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The Other Butterfly Effect
Earlier this month, Daniel Cohen joined the ranks of Israeli victims of unprovoked Arab knife attacks. The only difference in his story is that it was the best thing the could have happened to him.
As doctors worked to stop the bleeding and stabilize his condition, they discovered that the 31-year-old father of five was suffering from an undiagnosed case of intestinal cancer. Now receiving treatment, his prospects are good. Had he not been stabbed, who knows how long it might have been before the cancer was discovered.
How many things that look really bad eventually turn out to be really good? How many little things that go unnoticed may end up changing our lives in ways we can’t imagine?
It’s a topic worth revisiting, so I offer these thoughts from 2010:
On August 29, 1776, General George Washington’s first field command was about to end in disaster. Having divided his forces, Washington now found half his Continental army trapped between a superior redcoat contingent advancing on his position on one side and a fleet of British warships sailing up the East River to bombard his men from the other.
Instead, the rising winds of a nor’easter turned back the British ships, allowing the American force of over 9000 to escape across the river by night without losing a single man. As dawn broke, an impenetrable fog concealed the final stages of the withdrawal so that, when the air cleared around 7 AM, the British discovered an empty landscape where there had been an army only hours before.
On account of a timely wind and a providential fog, the American army survived to fight another day and the failure of the American Revolution was averted.
Two centuries earlier, it was the British who found salvation from a change in the wind. In 1588, King Philip II of Spain dispatched his fearsome Armada to depose the Protestant Queen Elizabeth and make Europe safe for Catholicism. On the night of August 7, however, a powerful north wind sped a plucky fleet of English fireships from its southern harbor up into the English Channel. By engaging the enemy flotilla, the British ships delayed the Spanish from their rendezvous with an invasion force of 27,000 soldiers that would almost certainly have captured London and executed Elizabeth. The wind then drove the Spanish on into the North Sea where they posed no further threat to England.
If not for the strong north breeze, Spain, not Britain, would have prevailed as the dominant power in Europe, the counter-Reformation might well have purged Protestantism from Europe, and Spanish would today be the preeminent language of world commerce and politics.
ALL THINGS GREAT AND SMALL
Even before the popular movie of the same name, virtually everyone had heard of the “butterfly effect,” the theoretical phenomenon whereby a tiny breeze begins with the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Africa and gathers strength until it becomes a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean. A seemingly insignificant event on one side of the world may produce events of titanic proportions on the other.
And although it took winds stronger than the humble breeze of a butterfly’s wings to carry British ships to within reach of the Spanish Armada in the 16th century and hold them back from trapping Washington’s army 200 years later, in comparison with the rise and fall of nations we would generally consider weather conditions on any given day to be equally inconsequential.
In the grand scheme of creation, however, nothing is without consequence. The kabbalists tell us that nothing occurs on earth unless it is first decreed On High, and that nothing is decreed above unless it is first determined below. This is not a contradiction. Every event in this world is a reflection of the Divine Will, which changes each and every moment according to the behavior of man, the same way a mother and father may alter their parenting style to match every action of their child. The blessings and the retributions that come to the world, therefore, are a heavenly response to the conduct of human beings.
In the final moments before the destruction of the Second Temple, not satisfied to have razed Jerusalem to the ground and set fire to the House of G-d, the Roman general Titus showed his contempt for the sanctity of the Jewish nation by taking the Torah scroll, unrolling it upon the floor of the Holy of Holies, and laying with a prostitute upon it. In the place where the High Priest once performed the most intensely spiritual act of divine service, Titus committed the most despicable act of defilement.
Why did the Almighty allow Titus to so desecrate His innermost sanctuary? Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, founder of the great Talmudic academy of 18th century Europe, explains that Titus gained divine sanction for his act because the Jews had, in a manner of speaking, already done the same thing themselves.
Just as the Temple once served as the focal point of Jewish society, similarly should every Jew see himself as a microcosm of the Temple. And just as the focal point of the Temple was the Holy of Holies, wherein resided the Ark of the Covenant, similarly is the mind the holiest sanctuary of the human being, for therein resides the soul. By allowing the philosophies of Greece and Rome to infiltrate their thinking and shape their values, the Jews had yielded to the carnal seduction of their souls and defiled the inner sanctuary of their own minds. For that reason alone was Titus allowed to perpetrate his abomination.
Despite the Temple serving as a constant reminder of their spiritual purpose, the Jews in ever increasing numbers had compromised their cultural integrity by adopting Greek and Roman styles of dress, by eagerly attending the spectacles of the Greek gymnasia and the Roman coliseums, by passionately studying sophistry from the philosophers of Greece and courting the aristocracy of Rome – all the while convinced that their dabbling in foreign culture was as innocent as the flitting of a butterfly on the breeze. But the moral corruption that lay at the core of these societies released a hurricane of spiritual confusion, eroding the foundations of Jewish values until the Jews forfeited the merit to serve their Creator in the great Temple of Jerusalem.
FROM ANY SOURCE, AT ANY MOMENT
Though the guidance of Divine Providence, however, the flutter of the butterfly’s wings need not always result in devastation. In November 1991, a long and painful drought in Israel ended dramatically with rain and snow falling at record levels to fill the dangerously low Sea of Galilee beyond capacity and replenish underground aquifers. Climatologists attributed the precipitous weather to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, on the Philippine island of Luzon, five months earlier. Coming after nearly 500 years of inactivity, Pinatubo’s eruption was the second largest of the 20th century.
After months of special prayers and fasting, the religious community had a different explanation. When the Almighty wants it to rain in Israel, He causes a volcano to erupt on the Pacific rim of Asia. Indeed, a more recent volcano eruption revealed the hand of Providence less globally but no less dramatically.
Earlier this year, an 18 year old seminary student in Israel was diagnosed with fulminate hepatic failure. Following the advice of his doctors and rabbi, the young man traveled to Brussels, the world center for liver transplants, which offered his only hope of recovery. But with five patients on the list ahead of him and his health deteriorating rapidly, the young man’s prospects were bleak. And so he waited and prayed for a miracle.
In mid-April, a liver became available. The medical center contacted the patient whose name topped the list, but he was unable to get to Brussels within the lifespan of the liver. Patients numbers two, three, four, and five could not arrive in time, either. The young student waiting for a miracle in Brussels received word that a liver was available. The transplant surgery was successful.
Why were none of the other candidates able to get to Brussels to benefit from the liver? Because only days earlier, the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano had shut down all air traffic in Europe. What should have been a journey of only a few hours now became an unbridgeable gap for all except the prayerful seminary student who waited seemingly without hope.
After seeing his diseased liver, doctors agreed that if not for the transplant the young man would have died within a week.
Nothing occurs on earth unless it is first decreed On High, and nothing is decreed above unless it is first determined below. As we mourn the loss of the Temple in Jerusalem today, Tisha B’Av, let us consider that the flapping of butterfly wings begins in our hearts, in our conduct toward our Creator and toward our fellow men. The breeze produced by every act of kindness and devotion works its way up to the highest reaches of the heavens, then wafts back down to earth as the wind of change that visits upon us the consequences of our misdeeds or, if we are worthy, the blessings of our virtue.
Did That Really Happen?
Well, it was probably inevitable. Dr. Ben Carson, quintessential political outsider and man of integrity, has been caught in a … well, let’s call it a modest inaccuracy for the time being. The inspirational narrative of his turning down a full scholarship to West Point proved somewhat less dramatic: at best, he was encouraged to attend West Point and chose otherwise.
This may have been an honest misstatement or trick of memory decades after the fact. It certainly can’t be compared to claims of having been shot down in a helicopter or having had to duck under sniper fire, and if it doesn’t emerge as part of a pattern of prevarication then the doctor can be forgiven.
It does demonstrate, however, how careful we should be with our words, especially in this day and age when everything is recorded and almost everything can be verified or disproven.
It’s a topic I address in this essay, published by Jewish World Review back in 2010.
Having circled the globe one and a half times before finding my way to Torah observance, having lived for nine years in Israel and one year in Hungary, having taught adolescents for nigh on two decades, it’s only natural that I have more than a few stories to tell. Consequently, it never fails to discomfit me when friends or neighbors respond to my essays by asking:
“Did that really happen?”
Are my anecdotes so truly unbelievable? After all, I never claimed to have flown to the moon on gossamer wings, to have crossed the Alps with Hannibal and his elephants, or to have led the attack against Custer’s army at Little Big Horn. No, I’ve merely looked to pluck useful insights from slightly quirky encounters and bring to light the Torah wisdom that resides within myriad aspects of the human condition.
And so I’ve penned essays about my white fedora, which fellow travelers reported noticing as our paths crisscrossed throughout Europe; about the Israeli gentlemen who rebuked me in an elevator for wearing an earring while sporting tzitzis, the fringed tassels worn over the belt line according to Torah law; and about the ragged man who stopped in his tracks on the streets of Budapest, apparently overwhelmed and overjoyed to discover a religious Jew having survived the travails of the Holocaust and assimilation; these, together with assorted episodes from my high school class room.
“I loved your article,” an acquaintance will say. And then, with alarming frequency: “Did that really happen?”
I even get it from my mother.
To be honest, I can’t say that I’m surprised. After all, narrative accuracy has seen its market value tumble over the years. As candidate for president, John Kerry described how Christmas in Cambodia was “seared in his memory.” A stirring narrative, aside from the fact that he wasn’t actually there. In the Democratic primary four years later, Hillary Clinton reported that her parents had named her in honor of Sir Edmund Hillary — an impressive feat of prescience, since Sir Edmund had not conquered Mount Everest until five years after Ms. Clinton was born and named. Even Ronald Reagan, although never caught embellishing his own history, nevertheless brought tears to the eyes of his audiences with poignant war stories that turned out to be scenes from old movies.
Popular motion pictures that are “based on” or “inspired by” true stories often undergo such embellishment that they emerge bearing little resemblance to the events they claim to portray. Tonight Show host Jay Leno, in his autobiography, reportedly included anecdotes that actually happened to other people, but explained that he had permission to use one story, and that he had paid for the right to use the other.
As in so many cases, the Torah prohibition against speaking untruths extends far beyond the simple meaning of the words. MiDavar sheker tirchak translates, simultaneously, as “Distance yourself from a false word” and as “Distance yourself from a false thing.” From the perspective of Jewish philosophy, words are not mere symbols or labels; they possess a substance and a reality all their own. Consider how a cruel word can inflict more pain than a sharp blow between the eyes, or how a well-placed compliment can produce more pleasure than the sweetest dessert.
When does a word or a thing become false? In principle, the slightest embellishment or exaggeration constitutes a violation of Torah values, if not Torah law. If one is uncertain about the details of a story, it is easy enough to add “I think” or “something like” to one’s narrative. That small concession to veracity helps us preserve our respect for the lines between truth and falsehood — lines that grow increasingly blurred amidst the moral confusion of our generation.
The Hebrew word emes, commonly translated as truth, is formed by the three letters that come, in sequence, at the very beginning, the precise middle, and the very end of the Hebrew alphabet. Before we can be certain that anything is true, we must have a sufficiently broad perspective; we must have all the information, accurately and in context; and we must have a clear understanding of the propriety of revealing that information and the consequences of doing so. Only then is it emes.
Consequently, sometimes even absolute truth may be considered false. In the case of malicious gossip, the accuracy of the information may result in harm even worse than slander by damaging relationships that would have been secure against rumor or innuendo. Similarly, details taken out of context, although factual, often imply conclusions that have no bearing on reality. They may be true, but they are not emes.
The distinction between words that are true and words that are emes easily leads us onto thin moral ice. What about “white lies” intended to spare the feelings of others, or “harmless” untruths meant to warm another person’s heart?
At first glance, Torah tradition seems to endorse such ideas. The sages teach that Aaron, the High Priest, upon discovering that two friends had come to quarrel, ran back and forth reporting to each how sorry the other was and how desperately he longed for reconciliation, until the two friends resolved their dispute and became friends once again. The same sages tell us to always call a bride beautiful, no matter what she actually looks like.
On deeper reflection, however, is it not true that true friends, divided by conflict, miss the relationship they once had and deeply long to restore their friendship? And is it not similarly true that every bride glows with an inner beauty projected at the moment of her greatest joy, and that she is truly beautiful in the eyes of her bridegroom? If so, is it not also true that the sages were offering us a profound lesson in how to interpret human nature?
Indeed, even if there may be cases that require us to speak some literal untruth to protect another person’s physical, mental, or spiritual welfare, such cases are few and far between. If we are honest with ourselves, we will concede that most of us will have rare occasion to bend or break the truth.
Perhaps, if we all exert more effort to ensure that all our words are words of emes, we will not find ourselves suspicious of those stories of little miracles and inspirational irony that can make our eyes sparkle and our hearts swell. And if a more profound commitment to honesty helps us become less cynical and more easily inspired, then what do we really have to lose?
South Carolina and the Great Flood
As residents of South Carolina begin to emerge from the floodwaters that inundated their state, Jews around the world are reading the story of Noah and the ark this week in their synagogues. Water is both the source of all life and the greatest destructive force on earth. I ponder the paradox in these reflections from after the Pacific Rim tsunami of 2005.
Volcanoes. Hurricanes. Earthquakes. Fires. Tornadoes. Blizzards. Drought.
In a time when reports of terrorism have become all too common, it is sobering to consider the myriad ways nature possesses to inflict death and violence on a scale surpassing the most destructive instruments devised by man. Of all these, however, destruction by water, whether from the sea or from the sky, holds a unique terror in the scope and measure of its devastation.
Aside from the 150,000 lives already reported lost across nearly a dozen countries along the Indian Ocean, dehydration, disease and hunger threaten as many as 5 million more in the wake of the recent tsunami. And rare though tidal waves may be, the more familiar trial-by-water of floods has, with much greater frequency, left similar numbers homeless and in danger of starvation.
It seems ironic that water, the source and foundation of all life upon our planet, can become nature’s most malevolent instrument against the beings whose lives depend upon it.
Devastation by water occupies a prominent place in human history. Virtually every ancient culture records the tradition of a great flood that inundated the world, lending credence to the biblical account of Noah and the ark. Jewish tradition describes this not as a random event, but as a divine response to the corruption of mankind.
The Talmud, however, reports a much more enigmatic account of divine intervention through water. It was in a time of terrible drought that the Jewish people approached the sage Choni HaMagil and beseeched him to pray for rain on their behalf. When Choni’s supplications to the Almighty went unanswered, he drew a circle in the dust and stepped inside of it, vowing not to leave the circle until G-d bestowed rain upon His people.
Immediately, a fine mist settled upon the earth, too little to alleviate the drought but sufficient to free Choni from his vow.
Choni called out to heaven: “I asked not for this, but for a rain to fill all the wells and cisterns.” Immediately, raindrops larger than melons began to fall, wreaking destruction upon homes and fields.
Again Choni called out to heaven: “Neither did I ask for this, but for a rain of blessing.” Immediately a normal rain began to fall, filling the wells and cisterns of the people as Choni had requested. But the rain did not stop, and soon the entire population of the land feared that they would drown in the rising waters.
One last time Choni called out heavenward: “Master of the World, Your people, Israel, whom You brought out from Egypt, can tolerate neither too much blessing nor too much misfortune.” Immediately the waters abated, and the people returned to their fields. From this time onward, people referred to Choni by the name HaMagil — the Circle-maker.
What was the point of G-d’s demonstration to the people of Israel? What did Choni mean that the people could not tolerate too much blessing? And why did Choni find it necessary to remind the Almighty, at this particular moment, that He had brought the Jewish people out from Egypt?
The Exodus from Egypt may be described, in commercial terms, as the largest loan ever extended in the history of man. During the generations of slavery in Egypt, the Jewish people had forgotten their Creator and lapsed into the same idolatries as their Egyptian masters. And although, to their credit, the Jews had guarded themselves against assimilation, this alone was insufficient to earn them the privilege of miraculous redemption. Nevertheless, G-d gave them an incalculable line of credit: Freedom from slavery, freedom from oppression, freedom to chart their own course into the future.
Moreover, He promised them immeasurable blessing and unbounded prosperity, on condition that they would repay their loan — repay it by living according to G-d’s law, repay it by rising above material pursuits and petty self-interest, repay it by using all the blessing that G-d would bestow upon them to aspire to moral, ethical, and spiritual perfection.
In this light, blessing may be understood as a double-edged sword. Wielded in one direction, it cuts down all enemies and obstacles that stand before us. Wielded in another, it obligates us to a standard of righteousness and moral behavior that we may find nearly impossible to meet.
This was the meaning behind the Almighty’s response to Choni the Circle-maker’s plea:
Two roads lie before My people, and it is their choice which to follow. One leads back to Egypt, back to the oppression of materialism and the slavery of self-indulgence, back to spiritual emptiness and the absence of all blessing. The other road leads forward, to spiritual fulfillment and spiritual greatness, if My people will only find within themselves the potential to seek greatness and discard all lesser goals. It is for this that I redeemed them, that they might cast off the chains of physicality and reach for the heavens.
And this too was the meaning behind Choni’s appeal to the Almighty:
Master of the World, You brought your people out from slavery and oppression on condition that they would use their freedom and the blessings to strive for spiritual heights. Your people, however, have demonstrated from their beginnings that, whatever their potential may be, they still suffer from human failings and human shortcomings. They cannot tolerate too little material blessing, lest the struggle to survive overwhelms them and they abandon all higher aspirations. And they cannot tolerate too much blessing, lest they cower before the goal set for them and lose all hope of its attainment.
By all accounts, the world that we live in today enjoys a level of material affluence unattained and unimagined by previous generations. Such basic necessities as rapid transit, instantaneous communication, indoor plumbing, electrical lighting and refrigeration, which we take for granted, provide us with an ease of living simply unavailable to even the wealthiest, most powerful monarchs until the last century. The very existence of an “entertainment industry,” much less the staggering sums of money devoted to it, testifies to our abundance of resources — which is to say, our abundance of material blessing.
Nowhere does Jewish tradition teach the condemnation of wealth or of recreation.
Nowhere does Jewish law mandate the forcible redistribution of wealth from those blessed with good fortune to those less fortunate. But Jewish tradition does warn us of the responsibilities of prosperity. It warns us in the narrative of the flood, in the story of Choni HaMagil, and also in the Hebrew word for charity: tzedakah, derived from the word tzedek, or justice.
It is only just that those who are blessed share a portion of their blessing with their less fortunate neighbors. It is only just that, before overindulging in one’s own good fortune, he ponders why he deserves having received such blessing while his neighbor has not. And it is only just that he ask himself how, even in the absences of tax incentives or legal mandate, he might reach out with his blessing to ease his neighbor’s plight.
If the waters of the earth, the life-giving waters that are the source of our greatest blessing — life itself — have risen up to inflict enormous tragedy, swallowing human life and draining billions of dollars of aid to spare human suffering, we will all be remiss if we do not pause to consider whether we have used our blessings wisely, and what we must do to ensure that we will continue to deserve them.
The War to End all Wars
Originally published by Jewish World Review in September, 2001, two weeks after the attacks on the Twin Towers.
Once upon a time there were three little pigs. One built a house of straw, until the big, bad wolf blew it down and gobbled him up. One built a house of sticks, until the big, bad wolf blew it down and gobbled him up. But one built a house of bricks and was safe from all the huffing and puffing of the big, bad wolf.
Society teaches values to successive generations through its children’s stories. The story of the Three Little Pigs is one of our most enduring fables, teaching the importance of good planning and disciplined effort. But it also carries with it a more subtle message, that safety rests in our own hands and our own labors, that security can be bought for the price of a pile of bricks and a bucket of mortar. This ideal, if it was ever true, went up in flames together with New York City ‘s skyline and Washington’s military nerve center on September 11.
More appropriate now than the Three Little Pigs is Robert Burns’s adage about “the best laid schemes of mice and men.” Indeed, the World Trade Center towers were each designed to absorb the impact of a 727; what the architects failed to factor in was how the fuel carried aboard a transcontinental airliner would create an inferno capable of compromising the structural strength of steel support beams. Of course, we don’t blame the architects; none of us imagined the acts of incomprehensible evil that brought down those towers.
Which is precisely the point. We cannot imagine the design and the reach of evil. We can make our best effort, erect walls of brick around ourselves and roofs of steel over our heads, but we will never be completely safe. The world is too unpredictable an arena, the mind of the wicked too dark a cavern.
As if to drive home the instability of temporal existence, observant Jews around the world will disrupt their normal lives this week by moving out of their homes into little stick houses to live as our ancestors lived in the desert after their exodus from Egypt. But more than an attempt to recreate the experience of a fledgling nation traveling toward its homeland, the holiday of Sukkos offers us an opportunity to attune our minds to a most fundamental principle of Judaism — that however great our strength and the might of our own hands, however elaborate and well conceived our plans, life strews unexpected obstacles in our path that can scuttle our most certain victories and demolish our most solid edifices.
A sukkah may be built of virtually any material: wood, brick, steel, canvas, or even string may be used to construct its walls. But no matter how stable or how precarious its walls, the roof of a sukkah must be composed of s’chach, thin strips of wood or leaves, through which the light of the stars can shine at night. And when one sits in the sukkah and looks up at the s’chach — the barest representation of a roof that won’t protect him from even the lightest rainfall — he is inspired by the recollection of his ancestors who trusted in the protection of the Almighty, the One who took them out from under the rod of their oppressors and guided them through the inimical desert before bringing them safely home.
In his visionary writings, the prophet Ezekiel describes a great battle on the eve of the messianic era, when the all forces of evil in the world combine themselves into a great army called by the name Gog and Magog. The brilliant eighteenth century thinker Rabbi Samshon Raphael Hirsch interprets the prophet’s vision not as a military battle but as an ideological war between the philosophy of gog — “roof”– and the philosophy of sukkah, where those convinced that their fate lies in the power of their own hands and their own resources will attack the values of those who recognize the limits of human endeavor to influence the world.
In the immediate wake of the World Trade Center destruction, cries rang out for vengeance and military retribution. Since then, more measured voices have asserted that this war will be like no other, without defined enemies or defined borders, without clear strategies or decisive victories. This is an unfamiliar kind of crisis, where we find our capacity to respond in our own defense or to secure our own future profoundly diminished in a new world order.
So now the citizens and leaders of the world’s last remaining superpower must grapple with the uncertainties of a violent present and a murky future. Some will respond by declaring that we must work harder to take control of our own fate. Others will concede that we will never be secure again. And they will be right: no building, no bunker, no shelter made of brick or concrete or iron will guarantee our safety from the perverse imagination of extremists who can rationalize indiscriminate mass murder.
Yet for all that, the Jew sitting in his sukkah will look up at the heavens and be at peace. He will recognize that the best laid schemes often come to naught and that, after doing all that can be done, we are best off leaving our fate in the hands of the One who placed the stars in their courses, the One from whom protection ultimately comes for those who trust not in their own strength, but in the source of all strength.
As the winds of autumn blow with the first hint of winter, we may shiver with cold but never with fear. The illusion of the roof we can see reminds of the invisible reality of the wings of the Divine presence. We neither abandon ourselves to fate nor try to seize hold of it, but turn with confidence to face the future, secure in the knowledge that we have prepared ourselves as best we can to meet whatever life holds in store for us.
Gaining Entry to the Glorious Kingdom
Aaron [the High Priest] shall place lots upon the two goats: one lot “for God” and one lot “for Azazel.” Aaron shall bring close the goat designated by lot for God and make it a sin-offering. And the goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be stood alive before God, to provide atonement though it, to send it to Azazel into the wilderness.
Leviticus 16:8-10
One of the most puzzling and disturbing rituals in Jewish practice is the goat “for Azazel.” During the afternoon of Yom Kippur, two goats are brought before the Kohein Gadol, the High Priest. By lot, one is chosen to be placed upon the altar as a sin-offering, while the other is taken out into the desert and thrown alive over the edge of a sheer cliff.
What purpose could such a practice possibly serve?
In truth, the symbolism of this ritual is astonishingly simple and frighteningly relevant. The two goats, identical in every way, symbolize the two possible futures that stretch out before every single human being. Like these goats – which appear indistinguishable from one another – many of the paths open to us in our youth seem equally attractive and filled with opportunity. Every child demonstrates both qualities of virtue and qualities of selfishness. Whether our higher or lower nature will win out in the end can never be reliably predicted.
Only over the course of a lifetime will it become evident whether the individual has chosen the path of righteousness, dedicating his life “to God,” like the goat offered up on the altar, or abandoned virtue for the path of wickedness, wandering through life into the wasteland of moral confusion and making himself into an offering “to Azazel,” a name commonly associated with the Satan but often left undefined.
Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch explains that the name Azazel can be understood as a composite of two Hebrew words: az azal – “wasted strength.”[1] Rather than devoting his life to the ways of virtue defined by God’s law, a person may use his human potential for pleasure seeking, for ego-gratification, for ultimately self-serving ends. By doing so, he squanders the resources of physical health, intelligence, and imagination in pursuit of temporal rewards that leave him, for all his efforts, with nothing of real value. He will have wasted his life, as surely as the life of the goat flung over the precipice in the wilderness comes to a wasted end. Like that goat, his life will have served no purpose except as a warning to others.
On this Day of Atonement, we remind ourselves of the urgency of daily reflection upon our past and our future, of the need to contemplate the awesome indictments of the Day of Judgment that we have only just survived, and of the priceless opportunity we have to influence the verdict of the Celestial Court as it determines our fate for the coming year.
Will we choose to offer ourselves on the altar of divine service by committing ourselves to take greater care in our speech, in our actions, and in our thoughts? Will we show more consideration for our fellow men and conduct ourselves with modesty and humility? Or will we continue on as we have, like the goat wandering blindly into the wilderness of oblivion, persisting in the habits of spiritual and moral insensitivity that may have already led us to the brink of eternal desolation?
It should be an easy choice. But the most important choices that confront us are rarely easy; instead, we grope through the darkness of confusion, blundering through the days and years of our lives.
Except for one day a year, when our eyes are opened wide.
The sages tell us that one who answers amen has greater merit than one who recites the blessing itself: no praise of the Almighty is complete until it is reaffirmed by another.[2] However, we learn elsewhere that in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the congregation did not answer with the tradition amen but with the phrase “baruch sheim kovod malchuso l’olam vo’ed– Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever.”[3]
Rabbi Samuel Eliezer Edels (Maharsha) explains that amen is an expression of emunah, the faithfulness that compels us to remain true to God’s Law and to our spiritual mission even when the darkness of exile envelops us, even when human logic would abandon all hope that there is any rhyme or reason, that there is either Judge or justice.[4] Amen is the affirmation of our faithful belief in the existence and the divine plan of our Creator even when our senses can make little sense of our existence. When we declare amen – it is so! – not as an obligatory act but as a willing response, we testify to others and to ourselves that the hidden face of God hides from us only so that we can raise ourselves to new spiritual heights by seeking out the divine presence.
In the courtyard of the Temple, however, the radiance of the Shechina (the Divine presence) illuminated the eyes of all who stood in the holy courtyard facing the inner sanctum. Those who made the pilgrimage and passed through those gates were rewarded with a vision of such profound spiritual clarity that every shred of doubt evaporated and absolute certainty overtook them. There was no room left for emunah, and no need to cry out amen.
Instead, the ministrants would proclaim blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever, a formula reserved for the malachim — the celestial emissaries that reside in the heavenly spheres — but which we are allowed to intone only in a whisper.
And why are we not permitted to say these words out loud? Since we do not know and cannot know the name – the essence – of God’s glorious kingdom, at least not until we have lived out our lives in this world and made our transition into the next. We have no right to praise that of which we have no knowledge, and so we dare only speak of it softly in anticipation of the day when it becomes our inheritance.
But in the Temple, in the presence of the Shechina enwrapped in the light of holiness, one gained sufficient clarity so that he could cry out with the malachim, not as an expression of faith but as declaration of absolute knowledge.
And there is one other occasion when we are permitted to proclaim this formula aloud: on Yom Kippur.
On Yom Kippur, we shed the trappings of our material existence and enter the realm of the malachim. Indeed, if we have prepared ourselves properly over the Ten Days of Repentance, then we do not merely give up eating and drinking; rather, we lose all interest in physical indulgences, attaining a vision of such spiritual clarity that we might as well be in the Temple itself, or in the celestial spheres alongside God’s divine emissaries.
And when the day is over and we return to the mundane existence of the physical world, we should find ourselves transformed, no longer malachim but much more than flesh and blood. With renewed spiritual energy and awareness, we are equipped to resolve the contradictions of the higher and lower worlds, and the paradox of the Almighty’s hidden and revealed self.
And this we can accomplish a hundred times a day, with every blessing we pronounce and every amen we answer.
Maharsha goes on to explain that the Tetragrammaton — the four letter name of God as it is spelled out in Hebrew – yud-kay-vav-kay – represents the Almighty in His ultimate form, all powerful and eternal, Master of the glorious kingdom whose name is known only to the malachim. On the other hand, the spoken name of God, the name in our prayers and our blessings – Ado-noy – represents the Creator as He reveals Himself to us as Master of our world.
With every blessing that we recite, we have an opportunity to act upon the revelation we experienced on Yom Kippur, uniting the revealed and the concealed names of God, proclaiming the unity of the Master of the Universe. And even more so when we respond amen.
According to Jewish numerology, or gematria, every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical equivalent. The numerical values of God’s written name – yud-kay-vav-kay – is 26. The gematria of God’s name as we pronounce it – Ado-noy – is 65. And when we respond to another’s blessing, affirming our faithful conviction that the same God we perceive imperfectly through our limited human eyes is one with the ineffable God who created the heavens and the earth, we ourselves transcend both the simple obligations of Torah observance and the finite nature of our earthly existence with one simple word: amen – with the gematria of 91, the sum of 26 and 65, representing the absolute unity of the Almighty.
And if we can achieve this awareness, despite all the darkness and confusion of our world, the malachim can do nothing but look on and covet the opportunity all of us have to serve our Creator in the way that is uniquely our own.
[1] Commentary on Chumash, loc. cit.
[2] Berachos 53b; Rashba, Sha’alos and Teshuvos 5:53
[3] Sotah 40b
[4] Ibid.
Yom Kippur: Playoff Season for the Soul
Guest post by Mendel Horowitz
Like a field of dreams Yom Kippur counts on ghosts to inspire. In Kevin Costner’s sentimental role, his character Ray Kinsella carves a baseball diamond from a cornfield after hearing a mysterious whisper “if you build it he will come.” Encouraged by the prophecy and by the spirits of departed ballplayers, Ray in the end discovers his estranged father behind the plate and engages him in a seraphic game of catch. The High Holidays too can be stirred by fantastic voices – inexplicable motivators of contrition, correction, change. On Yom Kippur, standing solemn before my Maker with ghosts of past defeats and not-yet triumphs at hand, I too will aspire to engage Him. I too will hew a future from the past.
This year, the portentous Day of Atonement falls on the eve of September 23, while Sir David Wright hosts the Braves and the Mets delight in their amazing dream. For believers in Flushing, on that weekend baseball might seem delightfully temporal, repentance as distant a notion as spring. For me, our pastime is irresistibly spiritual, her diamond silhouette an invocation, her metaphors as vibrant as her checkered outfield grass. In my synagogue, that holy day will be celebrated as an occasion of longing, an extra-inning playoff of abstinence and prayer. I may not be rooting for the home team that afternoon but I will be encouraged by baseball’s oddities.
Our national pastime is peculiar indeed. When Yogi Berra quipped “it ain’t over till it’s over” during the summer of 1973, the Mets were in last place, finishing July a dismal 44-57. By August 30 the team was 61-71, 6.5 games back with 29 to play. Before the season closed the Mets would claim the NL East, victorious in 21 of their last 29 contests. The Mets infiltrated the postseason with a record of 82-79, to date the worst percentage by a division champion. After raising the NL pennant and battling to a World Series Game Seven, it was finally over when the Mets fell to the Mustache Gang and their swaggering MVP.
Yogi was only half right. In all professional team sports – baseball included – a playoff berth is routinely clinched before the season officially ends. It can be over before it’s over. Baseball is, however, unique in disallowing any single game to be over before its final out. Only on a diamond can a team come back from any deficit with no buzzer, whistle, or horn interrupting its rally. No game is over till it’s over. Just ask Mookie Wilson, who in 1986 delegitimized Billy Buckner on the tenth pitch of his heroic at-bat after the Red Sox were at three times one strike from deliverance. Baseball is a game of second chances.
For diehards, Yom Kippur is a final opportunity in a season of do-overs. When the Israelites forged a golden calf at Sinai Moses was compelled to smash the original tablets, tossing the first pitch in an epic struggle for God’s favor. Throughout a heated summer Moses labored valiantly atop the hill, earning the right to carve new tablets by offering himself for his team. On Yom Kippur, his efforts rewarded, the prophet descended triumphant, with God’s unassuming pardon and trophy slabs in hand. From the assurance of spring through the worry of summer, Moses carried his team to a fall salvation. Not bad for a rookie.
Relived annually, the Jewish season of second chances gets underway with the advent of Elul, the final month before the New Year. From then, each morning after services a shofar sounds and a special psalm is recited, calling to mind the far-reaching potential of the ensuing homestand. For a meritorious few and their less fortunate opposites, Rosh Hashanah, thirty days later, is the conclusive day of judgement, when the righteous and the wicked are inscribed in their respective tomes. Yom Kippur occurs ten days after that, allowing unremarkable journeymen extra innings to settle their score. Before the season’s final strike everyone will have their say at the plate.
A forty day homestand of penitence offers adequate occasions for transcendance. The process of repentance can invigorate, awakening dormant courage from slumber. But introspection is notoriously difficult to maintain, the stretch from Elul to Yom Kippur wearisome, draining. Like an ordinary baseball season (which spans three of four climatic seasons) the Days of Awe rely more on storylines than thrills, more on drama than excitement. Baseball is neither raucous nor bold. When “90% of the game is half mental” its energy is bound to be subtle.
By some estimates 90% of the game is also spent standing around. According to the WSJ baseball’s fleeting moments of action account for but 17 minutes and 58 seconds of a typical three hour game. From on-deck circle to bullpen, from pathological glove adjustments to obsessive shaking off signs, baseball is an exhibition of exaggerated preparedness. Everything important in baseball happens in the heartbeats between anticipation. Apprehension is baseball’s charm; waiting, her mystique.
What made the pennant race endearing in ‘73 and the rally against Boston amazing in ‘86, were the unhurried ways they unfolded. Few things happen suddenly in baseball, it’s magic evolves leisurely in plain sight. No need for rapid eye movement or instant replay; baseball’s feats are taken in with a pencil and a stomach for suspense. In baseball, time is not something to play against but to toy with, the moments between activity more moving than the action itself.
The Day of Atonement is itself drawn out, prone to rushes of emotion and spans of boredom too. Between its haunting first inning and expectant last are 25 self-denying hours, an ascetic journey of supplication, ceremony, and song. Like baseball, Yom Kippur is a slow game, one that rewards patience with equal measures of elation. The enchantment of the day lingers in its tensions, its allure apparent in its yearning. A classic Yom Kippur unfolds without hurry, its promise swelling cautiously, its hesitancy bursting my heart.
As a religious orientation, baseball imbues the virtue of readiness, the modesty of reacting to something thrown at you really fast. At the plate and on Yom Kippur I can never be sure what may be tossed my way. All I can do is to prepare. Before the ghosts arrived, Ray Kinsella sculpted sacred space from profane, building it so “he will come.” Before knowing who he was, Ray was prepared for his arrival.
Absolution is never assured. To encounter Him on September 23 I will rely on ritual and superstition to get myself ready. My personal playoff will be lengthy, and if all goes well, improbable. I envision a nail-biter until late innings when, like Kirk Gibson, I will limp to the plate and achieve the impossible. Preferably with a longball. Preferably on a full count.
Rosh Hashanah Tailor-Made
NOBODY LIKES fundraising dinners. The speeches are dry, the menu is dull, and the seating arrangements seem to have been drawn up by the Marquis de Sade. No one looks forward to these affairs, and we attend them only out of a sense of obligation.
Since one dinner I attended many years ago, however, I have become more wary than ever of this kind of event.
The evening began unremarkably and proceeded unremarkably — up to a point. The food was better than usual, the speeches ran longer than usual, the company was as good as could be hoped for, and I never saw the dinner plate that slipped from the tray of the passing waiter and struck me squarely on the forehead.
“I didn’t hit you, did I?” asked the waiter in response to the alarmed gasps and cries from the people who shared my table, several of whom assured him that he had, indeed, scored a direct hit.
“Are you all right?” he asked, inevitably. A silly question, really. A pound-and-a-half of glazed ceramic packs quite a wallop after accelerating at thirty-two feet-per-second-squared from a height of six feet in the air.
At least I was still conscious, still sitting upright, and I didn’t think I was bleeding.
“Get a doctor,” someone said.
“He doesn’t need a doctor,” said someone else. “Get him a lawyer.”
The manager arrived with an ice pack. “Here, take this.”
“I was hoping for scotch with my ice,” I said.
He laughed, but didn’t bring me any scotch. “I’ll need your name and address, sir,” he said, handing me a pen and paper.
“Don’t sign anything,” yelled someone from the next table.
I scribbled my vital statistics. “I’m really very sorry, sir,” he said.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Just the scotch.” He laughed again and went away. I had figured the manager would offer me vouchers for a complimentary night’s stay. He hadn’t. (I never even got a letter of apology.) I hadn’t gotten my whisky, either.
I began regaining my bearings to a medley of more lawsuit jokes. From across the table, however, my next door neighbor offered the only profound comment of the evening: “What were you thinking about before you got hit?”
I knew exactly what he meant. According to Talmudic philosophy, there are no accidents, no coincidences, no random events. Everything comes about through the guiding hand of Divine Providence, what we call hashgochoh pratis: the spiritual imperative that governs how the external world acts upon each and every one of us. In other words, if I got smacked on the head, I must have had it coming to me.
This is a far cry from the popular notion that whatever I want, I have coming to me. As much as contemporary culture may insist that privileges and entitlements are birthrights, the Talmud recognizes only our responsibilities, both to other individuals and to society. When we live up to our obligations, we may expect certain rewards to come our way. But if we do receive an apparently undeserved blow, great or small, we should assume that the equilibrium of the cosmic scales of justice somehow needed to be set back in balance, and we should reflect upon the message that has just been sent us from on high.
Sometimes we can easily identify a concrete lesson to glean from such mishaps. Other times not. But the principle holds, even when we can’t perceive any clear cause and effect: this was necessary; now we need to brush ourselves off and get on with life.
The traditional Yom Kippur liturgy provides a poignant example in its narrative concerning Rabbi Yishmoel, the High Priest, who died as the skin of his face was peeled away to suit the whim of the Roman governor’s daughter.
The malachim, the divine beings who inhabit the heavenly spheres, protested in outrage: “Is this the reward for living a life committed to holiness?” they demanded.
“Be silent!” commanded the Almighty, “or I will return the world to void and nothingness.”
The incomparable 18th century genius, Rabbi Elyahu of Vilna, explains G-d’s reply with an allegory: a king once received a gift of fine Turkish wool, the most luxurious fabric in the world. It was so beautiful, in fact, that the king could not bear to think that even a tiny piece of it should end up as scrap on the cutting floor. He went to every tailor in his kingdom and asked each to make him a suit without letting even one thread of the wool go to waste. But every tailor claimed that such a feat was beyond his ability.
Finally, the king found a tailor who agreed to do the job. When the king returned to the tailor’s shop on the appointed date, he discovered that the tailor had indeed produced an exceptional suit of clothes. The king was elated.
“But have you fulfilled your promise?” asked the king. “Did you use every thread?”
“You really don’t know,” answered the tailor. “And the only way you will ever will find out is if you tear your beautiful suit apart and lay out all the pieces in the original shape of the fabric.”
Similarly, we often think that life is full of unfair knocks or is missing essential pieces. But to know for sure, we would have to see all of human history undone before our eyes. Only then would we have the right to assert that there were flaws in the slow sculpture of creation.
The days from Rosh HaShonnah to Yom Kippur — the traditional season of judgment — afford us the opportunity to strengthen our trust that the Master Tailor has done His job well, that He has stitched together the fabric of eternity according to a plan He understands far better than we do — even when bricks, or china plates, fall out of the sky upon our heads.
Should I have sued the hotel? the waiter? the school holding the event? the principal, who was speaking when I got hit? No doubt, I could have found any number of lawyers eager to take the case. If a woman could receive 4 million dollars for spilling a cup of coffee in her own lap, this should be worth at least as much.
But life is full of honest accidents resulting in superficial scrapes and bruises. It’s better for us (and better instruction for our children) to look for what we can learn from life’s bumps and knocks, not to look for whom we can blame and how much we can squeeze out of them.
The waiter returned, contrite and apologetic, perhaps more shaken than I was. “In twelve years this has never happened to me,” he said. Evidently, he also had a date with Providence. “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”
“I wouldn’t mind a scotch on the rocks.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
He did. It wasn’t four million dollars, but it was better than a knock on the head.
Rosh Hashanah: Letting our spirits soar
When my youngest daughter was three years old, she discovered the helium balloons in the flower section of our local supermarket, handed out free to every child who asks. I tied the string around her wrist so the precious balloon wouldn’t escape up to the rafters. She bounced it on its string as I pulled it this way and that to avoid bumping other shoppers. She hugged it as we climbed into the car for the ride home.
As I pulled into the driveway, my daughter flew out of the car, her balloon bobbing along behind her, raced in through the front door and out again to our back yard, slipped the string off her wrist and gazed upward as the balloon rose into the sky and slowly drifted away.
“Why did you let go of your balloon?” I asked, slightly miffed that she had so casually cast away the new toy she had been fussing over for the last half hour.
My daughter just shrugged, giggled, and watched the balloon disappear from sight.
After our next trip to the market she did it again. Then again, over and over for months. Every time I asked the same question. “Why did you let go of your balloon?”
Finally I got an answer. My daughter looked me in the eye and replied, “It’s a present for God.”
* * *
She doesn’t do it anymore. And part of me mourns for the pure, innocent faith that prompted a little girl to give up her toy as an offering to the Almighty.
For all our experience and the sophistication, for all our indulgent smiles at the simplicity of our children’s beliefs, is it not likely that our children know something we don’t, something they themselves soon won’t know or even remember they once knew? And perhaps it is precisely their power of belief that sets them apart from the adults they will become.
Children believe in God, believe in their parents, believe in their country and their school and their friends and that good will always win out over evil. Their trust and faith haven’t yet been sullied by the lies of politicians, the corruption of law and justice, the avarice of sports heroes, the superficiality of Hollywood or, most importantly, the cynicism of their parents, who may try for a time to put on an act to spare their children from their own disillusionment.
But what if it worked the other way, that we could learn an old lesson from our children instead of imposing yet another new lesson upon them? What if we could turn the clock back and recapture even a whiff of the innocence of youth? Would we reach out to grasp it, or have we grown too jaded even to try?
This Rosh Hashana, Jews around the world will fill synagogues to inaugurate the first day of the Jewish new year. But Rosh Hashana celebrates much more than the beginning of another calendrical cycle. It celebrates birth and rebirth; it celebrates beginning and renewal, for it commemorates nothing less than the Creation of the world and Mankind.
As we approach the New Year, let us ask ourselves how we can turn back the clock, exchanging bad habits for new challenges, routine for renewal, and cynicism for enthusiasm. Instead of smiling with adult condescension at the innocence of children, let us consider instead that the difference between childhood and maturity is not whether we give presents to our Creator, but what kind of presents we choose to give. A child serves God by sending a balloon up into the sky. An adult serves God by releasing his spirit to soar to the heights of Godliness.
Have we given charity in proportion with our means? Have we visited the sick and comforted the distressed? Have we consistently spoken with kindness to our neighbors, with respect to our superiors, and with patience to our children? Have we honored the Sabbath and studied the ancient wisdom of our people?
It’s not enough to make resolutions; we need to inspire ourselves to see them through. We need to awaken in ourselves an awe of the Almighty by reflecting upon the vastness of creation, the unfathomability of the stars in their courses, the mysteries of life, and the limitless potential of the soul — to behold for a lingering moment the immeasurable beauty and majesty of our universe.
And if we can follow through, if we can make the moment last without slipping back into our well-traveled rut of discounting every noble and beautiful thought and deed, then perhaps we can retain our faith in those things truly worthy of faith throughout the coming year.
Originally published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Aish.com
Why Souls Come Back: A Study of Reincarnation
What is déjà vu? Some believe it’s an echo of recognition resonating through the curtain that separates one incarnation from another. For one brief moment, two separate but interconnected lives make contact through a flicker of metaphysical commonality. Maybe that’s true; maybe it isn’t. But a recent study of reincarnation by Dr. Ian Stevenson supports the belief that our souls do in fact return to this world after we die.
One of the most persistent dilemmas in spiritual philosophy is why bad things happen to good people, followed closely by its sister conundrum, why good things happen to bad people. If we believe in Divine justice, why does our world operate according to a system in which justice seems to be the exception rather than the rule?
Read more at: http://www.learning-mind.com/why-souls-come-back-a-study-of-reincarnation/
The End of Man
Rabbi Levitas of Yavneh said: Be extremely lowly of spirit, for the end of man is worms.
Pirkei Avos (Ethics of Father) 4:4
Hat tip: @DreamingJannah
Yonason Goldson 