Recently I have been fortunate enough to have been given an incredible platform that enables me to share my ideas about Jewish matters to a significantly bigger audience than at any time since I began teaching.  Though I didn’t know all that much about it before, the Huffington Post is an extremely sophisticated blog that posts scores of blogs daily on a large variety of subjects.  It has a larger readership than the NY Times and the Wall St Journal and as such really represents the word on “the street”.  Sadly, I have been a bit taken aback at what some folks out there have to say about my religion (and religion in general).  Each article has a “comments” section that allows readers to freely express their thoughts on what you have written and though I have always abstractly known that there was a substantial antipathy to Judaism, few people have been willing to “say it to my face” until now.

The experience of having something you deeply care about denigrated is always a painful thing.  Try as you may, it’s sometimes close to impossible to open people up to something  they have decided (or assumed) to be a certain way.  In college, we had weekly live music at a campus coffee house…usually rock or folk.  Being the Jazz snob that I was, I decided to get my teacher’s quartet to come one week and show people what music really was.  I had envisioned a rapt audience quietly twisting their necks in that “yes and no” fashion common to Jazz fans.  Instead, 45 seconds into the performance, one of the “jockey” types of guys standing there loudly declared “jazz sucks!” and everybody kept talking over the music.  I was stunned.  How could they all not see the inherent beauty in this music-it’s complexity, the agility of the players and the originality of the composition?  It was but one of very many experiences that showed me that some of the most valuable ideas and experiences in life are routinely ignored, opposed or ridiculed as a matter of course.

It’s not just Jazz of course;  great symphonies, years in the making, can elicit yawns, strolls though the world’s great art galleries might hold someone’s attention for half an hour and exposure to classical philosophy could easily be met with a “bor-ing”!  Though I don’t really like it, I can deal with indifference or dislike of cultural matters.  I have a harder time when it comes to Judaism-the injustice strikes me as just too great.  Here you have a spiritual/cultural tradition that has obviously transformed the world for the better-providing Western Culture with most of its concept of morality and proper conduct in the world, promoting the value and rights of the weak and helpless, possessing an astounding record and system of charity, education and personal growth-only to be dismissed as “bunk”, “patriarchal”, “racist”, “backwards” “barbaric” and “outdated” by people who have little to no real knowledge of the subject matter.

One of the big issues, I realized, is that many folks out there have had some exposure to our Torah-what they know as “the Bible”.  This exposure allows them to read it in the most dermal way and then form independent conclusions about what they think it means.  Of course we live in a free society and they are perfectly at liberty to do that.  The issue is that the Torah doesn’t work like that and anyone who takes that approach is bound to miscomprehended what has been written.

Today is a fast day called Asara B’Teves (the 10th of the month of Teves) and one of the things we are mourning over is the translation of the Torah into Greek.  2200 years ago, Ptolemy forced 70 rabbis (at knife point) to translate the text of the Torah.  The Talmud recounts that the sages agonized over this task, not least of which because they knew the text-with all of its subtlety, nuance and layered meaning-would be misunderstood.  They did the best they could, but the deed was done and now the world was free to mistranslate, misinterpret and misapprehend.  They managed to get the text, but not its methodology.  Since then other religions have co-opted and appended the entire text to their own.  Many have read it and many have thereby drawn the wrong conclusions about it.  For instance, the text clearly says “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”  Doesn’t that indeed sound like some brutal medieval doctrine?  Well…what would a Jewish court do if an eyeless man went around poking out other people’s eyes?  Could he just do so with impunity?  Obviously that wouldn’t work and as we know from the Talmud (the key to understanding the text of the Torah), it has always meant a monetary payment and the text only means to imply that the perpetrator deserves to loose an eye, but he won’t.

There are countless example along these lines.  I feel fortunate to have made it my life’s work to reframe these and other misconceptions about Israel, Judaism and the Jewish people.  It’s our organizational goal to teach these ideas properly and then empower others to share the message as well.  It’s a painfully slow process, but it’s working.  I feel that our stage is beginning to expand and that our message will soon resonate in many diverse and exciting new forums in the coming months and years.

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” 

Gandhi

I have a friend who is studying abroad.  He happens to be an unusual combination of highly intelligent and extremely nice.  One would think that these traits would win him accolades and make him an extra desirable catch for the ladies out there.  I was surprised when I received this email from him explaining how his classmates were reacting to him.  For instance:

Dave, you’re a nice guy.  You help people when they need you, you’re caring, and people all want to be friends with you, but they don’t want to date you because of that, don’t you find that a problem?

So what is Dave’s social crime?  Helping people and caring!  Literally.  What have we come to?  What kind of society do we live in that inverts human behavior to the degree that it exchanges positive character for negative?  What would our children be like if every time they said please and thank you we put them in time out and every time they teased their siblings we gave them extra dessert?  Listen to the kind and practical advice that Dave’s classmate offered to improve his social standing:

You see that girl there?  Nice (expletive).  I’d have my way with her for 5 minutes, how about you?
If you treat women badly they’ll come to you, just watch.  Why are you so optimistic about everything?  Why are you studying, you know this already! Why are you even here in this program?

Wow.  So the best way to attract a woman is to treat her poorly, to be less nice, less optimistic and study less.  The horrible truth about all this is that I suspect that this individual, warped views and all, may be correct in many cases.  I have also spoken with many women who tell me that to be too nice to men, to display to high a degree of intelligence or to demonstrate too many virtuous characteristics, would be the death knell of their dating lives. 

In the original Superman comics there was a backwards world called Bizarro where they lived by a creed to do everything precisely the opposite of the way Earthlings did it.  Here’s Wikipedia description: In the Bizarro world of “Htrae” (“Earth” spelled backwards), society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states “Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!”. In one episode, for example, a salesman is doing a brisk trade selling Bizarro bonds: “Guaranteed to lose money for you”. Later, the mayor appoints Bizarro No. 1 to investigate a crime, “Because you are stupider than the entire Bizarro police force put together”. This is intended and taken as a great compliment.  Isn’t there some apparel company that is now advertising stupidity as the main selling point of their clothes?  Have we arrived there yet?  Perhaps not, but we do seem to be acquiring more and more of its features.

Judaism has long maintained that the true measure of a person is found only in the strength of their (positive) character.  Joseph was called righteous, Moses was “the humblest man who ever lived”, and other sages were called pious, holy and fearers of sin.  We have storehouses full of mighty tomes on how to develop these traits and put them into action.  Classical ethical treatises like “The Path of the Just”, “The Duties of the Heart”, “The Ways of the Righteous” and “The Beginning of Wisdom” were part and parcel of every Jewish home.  These works chart a course for true ethical behavior and vociferously trumpet the highest standards.  If we, as a society, rediscovered and embraced these critical principles, then Dave’s “friend” and people like him would be shunned as the base and uncouth people that they are and people like Dave would be held in high esteem.

Many people have suggested that Jewish writers Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster had Jews in mind when they created the Superman concept.  Here you have a “mild mannered” Clark Kent-bespeckled and cute-but at his core possessing a hidden, massive power.  This indeed is a Jewish theme as we claim that the entire true strength of the individual is to be discovered only internally.  “Who is the mighty person?” asks the Mishna, “the one who can control his negative inclinations.”  And Solomon said “a patient person is better than a mighty one and the one who rules his passions is better than the one who can conquer a city.”  So it’s not the big CEO, or the victorious general, or the influential political figure who wields power in our way of thinking.  It’s the person who wants to insult but refrains, who wants to indulge, but desists and who would prefer to hate, but teaches himself to love.  That’s power.  That’s character.  That’s maturity.  And that’s what deserves to be valued in this world.

Only on Bizzaro should nice guys finish last.

This week I had the unusual experience of being asked to officiate at two funerals.  While never exactly enjoyable, I find that they are reflection opportunities bar none.  Nothing is quite as sobering as witnessing that final brief journey from surface to deep six.  One of the relatives, a kind man in his seventies, looked me in the eye just after and noted, “Rabbi, that’s going to be me someday.  How am I supposed to process that?”  My first thought was “man is it late in the game to start mulling this one over.”  And my second was “but good!  better late than never.”

On my way home I slid open my Ipod and hit shuffle.  There is a particular tune that always seems to pop up when I’m in a contemplative mood.  It’s by Dave Matthews and it’s called “Pig”.  This verse caught me:

What if a great wave should wash us all away?
Just thinking out loud
Don’t mean to dwell on this dying thing
But look at my blood
It’s alive right now

I don’t know all that much about Dave Matthews and I don’t want to make him out to be some great philosopher, but I think he really hits something deep in this song.  Counter-intuitively, I end up feeling strangely alive and happy after confronting the ultimate conclusion of the human experience and I know now that the two concepts are intrinsically linked. 

In the mercilessly brilliant book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon informs us that it is better to go to a house of mourning than to one of feasting.  Why?  Because the party, while briefly fun, generally only serves to mask our ongoing battle with reality…to accept and appreciate reality for what it is and not for what we would prefer it to be.  Being forced to look death in the face is like acquiring a mental scalpel that invariably causes us to slash away all of the dermal pettiness and superfluities of our day to day lives.  With those gone, we start to deeply appreciate life.  I think this is what Dave means when he sings “don’t burn the day,” don’t waste your precious time fixated on that which is unimportant and saps all of our energy and joy.

The time is short but that’s all right
Maybe I’ll go in the middle of the night
Take your hands from your eyes, my love
All good things must come to an end some time
But don’t burn the day away
Don’t burn the day away…

One of my rabbis would always drill into us “the battle for life is the battle for sanity”-that theories are all fine and good but until we are able to live them, to put into practice what we profess to hold dear, we are not truly alive.  It’s this tendency to forget, to loose inspiration, that makes integration of expanded consciousness so bedeviling.  Sometimes we can go for weeks or months riding a wave of growth and internal achievement only to slam headlong into a wall of humiliating failure.  I had such an experience last week where I not only burned the day…I charred it, and it left me feeling physically ill.  The trick when we hit those turbulent patches is to strive to remember, and Jewish thought is extremely focused on remembrance.

The Talmud tells us that when we feel our “evil urge” overpowering us we should say the “Sh’ma”, a profound meditation on the Unity of the Creator, thereby helping us to stay focused on what is right and good.  If that fails we are encouraged to remember the day of death.  There we are again, with that splash of cold water meant to jolt us out of our ethical apnea.  It would be understandable to view this all as rather morbid but it’s not, it’s actually quite life affirming.  The thing is that it’s unfortunately just not possible to live life to the fullest until we have fully embraced the totality of what it is, for better or worse.  The whole while that were pretending that we belong to a special club of people who do not age, do not suffer and do not die, we are in for a long series of rude awakenings.  There’s a scene in the Dead Poet’s Society where the robin Williams character takes his students out to look at the pictures of the long departed pupils of yesteryear.  He notes that they “kind of look just like you boys,” to which one of them comments, “creepy!”  It got their attention.  The point of the Jewish burial and seven day mourning period is specifically to focus the mourners on the loss so that they can experience it deeply, process and then move on.  It’s actually forbidden to mourn any more than one full year.  At that point it must end and the beauty and joy inherent in all of creation must once again become dominant.

Judaism considers sadness to be a bad character trait.  We allow for broken heartedness, but never despair or depression as that would be tantamount to a denial of reality,  the reality that the universe and everything in it, is good.  Here’s the algorithm: G-d is infinite+G-d is good=everything is infinitely good…even death, as the Midrash teaches-four of the days of creation are described as good, except for the last which is called “very good.”  What is the “very” referring to?  Amazingly, to the day of death.  To the very end and beyond, it’s all about love.

Love, love, love, what more is there?
‘Cause we need the light of love in here
Don’t beat your head
Dry your eyes
Let the love in there
They’re bad times
But that’s okay
Just look for love in it

On September 24th, 1789, the US House of Representatives passed the First Amendment which read “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  Contrary to common belief, this law was not intended to cordon off government from all religious activity.  Rather, it was meant to prohibit a single official state religion as was practiced in England.  What’s the proof?  The very next day after the amendment was passed, by a two to one majority, a resolution calling for a national day of prayer and thanksgiving was passed…an American religious holiday.  Though the religious origins have obviously been phased out in favor of engorgement and hours of commercials (and some football), the holiday does nonetheless afford us an opportunity to reflect on the spiritual nature and benefits of a thankful life.

 Judaism’s concept of “tzedakah” (charity) is that it’s best done in a manner in which the recipient does not know the giver.  This is done to spare the recipient the embarrassment of needing to rely on others for their well-being.  Interestingly though, the opposite is true of a gift, the purpose of which, according to the Talmud is to “increase dearness and friendship in Israel.”  In the case of a gift we specifically want the recipient to know about it as it will increase their experience and level of “hacarat haTov” (recognition of good). 

There are multiple examples from the Torah about the necessity and the benefits of this character trait.  For instance, when the 1o plagues begin, Aaron and not Moses, is asked to strike the water (causing it to turn to blood).  We are taught that in as much as the water saved Moses when he was an infant, it would be improper for him to repay the favor with harm.  This is just some inanimate matter!  All the more so are we required to note and acknowledge the kindnesses that sentient people do for us.

Hacarat haTov is required because it leads to love, which is in and of itself a commandment.  The more we recognize the good acts (and qualities) in others, the more we will care about them.  The converse is true as well.  If we fail to make these recognitions, it will lead us in the other direction and increase our sense of distance and disdain for others.

When we had a Temple in Jerusalem we were required to bring the first fruits of our harvest up to the Temple and make a verbal declaration about our gratitude.  The fear was that if we had a good harvest we would come to feel that it was all our own doing (the root of idolatry by the way) and fail to create the proper emotional connection to He who actually arranges the crops to grow, the rain at the right time, etc.  It needed to be said out loud because when we articulate ideas they become more real to us.  As a corollary to this, we are instructed to verbally recognize the good others do on our behalf minimally three times daily-to the guy who holds the door for you in the subway to the barista who gets your latte, practicing sincere and honest thankfulness will engender in us a sense that there is a lot of good in the world, make us happier, and make us into better human beings.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Thanksgiving

In his great work “To Heal the Soul”, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira wrote that all humans each have their own unique musical ladder-a distinct melody that allows one to draw down spiritual sustenance into this world.  This melody is exclusive and in essence can not be performed by anyone else.  He believes that it is so individualized that to use someone else’s ladder is like putting someone else’s saliva into your mouth to sing!  This concept is so ubiquitous, so universal, that Rebbe Nachman of Breslov went as far as to say that each and every blade of grass has its own unique melody as well.  Very poetic, but is there any substance to it?  Years ago this assertion would have been harder to make but not so since the advent of String Theory.  Though there are many who reflexively disparage it, the fact of the matter is that as time progresses, science and “mysticism” seem to be merging.  For instance, since the time of Aristotle, the common wisdom was that matter had always existed.  So ingrained was this notion that even Einstein was prepared to “fudge” his own math to uphold the view (a move he would later call “the greatest blunder of my career”).  The 3,300 year old Jewish view that there was a “Beginning” to reality as we know it stood out in sharp relief against the prevailing wisdom…and was vindicated in the last century.  Science had taken a step towards religion. 

As science developed the technological capability to peer deeper and deeper into the essence of matter, the familiar notion of minute balls or dots of matter was formed-electrons, protons, neutrons and the like.  As it turns out, this picture now seems to be inadequate and has been replaced by Super String Theory-a concept that suggests that the tiny matter contained in the proton is actually composed of uber-small strings-the vibrations of which give rise to all of physical reality.  So we see that at its core, the universe is created through sound.  In that light Rebbe Nachman’s singing grass does not seem quite as quaint, but actually substantial.  String theory also helps to explain why Gd specifically used the medium of speech (as opposed to thought, deed or anything else) to create the world as outlined at the beginning of Genesis.  Interesting side note:  String Theory only works based on a model of the universe that contains either 10 or 22 dimensions which happens to be the exact same numbers suggested by the great Kabbalist Rabbi Issac Luria in the 16th Century.

What does all of this have to do with Jazz?  Well, as we have explained, every facet of the universe is currently singing its own unique tune.  This highlights the intrinsic need for us to “be ourselves,” and indeed, musicians perform at their peak when they are internally consistent.  Miles Davis had trouble finding himself early in his career, preferring to incarnate as a second Dizzy Gillespie.  Miles finally asked him why he couldn’t play like him and Dizzy wisely explained that Miles heard other sounds in his head and that he should play those.  The results were stunning.  I once heard the great bassist Dave Holland defend the music of Kenny G as “authentic.”  “You may not relate to it,” he said, “but he’s being true to himself and you need to applaud that.”

In “Conscious Community,” another classic of Rabbi Shapira’s, he explains the prophetic connection to music.  Jewish tradition records that the prophets of antiquity used music to lull themselves into the prophetic state.  There is a wonderful description in the Talmud of King David’s meditative practice.  He would prop up his stringed instrument by the open window and in the middle of the night as the wind began to blow across the strings he would be awakened by the tune and begin the process of focusing his thoughts.  Rabbi Shapira relates that when the musician begins, he is playing the music and after a while, the music begins to play him.  Every serious musician knows this to be the case.  In fact, this is the reason they are drawn to play to begin with.  When I gave my graduate recital at the New England Conservatory, there was a moment during improvisations on Mahler’s 9th that I simply ceased to be in control of what was unfolding.  I became an observer of the performance-aware of it but no longer directing it.  Melodies and musical ideas that I had previously been incapable of playing flowed from my fingers.  It was fantastic, and for those moments I needed nothing else from life.  The audience applause came as a shock and it was gone.  There is something that the music does to the psyche.  What is it?  What properties does it have that so elevates the heart and mind?  In an evolutionary sense, music has no value.  The deaf are quite as capable of propagating the species as anyone else.  How is it that these ordered tones compel us so?

Kaballah explains that there are 5 spiritual dimensions and that at the intersection of the highest 2, four energies merge: Eden, souls, Torah and music.  This implies that each one of these concepts is a doorway to the others.  Though Goethe wrote that architecture was “petrified music”, dance, sculpture, drawing, et al are not mentioned.  It seems as though music hits a plane of reality that is simply higher than other artistic endeavors.  It is the language of reality itself and its building blocks.  Musicians also know the feeling of deep connection to the other players.  It might not last 5 minutes after they leave the stage, but there is something magical while it lasts.  As all people possess souls and as the root of all souls emanates from the top of that 4th world, it would follow that music is also a doorway to the merging of people on a soul level.  Pleasure, wisdom, unity and transcendence are all byproducts of the true musical experience.

The Mishna quotes Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa as saying “anyone who’s good deeds exceeds his wisdom, his wisdom will endure.  But anyone who’s wisdom exceeds his good deeds, his wisdom will not endure”.  This is a common riff in Judaism’s ethical manual known as “Ethics of the Fathers”.  The authors seem very concerned with conveying the idea that neither intellectual knowledge of nor emotional connection to ethical behavior is worth all that much.  At the end of the day we either do or do not do.  Even worse, it seems to suggest that to not do, to not utilize our intelligence and bring our emotional embrace of goodness into tangible fruition will in the end stultify our wisdom.  In fact, it would seem that part of the definition of wisdom is to use it in the performance of good.

Many people are visionaries.  They see great possibilities in their mind’s eye and enjoy discussing all that they intend to accomplish.  Oftentimes, their eyes far outstrip their hands.  After college I had an audiophile friend who dreamt of opening his own music studio.  He was talented and smart and could outline in great detail his vision for the business and all the great things he intended to create with it.  Years went by.  When I asked him about his progress he always had an excellent reason for the hold up-he was missing important equipment that he couldn’t afford, he was too busy with his day job, he had important family matters to deal with, et al.  As far as I know it never happened.

Kaballah explains that there are 4 spiritual worlds; ours, plus three above that correspond to emotions, intellect and spirit.  Our world is known as the world of action.  It’s a dimension which is specifically created for doing as is outlined at the conclusion of the creation story in Genesis “Gd blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because on it He abstained from all His work which Gd created to do“.  The last two words are superfluous and are meant to teach us this critical lesson.  This world is designated for doing/becoming and the next for receiving/being.

Not all people are equally prepared on a personality level to maximize this truth.  There are three primary personality types: doers, thinkers and feelers and each corresponds to one of the three lower worlds we mentioned.  Obviously, doers are at a great advantage in this system, but what is a poor emotional or cerebral type to do as it’s very natural for them to have “big eyes” and to leave it at that?  The trick is for each personality type to use his or her natural inclinations to motivate them to pull their ideas or feelings down into this lower world.  How?  Partnership is one avenue.  Real doers are few and far between and if you find one you should grab on for dear life because as we said, action in this world really is the purpose of life.  There are people who simply understand how to get things done.  It’s an amazing quality.  Every organization has its visionary-the one who leads from the higher world so to speak.  Oftentimes these visionaries have no clue (or interest) in how to execute.  For that, good managers are needed…doers.  The bridge that these people build for the vision people and the intuitive feelers is sometimes the difference between stagnation and failure and wild success.

In actuality, everyone has a slice of all three of these traits with one being more dominant.  Our goals are all the same-to bring about the greatest good in this word that we are able.  Only the method differs.

“The world is judged with good, and everything is according to the abundance of good deeds“-Rabbi Akiva.

Shabbat Shalom

Separation, as a concept, is not too en vogue these days.  Our cultural drive is to unify (and in many cases equalize) people and ideas.  From the United Nations to the European Union to our neighborhoods and classrooms, unification is thought to be the best tool for societal advancement.  Obviously, when applied effectively and used for a truly worthy endeavor, unity is a fantastic thing.  But there are times when unity is actually utilized to divide and other times when division is used to unite.

The book of Genesis recounts the episode of the Tower of Babble.  It’s unclear from a cursory reading of the story what exactly the people had done wrong to annoy the Almighty so, but it’s understood from the Midrashic texts that the people were engaged in a war against Gd.  The tower was the vehicle they chose to unify the hearts and minds of the people.  They understood that what had doomed Noah’s generation was its lack of unity and perversely reasoned that their unity would protect them as they embarked on their spiritual rebellion…and so it did.  As opposed to a massive deluge, they were only subjected to the force of division and their languages became confused.  Hence they were spared through a lack of unity.

The Talmud tells us that anyone who dreams of a river, a kettle or a bird will know peace.  Why do these three things represent peace?  They unite disparities.  The river is what connects two separate towns allowing them to communicate and conduct commerce.  The kettle actually unites opposites.  Only through the agency of the kettle can the fire and water co-exist as obviously one destroys the other when allowed to unite, (the bird represents two opposites-a land and an air animal-joined into one being). 

Like a kettle, Judaism has many thoughts and practices that frequently are misunderstood as divisive when in fact they are unifying.  The “mechitza” or partition in a traditional synagogue allows for men and women to be together in a way that is most conducive to prayer.  On a deeper level, description of the receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai describes heavy cloud, darkness and smoke and the people are warned not to get too close.  It’s understood that these elements were needed to create a screen that would allow the people to get as close as possible to Gd without the exposure destroying them as fire and water would.

Unity is beautiful when its components are meant to be joined and when they can not be (or should not be) the partition is the subtle back road to productive unification.

“Good fences make good neighbors” (Robert Frost, Mending Wall)

Shabbat Shalom

This week a friend sent me a link to a fascinating website called The Long Now Foundation that “was established in 01996 to creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years”.  (The zero is there on purpose to get us to think long term).  Besides offering various seminars and workshops geared towards acquiring long term thinking their main goal is to construct a clock that ticks once a year, bongs once a century and releases its cuckoo once a millennium!  This is an awesome idea for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it helps highlight our societal inability to slow down.

There’s no original thinking in pointing out that the world moves much faster now then it ever has, that’s fairly evident.  What may not be as evident are all of the negative effects the speed has on our psyches and bodies.  Many of us have simply lost the ability to sit down and deconstruct a problem.  When our minds are racing, juggling multiple tasks and concerns and always trying to assimilate more and more information (most of which is not useful), we fail to perceive what would otherwise seem obvious.  Oftentimes in counseling situations my main goal is to get someone to slow (and calm) down.  A lot of these folks have like 27  idea fragments in their heads but no idea how they relate and many of which are fantasies to boot.  It can actually be painful to put your mental breaks on but the benefits in terms of lucidity are massive.

Another website I like that demonstrates this principle in the physical sense is called slowfood.com.  It’s a reaction against the fast food of our fast culture and encourages people to take the time to make and enjoy food that actually exists in nature…which for better of worse takes more time and effort.  And perhaps that’s the point.  They say good things come to those who wait and I’m inclined to think that it’s very true.  It’s not coincidental that the Torah’s 4 part analogy for the learning process is ploughing, sowing, reaping and then eating.  It does not say “nuke for 3 minutes and scarf while walking” and with good reason.  A lot of prep is required before we can properly digest something-be it food or information and I believe that this lack of groundwork has led to an emotional and spiritual “diabetes” where our spiritual selves are as unwell as our corporeal.  Why spend 75 minutes on a complex symphony when we can hear Green Day shouting for 3?  Why read a 600 page piece of classical literature when 20 lines of a blog post are available?  And why take the time and effort to develop our ethical/spiritual side when there are so many more easy and “fun” things out there to do?

Kabbalist Ariel Bar Tzadok begins one of his books by writing: “Stop!  Yes, right from the beginning, stop!  Slow down!  Your mind is already going too fast”.  Getting a handle on how do to it will help us enjoy life more as well as make all of us happier, healthier and much more effective in all that we do.

Suggestions:

• Meditation: Judaism has an ancient meditative tradition that is becoming more popular as various authors are brining them to light. Check out the work of Rabbis Aryeh Kaplan and Efim Svirsky for more information.
• Breathing exercises: When we are stressed or anxious we tend to be short of breath. Focusing on breathing deeply is calming and does wonders for slowing us down, hence the advice to “take a deep breath” when we’re having a negative reaction to something.
• Shabbat: It literally means “stop.” The Jews gave the world the idea of a day of rest and reflection, and when taken seriously its laws and customs can have a salubrious effect on our being. Many non-observant people in recent years have praised the wisdom of the concept and incorporated various elements into their lives. See http://www.aish.com/sh/ for a comprehensive exploration of the day.
• Do less, better: At the end of the day, there is only so much time to accomplish all that we desire. Oftentimes, we have a tendency to “bite off more than we can chew” and end up poorly executing on multiple fronts. Try (even if only for a specific amount of time) to maximize the most important areas in your life and see if it makes a difference.
• Read important things at least four times: Many of us are “jack’s of all trades but masters of none.” There is a natural inclination to want to constantly move on to newer and more exciting material. The result is a lack of deep comprehension of all that we come across. When you discover that you deeply connect with a particular piece of wisdom, integrate it by learning it multiple times. This is the method of the Torah scholar – four times review for everything.
• Listen to Mahler’s 9^th: It happens to be my favorite piece of classical music but there is obviously a huge amount of symphonic work to select from. Take the time to experience a fully evolved musical construction. Block off the time, relax and listen to the brilliance and emotional sophistication of the great masters.
• Cook for an hour once a week: The antidote for fast food is slow food. Besides being fun, it tends to be much healthier. Slow down your meals (at least one) and enjoy the process as well as the result.

Yesterday morning Dictionary.com come sent me my word of the day.  It was “Mana”, which they defined as ”a generalized, supernatural force or power, which may be concentrated in objects or persons”.  A bit broad of a definition I thought for the stuff we all know was food as described in the book of Exodus.  I was then surprised to discover that (according to dictionary.com) the word was “adopted into English from a Maori word meaning power, authority, supernatural power”.  Huh?  I had no idea that indigenous New Zealanders had so much influence in Jewish culture…not.

Either way, this week is the perfect opportunity to speak about the origin of language as the Torah portion is Noah which contains the famous story of the Tower of Babble.  The story opens by telling us that “the whole Earth was of one language, one speech” or in Hebrew “Vayihee kol ha’aretz saphah akhat oodivarim akahdim”.  Can you hear echoes of these words in our language?  Could “whole” be related to “kol”?  Could “Earth” come from “aretz”?  And “speech” from “saphah”?

I posit to you that they indeed are and that if we learn a few basic rules of linguistics you will be able to see this for yourself…in any language.

The rules (in an iddy bitty nutshell):

Letter shifts-this means that certain sounds tend to substitute for each other.  For instance, CH, S, TS and Z are frequently interchangeable.  There are 5 categories of these shifts-fricatives, bilabials, gutturals, dentals and liquids.

Nasalization-means that M and N sounds sometimes get inserted in the middle of words.  You can see the effect that this has for yourself in this little game: (try to match the words)

•   A[n]tique Da[n]ce Ha[n]ker Ny[m]phet Ri[n]se Sha[m]poo Stu[m]p Sha[n]k Si[n]k Spa[n]k
•   RaHaTS (to wash) SOOaKH (to bend down) TSaB (root of stubble) DaTZ(to leap, rejoice) ATiQ (ancient) SHooPH (to rub, polish) SHoaK (leg) NoEPHet (adulteress) KSaPHak (to clap/strike) HaQeH (to anticipate)

Metathesis-Root letters frequently switch places.  Like flutterby becoming butterfly.

There, now you are all experts and can check this out all the time like I do.  For instance, I was on the subway and saw a Verizon ad in Spanish that I did not understand.  The word that caught my attention was “mensual” which I assumed must be related to our word menstruation, which is of course related to time.  (Turned out “mensual” means monthly).  So I broke down the word to its root letters (M, N, S).  Using 2 principles of linguistics showed me that it came from Hebrew.  I switched the S to a Z-a common letter substitution and then used metathesis to change the order to (Z, M, N).  The Hebrew word for time is “ZMaN”…ta da!

Hmmm, I can hear you all saying, cute but just a coincidence.  To that I ask how many examples would be required to prove it?  10?  100?  What if I told you I could show you thousands of examples in dozens of languages and that English itself has borrowed scores of words from Hebrew like in these examples:

•   Hebrew: Orah (light), Gaon, Taraph, Yediah (knowledge), Yesh, Ayin, Perot, Terufah (medicine)
•   English: Aura, Genius, Trap, Idea, Is, Eye, Fruit ,Therapy

The Torah tells us that at one point there was only one language and despite what the Linguistic Industrial Complex likes to tell us with examples like “Mana” and many other strangely convoluted word origins, there is massive evidence to support its claim.  For anyone interested in exploring this further please refer to these sources:

• The Origin of Speeches, Issac Mozeson
• The Wisdom of the Hebrew Alphabet, Rabbi Eliyahu Munk
• Coincidences in the Bible and Biblical Hebrew, Haim Shore
• The Cipher, Rabbi Zamir Cohen
• As for Japanese, check out The Biblical Origin of the Japanese People, Joseph Eidelberg

Also, it’s no coincidence that we are starting a new round of Hebrew reading and speaking classes next Monday the 18th!  Check it out.

Shabbat Shalom

As I strolled though the campus student center (way) back in my college days I recall some upbeat Jewish fellows approaching me and excitedly asking if I would like to dance with the Torah to which I replied “um…no, not really”.  In retrospect, they were celebrating the lesser known holiday of Simchat Torah (the Joy of the Torah) and as I knew of no reason for that joy at the time, decided to keep moving towards the cafeteria.

Flash forward 8 years and (remarkably) I have become a yeshiva student in Jerusalem.  People develop extremely intimate relationships with books in these institutions, pouring over them day and night and constantly reviewing the often challenging material.  One day I observed two of my friends complete a tractate of the Talmud.  I had never seen this before, but like those kids from “Fame” they broke out into spontaneous, hugely enthusiastic dancing.  The moment struck me hard.  What other people had I ever seen celebrate their reading material with such exuberance?  There was something very moving about it all.

We have been called the People of the Book and I think we would be hard pressed to present another group of people who have literally dedicated their entire lives, over several milenium, to the intense study of a specific body of wisdom.  So what are we so happy about?  And furthermore, what does the person who does not engage in this study have to celebrate?  A great deal in fact.

• The Torah is the root of Western morality.  This is how the non Jewish historian Thomas Cahill starts his book The Gifts of the Jews: “The Jews started it all and by “all” I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and gentile, believer and atheist, tick.  Without the Jews we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings”.  Similarly, here is how another non Jewish historian, Paul Johnson, ends his book A History of the Jews: “To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice and many other items that constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind.  Without the Jews it might have been a much emptier place”.
• The Torah was the first book of Psychology: The Torah understands the human mind and condition extremely well and has charted a path for its practitioners to achieve balance, joy and inner peace.  These achievements are not based on some abstract model of “faith” but require rigorous training and dedication.  It knows our capabilities and so does not allow us to settle for mediocrity.  The name of the book itself, Torah, means instructions or “the way” and contains within it the tools to produce profound changes in the realm of inner achievement.
• The Torah explains the mystery of existence: Why are we here?  What are we supposed to do?  What will ultimately happen to us?  These questions burn in the heart of every human being.  The Torah provides a clear and logical framework that explains the essential nature of the universe and our role within it; provides insight into the nature of the non physical worlds and shows us how they are related to our own; explains the intuitive difficulty we have with the existence of evil and suffering and teaches us how to transcend it.

In short, Simchat Torah should be a universal celebration-an opportunity to reflect and revel in the most transformative document ever written-the most positive instrument of change that humanity has ever known.  I have seen both the pious and non pious cradle the Torah scroll like a baby and dance themselves breathless.  At first I couldn’t comprehend it, now I’m just grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of it.

“Delve into it and continue to delve into it, for everything is in it; look deeply into it; grow old and grey over it and do not stir from it.  For in it you can have no better portion”. (Ethics of the Fathers 5:26)