Parshat Vayishlach: It's a Matter of Perspective

"I have become small from all the kindnesses..." (Bereishit 32:11)

Yaakov is on the verge of reuniting with his brother for the first time in years. By all accounts this is not to be a joyous occasion. Immediately after securing the firstborn blessing from their dying father, Yaakov flees into exile from his home and from his elder brother. It is only now as he seeks to return to his family and to his land that he must reckon with his brother, Esav. Will there be warfare? Will they both be able to put their past grievances behind them and turn a new page? These are the questions that must have been flashing through Yaakov's mind as he prepared for their imminent meeting.

It is in the midst of all the preparations for their reunion that Yaakov stops and prays. He turns to God and asks for help in overcoming this last challenge between him and his home. It is within that prayer that we uncover remarkable language that can play a truly transforming role in our lives. "I have become small from all the kindnesses and from all the truth that You have rendered Your servant..." Rav Saadia Gaon (b. 892- d. 942), the prominent Babylonian Geonic figure, offers an interpretation that many others after him have adopted: I am small and insignificant, Yaakov cries out, and thus how am I fit to be deserving of all the kindnesses that You have performed for me?"

The plea that Yaakov utters profoundly shifts the paradigm away from an ego-centric to a God-centric perspective. It is all too easy to see ourselves as the center of our own universes. The reality being that for the vast majority of our lives we are totally consumed with our own needs and objectives. The world operates for us and we do not operate for the world. All too often it is natural to see a goodness that occurs for us to be part of the natural order of things, while any negative action, even an unwanted red traffic light, to be entirely alien and foreign to our perceived way of the order of the world.

When we stop and examine Yaakov's plea, we are confronted with a real challenge. Yes, it is true that we must take care of our own needs. There is a Jewish value to making sure one does not abandon themselves. However, it is beneficial to have times where we step outside ourselves and move our position in our ordered universe from the center to a more peripheral position. Doing so allows us to take a broader, more balcony driven perspective on the world and is a healthy action to do regularly.

Yaakov in what to him was perhaps one of the most frightening and difficult periods in his life, stops and considers how small he truly is within the grand scheme of God's universe and from that place of smallness seeks God's help and indeed receives it. 

Building Inclusive Jewish Community

I have a short article up today in the On the Square feature section of the religion journal First Things on the topic of building inclusive Jewish community. In the article I propose a different paradigm for the foundation of inclusive Jewish community. A short excerpt:

Perhaps we require a different paradigm for Jewish inclusiveness. For a generation we have relied on shared ritual. But ritual runs directly into contentious issues such as gender separation, and leads to the stark contrast of the highest or lowest common denominator. The result is to uproot ritual—the articulation of faith as expressed differently by each denomination—from its foundations, and force a compromise with which no one is comfortable.

The rest of the article can be found here.

Parshat Toldot: Discovering the Positive

There are some things in our lives which we struggle to find the positive element of. Situations present themselves which cause us to wonder what is there to be thankful for in regards to this?

 

In this week's Parsha we are witness to the birth of two nations, the entrance unto the world's stage of two major actors that would shape the face of human civilization: Yaakov and Esav. Yaakov, who would father the twelve tribes of Israel, brings forth into the world the Jewish people. While our rabbis, through the Midrash, understand Esav as the spiritual father of the Roman Empire and later the Western World.

Esav, a hunter with little time for transmission of covenantal destiny, blessings or pondering the nature of God must have presented a challenge for Yitzhak. Yet, our parsha clearly states "ve'ye'ehav Yitzhak et Esav ki tziyad be-fiv - and Yitzhak loved Esav because the game of the hunt was in his mouth."

 

Rav Dovid Kimchi (b. 1160 d. 1235), states that of course Yitzhak loved Yaakov but the difficulty was to find a reason to love Esav. How does one come to appreciate, to be thankful for someone who represents practically the opposite of all one holds dear? Yet, despite all the difficulties, all the challenges in coming to grips with Esav, Yitzhak found a reason, found a way to connect with him. Rav Kimchi concludes that Yitzhak was able to appreciate Esav because "ki tziyad be-fiv," because he was able to provide for himself and his family, to provide food for those who needed.

 

The challenge presented to us through this week's parsha is to find ways to appreciate and to be thankful for people, situations and things in our lives that may not be the easiest to do so with. "Ve'ye'ehav Yitzhak et Esav ki tziyad be-fiv - And Yitzhak loved Esav because the game of the hunt was in his mouth".

Parshat Chayei Sarah: To be of...?

What does it mean to be 'of the world' and not at the same time? In many ways this is the task the Jewish people are charged with by God. Avraham, the father of the Jewish people, is called an ivri - Hebrew, the word essentially meaning "the other."

Indeed Avraham was vastly different than any other person residing in his time period. He believed in a unique single God that created humanity and deeply cares about the world and all of its inhabitants. He believed in a world of objective morality and had the courage to voice his sentiments even to God ("Will the Judge of the whole earth not judge justly?"). Yet, he was also very much of this world. He owned property, was married and had children and interacted with his neighbors and the cultures they were steeped in.

An incident in this week's parsha exemplifies Avraham's tension between otherness and non-otherness. In his negotiations to acquire a burial plot for his wife he states: "ger v'toshav anochi imachem - A stranger and a resident I am with you (23:4)." Within one sentence contains the core of the seemingly paradoxical existence that Avraham championed and the existence that was transmitted to us through the generations of Jewish faith.

To be of the world and not of it simultaneously means to live a life that fully appreciates the positives of the surrounding cultures. It means cultivating a discourse of respect and appreciation for people who are not Jewish and it means striving to be a model citizen in whatever country we live in. It also means staying true to our traditions, values and heritage and being above the fray of what is not so positive about the society we live in. 

The life we are called to lead, the life modeled on Avraham, is not a necessarily easy life nor is it meant to be. However, to be in the creative tension of "ger v'toshav" can help shape us into spectacularly vibrant, thinking, God-centered people who while rooted in our majestic mesorah are also civil and respectful central actors in the public square.

Esther Petrack and the Complexity of Modern Orthodoxy

I have to admit I do not watch the popular TV show, America's Next Top Model (ANTM). It is not that I am opposed to television - I am not, but reality television has never been my thing, especially when the show is all about modeling. However, even those of us in the Modern Orthodox community who do not watch ANTM heard about the Modern Orthodox model from Brookline, Esther Petrack. The video clip was circulated wide and far of the host of the show, Tyra Banks, asking Esther if she would be able to give up Shabbat to be on the show and Esther apparently replied with the famous words "I will do it."

Many pundits, both in the Jewish online and print media and in the blogosphere, took this as an example of the unrealistic life of Modern Orthodoxy. Many of them declared that Esther's words were testament to the fact that it was impossible to raise a child simultaneously in both the Torah and secular communities and that one would be sacrificed in pursuit of the other.

The newest report according to Esther's mother Marina is that Esther actually never said what she was made out to say. Rabbi Eliyahu Fink of the Pacific Jewish Center in California blogged about the incident and received an email from her mother in response. I encourage you to visit Rabbi Fink's blog to read the excerpts from her email but in essence what transpired was that the production team behind ANTM edited a much more lengthy response from Esther to Tyra Bank's question. In her more detailed actual response Esther outlined, according to her understanding of halakha, what she could do and what she would be unable to do. The editing team of the show for whatever reason chose to edit her response to appear as if she would wholesale forsake Shabbat for the television program.

Now that we have been given a more complete understanding of what occurred on the television program I believe we are left with an example of not the unsustainable nature of Modern Orthodoxy but rather the complexities of the lives Modern Orthodox committed Jews lead. I do not have to agree with every choice all committed Modern Orthodox Jews make in their negotiations between the world they live in and the world of Torah but I will never discount or not appreciate the thought and care that goes into making those decisions. To be a Modern Orthodox Jew is to fully embrace the messiness of life with all of its manifold and complicated interests.

It is not an easy life but most human endeavors worth doing have never been easy.

Parshat Lech Lecha: The Open Road

What a difference one parsha makes. We had ended last week's parsha with a discussion of the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel in the mind of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv) was world's first attempt at totalitarianism. Those intrepid citizens of the world decided to build one tower and one city as the catalyst towards the cultivation of one people and one world. Indeed, the Torah remarks that the language of all the inhabitants was the same and so were their thoughts.

The story of Babel is a warning about the dangers of too much uniformity and conformity. It is a story that cautions us about the difficulties in urban and settled life; how the rush to build a single city can very soon lead to the crushing of difference and diversity.

It is then all the more revealing that the parsha that follows last week's telling of Babel begins with the pre-political story of the Jewish nation with the narrative of Abraham. And it is even more revealing that the narrative begins with the command to "go forth from your land, your birthplace and your father's house." Abraham is told to pack his belongings, gather his family and begin sojourning to an unknown destination. He is thrust into the life of a wanderer. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdechiv, the great Chasidic teacher, is quick to mention that Abraham was not a nuisance or a vagabond but was a man intentionally journeying to a place he did not know, a mission drive life.

This is in stark contrast to the consolidation and fortification represented by the Tower of Babel. While there have been people throughout Jewish history who have led the life of spiritual wanderer, it is certainly not a normative nor prescribed lifestyle. However, perhaps the Torah by juxtaposing these two narratives together is teaching us to strike a balance between the rigidity of urbanization and the fluidity and potential of the open road. These two modes of life when existing as poles in tension and conflict with each other create for us the potential of spiritual discovery while providing the safety of rootedness. The challenge is not letting Babel and the call to "go forth" operate in isolation from each other but allowing them both to inform and deepen our lives.

Tragedy and our duty

During Yom Kippur a Jewish resident of nearby Somerville, Mitchell Heisman, committed suicide in Harvard Yard on the steps leading up to where the Reform services were taking place. I wrote a response to this tragic event for Boston's Jewish Advocate. The full text of the article follows:


The liturgy of Yom Kippur felt much more pronounced and real this year than perhaps in years past. As we stood and chanted “mi yihiyeh,” who shall live and “mi yamut,” who shall die, our minds could not help but turn to the tragedy that happened in our own back yard. Mitchell Heisman, a 35-year old Jewish Somerville resident, took his own life on the steps leading up to Harvard’s Memorial Church, the site of Harvard Hillel’s Reform Minyan Yom Kippur services. On a beautiful Saturday morning, as we proceeded through the rituals of Judaism’s most holy day, we were shaken from the beauty of the world around us, and a glimpse of human tragedy and suffering was revealed.

It is unclear from news reports how affiliated Mitchell was with the Jewish community. A quick glance through his 1900 page suicide note does reveal that he did view himself as a Jew and that this element of his identity played a seminal role in his formation. The question though of whether Mitchell was affiliated or not is a red herring.

The Torah in Deuteronomy 21 commands a peculiar ritual upon the discovery of an unidentified corpse near one’s city. The leaders of that city are meant to both declare their innocence in the person’s death and to ask forgiveness from G-d for the murder that occurred. How are both possible? If the community is innocent, why ask for forgiveness; and if the community is not innocent, why declare its innocence? The Torah teaches us that as a community we are collectively responsible for the welfare of those amongst us. We may be factually innocent from the death of that particular person, but that does not exonerate us from the collective responsibility; and we, as a Jewish community, must seize this moment and take stock of our preparedness.

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski in his 1997 book “Getting Up When You’re Down” asks a fundamental question in his introduction: “What need is there for a book on depression in the Jewish family? Are there books on arthritis amongst Jews, or pneumonia among Jews?” The unfortunate reality is that mental illness, as Dr. Twerski explains, is “shrouded in a cloud of suspicion, secrecy and even shanda (shame).” This cloud obscures our ability to effectively reach out to those most in need. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that the cloud is all too often only lifted once the suicide has happened.

The magazine of the Orthodox Union, Jewish Action, carried a groundbreaking article by Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot in 2001, “Dimensions – A Young Man’s Story of Torment: Surviving Depression.” Rabbi Helfgot is a world renowned educator, author of several books and a public intellectual in the Modern Orthodox Jewish community. He went through a period of major depression in the ’90s and shared his story to help further open the Jewish community. He poignantly writes the following:

“Every few years, one reads in the newspaper of the frum boy who jumps off the George Washington Bridge or of the successful frum lawyer who shoots himself in the head, or the young adolescent yeshivah girl who runs away from home, never to be heard from again. And I sit and wonder, could these people have been helped before they reached the point of no return? Would they have felt less shame turning to someone if the community had created a culture where mental illness was not ‘someone’s fault’ or reflective of a personal flaw, but a disease to be treated and discussed in the same way and with the same empathy that one speaks of kidney disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure?”

We need to work tirelessly toward cultivating a greater atmosphere of loving concern and care amongst our community members. There is a fine line between gentle concern and “being nosy,” but simply being on the lookout for those who exist on the fringes of our community is a big step forward. Dr. Rosalynn Carter in her work “Helping Someone with Mental Illness” highlights several of the warning signs for mental illness, such as marked personality change; confused thinking; apathy; withdrawal from community; thinking or talking about suicide; or anger and hostility that is out of proportion to a situation. People exhibiting any or all of these symptoms need to be reached out to and proactively included in the community. Most importantly, they should not be kept a secret. Let a rabbi know what you have observed and hopefully a rabbi will be able to assist the person in finding a competent mental health practitioner.

The disorientation and shock we experienced on the tragic suicide of Mitchell Heisman should be the catalyst for a transformation in our communal perception of mental illness. The clouds that obscure our view of those most in need should be lifted, and those who exist on the fringes of our communities should be embraced with an open heart and open arms.