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This Week’s Torah Reading

Hayei Sarah

HaYEI SaRAH—meaning "The Life of Sarah." Oddly enough, the parashah begins with Sarah's death. Abraham secures a burial place for his wife through the purchase of the Cave of Machpelah, which can be visited today in the West Bank city, Hebron. Abraham must then find a wife for his son, Isaac. Abraham’s servant succeeds in finding the perfect mate, Rebecca. Isaac and Rebecca marry. Rebecca is blessed by her brother, Laban, and father with words of a blessing we use even today for brides: O sister—may you grow into thousands and even myriads! Sadly, Abraham dies at the end of this parashah.

A SHABBAT THOUGHT

Advice is like cooking—you should try it first before feeding it to others.

~~ Herbert Browne ~~

WEB OF THE WEEK

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/arts/20070919_ALBUM_FEATURE/index.html

A photo album from a Nazi whose temporary home was Auschwitz.
An upsetting series of photos which shows how the "other side" lived--at Auschwitz.

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Restoring Hagar
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THE ANNUAL REVIEW OF MIDWAY’S HIGH HOLIDAY SERMONS

This week, we feature the Yom Kippur sermon of the CyberRav.

NEW EYES, NEW EARS, AND THE POWER OF KINDNESS

Rabbi Perry Raphael Rank
Yom Kippur, 5768 / 2007-09-19

Gemar hatimah tovah, everyone—we should all be sealed into the sefer hayyim, the Book of Life, for a great New Year and I wish all of you a tzom kal, an easy fast.

Around the Yamim Nora’im, the High Holidays, I always look for human interest stories that might bring a little inspiration to us all. We listen or read the news daily and there isn’t a whole lot there that will inspire us. And yet, the inspiration and creativity of every day human endeavors surround us, if only we knew where to look. The other day I caught a program on the radio that was focused on the brain and how it processes information. As an example of how society has taught us to decipher the sounds that cross though our ears, if you heard someone playing a single note on a trombone, you may not be able to identify the note but in the very least you could say that a note was sounded on that trombone. On the other hand, were you listening to a vacuum cleaner, unless you were a rather intense musician, you may not think about the sound you’re hearing as related to a note on some musical scale, but it is, and talented musicians with perfect pitch could probably tell you what note the vacuum cleaner was hitting. Anyway, I’m listening to this program and feeling a little silly with the fact that I found it so entertaining because really—how many other people in the New York area could be listening to a report on how the brain processes sound, especially those emitted from a running vacuum cleaner? The narrator then moved on to a discussion of a CD by a Woody Phillips. What Mr. Phillips does is he has arranged a CD of classical recordings, including Beethoven’s Fifth symphony, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, Georges Bizet’s Carmen, among many others, but none are performed with conventional instruments. The instruments he uses are table saws, hand saws, 50 gallon drums, hammers, hand planes, coke bottles, table saws, ratchets, pneumatic nailers, hand drills, and yes—a vacuum cleaner, and somehow, he emerges with frighteningly faithful renditions of these compositions in a collection entitled "Toolbox Classics."

You can imagine just how entertaining these arrangements are. But more than the comedy of it all is the utter ingeniousness of being able to take the mundane, the unremarkable, the typical that surrounds us and reframe it into something extraordinary and beautiful. It takes a special set of eyes and perhaps a special set of ears to be able to do that sort of thing. It is precisely the prescription that we all need for a new year. It’s also one of the most difficult things in the world to do.

All of us have had the sense, now and then, that nothing in life ever changes, that one day is like the next, and like that ancient sage Kohelet once said—

Whatever was, that is what will be;

That which has already been done, is destined to be repeated,

There is utterly nothing new under the sun! (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

Clearly it is a view with merit, yet a collection like Woody Phillips’ music would move me to believe that there is plenty of the new under the sun were it not for lazy eyes and ears that miss the different ways we could combine and recreate the world around us.

But in order to recreate the world, in order to make it new again, we need the time and patience to think about it, and the pace of our lives really militates against that type of quiet reflection. Between e-mails, cell phones, downloadable music, and instant photos sent wirelessly to just about anyone, anywhere in the world, our lives have become too fast and too speed-oriented. We are driven in unhealthy ways and forget not only about the creative, we even miss the obvious. The tale is told of a Mrs. Goldberg, a widow for 20 years, who used to go to the local post office every few weeks to purchase 15 stamps. She would never buy 100 stamps at a visit but only a small number of stamps and then she would return to the post office several weeks later for another purchase. One day, during the last two weeks of December, when the post office was jammed with people sending packages and gifts to loved ones, in comes Mrs. Goldberg, not a package in hand, and stands in the back, the last person in a line of some 25 people. The man right in front of her, her neighbor, recognizes her and greets her warmly. Noticing that she hasn’t a package in her hands, he asks why she has come to the post office. She tells him that she’s come to buy stamps. He thinks for a minute and says, "You know, Mrs. Goldberg, there’s a machine out in the corridor where you can purchase stamps." Mrs. Goldberg smiles and says, "I know." Her neighbor, unsure if she really understood, continues, "You know, Mrs. Goldberg, you take your credit card, you swipe it, you tell the machine how many stamps you want, and you’re done." Mrs. Goldberg smiles and says, "I know." The neighbor, still uncertain if Mrs. Goldberg really understood what he’s getting at, makes one more attempt. "You know, Mrs. Goldberg, if you were to use the machine, you wouldn’t have to wait 20 minutes in this long line." Mrs. Goldberg says, "I know but, the machine never asks me how my arthritis is."

In the Talmud we learn:

Rabbi Yitzhak states—Whoever gives a poor man a perutah (a coin)

is blessed in six ways

But whoever speaks kindly to a friend is blessed in eleven ways (Baba Batra 9b)

The point here is not so much the different ways in which people are blessed given their specific acts of kindness, but rather the premium placed upon kindness by taking out the time and saying a few kind words to another person. To give a perutah to a poor person takes a second, but to stop and say a few kind words, to look at that person and see that person and listen to that person and treat this person as someone worthy of your attention, that’s already a gift far more precious than a perutah. Giving tzedakah is great, according to Rabbi Yitzhak, but speaking kindly to another person is greater, by almost double.

Rabbi Yitzhak’s statement reveals to us his personal bias in which Judaism is rendered as the power of kindness in the world. And his view, and the view of so many of his colleagues, is very important, because as we know, there are multiple passages in the Torah which are harsh, punitive, and ruthless. A man who violated Shabbat by gathering sticks was stoned by the community in accordance with God’s ruling (see Numbers 15:32-36); Pinhas, Aaron’s grandson, slays an Israelite and his paramour because it was an illicit relationship and is praised for his zeal (see Numbers 25:1-13); and finally, the Torah offers us many rules whose punishments seem just a bit over the top given the nature of the crime, for example:

He who insults his mother or his father shall be put to death (Exodus 21:17)

If we took that and similar rulings literally, believe me, not a one of us would be alive today. And yet, Rabbi Yitzhak sees the other side to the Torah, a text filled with multiple mandates about kindness. The Torah worries a great deal about the vulnerable—the widow, the orphan, the deaf or the blind—and instructs us to treat them with kindness. The Torah encourages us to help a brother or sister in financial straits via interest-free loans. And the Torah repeatedly reminds us to be respectful of the non-Jew—even the Egyptians who enslaved us:

For you were a stranger in his land (Deuteronomy 23:8)

In Rabbi Yitzhak’s eyes, and in the eyes of so many of his colleagues, the many and sometimes conflicting rules in the Torah may have been of equal sanctity, but they were not of equal weight. If you took all the harsh rules, and placed them on one side of a scale, and all the kind rules, and placed them on the other side of the scale, the rules about kindness would push that scale downward because they are so much weightier and challenging than the other rules.

You shall not abhor an Egyptian

For you were a stranger in his land (Deuteronomy 23:8)

Think of how differently the Torah is asking us to see the Egyptian if it prohibits hatred of the people who enslaved us for over 400 years. Moreover, the ruling sounds like a rule about Egyptians, and it is, but it is as much a ruling about how we treat our family and our friends and our neighbors, because if we are bidden to rid our hearts of hatred toward the enemy, kal vahomer, how much more so must we rid our hearts of hatred toward members of our family, former friends, and neighbors. The trick is to begin seeing them and listening to them in a new way. It is possible to better appreciate their personal struggles, consider the challenges they’ve faced, reflect on the historical baggage they carry, and so forth. The promise of damaged relationships made whole is real if we dare permit ourselves to alter the way we see and listen to the world around us.

The other day I was thinking about what a fortunate accident it is that we are known as Jews. It may seem perfectly logical to us, but it clearly is an accident of history. Our father Abraham was not known as a Jew. Abraham was an Ivri, a Hebrew. The name may mean someone who crosses, for example, someone who crosses the Jordan river, perhaps from some distant land, as did our ancestors. Some have suggested the name is more likely a variation on the term afar, or dust, hearkening back to a time when we were nomads, wanderers in the wilderness, and therefore a very dusty people. The Twelve Tribes would not call themselves collectively as Jews, but rather as B’nei Yisrael, the Children of Israel, with Israel meaning "one who struggles with God." Individually, the Twelve Tribes probably referred to themselves by their tribal name—so someone from the tribe of Benjamin would have been a Benjaminite or someone from the tribe of Levi would be a Levite. The term "Jew" is most likely a derivative of the tribe of Judah, the one tribe that outlived the others before its final destruction in the year 586 BCE. And what does Judah mean? Judah comes from a Hebrew root meaning to give thanks. A Jew is one who is filled with gratitude. If there was only one quality that could define us as a people then the quality of gratefulness for our many blessings would be an outstanding choice. But in order to live life with a sense of gratitude, you have to see your problems and your troubles in a new light. Think for a minute about all those troubles, the problems and difficulties you face, the people who have either insulted or hurt you in someway, and put them on one side of a scale. Now take all your blessings, take the food that you are able to set on the table each night, and the health that you may enjoy, and the children or grandchildren that adore you, and the friends that you shmooze with, and put them on the other side of the scale. Which side descends further? I hope it’s the side with the blessings. I hope it’s the side that ought to fill our hearts with gratitude, not because we have so many more blessings than curses, but because the weight we assign to those blessings is so much more than the weight we assign to the curses. We are not necessarily in control of the troubles that we encounter, but we are in complete control of the weight we assign to them. We should see our troubles as fallen autumn leaves, light and crumbling. We should see our blessings as bricks of gold bullion. The blessings deserve the greater weight.

Back in 1998, a neurologist by the name of Frank R. Wilson wrote a book entitled, "The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture." In one experiment, he showed a group of musicians a video of hands that had been injured or were in some other way damaged trying to play various instruments—a violin, the piano, and so forth. Anyone with an ounce of compassion who saw the video would have been upset by the struggle these formerly brilliant hands now had in trying to play their instruments, but the effect on the musicians was even deeper. On several occasions, a musician would actually faint watching the video.

Wilson went on to theorize about the special relationship that exists between hand and brain. It’s a connection that all of us should be familiar with. How many of us have groped for the right word until our hand has given us the proper cue—

When you leave the room could you please flip off the …(hand motion) switch. Hey, does anyone know where the … (hand motion) remote is?
I can’t seem to find the …(hand motion) can opener.

There’s an old joke you might recall—How do you shut up a Jew? You tie his hands behind is back. The point is that our hands speak, but you would never arrive at that conclusion if you continued to look at the world conventionally. On a multiple choice exam, faced with the following task, complete the following sentence—Human beings speak with their a) mouths; b) ears; c) elbows, or d) hands, the only right answer would probably be "a) mouths" but I would challenge the makers of the test. Our hands sometimes speak more eloquently than our mouths.

Does God speak with His hands? Absolutely! Consider the following passage from Psalm 145, commonly known as Ashrei:

You open Your hand and feed all that which lives (Psalm 145:16)

God says many things in the Bible, but He never speaks better than when His hand is doing the speaking. To the extent that we take our cues from God, we too must learn to open our hands more, and thus communicate to all a message about the importance of kindness and gratitude in the whole scope of what it means to be a Jew.

One could easily scoff at such verses from the Bible and cynically dismiss the alleged generosity of God’s open hand. There are plenty of starving people in this world. Bread for the World Institute, a Washington DC based organization that monitors world-wide hunger and lobbies for legislation to mitigate the problem, indicates that some 850 million people world-wide go hungry each day. Each year, some six million children die of hunger related causes. The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that in 2006, 36.5 million Americans live in poverty. So what about this so-called open hand of God? Where exactly is it and why is it doing such a poor job? These are good questions, important questions, and legitimate questions. Now here’s an answer. Start reading the Bible with new eyes. Listen to its message with new ears. Psalm 145 is not an anatomy lesson; God has no physical hands. Psalm 145 is poetry; the hand of God is a metaphor. The thrust of its meaning is that God’s intent is to feed the world. It is now up to us, the animals with not one but two hands, to open those hands, and make good on God’s intention. Poetically, God does have hands. We are the hands of God.

There’s a story popular among ministers about an elderly woman, very poor, who lived in an impoverished rural area. She was a woman of deep faith and among her more colorful traits was her enthusiasm and energy when it came to matters of faith. In fact, she would rise each morning, go out onto the front porch and cry out, "Praise the Lord!" Now her next door neighbor was not so inclined in matters of faith and he was, in turn, as loud as she was about his atheism. So as soon as he heard "Praise the Lord" pierce the air, he shot back with an equally loud, "There ain’t no Lord." In spite of his cynicism, he wasn’t a bad fellow, but he was a bit mischievous, so he concocted a plan to once and for all teach his senior neighbor a lesson. He purchased a large bag of groceries and placed it on the old woman’s porch. Within a few minutes, as if on cue, the old woman went out onto the porch and seeing the groceries, shouted out an unusually enthusiastic "Praise the Lord!" The neighbor then stood up and shouted, "I bought those groceries for you and there ain’t no Lord," whereupon the old lady responded, "Lord, You not only sent me groceries, but you made the devil pay for it!" What a great way to see the power of God operating in the world!

Each year on Yom Kippur, the morning haftarah we read are the words of the great prophet Isaiah, who lived in the sixth century BCE, certainly after the destruction of the Temple. He was a straight shooter. He could be deeply critical of the Jewish people in one breath and bring them beautiful words of comfort and consolation in another. But the thing about Isaiah is that he had the ability to look at the Jewish world with new eyes and listen to the Jewish people with new ears. Each year, I struggle with his message because he sounds so negative about ritual. He is critical of those who fast, who starve their bodies, who put on sackcloth and ashes—thank God we don’t do that any more!—and thus seek proximity with God. But as a prophet, he forces us to rethink the meaning of spirituality.

I do wish he wasn’t so critical of ritual. Jewish ritual is the choreography of our values, and doing the dance is important. Each ritual teaches us something about who we are and what we value whether that ritual is putting up a mezuzah to remind us that among the building materials needed to produce a Jewish home is Torah to kashrut which teaches us that as guests in God’s home, not everything is ours for the taking. But I understand Isaiah because he is telling us that exercising the ritual without ultimately exercising the value it represents is at the heart of it, an empty and meaningless exercise. And so he writes:

…this is the fast I desire: to unlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin. (Isaiah 58:6-7)

Isaiah writes these words because he can see beyond the rituals we observe into the heart of the ritual and he dares us not to forget the essence of the ritual. On Yom Kippur he is essentially telling us that it is better to open the hand and feed the starving, than it is to close the mouth and starve the soul. Isaiah is telling us to let our hands speak louder than the prayers that pour from our mouths. We should all have enormous respect for that message. It is key to the proper observance of Yom Kippur.

And so, I ask all of you to examine the contents of your tool box—and now I do not now refer to hammers, or screw drivers or wrenches. I refer now to the talents we have as professionals or dabblers in a certain hobby that might be shared with others who would in some way be in need of those areas of specialty. You read, a skill you don’t even give a second thought to—but imagine the struggles of someone who cannot. Could you give of your time to help another learn how to read? You do simple math, a skill you don’t give a second thought to—but imagine the struggles of someone who cannot. Could you give of your time to help another master some fundamentals of arithmetic. Perhaps you’re a good listener. Could you dedicate your ears to a few homebound people who would love to speak with someone from time to time? If you enjoy building or construction, maybe you would want to take a few days off from work and get involved in a home construction project for the needy. Do you know your way around Long Island? Some of our new immigrant families do not and they could use some guidance as to medical care, dental care, summer camps, and so forth. There are Adopt-a-Family programs which exist and are looking for volunteers.

In the past, you may have paid good money to do something—take a vacation, go to a spa, eat at a fancy restaurant—that would in someway make you feel good. I want you to consider doing something that will cost you far less than any of those entertainments, but will make you feel better for months on end. The talents that are yours and yours alone you may think little of, or you may see them as an instrument to obtain a pay check, but to someone else, they may be the very symphony that they have waited for all their lives.

Are you still unsure of ways you can help? Here’s some good news. There are many, many websites dedicated to volunteerism with concrete references to organizations, hospitals and soup kitchens looking for help. And these places are not necessarily far away. The websites will ask for a zip code, and based on that zip code, list all the places in need of help within a 10, 15 or 25 mile radius, depending on how far you are willing to travel. Moreover, on Thursday, October 18, 8:15 PM, our own Linda Weiss will be convening a meeting of our Tikkun Olam committee. I hope you’ll consider attending and getting involved. A robust and active campaign to get all of us involved is long overdue, and the time has come to correct that, because as the prophet Isaiah would say, our fasts are only as good as the extent to which they move us to repair this broken world.

In Hebrew the New Year 5768 is spelled tav, shin samekh, het. Sometimes the Hebrew forms an acronym of significance, and this year, we are in luck. The Hebrew year spells out this message:

May this year be a year filled with signs of lovingkindness

And to that I can only say—Praise the Lord!

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