A Mile In Their Shoes

A little known secret about me is that I began college as a studio art major. I only last in that for a semester, because after a few nights in my freshman photography course, I dropped out. I could not take the criticism. Every few evenings, our professor asked us to bring in the prints that we had made for our various assignments. Each student put his or her photos up around our classroom. Then, the professor would walk around, making suggestions as to how we could improve our work.

By the third critique night, I was jazzed to show off my new prints. I had one in particular that I wanted the professor to notice. I placed it dead center on the wall, and it was the first one he commented on.

The professor was your classic artist. He wore a black turtleneck sweater and jeans, his hands were dried and cracked from years of exposure to the harsh darkroom chemicals, he had a greying goatee, and he wore heavy, black-rimmed glasses. The professor came up to the prints I had pinned to the wall, and he focused down on the one I wanted him to notice most. He placed about an inch and a half between the photograph and his nose. He lifted his glasses, resting them on his forehead, peering deeply into the shot, as though he were the photographer on the street looking through the camera’s viewfinder, composing the image. He was entering the physical space recorded in the print itself.

Then, just as intensely as he had approached, he lept back. “Mr. Hirsch, this photo fills me with a sense of existential fear,” he shouted, rolling his wrist around, his finger extended and pointing toward the photograph. He said nothing else as he continued on to other students’ works, leaving me standing there, open mouthed.

That was it. I called mercy. In hindsight, I have come to realize that the professor’s comment was a compliment. At 19 years-old, though, I heard it as criticism, and I received a flavor of existential fear. The next day I made an appointment with my advisor. I changed my major over to art history, which seemed like a safer major.

“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes,” the joke goes, “because then you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.” We are naturally critical of others. It is how we hold standards of ourselves and of others. Criticisms is easily given, and often hard to receive. It can be electric between individuals. It charges us up, and it makes the hair on our arms stand on end.

To discharge my discomfort with criticism, I have taken refuge in Hillel’s teaching, “Do not judge another until you are in his place” (Pirkei Avot 2:4). This is a kinder, wiser version of the old joke. Judgement has utility for individuals and for a community, but it is power that can so easily be misemployed if used by someone who does not understand it. That is why Hillel enjoins judgement to those who have shared similar situations. My miscalculation in the freshman photography course was that I did not think of the professor as one who could criticize my work, nor was I able to see that judgement and criticism would help me grow to be a better photographer and a better man.

Criticism enables us to hold ourselves and others to particular standards, it pushes us to excel and to surpass self-imposed boundaries. Through constructive criticism we grow and learn. Proper judgement can help determine in a conflict who was correct and who was wrong. Explicit within Hillel’s statement is that there are individuals fit to sit in judgement of others, namely, those who have been in similar, previous situations to our own. Those who are worthy of being judge and critic are individuals who have experience in what they judge. I wish I could go back and say thank you to the professor for helping me learn how criticism works.

More often than not, we make or we receive a judgement quickly and harshly. We jump to conclusions. If I was able to have another conversation with that professor, I would urge both of us to think and react slower to one another. Hillel urges us to be slow in our judgement. Joseph Telushkin notes, “The expression ‘to jump to a conclusion’ almost always has a negative connotation. Few of us jump to positive assessments about others, but we are likely to seize upon a comment someone has made, an action someone has or has not taken, and assume a deficit in a person’s character” (Hillel, 75). Imagine how much richer of a community we would be if we all acted with deliberation instead of snap judgements.

No better place is that seen than in the debates between Hillel and Shammai. Hillel often takes the expansive, optimistic view, while Shammai is the literalist, conservative type. Shammai is quick to judgement, slapping away the person with the yardstick who wants the whole Torah taught to him while he stands on one foot. Hillel is humble and patient, teaching expansively. He responds to the man who wants the whole Torah in a sentence, “What is hateful to you, do not do to another. The rest is commentary, now go and study” (BT Shabbat 31a).

What many do not realize about this story is that it is one of three on the same page of Talmud. Three individuals go first to Shammai, and ask ridiculous questions. He slaps the person away, and then that same person goes to Hillel. In each case, Hillel uses the opportunity to guide the questioner into a new perspective on the question. At the end of the three vignettes, the three individuals meet. They conclude, “Shammai’s great impatience sought to drive us from the world, but Hillel’s gentleness brought us under the wings of the Divine Presence.”

Judgement is necessary, and it takes place as Hillel calculates his response to the individual with the strange question. Hillel’s lesson in judgement teach that there is much to gain when we are judged fairly and wisely by those for whom it is appropriate to judge. And, we reward ourselves and those around us when we refrain from unnecessary critique of others.

Last Shabbat’s Inspiration

Last Shabbat’s Inspiration

Last week, our community was not able to come together for Shabbat evening because of the shelter-in-place order that was in effect for Newton, Boston, Brookline, and other communities in the greater Boston area. After that though, we experienced a powerful Shabbat morning that was healing and inspiring. On Saturday, we celebrated Ashley as she became bat mitzvah. I’d suggest that everyone read the blog piece from The Jewish Week linked here to learn more about what took place.

Fate or Destiny? Moving Forward

As I headed out the door to last week’s Interfaith Prayer Service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, I stopped for a split second, thinking “I’m going to be sitting there for quite a while. I should take something to read.” Uncertain about bringing any kind of electronic device with me  other than my cellphone (“No bags!,” they said), I grabbed a book from my overflowing bookshelf — one of the slimmest I could find. It was a copy of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s Kol Dodi Dofek – The Voice of My Beloved Knocks.  I had read part of the book years ago, but was interested in the fuller work. Since it was small, I grabbed it and headed to the service.

As it turned out, I spent most of the several hours I waited talking with friends, which was, in and of itself, soothing.  By the way, virtually every clergy friend in the row behind me had an iPad! Even so, in spurts, I cracked open the Rav’s book, and began from the start.  The first essay in the book is entitled “The Righteous Suffer.”  I found it quite ironic to be reading this exposition on the bad things that happen to good people in this world, while awaiting the start of an interfaith service to heal a community — and a world — deeply wounded,  physically, emotionally and spiritually, by the suffering of innocent people at the hands of actors who were at that point, as yet unknown.

In this opening essay, Rav Soloveitchik posits that we live our lives in a world in which there are two realms of existence: fate and destiny. In part, he writes: ”Judaism has always distinguished between an existence of fate and an existence of destiny. What is the nature of the existence of fate? It is an existence of compulsion, an existence of the type described by the Mishnah, ‘Against your will do you live out your life.’ (Avot 4:29), a pure factual existence, one link in a mechanical chain, devoid of meaning, direction, purpose, but subject to the forces of the environment unto which the individual has been cast by providence, without prior consultation. The ‘I’ of fate has the image of an object. As an object, he appears as made and not as maker…”  (Kol Dodi Dofek, pages 2-3) Fate, holds the Rav, is that over which we have no control.  To be sure, the feeling of a lack of control was widespread and deeply felt last week.

Rav Soloveitchik then proceeds to explain his understanding of destiny, which he reads as a countervailing reality to fate as he asks,  ”…What is the nature of the existence of destiny? It is an active mode of existence, one wherein man confronts the environment into which he was thrown, possessed of an understanding of his uniqueness, of his special worth of his freedom, and of his ability to struggle with his external circumstances without forfeiting either his independence or his selfhood. The motto of the ‘I’ of destiny is, “Against your will you are born and against your will you die, but you live of your own free will.” Man is born like an object, dies like an object, but possesses the ability to live like a subject, like a creator, an innovator, who can impress his own individual seal upon his life and can extricate himself from a mechanical type of existence and enter into a creative, active mode of being.” (Kol Dodi Dofek, pages 5-6)  In contrast to fate, destiny is the realm in which we can choose to act in order to impact our future — and that of the world around us.  The Rav’s message was a mighty powerful one to read sitting in that place  at that time.

Individually and collectively, last week was one in which we faced ultimate questions: Why do bad things happen to innocent people?  What drives individuals to act out in such horrific ways so as to cause such havoc and to inflict such suffering on so many people?  And there are many more questions out there – as well as resident in our kishkes. With one of the suspects in custody, there is a chance that  there may yet be some answers to some of our questions.  To be sure, no answers will restore what has been taken – the limbs and lives lost, the sense of celebration compromised nor the security breached.

In the days since Thursday’s service and Friday’s surreal events, I keep coming back to the question of how to respond to last week’s events, and of how we move forward in its aftermath.  Over Shabbat I was struck by the juxtaposition of our two Torah portions — Acharei Mot and Kedoshim.   Acharei Mot opens with reference to the death of two of Aaron’s sons after they offered eysh zarah – foreign fire on the altar. (Indeed, during Torah study on Shabbat morning, one participant, Barbara caught us all with her linkage of Aaron’s two sons and their misguided offering of “foreign fire” and the two brothers who terrorized our city with their “foreign fire.”)  Kedoshim — “Holy matters” deals with some of most inspiring and enduring values of our Jewish tradition.  Citing an interpretation I had heard years ago, in my comments I noted that Acharei Mot — “after death” we must strive to find our way back to the path of Kedoshim — the pursuit of holiness.

Shabbat Satisfied

On Friday morning, I shared on this blog a story I had recently heard from my friend and community leader, Lisa Berman. At the end of that post I prayed–given all that had been going in the week–that Shabbat would come speedily.

This was before we had to cancel services for our community, as we all stayed in lock down for the remainder of the evening. When we made the decision to cancel services, I was frustrated. Not only was I saddened that I would not get to be with my community when I needed to be with others, but I was angry that I was being robbed of Shabbat.

But Shabbat did come, and my anger abated. After all, we were able to gather as a community Saturday morning and to have services and Torah study together. I was so glad to get to be with people I hold dear, so glad to have Shabbat morning services together, and so glad to get to celebrate a special young woman as she became bat mitzvah.

Following our morning services, I turned to Rabbi Gurvis and said, “Okay. It’s time for my run.”

“Have fun,” he responded.

I changed into my running clothes, stretched out, and then headed out from Temple Shalom onto Commonwealth Avenue. This was my first run since the explosions at the finish line, and while I was on it, I encountered Shabbat.

I headed inbound on Comm Ave. up the first of three hills in Newton that everyone always identifies as the root of heartache along the marathon route. It was beautiful out. Calm. A little windy, but it was refreshing. It was how Shabbat is supposed to be.

My turn came at the corner of Comm Ave. and Walnut St. Those of us who have driven past that corner are familiar with the Johnny Kelley statue. Two men are running, crossing an invisible finish line, holding hands as they cross it together. Both are wearing this year’s marathon medals.

This is actually the same man at two ages in his life. Johnny Kelley ran the marathon until he was into his 80′s. All around the statue people have placed flowers and mementos of goodwill in the face of the destruction that took place at the Marathon’s finish line. Next year, two marathon finishers will gift their medals to the statue to stay there until the next. As I took all of this in, I let out a deep breath, and I headed back the way I came.

A new prayer for this Sunday: May we travel from strength to strength, and may we continue to repair this world. Because we deserve that repair.

Finding Comfort in an Uncomfortable Time

To say the least, it has been a sad and surreal week here in the Boston area.

As we gathered in the office of Newton Mayor Setti Warren prior to Wednesday evening’s Newton Community Vigil the mayor asked how the assembled clergy how folks in our congregations were reacting.  Several of the clergy gathered responded with different responses.  I remember commenting that my feeling was that “people are in shock.”

Standing on the steps outside Newton City Hall a short while later, as our community gathered for its vigil, there was a noticeable measure of comfort in being with friends, neighbors, and yes even folks we don’t know.  Simply being together as a community brought comfort in a very trying time.

Mayor Tom Menino

For me, that feeling was underscored and intensified as I sat in the congregation at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross yesterday for the Healing Our City Interfaith Service.  I had not planned on attending the event.  Guided by advice from leaders in our Jewish community, I planned on watching it, like most of you, on television. Then I awoke yesterday morning to messages from two Christian colleagues informing me that they had included me on a list of folks to attend the service.  I was deeply touched, and hurriedly dressed and headed for the Cathedral. I’m glad I did.

Governor Deval Patrick

Sitting in that community, and especially in a part of the assembled in which I sat surrounded by Christian, Muslim and Jewish colleagues, I found myself reminded even more potently of the power of community.  I know that power in my bones. It’s a feeling I often experience in our Temple Shalom community.  However, it’s not often that I have the opportunity to sit in the community, in the congregation, and simply feel that power.

President Barack Obama
at Heal Our City Interfaith Service

Hearing the words of my clergy colleagues, several of whom are friends; hearing Mayor Tom Menino (and watching him heroically project a strength that his body clearly belies); hearing our Governor and our President – all amounted to a powerful experience that brought a sense of comfort that has been elusive for so many of us this week.

As Jews, we live out our rituals and customs in our families and in the larger context of our communities.  Judaism has never been about solitary activity.  I often speak and write about community.  Indeed, Judaism is most powerful when we experience it in community. Whether it’s study, prayer, tikkun olam, celebration, and yes, gathering to find solace and comfort, we are hopelessly (or should I say hopefully) communal.  Indeed, I often speak of our “Temple Shalom family.”  For me, they are not mere words.  They are an expression of a feeling that was instilled in me as a child growing up in my home congregation.  It is a reality I have tried to recreate in each of the communities in which I have served over the course of my thirty years in the rabbinate.  When I teach children in our Temple Shalom family, I am teaching my children.  When I celebrate – a new child, a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, a wedding or whatever, I am with family.  When we suffer a loss, we share that loss.  This week we have felt that sense of shared loss, uncertainty and shakiness together.

Sitting in the congregation at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross I felt part of a larger family – the Boston clergy family, and the family of Greater Boston.  And indeed, we have all felt part of something larger as friends and other communities have reached out to surround us with their love and concern since Monday’s tragic events.

As I write these words, like many, I am watching the news reports as this very surreal day unfolds with the manhunt that has frozen our greater Boston area in place.  Let us pray that in the coming hours this crisis will come a conclusion without any further loss of innocent life.  Even as it hopefully will end quickly and definitively, the days ahead will still be ones of uncertainty as we take our first shaky steps back to normalcy – or perhaps I should say, to whatever our “new normal” will look like. As we do, let us remember to reach out to those around us – that the steps we take will be easier if taken together.

It is my hope and prayer that we will be able to gather for Shabbat worship this evening, to remember those who have died and pray for those in need of healing.  It is my hope that we will be able to lift our voices together in prayer and song – and to stand together as an affirmation of our commitment to embracing life, and all that is holy as together we walk towards wholeness and healing.

Let me end by echoing the words of my friend and dear colleague, Rabbi Neil Hirsch, “Please let Shabbat come.” And let it bring a sense of Shalom! 

Stay safe everyone – I hope we can gather tonight!

Please Let Shabbat Come

With events and news currently breaking I want to share a story that I have been thinking about since Monday’s explosions. A few weeks ago, before we would have been able to connect the words marathon and bombings, Lisa Berman–Temple Shalom congregant and Director of Education at Mayyim Hayyim–relayed to me a story about Pope John Paul II. It has lingered with me in full force. 

Pope John Paul II traveled constantly. In every trip he made, he met with Catholics and others all around the world. He would sit with those individuals, and he would often pray with them. As they prayed together, he would take on their prayers, their confessions, and their stories. The Pope weaved a cloak out of these experiences that he would wear and take with him from location to location. The more visits he made, the more prayers he took on, and the cloak would become heavier.

When the Pope would arrive back at the Vatican, no matter the hour of the day, no matter the day of the week, the first place he would go was St. Peter’s Basilica. He would make his way across the grand floor, straight to dais. Yet, he did not stay there. He made his way into the tombs underneath the Basilica, kneeling at St. Peter’s grave. There–alone–he would take that prayer-filled cloak, and lay it down at St. Peter’s feet.  All of those prayers, all of those confessions, all of those stories from the people he had met all around the world were left in Catholic safe, sacred territory. 

Every time the Pope traveled, he was witness to the brokenness and woundedness of our world. As he met with others, those breaks and wounds became his own. Yet he knew he could not let those weigh him down permanently. He had to take them somewhere, to leave them somewhere, to do something with that hurt. For Pope John Paul II, he transferred that weightiness through his own prayers at the feet of the man who was the first to hold his post.

Given the events of this week, we too need a place to take our prayers, our hurt, our brokenness, and our woundedness. If it were near the High Holidays, I would say that we Jews have Tashlich as an opportunity to cast off those worries. Yet, we need immediate help, and so I give thanks that Shabbat is coming. Events continue to break, and we do not know when it will be safe to go about our day. Should it be safe for us to congregate tonight, I cannot wait for us to be together, to share in prayer, and to lessen our burdens. Please, let beautiful Shabbat arrive. 

Passover and the Mitzvot

The following was originally delivered as a sermon at Passover Festival Morning services, March 26, 2013.

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In my understanding of it, the central text of the Haggadah is the line: “In every generation, one is obligated to see himself as if he were the one who went out from Egypt.”

The Exodus from Egypt is to be a personal and present experience for each of us. To this point, Michael Walzer reminds us in his book, Exodus & Revolution (and then adapted in our siddur, Mishkan T’fillah), that “Standing on the parted shores of history we still believe what we were taught before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot; that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt that there is a better place, a promised land; that the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness. That there is no way to get from here to there except by joining hands, marching together.”

We are all in this together. We are in it with one another here and now, and with every generation that has come before us, and every generation that we bring about. In the Pesach seder and at other moments, we are invited to recognize that it is we who experience liberation from Egyptian slavery; God takes us presently from Egypt to give us the ever-Promised Land.

How strange is it to bend time in such a manner? Upon what basis are we enjoined to experience life as if we are the ones who go out from Egypt?

The answer can be found in our text. Exodus 13:8 is quoted four times in our Haggadah: “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is on account of this that God did for me when I left Egypt.’”

On this verse, Rashi asks “On account of what?” What is the this in the biblical verse? On the accounting that each of us will be established by God’s mitzvot. The drive of liberation is that we go from Egyptian bondage into God’s direction. We are liberated in order to do mitzvot.

Last Shabbat, in our weekly Torah Study, we looked at the meaning of the word Tzav, the first significant word in last week’s parasha. God commands Moses to command Aaron and the other kohanim. “And God spoke to Moses saying, “Command Aaron and his sons, saying…” (Levitucus 6:1-2). God speaks to command Moses to command. It is the force of that second command within the sentence that raises questions: Is God not Metzaveh, the One who Commands? How is it that Moses also has the power to command those within the community? Rashi answers this problem by saying that tzav here is a code word. Tzav really means zaruz, to urge on.

As we studied this text, I was struck by the idea that observance of the mitzvot was never meant to be a simple task. Accepting one’s obligations takes intention and dedication. From time to time, we really do need to be urged and compelled to do them. Mitzvot are ritual, they are the regularized, routinized actions of Jews. We fill our days with rituals. We wake up, put our feet on the floor, stretch out our arms. Same as any other day. How often do we know that we’re supposed to brush our teeth, but go “eh… I can get away with skipping it today.”

We know that our daily rituals are actions that are good for us. Daily rituals keep us healthy, keep us sane, keep us balanced, and –in fact– can make us a holy people.

In every generation, we continue to serve God through mitzvot because we once had to serve another task-master. Still, our Jewish tradition is brilliant to recognize that from time to time, mitzvot may not feel like joys to fulfill, but that they can continue to feel like tasks forced upon us.

It would be disingenuous of me to claim that I find it easy to always fulfill mitzvot. As a dedicated Jew driven by the teaching of generations of reform Jewish thinkers, I am constantly in dialogue with the tradition, trying to dutifully practice actions that bring me closer to HaMetzaveh, the commanding God. Many have recognized this tension that exists for us to live in our world and be observant of God’s mitzvot. And as of late, I have found motivation from an unlikely source: Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch.  I have what to say about Chabad; still, one thing that I think they get right is the idea that observance leads to joy. Through the observance of mitzvot, through dedication to God’s commands, we are brought closer to God. And, joy emerges from that experience.

Rabbi Schneerson once wrote that “A hassid is he who puts his personal affairs aside and goes around lighting up the souls of Jews with the light of Torah and mitzvot. Jewish souls are in readiness to be lit. Sometimes they are around the corner. Sometimes they are in a wilderness or at sea. But there must be someone who disregards personal comforts and conveniences and goes out to put a light to these lamps. That is the function of a true hassid” (Cited in The Rebbe’s Army, 21).

We do not need to go putting aside our personal affairs, and we do not need to go to the ends of the earth to inspire other Jews toward God’s commands. Yet, I agree: Jewish souls are in readiness to be lit by the light of Torah and mitzvot. Through acts of justice and righteousness, we are lit by the light of Torah and mitzvot. Through the coming together of community in study and prayer, we are lit by the light of Torah and mitzvot. Via selfless caring we show toward others, we are lit by the light of Torah and mitzvot.

Torah and mitzvot happen in the present. They are what we do as Jews. And it is a normal thing for anyone to ask, “Why am I supposed to do such things?”

In Passover, we are given an answer to that key question: Because the Holy One of Blessing liberated us from Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Because of the miracles God did for our ancestors. Because God took us out of Egypt in order that we might stand at Sinai. All of us, we stand at Sinai, to receive the commandments, to learn what it is we as Jews are called upon to do, to define us, to guide us, and ultimately to give our lives particular meaning and worth. To proclaim na’aseh v’nishmah, we shall do these things and we shall come to an understanding of their meaning.

In every generation we are obligated to see ourselves as personally liberated from Egypt, for in every generation we are called upon to live by the mantle of mitzvot, as Jews have done for millennia.