Ahz mah (So what)

When I did my chaplaincy training years ago, one of the most striking differences I encountered between myself and my Christian colleagues was the ease and frequency with which they uttered "spontaneous" prayers and blessings. My sense is that as more rabbis go through chaplaincy training, this skill is gaining in popularity. In my own work, I have found that there are situations where it is both appropriate and powerful. Still, I continue to ponder the relative merits of spontaneous versus established blessings. In the biblical Book of Numbers, set in the wilderness, we encounter instructions for the Israelite priests on what to say when blessing the people. The words of this brief blessing, considered by scholars to be extremely ancient, are beloved in both Jewish and Christian contexts to this day: May God bless you and guard you. May God shine God's face upon you and be gracious to you. May God lift up God's face toward you and grant you peace. Rabbinic commentato...

When I was about eight or nine years old, I wrote a letter to the President of the United States. My older brother was not keeping his fish tank clean, I told the president, and I was distraught at the possibility that the fish might die. My mother apparently intercepted that letter before it reached the mailbox. I don't remember any other details of the incident, but I do have a pretty good sense of how I felt... because it is a familiar feeling even decades later. What was I feeling? Outrage, righteous indignation - and a sense of unfairness - because he got the fish tank when I was the one who wanted it (and was, of course, the one more worthy of having it). My concern for the fish may have been genuine, but I imagine that my distress was primarily due to my sibling envy and sense of unfairness. The Torah is full of expressions of envy, particularly (although not always) between siblings. In the book of Genesis alone, there are many famous examples: Cain and Abel, Sarah and Hag...

One summer evening, my friend Leah and her daughter took me and Alan and Jacob away from the bustling, tourist-filled streets of Bar Harbor Village to the end of a side street. It was low tide, and a sand bar leading to a nearby island had emerged. It was dark, about 9:00pm, and a fog hung over the water. With only the faint glow from distant lights, we set out to cross the sand bar. No one spoke. We were all concentrating on feeling our way forward in the dark. The salty air was so moist that our hair was wet. As I took one step at a time, unable to see my feet, I had an "aha" moment. Here was a window into the mythic experience of the Israelites crossing the Sea of Reeds out of slavery! The water is "parted" - temporarily - and passage across the sand bar is possible. But for how long? And how far is it, and how long will it take us? Who can see where we're headed? How do we move forward when we can't even see two steps in front of us? How to trust that th...

How many times have we heard the expression, or said it ourselves: "I don't just want to be a number"? Jews traditionally have a complex attitude regarding the notion of counting people. In fact, we have a very ancient tradition of avoiding counting people directly. With roots tracing back to the Bible itself (and likely earlier), counting people directly has been considered taboo. When counting was necessary, as for a military census, it was supposed to be done indirectly - for example by having all the eligible men contribute a half-shekel coin and then counting the coins instead of the men. When we need to know if there are ten Jews present to make a minyan, a quorum for public prayer, it is traditionally forbidden to simply count - rather we are taught to count indirectly by reciting a biblical verse (such as from Psalms) containing exactly ten words. Is all of this merely superstition? In this week's Torah reading from the beginning of the Book of Numbers, the Is...

The ancient impulse to hold back chaos is something we can relate to. The world feels very chaotic and frightening sometimes (perhaps often). Disasters strike. Innocent people suffer. It could happen to us - it does happen to us. So it becomes a very real question - How do we create space in our physical world that will provide some spiritual structure for holding back chaos? In the ancient realm of the book of Genesis, holy space is found - it is encountered. For example, when Jacob dreams of a stairway/ladder with angelic messengers ascending and descending, he wakes up and expresses awe at having happened upon a holy place. By contrast, in the equally valid worldview of the book of Leviticus, holy space is created. You want God's presence in your life? In the life of your community? It's up to you to create the space, to set up boundaries to hold back the chaos of the world. So what is this book of Leviticus? If you think of the Torah - the Five Books of Moses - as a story ...

Remember when I wrote back in September about re-learning how to swim? Well, I'm still at it! Turns out that there are several distinct pieces of the process that I am having to unlearn and re-learn - and that takes time. I haven't yet gotten to the point of being ready to put all the pieces together. So in addition to practicing breathing, stroking, kicking, etc, I find that I am practicing patience. Turns out that change in our congregation is kind of like that, too. We are moving forward in a variety of ways, and putting all the pieces together is going to take patience. Along the way, I would like to urge everyone to practice not only patience but also generosity. There are many ways to practice generosity, right? - giving of your time, energy, patience, creativity, attention, talent, and yes - your money, too. The more you give of yourself, the better you feel and the deeper the connections you create in the community. Remember what Mother Teresa said: "In this li...

Religious education is a puzzle and a challenge. Jewish religious education is perhaps even more of a puzzle and a challenge, because Judaism is a culture overlapping with a religion. How are cultural and religious values best transmitted from one generation to the next? Rivers of ink have been spilled about the merits and pitfalls of various types of Jewish education, and about the "watering-down" of Jewish knowledge with each generation, etc; I can't begin to address all of that here. I just want to speak from the heart: We need to have the courage to leave behind the post-WWII model of religious education that no longer serves our purposes today. In fact, it hasn't served our purposes for several decades! - but somehow we keep re-creating it, perhaps simply because it feels familiar. But the lesson of the past several decades is clear: Sending the children off to religious school and hoping in some vague way that someone else will "make them Jewish" - whe...

In the Torah scroll, there are a handful of scribal oddities - letters that are too big or too small, or upside down or backwards, or with dots over them - and for whatever reason they were originally written that way, the tradition demands that those oddities be preserved. As a result, a rich tradition of interpretation has developed to find meaning in these oddities, because it is believed that every aspect of the Torah is precious and has something to teach us. One of those scribal oddities appears at the beginning of the book of Leviticus. The first word of the first chapter of the book of Leviticus is va-yikra. The first verse says: Va-yikra el Moshe/God called to Moses. In the word va-yikra, the final letter - the letter aleph - is smaller than the rest of the letters. So what meaning could there be in one tiny letter? There is a Hasidic teaching that this tiny aleph is a symbolic hint of the humility of Moses, who is traditionally said to have been the most humble man in history...

How often do we reveal our "alter-ego" publicly? Jewish tradition provides a safe space for doing precisely that once a year - on Purim, the topsy-turvy holiday in which nothing is quite what it appears to be, when silliness and irreverence are commanded , and our usual attempts at being "proper" and "mature" are turned on their heads. [Speaking of which: The Dean of my rabbinical school has a custom of doing headstands daily, in public, during the weeks leading up to Purim!] So don't be fooled into thinking that Purim is a holiday for children - it is much more than merely an opportunity for kids to dress in costumes and make noise in the sanctuary. (And by the way, if you read the text carefully, you'll discover that the Book of Esther is definitely R-rated.) The holiday of Purim is about hiding and revealing, on many levels. For example: * Esther hides her Jewish identity from the king until she chooses to reveal it in order to save herself and ...

Mother Teresa once said, "In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love." I believe that implicit in her message is that together, combining our "small things" over time, we can indeed do great things. I believe that this is the message of Yes we can. In his inauguration speech, President Obama said: "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task." I am inspired by our new president in a way I have not been inspired by a political leader in my adult life - inspired to renew my intention to do "small things with great love," and to see those small things as part of a greater whole. I am als...

There is a traditional Jewish practice of saying 100 brachot/blessings each day. Not long ago, two teams of students on Sunday morning came up with lists of things in their lives for which they would say a bracha/blessing. Between the two teams they came up with a long list. I would like to share a sampling from this list with everyone, because it is good to be reminded often of all the blessings in our lives: Waking up, brushing teeth, getting dressed, school, shelter, food, life, physical ability, brain, birds, hearing, talking, feeling, beauty, our heritage, democracy, freedom, stuffed animals, companions, technology, clothes, health, cars, plants, friends, parents, Shabbat, money, guidance from God, Torah, tools, doctors and dentists, hospitals, Jewish holidays, warmth, family, education, love, teachers, peace, trust, weather, the Jewish people, comfort, Israel, beautiful things, ugly things, water, toys, books, nature, pets, the Earth. Truly we all have much to be grateful for eve...

This is the time of year when I begin to think that hibernating animals have the right idea! We plan so many events in winter here in New England, only to have them canceled at the last minute due to weather. Perhaps it would be wiser to admit that we have no control, loosen up on the planning, and slow our pace down. That said, it is also true that one thing that we humans can do that hibernating animals probably cannot do is imagine a different reality. Our Jewish tradition is all about living within that paradox: on the one hand, accepting reality however it presents itself in each moment; and on the other hand, imagining a better world and working to bring it into being. Of course, there is a third option, manifested by our fortunate Snow Birds - denying reality and temporarily moving to Florida! And then there is a fourth option, which I would encourage for our community: gathering together as often as possible to share in the warmth of fellowship. Wherever you are this month, may...

I've been thinking a lot about swimming lately. Not because of the Olympics, but because a friend of mine is teaching me to swim all over again from the beginning! She is trained in Total Immersion swimming, which is light-years from the swim instruction I suffered through as a child. You may be surprised to hear that our ancient sages thought about swimming, too. The Talmud - an amazing repository of teachings, stories, and folk wisdom - tells us: The rabbis used to say that it is every parent's obligation to teach their children Torah, a trade, and some say how to swim too. I am curious what you think of this list. Of all the possible things in life that could have been included, how is it that these three things are the ones mentioned? Here is what I think: By saying "Torah," the ancient rabbis meant that if you learn how to access the wisdom of Torah, you will be able to handle whatever comes your way in life. (I believe this.) Then the rabbis said "a trade...