Making Exceptions

Getting from the house to cheder - or rather the two separate chedarim that my sons attend - always takes time. Shmuel is like a seven-year old Wordsworth - constantly stopping to marvel at the wonders of nature (and the neighborhood); while Pinchos, five, comports himself like a young Newton, always pausing to ask how things work. Today, a garbage pick-up fired both of their imaginations. Yes, getting to cheder takes a long time.

Between the flights of sublimity and the mechanical inquiries, I pursue another topic - 'How to Cross the Street.' First, an under-undergraduate course in semiotics: 'What do the thick white lines on the pavement mean? What does the blue and white illuminated image of the pedestrian connote? Yes, this is the place to cross the street!'

So we stand and dutifully wait. One car zooms by; and another. Then a young father, with ear phones - he seems deep in thought - his five year old daughter in tow, crosses down the block, away from the pedestrian crossing. I see Pinchos wondering: 'what exactly is abba trying to pass off on us?' 'You don't have to cross here,' he finally says, another car whizzing by: 'look at them,' he points to the father and daughter still in sight and already at the makholet across the street, presumably poised to buy lachmania and choco for the day ahead.

'No you can't have lachmania and choco; mommy packed you a lunch.' And: 'just because other people do the wrong thing does not mean that it's right.' Finally, a car stops, the driver waiving us across benevolently. I nod in gratitude: 'thank you for abiding by the law.'

Pinchos is first today. Shmuel, shy, is reticent to accompany us, so he waits outside the cheder gates. Some boys lean out towards the street through the metal bars - starting to tease him, even as I'm standing by. 'Yesh l'chem baya?' - I ask - mimicking what boys typically say when taunting Shmuel who has Down's Syndrome: 'you guys have a problem?' When I come back, Shmuel is still standing there - he looks confused, a departure from his wondrous happy friendly self: one of the boys is standing with his tongue hanging out with a mocking stare.

When I returned my wife asked: 'what do you expect?' Pinchos is in one of the schools that would not take Shmuel - why should we expect more from children than their teachers?

Back on our morning trek, now walking in the direction of Shmuel's cheder, we encounter the bouncy-gait of the nine year old Yehuda: 'Good morning Shmuel!'; and shortly after, a smiling boy in Shmuel's class, 'Shalom Shmuel!' 'He's my friend,' Shmuel boasts loudly to me. And then the gawky eleven year-old from down the block, who keeps a rooster in our building courtyard, volunteers, 'Can I walk with Shmuel to cheder? I'll take him!' These are boys from a chassidic cheder in our neighborhood: while other principals told us, 'Shmuel will give the school a bad name'; their rebbe says: 'it's a mitzvah gedola; it's a big mitzvah!' So the children look at Shmuel as an opportunity. Or maybe they just like him?

So what kind of exceptions do we make - for ourselves? for our children? One thing is sure: when we start making exceptions, they become natural, even second-nature. Like crossing the street in the wrong place, or, making a new friend, even though he may be a bit different.

Fanatics in Israel

After a considerable hiatus, OMT weighs in on 'Who are Israel's ultraorthodox Jews?'

Imagine an extra-terrestrial – or someone from Oslo or maybe Kansas City – who googles ‘ultra-orthodox’ and happens upon Avirama Golan’s ‘Who are Israel’s ultra-orthodox Jews?’ What would he find? Golan starts by expressing dismay – ‘woe unto us,’ she laments – at the differences of the skullcap-wearers who continue to ‘divide and subdivide.’ True, Golan admits, one can’t generalize – but in this taxonomy, the ultra-orthodox largely consist of lunatic preachers, arsonists, vandals, fanatic messianists and missionaries, murderers, and impoverished psychotics; the few lawyers and the staff at the Glatt Kosher restaurant in Petach Tikvah come as afterthoughts, negligible exceptions.

Golan may be convincing – to the outsider – as she dons the mask of rationality, speaking for the ‘distress’ of the ‘moderate’ Israeli majority. In the name of analyzing the secular-religious divide, she blames the now-defunct Shinui for dubbing the ultra-orthodox ‘parasites’; yet herself implies a comparison between the ‘ultra-orthodox’ and dividing, multiplying and mutating cells. Admitting that ‘it’s impossible to define the word “Haredi,”’ she goes on to provide the dizzying list of ultra-orthodox proclivities, and concludes by condemning the government for having ‘abandoned its citizens to extremist.’ That this kind of supposedly enlightened form of anti-semitism has many parallels and precedents – among Jews, as well as non-Jews (the Nazis were experts at taxonomies of Jewish ‘perversities’) – does not make it any less venomous and misleading. No, Norway, it is not like this! But typical as it may be, Golan’s portrait of the world she calls ultra-orthodox, may show her, with much in common with the extremists she condemns.

In Israel, extremist right and left exist in dangerous co-dependency: both sustain a divisive vision of the world which allows for the perpetuation of their parallel one-sided hatreds. Like the camera-man who visits Kiykar Shabbat in Jerusalem on the Independence Day and the thuggish delinquents who happily accommodate with vulgar displays of disrespect, Israel has turned into a predictable play of hatred – and it’s the rest of us who lose out. Most Israelis don’t identify with the fanatical displays of religious zealotry, nor with Golan’s thinly veiled anti-semitism and close-mindedness. Yet while the rest of us strive for a culture which accommodates our sense of complexity – and the richness and diversity of our shared tradition – it’s the divisive rhetoric of fanatics on left and right which prevails. But there is a growing sense among Israelis that the sociological categories and languages of enmity that sustain fanatics of every color have run their course, and that we need new ways of talking, thinking, and acting – reflecting the diversity of life and culture outside of newspaper headlines and billboards in Mea Shearim.

John Donne, the seventeenth-century poet and sometimes Hebraist, writes, ‘no man is an island.’ Donne does not merely assert that individuals are connected, but that his own individuality is dependent upon others: ‘any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.’ With Donne in mind, perhaps it is time to assert more strongly what many of us already know, but what left and right-wing extremists continue to deny – that we don’t fit into their categories; and are connected, depending upon each other for our various identities. To deny that connectedness, to disenfranchise through sociological dissection and divisiveness diminishes. As Donne writes: ‘And therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.’

Rosh HaShana Redux: Speech in Exile, Kol Shofar

OMT revisits this classic blog from the past

Rosh Hoshana is the anniversary of the creation of man. On the sixth day of the creation, man was inspirited by the divine, and given a soul: 'And the Lord G-d formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.' From the divine breath and the dust of the earth - the joining of upper and lower worlds - comes the 'living soul,' what our tradition translates as the 'speaking soul.' Creation reaches it's pinnacle in man who joins heaven and earth in speech.

What is man? For Aristotle, man is the rational animal. In the Jewish tradition, man is the speaking soul. Yet on Rosh Hoshana we forgo speech or dibbur for kol shofar, the voice of the shofar. Why do the days of awe commence with kol? Why is Rosh Hashana, yom t’ruah - the day of the sounding of the shofar?

The musaf prayers of Rosh Hashanah are the longest of the year - with three sections, on Kingship, Remembrance and Shofar. The blessing that ends the last section reads: 'For You hear the voice of the shofar and You give ear to the t'ruah (the shofar blast), and none is comparable to You.' Why does the blessing emphasize that G-d hears the sound of the shofar? Rambam writes that the shofar arouses man to repentance - 'to awaken us from the slumber of habit and draw us close to our Creator.' So why should the blessing stress that G-d hears the kol shofar; shouldn't it emphasize rather that the people of Israel hear the shofar? The conclusion of the blessing is also strange: for 'no one is comparable to You.' We don’t find other blessings mentioning G-d’s uniqueness. Why here?

Kol comes in a place where speech is not possible. In Egypt, speech, our sages tell us, was 'in exile.' This does not mean that there was no conversation in Egypt. To the contrary, there was too much conversation - about vice presidential candidates, the Bail Out, and pennant races. Of course, these are important, but in Egypt these were the only topics! Because of their collective debasement, their enslavement to a culture of work and idolatry, the people of Israel foresook their spiritual roots, and it showed in their speech. Language has the highest powers - to unify spirit and body, to bring together heaven and earth; through speech, the spiritual can find expression. When speech is in exile from its Source, however, it ceases to achieve its elevated goal. When there is no longer the possibility of meaningful speech the only recourse is to cry out. Though immersed in the decadence of Egypt, the people of Israel were still able to cry out to G-d with their voices. Even when speech is corrupted, there is still that internal voice, the authentic kol of the neshama. A person may not know how to pray, he may not know how to learn Torah, but he can still cry out! Kol is the inner voice of longing for the divine.

But kol also expresses G-d's longing for us. In the Rosh Hoshana musaf, revelation and the sound of the shofar are linked - the means through which G-d draws close to us. The shofar sounds at the revelation of Mount Sinai, and is also associated with the day of the creation of man, as well as the End of Days, when the final great shofar blast signals the full and ultimate revelation to all of humanity. In the Talmud, the shofar, though merely an object, is associated with the 'inner sanctum of man.' The ram's horn connects to the our inner depths because it is the means by which we attend to G-d's revelatory voice and draw close to Him. The shofar arouses us from our own slumber and habit, from our exile from ourselves. Rosh Hashana is not only a day commemorating G-d’s revelation in history, it is a day of self-revelation, the revelation of our inner selves for which G-d yearns.

At the end of the prayer services on both days of the holiday, there are several requests. One is: 'Hayom Tidreshenu L'tova': 'Today seek us out for good.' We ask G-d not only to seek good for us, but we ask him to seek for the good in us. Seek out the good in us which other people don’t know; seek out the good in us about which we don’t fully know! G-d, as the blessing of Remembrance reads, finds Ephraim to be his ben hayakar, his most precious son, his yeled sha'shu'im, his most delightful child. But Ephraim was also the most wayward son, the one who worshipped idols; yet G-d finds him to be the most precious! G-d yearns for Ephraim, as the prayer reads, with 'His inner self' - literally His innards. G-d’s own internal desire, as it were, is for us to reveal our internal voices. We implore G-d during the year, but especially during the days of repentance, to hear us: sh'ma koleinu! Hear our voices! Hear our authentic voices! Attend to the voice which gets lost in our daily routines—lost to others, lost even to ourselves. On Rosh Hashana, we take the first step to reclaiming our speech, by first finding our inner voice.

This is the uniqueness of G-d - emphasized in the prayer: 'there is none like You.' He is the one who hears our attempts to connect to him through sounding the shofar. There is no need for some mediator or sacrificial agent in order for our repentance to be accepted: G-d is the one who hears us and accepts our prayers. The shofar blasts call out: remember our authentic selves, even if we have forgotten! sh'ma koleinu: hear our voices; help us - during these days - to remember who we are!

Fear of G-d: Religion's Antidote

The wife of a friend is in the shmattah business. She makes the shmattas; he collects the money, deposits it in the bank. One day recently, he took the profits - 800 Shekels - which unbeknownst to him, fell out of his pocket as he scootered from one end of town to the other. I met him the following day – his remorse had already turned to relief: ‘Baruch Hashem’ - his wife had secured a new order the very next day – for exactly 800 shekels!

Baruch Hashem - Thank G-d!

Our sages say that there are three Books – the first is the Torah, the second, the Book of the cosmos or the natural world, and the third, the Book a person writes for himself. G-d has his two books – His means of revelation. But every person has to write their own book - their means of self-revelation. So I tell my story – and in so doing show gratitude for the kindnesses bestowed upon me. 'Baruch Hashem!' But the proclamation – ‘and the very next day she received an order for exactly 800 NIS!’ – sometimes transforms from an acknowledgment of the past into a theology for the future. When we anticipate that G-d will always acts in such a way; when we claim to know how G-d rewards and punishes; when we decide we understand his hashgacha, his providence - then we sneak idolatry into the Temple. It's not rocks and pillars that elicit our idolatrous desires, but, in our generation, it's most obviously money and reputation, and perhaps even more - and less detectably - our conceptions of time and the stories about the future which we like to tell.

‘Adulthood,' writes the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, ‘is when it begins to occur to you that you may not be leading a charmed life.’ Being an adult, breaking the spell of charms, may require the painful realization that we must free ourselves of the stories of the future in order to live in the present.

G-d admonishes Israel to distance themselves from ‘charmers’ and ‘observers of times,’ and then enjoins: ‘be perfect,’ as King James renders it, ‘with the Lord your G-d’ – tamim tiyeh im Hashem Elokekha. Jews are meant to distance themselves from the idols and ideologies of the world – and to be pure in the trust of G-d. But the charms of the nations are tempting. John Milton the author of Paradise Lost knew this, writing of a ‘pleasing sorcery’ that ‘could charm/ Pain for a while or anguish, and excite/ Fallacious hope.' Satan’s charms ward off – momentarily – pain and anguish, instilling fallacious hope.

Freud found fear - fearful memories of past pain - to be at the root of the religious impulse. People, as Phillips explains Freud, are not bad, they are simply frightened. Fear is the response to absence, trauma, lack of love and security. It’s the first fear first felt in childhood – when parental love and security, feelings of wholeness are sundered and lost. Trauma, in this Freudian story, is at the beginning, in one form or another, of every personal history. Religion provides - in the simple Freudian reading – a benevolent future of consolation, a charm to forget ‘pain for a while.’

Fear is response to what is missing - the resonance of the trauma of love lost, security lost, the feeling of being foresaken. In Phillips' reading of Freud, one says to the patient - 'tell me what you fear and I will tell you what has happened to you.' In this depressing vision, the past experience of wounds and loss makes one imagine a future limited by that experience of those past failures. This offers the consolation that the future will be just like the past. Even though the vision is grim, the consolation is that I get to relinquish responsibility: I give into my idolatrous vision of an impossible future in which my passive inaction is blameless. In jumping to conclusions about the future, I close it off. Since the past will inevitably look like the past – ‘things never work out for me!’ – my passivity is justified.

This is one form of idolatry. There is another where the analyst says, 'tell me what you pretend not to fear, and I will tell you what has happened to you.' This is the idolatry that sometimes stands in for - pretends to even look like - Jewish observance. In our fantasies of an always benevolent future – the recovered 800 shekels as theological statement – there are similar fears, also closing off the possibilities that the future may hold. This is the charmed life – of salvation if not always achieved, at least anticipated. My fears, in this version, put me under a self-induced spell – things will always work out. Though adulthood, as Phillips tells us, means breaking the spell. Of course, it’s easier to live a charmed life. Though the charm sometimes wears off in the shock of a reality denied, sudddenly asserting itself. Such recognition - coming too late - leads not to adulthood, but crisis. So one can go directly from childhood to midlife crisis - without passing through adulthood. Or alternatively, in a conspiracy of denial, one attempts to maintain the spell and the illusion; after all, everyone else does. Though the faith that inspires jealousy is almost certainly theatrical, inauthentic.

The 800 NIS is not always forthcoming; our lacks are never fully compensated. But for a current generation, the story in ‘frum’ magazines and ‘frum’ books and ‘frum’ billboards - are they all the same? - is that G-d is almost always acting with benevolence in ways which are immediately and palpably available, fulfilling our expectations. Tell me what you pretend not to fear, and I will tell you what has happened to you!

Hiding in the endless stories that affirm a simplistic - not simple - faith is the fear of a future that might just be like the past. We all know that past – not only of our personal histories, but our recent history as a nation – a collective trauma never before known to the world. Yet after this trauma, there is the desire for the self-induced spell: a charm to push off our ‘pain and anguish.’ So we insulate ourselves from the present in our ideological retellings - our charmed stories - about the future. Adorno wrote, ‘no poetry after Auschwitz,’ lamenting the power of language to express after the horror. Yet many in our generation have chosen not the poetry of Homer, Shakespeare or Goethe, but the ersatz and unsatisfying charms of Satan’s charms. How much longer can these charms satisfy?

Judaism is at its deepest roots a skepticism: Abraham, I sometimes answer to precocious and skeptical students, was the first chozer b’shaila – the commonly used term to describe once observant Jews who have returned to a life of questioning. But if there were more chozerei b’shaila among observant Jews, there would be less chozerei b’shaila. In some sense, it’s the atheist that has more in common with the servant of G-d than the idolater. He has refined the impulse of iconoclasm, and cleared out the idols and charms. His problem, however, is that he fails to see his own atheism as the remaining – the last – idol in the sanctuary. In this sense, Hobbes and Freud are the most important philosophers for contemporary Judaism - for Hobbes as the philosopher of power, and Freud as philosopher of desire show us our propensity for idol making and idol worship.

‘Tamim tiyeh im Hashem Elokekha’; and you should be perfect with Hashem your G-d. Break the idols! The Torah tells us, as Rashi explains, not to look into the future, but to anticipate only G-d. While the nations of the world are 'time-observers' – seeking propitious moments and segulas, wearing amulets and red-strings, and consulting religious-looking astrologists and charmers, the Torah enjoins: 'Give them up; live in the present.' Onkelos writes that the injunction of tamim tiyeh is to be pure in fear of G-d.

Freud is right: Religions are born out of fear, they are ideologies – providing clear and predictable maps of an already foretold future. In this sense, the yiras Shmayim required by G-d is an antidote to religion, or that religious impulse - and its charms - created by fear. But Judaism is neither an ideology nor a religion. For being perfect in the fear of G-d means acknowledging not knowing, and facing a future without guarantees. There are no charms – for the Jewish adult – to do away with such fears.

A child experiences what Phillips calls the 'to and fro of emptiness and plenitude' – of love present, and then love strangely and inexplicably absent. Such loss brings about our attempted compensations, all of those charmed and charming stories, to secure the future, as T.S. Eliot wrote, 'to redeem the time.' In such fear, we make a future out of something we cannot possibly afford to believe in. For even, as we try to charm ourselves with such stories, we know - deep down - that it's just a spell.

In the psalm recited twice daily from the beginning of the month of Elul to Shmini Atzeret – we read: ‘when my mother and father forsake me, then G-d will take me up.’ For many years, I read this verse incredulously: 'do parents really forsake their children? what could be further from the mind of a parent? But parents - even the best of us - are always forsaking our children. In Rashi’s reading of the text, that forsaking begins at the time of conception – the time, as Rashi writes, of the parent’s 'pleasure' – after which 'they turn their faces,' and G-d is left to sustain the growing fetus on His own. So parents turn to different pleasures and obligations, it's only natural, as the child gets older – they sometimes turn their faces. The baby is crying; but the kettle is boiling. And the child - even with the best of parents who nurture their infant to childhood, and their child into adulthood - feels forsaken, left alone, and... fearful. There is no 'charm' - notwithstanding the protest of Milton's Satan's - to 'respite or deceive, or slack the pain.'

Tamim - be pure. Live in the present; give up the charmed stories about the future that other nations of the world entertain. In the Maharal’s reading, the verse is a conditional statement, but it’s a condition that is fulfilled automatically. Be perfect in your fear of G-d: and when that fear of G-d replaces the fears that generate idolatrous stories that close off the future, then G-d will be your portion. Such a portion, however, is for adults only.

Time, Creativity and the Power of Tshuva

After an extended hiatus - was it the swine flu? - OMT returns with a lecture at yeshivat shalavim.

Kinnos Confessios: A Tisha B'Av story

Openminded meditations spurred on by a visit to Yad V'shem on the Ninth of Av.

Turning Hatred into a Mitzvah: Thoughts for the Nine Days

OMT conquers yet another one of the new technologies.