May 17, 2017| Rabbi Dina London
Recently, I attended a performance at the Goodman Theater in Chicago called “Destiny of Desire,” a take on the Spanish soap opera. The playwright, Karen Zacarias, was quoted in the playbill as saying, “Destiny is different from fate.  Destiny is what your life can be if you realize your potential, if you believe in your potential and you go for it.  Destiny is not something that happens to you; it’s something you have to strive for.  Unlike fate, which is something that’s sealed and locked, destiny is fluid and can evolve.  Who you were and who you can become is within your grasp…”

In the Torah, at this moment in time, the Israelites are experiencing their sojourn in the desert.  In just a few weeks, they will gather at Mt. Sinai to witness the revelation of the 10 commandments.  Their fate could have been to lose interest in their culture of old, ignore Moses, and wander forever, but their destiny, what they had to work for, was getting their people to the promised land.  As Rabbi Levi Meier says, “Torah teaches us that our fate is not predetermined by circumstances of nature or nurture.  You can always create your destiny.”

But, it is important that we realize that there is no “date with destiny.”  Destiny doesn’t just appear on our calendar, waiting for us at the nearest Starbucks.   Rabbi Yosef Dov Solveitchik teaches us (in “Who by Fire, Who By Water”) to distinguish between goral, fate, and yi’ud, destiny.  He says that our mission in this world is to turn fate into destiny, from an existence that is passive to one that is active and influential.  To me, what that means is that destiny equals the creative response to the impermanence of life.

As Jews we understand this need for using creativity to move through our existence.  For instance, we have many approaches to naming…not naming a baby until the eighth day (high infant mortality throughout much of history), changing someone’s name if they are very ill to fool the angel of death, etc.  The Jews of Alsace were said to have come up with the idea of “change of place, change of luck.”  If your fate in your current location doesn’t look promising, don’t be afraid to pick up and re-create your life somewhere else.

Though they may not know it, when Jews say “Mazel Tov,” what they are really saying is “may the stars be favorably aligned for you.”  But astrology isn’t just about the fate that the energy of the stars and planets bequeath upon you.  No, our birth chart asks us to take the ever changing alignments and creatively mold that energy into our destiny.  In other words, “the mazel we are born with is elastic, ” says Rabbi Avi Weiss in “Who by Fire, Who by Water.”

After a 9 year hiatus, I’ve been binge watching Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix.  Amidst the soap opera nature of the show, if you listen carefully, each episode aims to relay a teaching.  And, in season 5, Episode 14, the main character, Meredith Grey, sums up the response we must have if destiny is to trump fate.  “We have to keep reinventing ourselves…almost every minute…because the world can change in an instant.  And, there’s no time for looking back.”

My mother always says that people die by inches.  When I look back on my life, I can certainly recall those who passed away in an accident or due to a sudden body failure, but I have also been witness to the gradual process of death.  Whether it be by cancer or Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s or the slow decline associated by old age, death can creep up on us at a snail’s pace. 

My godfather never accepted this possibility.  A giant of a man, his doctors told him that if he didn’t refrain from his gourmet lifestyle, he would surely die in a matter of two years.  He decided that he would prefer to leave this world enjoying his opulent dinners at five star restaurants.  The problem was that he didn’t anticipate that his demise would be agonizingly slow, robbing him of his bodily functions one by one and leaving his family to care for him in his diminished state.

In this week’s Torah portion Hukkat, two important characters in the story of the Jewish people die…Miriam and Aaron.  The text tells us, “The Israelites arrived in a body at the wilderness of Zin on the first new moon, and the people stayed at Kadesh.  Miriam died there and was buried there.”  Later in the portion, God says “strip Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar.  There Aaron shall be gathered unto the dead…and Aaron died there on the summit of the mountain.”  When I think back on the parshas we have read since Simchat Torah, it seems that the death of the bible is frequently swift and matter of fact…whether it be by natural causes or an act of aggression.  We aren’t given a whole lot of detail regarding long illnesses or the perils of an aging body. 

There is an old Hasidic saying that death is as painless as pulling a hair out of a bowl of milk.  However, that comment refers to the moment of death.  So, what about the time leading up to that instant?

According to Rabbi Dayle Friedman, despite medical advances that have lengthened the span of life from under 50 years at the turn of the 20th century, to close to 75 today, we have not succeeded in evading facility and finitude.  Our society is loathe to acknowledge and accept the seeming inevitability of the physical and mental deterioration of most older people.  This has serious consequences such as the isolation of the elderly, the denial of aging and a loss of self respect among elders.

I see these scenarios currently playing out in my own life.  My mother is very lonely in her one bedroom apartment, but refuses to consider a retirement community as this would indicate to her and all the world that she is elderly.  Despite my father-in-laws early dementia and balance issues, he and my mother-in-law refuse to move from their upstairs bedroom to the one on the first floor of their house despite the steep stairs they must navigate throughout every day.

From the Psalms we are told “Do not cast me off in old age; when my strength fails, do not forsake me. (Psalm 71:9).”  It is frightening to accept the truth of aging when we fear that we will be abandoned by our families, our friends, and even God.  It is also difficult to contemplate the inevitable losses that we will surely face.  But, pretending that the aging process is nonexistent does not actually forestall the inevitable.  And, it robs us of our power to create a happy, productive, and safe twilight years.

Who is rich? The one who is

happy with what he or she has.”

Pirke Avot teaches that we access treasures by acknowledging and accepting reality; we suffer when we attempt to be somewhere other than where we are.

I told my 20 year-old daughter that she need not worry about managing my old age.  I vowed to her that I will make plans for myself, anticipating each stage of transition, and accepting the changes that are required.  For me, accepting this truth, will free me to concentrate on the ways that I can still contribute rather than spending my energy resisting what is.

So, as we each face our personal journeys through aging, let us remember that a positive and truthful outlook can fulfill the ancient vision that the Psalmists had for us:

The righteous will flourish like the palm tree:
They will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Planted in the house of the Eternal,
They shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall yet yield fruit even in old age;
Vigorous and fresh they shall be,
To proclaim that the Eternal is just!
[God is] my Rock, in whom there is no injustice.

In this week’s Torah portion, we witness Korah and others rebel against Moses and Aaron, and for their actions, dire consequences ensue. 

Most interpretations of Korah’s rebelliousness say that he was not justified and that he was a power hungry revolutionary.  But, what evidence do we have that this is really true? 

In the parshat, Korah actually only utters 3 sentences.

“You have gone too far!  For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst.  Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?”

Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton says that Korah’s traits sound like components of an excellent character profile to describe the kind of person one would want working within a large organization…someone with a mission to prod at complacency, call attention to issues, and, at the risk of censure and punishment, call the authorities to account.

But, Korah’s courage was not rewarded.  God open’s up the earth and has Korah, his men, their wives, and their children swallowed up.  Then a fire consumed 250 men offering incense, and then 14,700 people die of the plague.  If anyone else was thinking of speaking out against the leadership, chances are they were now keeping their ideas to themselves.

Rabbi Bolton tells us that Whistle-blowers like Korah don't tend to fare too well these days, either. Those who call our attention to endemic racism still suffer economically through  lack of promotions and other limitations; corporate truth-sayers find themselves challenged with personal lawsuits; others are ostracized from their communities, and within their families.

Perhaps the story of Korah’s rebellion, complex thought it may be, offers a simple teaching about our basic freedom to challenge authority and redress injustice wherever we may find it.

But, I think that there is another perspective to consider.  We can also look at Korah’s story as a metaphor for the evolution the Jewish people.  It is possible that, at the time of the Israelites wandering through the desert, they were not yet ready for democracy.  Korah may have been the voice of a distant future that would bring a Judaism with a more egalitarian focus.  Fast forward to 1920 in America and we find Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan introducing the idea of Judaism as the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people.  And, controversial even today, he felt that the people Israel should no longer be conceived of as supernaturally “chosen” people, but as a naturally evolving social group whose unique identity exists solely in relation to its unique culture.

Kaplan pushed for the removal of liturgical phrases like "He has not made us like the pagans of the world, nor placed us like the heathen tribes of the earth…" from the Aleinu prayer.  He felt that concepts like these were not conducive to the fostering of intergroup goodwill which his philosophy, Reconstructionism, maintained should be a goal of all religions.  Doesn’t sound too far from Korah’s statement that “all the community is holy” does it?  Ironically, in 1945, on the occasion of the appearance of the Reconstructionist Prayer Book, and around the Shabbat when Parshat Korah is read, Moredecai Kaplan was formally excommunicated by a group of Orthodox rabbis.

When I was working for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, I traveled all over the Midwest visiting Reconstructionist congregations.  One of the unique characteristics of Reconstructionist synagogue buildings is that there are no names on rooms, no public declaration of differing levels of giving and no special privileges for Cohen’s or Levites.  The whole community is equal when it comes to recognition for contributing to the congregation.

Mordecai Kaplan also understood evolution on a personal level.  “The only way to change the world is to change yourself into what you want others to be, he wisely said.”  Maybe if he could have counseled Korah, he would have told him that his influence on the Israelites may have been greater if he had introduced his ideas in a more subtle manner.  Actions speak louder than words, afterall.

May we each consider how, in our own lives, we can make an impact on the injustices of the world without being swallowed up by the forces that are less ready for change.

Shabbat Shalom.

While traveling in Peru last year, I learned much about the history of this beautiful South American country.  While the Inca are the most talked about tribe, there were many cultures that came before them and, of course, the Spanish who conquered them.  In fact, many of the Incan ruins were actually built on top of walls constructed by previous civilizations.  And, in Cusco, a large city at 11,000 feet, the Spanish destroyed much of the architecture, yet rebuilt the city using Incan walls and foundations.  Peru’s museums are filled with incredible artifacts from cultures dating back more than 4,000 years and its citizens are literally living on layers upon layers of history.

This experience made me consider the foundations upon which our own lives are built.  We can look back on who we were as children, teens, young adults.  We can also follow our pre-birth narratives of the ancestors that preceded us.  These incidents and information all contribute to who we are in the present moment.  We like the Peruvians are made up of layers of history and it is only through careful excavation that can we truly know who we really are as individuals.

In our Torah portion this week, the first chapter of the book of Numbers, Bamidbar, we witness the census taking of the Israelite clan.  We are told that Moses and Aaron assembled the community on the first day of the 2nd month and all the people were registered by ancestry.  They were literally counted based on who had come before them.  In order to count in the present, their past required consideration.  What this tells us is that at critical points in time we must pause and take stock.  We enumerate our blessings and our curses and we take the opportunity to mine our deepest nature.  We may reflect, we may journal, we may enter therapy, the method we choose is not important.  It is the practice of unearthing our truest self, our self made up of a complicated and intertwined past that is most important.

On Ancestry.com, the Mormon’s incredible geneology website, it is possible to watch the story of our ancestors unfold through the U.S. Census.  Take my great-great grandfather, for instance.  In the 1920 census, he and his wife are retired and living with their daughter and her family in Cleveland.  In the 1910 census we find that my great-great grandfather has gone blind.  In the 1880 census, he is a young married man, a tailor, with six children.  And, in the 1870 census he is a new immigrant from Germany living in New York City…with what appears to be his mother and sister…though their stories are lost to history.  Without the census, a seemingly mundane list of facts, I would never have been able to piece together a narrative of my great- great grandfather’s life, which contributed to a deeper understanding of myself and my bloodline.

Peruvian museums contain exquisite pottery that miraculously remained intact in tombs centuries ago…undiscovered by the Spanish…yet uncovered by modern day explorers.   We, too, like archaeologists, are uniquely called to unearth the self that has been buried under years worth of rubble we call the trials and tribulations of life.

Soren Kierkegaard said that we live our lives forward, but we can only understand them backwards.  We review, we reflect and we reconsider in order to reconstruct and move on to the next chapter.

May we use our time this Shabbat to uncover one aspect of ourselves that was disgarded, and may we consider how this long abandoned trait can be reclaimed and fit like a missing puzzle piece back into our present lives.

As the first night of Passover approaches, we once again contemplate our ancestors struggle to be released from slavery.  I venture to say that all of us have lived lives free of the kind of indentured servitude that plagued the Israelites.  And, yet, we do experience a kind of slavery in our modern existence.

A habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary, to the point that we become enslaved by our habits.

We all know that habits can be formed around actions like eating, exercising, drinking alcohol and taking drugs, but our tradition also tells us that acting without thought, by rote, is an obstacle to the formation of good character and, ultimately to our spiritual growth.

In his book, the Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg says that habits aren’t our destiny, and that by harnessing the power of our brains we can create new, more productive habits that allow us to improve our behavior, and even the world.

While based on modern science Duhigg’s idea isn’t new.  In 1989, Stephen Covey taught about the powerful role that habits have in forming our character in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

But, The Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer,  who lived from 1720-1793, preceded them both when he said, “Character requires habituation, and habit rules all things, and all beginnings are difficult.”

In his essay, Through a Mussar Lens:  Tree of Light, Rabbi Avi Fertig tells us that the numbing effect of habit comes from the physical aspect of our beings and the physical world in which we live.  He says that the Hebrew word for habit is hergel, related to the word regel, meaning foot. The foot represents our physical nature—the lower half of our bodies. Walking is perhaps the most habitual thing we do. We never stop to contemplate the myriad processes that must come together perfectly so that we can take the next step. The nature of the physical is that it gets old, moldy and stale. Habit is when our hearts and minds are closed and we are governed by the lower half, the “foot,” so that we go through everything in the way we walk, devoid of conscious thought or focused will.  In essence, we become like a slave, performing our duties, under the domination of a habituated mind. 

The orthodox practice of Mussar, originating in the 10th century, but reaching its height in the 19th century, gives us a prescription to free us from our brain numbing bondage.  What Mussar seeks to accomplish is to counteract the pernicious effects of habit as it slowly creeps into our spiritual practices. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter defined Mussar as the Torah’s antidote to what he called timtum ha’lev, the closed heart that is no longer sensitive and supple. Mussar is meant to re-awaken us to the truths we know well but have “forgotten,” as they have become habitual features of our day.

I’d like to introduce you to one of those Mussar practices.  It is called the Cheshbon Hanefesh practice and it is outlined in Alan Morinis’s book, Climbing Jacobs Ladder, and can also be found on The Mussar Institute website.  The exercise is designed to promote positive character building habits.  And, it is a practice that all of us can easily introduce into our daily lives.  Each month we focus on one of 13 prescribed traits, or middots.  For that entire month we commit to noticing how that trait manifests in our life.  Each night, we journal about how we experienced that trait and we attempt to cultivate the most positive aspect of the behaviors which are:

Minucha/Equanimity
Savlanut / Patience
Emet/Truth
Sh’tikah/Silence
Chesed/Lovingkindness
Anavut/Humility
Nedivut/Generosity
Hoda’ah/Gratitude
Bitachon/Trust
Seder/Order
Da’at/Mindfulness
Kavod/Reverence
Yirah/Awe

Consider inserting the instructions for Cheshbon Hanefesh practice into your seder as a new way to contemplate modern day slavery.  For by focusing on one of these ideals over the course of a month, year after year, we are forming new, more positive habits, and releasing our slave plagued minds from anesthetizing barriers that obstruct the flow of inner light in our lives.

Chag Sameach!

Recently, I read a new book by author Kate Atkinson called Life After Life.  In this unusual novel, the main character, Ursula, dies and is re-born dozens of times.  Upon each re-birth she enters the same life again and again.  And, each time, through pure instinct and déjà vu, she tries to fix previous mistakes that led to her death and to the death of friends and family.

The premise of Life After Life, led me to think about our opportunities for remedying mistakes in the life we are currently living.  Surely, we can’t go back in time and prevent things from occurring, but, on the other hand, might we somehow shift our memories and the memories of others?

In his book, The Thirteen Petalled Rose, Adin Steinsaltz says that “with regard to repentance, that before man was created, he was given the possibility of changing the course of his life….Man can extricate himself from the binding web of his life, from the chain of causality that otherwise compels him to follow  a path of no return….However, even though the past is “fixed,” repentance admits of an ascendancy over it, of the possibility of changing its significance in the context of the present and future.  In a world of the inexorable flow of time, in which all objects and events are interconnected in a relationship of cause and effect, repentance is the exception:  it is the potential for something else.”

What I interpret Steinsaltz as saying is that by making an apology or participating in an act of tikkun, you can actually shift the energy of the negative event.  In the movie Atonement, we witness a little girl fabricate a story that results in her sister’s boyfriend being arrested.  The event causes their lives to be forever changed and both the sister and her boyfriend end up being killed in World War II.  The little girl becomes an author.  The last novel she pens before she dies is a re-writing of her misdeed and the ultimate happy ending of her sister and her beau.  She says that the story is her apology and her attempt to let her sibling live out the life she would have lived had the transgression not occurred.

In this week’s Torah portion, Aharei Mot, God tells us, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have assigned it to you for making expiation for your lives upon the altar; it is the blood, as life that effects expiation.  What is interesting is that much earlier in our Torah we are told that the breath is life.  But, what I think is being said is that when God breathes us into living, our soul enters our body.  However, the blood is actually the life-force of the physical.  In this parshat, we are told that blood is crucial for expiation, and interestingly enough, one of the meanings of the word expiation is correction.  In essence, these lives we lead, in the flesh, with blood flowing through our veins, affords us the ability to learn from our mistakes and make course corrections during the length of our existence.  The blood is the glue that keeps our bodies functioning so that the soul, or life force, may carry out this mission.

Ursula in Life After Life is born on February 11, 1910 only to die moments later due to strangulation by the umbilical cord.  Then, in the next scene she is re-born again, only this time, the cord is loosened and she lives.  Later, she and her sister drown at the beach, but when she is born again, her instinct prevents the drowning.  With each passing life, her ability to be aware in the present moment increases, allowing her to make alternate choices.

Because her lifetimes included so much suffering in WWII, Ursula returns to kill Hitler in one of her incarnations.    And, though, in our one life that we are living now, we can’t have such dramatic impact on the past, we can choose a different response in the present.  We are repeatedly confronted with scenarios that ask us to choose kindness instead of anger, to choose generosity over hoarding to choose growth of character instead of stagnation.  And each time we are presented with these choices, we have the opportunity to be awake and to select a better avenue, affecting both the past, the present, and the future.

Rabbi Alan Lew, of blessed memory, said that “stretching before us from this moment are the infinite consequences of our present action.”  We can let go of the pain of the past by covering it over with new intention and then allowing that intention to ripple out soul to soul until it has filled all of time.

56 years ago, my step father and his wife had a son who was born with severe disabilities.  He was placed in an institution as an infant, and, to this day, has never been visited by any of his relatives. 

In this week and next week’s Torah portions Tazria and Metzora, we also witness the somewhat cold treatment of those in the Israelite community who present with physical defects and blemishes.  The text is matter of fact and seemingly void of empathy for those who have the misfortune to be plagued by that which is determined to be impure.

In her book, Judaism and Disability, Judith Abrams explains the role of the priests and ritual purity in the day-to-day workings of the temple, along with the implications of these for people with disabilities. The Temple was understood to be a place where Heaven and Earth overlapped and the priests operated in the Temple's most dangerous zone, so the codes dealing with ritual impurity existed for the priests' safety. "To survive in such a dangerous position, the priest had to be fit for the company of angels,” writes Abrams. 

In the sacrificial society of the ancient Israelites, life in its purest form, was symbolized by 1.  An absence of the taint of death (i.e., ritual impurity), 2. The embodiment of perfect human life (the blemishless priest), 3. The perfect sacrificial animal, and 4. Senses fully stimulated by incense, bells, and loaves.

This helps to explain why there was a need to banish those who were imperfect from the community.

After the fall of the Temple, some vestiges of the ancient practices continued to be honored - such as the priestly benediction. It was thought God's presence comes and rests on the priests, so congregants should look away or they might die. Thus, the sages who protected and nurtured Judaism after the fall of the Temple gave instructions that the hands of those giving the blessing should be as inconspicuous as possible, free of deformity or blemish. Over time, the oral code known as Tosefta softened this teaching: If everyone is used to how the blesser's hands look, then he can still give the blessing.

What Abrams outlines in her book is that, over time, Judaism has shown a continued evolution in thinking with regard to people with disabilities, balancing respect and awe of God's holiness with real-life human concerns.

Beginning in the very book Leviticus that outlines such harshness of treatment for those who are disabled, we read:

You shall not insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind (Leviticus 19:14) And, we find in Proverbs (31:8), speak up for those who cannot speak, for the rights of the unfortunate.  Speak up, judge righteously, and champion the poor and needy.

Ben Azzai taught in Pirkei Avot (4:3), do not disdain any person; do not underestimate the importance of anything.  For there is no person who does not have an hour, and there is not a thing without its place.

In the Jerusalem Talmud, Rabbi Yochanan said: Each of the 40 days that Moses was on Mount Sinai, God taught him entire Torah.  And each night, Moses forgot what he had learned.  Finally, God gave it to him as a gift.  If so, why did God not give the Torah to him as a gift on the first day?  In order to encourage the teachers of those who learn in a non-traditional manner.

And, in the Mishneh Torah, we are told one who sees … people whose physical nature is distinct must recite the blessing, “Blessed are you, God, Sovereign of all worlds who creates variety in life.” 

In 1959, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of Israel, insisted rabbis accept people with deafness since it is obvious in modern times that deaf people can both learn and communicate.

And, in our own times, we find that Judaism has continued to make strides with regard to attitudes towards disability.  We only need search the internet to find a plethora of Jewish organizations dedicated to healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and alleviating the pain of those who are suffering. 

Indeed, my own son, who works with autistic and down’s syndrome youth, has actually found that he gains energy from finding ways to connect with those who are differently abled.

Kenneth Kaplan, my step-father’s son is now middle-aged and continues to live in the same facility, financially supported yet physically and emotional abandoned by his family.  May Judaism continue to evolve in its treatment of the imperfect so that the tragedy of Kenneth Kaplan’s life need never be repeated.

Like many of us, my life has included numerous instances where I have been faced with the issue of forgiveness.  But, I’ve never quite been able to reconcile the literature and advice on the topic with the reality of each betrayal.  For each time we are wronged both the wrong doing and our state of mind are altered, requiring us, to respond in a different way.

In this week’s Torah portion, Shmini, the Israelites are given instructions on how to atone for their sins.  In order to receive God’s forgiveness for their transgressions, very specific sacrifices must be made.  These are what God requires in order for him to bestow forgiveness.

But, our tradition actually tells us a variety of things with regard to granting forgiveness.

Isaiah tells us, “Remember not the former things.  Consider not the things of old.”
The prophet felt that forgetting and forgiving is part of the circle of repentance.   He taught not to dwell on the past.  And, he asked us to focus instead on the future as the thing that illumines the present. 

The Talmud says, “The quality of forgiveness is one of the finest gifts God bestowed on our ancestor Abraham and his seed…and it means forgiving before someone has even asked for forgiveness.”

Moses Maimonides had a different idea about forgiveness.  He said that for sins committed against another person, one is never pardoned unless that person compensates his or her neighbor and makes an apology.

In Rabbi David Cooper’s book, God is a Verb, forgiveness in the Kabbalistic tradition is described as God’s most excellent gift for each of us to utilize.  Cooper explains that, “for the Kabbalist, forgiveness does not mean we need to embrace someone who has done a despicable act against humanity.  Rather, it is focused on the degree to which we hold on to our anger or our negative feelings."

Even our liturgy has weighed in on the topic.  In the bedtime Shema, to be recited every night before retiring, we say “I hereby forgive everyone who offended me or angered me or sinned against me today.”

In his book Seven Prayers that will Change your Life, Leonard Felder says we grant forgiveness every evening in case, God forbid, anyone who may have sinned against us will not be able to make full atonement.  We should not take such forgiveness to the grave – and we never know when death will come upon us.

But, in contemplating the duplicity of my father or the disloyalty of my ex-husband, none of these forgiveness instructions resonated with me.  And, then, not too long ago, I came across Rabbi Karyn Kedar’s book, The Bridge to Forgiveness, and the forgiveness fog that plagued me finally lifted.

In her poem The Bridge, Rabbi Kedar says:

Forgiveness is a path to be walked.
There are steps along the way: 
loss, anger, acceptance, learning,
forgiveness, restoration.

So, just as Elisabeth Kubler Ross introduced us to the stages of grief, finally acknowledging that grieving is a process, Rabbi Kedar tells us that forgiveness, too, is a journey.  She says that “Forgiveness is not condoning the wrong in the world or the offenses we experience in our lives.  It is not forgetting.  Rather, it is a state of mind.  Forgiveness is actually a decision about how to live.  Forgiveness is regaining control over your life. You acknowledge the loss of innocence, trust, faith, inner light.  You rage against the crime that was committed.  And you accept, with self-love, the story that has become your life.”

Back in our parshat Shmini, we watch as Aaron’s son’s are consumed by fire having presented God with the incorrect sacrifice.  What this tells me is that the God of this portion was still struggling with the stages of forgiveness and, that we, too, need to accept where we are on the quest.  As Rabbi Kedar says, “Forgiveness does not spontaneously bubble forth, erasing all evil and wounds.  It involves intention, purpose, vision.  It is a path to be discovered, an expectation that there is another side to the pain and diminishment that we have suffered….It is always about finding what you have lost, restoring a sense of wholeness.”

We need to remember that forgiveness is a paradigm shift that may take hours, days, years or a lifetime…and it is completely individual depending on person and circumstance.  May we each journey on the path to forgiveness, in our own way, and ultimately find a bridge that leads us to restoration and peace.

Shabbat Shalom

My friend, who has been a religious school educator for a decade, recently told me that she had been awarded a month’s sabbatical.  During these 30 days off, she will be exploring innovations in the Jewish world and bringing back a renewed sense of spirit to her congregation.  She told me that she was thinking of spending the time in California and I immediately rattled off the names of two west coast congregations that I knew were pushing the envelope in terms of engaging the Jewish community.  Later that day, she sent an email to these two groups asking for an appointment in June.  The response from one of these organizations went as follows:  “We would love to meet with you, however, as requests for meetings are so frequent we ask for a $360 donation.”  And, by the way, this email came directly from the rabbi.

In the book Sacred Intentions, Rabbi Kerry Olitzky says that within the Jewish community, we depend on one another.  This mutual dependence is what unites us and gives us strength.  We are there for each other because our togetherness makes it possible for us to stand and be strong.

The Mishnah tells us “Do not separate yourself from the Community” for we are obligated to participate in the work of the community even though we are not required to see its completion.  Furthermore, we need not personally benefit or receive credit for the work that we contribute to the whole.

According to Rabbi Lori Forman, Judaism is especially cognizant of the relationship between individuals and the community.  In our highly individualized society, it is all too easy to remove ourselves from the community.  After all, our days are busy dealing with our individual needs as well as the needs of our employees, our constituents, our friends and family.  And, these commitments take a lot of energy.  Yet when we work together with others to solve a communal problem, we commit ourselves to being part of something grander than ourselves.  Granted, this takes time, patience, and creative thinking.  But, our tradition does not let us off the hook because the task is difficult.  One Midrash says that “At a time when the community is in need” one should not say, “I will go home and peace be to you,” but rather one should “participate in alleviating the community’s troubles.” 

In this week’s Torah portion Vayikra, we are inundated with instructions regarding animal sacrifices which are, at times, painful, to read.  And, yet, might we take this idea of sacrifice, of giving up something of value, as a metaphor for behavior in our own lives?  Might we glean from this parsha that our unique wisdom might be given through sacrifice for the good of the community?  According to the Talmud, a person who has knowledge has everything, and if we have everything, might we not share with others who have less?

In his book “Finding a Spiritual Home,” Rabbi Sydney Schwarz profiles the ever growing number of cutting edge synagogues that are coming to understand the particular tastes, inclinations, and values of the new American Jew.  These congregations are beginning to break the mold of the out-dated synagogue-center and are beginning to chart the course of the next stage of the American synagogue.  It does the Jewish people a disservice for these ground breaking institutions to not willingly and wholeheartedly share both the successes and challenges they encounter on the path to innovation.

The following story is a Chasidic tale edited and translated by Arthur Green and Barry W. Holtz .

Once in a tropical country, a certain splendid bird,
more colorful than any that had ever been seen,
was sighted at the top of the tallest tree.

The bird’s plumage contained within it
all the colors in the world.

But the bird was perched so high
that no single person
could ever hope to reach it.

When news of the bird reached the ears of the king,
he ordered that a number of men
try to bring the bird to him.

They were to stand on one another’s shoulders,
until the highest man could reach the bird
and bring it to the king.

The men assembled near the tree,
but while they were standing
balanced on one another’s shoulders,
some of those near the bottom decided to wander off.

As soon as the first man moved,
the entire chain collapsed,
injuring several of the men.

Still the bird remained uncaptured.

The men had doubly failed the king.
For even greater than his desire to see the bird
was his wish to see his people so closely joined to one another.

When the going gets tough, or cumbersome, or time consuming, or just plain inconvenient, some of us, like the California rabbi might choose to walk away from the very community we are trying to help.  I encourage all of you to see the value in the mutual dependence that brings strength to the Jewish community.  And I urge you to commit to sharing and contributing your insights and observations freely and selflessly.

Shabbat Shalom.

Some call it intuition; some call it deja vu; some call it extrasensory perception; some call it past-life memory.  The Kabbalists and the mystics call it gilgool hanefesh, the “transmigrating” or “rolling of the soul.”  It is what is commonly known as reincarnation.

In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa, in the last line of the proclamation of the 13 Attributes, we are told that God “does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”

Why should unborn children be punished for the transgressions of their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents?  In her book New Age Judaism, Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World, Mindy Ribner says Jewish mystics believe that this line has a much deeper meaning.  They believe that “every third or fourth human generation, our soul returns to earth in a human body in order to do the work of t’shuvah and tikkun, of repentance and healing – to fix the karma – for the mistakes we made in that previous lifetime.”  Kabbalah says that the sin is not passed on to innocent children, but it is the same soul who comes back in the third and fourth generations of the family to correct its deficiencies.

In his book Jewish Views of the Afterlife, Simcha Paull Rapheal tells us that over the course of centuries, the Kabbalists repeatedly spoke about how souls, once they have assimilated the spiritual learning of the highest heavenly realm, are subject to reincarnation.  Through the process of physical reimbodiment, the soul can bring about a restitution for the wrongdoings of a previous life and attain further perfection.  According to the Zohar, there are 613 commandments, each one sacred and requiring specific holy actions.  The Zohar states the necessity to reincarnate to assure that the religious obligation of each will be completed.

There is an old Hasidic story of a young Rabbi named David Leikes.  Reb David decided to spend Yom Kippur with the Baal Shem Tov.  He started out in plenty of time to get to his holy master before Yontif, but delay after delay kept him from his destination.

Finally, it was only an hour before Yom Kippur was to begin, but if he hurried, he would make it on time.  To be sure that the horses would not falter on the way, he stopped for a precious moment to water them.

In that moment when the horses were drinking, some people from the little village approached him.  “Please, good man,” they said, “please help us.  We are but nine Jews in this tiny village.  We need one more person to make our minyan so that we can say our prayers on the holiest day of the year.  Please stay here and daven with us on Yom Kippur.”

Reb David barely listened to their pleas.  “What?” he asked incredulously.  “Don’t you know where I am going?  I am traveling to be in the court of the holy master.  I’m going to daven Yom Kippur with the holy Baal Shem.  I would like to help you, but how can I give up being with the holiest of all men on the holiest of all days?”

Chastened and saddened, the men stepped back, and Reb David grabbed his horses and rode away.

When he came to the holy Baal Shem’s court, the master was wishing everybody a “good Yontif.”  When it came Reb David’s turn, the Baal Shem skipped over him.  “It must be an oversight,” thought Reb David.  “The Baal Shem just didn’t see me.”

When Yom Kippur was over, once again, the holy Baal Shem greeted all who had come to daven in his court, but once again he skipped over Reb David.

By the time Sukkot came and went and he had been skipped over time and time again, Reb David knew that it was no oversight, no accident, that the holy master had failed to recognize his presence, he cried out, “Please, Rebbe, please, holy master.  Tell me what I did so wrong that you should ignore me like this.”

And the Baal Shem Tov looked deeply into Reb David’s eyes and said, “Tell me, David.  Tell me how many hundreds of years, how many gilgoolim, has your soul been waiting to daven Yom Kippur with those nine men?  You came into this world only to pray with them.”

Gilgool hanefesh calls upon us to practice kavanah with each and every moment of our lives.  According to Jewish scholar Arthur Green, we must listen intently to that which is occurring around us and within us for evidence of what our soul came to earth to accomplish.  This way of thinking spurns us to connect with the Godliness within ourselves, affording us the opportunity to elevate our souls and challenging us to connect with others and the world around us in the most compassionate way possible.

Let us conclude with the words of English poet William Wordsworth:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.

Shabbat Shalom.