Shemot: 5772 — Heavyweight Division

 

“Heavyweight Division”

 Parashat Shemot

Neil F. Blumofe

14 January 2012

 

We have formed a new opportunity in our community – called the Kavod Committee – where sons and daughters acting as caregivers can gather monthly to speak about their own challenges in providing for parents.

 

With its wisdom, Torah opens up ample opportunity for us to explore issues and dilemmas that are closest to our heart.  At present, one of the positive characteristics of our community is our diversity – the many folks connected to Agudas Achim have a wide variety of viewpoints, opinions, and outlooks that keep conversation lively and interesting as we seek ways to understand each other and develop compassion for attitudes that may be markedly different from our own.  Over the years, many of us have seen an ebb and a flow of interest and attachment to synagogue life as our children come of age and as our own paths and situations rise and fall.

 

Yet, even in our assorted mixture, we all hope to share the common denominator of our own aging, as fraught as it may be.  And over the years, while we encounter the changing face of our life, many of us too find ourselves in a situation of lending support and caretaking not only children – but our own parents, as well.  Seeing our parents becoming elderly and in some cases, infirm – either in mind or body – can be incredibly painful.  Not only acting as a portentous light for what may lie ahead of us, and activating our own fears– seeing the ones who raised us in a position of vulnerability and limited circumstances and decline, can bring us profound sorrow and guilt on top of increased responsibilities and meetings with folks and agencies whom we barely knew existed, before.  For the child who becomes the caregiver, the industry of aging is a cavernous and lonely place.

 

It is striking that through Moses, our Torah commands that love God – v’ahavta et haShem Elokecha and that we honor our parents – kabeid et avicha v’et imecha.  Which is a greater mitzvah?  Which is more difficult to perform.  One can always be in a relationship with love – falling in and out of it is the hallmark of an honest and committed relationship; however, honor is a different thing – it is facts on the ground – it is determined by our own actions.  Honor gets us out of our place and demands that we are thoughtful and generous – it is the active extension of love.  Love not acted upon, while cozy, remains theoretical.  Honor commits us to a practice of relationship – and not a relationship where we reap absolute benefit.  Practicing honor puts another first, before our self and thus, is more difficult to enact than love.  I think that the Torah recognizes this – as we are presented with the 10 Commandments twice – in Exodus and in Deuteronomy – the first time mentions that as one honors a father and a mother, in turn, the child will have long life – and the second time, the commandments promise that with honor not only comes a long life – and also a peaceful life and even a good life – although, some may tell you, aiding a parent who has dementia, it is hard to see where the good life actually begins.

 

Can we honor our parents without loving them?  Our Torah instructs us that we must.  In our lives, we have a period of wanting to grow away from our parents – to leave them and establish independence – as Moses does with Pharaoh, the man who raised him.  In fact, although not the established narrative, one can read the entire encounter between Moses and Pharaoh as a dynamic in family breaking and bonding.  Moses wants to leave, is compelled to leave, yet can’t.  Pharaoh has his heart hardened and his worldview become smaller, time and time again – not able to unclench his hold on the boy who grew up in his home and finally, he suffers an unbearable pain – the rupture of relationship – what our Torah calls the 10^th plague — the death of the firstborn, one can read as a permanent severing of relationship between father and son.

 

Reading the relationship between Moses and Pharaoh in this way – one can see that Moses makes a definitive choice – he chooses God over Pharaoh.  As he is learning, it becomes an absolute situation – either one or the other – either in or out – either involved or not involved.  Compare this position with Rabbi Akiva, a sage found in our rabbinic literature.  It is said about Rabbi Akiva that as his mother got older, she became senile, and she would often walk out in the street barefoot, and behaved too in other ways that appeared to be quite embarrassing.  Our tradition claims that Rabbi Akiva, who was renowned for his teaching and his authority, would get down on his hands and knees in front of his mother and put his hands down under her feet, in order that she not get cut or bruised as she walked.  Even in this extremely difficult situation, our tradition teaches, that Akiva found within his diminished mother – even at that moment when it was unsure that she was even still there – that he found a connection to God.  Beyond the absolute confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh — Akiva, within the turbulence that he must of felt – the conflicting emotions, the inconvenience, and the dread – he found perhaps, the thinnest of threads of God to love within her.  Can one look to recognize a sliver of love within an otherwise trying and opaque situation?  Can one overcome very real and understandable emotions  — perhaps feeling that elderly parents are more of a nuisance than a blessing.

 

Honoring a father and a mother involves us in a great spiritual practice.  Honoring our parents is not the same thing as feeling obligated to honor them blindly – rather, it’s about a deeper inner gratitude for their having given us the gift of life.  Obligation is toxic – honoring is joyful — obligation is toxic – honoring is joyful, and it is with this practice of recognizing the link in the generations – that even in the pain of hearing the same story told over and over and repeating information for the thousandth time – or buying diapers for those who have raised us, we are in this world because of them – because of an act of love or desire that they practiced, we are able to give voice to our own life – that there but for the grace of God we may also go?

 

May we constantly improve with the guidance of our tradition – may we see that all things are not black or white – as practiced by Moses in Egypt – that Akiva’s behavior was a bit extreme and that there is honor involved when making sure that our parents are safe and receiving proper care.  Finding something – some sliver of God or grace when engaged in care giving that can be all consuming is a lifeline that can help us and all in our circles.  Knowing that we are not alone can be an incredible comfort – acknowledging pain and frustration can be healing and can bring us to an additional level of appreciation of our own humanity.  Knowing our limits can bring us strength to honor our parents well.  May this new opportunity – a space within our community to come together, continue to build our relationships together honestly – and that despite our different opinions on other things, we can be united in our support for each other as we tend to our parents in days of frailty, exposure, and insecurity through similar circumstances that we all may yet share.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

Vayechi — 5772: “Praying in Hebrew”

“Praying in Hebrew”

 

Parashat Vayechi

Neil F. Blumofe

7 January 2012

 

I am habitually asked – why do we pray mostly in Hebrew?  Many times, the one who asks the question is unfamiliar with the pattern and the scope of the liturgy and wants to learn more – or sometimes the person asking is uncomfortable with so much of a language that’s not understood so well or that wasn’t the language of prayer when growing up.  This question comes from a place of a person’s distance as well as interest and oftentimes sparks a good conversation about the meaning and the purpose of prayer.

 

Hebrew is considered to be lashon hakodesh – the holy language – a language that has the power to create and to destroy.  Among our sages there is an idea that chanting or praying in Hebrew brings with it a restorative power – that even though we may not be aware of it, while we are sounding out and pronouncing the various words and while we are listening to many in the congregation do the same, in that moment, our soul is filled with essential vitamins and minerals that replenish us and bring us longer term health.  There is something healing about our Hebrew prayers – and that our siddur, our prayer book, is not merely the latest stage in the editing of generations of human messages to God, rather it is a daily regimen both to prevent malaise and to boost our strength of spirit.  In short, according to this idea, we need to pray in Hebrew to keep rooted to the divine within us and thus to pray in Hebrew supersedes any normal or expected communication.

 

As we pray in a Hebrew that is different from today’s spoken Hebrew and in fact combines many of the stages of development from the origins of the language itself – Biblical, Mishnaic, Rabbinic, Medieval, Mystical, which includes some aspects of Aramaic into the Hebrew mix – we enter into a moment that is incredibly full and not assigned to any particular historical moment.  We live in all times at once, able to transcend space and time and to experience the enormous beauty and benefits from an entire tradition.  As we take our time to immerse in a language that is different for us – even if we are native Hebrew speakers – we enter into a different time – a mythic time where ordinary interaction is exchanged for something beyond us – where today, our lives are added to the vastness of a moment of revelation that continues – through us and through our students, as we can stand with Abraham, and Moses, and Rachel, and Hannah, and for some of us, our grandparents, as we unburden our heart directly before an ageless God.

 

Yet many of us crave understanding – and this explanation of cleaving to a tradition while nice, does not address real needs that many of us have to want to know what we are saying.  Before exploring this thought for a minute, let me say too, that a parallel position that some have expressed to me over the years is that they specifically like not understanding exactly what they are saying – that in the routine of their lives, it is nice not to have to be pinned down, not have to get involved to a degree, and to let go for a bit and not worry about communicating effectively, or God’s gender and specific images embedded in our prayers that if they knew more about, would vex them and in understanding would cause them to be more distant.

 

So, the good thing about our prayers is that they happen frequently and that we have a lifetime to enter into them and gain meaning from them.  While we may start with the line of Shema Yisrael, which proclaims God’s Oneness, every time that we engage in prayer in Hebrew, we can learn something more – truly, adding a word at a time.  Granted, asking an adult to make learning Hebrew a priority is not easy – however, knowing that there is no expected outcome and that the more frequently one prays – establishing a practice of prayer — the easier it becomes, is true.  There are many different prayer books available, both in book form and electronically, that provide useful study aids, such as interlinear translation and helpful commentary – in addition, classes in prayer book or liturgical Hebrew are readily found in our community and online that can bring a dedicated student much reward, even after a few weeks. 

 

And truly, there is no expectation that one pray everything, all the time.  While the shaliach tsibur, the pray leader establishes a pace, it is really up to us to find both our places of comfort and our places that gently push us a bit.  Dwelling on a Hebrew word – or struggling with a concept in prayer, or finding a silence – whether in our individual Amidah or in a blessing before or after the Shema is not only welcomed, it is desired.  I ask that we have patience with our progress and that we appreciate each word as we build our connections – that there is no expectation for finishing or for mastery as we devote ourselves to a regular connection with our prayers.

 

However, the real question might be – do we believe in these prayers in the first place?  While many of us welcome a prayer for healing for those in our lives who may be ill – entering into a conversation with our sages and those who have creatively come before us does not resonate.  Acknowledging this may help to ease our self-induced isolation.  Entering into the synagogue, it certainly seems that we should believe what is in front of us and for those who don’t, or who don’t have positive feelings of inclusion or who are not prepared to open up to a non-rational experience, Hebrew is just another hindrance.  While I don’t have a ready-made solution for this – I know that this kind of estrangement is more common than acknowledged.  Let me say, that music – and how we chant the prayers, helps.

 

And as you may know, I also am a strong advocate for our original prayer.  I recommend using our matbe’ah tefillah, our order and sequence of Hebrew prayers as a baseline.  Our tradition is nothing without commentary – so I invite each of us to enter into a convention of mastering the Hebrew, word by word, and then also responding in ways that continue the conversation that have been established. How rich our synagogue experiences can be as we pray a few words in Hebrew and then respond immediately to them – turning them over and over – allowing them to penetrate us at that moment – and while we may only pray just a few lines, our time would be meaningful as we bring our fullest selves into the conversation, rather than let they prayer leader just carry us along.  Even when we are not engaged in prayer at the synagogue – to try our hand at prayer – to open a siddur and with inspiration, draft our own poems about light, darkness, love, exile, and God.

 

Prayer is called avodat halev – service of the heart – and for us to open up a bit, to allow our self to flow even a little past our self-defined limits can be transformative.  Moving past our doubts and our defenses and learning to express ourselves in a foreign land – in another language — is powerful.  Incorporating elements of Hebrew – learning associations from our Torah and our prayer book and our oral texts like the Talmud is incredibly empowering and will serve us well as we encounter our identity and write the Torah of our lives. 

 

Our tradition asks, what is shefa?  And the answer is that is abundance in its highest form – a flow between the Creator to God’s creation.  And prayer is the return of this sheaf, this abundance – it is what we offer back to the Creator of all – it is who we are, in all of our majesty and all of our impurities that we offer back to God, and while the container of all of this is Hebrew – responding to God, as God spoke words of prophecy, prayer and instruction to us, Hebrew is many things.  Hebrew is just a beginning.  Hebrew is the channel previously dug by our ancestors – Hebrew is just the vessel in which who we are, is carried, and within that vessel are words of English, and too, words that cannot be expressed, our tears and our voiceless hurts and expressions.

 

So let us dedicate our lives to the Hebrew letters and as we do, let us continue to open them up to propel our understanding of this extraordinary fertile language, to improve our connections with the many stories and people of our tradition and too, to plumb the levels and the boundaries of our beliefs – finding conviction in what we say and consolation in our distance, as well.  Let Hebrew inspire us to create our own prayers, joined to the hopes and dreams of our resonant tradition as they too, implore, question, magnify and praise.

 Shabbat Shalom.

 

Vayigash — 5772 — “Eminent Yosef”

“Eminent Yosef”

 

Parashat Vayigash

Neil F. Blumofe

31 December 2011

 

The Earth is degenerate in these latter days.  Bribery and corruption are rampant.  Our leaders are inept.  Children no longer obey their parents.  Each man cares only to write his own life story.  The signs of our decay are obvious for all to see and indeed it is clear that the end of civilization is at hand. 

 

This comes not from the latest blog or news article – it is not rhetoric out of any political campaign or am radio show – rather it is from an Assyrian tablet, dated back to the year 2800 BCE.  Ein hadash tachat hashemesh – there is nothing new under the sun.

 

As we learn in this week’s Torah portion, finally it is the brother Yehudah who stands up to the vizier Zaphnat Paneah and breaks the dismal cycle of bullying and harassment that this powerful man was waging specifically against the youngest son Benyamin and too against all of Ya’akov’s sons.  We learn that Yehudah approached Zaphnat Paneach, who was really his younger brother Yoseph, deep within, not in any casual way, rather in a way that was transformative both for Yehudah and for Yosef, himself.  At this moment, Yehudah had nothing left to lose – in deciding to finally confront the man who stands directly before him, he roused his fullest self and was determined to not let a cycle of abuse continue.

 

For many of us, our days continue as they did before – we gradually getting older with each passing year, making plans for the future – or at least saying that we are making plans for the future — watching children enter another grade and continue to grow up and away from us.  We, mourning friends, family and acquaintances who pass away – attending funerals and shiva services, shaking our heads in sadness and breathing deeply, fretful too about our own life, perhaps.  And as the year goes, we continue to have to adjust, making room for new ways to stay connected – new information that is constantly available to us, at all times – and we find ourselves having to take a stand to separate from this continuous flow.  The world may not be so different now than it was 4000 years ago – however, it comes at us much faster and without interruption.

 

It is amazing how our human body and mind can and will adjust to any situation.  Like the metaphorical anecdote about a frog that is gradually boiled alive in water, not aware of gradual changes in its environment, the brothers in Egypt find that their circumstances are changed as they ask for food during the severe drought.  They are confronted by their long lost brother Yosef, whom they sold into slavery many years before.  Here he now stands, gripped by his own frustrations and traumas, and perhaps in spite of himself, he continues to needle and provoke these hapless brothers who are entirely in his control.  The tables have turned, and in his authoritative role, Yosef turns into Zafnat Paneach — an aggressor – unwilling to let bygones be bygones and perhaps helpless to have his resentments rest.  What turns good people into recreational antagonists?  What brings decent people into a place  of perverse pleasure – where hurting another is accomplished as part of a day’s work?  How do worldviews become so narrow, so as not to admit even the possibility of another point of view?

 

In this case, we have one brother tormenting the rest of his family – which in many ways is more common than one who harms a stranger – and in this, I think ein hadash tachat hashemesh is true – we regularly wound the ones that we most love.  The courageous one of the moment we learn, is Yehudah – one who is implicated in bringing upset to his family, yet who is not trapped by his past actions.  Yehudah finds a way out of the cycle of despair and cruelty and in his ability to approach the authority figure in front of him, himself, and to bare himself openly and humbly before God, he changes the world.

 

Our Psalms teach, gam hoshech lo yachshich me’meka – even darkness is not dark for You – in any situation, one who is willing to stand up against injustice, to be responsible for his or her environment and surroundings, brings a light that can alter the inevitability of the world never changing.  Indeed, this challenge may be our life’s purpose – we know that our effect is limited in this world – as leaders come and go – it is the rare opportunity that we have to reasonably and thoughtfully speak our truth which can bring small yet profound variables into an otherwise unyielding boiling pot. 

 

So, where can we be Yehudah, standing before our master?  Is there an issue that grips you, that causes your heart to beat faster?  Where can we apply our limited energy and effectiveness to stand up and transform a situation by carefully weighing it out and then entering into it with all of our heart, our soul, and our might?  Is there a situation in our city or in this country – or if you have been following the upsurge of unpleasantness in Israel – of Jews against Jews, specifically in Beit Shemesh, where an 8 year old Orthodox girl has been threatened by other Jews as she walks to school – is there something we can do to demonstrate that Judaism has more than one ugly, fundamentalist face?

 

Our mystics teach that Yosef is not just another brother – rather, the word Yosef means, “something more,” or  “extra,” and the Yosef is found within each of us, usually in hiding.  As we turn to standing up and attaching ourselves to that which is ineffable and godly, we can find our truest selves and ways to dedicate our lives that have meaning far beyond current events.  We are to dedicate ourselves, not to expediency, or doing things that are most convenient, rather to revealing the holiest pieces of ourselves – our inner Yosef that can blaze forth past the trappings of our outer Zafnat Paneach that we usually display in the world.  Yehudah found his Yosef within himself and we too, should not let the present circumstances of the world deter us.  In 2012, let us locate the wholesomeness of our soul – the shalom part of our spirit, and apply ourselves to not changing the world, rather, to changing ourselves to effect the world – standing against any gradual injustice or sudden burst of terror. We can challenge and not be afraid – and in this bravery to stand like Yehudah and reclaim our eminent inner Yosef, there will be something new under the sun, every day.

 

Shabbat Shalom.