Margin of Error

בס''ד

29 Adar, 5772

March 23rd, 2012

If it were up to me, we religious figures would have a mandatory disclaimer after we spoke, like in those car commercials.

It would go like this:

“There is neither wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel in place of God.” Proverbs 21:30

What this means in context is something like, “Everything I’m saying has a healthy margin of error.”

This is the truth of the situation - to live a religious life is to reach for God’s will, not to know it. The very point of the exercise is that we do not know with certainty, and that we spend our lives searching for the way. Life is an exercise is learning, not knowing. No religious leader, no matter how fervent, knows the will of God.

But before you get too excited, remember that this disclaimer applies to everyone, not just religious leaders. Often I see people who substitute doubt of religion with their own certainty. Overhead from another Jew: “That’s just what the Rabbis say, it’s not God’s law.” Just because we do not believe in perfect knowledge does not mean we reject wisdom. Not to give teachers the presumption of value is to say that one person cannot pass holiness to another.

What I’m describing is not an end to belief, but a call for belief with humility.

And yes, you still can’t eat that bacon double-cheesburger.

Yelling

בס''ד

Yelling

22 Adar, 5772

March 16^th, 2012

It’s been a big few weeks for the pundits and talking heads. As the presidential election draws closer, as Israel’s concerns about Iran skyrocket, there’s been plenty to talk about.

What irks me, as the tensions rise, are the kinds of people to whom we’ve chosen to listen, as they pontificate on our nation’s and people’s woes.

The prophet’s primary definition has been misplaced somewhere in the crevasse of modern parlance. A prophet’s first job is to yell at his or her own people, to the group to which s/he belongs. Prophets are the expression of our internal voice of conscience. So why is it that all we hear are people yelling at the other guy?

The Limbaughs and the Olbermanns, the Frankens and the Pragers – all these pundits direct their energies solely towards the other. Towards those like them, and especially regarding their own sacred persons, they have nothing but pristine confidence.

Our Torah does not admire intelligence in place of wisdom, nor glibness in the stead of humility. One of the great questions of the Talmud is, “Who in this generation is worthy of giving criticism?” The manner and method of those to whom we give a platform is of vital importance.

If we could change the world in small, but substantive ways, let one change be this: that we enshrine in our culture those whose criticism we need to hear, not only those who criticize on our behalf.

“A wise person accepts discipline. One who hates criticism is a fool.” Proverbs 12:1

Ich bin a Yid

בס''ד

Parshat Terumah

1 Adar 5772

February 24^th, 2012

Yesterday might have contained my greatest moment of 5772. A 78 year-old African-American preacher grabbed my arm, looked me in the eye, and said with considerable charm, “Ich bin a Yid in my heart.”*

I must admit, it was awesome.

The irony of my pleasure in this moment is that I get quite touchy when non-Jews claim Jewish identity or affinity. I have seen some very strange appropriations of Judaism over the years: non-Jews at Krakow’s klezmer music festival, wearing hassidische clothing, quoting stories of the rebbes, with interest only in Jews long dead; Christian biblical fundamentalists who mistakenly believe that they share our essence because they are Old Testament focused (they’ve never heard of the Talmud); Messianics claiming ownership over Torah, including the disgraceful “coronation” of Bishop Eddie Long with a Torahscroll. 

At issue is the nature of identity, and the question of how people relate to identities that they partially share, but do not wholly inhabit.

In our time, each of us is an amalgamation of identities. It’s true: our global culture exposes us, quite felicitously, to external identities in such a way that they take residence in our soul. There is a part of me that is an American at the founding of this country, a part in a yeshiva in Lithuania. There is a part of me that is black, a part that is gay, a part Latino, Asian, Eastern European, Southern, East Coast, and so on. The nature of our era is that we exist as hybrids.

But I am nonetheless conscious of my central identity: a Jew in America. And though I may inhabit others in a partial way, it is only as an American Jew that I am an arbiter and influencer – only in that realm where I can speak to the destiny of my identity.

With the contemporary sharing of identities has come arrogance: the fallacy that because I am influenced by another culture, I have a right to define that culture. This is why Jews get uncomfortable with outpourings of Evangelical love – it comes with a definition about us and our future (eventually coming to love Christ) that we reject. We do not want to be known as future converts. It is invasive.

Therefore, the response to the identities shared with us must be humility. When others share their identities with us they give us a gift, not a commodity to be consumed and controlled.  Ultimately this is why I loved my preacher friend, for in his eyes was kindness, not ownership.

“Words of Torah can only exist in one of humble mind.”

-Talmud, Masekeht Ta’anit

* Yiddish for “I am a Jew.” It loses something in the translation.

Sick

בס’‘ד

Parshat Mishpatim

24 Shvat, 5772

February 17th, 2012

I’ve been sick for the last four days.

It’s nothing serious, thank God. Enough of a cold to make me wish I could detach my own head for a while, but nothing more than discomfort.

But it did get me thinking. 

Being sick reminded me of a uncomfortable truth, which is that to live is to be at war. On the microscopic level, our bodies are more or less constantly in battle. Scientists estimate that the parasites on planet Earth outnumber us free-standing organism by a factor of 3 to 1. We are always under attack.

So you have to wonder, then, what health really is. Is it the illusory state that existed only before the onslaught of life? Is health sterility - the eradication of all harmful influences?

My guess is that the answer is no. It’s negotiating those challenges that makes us healthy, not avoiding them. Health is not pristine.

This is the magnificent truth of our bodies: “Do not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by die; Not the disease that comes in darkness, nor the destruction that lays waste at noon. A thousand will fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand - but they shall not come close to you.” (Psalm 91)

Every moment of health is a wonderful overcoming, a show of grace against great odds. As the sick know, every second of health’s preeminence is worthy of gratitude.

Choice vs. Journey

בס''ד

Parshat Yitro

17 Shvat, 5772

February 10^th, 2012

I suppose I do not have the bona fides to the critique the plethora of choice in our world, as I am certainly a child of choice. I live a half-extremely religious, half-secularly engaged lifestyle unthinkable in centuries previous. I am defined by the ability to choose, minutely and freely, the exact kind of life I want to live. So who am I to talk?

But at the same time, I am sad that we are so glutted with choice. The amount of it is overwhelming. There’s so much of it that our brains have dropped other faculties (memorization, calculation) and function as eternal selectors:  not just private or public, but which private? And should we go charter? Not just Apple or PC, but which of these 13 billion little apps do I need to download to my i-pad to make sure I survive the weekend?

What makes me sad is that I believe our ease of selection preempts the possibility of real internal search. It’s as if all of us are art critics, none of us artists. We choose constantly, but do we have the chance to journey towards meaningful choice? Are we allowed to reap the rewards that come from internal struggle and the necessary rigors of finding our place within systems that seem foreign to us?

The Talmud in Ta’anit has a piece of advice for teachers: “if a student is ready, ‘bring water to the thirsty;’ if a student is not ready ‘let the thirsty come get water.’” This means that there is a journey each student must take before s/he is ready for Torah. But our world treats us as if we are eternally ready, dropping all the knowledge and wisdom and opportunity that can be found in a heap at our feet, whether we are prepared for such or not.

So I say: make space for yourself not to be ready; make space not to know or understand; make space for everything not to be revealed right now. Give yourself the chance to journey.

Vastness

8 Shvat, 5772

February 1^st 2012

It’s hard to comprehend the vastness of the universe.

Think about this: We inhabit one of the outer spiral arms of our galaxy, the Milky Way. We’re not quite in the boondocks – more like the galactic Akron, Ohio.

We are roughly 27,000 light years from our galactic center. The Milky Way itself contains about 300 billion stars. 

The Milky Way itself is one of 54 galaxies of the Local Group. The Group has a 10 million light year diameter.

The Local Group is part of the Virgo Supercluster – 100 groups of galaxies and 110 million light years across.

There are about 10 million superclusters in the visible universe.

What’s crazy is that our technology – the Hubble telescope in particular – allows our reach to obliterate our grasp. We can see with clarity objects over 13 billion light years away. It takes so long for their light to reach us that anything we see is a glimpse into the early history of the universe, within 400 million years of the Big Bang itself.

That’s just cool.

I find it interesting that the realization of the universe’s size has not had more effect upon contemporary religious belief. To believe in our God is to believe God created literally everything. How do we account for the fact that we are, in universal terms, of miniscule account? How do we understand our relationship with a God who created reality on a scale so large that we are not built to comprehend it?

 300 words cannot do the topic justice, but I can tell you that the vastness of the universe makes most of our local religious conflicts look pretty silly. The doctrinal differences that have actually led human beings to kill each other just can’t be that important to a God so large. The enormity of the universe injects some much needed perspective into religious affairs.

So the next time someone worries that too much English in the service is going bring the End of Days, I’ll simply think of the Virgo Supercluster…

Delusion

בס''ד

3 Shvat, 5772

January 27th, 2012

Dear reader, herein find the cautionary tale of Jean Martin Charcot.

Charcot was a French neurologist of the 19th century. His impact on modern neurology is profound: he was the first to describe and name multiple sclerosis, and one of the first with ALS; he counted among his students Sigmund Freud, William James, Alfred Binet (of IQ test fame), and Gilles de la Tourette; he contributed significantly to systematic neurological examination. 

But his unfortunate legacy is forever linked with hypnotism.

Hypnotism was the popular scientific rage of the time. Charcot believed that the ability to be hypnotized was the best sign that a person was a hysteric - an antiquated term for neuroses (itself antiquated). A natural showman, physicians came from all over Europe to watch as Charcot, with merely a glance, sent his patients into deep hypnotic trances, whereupon they would produce dramatic hysteric fits. 

But there was a problem. It turns out that Charcot’s patients were carefully prepared by his assistants beforehand, essentially told how to act. Thus Charcot wasn’t uncovering anything in his patients; he was producing the effects himself. The brilliant physician’s demonstrations were discarded as studies of the etiology of disease, and became an eternal example of the power of suggestibility. Charcot, a father of neurology, died with the shame of public discredit. 

Even the best of us has a huge capacity for self-delusion. When our blood pumps hot with the felt truth of our convictions, it is hard to remember that we bend the world to meet our opinions, and that we hide that bending from ourselves.

This then is the power of studying Torah. To train one’s mind and heart to seek truth beyond one’s personal intuitions -- this is the responsibility anyone who would speak for truth in the world. 

“Lips that speak truth last forever; Gone in an moment is a tongue that speaks falsehood” Proverbs 12:19