Ahz mah (So what)

We tend to think of generosity primarily in terms of the willingness to give money or material possessions. But actually, in Jewish tradition, financial giving to support the community as well as those less fortunate is considered an obligation, not an expression of generosity. Tsedakah, which is often erroneously translated as charity, actually means righteousness. So financial giving is understood to be an expression of justice and covenant, not so much of generosity. Supporting the community as well as those less fortunate is just what we Jews do, regardless of how we feel. Generosity, on the other hand, is understood in Judaism to be a movement of the heart. There is a quality of openness and giving that arises in the heart and manifests as a sharing of self as well as a sharing of material possessions. I believe that generosity is both an attitude and an activity. It is a fundamental spiritual practice, closely associated with the practice of gratitude. Generosity is about acts of...

Wavy Gravy was, and continues to be, a serious social activist and philanthropist as well as a very funny clown. In his 70s now, he is perhaps best known for his role as m.c. at Woodstock 40 years ago. Many of his impromptu statements back then became enshrined as 60s slogans. My favorite: “We’re all bozos on this bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.” Believe it or not, this is one of the deepest messages of the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur: We are stumbling, bumbling, goofy human beings. We keep trying, and we keep falling on our faces, and it’s all okay. We’re doing the best we can. And we’re all on the same bus, together. But as Elizabeth Lesser writes in her wonderful book “Broken Open,” the source of our suffering is that we keep imagining that there is some other bus on which the passengers are all healthy, happy, gorgeous, and well-dressed! But that’s an illusion, and Yom Kippur is about shattering illusions. We are all just lovable, flawed bozos on this bus calle...

In the Jewish mystical understanding of human nature (humans being a microcosm of the cosmos as a whole), there is a dynamic tension between the forces of lovingkindness and strict judgment. Chesed is the Hebrew word for lovingkindness. Gevurah is strict judgment. Too much of one at the expense of the other, and life is intolerable. Both in our emotional life, and in our interactions with others, the healthy goal is balance. What some people call the Inner Judge is a manifestation of too much Gevurah, strict judgment insufficiently balanced by lovingkindness. I know from personal experience, this voice of judgment can be merciless. Unrelenting. Taking it a step further, the mystics boldly assert that Gevurah untempered by Chesed is the source of evil in the world. Rosh Hashanah teters on this balance between Gevurah and Chesed. Our high holiday liturgy is filled with expressions of the cosmic quality of judgment. It’s hard to miss. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were designed by the anci...

It's a sad-and-funny thing that something like 97% of new year's resolutions evaporate within months, sometimes within weeks or even days - and then they are solemnly resolved again the following January. Are we kidding ourselves year after year? What's going on here? And if Rosh Hashanah the Jewish New Year is analogous to January 1st, then are all our words of prayer hypocritical? Rosh Hashanah is all about teshuvah - turning around, turning back, returning... in other words, about re-volutions. Classically, teshuvah refers to the process of regretting an action, saying you're sorry, and intending not to do that regretful action again in the future. Another way to think about the process is as an inward spiral: Teshuvah is about coming back again and again to who we really are, who we are meant to be. This true self has nothing to do with how much we weigh, or how much we exercise, or how much money we have saved (the focus of typical American New Year's resolutio...