    May we all be blessed with finding our roots in the land around us.

The Burden of Choice

בס''ד

Parshat Re'eh

17 Menahem Av, 5771

August 17th, 2011

The New York Times Magazine this week published an article on a startling dilemma of medical ethics. The introduction of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) has made it common that women seeking infertility treatments will become pregnant with multiple embryos. In a number of cases, women carry more fetuses than they can safely bear to term. In order to protect the mother’s life, doctors terminate all but two or three.

As is the case with so much of medical progress, new technology has brought unprecedented choice. In the words of the article, “…what began as an intervention for extreme medical circumstances has quietly become an option for women carrying twins. With that, pregnancy reduction shifted from a medical decision to an ethical dilemma.” Women now may choose to reduce twins or triplets to a single fetus.

The Torah’s view of abortion maps very poorly onto contemporary discourse. It would understand neither Catholic/Protestant ideas that life begins at conception, nor the idea of a “right to choose.” Depending on circumstance, Torah permits, forbids, and even compels abortion.* But I do not believe that the criticality of this ethical question – whether one may electively reduce a pregnancy – is found in a discussion on abortion. Rather, this is a question about the will of God.

The will of God is a powerful idea in Torah. It most often means accepting that which is placed before us and relinquishing control. Death, for example: every time a person dies we say a prayer, the tziduk hadin (acknowledging the righteousness of the judgment), which understands that mortality is the will of God.

But in IVF-related pregnancies, the problem is that multiple embryos are not the will of God.** They are the direct result of human intervention, an acknowledged statistical possibility of a medical technique. The situation has evolved from accepting what God ordains into the question of making Godly decisions between the possibilities available to us.

These decisions are not simple: since the pregnancy was artificially initiated, should women have more choice about how it progresses? Which reasons for doing so are moral and which not? The stakes are high.

Our headlong hurtle into undreamed technologies is changing our fundamental relationship to God and the world. We are vastly more powerful, but still just as corruptible. We carry an unheard of burden of choice, but are moving so quickly that we do not bear the burden easily.

I think it foolish to believe that we could just take a breather from technological progress. But we do need to spend much more time understanding what is happening to us and what we are becoming. Not doing so means morally abandoning those confronted by the difficult decisions that progress occasions. We owe them, and ourselves, and God more.

*Two well-grounded synopses of halakhic views of abortion: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Issues/Bioethics/Abortion.shtml

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Issues/Bioethics/Abortion/Parameters.shtml

**Except in the sense that everything (literally everything) is the will of God. This is some deep theology, so catch me in the halls and we’ll talk about it.

Death by Committee

בס''ד

Parshat VaEthanan

Shabbat Nahamu

11 Av, 5771

August 11^th, 2011

400 years ago, a group of bishops under the guidance of one of England’s most quirky and brilliant kings, James, came together to create an English translation of the Bible, now known as one of the great masterpieces of English literature. Originally without title (other than Holy Bible, of course) this translation is known to us as The King James Version.

The King James was such a powerful force in the English language that the turns of language invented therein are a lasting part of our life, four centuries later: “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” “a drop in the bucket,” “a fly in the ointment,” “labor of love,” “skin of your teeth,” “the powers that be,” and on. A full list of these phrases can be found here http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bible-phrases-sayings.html.

            The story of the King James’ creation is extraordinary. It was written by committee: six directors and 48 separate translators. Those who have sat on boards should imagine accomplishing anything with 48 separate members, let alone translate the entire Bible.

            Moreover, Jacobean England was a religiously fractious time. Not only had England just separated from the Catholic Church only sixty years before, but there were significant divisions within England: The established Church of England, reforming Puritans, outlawed Presbyterians, and Calvinists.

Yet out of this mess came what became known as the English Bible. And as one who works in committee regularly, all I can say is – I would give almost anything to know their secret.

Adam Nicolson wrote God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. And here’s what he writes, “The currency of this world was talk between people who had known each other all their lives, and the intimacy of those relationships was crucial to the nature of the conference…and to the qualities of the Bible that would eventually emerge from it…These were the people in whose hands the future of the Church of England lay and they all knew each other. They were deeply opposed on important issues but a single envelope, what would nowadays be called a single discourse, contained them, and much of the peaceableness of England can be explained by that.” (46-47)

It matters not that we disagree with each other. It fact our disagreement may be a great asset. What matters is that we know each other well, intimately, and that our issues are shared issues. The unity of shared life is far more important than the unity of our thoughts.