The other day, waiting to board a bus, I was moved to think about empathy.

Unfortunately, the prod came in the form of the opposite, crass selfishness.  A young woman approached the group of us waiting to step up into the vehicle and insinuated herself at the front of the long line.  She had no visible physical impairment, made no request for anyone’s permission, offered not even a perfunctory “excuse me.”  She seemed entirely oblivious to the fact that other people occupied the universe at the time, some even in her immediate vicinity.

I could read the minds of my fellow future passengers. Their faces telegraphed my own mental reaction: Who does she think she is?  How would she like it if someone cut before her in a line?  Yes, she would probably reply in puzzlement.  “But that’s not what’s happening.  I am the one cutting in here, not someone else cutting in before me.”  The lady, in other words, was empathy-impaired.

“My sins I recount today,” as the waiter, just released from prison, told Pharaoh.  I recall myself as a small boy armed with a magnifying glass on a sunny day, incinerating individual ants out of sheer curiosity.  I even remember watching without pain or protest as my buddy devised creative ways of dispatching grasshoppers, ever-present victims of little boys in early-60s Baltimore summers.  Some claim that killing insects as a child presages the eventual emergence of a serial killer.  So far, though, thank G-d, I haven’t much felt the urge to commit murder; and when I have, I have managed to overcome it.

Today, in fact, when an insect finds its way into my home, I always try to capture the invader and escort him or her safely to the great outdoors.  (All right, mosquitos are an exception, but they are the aggressors.)

After all, I wonder, how would I like it if I were a stinkbug and someone chose to squash me or spray me with poison or flush me down the toilet?  Empathy, again.

Being concerned with the wellbeing of an insect, or for that matter a dog or cat or cow, is but one rung on the empathy ladder.  The Torah teaches us that animals, in the end, although they may not be needlessly hurt, exist for human servitude and food, things we would surely not wish for ourselves.  Our ultimate and most powerful concern for “the other” is meant to be for other human beings.

What occurred to me at the bus stop was that, while some may gauge human spiritual growth by religious meticulousness or proficiency in texts or the ability to deeply meditate, the most essential marker of spiritual progress may well be how far one has progressed from the selfishness that defines us at birth toward true, encompassing empathy. (I have far to go; caring about bugs is easier than truly caring about people, especially some people.  But most of us have, over our years of living, grown, to various degrees, to appreciate empathy.)  The severely empathy-impaired, like the girl on the bus line, are essentially children, perhaps infants.

It is the import of empathy, of course, that imbues Rabbi Akiva’s statement (in the Midrash, quoted by Rashi) that the verse, “Love your fellow as yourself” (Vayikra, 19:18) is a “great principle of the Torah.” And Hillel’s famous response to the potential convert who insisted on learning the entire Torah on one foot: “What is hateful to you do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and study it” (Shabbos, 31a).

Jews the world over are reading and studying these days about Avrohom, the subject of the weekly Torah readings.  It is not insignificant that the first of our forefathers is characterized by our tradition not only as the champion of monotheism – the quintessential Jewish idea – but as the paragon of chesed, or “kindness to others.”  His rejection of idolatry, even to the point of risking his life, is of a part with his pining for strangers to welcome and feed even when in great pain from his adult circumcision.

Which points to a deeper truth, one that might be germane to the akeida, Avrohom’s “binding” of Yitzchok his son: Although some choose to see human empathy as a simple evolutionary adaptation that helps protect the species, a believing Jew’s dedication to the other is ultimately expressed in the context of his dedication to the Other, that is to say to G-d.  We are born utterly selfish; we are meant to strive toward utter selflessness, to care about and for our fellows, and to be, in the end, selflessly dedicated servants of the Divine.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

The recent “news” story about a bar mitzvah boy in Dallas who celebrated the milestone of obligation to observe the Torah’s laws by entertaining family and guests by dancing on a stage with a bevy of Las Vegas-style showgirls reminded me of an article several years ago in The New York Times about such crass missing of the Jewish point.

It introduced something that has become de rigueur in some bar and bat mitzvah circles, something called “motivators.”

While perhaps not on the level of the Dallas debauchery, what the article described was sad enough.  It highlighted the profession of a young non-Jewish gentleman from the Virgin Islands clad in a form-fitting black outfit, who “regularly spends his weekends dancing with 13-year-olds… at bar mitzvahs,” according to the report.  His is a “lucrative and competitive” profession – he is a “party motivator.”

Such folks are paid to attend bar mitzvahs and other events to make sure “that young guests are swept up in dancing and games,” according to the article.   The Caribbean crooner was described as smiling ecstatically at one bar mitzvah “as he danced to Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez songs with middle school students” and with their parents.

“Whether you can have a successful bar mitzvah without at least a handful of motivators,” the article asserts, presumably in the name of parents who employ such services, “is debatable.”

One female “motivator,” at a bar mitzvah, “in a black tank top,” was observed at the “children’s cocktail hour” enthralling the 13-year-old boys in attendance. “She just talks about, like, sex and girlfriends,” explained one of the young men, clearly motivated.

Some of the parents are similarly adolescent.  While sometimes, the report notes, “they request that their motivators dress modestly…  sometimes they request the opposite.”

“Dads especially,” often indicate their preference for provocative women “motivators,” according to the owner of one entertainment agency.  Then he heads, he says, unconsciously alighting on an apt metaphor, “to our stable of people” to find the right one for the job.

Were it all a Purim skit, it would be, if in poor taste, perhaps funny.  As reality, though, not even the word “tragic” does it justice.

How horribly far the concept of “bar mitzvah” has drifted from its true meaning in these materialistic, vulgar times.

A mitzvah, of course is a commandment, one with its source in the ultimate Commander.  And the “bar” refers not to what a bartender tends but rather to the responsibility of the new Jewish young adult to shoulder the duties and obligations of a Jew – the study and observance of the Torah.

And so, a truly successful bar mitzvah is one where the young person has come to recognize that responsibility.  Dancers, decadence and the lowest common denominators of American pop culture are hardly fitting “motivators” for such.

The issue is not denominational.  There are excesses to be found in celebrations of Orthodox Jews as there are in those of Jews of other affiliations.  While the “motivators” phenomenon might represent a particular nadir of Jewish insensitivity, none of us is immune to the disease of skewed priorities, the confusing of essence with embellishment, the allowing of the true meaning of a life-milestone to become obscured by the trappings of its celebration.

In fact, following the directive, a group of highly respected rabbis in the American charedi, or traditionally Orthodox, community, have toned down wedding celebrations (where party motivators are unneeded to get people dancing but where excesses of food and trimmings are, unfortunately, not unheard of).  And many of us have taken the initiative to do the same with other celebrations as well, including bar mitzvahs.

At our youngest son’s bar mitzvah celebration, seven years ago, the new man read the Torah portion on the Shabbat after he turned 13, but on the Wednesday before, his Jewish birthday, my wife and I hosted a modest meal for relatives and a few friends – and, of course, our son’s friends and teachers.

There were only three things on the agenda for the evening.  My son delivered a d’var Torah, a discourse on a Torah topic, and each of his grandfathers said a few words.

My wife’s father thanked G-d, as he always does at family celebrations, for allowing him to survive the several concentration camps where he spent the Holocaust years, and where he and his religious comrades risked life and limb to maintain what Jewish observance they could.

And my own father, for his part, expressed the deep gratitude he feels to the Creator for protecting him, during those same years, in a Siberian Soviet labor camp, where he and his fellow yeshiva students similarly endured terrible hardships to remain observant, believing Jews.  Both grandfathers take deep pride in how their children’s children are continuing the lives and ideals of their parents’ parents, and theirs before them.

And I sat there silently praying that my son would grow further to recognize the mission and meaning of a truly Jewish life, and follow the example of his grandfathers and grandmothers, parents and siblings, uncles and aunts and cousins, many of whom were there to celebrate with him. Thank G-d, he has indeed made us very proud.

The celebration lacked “motivators,” like those in the Times’ article or at the recent Lone Star State lewdness.

But motivators were everywhere.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Chumros, or efforts to go beyond the letter of Jewish religious law’s requirements, have gotten a bad name over the years.  And it is true, some stringencies can be unwise, even counterproductive.  Some are even silly.

I recall a letter to the editor of a now-defunct Jewish magazine whose writer was deeply upset that an advertisement for a dairy product in an earlier issue had run face-to-face with one for a meat product.  Many readers, I’m sure, like me, first thought it was meant as a joke.  But it wasn’t Purim time and it didn’t carry any indication of wryness or satire.  The writer was serious, and, of course, deeply misguided.

But when a stringency is adopted, either by a community or an individual, for a good reason, it should not be resented or mocked.  Sometimes a person may feel a need to draw a broader circle than the next guy’s around something prohibited; sometimes a particular  era or community will require the adoption of special stringencies.  Generally, chumros present themselves in realms like kashrus or the Sabbath, in the form of refraining from eating or doing even something technically permitted.  Other stringencies, though, consist of adopting as one’s norm the example of a great person.

Among the greatest Jews who ever lived was the spiritual head of the Jewish people at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, the famed Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai.  The Talmud (Brachos 17a) relates that no one ever greeted him first, as he was always the first to offer greetings, “even [to] a non-Jew in the marketplace.”

Now there’s an unusual – unnecessary, to be sure, but clearly laudatory – conduct worth considering these days, when civility seems on the wane. Obviously one can’t walk through a busy pedestrian area greeting every person one sees.  In any event, doing so might not endear one to those serially accosted.

But there are many times when one finds oneself in the presence of another individual or two when the option of a “good morning” or “good evening” hovers in the air, easily ignored but entirely available.

Taking the opportunity to convey the wish, the Talmud teaches us, is something praiseworthy.

And for Jews, the more “Jewish” one looks, I think, the more desirable it is to consider taking on the chumra of emulating Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai.  Because in addition to the inherent goodness of acknowledging another human being, there is the unfortunate fact that some people, for whatever reason, are quick to think of Jews, especially Orthodox ones, as “stand-offish.”  And our insular lifestyles, even though they are not intended to insult anyone, can inadvertently reinforce that impression. But it’s hard to maintain a bias against Orthodox Jews when one’s head holds the image, too, of a smiling such Jew offering a greeting.

On a fifteen-minute walk to shul a few Shabbosos ago, I met: two other shul-goers, a Muslim family, and a young man of indeterminate ethnicity.  I also passed a fellow washing his car.  I wished the identifiable Jews a “good Shabbos” (actually, one of them a “Shabbat Shalom”) and offered the others a smile and a “good morning.”  All the greetees returned the good wishes, as did a large man with dreadlocks standing in line with me at the kosher Dunkin Donuts a day later.  That’s usually the case.  Rarely does someone greeted ignore the greeting; and when he does, it’s usually because he didn’t hear it (or couldn’t believe his ears).

Whether my “stringent” behavior made the world any more civil a place I don’t know, but all any of us can do is our own small part.

Some religious Jews, who – rightfully – value modesty and reticence, may feel that it’s somehow not proper to engage strangers in public places.  And in some cases that may well be true.  But in many, even most, cases, it’s certainly not.

At least it wasn’t in Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s eyes.

© 2013 Rabbi Avi Shafran