I go to shul to pray in community nearly every Shabbat. I go to Nats Stadium to watch and root in community a number of times a year. And I read the sports section of the Washington Post nearly every day. After the Boston bombing I started thinking about the idea of community and what it means to be a part of one. And then sportswriter Tracee Hamilton wrote about that very subject. I read her paper - she must have been reading my mind. The article pointed out just how vulnerable spectators are at sporting events, and that perhaps one day soon, partly because of security concerns. people may choose to stay home. That would be a great loss she notes, because being a member of a sports community is all that some people have. Where would that choice leave many? Plugged into personal communication devices that estrange us from a sense of community. (Maybe some day someone will invent the wePad) Interestingly, a reader wrote to the Post objecting to Hamilton’s premise about loss of community. “Isn’t the online community a community?” he asked. I am not going to comment on that, but rather look to last week’s Torah portion for guidance, where at the beginning of Parshat Kadoshim G!d says “You shall be holy”. The word “you” is stated in the plural, and the declaration is meant to be addressed by Moshe to "adat Yisrael", the entirety of the congregation of Israel. The Chatam Sofer comments that this holiness refers to holiness that can only be attained in community, holiness that springs forth from relationship with one’s neighbor. (“v’ahavta, rey’echa kamocha” - love your neighbor as yourself - appears a few lines later) The Chatam Sofer is teaching that we should seek G!d in community, that isolating oneself in the search for holiness is not the ideal. I suspect that the Rebbe never once went to a ballgame.
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I am humbled every time I am reading a Jewish text and the following words appear: "As we know...", which is then followed by the teaching itself. Why? Because apparently the teaching is a common one that EVERYONE knows. "Everyone", of course, except for me. Today the teaching was on the word ADaM, which, "as we know", is an acronym for "ADaM David Mashiach". What ADam? Who is the person who will lead us towards the long promised messianic age of peace? Why, according to the teaching, it's me, and you, and every other human being that has ever been and will ever be born. This is called "messianic consciousness. There is a story of Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk as told in Pillar of Prayer, "Once, while he was studying in his synagogue, someone burst in and shouted that the Messiah had just revealed himself in the Galilee. The Rebbe left the house and courtyard, and took a whiff of the air in the public thoroughfare and announced "nothing has changed." Hasidim explained that the reason the Rebbe had to leave the synagogue for the public street is because as far as he was concerned, Messianic consciousness is already present." And so it is, in the aftermath of Boston, that I am reminded not only of heroes, but of the promise of Messiah, and the concept that each of us has a messianic spark. I am also reminded of a story that "everyone knows", "The Rabbi's Gift", which appears in M. Scott Peck's The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace. I share an abbreviated version with you here. The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. It was once a great order, but because of persecution, all its branch houses were lost and there were only five monks left in the decaying house: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying order. In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi occasionally used for a hermitage. The old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. "The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods" they would whisper. It occurred to the abbot that a visit the rabbi might result in some advice to save his monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot to his hut. But when the abbot explained his visit, the rabbi could say, "I know how it is" . "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and spoke of deep things. When the abbot had to leave, they embraced each other. "It has been a wonderful that we should meet after all these years," the abbot said, "but I have failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me that would help me save my dying order?" "No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. But, I can tell you that the Messiah is one of you." When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, "Well what did the rabbi say?" “The rabbi said something very mysterious, it was something cryptic. He said that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant?" In the time that followed, the old monks wondered whether the significance to the rabbi's words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks? If so, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for always being there when you need him. He just magically appears. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I? As they contemplated, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect. People still occasionally came to visit the monastery in its beautiful forest to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even to meditate in the dilapidated chapel. As they did so, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery to picnic, to play, to pray. They brought their friends to this special place. And their friends brought their friends. Then some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another, and another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm. "When I was a boy and and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am comforted in realzing that there are still so many helpers, so many caring people in this world." "We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say "It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem." Then there are those that see a need and respond. I consider those people my heroes." "It's very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It's easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition. but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other." Keyn Y'hi Ratzon. ....walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, "What is this, a joke or something?" Anyone who knows me knows that I have been blessed with the gift of a sense of humor. I am not talking about joke telling, because I can hardly remember any of the jokes I've been told. I am talking about the ability to elicit laughter from a situation. Yes, sometimes I get an eye roll from my 17 year old daughter Kaziah, but that's her job, and I usually deserve it. But more often she laughs, which was one of the things my wife Renée blessed her with at her baby naming, "May you always laugh at your father's jokes." There is something deeply instrinsic to the human spirit about being joyous, as we learn from many Hasidic teachings. The Tanach and the Talmud are replete with humor, as I was reminded during a study session with my chevruta yesterday morning. In BT Taanit 22a is a story of Rabbi Baruqa, who one day happened upon the prophet Elijah in the marketplace. He asks the prophet, "Is there anyone among the people here in the marketplace who have a place in the World to Come?" Elijah answered that 'there is none." Later two men entered the marketplace and Elijah pointed them out, saying, "Those two will have a share in the World To Come". "Rabbi Bauqa asked the two men their occupations. "We are jesters" they replied, "when we see someone who is sad we cheer him up. When we see two people quarreling we try to make peace between them." The Baal Shem Tov teaches that the job of these two merry-makers is to remind us of our true nature, to reactivate the passive aspect of the Divine that are lying latent in our deeds and words. The "passive aspect of the Divine"? Why joy of course! What an occupation! What a calling! Imagine a want ad: Jester needed, to use your sense of humor to unite with others; could be a person who is in a state of pain and despondency. Ability to unite a person to His blessedness required. In his book "Pillar of Prayer", a recent translation of the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov on prayer, Menachem Kallus writes "using humor for a higher purpose and imbuing all of one's words with intentional significance" is, according to the Besht, an important priniciple. What is this, a joke or something? It sure is - an important tool of Rebbe-craft. I recently found out that for the last 10 years, NYU president John Sexton has been teaching a course "Baseball as a Road to G!d". It's always nice to have a university president confirm something that I have sensed for the last 50 years! I have every intention of buying his book by the same name, perhaps two, one for me and one for my baseball crazy bar mitzvah student Ben. A few days ago I was pleasantly surprised upon opening a different book, "The Spirituality of Imperfection", to find this baseball quote: "Baseball teaches us...how to deal with failure. We learn at an early age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often - those who hit safely in one out of three chances and become star players. I also find it fascinating that baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth." This was written by former baseball commissioner Faye Vincent, Jr. Let's call it the Torah of Baseball. Hmmm.... maybe I'll write a proposal to teach it at American University! My friend Dina played the word kvass the other day in Scrabble. I sent her an IM, "where the heck do you get these words?" to which she replied, "Someone played it against me and I remembered it." Unbelievable - I can't remember the details of what I studied this morning and she remembers k-v-a-s-s for 43 points. Later that day I was immersed in reading Aleksander Hemon extraordinary novel "The Lazurus Project", and was floored when I read about the Cossack who "stank of garlic and kvass." Kvass! What were the odds? So now I had to look it up. Turns out it is fermented beverage made from rye or black bread, with a relatively low alchohol content. I guess it gave the Cossacks enough of a jolt to propel them while they raped, pillaged, and killed Jews in the Kishinev progrom of 1903. JJ Goldberg writes in The Forward: "Provoked by a medieval blood libel, flashed around the globe by modern communications, Kishinev was the last pogrom of the Middle Ages and the first atrocity of the 20th century. The event, and the worldwide wave of Jewish outrage that it evoked, laid the foundations of modern Israel, gave birth to contemporary American-Jewish activism and helped bring about the downfall of the czarist regime." I'd call that a pivotal event, and one that I was not very familiar with. I spent the next few hours reading about the massacre, which led me to a poem written about it by the young Hebrew poet Chayyim Nachman Bialek: Descend then, to the cellars of the town, There where the virginal daughters of thy folk were fouled, Where seven heathen flung a woman down, The daughter in the presence of her mother, The mother in the presence of her daughter, Before slaughter, during slaughter, and after slaughter! Touch with thy hand the cushion stained; touch The pillow incarnadined: This is the place the wild ones of the wood, the beasts of the field With bloody axes in their paws compelled thy daughters yield: Beasted and swined! Note also, do not fail to note, In that dark corner, and behind that cask Crouched husbands, bridegrooms, brothers, peering from the cracks, Watching the sacred bodies struggling underneath The bestial breath, Stifled in filth, and swallowing their blood! Watching from the darkness and its mesh The lecherous rabble portioning for booty Their kindred and their flesh! Crushed in their shame, they saw it all; They did not stir nor move; They did not pluck their eyes out; they Beat not their brains against the wall! Perhaps, perhaps each watcher had it in his heart to pray: A miracle, O Lord, and spare my skin this day! Between the scene in the book, and this poem, two heart wrenching desriptions of Jewish victimization. The only problem is that Bialek got it all wrong about Jewish passivity (read more about that here) Whew, from k-v-a-s-s to Kishinev to Bialek. I'll remember that. I do admit that I play a lot of, perhaps too much at times, online Scrabble, when I could be doing far more useful things with my time. Like drinking kvass. I have memory of my father, Abraham Novak (z"l) , chanting. making his way through the haggadah at stunning speed, interrupted occasionally by my mother peeking out of the kitchen, asking "how much longer until dinner?" I have memory of my father singing, always a Jewish liturgical song, in his rich deep bass, a voice that held up the world. I have memory of my father working, standing over the cutting table at his dress factory, cigar in hand, ruling his small "empire" that employed 20 people for 40 years. I have memory of my father smoking his cigar, his constant companion every day, except on Shabbas. My mother would ask, "Adolph, why can't every day be Shabbas?" I have memory of me and my father playing catch on the side of our house. He is wearing a white tee shirt, shorts, black socks and shoes, tossing a hard ball with me, back and forth, as time stands still. Is this heaven? (Yes, I do weep, every time, at the end of Field of Dreams) I have memory of my father eating, always with a yarmulke on his head. He expected me and my brother to always wear one at the table as well. I remember one day as a teenager sitting down at the table, beggining to eat purposely without my head covered. I hear my father say to my mother, "Tell your son that at my table we wear a yarmulke." I have no memory of my father crying. I have memory of my father selling cans upon cans of maccaroons to everyone he possibly could - in his workplace, on the subway, in the neighborhood. With his help I win the #1 prize in the religious school contest for selling maccaroons - a radio that clips on to my bicycle handle. I have memory of my father lying in bed at the hospital. Although he cannot open his eyes nor utter a word, he hears me singing to him, L'dor Va'dor, and instinctively, through labored breathing, he reaches for the harmony part. For all that you gifted me with dad, I thank you. When I say Kaddish for you, through the gift of memory you are reborn, allowing me, once again, to feel your presence. I never died said he. THis past Sunday, March 17, was the birthday of the late Bob Alexander, founder and director of the Living Stage Theater Company, which I served from 1977-1985. (Bob is seen here with the late Rebecca Rice, actress/director, and theater worker extraordinare) Despite his distrust for all things "religious", and disassociation from his Jewish heritage, Bob was my rebbe. One of his favorite quotes was: "In the deepest part of our soul, in the deepest parts of our humanity, we have the need to create. to transform the visciousness and mediocrity of the world into sunlight and peace. Welcome to the place where you can dare to be in your dreams, dare to be strong, dare to be vulnerable. All power to the imagination Love and good courage" It is astonishingly clear to me that these words speak of our soul's longing, pushing and struggling to recognize itself, often in opposition against the realities of the world into which it was born. We were born into this world to create. We are, in Jewish thought, co-creators with the Divine. Creativity, the most powerful way to act in a Godly manner, is our birthright. And it is, like Pablo Casals wrote, "not something to turn on and off like tapwater", but rather the way to live life. In the moment of creation we are "like G!d", all pretense and ego is stripped away, and we are channels for something far greater than ourselves. Truth is revealed, and if we are so blessed, light shines on and through us. Like Moses descending Sinai, we are radiant, and truly free. In its most radical understanding, this means that humankind need not wait for a single messiah to herald the coming of a world perfected. That messenger is here, right now, and is born every minute of every day. If only we could listen, and truly hear his/her message. From "It's In Everyone of Us", by David Pomerance, one of Bob's favorite songs: "It's in everyone of us To be wise Find your heart Open up both your eyes We can all know everything without ever knowing why It's in everyone of us, by and by." Yesterday morning was the once a month gathering of my nascent community, Minyan Oneg Shabbat. At first I had a twinge of dissappointment, as we had "only" 12 people who attended, the smallest turnout since our November start. But as our morning of devotional prayer progressed, it proved the adage "sometimes less is more" in a most powerful way that I could ever have imagined. Being so few in number allowed us all the opportunity to gather around the sefer Torah as it was chanted. Since Parshat Vayikra begins the description of the sacrifices commanded of the wandering nation, after the reading my chevra and I took the opportunity to unpack the meaning of sacrifice as we understand it. Laurie, an oncology nurse, shared the following - she told us that when a doctor needs to remove cancerous growth from the body of a patient, that s/he refers to it as a sacrifice, and communicates as such to the patient. In other words, the patient sacrifices/gives up something - i.e. a breast, or part of a stomach - for the sake of a larger purpose. In this case for the sake of life itself. In silence we stood together, with the Torah as witness, digesting the full impact of this. Never could we have imagined that the expression "less is more" and the reading of the sacrificial rites would have intersected in such a profound and humbling manner. On Tuesday I visited my friend Stuart at a federal penitentiary, where he has been incarcerated for nearly two years, still awaiting sentencing. As I waited in the lobby, I noticed a women between 60-70 sitting and reading tehillim (psalms). I knew immediately who she was. She was the wife of the man who was responsible for Stuart's situation. My mind imediately began planning on somethng to say to her: "You shoukd be ashamed of yourself", or worse "May God multiply your pain and suffering." In the end, I restarined myself andI did not say anything to her. When I arrived upstairs to the visitng room to meet with Stuart, I noticed that she sat down with a young inmate about 30 years of age. Of course! It was her son, also indicted in the same scheme, along with his father and my friend Stuart. I looked over, and caught the son's eyes. I wanted to strangle them both. Gevalt, what was I thinking? Stuart and I settled into a wonderful hour of conversation, much of it centering on his faith in HaShem, his faith that he was in prison for a reason, and that the time there had allowed him to sort through and make some sense of his life. Suffering from poor eyesight, he shared with me that HaShem had literally and figuritively opened his eyes, and that now he more clearly understood the arc of his story and why he was where he was supposoed to be at this moment in time. "And the man and woman over there?" I asked him. He confirmed who they were, but he harbored no resentment nor anger towards either of them. I compared my reaction to these people with my friend's state of mind towards them. My impulse was one of amger and resentment, and his place was one of equanimity and forgiveness. Clearly I was imprisoned as well. Two different quotes came to mind. The first was from George Jackson, who wrote in his autobiography Soledad Brother: "Locked in jail within a jail, my mind is still free. I refuse ever to allow myself to be forced by living conditions into a response that is not commensurate with my intelligence and my final objective." The second was from Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: " “A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky. But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom. The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own. But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.” In this season of liberation, may we all "see through (our) bars of rage", and sing a song of freedom. Reb Zalman speaks of prayer as a spritiual tool that is useful in helping us to recalibrate. I take that to mean that the insight gained from prayer guides me to re-member who and what G!d intended for me upon conception (Hmmm....G!d's or mine?) A few weeks ago I planted a number of broccoli seeds, which are now 1 1/2 inches tall and reaching towards the light, awaitng their transplanting upon spring's arrival. How does the broccoli seeed know what it is and what it will become? What do I have to learn from its wisdom? Perhaps part of the answer lies in Hanna Tiferet's beautiful song "Planting Seeds". On this Shabbas, may we all be reminded of who we are. My morning davvenen this morning consisted of the following: 1) Putting on my tallis (my late father's tallis is my weekday davvenen tent of meeting) 2) Laying tefillin 3) Lighting a candle and taking a few moments in hitbodedut 4) Sitting next to the window that overlooks my garden 5) Listening to Reb Zalman teach about Psalm 23 (it's always good to hear Reb Zalman's laugh to start the day) 5) Listening to Bobby McFerrin's setting for Psalm 23 With eyes closed, I sit in silence - bathing in the sunlight streaming through my window, bathed in the miracle that is McFerrin's inspired gift. With tears streaming down my face, I am ready to face the day. Yesterday I asked Ben, my bar mitzvah student and fellow baseball lover, how he would define the word "sacrifice". He replied that "it is when you give something up fo yourself in order to benefit others or yourself." I was struck by his insight, and was delighted to happen upon the image to the left of what happens on a baseball field when a batter sacrifices himself for the benefit of the team. Notice that his intention/action sets every other player on the field in motion. Not one player on the field is unmoved by the action of a single member of its community. The ripple affect caused by an act of giving. I was listening to Tony Kornheiser this morning (which I only do if I I happen to be in the car and he's talking to Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe) and Ryan shared that he learned more about baseball from former Baltimore Oriole manager Earl Weaver than any other person in his life. (Ryan had been the beat reporter for the Orioles when Weaver was manager) One day outfielder Pat Kelley walked into Weaver's office and told him that he had decided to become a minister. "I've decided to walk with God," he told his manager. Weaver replied, "Better you should walk with the bases loaded." There's such an amazing payoff being a life long baseball fan and being familiar with the characters who seem to have stepped out of a Damon Runyan story. This too is Torah. |
Mark Novak is a "free-range" rabbi who lives in Washington DC and works, well, just about everywhere. In 2012 he founded Minyan Oneg Shabbat, home to MOSH (Minyan Oneg Shabbat), MindfulMOSH (Jewish mindfulness gathering), and Archives
June 2017
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