For years I have been asking students of various ages if they ever had a discussion about God around the dinner table. Once the smiles abate, I ask why not. The reasons are usually the same: everyone has different opinions; nobody really knows; what is there to say – you believe or you don’t.
Of course people have different opinions about almost everything. Of the three topics one is not supposed to discuss in polite company – sex, politics, and religion – the first two comprise most of our conversation and only the last is rarely mentioned. Yet what we think about where we came from, where we are going, whether we are children of God or creatures of happenstance – surely these are topics we should be discussing with each other and with our children?
Whatever your beliefs or doubts, the Jewish people were the ones who introduced the world’s greatest idea – that of one God – to the world. We should find a way to talk about it with one another and with our children. “And all your children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of your children” (Isa. 54:13).
When the brothers meet, Esau tells Jacob “I have much.” Jacob responds by saying “I have enough” (lit. I have everything.)
The scholar and ethicist Meir Tamari calls this “the economics of enough.” We always want more; as Koheleth teaches, “the eye never has enough of seeing nor the ear of hearing” — we might add, nor the hand of grasping. Yet beyond a certain point money and possessions are not what you need or even what you can use, but about salving the ego with more and more and more.
Many people in our communities have far more money than they or their families could possibly spend, and are nonetheless reluctant to contribute to charity. Others have celebrations so lavish that the spiritual meaning is drowned in awful opulence. This is not the economics of enough or even the economics of excess, it is the economics of egregiousness.
Money in this world should be not a cistern but a fountain. It can make the world better if used, not merely to fortify the walls of a shaky self-esteem by being amassed. Limitation and generosity are hallmarks of our tradition; rapacity and hoarding are the antithesis of Israel, who taught us the economics of enough.
Those who are new to traditional Jewish prayer often hear it as a parade of gibberish. There are moments when the congregation sings together but then it is like boxers retreating to their corners, each becoming newly occupied with his or her own stream of chants or mumbles.
Rabbi Simon Greenberg used to say that Jews pray alone together. Individual hearts, each with its own sorrows and dreams, also join in a collective aspiration that takes flight at certain moments in the service. Mumbling, although it is the recitation of words, is closer in sound to the babbling of a child. Yet babbling is understood and cherished by the parent. Similarly we may not be sure of what we wish to say and still feel God understands.
Jewish prayer asks us to be disciplined with abandon. There are formulas, but the heart is set free and even within the confines of a brief service travels to far regions before returning home.
We pray not to bend God to our wishes, but to elevate our wishes to God. We pray to seek what is better and to be better.
