Off the Pulpit

The Torah begins with the letter bet, the same letter that begins bayit in Hebrew, home. Some have taken this as a signal – here is your home, in the Torah. Yet it is an uneasy home, full of wandering, perplexity and challenge.

Such unease is part of the true nature of home. Commenting on the phrase ger toshav, ‘stranger-resident’ the Maggid of Dubno explains we should all feel both comfortable in the world and out of place in it, like residents and like strangers. Echoing this insight is the philosopher Adorno: “The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one’s own home.”

The realization that things are not entirely safe, or perfect, is one that everyone in the world acknowledges in a time of pandemic. But even in normal times there is no place of perfect safety, and the awakened spirit hears the low hum of peril beneath everyday life. Therefore we are energized to make things better, to take care of one another, to improve the world. If home is flawless we need not repair and to grow. This is an unredeemed world, an imperfect home; so we have much work to do.

Before my freshman year of college, the synagogue in which I was raised moved to a new location. I visited the old synagogue, now abandoned, and when asked in freshman English to write about a personal experience I wrote the following. Written more than forty years ago, I rediscovered it in a drawer, right before Yom Kippur.

Slowly I ascend the steps of the synagogue.
I remember when throngs of worshippers would have been
at my side
walking with me
ages ago.
The temple has moved to another place.
As I climb I feel I am saying goodbye to too much.

I open the door
carefully
as if I would otherwise awaken things better left asleep.
The corridor looks the same, but it no longer leads
anywhere…
for a moment I’m not sure I wish to see…

It hasn’t changed.
The majestic pulpit still towers over rows and rows of seats,
yet they are empty.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen them that way before.
No bewildered children, no annoyed parents.
Gone are the old men who have come to cry
to the One
they know
listens.
The giant stained glass windows still offer their mute message:
there are no takers.
The sun continues to shine through them,
illuminating nothing.

I stoop to pick up a piece of paper left on the floor—
a page torn from a prayerbook.
Its words lament the exile of the children of Israel
from their land. Two thousand years
have passed since it was written:
“How doth the city sit solitary,
that was full of people!
How is she become as a widow!
She that was great among nations and princess among the provinces,
how is she become as a tributary!”
Gently, knowingly, I replace the paper.

I approach the Aron Kodesh – the holy ark
where the Torah scrolls were once kept.
When the curtain is opened all rise out of respect.
Slowly I open the curtain:
no one stands, no one sings.
There is no reverence for emptiness.
The holiest place in the synagogue:
“How is she become as a widow.”
Hurt and confused, I shut the curtain.

I look out upon the seats,
standing where I stood
when I first chanted the prayers
before the congregation.
years of study in preparation
for that moment
and all it meant.
On that very spot my father told me of his dreams and hopes
for me.
Now as I chant those same prayers,
they echo and fly back to me,
hollow
and taunting.
Rushing toward the exit, I turn back for
one last
look.
I hadn’t noticed it before. The final tribute to
the remoteness of the past.
On the pulpit hangs the eternal light, the light that is to burn forever.
It is out.
And I leave.

Outside.
I take a deep breath of the present.
And once again,
the synagogue is empty.
Except for the piece of myself that I left behind.

Please click HERE to see the original document.

On Rosh Hashanah I spoke about Ahavath Yisrael, loving the Jewish people, and was told by a friend that some young people he spoke to found it elitist and distasteful. Permit me three responses:

1 — Had an Irishman said he loved all the Irish, or an Albanian said she loved all Albanians, my guess is these people would have found it an endearing expression of national pride. Loving and embracing your people of origin is not to hate or look down on others; it is an affirmation made daily by members of almost every group, religious, ethnic, cultural and national.

2 — Jews, for all their supposed ‘tribalism’ are deeply universal. Unlike Christianity, Islam or Greek culture, our new year celebrates not the beginning of Judaism but the beginning of the world. Unlike classical Christianity, Judaism insists that one has to be righteous, not Jewish, to attain eternal life. And atop the most universal institution in the world, the United Nations, there is a quote from Isaiah, a Jewish prophet. (And on the Statue of Liberty, welcoming people from all over the world, a poem by a Jewish poetess.)

3 — Of course there are bad Jews, venal Jews, cruel Jews. No one doubts or disputes that. But we are 0.2% of the population of a world that has often sought to destroy us. To celebrate our survival and accomplishments — to celebrate one another — is the most natural thing in the world. What is “distasteful” is depriving Jews alone, of all the world’s many groups, of that privilege.

Each year we wonder, “who will live and who will die?” We know that the question is genuine, but this year it feels more urgent than it has in my lifetime.

By most measures human life has grown better, more prosperous and longer. Hunger and disease — the pandemic obviously aside — have declined. These processes are gradual, and don’t make the morning paper. Humanity as a whole lives in a more comfortable and kinder world than ever before.

Nonetheless there is so much that looms as danger. Amidst the pandemic, the fires, the social unrest, random outbursts of violence and so much more, we identify with the anxiety of our ancestors. On a deep level each of us must feel that we are so small and the forces that determine much of our lives so great.

That humility and recognition are the spirit of Yom Kippur. Before you, God, all of our gifts we are as passing shadows. We try our best and fail. We are grateful for Your gifts but too often squander them. Help us be better; help us grow; grant us another year of life to refashion our souls and reach beyond our limitations, and reach toward You.

For five years Hamas has kept the bodies of two soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul. For six years, an Israeli citizen Avraham Mengistu, has been held by Hamas.

One of the byproducts of distress is that it wipes out the distress of others. As the world has been struggling with the pandemic and all kinds of social unrest, many of us have forgotten the heartbreak of the families who remember their loved ones remains untended and unburied, or even worse, imagine the fate of their family member who remains captive.

The repatriation of Jewish captives, pidyon shevuyim, is among the highest mitzvot. In Jewish history ransoms were raised, deals offered and heroic rescues mounted to bring home Jews who had been kidnapped or whose remains were withheld. In many cases, such as the famous case of Gilad Shalit, soldiers and others were finally brought home.

As this new year begins, we ask Jews around the world and the government of Israel to remember those who are not yet home. May God give their families strength and may we see their swift return to our land.

“Live out loud, you are unique, celebrate who you are.” Our world is awash in such slogans. Self-esteem is prized, self-assertion applauded and spiking the football, rather than arrogance, is considered justifiable pride.

There is another way of being in this world described in our tradition. The three Hebrew letters for “me” – aleph, nun and yod, can be rearranged to spell “ayin” which means “nothing.” When I was learning counseling I read of the practice of “bittul hayesh” – nullifying the self, in order to make space for others. It is not a lack of belief in one’s own worth, but a lack of need for constant assertion and expansion.

Judaism has a powerful model of contraction, tsimtsum, in human relations. The kabbalists teach that God contracted to permit room for the world, as parents must step back to allow children to grow. Sometimes the self is better served by restraint than by overflow. In her marvelous book “Quiet,” on the “power of introverts,” Susan Cain describes how rich is the experience and contribution of those who are often seen as sitting on the sidelines. Given the teachings of Judaism it is no surprise that she dedicates the book to her grandfather, a Rabbi, who “spoke so eloquently the language of quiet.”

The one who blows the shofar produces the sound from within his or her body. The force of the shofar is breath, in Hebrew, ruah – spirit. In order to create the sound properly one must bring one’s spirit to the world.

The second lesson is how one creates the sound. As Cynthia Ozick observed, the shofar has a broad end and a narrow end. If you begin by blowing in the broad end, you get nothing. But if you blow in the narrow end you get a sound everyone can hear. Judaism may seem like one small tradition in a large world. But Jews who have spoken from our tradition have been heard throughout the ages and throughout the world. By blowing in the narrow end, we offered a universal message.

Finally the mitzvah is not the blowing of the shofar, but hearing it. Each Jew is commanded to hear ‘kol shofar’ – the voice of the shofar. The shofar is a lesson in listening. It rings throughout the ages, from our ancestors to us, from us to one another and to God. May the sounds of the shofar promise a year of healing and hope for Israel and for the world.

While the pandemic has been disastrous for many activities, it has been a boon for chess. Online tournaments have exploded, thanks largely to the world champion Magnus Carlsen. I became a chess player at 14, and fell so deeply into the game that on my bedroom door in high school, was a quote from Grandmaster Isaiah Horowitz: “Of chess they say that life is not long enough for it, but that is the fault of life, not chess.”

So it was a particular thrill to have lunch last year with Garry Kasparov, perhaps the greatest player in the history of the game. Later he sent me his book “How Life Imitates Chess.” Particularly now, chess has lessons to teach us. It exposes self-deception, because you may think you are doing well only to discover the reverse. It requires patience, but also demands decision. It is humbling – even the greatest lose, and there is no bad bounce of the ball, the responsibility for your moves is always yours.

The great world champion Emanuel Lasker, wrote: “On the chessboard lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a life; the merciless fact, culminating in checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.” Lasker was a friend of Einstein’s and a philosopher and mathematician. Kasparov is a political activist and his far flung energies embrace a variety of fields. Both, as with an astonishing number of great chess players, have Jewish roots. The insistence on self-examination, thoughtfulness, refutations and improvements, honesty, innovation, strategy, artistry and passion drive students of each to search for a kind of ultimate truth. There are 63 tractates in the Talmud and 64 squares on the board. The human mind will never fully master either for each holds limitless riches and wonders.

When John Churchill, later the Duke of Marlborough, became a peer in 1682, another lord asked Churchill with a sneer, “whose descendant are you?” Churchill answered, “I am not a descendant. I am an ancestor.”

Churchill was prophetic, as he was in fact the ancestor of Winston Churchill, who would be his eventual biographer as well. Moreover, his response challenges all of us. We know what we have gotten from the past — what will we give to the future?

This is a crucial time for the Jewish community. Synagogues are struggling with membership. Jewish schools, camps and federations are looking for support. What message do we give to our children if we abandon our tradition and its institutions at a difficult time? We are the descendants of a people who braved both trials and tragedies to hand us a tradition of incomparable richness. Now is the time to decide what we will do with what we have been given. It is the time to make choices about what we will hand on to those who come after. Renew your membership or start a new one. You are not only a descendant — you are an ancestor.

More than 50 years ago, Rose Macaulay wrote a book about the delight we take in looking at archeological and antiquarian sites. In “Pleasure of Ruins” she catalogues the various reasons human beings like to look at the remains of other civilizations, from wonder at what they have accomplished to delight at having outlived them.

Visiting the oracle of Delphi when on sabbatical, I felt the strange thrill of being in a place so sacred to the ancient Greeks, where Socrates learned that he was the wisest man for acknowledging his own ignorance, where generations came to discover their fate. Yet now it was a curiosity, with guides and photos and regular buses bringing people from around the world.

How different are the ruins of Jerusalem. Here we go not as tourists but as pilgrims. People are drawn to the remains of the ancient Temple less from curiosity than from reverence. Voices continue to whisper through the ruins. The same prayers are recited there that were recited when the Temple stood. The spirit that created them endures. For the Jewish people, unique among the ancient nations of the world, ruin was a prelude to renewal.