Off the Pulpit

“Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else.” So wrote G.K. Chesterton, reminding us that some of the most penetrating observations about life are made through humor. You do not have to be somber to be serious.

Jewish humor has not only enabled an often oppressed people to cope with the world, but taught a great deal about that world. When Henny Youngman tells us that Jews don’t drink because it interferes with their suffering, he swirls up several stereotypes to make a point. It is kin to the concise observation by Joseph Epstein — a sad Jew is a happy Jew.

We even have a joke for a Jew who doesn’t want to feel pain: An Eastern European Jew was reading the Nazi paper. His friend was aghast, but he explained: “In the Yiddish paper all I read is how we are suffering. But here I’m reading how we control the world!”

There are sermons in stones, wrote the poet. But there are also sermons in jokes. Except the jokes are shorter.

I once wrote about our baby proofer. His wisdom has grown even greater over the years. After leaving the house, ensuring that no prying baby hands could open dangerous drawers, climb perilous steps or fall on sharp corners, he turned to me and said — “Now remember, you can’t take your eyes off of her for a second!”

In a larger sense what that wise safety maven meant is that the world can be made safer, but not safe. Having lived through both a brain tumor and lymphoma, both AFTER I began eating a vegetarian diet, I often think bemusedly about the people who reassure you that this exercise or that eating regime will guarantee longevity. It may help in many ways; I am no doctor or fitness guru. But life has more sharp edges than there are foam bumpers, more germs than soap, more falls than nets.

So it is unwise to spend too much time thinking how to preserve life rather than how to live it. I haul myself to the gym and try to walk and on occasion refuse the cake. But I also try not to let my fear override my joy, and now and again to be heedless is to be alive.

In the years when I played tournament chess I would wander over to the boards of the top players and was often surprised to spectators with lesser skills (like myself) make whispered pronouncements about the play of the masters. I realized then that level of skill and level of confidence are two entirely different things.

In modern society we are often called upon to make judgments about things in science, technology, politics, economics — for which we have little training and less knowledge. Yet it does not seem to diminish, for many, the confidence with which they pronounce.

Judaism is a tradition that inculcates great respect for knowledge. Legitimacy of opinion is tied to familiarity with sources and ideas; depth of feeling is no assurance of correctness. As the Rabbis counsel us, “Teach your tongue to say, ‘I don’t know.'”

Experts are not always right of course, and on rare occasions an untutored guess will prove more accurate than a learned surmise. But knowledge is almost always an aid to judgment; you don’t want your surgeon, pilot or automaker to be ignorant. Confidence that outstrips understanding is empty. As Hillel said — zil g’mor — go and learn.

The book of Deuteronomy begins by telling us that Moses spoke these words “to all of Israel.” As the Vilna Gaon points out, it is obvious they were spoken to all of Israel, but the phrase is included because there are shades of meaning.

The words of Torah are simple and available to all. The phrase “all of Israel” also means that they are infinitely deep, and each person can comprehend them according to that individual’s capacity.

“All of Israel” also implies an eternity. It was not only spoken to the Israelites standing before Moses that day, but to all Israel for all time. Moses speaks to us as he spoke to his contemporaries.

Finally, even though the words are different to different people, and have special resonance in each soul, they are given to an entire people. The Torah is a corporate spiritual covenant; it teaches Israel how to move through the wilderness and through the world. We are in this together.

All that and more is contained in a simple, easily overlooked phrase that was given to us, all of Israel.

Can one combine Torah and secular study, religious devotion and participation in the world? In a letter written shortly before his death, Rabbi Shagar (Shimon Gershon Rosenberg) put it this way:

“It should be interpreted in the vein of Franz Rosenzweig, who described the ‘and’ as the keystone that supports the entire edifice and imbues it with meaning.”

It is easy to put up hard and fast walls and ignore the reality that everything we are and think interpenetrates, that we are raveled as rugs. As another great Jewish thinker, Rabbi Harold Schulweis, once wrote: “Beware of split thinking, schizophrenic thinking! When you are confronted with ‘Either/Or,’ think again! Look for ‘Both/And’ — Yes, there is night and light, but there is ONE day. Yes, there is evil and good, but one person. There are broken Tablets and whole Tablets, but both are placed in the Aron Kodesh, the holy ark.”

In a divisive time, we are pushed toward exclusions: Either this must be, or that must be. But the world is not so simple and rarely is reality so divided. As we strive to a greater synthesis and deeper understanding, honor the “and.”

The first thing that strikes a visitor to the Dalai Lama is the absence of majesty. You walk up bare concrete steps, past some trees and a building and hear street sounds.

This is not the Vatican, or the White House; though it houses a man as well known as any in the world, the only indication is the rigorousness of security. Your cell phone is taken and you are frisked thoroughly — really thoroughly. The man standing next to me had the security guard comb through his Afro with his fingers several times, and everyone surrendered a passport.

My brother, sister-in-law and I were ushered into the waiting room for our private audience. The waiting room was a small antechamber, with a few books and photographs. One showed a 21-year-old Dalai Lama sitting beside Jawarahal Nehru with a full head of hair and without his trademark glasses. It was taken in India in 1954 and showed the deep links the Dalai Lama (invariably referred to as “His Holiness”) had with India even before he took refuge there after his exile from Tibet in 1959.

The room was full: local petitioners seeking blessing, a delegation from His Holiness’ home town that had brought him items for him to bless; Lobsang Sangay, the president of the Tibetan state in exile; and some businessmen. In and out came his nephew and private secretary, Tenzin Coegyal.

I was there because my brother Paul is director of the ethics center at Emory University, with which the Dalai Lama had begun a science and ethics exchange. A group of students from Emory spend time in India, and Emory professors have gone to India for the past decade to teach Tibetan monks about science. This was a project of His Holiness who said that it is a 100-year initiative. As one of the professors commented to me, it begins introducing science to people who do not recognize an equal sign.

My brother and I both were also there to give lectures at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives — he on ethics and I on the Jewish experience of exile and what Tibet might learn from our experience — all arranged by Emory professor and former monk Lobsang Negi.

After some time waiting, we were ushered into the room where His Holiness receives visitors. Once again, if you are expecting grandeur, you will be disappointed. It is a small, square room with a couple of couches and padded chair in which he sits. There are no pictures with world leaders, or his Nobel Peace Prize on display. A few works of Tibetan art adorn the walls, and there is a small Buddhist shrine.

Before you enter you are given a khata, a thin white scarf, which you unfurl, hand to His Holiness, and he drapes it over your bowed head. In other words, the meeting begins by the visitor receiving a blessing.

As we sat down I asked to offer a Jewish blessing in return, one offered when one meets a scholar or wise person, and in response to his enthusiastic “yes,” pronounced the blessing in Hebrew: “Blessed Be God, Sovereign of all, who has given wisdom to flesh and blood.”

Then we asked questions, and in response, he returned to the themes dear to his heart: that all people are the same, that we need an ethic that all religions and non-believers too can fulfill, and its foundation is compassion.

He insists that science must be taught and a healthy mind — “mental hygiene” — is the basis of a good life. Education, in both the Eastern and Western world, should include not just information, but how to deal with negative emotions and to live a good life.

He has no interest in making people Buddhists, His Holiness insists. He wants them to be more fully what they are. And all religions teach compassion, love and goodness. We just need to be more true to the teachings of our own traditions.

He spoke about power and powerlessness, and the obligation of the former to the latter. Having mentioned the problems in the Middle East, he turned to me and said, “And what is this about chosenness?”

I answered that Jews believed God chose them for a particular purpose, but it does not mean we are the only ones chosen; different peoples can be chosen for different things. He laughed, and said yes, it is true, Tibetans think they are chosen as well.

It seems strange to say that a religious figure’s authority is dependent on his laugh. There is far more, but nonetheless His Holiness’ laugh is striking. Having met my share of religious leaders, I don’t think any of them is as un-self-conscious and as devoid of a sense of self-importance. Every now and then, if feeling particularly mischievous, he will stick his tongue out to emphasize the ludicrousness of it all. It reminded me of a comment by G.K. Chesterton, that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

Still his primary message is human. He pointed to a student at the outset of his talk, and said, “You have problems.” The student nodded. “And my experience can help you.” The student again agreed. But then he said the unexpected: “And I have problems. And your experience can help me.” A visitor quickly understands why his schedule runs behind. He loves the exchange, and to dwell on his favorite themes. One of his disciples told me he used to be more discursive, tell more stories, but now at 82 increasingly feels the urgency to focus on what he has learned and has to teach. He sees America as a beacon of freedom and urges Americans to remember their responsibility to the world as well. And this unusual man, who begins his day with four hours of meditation followed by watching CNN and BBC, having seen his nation decimated and swallowed by an authoritarian regime, is clearly conscious of the political edge to his spiritual message.

Six million Tibetans remain in Tibet and some 150,000 live in exile. In the afternoon I spoke to a group of monks and students about the Jewish sense of mission, our tradition of family, storytelling, ritual, the miracles of history and how we maintain hope.

Dharamsala, a small Indian town that serves as the capital of Tibet in exile, is nestled at the foot of the Himalayan mountains, where the dogs bark at night and the monkeys survey you suspiciously from the trees each day, where the cars jostle and avoid each other with circus-act skill. This mountainous village houses Buddhism’s most revered living personality who has, combining tradition, modernity, joy and sheer stamina, projected his people’s cause before an often-indifferent world. Years ago His Holiness said in an interview that gardening was almost impossible in Dharamsala because the monsoons come and destroy everything. The monsoon already struck in his life and the life of his people; but he is still here, laughing and planting flowers.