A Torah teaching that profoundly upgrades my life is “Gam zu l’tova” – there is good in this, too.   Implicit in this teaching is that while we can’t always change negative or unpleasant facets of our life, we can change our relationship to them.

A story

R. Zelig Pliskin is a senior lecturer at Aish in Jerusalem and a master of this wisdom.  One day his five-year-old came home from school  sobbing.

“They all call me ‘gingi,’” he cried, referring to the Hebrew word for “red-head.”

“Hmm,” R. Pliskin strategized.  ”I will make you the following deal.  You keep careful track tomorrow of exactly how many times you’re called ‘gingi’ and for each one I will pay you a shekel.”

The boy’s mouth dropped open.   For a five-year-old, this could mean real money.

So the next day he did just that.  As they teased, he became calm and intent as his fingers counted.

“Sixteen,” said the boy that evening, at which point R. Pliskin counted out 16 shekels.  His son could barely contain himself.

The next day, there were fewer taunts.  Within a few days, there were none.

In my own life, I sometimes feel taunted by obstacles – from negative  people to my own negative habits.  I can resent and protest them but that typically strengthens their effect.  Or, I can change my relationship with them.  Like R. Pliskin’s son, I can see, “There is good in them,” and thereby earn amazing riches and upgrades.

Shabbat Shalom,

Henry Harris

PS – Please join me this coming Monday at 7:15pm for “Torah-tainment: The 10 Suggestions?” or this Wed. at 8pm, “How We Muck Up Relationships.” http://www.aishcenter.com/programs/learning

Most spiritual traditions have a structured methodology through which they strive to make personal or collective contact with the Divine. This practice is commonly referred to as prayer or meditation, and while many might not agree with a particular practice or the enterprise in general, very large swaths of humanity looks upon it as valuable and purposeful.

There are two problems with the common perception of prayer. One is that if you believe that God answers prayers, then why is it that we so often fail to receive what we have requested? And if you believe that God will always do what’s best for us regardless of what we choose to ask for, then what is the purpose of the petition in the first place?

In truth, the notion that focused communication with the Infinite would find its fullest expression in solicitations for “stuff” misses the point by a country mile.

In classical Judaism, though we may have expected it, there does not always appear to be a natural correlation between righteousness and Divine wish fulfillment. For instance, in the book of Genesis, three out of the four Matriarchs — Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel — have a very hard time conceiving children. Commenting on this, the Talmud notes that “God desires the prayers of the righteous.” But why? It certainly can’t be for His sake. The Jewish conception of God is of an infinite, loving, creating and sustaining force that needs nothing. The collective beseechings of all of humanity, cannot, by definition, help Him one iota — after all, infinite plus 10 is still infinite.

The obvious alternative conclusion is that He desires these prayers not for Himself but for the one praying, and that the lack that we all experience (health issues, financial hardship, failing relationships, et al) has been presented to the supplicant simply as a vehicle to initiate the dialogue. What then, could be so important in this communication that would prompt the Almighty to send these wake-up messages and cause us to contend with so many unwanted and painful challenges?

In the Hebrew language, the word “to pray” is lehitpalel. Interestingly, it is a reflexive verb — something that you do to yourself. The root of the word, palal, means “to judge,” rendering the actual translation of prayer as something more akin to self-evaluation. Therefore, when a person stands before God to communicate, she is taking stock of her capabilities, current level of spiritual consciousness and willingness to accept reality for what it truly is. The deeper notion is that we are willfully trying to integrate the inescapable fact that we are utterly dependent on the Creator.

For instance, we can intend to get up and go to work, but there are countless external factors (which are beyond our control) that could easily conspire to thwart that intention. Our own lack, and the realization that the smartest, bravest and most capable people on Earth are essentially powerless to alter their circumstances without outside assistance, forces the one praying to grasp the greatness of the Provider and the great chasm that yawns between where (and Who) He is and what we and our capabilities really are. As the Talmud also teaches, “all is in the hands of Heaven, except the fear of Heaven.” Fear in this context means a fear of loosing the connection with Heaven. It’s explaining that, try as we might and though it may seem counter-intuitive, we have precisely zero control over what occurs around us. In actuality, the only thing that we can control is how we react to what is occurring to us.

This is an exceedingly valuable lesson to learn. Our illusion of control causes us untold amounts of pain and confusion. How many individuals have helplessly wondered, “Why is this happening to me?” How many people seethe in anger when spoken to in the wrong tone, or when they lose a job, or even when it rains at an inconvenient time? One who has fully integrated his or her true dependent status is humble, is emotionally unaffected by these difficulties, and grasps a firm rudder to navigate through life’s unceasing vicissitudes. True joy comes from being anchored to what is certain. Unfortunately, virtually all that we experience in this short plane of our existence does not fall into that category. This is well understood — “here today, gone tomorrow,” as the saying goes — and along with the loss, change or departure of that which we love, goes the equanimity of most people. Tefilah, the noun form of this process of self-evaluation, helps us come to terms with this reality — and then transcend it.

This transcendence, and the pleasure that comes along with it, is commensurate with the extent to which one is able to integrate the truth of the one unchanging Force of reality that some of us choose to call God. There are myriad benefits embedded in this realization, including: peace of mind, patience, lack of the need to judge, calmness and optimism. The natural alternative is what Freud described in a letter to Marie Bonaparte: “The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence.” That is how the clear-thinking individual feels when he or she fully accepts the void — sans the God anchor. Without that rooting, life is intrinsically chaotic, unpredictable and upsetting. With it, those same challenging experiences are just hurdles to be scaled for the sake of an underlying good.

Crosby, Stills and Nash once sang that “confusion has its costs.” And it does. As the Talmud understands matters, “there is no joy like the resolution of doubt.” Our version of prayer is a key vehicle to promote that resolution, and the joy that follows in its wake.

Follow Rabbi Adam Jacobs on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RabbiAdamJacobs

By Rabbi Adam Jacobs
View article source at Huffington Post
2/2/12

“I know everything about football. I know what every player is supposed to do. I can see the play before it happens.  I know how to manage a game.

G-d tells Moshe to inform Pharoah of the impending plague of blood at Pharoah’s morning visit to the Nile.  Why then and there?

Pharoah is in denial (pun intended)  - “I am a  god who has no need for the bathroom.”   (He would relieve himself every day before the sun rose and hold his bowels – to the wonderment of his subjects.)  Moshe’s early morning confrontation catches him literally with his pants down.

Consider pitiful Pharoah, stubbornly hiding his need to eliminate in order to pretend he’s something he’s not.  Doesn’t he realize that the need to use the bathroom is part of what makes us human, that it signifies not our lowliness, but rather our capacity to choose our soul even as we feel the tug of a more lowly nature?

I once had the pleasure of meeting with someone pursuing recovery from addiction.  He’s discreetly but proactively seeking support and spirituality.

“I tried a long time to manage the challenge on my own,” he shared.  ”At a certain point, I realized I couldn’t hide.”

Pharoah is the arrogance of thinking I am autonomous and need no one because I concede no imperfection.  Such is the stuff from which addictions come:   I feel compelled to do silly, self-defeating behaviors to mask my foibles rather than humbly seek means to grow.

The takeaway is: the powerful person is not the one who needs no one; it’s the one who acknowledges his shortcomings and thereby creates powerful partnerships to address them.

Shabbat Shalom,

Henry Harris

1) Join me Monday at 7:15pm for Weekly Torah-tainment at Aish or listen to past talks on iTunes

2) Join Tzipora and I  next Friday night at Aish for our winter Luau Shabbat

Bright Nebula. Photo: European Southern Observatory.

There is something tantalizing in the notion that contrary to popular belief, ancient people may have been in possession of a far greater level of insight about the nature of reality than they have generally been given credit for. Though there is the danger for this exploration to rapidly veer off into the loony bin of UFO encounters, Atlantis theories and the like, there are some serious thinkers who have noted that some cultures seem to have been aware of aspects of the natural world that, all things being equal, they should not have been. The Israeli professor of engineering at Ben Gurion University, Haim Shore, is one of those people and he has recorded his findings in a fascinating work called “Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew.”

Though at no point does Professor Shore describe these data points as explicit proofs of anything, one is left wondering: if his examples are indeed true, what does it mean? How could human beings living hundreds or thousands of years ago have known about matters which they could not have verified through experimentation or that would have required knowledge of parts of the world that had not yet been discovered or phenomena that are fully invisible to the naked eye? One possibility is that they didn’t know anything about these matters and that it’s just wishful thinking or reverse engineering of facts that make it seem as though it were true. Another is that they speculated so often about so many matters that occasionally they just got lucky about a few random facts and supporters just cherry-pick the ones that work and have discarded the more embarrassing ones.

As it happens, in the cases described by professor Shore (and others), the Jewish People have been familiar with the quoted sources for an extremely long time – the Talmud, the Zohar and other ancient texts were well known and widely dispersed so it’s not as if the examples have been culled from some wholly esoteric source and then spun at some later date to sound like a more recent scientific discovery. The examples are also quite clear and specific – there is no convenient ambiguity that can be interpreted in a variety of ways. And while it is true that the sages discussed and believed much of the scientific wisdom of their day that is now known to be incorrect, (such as a belief in the spontaneous generation of lice or the advice that pregnant women should drink wine), they never claimed to have a lock on the totality of knowledge – scientific or otherwise. They only claimed that they were given the keys to certain aspects of life that in general would help them with their spiritual practice. It is interesting to note that in many examples they give which do appear to be correct they claim to know through tradition and not through any particular inquiry. If true, what would be logical to posit as the source of their knowledge? Here are three examples:

Number of Stars

The Naked eye is able to perceive about 4000 stars in the night sky. Though the ancients might have wondered if there were any others beyond our perception there is no logical reason to assume that the number that they would imagine would be in the quintillions. There is even less reason to imagine that they would have suggested a number that is close (on a galactic scale) to the number that cosmology currently posits. This is what the Talmud had to say about it almost 2000 years ago:
“I created 12 constellations in the firmament, and for each constellation I created 30 hosts (clusters of stars), and for each host I created 30 legions (30 legions of stars for each host), and for each legion I created 30 divisions, and for each division I created 30 battalions, and for each battalion I created 30 camps, and to each camp I have attached 365,000 tens of thousands of stars, corresponding to the days of the solar year, and all of them I have created only for your sake.” (Brachot 32B)
Doing the calculations we see that:
• each camp has 3,650,000,000 (1000 x 10,000)
• 30 camps x 30 battalions x 30 divisions x 30 legions x 30 hosts x 12 constellations = 291,600,000 camps
• 3,650,000,000 x 291,600,000 = 1,064,340,000,000,000,000.
It is interesting to note that in 1997 NASA concluded there were 10 to the power of 21. Other sources suggest both smaller and larger numbers. The Jewish sages said it was 10 to the power of 18. Whatever the actual number may be, what would have prompted them to speculate on such a massive scale?

Continental Drift

Genesis 1:19 says “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so.” Again, around 2000 years ago the Zohar Chadash (12:1) explained that “one single continent came out of the water, and from it seven continents were formed.” (There is a dispute between academics and religious scholars on the issue of the Zohar’s age, but either way, the texts are, by any standard, pre-scientific revolution). There are manuscripts and references to the Zohar that go back as early as the 14th century, yet the first scientist to talk about continental drift was Alfred Lothar Wegener in his book “The Origin of Continents and Oceans” in 1915. By what means would these sages have acquired the notion a) of a single land mass that broke apart, and b) the correct number of continents before they were even discovered? Why would they even discuss it?

The Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy

250 years ago Anton Lavoisier, (the father of modern chemistry), proved that matter that appears to have been destroyed continues to exist in a different form. It was a striking discovery due especially to the non-intuitive nature of the reality – when you burn a piece of paper it really does appear to be gone. 2800 years ago, King Solomon wrote the following in the book of Ecclesiastes “I know that whatever God does, it shall be forever; nothing can be added to it or taken away.” 1500 years later Rabbi Saadiah Gaon in his book of Beliefs and Opinions explained this verse to mean that “…a created object can never annihilate another object in any way. Even if it is burnt with fire, it can never be annihilated; because it is impossible to destroy something to the point that it becomes nothing; for only God [can do this], who himself created it from nothing.”

Other examples that strangely parallel with our modern, scientific understanding:

• The origin of the universe
• The exact length of the lunar cycle
• The existence of the outer layer of the sun
• Water in space
• Meteorites as a source of water on planet Earth
• The effects of sound waves on matter
• The weight of air
• How the conception of twins occurs
• The day when blood coagulation begins

Each one of these examples may be coincidental and there may be a variety of alternative methods of explaining them. But what if they are (as these sages claimed) the revealed wisdom of a transcendental power – one for whom this foreknowledge would be rather intuitive as it was the designer of the system in toto? Would that not be a simple and elegant solution to the question? At the very least, it’s intriguing.

View Article Source at algemeiner.com
By Rabbi Adam Jacobs
January 13, 2012

The Egyptians strove to destroy the Jewish people with avodas parech: “work of crumbling.”  What’s the principle?

The Talmud explains that such work includes two aspects:

1) no purpose – “dig a 10 foot hole and when you’re done fill it up and then redig it, etc.”

2) no completion – “dig here until I tell you to stop.”

The best way to break the spirit of a human being is to bind him to activity that has no apparent goal or end point.   Purpose is to the human spirit as oxygen is to the human lungs; our vitality is literally dependent on it.  When a person experiences a deficiency of purpose, it’s hard to think; it’s hard to see reality; it’s hard to be alive.

I spoke with someone recently who was experiencing significant pain and indecision. 

“I’m so frustrated,” he said.  “I feel like G-d is giving me the same challenge over and over and I’m not getting it.”

Listening more closely to his words, I sensed our principle at work.  

“You seem to think you’re in some kind of remedial school,” I suggested, “as if this work is below where you should be, even pointless.”

“Kind of,” he admitted.

“Who says?” I asked.  “Great sages describe themselves facing similar challenges.  According to them, this is not remedial school; it’s graduate school.”

He heard it.  We then reviewed several routes his decision could take.  One jumped out as obvious and reasonable.

“Amazing,” he said.  “When I open up to the value of the work, the work goes more smoothly.”

May we merit to seek and find both meaning and meaningful markers of growth in all that we do.

Shabbat Shalom,

Henry Harris

PS – Join me Monday at Aish, 7:15pm, for more insights on freedom, or check out my classes on iTunes

Tonight, eat, drink and network with other young Jewish professionals. Hear speaker Robert Butters, Owner of ‘And Entertainment’ and ‘Green Distribution Inc,’ followed by a Q & A.

Robert Butters
Owner of ‘And Entertainment’ and ‘Green Distribution Inc.’
· Working for over 20 years in the Entertainment industry and dealing with theatrical brands such as Phantom of The Opera, CATS and Jesus Christ Superstar
· Producing large-scale entertainment events for corporate brands such as Harley-Davidson and Coca-Cola
· Setting up his own apparel businesses working with music artists such as Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber and sports franchises such as the Mets and JETS

There’s a lot of blessing going on in the weekly portion: Jacob blesses each of his children before he dies; we learn the formula for blessing Jewish boys which is recited Friday nights in Jewish homes till today.

What exactly is a blessing?

Let’s look at the Hebrew for “blessing:” bracha.  Our sages teach that it shares its root with bricha – a live spring of water.  Just as a spring points to water’s point of origin (albeit hidden), so does a “blessing” – it focuses the attention of the blesser on the truth that there is a source to life – beyond our immediate perception – that is continuously flowing.  The greater our awareness – i.e. the aperture –  the greater the flow.

When I give you a blessing, I first think about you and your needs.  I’m moved by who you are and by your dependence on the source, and I pray for you.  In the merit of you (and your needs) becoming a catalyst for my greater “Source” awareness, you become the recipient of that greater “flow,” the fulfillment of my prayer.

This week, as my wife was about to nod off at 1am after a long day of serving as cook, chauffeur, tutor, mediator, and butler, I thought of the following blessing:

Tzipora, in the merit of you squeezing your needs and wishes to make room for others, may the Al-mighty squeeze a lot of rest and relaxation into this short night of sleep!

And my blessing to you, dear reader: In the merit of your openness to wisdom and growth, may the Al-mighty open both your eyes to your great present abundance and your heart to receive even more.

Shabbat Shalom!

Henry Harris

PS – Please join me Monday night at Aish, 7:15pm – The Exodus and our own personal Egypt.

I went to get an inspection sticker today for the used car we just got.  Too many cars in line: I bailed.  It’s ok, I consoled myself, the main reason to come to Newark was to buy an additional van seat from a junk yard.  The floor moldings were wrong: no go.

I shared my frustration with my wife as I walked in the door.

Then my son walked in. “Where’s the Frustration Game?” he asked.  My wife gave a puzzled look.

“What’s that?”

“It’s the name we gave to the new toy,” I explained.  Last Shabbat we gave the kids Perplexus: a round plastic ball with snaking obstacle courses over which one attempts to gently guide a metal ball to a final marker without it falling off.  Last Shabbat the boys (and some adults) unlovingly named it the Frustration Game.  At one point, I thought we might need to de-gift it.

Then it dawned on me.

“Moshie,” I told my son, who seemed frustrated that he couldn’t find the Frustration Game, “you can play the Frustration Game with anything, anytime, anywhere.  I just played it right now – twice in Newark!”

2011 is about to come to a close.  I’ve played this game plenty over these past 12 months; I will be tempted to do so again no doubt.  But there’s another game to play: the Perspective Game, as my wife hinted at when summarizing my aborted errands.

“It’s ok,” she said.  ”It’s just another reminder from G-d that we don’t run the world.”

May we merit to embrace forgo Frustration for Perspective in 2012.

Shabbat Shalom

Henry Harris

A fascinating thing has transpired in the 63-year-old relationship between the Israeli Jewish population and their brethren in the American diaspora. The latter have just realized that their days are numbered — not as a result of the encroaching existential dangers of the sort that Israel faces day in and day out — but rather as the result of a slow implosion borne on the back of apathy, cultural acceptance and assimilation.

Ironically, no nation has been as embracing and tolerant of the Jewish people as the United States. One need only to read President Washington’s remarkable letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport: “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Sadly, the American Jewish community has used this unprecedented opportunity unwisely. Instead of educating our children in the beautiful system of ethics, logic, personal growth and spirituality that is the Torah, they sought mainly to fit in with the population at large. Rather than instruct them in the miraculous and heroic history of the ancient people to whom they belong, they provided anemic and mind-numbing Hebrew School experiences and focused on making sure that they had competitive SAT scores and college-worthy extra-curricular activities. The result has been a cascading abandonment of true Judaic thought and practice and a collective spiritual ignorance that is unprecedented in our 3,000+ year project in this world. As a whole, based on the standard demographic measurements of affiliation, the American Jewish community appears terminal, and the effects are manifesting themselves now. In the words of Reform Rabbi Lance J. Sussman from 2010, “With the exception of a number of Orthodox communities and a few other bright spots in or just off the mainstream of Jewish religious life, American Judaism is in precipitous decline … the reform movement has probably contracted by a full third in the last ten years!”

When contrasted with the continuity performance of the Israeli Jewish community, it’s hard not to be shocked at the gap. Despite their highly publicized problems, the Israeli Jewish world is thriving. Among other facts, the Jewish birth rate there is the highest in the industrial world at about three children per woman. The entire population is obviously fluent in Hebrew and even the public school students get 12 years of biblical study — both of which deeply enhance their sense of connectedness to their “Jewishness.” It is commonly believed that most Israelis are secular but the truth is that in practice most Israelis are a hybrid — incorporating many elements of Judaic practice such as having a Passover Seder, building a sukkah or lighting Shabbat candles — without taking on the entire discipline (Hat tip: David Goldman). They also marry Jews, unlike more than 50 percent of their American counterparts. As the products of inter-marriage are statistically unlikely to be raised with any lasting Jewish knowledge or commitment and given their low birth-rates, it is simply a matter of time until the bulk of the community in America destroys itself.

This is the reason for the surprisingly antagonistic responses by secular American Jews to the Israeli government’s recent ads prodding their expatriates to come home. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg says that “I don’t think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads.” He also states that in his view intermarriage “can also be understood as an opportunity.”

An opportunity for what? For inter-denominational understanding yes, but as a means of preserving the Jewish nation it fails utterly — as it always has. It’s the reason that the Reform and Conservative populations are now vanishing. Any student of Jewish history knows that there have periodically arisen great new Jewish movements that deviated from the mainstream, temporarily flourished and then collapsed and disappeared. It’s the reason why the once great Karaite and Sadducee communities are irrelevant or non-existent, respectively. We are witnessing the latest iteration of that ancient cycle currently and it disturbs those who are standing on the wrong side of history. Israel is once again the epicenter of Jewish life and more and more we will see religiously committed leaders taking authority over Jewish matters — both at home and in the diaspora. Even the once spiritually bereft IDF has begun contending with the need to accommodate the recent influx and promotion of religious soldiers in its ranks.

America has indeed been an important safe-haven for the remnants of the European destruction. We have flourished materially and been granted opportunities undreamt of by our ancestors. It has been good. But now the ground has shifted, and each Jew must make his or her choice — to continue to allow themselves to be distanced from their Judaism and their connection to the land, or to explore and (hopefully) embrace them. Israel (and traditional observance), as was foretold by the Torah and the prophets thousands of years ago, is the future: “And He will return and gather you from among all of the nations where he has dispersed you. If your dispersed ones will be even at the ends of the heavens, from there God Almighty will gather you and from there He will take you. And God your Lord will bring you to the land that your fathers inherited and you shall inherit it and He will do good for you and make you more numerous than your forefathers.” (Deuteronomy 30:1-5)

That this decline will occur seems a foregone conclusion, but it does not mean that we should casually resign ourselves to it. There is a Talmudic dictum that says that “all Jews are guarantors for one another.” On a practical level this means that each one of us is responsible for the physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of all the others. I cannot sequester myself in my religious enclave and spiritually satisfy myself while the vast majority of my nation cannot read two letters of their own alphabet let alone navigate the finer points of our legal, ethical and philosophical texts. All Jews must take the time and the responsibility to reach out and — at the very least offer to — help educate their fellow Jew. Otherwise, soon enough we won’t even know who to reach out to.

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By Rabbi Adam Jacobs
12/15/11
View article source at HuffingtonPost.com