Category Archives: Jewish Thought

The Truth About Trayvon

Could there possibly be anything else to say about the George Zimmerman trial that hasn’t already been said?

After all, the supporters of Mr. Zimmerman, who killed teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida last year, have made clear all along their belief that Mr. Martin assaulted Mr. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, and that the latter shot his alleged assailant in self-defense.  Of course, as everyone knows now, the jury found no reason to endorse a different scenario.

And defenders of Mr. Martin have, both before and after the verdict, made their own, different, version of the happening known – that the teenager was an innocent victim of a trigger-happy, racist cop-wannabe who targeted Mr. Martin because of the color of his skin.

Pundits have since tirelessly trumpeted their convictions, either that the verdict was a triumph of justice or a travesty thereof.

But there is indeed something else to say about the case, and it may well be the most important thing to say.  And that is: No one alive but George Zimmerman actually knows what happened that night.  And so “taking sides” on the subject is the height of ridiculousness.

Somehow, that self-evident fact seems to have become overwhelmed by all the reaction to the verdict.  President Obama came closest to reacting reasonably, stating that Mr. Martin’s death was a tragedy but that “we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken” and asking that “every American… respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.”  More recently, he added “context” to his reaction, saying that the dead teen “could have been me 35 years ago,” and that even though “somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else,” the rallies and protests that have followed the verdict were “understandable,”

Those rallies and protests, thankfully, didn’t degenerate into riots, as some had feared. There were, however, gatherings of outraged citizens chanting slogans about justice; and, in some cities, vandalism of cars and bottle-throwing at cops (nice justice there). Al Sharpton, never one to squander an opportunity to capitalize on tragedies in the black community, announced that he will lead a national “Justice for Trayvon” day in 100 cities to press for federal civil rights charges against Mr. Zimmerman (which, unless new evidence somehow emerges, seems like a futile effort).

And for their part, the usual talk-radio pontificators did their usual pontificating, holding up the verdict (a reasonable one, considering the dearth of evidence) as evidence itself, somehow, that Mr. Zimmerman’s account must be true.

All the surety-silliness leads, or should lead, to some serious thinking on the part of people given to such endeavors – especially Jews, who pride themselves on being thoughtful people.

There are certainly certainties in most people’s lives, convictions that are rightly embraced for any of a number of valid reasons.  They include fundamental things, like belief in a Creator, and that the world has a purpose, and that human beings are privileged to find their roles in that purpose.  And derivative truths, like the rightness of treating others kindly, and the wrongness of things like murder or theft.

And then there are things we know to be true because we experienced or witnessed them.  But to proclaim our certitude about an occurrence removed from our personal experience, and about which we have been served conflicting claims, is senseless.  We’re entitled (at least sometimes) to our suspicions, but suspicion is not knowledge.  The truth about Trayvon?  That we don’t know what transpired.

And even in cases where we can make “educated guesses” – where we possess some, but incomplete, knowledge – it is always beneficial to keep in the backs of our minds (or, even better, their fronts) acceptance of the fact that, for all our intelligence and gut feelings, we still might be wrong.

That’s true not only regarding things like Trayvon Martin’s killing but in myriad realms, like politics and public policy, where all too many of us all too often feel compelled to take unyielding positions based on incomplete knowledge, and see any other position as obviously misguided.

Doing so, though, telegraphs a special sort of ignorance – ignorance of our own ignorance.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Missing the Joke — And the Message

The lack of a sense of humor may not totally disqualify one from being a good teacher, but in, as they say, my humble opinion, it comes close.

I had recent occasion to watch the recorded presentation of an Israeli professor who seemed, regrettably, humor-impaired.  That he exhibited no sense of cleverness wasn’t so terrible.  That he failed, though, to even recognize humor – in this case a poignant pun – was.

The lecturer was soberly providing his audience what it had come to hear, namely a scholarly assault on the contemporary “Ultra-Orthodox” world and its leaders.  And, as has become de rigueur, in his effort to portray the charedi world as hopelessly close-minded, he invoked the famous dictum of the Chasam Sofer (Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, 1762-1839) that “chadash assur min haTorah” – “what is new is forbidden by the Torah.” But he presented it as some sort of absurdly pilpulistic application, not seeming to realize – or, certainly, not communicating – that it was, in fact, ingenious wordplay.

The Chasam Sofer, venerated by Orthodox Jews to this day, was a strong opponent of the nascent Reform movement of his day, which had begun to attract adherents in his native Austria-Hungary and beyond. It was his influence and determination that kept the Reform movement out of Pressburg, the city he served as rabbi for more than three decades.  And it was his determination to preserve what we today call Jewish “Orthodoxy”– namely, commitment to the entirety of classical Judaism – that impelled him to humorously hijack the “what is new is forbidden” phrase.

The phrase’s original context is the Biblical prohibition of consuming the “new grain” of each Jewish year until the second day of Passover, when the Omer sacrifice was brought.  Rabbi Schreiber employed the phrase as a pun (oh, what injury we do to a joke by explaining it!), to express his entirely unrelated-to-agriculture feeling that even a seemingly innocuous innovation to Jewish life – “what is new” – must be regarded with skepticism, and scrutinized to ensure that it will not prove an inadvertent step in a bad direction.

Some innovation-minded Jews, including some who are fully committed to halacha, find the Chasam Sofer’s approach discomfiting.  What they don’t seem to appreciate is that he was not, in fact, offering a blanket rejection of all that is “new” for all time, as people like the humor-compromised professor profess.  To begin with, the revered Torah leader of his generation was confronting an immediate and formidable challenge to the mesorah, or Jewish religious tradition, a movement that rejected its very theological foundation.  And so, even minor changes in liturgy or synagogue practices represented – at least to a deeply perceptive mind –a potential Trojan Horse.  Or, perhaps a better metaphor, a slippery slope.

And secondly, he was not saying that every change in Jewish life or practice is dangerous.  The fact that sermons are delivered from Orthodox synagogue pulpits in English, that there are schools and seminaries for Orthodox girls and women, that organized efforts exist to encourage Orthodox Jews to reach out to their non-Orthodox fellow Jews all reflect that fact that what is “new” is sometimes not only permitted but necessary.

What allows the novel to be embraced by Orthodoxy, though, is the considered judgment of the most experienced and learned religious leaders of the Orthodox world. That Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch sermonized in German, that the Chofetz Chaim endorsed the Bais Yaakov movement, that “outreach” was characterized as a Jewish obligation by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, all demonstrate that the Chasam Sofer’s pun was not intended to promote some sort of spiritual Luddism.

What it was intended to do was to sensitize his generation to the existence, and danger, of slippery slopes, a recognition our own times require of us no less.

In truth, at least with regard to secular beliefs, most American Jews readily understand that small departures from a path can eventually lead to larger, more disturbing, deviations.  Any “new” idea, for instance, that that would ever-so-slightly modify First Amendment rights in the United States, like freedom of speech or religion, is rightfully seen as a threat to those high ideals.  Not to mention that every teacher – and parent – knows that there are times when making a small allowance can be an invitation to anarchy, when giving an inch begets the loss of a yard, or a mile.

Yes, of course, there are limits to what sort of Jewish “newnesses” should be regarded as wrong.  There are many great jokes – speaking of humor – that we charedim tell among ourselves about taking stringencies or “the way it has always been done” too far.

But as a wise man (or wise guy; I think it was me) once said: Just because elephants don’t fly doesn’t mean birds don’t exist.  Excessive insistence on fealty to the way things have always been is unwise.  But so is pursuing, without the blessings of true Jewish leaders, shiny, happy innovations whose trajectories we cannot know.  That was what the Chasam Sofer meant, and expressed in an amusingly creative way.

It’s unfortunate that the Israeli professor wasn’t able to recognize a joke – or the possibility that a venerated Jewish sage might be more prescient than he.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

A Modest Jewish Proposal

A reporter recently asked me whether I thought Jewish women could be experts in Jewish law.  “Of course,” I responded without hesitation.

The journalist was one of the horde of heralds who practically fell over one another a few weeks ago to celebrate – I’m sorry, report upon – the recent graduation of three women from a school whose aim is to place them in synagogues as rabbis, if not quite to call them that.

I elaborated on my response by citing the examples of my own wife and daughter.  (We have several, all of them knowledgeable Jews, but I had in mind our youngest, about to be married but for now still at home.)  “When I have a question, for instance, about what bracha, or blessing, to make on a food,” I explained, “they are the ones I ask.”

The reporter seemed surprised to hear that there could be questions about blessings. So I elaborated on the fact that much of an entire tractate of the Talmud deals with blessings on food and other things, and that there is a wealth of complex halachic material relating to the proper blessings a Jew is to make on different foods and special occasions.  Since brachos entail invoking G-d’s name, I pointed out, it is important that they be made only when required, and that, when required, the proper blessing be made.

There wasn’t time to go into the underlying meaning of brachos, our need to recognize how blessed we are to be able to eat this food or that one, to have reached a milestone in the Jewish year, to have experienced thunder, lightning or an earthquake, or even to have digested one’s food (yes, there’s a blessing to be recited after leaving the bathroom).

The majority of brachos, however, and the volumes of halachic material thereon concern the proper blessings to be made before consuming a food and, if a certain amount is eaten, afterward.

There’s a movement in the larger world these days that promotes “mindful eating,” the conscious focusing on one’s food before consuming it and the retaining of that focus while doing so, slowly and deliberately.  That approach dovetails well with the Jewish perspective on eating.  We are indeed to stop and appreciate every morsel we consume; and brachos are the key to focusing us on that goal.

Unfortunately, many of us observant Jews are not sufficiently careful with our brachos, reciting them hurriedly and pro forma, without summoning the requisite attention to the meaning of their words, and often while doing something else: working, reading, conversing, even driving.  What’s more, as above, the laws governing brachos can be very intricate; not having studied them is a recipe (I’m sorry) for error.

In the non-Orthodox Jewish world, to the best of my knowledge, there is little observance of brachos altogether.

Which leads me to a thought.  With all the contemporary Jewish world’s disagreements and disagreeableness, all the polarized points of view and highly charged issues, might a small measure of pan-Jewish People unity be attainable by a collective embrace of brachos?

Brachos, after all, don’t touch upon issues like feminism (they are – well, almost all – gender-neutral) or insularity (they are recited on both cholent and crêpes Suzette).  And brachos are not even within firing range of topics like drafting charedim in Israel or forcing changes in their educational system.  In other words, they may well comprise a perfect potential Jewish unifier.

For those of us who identify unapologetically with the Jewish past and consider halacha sacrosanct, a renewed focus on brachos would mean strengthening our knowledge about the laws of brachos and undertaking to recite them properly.  Instead of mumbling them, let us resolve to pronounce each word clearly and carefully.  Instead of a mindless “shkolniyedvoro,” let us try harder to articulate our words and think about what we’re saying.

For the part of the Jewish world that does not consider itself governed by halacha at all, simply focusing on the Divine blessings inherent in our food, and acknowledging them with brachos, should present a wonderful opportunity to embrace a non-hot-button Jewish observance.  There are many excellent English-language guides to the recitation of brachos available today.

And for Jews who embrace halacha in principle but feel a need to champion elements of contemporary societal mores, mindful eating and Jewish observance would seem a perfect pairing.

Imagine the importance and laws of brachos being spoken about from the pulpits of Orthodox shuls, Reform temples, feminist yeshivot and Jewish Federation meetings.

No, it won’t bring all Jews to agree on other things. But you know what they say about the journey of a thousand miles…

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

There’s A Will

A new book, “The Anatomy of Violence,” suggests that “the seeds of sin are brain-based,” at least in a sense.  Its author, psychologist Adrian Raine, isn’t speaking of sins like gossip or tax evasion but rather violent crime.  And he makes the case that such criminalities may have biological roots, and that “neurocriminology” may provide society with ways of curbing crime.

Both genetic makeup and prenatal environment, Dr. Raine asserts, are factors that can presage a criminal mind.  On the most basic level, it has long been clear that there is a correlation between certain “accidents of birth” (or of life) and proclivity to crime.  Being born male rather than female, for instance, makes it much more likely that one will become a mugger or murderer.  And certain types of damage to the brain have long been observed to yield changes in behavior, sometimes including a proclivity to violence.

Likewise, more mundane things, like an expectant mother’s smoking or consumption of alcohol (not to mention even more severe chemical insults to the brain of a fetus, like exposure to lead or use of other drugs), can contribute to the likelihood of eventual bad behavior on the part of the child later born.  That a low resting heart rate, however, correlates with antisocial behavior – a finding relayed by Professor Raine – comes as something of a surprise, as does evidence that fish consumption may have the opposite effect.

Many other factors, of course, biological, environmental and situational, may also contribute to the statistical likelihood that a person will be prone to violence.

Correlation, however, does not mean causation.  Shoe size, after all, broadly correlates with math proficiency – most small children are not as good with numbers as are we larger people.

More important still, even causation needn’t be absolute.  Professor Raine cites the case of a man who possessed many of the risk factors for becoming a killer.  The fellow suffered from a vitamin deficiency as a young child, as a youth had a low resting heart rate; and abnormal structures in his brain, revealed by a scan, were reminiscent of abnormalities in the brains of serial killers. And in his pre-teens, the subject joined a gang, smoked cigarettes and engaged in vandalism.  With time, however, he veered from that course, and in fact even wrote a book about the biological roots of violence.  Yes, Professor Raine speaks of himself.

“Why didn’t I stay on that pathway?” he wonders.

The answer is simple: human beings have free will. Bad behavior, whether of the sort universally recognized as such or, for a Jew, behavior forbidden by the Torah, is ultimately a choice.

To be sure, as the great Jewish thinker Rabbi E. E. Dessler (1892-1953) famously pointed out, different people occupy different points of a free will continuum.  One man’s free-will challenge (because of his nature and nurture) may be to refrain from murdering someone he hates; another’s, whether to opt for a kosher product over a tastier non-kosher one; yet another’s, whether to utter a sentence that straddles the line of derogatory speech.

But Francis Crick (quoted by the professor) was wrong to assert that “free will is nothing more than a large assembly of neurons located in the anterior cingulate cortex.”  The choices we make may be processed by our brains, but they are sourced in our souls.

Reviews of the book and its thesis reminded me of the Talmudic statement (Shabbos, 156b) of Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak.  There are two opinions in the Talmud about whether astrological factors, presumed to influence the world and most of its inhabitants, have any effect on Jews.  Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak was of the school of thought holding that they do.  In fact, he declared that someone born under, so to speak, an unlucky star, the planet Mars, will be a “shedder of blood.”

But, he goes on to say, what that means is that he will be either a surgeon, a mugger, a ritual slaughterer of animals or a circumciser.  An orientation, in other words, is one thing; its expression, quite another.  Because that is a matter of will.

So whether one seeks the sources of personal psychologies in a scan of a brain or a scan of the sky, in a double helix or a double star, whether one peers through a microscope or through a telescope, ultimately we all choose our actions, and thus our fates.

© 2013  Rabbi Avi Shafran

Addendum

A correspondent  had some complaints about my essay below “Meet Cindy,” and since the points he raised are important ones, I am sharing my slightly edited responses to him here.

He quoted the following paragraph from my essay:

“And a country that calls itself the Jewish one, it can well be argued, has a special responsibility to underwrite the portion of its populace that is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism.”

And then commented:

The charedi community is not willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism. In classical Judaism – both in sources in the Gemara and Rishonim, and in actual Jewish history – people worked to support their families. Following the directives of Chazal, people raised their children with the skills, the desire and the motivation to work for a living. There was no system of mass kollel.

The charedi community is not willfully destitute because of its dedication to perpetuating classical Judaism. It is willfully destitute because of its dedication to perverting classical Judaism.

My response:

Classical Judaism is, above all, hewing to the interpretation/application of the Torah’s timeless principles to each generation and place’s situation and needs.  The dorshov of each dor vi’dor [spiritual leaders of each generation] are the arbiters of what is required of us in each era of our history.

I may personally be (and am, in fact) a Hirschian in outlook, and be as puzzled as you at the seeming shunning of what seems to me to be healthy development for Klal Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael.  But even Rav Hirsch, in his day, recognized that his school model in Germany could not be “exported” to Eretz Yisrael.  To ascertain when we are correct and when we are not is what we have Gedolim [recognized spiritual leaders] for.

In the end, whatever my natural personal view, my emunas chachamim [trust in the judgment of the wise] trumps it.  When there is a consensus of the greatest and most recognized Gedolim that a certain departure from the historic norm (and the historical uniquenesses of our times are many), I don’t second-guess them, because I believe that Hashem’s will is that I follow the decisions of the judges “in my day.”

My correspondent then asserted that my analogy between charedim and my fictional creation Cindy was flawed.  He wrote:

1. Cindi is raising her children to be productive citizens, not to also require welfare.

2. Motherhood is something valued by everyone. Being charedi is not. (It’s not being a religious Jew that we’re discussing – plenty of people who work are also religious Jews.)

3. Cindi is presumably appreciative for the aid. She’s not part of a movement that disparages the government, refuses to serve in the army even in times of great national danger, and refuses to display any gratitude to those who defend her and those who financially support her.

4. Cindi’s situation is unplanned, unwanted, and she hopes to get out of it one day.

My response:

1)  Perhaps she is, perhaps she isn’t.  But if she isn’t, should we feel differently about her?  And if so, should we see ourselves as responsible public policy makers or as social engineers?  You may well disagree with my feeling that how Cindy raises her children should not matter, and I respect your point of view on that, but I reject it.

2) My essay wasn’t an attempt to convince a reader that the charedi way is right or wrong.  It was intended only to, through a thought experiment, help him/her to better relate to how charedim feel.

3)  Most charedim do not disparage the government (at least not any more than non-charedim or secular Israelis).  Their avoidance of military service is for principled religious reasons, not as some sort of eye-poking (and they contribute – at least to those of us who consider Torah-study to be protective of Klal Yisrael – much to the security of the state). 

And I explicitly wrote that charedim need to be makir tov [have and express gratitude to the state for what it provides them].

4) That is a valid difference.  Whether it makes a difference is another matter.  I don’t think it does.   

Marriage Isn’t What It Used To Be

A number of years ago I shared the essential thought in the essay below with subscribers to my mailing list at the time. But I believe it’s a thought worth repeating, for the benefit of new readers, and worth re-pondering for the rest of us.

My wife and I recently accompanied our second son to the chuppah.  It was an elating experience, understandably, and the sight of the new couple recalled to me the unsettling, if simple, observation of the Netziv.

The Netziv – an acronym meaning “pillar,” by which Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (1817-1893), the famed dean of the Volozhin Yeshiva, is known – noted that the first marriage in history differed in an essential way from all the matrimonial unions that came to follow.  Because, according to a widely cited Jewish tradition, Adam and Eve were created as a single entity, a man-woman coupled back to back, with the “forming” of woman described by the Torah more accurately envisioned as a separation.  The word often translated “rib” is in fact used elsewhere in the Torah to mean “side,” and so should be understood in the light of that tradition as referring to the woman-side who was part of Adam-Eve before Divine surgery provided her an independent personhood.

So, notes the Netziv, Adam’s subsequent union with his wife was in fact a “re-union” – of two entities that had originally been one.  That idea, says Rabbi Berlin, lies in Adam’s declaration when Eve is presented to him:  “This time it is a bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23).  Comments Rabbi Berlin: “Only ‘this time’ is it so, since she is a ‘bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh’; [here, Adam’s love for Eve] is like a person who loves his own hand.”

Not so, though, every marriage to follow, where the two people creating a relationship will have been conceived, born and raised as independent individuals before becoming a marital unit.

Yet the Talmud directs that, among the blessings recited at a Jewish marriage ceremony and at the festive “Sheva Brachot” (“Seven Blessings”) meals attended by the bride and groom for the week thereafter, are several references to the First Couple (Eden’s, not the Obamas).  Not only is the creation of Adam and Eve explicitly invoked, but the bride and groom are reminded of how “your Creator made you joyous in the Garden of Eden.”  How, though, can the comparison be made?  The essence of post-Edenic marriages, their emotional and spiritual components, would seem to be of a qualitatively different nature from that of the original one.  As per the Netziv’s observation, they are mergers, not homecomings.

Or, to carry the Netziv’s own simile a bit further, they are not like reattaching a severed limb but like transplanting a newly donated one.

Interestingly, the medical metaphor itself may hold the answer to why we hold up the example of Adam and Eve to those marrying.  Maybe it isn’t a comparison that is intended but a spur to thought – the thought that a successful marriage entails striving for a relationship like that of Adam and Eve, who began their lives as a single being.

Consider why transplantation is no simple matter: It commonly entails a risk of rejection.

The natural reaction of a normal body to the introduction of an “other” with its own distinct genetic identity is to seek to show it the door, so to speak.  There is good reason for that immune response, of course; it helps protect against the introduction of foreign elements that could be harmful.

Likewise, the natural response of a normal human psyche to the intimate introduction of an “other,” with its own discrete emotional and spiritual identity, is to similarly seek to protect the threatened self.

Doctors help ensure successful transplants by administering immunosuppressant drugs, chemicals that prevent rejection.  They operate by lowering the threshold of the immune system’s integrity.  Or, put more simply, they weaken the body’s sense of self.

Might it be that we focus a contemporary bride and groom on the original ones in order to teach them that marriage needs its own form of “immunosuppressant” to succeed – that, in other words, no less than in an organ transplant, marriage requires a weakening of self?

Here, of course, no drug will do; what alone can work is a conscious, determined reorientation of attitude, a force of will born of love.   In the Netziv’s words about post-Edenic brides and grooms, only “deep connection [“d’veika”] will bring them together, to become one.”

Like everything truly important, of course, that is more easily said than done.   But knowing one’s objective is the first step of any journey.

And the second, here, is acting – whether or not one’s actions reflect purity of intent – as if it is not one’s self that is calling the shots.  Jewish tradition stresses that simple deeds can beget essential changes.  As a Jewish aphorism sourced in the 13th century work Sefer HaChinuch puts it: “A person is acted upon by his [own] actions.” What we do, with determination to become someone who naturally does what we are doing, brings us closer to becoming that person.

And so newlyweds might disagree over whether the window should be open or closed.  But the chilled spouse should be the one insisting that it remain open, for the comfort of the overheated one; and the latter should be running to shut it, to keep the other warm.  Even if the result is a compromise, like leaving the window open a crack, the acts of selflessness themselves are priceless.  And they are not limited to windows.

And the marriage-message borne by the Netziv’s observation is, of course, not only for newlyweds.

Transplant recipients, after all, generally need to take their immunosuppressants for life.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

 

A Piece of the Wall

I really must avoid spicy foods – even my wife’s scrumptious jalapeno pepper-laced cornbread – before retiring at night.  The recipe’s great, but for someone approaching 60, it’s a recipe, too, for indigestion-fueled nightmares.

The scene: the Kotel Maaravi, or “Western Wall” in Jerusalem.  The time: some future point, may it never arrive, when Anat Hoffman’s vision of the holy place has been realized.

Ms. Hoffman, of course, is the famously melodramatic chairwoman of the feminist group “Women of the Wall,” who has orchestrated countless demonstrations (with adoring media and bevy of cameras in tow) in the form of untraditional prayer services at the holy site; who has reveled in being arrested for her provocations by Israeli police; and who is celebrated by temple clubs and coffee klatches across the United States as the Jewish reincarnation of Rosa Parks.  She recently told a Jewish newspaper in California that the Wall should become, in effect, a timeshare.  “For six hours a day,” she explained, “the Wall will be a national monument, open to others but not to Orthodox men.”

Those “others,” in Chairman Hoffman’s hope, will presumably include not only the group she leads (and which she characterizes as praying in a halachic manner, although she is personally a Reform Jew) but any group seeking solace under the sheltering umbrella of “pluralism.”

Ms. Hoffman also serves as the executive director of the Reform group the Israel Religious Action Center, which laments the fact that “Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Humanistic, and secular Jews have no representation on the council overseeing the operations of the holy site” and declares that the current single standard there “must be changed.”

That’s what apparently fueled my nightmare.  In it, the timeshare model had apparently been found too cumbersome.  Each of the various groups laying claim to a “piece of the wall” wanted to express themselves without any time limit; and so a geographical solution to the pluralism problem had been instituted. The Kotel had been Balkanized.

One crowded sliver of the plaza continued to be a place of traditional Orthodox worship, men on one side of a partition, women on the other, everyone welcome.  But the area had been severely truncated, to make room for the others.

Nearby, the Reform service, comprised mostly of women in colorful talleitot and kippot, featured a folk guitarist and her choir.  (The Orthodox men next-door had resorted to earplugs.)

The Conservative service turnout was sparse, and most of those in attendance were on the far side of middle-age.

The Reconstructionist area was empty, but a sign designated its identity.

The Renewal spot was populated by various small groups of people, some quietly meditating in the lotus position, others dancing in a circle and others still seemingly lost in a daze of unknown provenance.

The Humanistic Kotel-space harbored a small band of people chanting “Hear O Israel, Humanity is holy, Humanity is One.”

There were other successful applicants for Kotel space too.  Over toward the end of what had once been the common plaza, was a Jewish animal rights group holding a “blessing of the pets” ceremony, which was followed by a noisy “bark mitzvah” celebration for a pug wearing a kippah.  And at the very end of the site were the Jewish Vegetarians of America, waving ceremonial stalks of celery.

At the other end of the pluralized plaza was the Jewish Global Warmist Alliance.  Its members were sitting on the ground, wrapped in sackcloth and singing dirges from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

At the back of the plaza, protesting the fact that they hadn’t yet been awarded a space of their own, were members of a “Hebrew-Christian” group, in Jewish religious garb of their own.

I woke up then, thankfully.  But not before I sensed a deeper, ethereal moaning, inaudible to human ears but causing the very universe to shudder, emanating from the other side of the Wall.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

 

Infestation Inspiration

The thought, a staple in the writings of the celebrated Jewish thinker Rabbi E. E. Dessler (1892-1953), is best known to people unfamiliar with his thought and writings from a famous and evocative paragraph written by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

 
“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years,” Emerson mused, “how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of G-d which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”

 
Rav Dessler, who wrote poetry too but was above all a keenly incisive philosophical thinker, explains that there really is no inherent difference between nature and what we call the miraculous.  We simply use the word “nature” for the miracles to which we are accustomed, and “miracles” for those we haven’t previously experienced.  All there is, in the end, is G-d’s will.

 
That we are inured to the magnificence of the stars in the sky is unfortunate.  We city dwellers can still capture some of the grandeur of Emerson’s “city of G-d” if we journey to less light-polluted places.  I recall the shock I felt as a young man driving with some friends through West Virginia on a cross-country trek and suddenly seeing, for the first time in my life, the Milky Way.  It was a moonless night and the river of white across the sky so struck us we stopped the car and got out to gape at the splendor.

 
It’s important, though, to try to capture some of the miraculous in the mundane wherever we are and whatever we are surveying.  The short Jewish prayer on awakening – “I am thankful before You, living, everlasting King, that You have mercifully returned my soul to me…” – sets the day’s stage for acknowledging the Divine gifts we are daily given.  That our sleep was not permanent, yes, but also that our hearts have been beating all the while, and our lungs filling and emptying; that arms and legs do our bidding, that the food we eat nourishes us and allows us to live, to think, to do…

 
But human nature makes it hard to be filled with gratitude at the sight of the rising sun, much as we should be.

 
And so it’s a special occasion when we are able to see something in nature that reminds us of Rav Dessler’s nature-equals-miracle equation.  And one such occasion is near, at least for those of us in the northeast of the United States.

 
The more perceptive among us might notice in coming days small holes appearing in the ground.  And the least perceptive will find it impossible to not notice what will quickly follow: billions of large dark blue insects with strikingly red eyes and beautiful lacy, orange-veined, nearly transparent wings.  People who are not blessed with the miracle of vision will know of the sudden visitors through the miracle of hearing.  The noise that large numbers of Magicicada septendecim generate en masse can be overwhelming.

 
As another poet, born Robert Zimmerman, put it, “And the locusts sang, yeah, it gave me a chill.”
What will allow us, if we’re sufficiently sensitive, to see the upcoming “natural” happening not as an infestation but an inspiration will be the knowledge that the members of “Brood II,” the cicada group soon to emerge, emerge only every 17 years.

 
Although they are commonly called “locusts,” cicadas are not biologically related to locusts (which we Westerners call “grasshoppers”).  But they are impressive creatures, ferocious-looking but entirely harmless to humans and animals (who readily feast on them).

 
After the insects mate and the females among them lay their eggs, they quickly die.  The nymphs that will emerge from the eggs several weeks later will then burrow into the ground, to make their own grand entrance, G-d willing (meant most pointedly) in 2030.

 
No one really knows why the cicadas spend so much time waiting to emerge, and how they “know” when 17 years have elapsed.  John Cooley, a research scientist at the University of Connecticut who has been studying Magicicada septendecim since the early 1990s, was asked about the 17-year wait.

 
“Man,” he responded, “I wish I knew.”

 
No doubt science will eventually provide a good hypothesis or two  for the marvel.  But anyone who wants to experience the frisson born of recognizing the miraculous in the natural, who wants to see the phenomenal in the phenomenon, can just open his ears and eyes to these unlikely envoys of beauty.

 
And consider, as Mr. Zimmerman did, that “Yeah, the locusts sang, and they were singing for me.”

 

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

The Gorilla’s Lesson

The little boy was petrified, as one might imagine, by the gorilla who sat down next to him at the table in his (the child’s) home. I hadn’t meant to scare the kid; I was just tired and needed to get off my paws.

It was a very long-ago Purim (the child is now a father and accomplished talmid chochom) and a group of us had rented costumes to use in Purim visits to homes while collecting for a worthy charity. The gorilla suit was very realistic (and very hot).

Sheftel, as I’ll call the boy (because it’s his name) was around three years old at the time. I was around 19. I felt bad, and immediately removed my head—that is to say the gorilla’s.

Sheftel’s eyes shrunk back to their normal size and the scream that had lodged in his lungs never made it to his wide open mouth. He saw it was only me.

When, a bit later, I replaced my gorilla head, Sheftel let out a scream. I reminded him from inside that it was only me. He screamed again. I took off the head and he immediately calmed down. I put it back on and, once again, he screamed.

Children, apparently, have to reach a certain stage before they realize that a costume is only a costume, that the person wearing it remains the person wearing it even when he’s wearing it. Sheftel had yet to internalize that truth.

Related and more poignant is the lesson of an old Yiddish joke, about Yankel informing Yossel that, unfortunately, Shmelkeh had just passed away. “Shmelkeh?” asks Yossel, “the guy with the oversized ears?”

“Yes, that Shmelkeh,” Yankel says sadly.

“The fellow with the terrible skin condition, the rash covering most of his face?

“Yes,” once again.

“The Shmelkeh missing an eye, and with the large wart on his chin?

“Yes, yes, that Shmelkeh,” Yankel confirms.

“Oy!” exclaims Yossel. “Azah shaineh Yid!” (“Such a beautiful Jew!”)

Superficial things, we come to realize if we’re perceptive, are, well, superficial. Masks, in other words, mask.

The theme of misleading appearances is, of course, central to Purim. Esther, the heroine of the historical happening commemorated on the day, hides her identity from the king who takes her as his queen. Her very name is rooted in the Hebrew word for “hidden,” and is hinted to, the Talmud teaches us, in words the Torah uses to refer to Hashem “hiding” Himself, rendering his providence undetectable.

Which it is in the Purim story. The absence of Hashem’s name from Megillas Esther reflects the fact that His presence was not overtly evident in what happened. Yet, His “absence” was itself but a mask; Divine providence, in the form of delicious ironies, informs the story at every turn. From Achashverosh’s execution of his first queen to suit his advisor and then execution of his advisor to suit his new queen; to Mordechai’s happenstance overhearing and exposure of a plot that comes to play a pivotal role in Klal Yisroel’s salvation; to Haman’s visiting the king at the perfectly wrong time… Hashem’s presence loudly hums, so to speak, in the background. If anything merits being called The Purim Principle it would be: Nothing is an Accident.

Even the very symbol of meaningless chance, the casting of lots, turns out to be Divinely directed and crucial to the Purim miracle.

Klal Yisrael, too, is “masked.” The people seem beholden to an idolatrous, lecherous king, and readily participate in his grand ball where he celebrates, of all things, the finality of the Beis Hamikdosh’s destruction, chalila.

But that was, as the Talmud teaches us, a merely superficial stance. In truth, behind the unimpressive Jewish veneer lay Jewish hearts dedicated to Hashem. And when events began to blow like a strong wind, the masks were ripped away. Our ancestors, in their fasting and prayers, showed their true essence.

Is it any wonder that on Purim we wear masks? And make fun—of ourselves and even (good naturedly) of others? What we mock are the masks we all wear, the particular character each of us projects. The mockery declares that such things are superficialities, camouflaging what really matters: the Jewish soul that resides in, and ultimately defines, us.

© 2012 AMI MAGAZINE