Gods Word

Where is the Torah? Does it reside in the heavens with the angels? Or in a parchment scroll in the ark of the synagogue? Or with the rabbis and scholars?

It lives in the heart of each person who learns it, in the voice of the one who discusses it and in the life of the one who lives it.
That heart, that voice, that life - that, too, is G-d's word.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson זצ״ל

Bageling

This wonderful story was sent to me from this blogs most loyal reader, it has the ring of truth. When the new neighbors moved into the place next to mine, I ran into one of them moving in and he immediately said to me that he had noticed my mezuzah and knew that we would get along.

As it turns out he was bageling me, I just didn’t realize it until I read this.

Enjoy:

It all started when my friend -- who wears a kippah -- was back in college and suffering through a tedious lecture. As the professor droned on, a previously-unknown young woman leaned over and whispered in his ear: 'This class is as boring as my Zayde's seder.'

The woman knew that she did not 'look' Jewish, nor did she wear any identifying signs like a Star of David. So foregoing the awkward declaration, 'I'm Jewish,' the girl devised a more nuanced of heralding her heritage.

This incident launched a hypothesis which would henceforth be known as the Bagel Theory.

The Bagel Theory stands for the principle that we Jews, regardless of how observant or affiliated we are, have a powerful need to connect with one another. To that end, we find ways to 'bagel' each other - basically, to 'out' ourselves to fellow Jews.

There are two ways to bagel. The brave or simply unimaginative will tell you straight out that they are Jewish (a plain bagel). But the more creative will concoct subtler ways to let you know that they, too, are in the know.

I suspect that Jews have been bageling even before real bagels were invented. And while my husband and I may not have invented bageling, we do seem to have a steady diet of bagel encounters.

An early bagel favorite occurred when my kippah-wearing husband and I were dating, and we spent a Saturday evening at a funky coffee house with friends. We engaged in a few boisterous rounds of Boggle. Observing our fun, a couple of college students at a nearby table asked if they could play too. After we rattled the tray and furiously scribbled our words, it was time to read our lists aloud. One of the students, who sported a Rasta hat and goatee, proudly listed the word 'yad.' Unsuspecting, we inquired, 'What's a yad?' He said with a smirk, 'You know that pointer you read the Torah with.' Yes, we were bageled at Boggle.

On our honeymoon in Rome, we were standing at the top of the Spanish steps next to a middle-aged couple holding a map. The husband piped up in an obvious voice, 'I wonder where the synagogue is.' My husband and I exchanged a knowing look at this classic Roman bagel and proceeded to strike up a conversation with this lovely couple from Chicago. After we took them to the synagogue, they asked to join us at the kosher pizza shop. As we savored the cheese less arugula and shaved beef pizza - to this day the best pizza I have ever had - this non-religious couple marveled at traveling kosher and declared they would do so in the future, a satisfying bagel to be sure.

In the years since, our bagel encounters have become precious souvenirs, yiddishe knick-knacks from our family adventures in smaller Jewish communities. Like the time the little boy at the Coffee Bean in Pasadena, California, walked up to my husband, pulled out a mezuzah from around his neck, smiled and ran away (a non-verbal bagel!). Or our day trip to the pier in San Clemente, California when an impish girl in cornrows and bikini scampered over to say 'Good Shabbos.'

We have been bageled waiting at airline ticket counters, in elevators, at the supermarket checkout. On a recent trip abroad, however, we did not get bageled even once. That was in Israel where there is no need.

Ultimately, why do we feel this need to bagel? Does it stem from our shared patriarchs, our pedigree of discrimination and isolation, a common love of latkes or just the human predisposition to be cliquey? I maintain it is something more. Our sages say that all Jews were originally one interconnected soul which stood in unison at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. Now scattered across the Earth, as we encounter each other's Jewish souls, we recognize and reconnect with a piece of our divine selves.

The bagel may have a hole, but we bagel in a quest to feel whole.

That which is plain

Even that which is plain in the Torah is obscure, how much more so that which is already obscure - Judah Halevi

Thinking outside of the box

Is it possible to be both ‘liberal’ and ‘frum’, I’m asking this question not because its incredibly original but because one of my best friends from yeshiva and I often have this conversation. It’s a tired subject in many ways but for those of us who have spent time learning Torah, who have made difficult and often painful changes to our lives in response to what we’ve learned it’s a pertinent question.

The short answer is yes it is possible, the easiest way to do it when someone asks about a controversial issue like gay marriage, or evolution or anything else is to say I don’t personally agree with it but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Its how I’ve managed to reconcile the opposition to many decisions I’ve made, you don’t have to agree you just have to accept that I’m making a valid choice for myself and I’m not asking you to make the same decision or to agree with me, just to accept me.

So again I ask the question is it possible to believe in the Torah, to accept it as truth, to live by it and still accept people who live in ways that are against it?

For this I’d like to point to a few sources first is Dov Bear, a wonderful writer who is both a god fearing Jew and a liberal, to quote:

Rav Sa'adya Gaon states in Emunot v'Deyot 7:2 there are four conditions under which the Torah is not to be taken according to its literal meaning (1) When the plain meaning is rejected by common experience, or your senses; (2) When it is repudiated by obvious logic; (3) When it is contradicted by scripture; or (4) When it is opposed by tradition.

My next source is Rabbi Schmuley Botach in is most recent article title “No Holds Barred: The Jewish view of homosexuality” he writes:

People of faith insist that homosexuality is the most serious of sins because the Bible calls it an abomination.

But the word appears approximately 122 times in the Bible. Eating nonkosher food is an abomination (Deuteronomy 14:3). A woman returning to her first husband after being married in the interim is an abomination (Deut. 24:4). And bringing a blemished sacrifice on God’s altar is an abomination (Deut. 17:1.). Proverbs goes so far as to label envy, lying and gossip as that which “the Lord hates and are an abomination to Him” (3:32, 16:22).

As an Orthodox rabbi who reveres the Bible, I do not deny the biblical prohibition on male same-sex relationships. Rather, I simply place it in context.

There are 613 commandments in the Torah. One is to refrain from gay sex. Another is for men and women to marry and have children. So when Jewish gay couples come to me for counselling and tell me they have never been attracted to the opposite sex in their entire lives and are desperately alone, I tell them, “You have 611 commandments left. That should keep you busy. Now, go create a kosher home with a mezuza on the door. Turn off the TV on the Sabbath and share your festive meal with many guests. Put on tefillin and pray to God three times a day, for you are His beloved children. He desires you and seeks you out.”

The mistake of so many well-meaning people of faith is to believe that homosexuality is a moral rather than a religious sin. A moral sin involves injury to an innocent party. But who is being harmed when two, unattached, consenting adults are in a relationship? Rather, homosexuality is akin to the prohibition of lighting fire on the Sabbath or eating bread during Passover. There is nothing immoral about it, but it violates the divine will.

Next up is the Rationalist Jew who quotes Rav Hirsh on the theory of evolution:

Even if this notion were ever to gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, Jewish thought, unlike the reasoning of the high priest of that nation (probably a reference to Thomas Huxley, who advocated Darwinism with missionary fervor—N.S.), would nonetheless never summon us to revere a still extant representative of this primal form (an ape—N.S.) as the supposed ancestor of us all. Rather, Judaism in that case would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus, and one single law of “adaptation and heredity” in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that sets it apart from all other creatures. (“The Educational Value of Judaism,” Collected Writings, vol. VII, p. 264)

To wrap this up, does one have to be a conservative to be an observant Jew? Absolutely not, all one must do it accept gods sovereignty, accept the Torah’s law as binding, and do their best to live their life accordingly, the rest is commentary.

Choose Life

In Deuteronomy 30:19, ha kadosh baruch hu says, "I call this day upon heaven and earth as witnesses. I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life." A religious person might read the words "life" and "blessing" as refering to Torah and Mitzvot, and "death" and "curse" as referring to doing sins to disconnecting oneself from Torah and Mitzvot.

Chassidus teaches us that life and death, blessing and curse, are not two separate entities from which we must choose. But in fact the Torah is telling us something much deeper: that everything in existence has life and death in it. The external of something is the death of that thing, and the internal of something is the life of it.

Judaism is not something we do. It's who we are and the Torah and Mitzvot connect us to that innermost part of ourselves. Choose life, L'shalom.

In the Beginning of wisdom

I love autumn, I love waking up before the sun and feeling the cold seep through the windows (please check back with me in a month and a half when I’ll be cursing out the rain, sleet and snow that follows here in the great white north) autumn brings with it the annual cycle of holidays and a lost month of September. It was truly a crazy month and now I’m sitting and reflecting as I tend to do asking myself what did I learn? How did I grow? I’m not sure I have clear answers to anything most of the time. But these holidays and the way they are arranged do give a person the chance to spend time reflecting on themselves and on the year that was.

This is what I learned: I’ve grown a lot. Last year I had trouble following the services. If I got lost in the prayers I’d have to wait for a Kaddish or ask someone next to me where we were in order to get back on track. This year I could find my way back fairly quickly, I was even the one keeping many of those around me at the right spot. This is largely to do my command of Hebrew getting much, much better. I still have a long way to go on it but I’m getting there. Sometimes it’s hard to see but I realized this month that I can read fairly well even if I get nervous when reading out loud or for a crowd. That goes along with this observation: I’ve become more confident in my observance. I’ve learned when it’s okay to tell people to get off my back and when I need to accept a push or a prod. It hasn’t been easy. I still fight with my Rabbis and with my old friends and family seemingly about everything. There are still misunderstandings and tensions because I’ve made the choice to move from my old secular existence in the pursuit of an observant life. But it has its rewards as well.

Like experiencing for the second time the rapture that goes with making it through Yom Kippur, the ecstasy of the Neliah service at the end of the day when we trust that our prayers and confessions have been heard and accepted. I also built my first sukkah and was delighted to get to invite my neighbors to dwell in it with me (even if we did get rained out). Finally last week the final farewell for this holiday season came with Simchat Torah and with it the adventure of finding a new minyan, and the experience of feeling really connected with a new group of people. Getting to dance with the Torah with less inhibitions then I did last year and praying that next year I’ll truly be able to lose myself in the experience and dance like David HaMelach did before the ark as it was brought to Jerusalem without inhibition.

To top it all off I was called for the third aliyah to the Torah on Shabbat and I went up there with confidence and lead the minyan. That was the moment when it really hit me. For the last year I’d been struggling with taking a leadership role in my new community. In most situations I’m very vocal and assertive when I want to be but while starting the process of teshuva I’d become more reserved. Much of it had to do with feeling like a stranger in a foreign land wanting to feel at home but knowing that I was not. I used to dread being called up to the Torah so nervous and afraid of messing up the blessings that accompany it. But the other day I stepped up and just did it. It was a wonderful feeling and very affirming to feel with certainty in that moment that I do belong. That the work I’ve put in despite my knowledge that I can do more and do it better is paying off. It’s a blessing one I hope I can remember each and everyday of this new year.

Leading an observant Jewish lifestyle (as I now can safely say I do) has given me a greater appreciation for the sacredness of time. That I can’t just throw it away and that I should always be using it to get better. Taking so much time off this month, especially at the beginning of a hectic school / work time has had an even greater impact. For now we, the Jewish people decend to Egypt like our ancestors of old, as we will soon read about in the Torah. Not until Pesach will we again block off so much time for the sacred, for that which is eternal. May we all be blessed this year to learn and grow and look back at ourselves next year at this time and appreciate how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go. L’Shalom.

Pearls of wisdom from the Jewish Buddhist

Thought these were not only funny, but also fairly true, Enjoy.

Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish.

Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about?

There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy. Vey.

Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.

The Torah says, Love your neighbor as yourself. The Buddha says, There is no self. So, maybe we're off the hook

Parsha Va’etchanan

This week’s Parsha contains perhaps the most famous and important idea in all of Torah. The Shema has many important ideas in it, but none more important than the imperative to teach our children the ways of our people. In this sentence we learns that although a person might think that the mitzvah of learning Torah takes precedence over that of teaching others, the opposite is in fact true. We learn from the emphasis on teaching children the proper approach we should have when we begin to learn Torah.

When Jews do mitzvah’s we create a change in the physical world, we elevate physical objects and seemingly mundane tasks and make them holy buy using those objects in the performance of mitzvoth and in our service to gd. The practical performance of the mitzvah is therefore more important than the intentions of the person doing the deed. The action itself brings spiritual illumination into the world.

In contrast to this Torah learning’s purpose is to refine and elevate the individual. When a person engages in the act of studying Torah their intellect becomes united with the gdly wisdom contained within and that wisdom affects the individual. Aiding and helping us to be more gdly people whose thoughts and actions are holy. Therefore learning Torah is in essence a process of humbling oneself and nullifying oneself with the goal of approaching gd with an open heart and mind.

Before we learn Torah we must subjugate our own ego and ask ourselves what does the Torah want from me? Our Sages say that without this prerequisite, Torah learning can be like a poisonous drug. Without asking this question we can actually damage ourselves.

I’d like to thank, Chabad.org and the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt”l for this insight, Shabbat Shalom.