This past week all across the world Jews mourned the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. And they blamed themselves.
Yes, there are passages in Jewish literature that excoriate the nations who carried out the destruction. There are even passages that express anger at God. But primarily the Jews attribute the catastrophes of their history to their own misdeeds. In that is a danger and a blessing.
The danger is clear: when something catastrophic happens that is not at all the fault of the people, such as the Shoah, to blame oneself is a moral monstrosity. No one should feel responsible for the inflicted evil of another.
Yet the blessing is that the Jews were able to survive because we believed in the wisdom of the tradition, the love of God, the promise of history and the possibility of doing better. If it was our fault today, it need not be our fault again tomorrow. What we have destroyed we can rebuild; what we have neglected we can enact; what we have failed we can fulfill.
So after Tisha B’Av comes the great project to restore the possibilities of Jewish destiny. To reverse the poet’s line, in responsibility begins dreams.
A favorite saying of the Rabbis of Yavneh was: “I am God’s creature and my fellow is God’s creature. My work is in the town and his work is in the country. I rise early for my work and he rises early for his work. Just as he does not presume to do my work, so I do not presume to do his work. Will you say, I do much and he does little? We have learnt: One may do much or one may do little; it is all one, provided he directs his heart to heaven.” Berachot 17a
Judaism is a tradition of action but motivation counts as well. The world is filled with various tasks and the way you go about your work makes a difference. One who plants crops, who raises children, who practices medicine, who sells clothes and who writes poems all do vital work in God’s world.
Strikingly, the Talmud says this is a “favorite” saying. The idea that all work can be sacred if invested with the intention of sanctity can console us when things go badly and uplift us when they go well. Direct your heart to heaven.
We are a society geared toward the gifted. We have programs to enhance people’s natural endowments, special training and tutoring, early identification of people with talent or intelligence. Of course it makes sense; innovators and artists and thinkers should be given opportunities to grow their gifts. But moral education has to go hand in hand with ability; those who can make the greatest contribution need the greatest sensitivity to ethical issues.
The Torah teaches this with the story of Bilaam. Bilaam was a pagan, but according to the Rabbis, he was the most gifted prophet in the world. In a startling passage, they compare Bilaam’s abilities to Moses and Moses comes up short: “Moses did not know when God would speak with him. Bilaam knew… Moses only spoke with God standing up — Bilaam spoke with God even lying down.”
You would think that the Torah would be the story of Bilaam, but he plays a very minor part. Moses used his gifts for goodness. His stature did not come from his capacities alone; it came from his passion for God, for the people and his unswerving determination for justice. It is good to be gifted when the gifted are good.
Deuteronomy is the great book of listening. We live in a visual time; our age is saturated with images. Everyone’s cellphone carries a camera and can document the sights of our lives. But over and over in the first chapters of Deuteronomy we read the word ‘shma’ — listen, until we reach the famous line of the Shma prayer itself (Deut 6:4).
Judaism expounds and echoes. In the bare desert there was little to see but much to hear. God does not appear, but speaks. The Talmud is called the Oral tradition, because it was passed down in stories and wisdom from teacher to student, and repeatedly one comes across students repeating what they heard from their teachers.
Every child has access to endless images on screens. But Judaism is carried along in voices; we do not see Abraham and Sarah greeting angels, Joseph revealing himself to his brothers or Moses ascending the mountain; we imagine it when we hear their deeds retold. In the chanting of the prayer and the magic of the tale is religious wonder.
Franz Kafka in his famous parable “Before the Law” writes about a man who stands before a door designated only for him, but dies without entering. A very different spirit from Kafka, Ralph Waldo Emerson, nonetheless anticipated the existentialist by writing: “Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hand on the door latch they die outside.”
During the Neilah service of Yom Kippur, the liturgy tells of the gates closing. The origin is both literal and metaphorical: the gates that closed on the ancient Temple at the end of a long day, and the gates of repentance that are closing in heaven. But the assumption the tradition makes is that we can enter. No one need die outside the gates.
One may see life is a great unfulfillment, where there are promises and possibilities that mock us in our insufficiency. Or we may view life as a series of doors we are able to enter, blessings given and goodness grasped. A mezuzah is hung on the door not as a reminder when you merely see it, but to kiss when you open the door and walk through to the other side.
Do you know OTSOG? That is the shorthand for “On the Shoulders of Giants” an absolutely singular book. In the mid 1960’s, the renowned sociologist Robert Merton decided to find out the origin of the phrase attributed to Sir Isaac Newton: “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” The search takes him through many lands, fields of learning and languages (including Hebrew and Jewish scholarship.) He rambles and speculates with wit and astonishing erudition. It is an intellectual romp and a tour de force.
Merton also illustrates how thoughtful human beings throughout the ages have felt the benefit of those who preceded them. We are all on their shoulders. Judaism, with its penchant for quotation and citation, constantly acknowledges its debt to the past. To ignore the wisdom of earlier generations is to condemn oneself to poverty of the mind.
As we learn, the phrase goes back – at least – many hundreds of years before Newton. For all we know some Philistine child coined it atop Goliath before he was felled by David. We stand, all of us, on the shoulders of giants. But to appreciate the view it helps now and then to open a book.
L.P. Smith put it this way: “I might give up my life for my friend, but he had better not ask me to do up a parcel.” Another Smith, Zadie, put it even better: “I will do anything for my family except visit them.” Both were kidding of course. Sort of.
The small burdens of life are in fact sometimes more difficult than the major crises. We all show up for the funeral. But we forget the birthday, the weekly call, or the holiday visit. Life is always rushing at us, and while we can rouse ourselves for the big moments, in quieter times we are likely to remain on the couch.
Yet as a giant brick is not a dwelling, a heroic act is not a friendship. Each relationship is built on an accumulation of small acts, as a house is an accumulation of small stones. Emerson taught wisely, “Go often to the house of your friend. Weeds choke the unused path.” Rare is the funeral where I do not hear the lament – “had I only spent more time when he was alive.” Well, right now she’s alive.
Recently an experiment involving almost 20,000 people showed that we consistently acknowledge that we have changed in the past but underestimate how much we will change in the future. The music the subjects thought they would love forever changed, and sometimes their taste in food as well as ingrained habits and ideas. We believe we will be the same tomorrow as today, but actually we change a good deal.
George Bernard Shaw once remarked that the only person who understood him was his tailor, since his tailor measured him anew each time they met. If we are wise, we will reserve judgment on others as well as ourselves.
Repentance, “teshuva” is a promise of the possibility of change. It is easy to have settled ideas about who we are and to be equally settled about the character of others. But there is wisdom in that marvelous movie, the Philadelphia story, when Katherine Hepburn declares passionately, “the time to make up your mind about people is never.”
The Torah teaches us what to value, sometimes by faithfulness and sometimes by forsakenness.
Despite many trials and difficulties, Ruth remains faithful to Naomi and through that faith, reconstructs their lives and paves the way for the coming of the Messiah.
Samson should treasure his people and God, yet forsakes both for ego that struts for an hour on the stage before he is reminded of his destiny.
Moses remains faithful and fulfills his mission.
Saul is betrayed by his own insecurity and uncertainty, forsakes his calling and fails as King of Israel.
The Torah’s message is clear: do not let the distractions of the moment derail you from the deep certainties that should guide a life. Bitachon, trust in God and in the love that brings will be the lodestar of the divided heart.
Or in the words of the great poet: Endless the grief of one who, for love of things that do not last, casts off a love that never dies. (Dante, Paradiso XV)
What is the meaning of the ‘badeken’ — veiling the bride before the wedding ceremony? Some associate it with Rebecca, who upon meeting her future husband Isaac, placed a veil over her face. Others, perhaps more fancifully, associate it with Jacob and Leah, since Jacob intended to marry Rachel and woke up to her older sister.
The first time I conducted a wedding however, a deeper meaning to the veiling ceremony seemed clear to me. The Kotzker Rebbe once sharply rebuked his disciples — “Masks! Where are your faces?” He was pointing out that we all wear masks, or veils — professional, personal, sometimes deliberately and sometimes without even realizing it. To be authentic in a world of judgment is frightening. So we reveal parts of ourselves to selected people.
But there should be at least one person in this world before whom you can be fully seen, before whom you do not need to wear a veil. If we are lucky, we can share our lives with a partner who really knows, accepts and loves us. At the end of the wedding ceremony, the veil is lifted and the bride and groom look into each other’s eyes. Here is love, here is acceptance, here is the presence of God — without a veil.
