The Majesty of Brokenness

בס''ד

Parshat Bamidbar

38^th Day of the Omer

22 Iyyar, 5771

May 26^th, 2011

God knows our yetzers (urges), and remembers that we are dust

Psalm 103:14

A man pulled up next to me on Westwood, and gestured that I should roll down my window. Then he started yelling.

            It’s the reason he started yelling that prompts this retelling. I had not cut him off, nor had I blocked his way, or done anything having to do with traffic. Rather, his anger was prompted by a political bumper sticker on my car (a fairly parve one, at that).

            Almost every day, during Shaharit, the guys at the Minyan and I pray the words above. They are meant to remind us of our frailty, our overwhelming tendency to give in to our temptations and inclinations, and the fact that so much of what we want is prompted by our basest instincts.

            These words are also some of the most life-giving I know.

            Pirkei Avot teaches that what defines a hero is conquering of one’s urges, and this is true. Restraint is heroic because our yetzer never tires of convincing us that it is in fact warranted, that it is justified. Anger’s genius is its success at explaining why other people deserve ours. Be it politics, or family issues, or perceived slights, or work disagreements – more of us are like the Westwood yeller than we might admit. The yetzer hara is an implacable foe.

            Salvation lies in the consciousness that our urges are both flawed and fleeting. We are more than our impulses. Beyond the acceptance of brokenness lies majesty.

The Beaver

בס''ד

Parshat Behar

23rd day of the Omer

7 Iyyar, 5771

May 11th, 2011

I’m likely about to make the least significant principled stand of my career. I have tried to resist for months, but a man does not always defeat his yetzer hara and pique has taken over my soul.  I ask for Jodie Foster’s forgiveness ahead of time.

Please boycott The Beaver.

Our Rabbis thought incessantly about public space. They knew that the realm of publicity changes the laws of psychology. The reactions of an individual and those of group are quite different, and it matters not how crazy, baseless, or offensive behavior is - if it survives long enough in the public eye, it will have carved out a perverse longevity for itself. There is a tenacity to public evils, when given enough of our shared attention.

For this reason people who have made bad names for themselves cannot serve, say, as representatives of the community to God during prayer. (Shulhan Arukh, Orekh Hayyim 53). The Sages knew that the best way to destroy notoriety is to kill the attention that feeds it.

Now, I have no special expectation of the rectitude of celebrities -- I was, after all, raised in Los Angeles -- but just how far does a person have to fall before his career is a non-starter? Anti-Semitism, racism, domestic abuse -- are there any shoes left to drop?

I realize that by writing these words I work against my own purposes. So don’t boycott the Beaver, just don’t see it. Don’t talk about it; don’t discuss it; don’t review it; deal with it in the only manner effective in our sadly corporatized society: let it die the ignominious death of the box office flop.

In fact, I refuse to let my words add to his notoriety one whit -- this Torah will self-destruct in 30 seconds.

Osama

בס''ד

Parshat Emor

16th Day of the Omer

30 Nisan, 5771

May 4th, 2011

     Of the unbelievable volume of e-articles, blog posts, and facebook status updates in response to the killing of Osama bin Laden, there is one argument - almost an obsession - that stands above all the rest: how should we feel about his death? Is it appropriate to be happy that he is dead? Does celebration somehow mar our dignity or give in to baser impulses?

    This ambivalence is fascinating. That the world is better without Osama brooks no debate, yet many have deep concerns (and very strong opinions) about what kind of emotion people should express in response to his execution. 

     Even Torah is conflicted about this.* The book of Proverbs, the seat of Torah wisdom, says, “When the wicked perish there are shouts of joy.” (11:23) It also says, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, nor let your heart be glad when he stumbles. (24:27)

     Those two quotes come from the very same book.

     I understand the root of our concern. We consider that the emotion we display is the sign of why we killed him: celebration means that we were pursuing revenge; stoicism means that we were upholding justice.

     I believe, though that how we feel after such an event is irrelevant to understanding its rightness. What matters are the emotions that preceded the act - the motivations that led us to kill him - and the fact of the action this country took. Actions and motivations cannot somehow be emended by how we respond after the fact.

     That our emotions were murky cannot be denied. Is it possible to edit out the rage that a parent feels for a child’s murderer? that a spouse feels for the killing of a partner? We are not dispassionate creatures.

     The comfort I offer is that, in the final accounting, killing Osama bin Laden was a moral act. Though our Torah envisions a future of perfect peace, it was born with a very earthy justice, and it says:

“Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by a man his blood will be shed, for in God’s image did God create man.” (Bereishit 9:6)

Osama bin Laden set the destruction of God’s image as his life’s work. His death is just. 

* In this, I find the proof of Torah’s wisdom, for to be decisive one way is to be too ethereal, ignoring basic realities of what human beings are. To be decisive the other is to condone the basest of sentiments.

God's Voice

בס''ד

Parshat Kedoshim Tihiyu

8^th day of the Omer

23 Nisan, 5771

April 27^th, 2011

Next month marks the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible. Charles McGrath writes in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/weekinreview/24mcgrath.html?_r=1&ref=charlesmcgrath) that not only was the King James written by committee (usually an excellent recipe for mediocrity), but it was intentionally written archaically. Nonetheless, it remains one of the masterpieces of the English language.

            McGrath, himself an atheist, spends some time belittling modern Bibles that render into more colloquial English. Apparently, the God he does not believe in is very formal.

            However, he asks a profound question: how does one translate God’s voice? It is a question worth investing in.

Translating Torah well is essential. Connection to Judaism depends on being drawn into a world of holy words. If such words are opaque, the handicap both to students and teachers is enormous.

But as a student of the Rabbis, I want to contradict a basic assumption of biblical literalists – that God’s voice can be directly translated. In fact, the opposite is true: God’s voice is inherently difficult to understand. Take this midrash for example:

            “Said R. Yose ben R. Hananiah: according to each person’s individual capacity did [God] speak [each of the ten commandments]. Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 12:25”

Or this one:

            The commandment to remember Shabbat and the commandment to keep Shabbat were said the same utterance…something that human beings are incapable of doing (i.e. God said one thing, but human brains can only understand it as two separate things). Midrash Tannaim 25

            There are those who assume that if we just followed what God told us, the world would be a better place. Jews believe, though, that the trick of it is first trying to understand what God was saying. Looking at the world, I’d say we have yet to hear the Holy One right.

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

בס''ד

Parshat Aharei Mot

Shabbat HaGadol

9 Nisan 5771

April 13^th, 2010

I was skeptical when a psychologist friend recommended Dr. Gabor Maté’s book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. It is about addiction and substance abuse, to which my eyes are being opened because of its quiet, overwhelming prevalence in our middle class world. Most of the books about it I have found to be either overly technical or – how can I put this? – kind of foofy.

There is nothing foofy about this book. Maté has spent decades in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where the homeless drug addicts live. And die. He is their physician, and he helps some of the most difficult, powerless, violent, traumatized people in the world prevent  septicemia, caused by too much IV drug use, from overwhelming their weak immune systems, from HIV and Hepatitis, as they sacrifice their well being for just one more hit (just one example).

My moment of clarity came when Dr. Maté compared their addictions to his overwhelming need to buy as many classical CD’s as possible. Suspicious of any incipient foof, I was about to put the book down until Maté mentions that he once spent $8000 in single week on albums.

We think that there is this class of people called drug addicts, who are so badly damaged or built that they are somehow separate from the rest of us. This is not the portrait Gabor Maté paints.

Rather, he talks about an infinite spectrum of trauma, from the humdrum into the hellish: physical abuse, sexual abuse, massive betrayal, tragedy, death. “Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance abuse is the addict’s attempt to avoid distress…Addictions always originate in pain.”

We all suffer. And many of us try to fill that suffering with alcohol and drugs, pills, internet pornography, gambling, compulsive spending, compulsive overeating, working to the point that our work consumes our lives – all so that we avoid the suffering. But these do not work.

What Torah offers us instead is a way to close the hole, to understand the pain and bear it, to repurpose our desire to fill it towards beauty, towards health. Hayitani miyordei bor – “in the midst of my dwelling in the pit, You gave me life,” teach our Psalms.  No easy consolation, but a true one.

Just to the east of us, Beit T’Shuvah saves people’s lives everyday through Torah; all around us are Alcholics Anonymous meetings and their various offshoots; in my office is a safe space for any who need it. The life that Torah gives is strong than addiction.

Beit T’Shuvah - www.beittshuvah.org -  is the Jewish community’s powerful response to addiction.

Alcoholics Anonymous – www.lacoaa.org

Narcotics Anonymous – www.todayna.org

Overeaters Anonymous – www.oa.org

Sex Addicts Anonymous -   www.sa.org

Ripening Fruit

בס''ד

Parshat Metzora

3 Nisan, 5771

April 7^th, 2011

Among the reasons I love being a rabbi is the freedom people give me to be weird. What was thought odd in polite society has magically become “rabbinic” now that I’m ordained. Trust me, I am not the only person to become clergy just so people wouldn’t scratch their heads at him.

This lovely leeway has had a surprising benefit, one for which I’m really grateful. Because people have been so respectful, I’ve been able to carve out a little mental garden for ideas which are not yet ripe. Every once in a while I will show one or the other of these ideas to someone, and they will politely comment that my half-baked theology is really coming along nicely, or that my naïve spirituality looks promising.

I think everyone should be allowed such a garden. In truth, really worthwhile ideas take years to mature. They are often slow in coming, require care, and seem insipid or to lack taste before they are ready. Somehow, our culture demands that we defend completely all that we think, right now. I don’t know how really good ideas can take root in such rocky soil.

I recently asked some very bright, wise people why they don’t speak up more in conversations about Torah. Each said the same thing – that they fear being thought stupid. As a person who, by nature of his job, only knows an idea’s worth after he has shared it (that’s just how it works), I mourn the fact that others do not feel the same freedom. How can we deny the promise of a fruit before it is ripe?

I have come to my garden,

my sister, my bride;

I have gathered my myrrh and spice;

eaten my honey and honeycomb,

drunk my wine and my milk.

Eat, friends, and drink…

Song of Songs 5:1 

The Power of Ritual

בס''ד

Shabbat HaHodesh

Parshat Tazria

24 Adar II, 5771

March 30th, 2011

The Rabbis teach that when Moshe asks to see God, God passes before Moshe and shows him the Divine back (as it were), for no human can see God’s face and live. What Moshe saw was the knot of God’s head tefillin.

I have shopped for a few sets myself. Divine tefillin are probably really expensive.

The question, of course, is why. Of all Beings, it seems like God would have a pass on tefillin. The answer, I believe, lies in the difference between speech and ritual.

Speech is a lousy way to express belief. This is because we have the power to lie, which is not as bad as it sounds. We often need to lie in order to coexist with each other. If we shared exactly what we thought with other people, we would kill each other. One of speech’s important jobs is to obfuscate what we think so that we can have civilization. But this power to cloud men’s minds makes speech unreliable.

Actions are much more dependable – we’ve either done something, or we haven’t. Nothing tells more about what people really believe than what they actually do. So in order to make profound statements of meaning, the incontrovertible kind, we imbue a specific action with a value or idea – that is, performing the action expresses something meaningful. Actions thus imbued are called rituals. Rituals are extremely powerful.

This is the message of God’s tefillin. In the end, the story of what we value will be told through what we have done, not through what we have said. Rituals are the truest expression of our beliefs.