Once we were slaves in the land of Egypt

Pesach is a crazy time in the Jewish calendar, its kicks off the holiday season and it’s a big one. I’ve spent the last two weeks dreading it, complaining about everything involved with it and praying to gd that I’ll be ready in time with it and freaking out that I won’t. But last night I remembered something, that amid the rush of work, school, of getting my life together enough to check out for a week and a half I’d forgotten something.

I’d forgotten why. Why it’s important to clean out ones literal and figurative house. Why it’s important to take an accounting of what I’ve done in this last year and remember that it’s okay. It’s okay that I haven’t done everything I need to do, and yet I’ve managed to come a long way. Last year at this time I moved to Boston. After coming home from Israel, I broke free and found a place I could call my own. Last year the story of Am Israel’s fight to do the same resonated with me for that reason.

This year it’s a different story. Over the course of the last year I’ve settled down, found a place I can call my own, settled in for a while and filled my life with things that will ensure, for the foreseeable future that I’m staying where I am. The uncertainly that I felt last year is not gone, it’s just changed and I was thinking about that last night. About how last year I was struggling so much finding a place where I could be me, when I could be comfortable with the person I’m constantly becoming. This year it’s a new set of worries, and I’m reminded yet again; once we were slaves in the land of Egypt, now we are free.

Same theme, same questions, different answers and so it goes.

In my worry about the physical preparation for Passover I’d forgotten about the spiritual preparation. That’s what I was thinking about last night as I searched my house for stray chometz, stray pieces of ego. Passover reminds us all that once we were slaves, once we did not control our own destiny. But now we are free, free to choose who we are. It is up to us to make our own decisions about who we are, what we stand for. Cleaning for Passover, putting thought into what we keep in our homes for this ancient and sacred holiday isn’t just a decision about physical matters, it’s about how we are internally, in the depths of our truest being.

Last year I went out in search of new land, this year I sorted out the space I was in, in hopes of making it fresh, of making it better, of making it more my own.

May we all be blessed, this year to face new challenges and remember that it is we who define who we are, through our actions.

Once we were slaves in the land of Egypt, now we are free.

L’Shalom

Perfection

A thought on Passover from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, excerpts below:

The advent of Passover and Easter… beckons a deeper discussion about one of the principle differences between Judaism and Christianity… it is the difference between a values system based on struggle and a values system based on perfection.

The reason there are no perfect people in the Torah is that we don't believe in perfect people…Do you know what the perfect person lacks that the imperfect person has? An imperfect person fights to do what is right. He struggles with his conscience. When you fight for something, you demonstrate its worth.

Personally, I have no patience for perfect people. I find them boring, predictable, and judgmental. It is human beings whose goodness is real, yet purchased amid Herculean effort and struggle, whom I find so endlessly fascinating.

People used to think Martin Luther King Jr. was a saint… But then we discovered that in fact he was deeply human and did things that betrayed big character flaws. Suddenly... his true greatness was thereby manifest: He was flawed and frail and still he accomplished so much. You mean he was scared in front of those attack dogs and Bull Connor? He had to struggle to do those things? My G-d, that truly is a great man. To me, that is so much more inspiring. King wrestled with his conscience. Now he speaks to me, because I'm just like him. He was not an angel, not a saint, just a person who struggled to live righteously and courageously.

The truth is that perfection fosters dependency. It is an engine that actually retards human progress, because it continually tosses humans back on a sense of their own inadequacy. Rather than lift them up, it keeps them down.

Those for whom life has been so sweet and smooth, those who refuse to struggle, will never know the true taste of courage. They will never develop the ability to overcome obstacles to do what is right. They will never firmly establish that their convictions are not just feelings. Struggle is where the infinite value of goodness is established.

Voltaire

I’m a rationalist, not necessarily by choice but by nature. As a result I often find myself attracted to other rationalist writers. Recently I started reading bits and pieces of Voltaire. Voltaire was one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment. One of the pitfalls that rationalists tend to fall into especially when they get older is they get bitter and cynical. I hope to avoid this trap by always being cognizant of that and by always pushing myself to keep learning and growing. I’d like to think that with this attitude I can avoid some (being a rationalist I acknowledge that I won’t be able to avoid them all) of the downsides associated with growing older. However I do hope that in my effort to stay upbeat I don’t find myself growing out of touch with reality like some of those that I know and admire. With that said, here are a few wonderful quotes:

All sects are different, because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.

Silence

"The silence of God about the evils of the world, or our inability to hear his voice, is an inscrutable mystery. But the silence of man is a different matter. It confronts us, it challenges us, and it does not escape judgment."- Riccardo di Segni, Chief Rabbi of Rome

The fake crisis / What Obama is trying to do

Interesting article by David Rothkopf in Foreign Policy, a few selected quotes:

This is one of those diplomatic flareups that may trigger fire drills in the governments and polemic fireworks from pundits but which, upon analysis, is really much less than meets the eye. It's actually a fake crisis.

Obama, with few foreign-policy accomplishments to point to thus far in his young presidency, needs the peace process at least as much if not more than Netanyahu does. Time and leverage are, for the near term at least, on Netanyahu's side ... Further, the United States can't really turn its back on Israel and embrace the Palestinian side any more closely than it has because there is really no there there.

The U.S. argument that the Israelis need to be seen to be more quietly cooperative with U.S. efforts or Obama won't be able to effectively stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program is undercut by the fact that the United States won't, in the end, actually stop the Iranian nuclear program. We just don't have the domestic will or the international support to do so...When the Iranians do ultimately go nuclear, the United States will want and need a strong relationship with Israel more not less.

"Tough on your friends, weak with your enemies" is neither a common trait among great leaders nor is it a particularly good campaign bumper sticker.

And more from Jeffery Goldberg at the Atlantic:

I think it's fair to say that Obama is not trying to destroy America's relations with Israel; he's trying to organize Tzipi Livni's campaign for prime minister, or at least for her inclusion in a broad-based centrist government.

The goal is force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take into his government Livni's centrist Kadima Party (he has already tried to do this, but too much on his terms) and form a broad, 68-seat majority in Knesset that does not have to rely on gangsters, messianists and medievalists for votes.

Obama knows that this sort of stable, centrist coalition is the key to success.

Asking Hashem

From a wise friend:

Prayer is not about asking Hashem for what we need or want cause He already knows and like a loving father would give it to us anyway if we needed it...so why what the point of asking? Its to change ourselves to the point where that thing we are asking for becomes good for us. The analogy is as follows...a father gets a gift for his son, but holds off on giving him the gift until the child acknowledges the father as the giver which is what the father was waiting for...the recognition from the child maybe all the father is waiting for.

Lonely Atheists

I've been thinking about the review of Christopher Hitchen's all day, a few years ago when I was first starting along my road to increased observance, I came across this brilliant article by Michael Novak, that reviews the works of Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and it has always stuck with me. I feel that similarly to the other three authors Hitchen's misses the fundamental point about religion and other peoples relationship to it. I hope and pray that this will help clarify what I wrote earlier this morning.

The whole inner world of aware and self-questioning religious persons seems to be territory unexplored by our authors. All around them are millions who spend many moments each day (and hours each week) in communion with God. Yet of the silent and inward parts of these lives - and why these inner silences ring to those who share them so true, and seem more grounded in reality than anything else in life - our writers seem unaware. Surely, if our atheist friends were to reconsider their methods, and deepen their understanding of such terms as 'experience' and 'the empirical,' they might come closer to walking for a tentative while in the moccasins of so many of their more religious companions in life, who find theism more intellectually satisfying - less self-contradictory, less alienating from their own nature - than atheism.