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.

When I was a kid I collected coins.  Almost daily I would carefully and neatly lay them on my bed and count them.  As such, Rashi’s reason for G-d’s counting the Jewish people in this week’s portion – out of extreme endearment – resonates with me.  Things we love we lavish attention on.

But coins don’t notice such attention, whereas people do.  The job of a Jew is to notice that he counts and is counted upon.  That’s why Jews are obligated to think/say daily:

1) My G-d, the soul You placed within me is pure.  You created it, You fashioned it, You breathed it into me…Great is your loyalty to me/belief in me. (Siddur)

2) The world was created for me (Talmud)

3) The first opportunity of growth lies in one’s knowing his self-worth, his exaltedness…and dearness to the Creator (Gates of Service, Rabbeinu Yona)

Of course, the temptation is to indulge thoughts of a different nature.  That would actually constitute a transgression.

Shabbat Shalom,

Henry Harris

In season 6 of Star Trek: the Next Generation a visiting diplomat uses the Enterprise’s “empath” Deeana Troi as a receptacle for his negative emotions.  He reasons that he needs to remain calm and focused in order to bring peace between warring alien factions-a noble aim, but the result is that Troi ends up rapidly aging and becoming nasty and aggressive.  Fortunately, the ship’s captain figures out what is going on and busts the diplomat-forcing him to deal with his own emotional turmoil.

The Mishna in Pirke Avot 4:1 asks the question “who is the mighty person”?  It answers its own question by telling us that it’s “the one who can conquer his negative inclinations”.  Conquer them, not hide from them.  How often do we choose to shove aside unpleasant feelings, anxieties, concerns and frustrations-leaving them to fester under the surface only to pop up and bite us later?  From the Torah’s perspective, true might is the willingness to stare down these feelings and like Jacob the patriarch, wrestle them to the ground until they say “uncle” and leave us alone.

If anyone is interested in learning Judaism’s time tested methodology for accomplishing this, we have several seminars on the topic launching May 11th.

Shabbat Shalom