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Rise

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The memory of a righteous person is a blessing.

–Proverbs 10:7

At a family therapy session, one family member said something totally uncalled for, provocative, and insulting to another person. The remark was extremely irritating to me, even as an observer, and I anticipated an explosive outburst of outrage from the recipient. To my great surprise, the latter remained quiet and merely gestured to indicate that he was dismissing the comment as being unworthy of a response.

After the session, I complimented the man on his self-restraint. He explained, “A friend of mine once had a very angry outburst. During his rage he suffered a stroke from which he never regained consciousness.

“I am not afraid that if I become angry I would also suffer a stroke. However, what I and everyone else remember of my friend are the last words of his life, which were full of bitterness and hostility. That is not the way I wish to be remembered. Since no person can know exactly when one’s time is up, I made up my mind never to act in such a manner, so that if what I was doing was to be my last action on earth, I would not be remembered that way.”

The Talmud tells us that when Rabbi Eliezer told his disciples that a person should do teshuvah one day before his death, they asked, “How is a person to know when one will die?” Rabbi Eliezer answered, “Precisely! Therefore one should do teshuvah every day, since tomorrow may be one’s last day.”

The verse cited above may be explained in the same way. People should behave in a way that they would wish others to remember them, for that can indeed be a blessing.

Today I shall…

behave as though this day is the one by which I shall be remembered.

-Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
“Growing Each Day, Elul 10”
Aish.com

There’s more than a little anger flowing around on the Internet. Anyone with the ability to create a website or a blog potentially has access to a vast audience (though in reality, how many people really read all these messages), and whatever ax they have to grind, the website owner or blog writer freely grinds. I can’t exempt myself from such company since, given a good enough reason, I can go off half-cocked, just like the next guy.

But as we can see from the story told by Rabbi Twerski, if we allow hurt and anger to rule our lives, hostile words may be the last thing anyone remembers about us. Is that the sort of legacy you want to leave behind?

Many years ago, a psychologist friend of mine told me that anger is a “secondary emotion.” People don’t feel anger without some other emotion happening first. Usually it’s some sort of hurt or anxiety, like when you accidentally hit your finger with a hammer. First you feel pain, then you get mad at the hammer.

But there’s another kind of pain that people can suffer from, often for years or even decades. It’s the pain of unresolved fear or anxiety or loss. When we see a person fly off into a rage, all we are aware of is the rage, the unpleasantness of hearing such angry words and seeing someone screaming red-faced at us. We typically aren’t able to see behind the face at the sad, lost, and frightened person who is hiding beneath the anger and hostility.

Believe me, that “rager” isn’t half as angry at you or me as he or she is at themselves.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus said this?

And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” –Matthew 22:39-40 (ESV)

Why love your neighbor as yourself? What if you don’t even like yourself? What if you detest and loathe the person you are? How could those feelings in any way translate into loving another person and how in the world could Jesus make “love” a command? Emotionally, some people are just barely able to get by from day-to-day. Love would be an enormous stretch for them.

Right now, feel a greater sense of self-respect and respect for others. This will be reflected in how you speak and how you act. Repeat the words “self-respect and respect for others.”

If you had a greater amount of self-respect, what is one special thing you would do differently today?

What can you do today that would be an expression of greater respect for others?

-Rabbi Zelig Pliskin
“Today’s Daily Lift #560”
Aish.com

AbyssLook at what Rabbi Pliskin is saying. He’s associating self-respect with respect for other people. I’ve said in the past that Jesus directly connects the commandment to love God with the mitzvot of loving your neighbor. You cannot say you love your neighbor unless you love God and you cannot truly love God if you do not love your neighbor. But to love your neighbor; to respect him or her, you must also love and respect yourself.

No, I’m not suggesting leaping into the depths of narcissism, but as I’ve said in the past, depression robs us of the purpose, the meaning, the joy that God has created for all of our lives. It is the thief that takes from us who we really are.

Depression is not a sin, but it can take you to places lower than any sin.

-Chassidic saying

When you’re sitting at the bottom of the abyss, buried up to your neck in darkness and held in place by the heaviness of your chains, it can be extremely difficult to imagine any other type of life. And yet God did not create you to live in darkness and to exist in the shadows. While there are circumstances that can be difficult or even impossible to overcome physically; slavery, imprisonment, chronic brutality by a spouse or parent, God has always intended more for us.

Even when the physical or emotional torture and abuse has passed and we are free from those chains, often times, we continue to forge bonds of our own and then place ourselves in their power. Unfortunately, the darkness and chains that some people live in are invisible to the rest of us. All we see is the anger, the outbursts, the bullying, and the ugly way we are being treated by this person. We never see how terribly they are treating themselves.

If only there were a way out of the abyss; a way to rise up and climb into the light.

Higher consciousness is more than a state of mind.

It is a way of eating, of sleeping, of loving, of speaking, of doing business—it is apparent in all your ways.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Higher Mind”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

I know the climb seems insurmountable. I know you don’t even want to admit you are at the bottom of your well. It’s never too late. Not as long as you don’t give up hope. Not as long as you can still look up and see the light.

Look at the light. Begin your climb. Rise.

 

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Waking Up Alive

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In school, from an early age, Joe learned how stuff works. Joe learned how pulleys work, how electrical circuits work, how cells divide and how neurons process thoughts. He learned that the whole world is a big machine, and we are all little machines inside it.

Joe graduated college, got a job, got married, had kids.

Then Joe had a crisis. He needed help. He picked up books of today’s most popular genre—self-help. Lots of them. The books told him he has a soul, he has purpose, that’s there’s something beyond just being a pleasure-seeking machine.

Joe felt better. He was able to go back to work, keep his marriage and enjoy his kids.

There are many things the world needs. It needs nothing more than a soul.

Joe needed to know he has a soul.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Why the World Needs a Soul”
from the “Chassidic Thought” series
Chabad.org

Some people don’t know this. Some people will never learn this. Even for people who do know that they have a soul and that life has a broader purpose beyond the day-to-day grind, any pain that is strong enough or lasts long enough will knock that information right out of awareness.

And all that you’ll be about to think or feel is the pain.

Fortunately, Joe was able to overcome that, as were the equally fictional Julie and Sasha in Rabbi Freeman’s tale (which I highly encourage you to read in its entirety since it makes many good points).

Yesterday, I talked about how experiencing chronic emotional and spiritual pain can make it very difficult to connect to your purpose and to cling to the awareness of your soul in any meaningful way. Actually, that kind of pain makes it hard to even get up in the morning and care about whether you have a purpose or not. No matter how hard the soul strives to reach its Creator, the weight of a thousand, thousand failures, disappointments and criticisms presses the soul back into the dirt like the hand of a thoughtless child crushing a bug.

Yesterday, I also said this:

Supposedly, you can only go down so far before you start to rise up again. There is a principle in some areas of Judaism that says, “Every descent is for the sake of a future ascent.” Of course, that “ascent” might not occur until the world to come, which means you’re already dead and your life on earth hasn’t worked out at all. Besides, it’s just a saying. You can’t find it in the Bible.

There is an increasingly mythical sacred person buried under endless tons of rock, dirt, and pain. They keep trying to dig their way out of their cave-in using only splintered, bloody stumps of what’s left of their fingers. The light is dimming and the air is running out. When the Divine spark is extinguished, what will be left of the person who was supposed to be holy? When the abyss finally claims its victim, will God still be there to watch?

Is God watching when we’re about to surrender to the final abyss and does He see how tiny and fragile the flicking spark of our soul is under the oppression of darkness and hopelessness? Is He waiting for our ascent after the descent as well? Is He waiting in vain?

It is said “that which doesn’t kill you will usually try again.” But that assumes whatever is trying to kill you will succeed. What if it just hurts instead?

“What is unique about a Jewish martyr,” wrote Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch, “is that he would rather stay alive.”

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Martyrs for Life”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

You feel the Divine spark growing weaker within you. The light dims. Suddenly, you realize that you are in complete darkness. Your lungs labor for air and then there is none and your chest sucks in only dirt and dust and gravel. You close your eyes in anguish one last time welcoming a final oblivion.

But the next morning you wake up and realize you’re alive. On days like that, I still say:

I gratefully thank you living and existing King for restoring my soul to me with compassion.

Abundant is Your faithfulness.

–Modeh Ani

Somehow, the weight is still there but it’s lighter, just light enough to allow my chest to expand, let my lungs fill with air, let me exhale, and then inhale again. I open my eyes and I can see light. I sit up in bed, put my feet on the floor. And I can stand.

Why am I thanking God for being alive?

Because I have a soul and regardless of what the rest of me feels like, my soul is part of God and she (in Hebrew, words have gender and the Hebrew word for soul is feminine) thanks her maker for the restoration of life and the ability to continue in the service of the King.

Regardless of what the rest of me feels.

The need for meaning in our personal lives, the sense of responsibility for the ecology of our planet and the respect for the dignity of every human life—all these are sacrosanct today. Which is a good thing, because without them we would have destroyed ourselves in the century just past.

Yet they are entirely hollow. More than that: they are in utter conflict with the materialist concept of reality that we are taught in school and practice in the laboratory.

In short, we suffer an aching disconnect between our brains and our soul.

Our soul believes life has purpose and meaning, while our brains consider our bodies to be no more than a walking water-bottle of biochemical reactions. We teach small children to cry over the future of the elephants, the pandas and the blue whale, that they have a responsibility to save the planet and sustain it, and then we teach them that all this arrived due to a big bang and a series of accidents. We will not tolerate any voice that suggests the superiority of one family of human beings over another, all the while reducing this creature to a string of DNA in which serious differences have already been uncovered.

Nothing could be more precarious.

The world, existence, everything, is more than just how we feel at any given moment. No matter how much life can sometimes hurt, who we are and that we’re alive is more than just our circumstances, our history, our “excess baggage,” and how we perceive our lives. The world needs a soul because it needs a purpose. God built that into each and every human being, whether we choose to recognize that fact or not. Once we do, we’re “trapped” with that knowledge and we become aware of the Divine that lives within our secular, ordinary flesh. We are more and different than the sum of our wetware and our programming. The part of us that thanks God every morning for waking up alive means we can suffer what we think will kill us but still arise the next morning a living martyr.

Life means more than getting our way or winning or losing the endless arguments we find in the blogosphere and in social networking venues. It’s important to step away from the monitor and the keyboard and to realise that life doesn’t primarily occur in the Internet. It occurs in the connection between man and God, even if we only cry out to Him that it hurts, oh my does it hurt.

I recently read an article written by a fellow named Dr. Harlan Weisman called My 11 Months of Kaddish. It’s too long to quote the whole thing here, but it’s the story of a man who, in saying Kaddish for his deceased father everyday for 11 months, discovered himself, who he is as a Jew, and ultimately the relationship between his soul and God.

But he couldn’t do it until his father died and he began his bitter grief. However, Dr. Weisman didn’t really start to live again until the eleven months of saying Kaddish were over:

Next day, I went to shul, even though I didn’t have the obligation to say Kaddish anymore. But I needed the warmth and the continuity. And the minyan needed me, the tenth man. I’m repaying all those who took care of me for those 11 months. I’m helping those who continue their period of saying Kaddish, and I watch the new ones joining us, some just as unsure of what they’re doing as I was 11 months ago, as they stumble through their first Kaddish.

I go because it feels good to join the generations of Jews before me who were blessed with the same traditions.

I go because it makes the light inside me shine more brightly.

In the weeks following my last Kaddish, the hole inside of me opened and closed in unpredictable cycles. The sadness continued, coming and going, but gradually became less intense. And the hole gradually filled and stopped opening, just like the rabbi said. The sadness was pushed away by the knowledge that my father was not gone. He is with me today, with me every day. His values, his kindness, compassion, courage, endurance, fortitude, determination and tenacity to do what’s right, his commitment to justice and fairness, but most of all his love, is with me today, tomorrow and always. And I am passing these gifts onto my children, as they will to theirs, through the generations.

Sadness, grief, regret, self-loathing, depression…something’s trying to kill us, but our soul won’t let us die. We’ll just continue to suffer under the weight of a life we never wanted and cannot control. But something has to die for us to live again. Something must be extinguished, and we must let go of it before we realize that it is time for it to end.

Someday, we’ll pray to God, not just because we need Him, but because we want Him, too. Because being with God is the most natural and normal thing for us to do…like waking up in the morning, like breathing.

Our soul will never stop needing God. But we must realize that the rest of us needs and wants Him, too. Then we can stop simply existing in our suffering silence. Then we can begin to wake up alive.

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What Doesn’t Kill You

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:‫אחד המרבה ואחד הממעיט ובלבד שיכוין לבו לשמים. — ה‬

Whether one does a lot or a little, it is equal, as long as his intention is for the sake of Heaven – 5b

In his commentary to Hilchos Krias Sh’ma, the Or Zarua writes: “One who toils in Torah to the best of his ability might nevertheless feel that he has accomplished very little. He should know, however, that as long as he has done his best, he has earned the same reward as another who has toiled in Torah and who has accomplished much. The reward is commensurate with the effort. (Avos 5:23). The Yerushalmi even says that if one person toiled in Torah day and night for one hundred years, while another studied Torah to the utmost of his abilities for a shortened lifespan of twenty years, God rewards them equally.”

The Or Zarua concludes and rules that the same measure is used in terms of giving tzedaka and for all meritorious acts. When a person honestly does whatever he can and works to the fullest extent of his abilities, God judges it as if he has accomplished what is expected from him, and God will reward him accordingly.

Daf Yomi Digest
Gemara Gem
“To focus one’s heart for the sake of Heaven”
Berachos 5

I suppose this could be condensed down to something like, “do your best” or some similar statement. The “Gemara Gem,” from a Christian point of view, is probably thought of at best as a learned opinion or an encouraging statement, though as I’ve mentioned before that Christianity doesn’t look at Bible study as an act of loving God or something done for its own sake. In religious Judaism however, Torah study brings a Jew close to God in a way that most non-Jews will never understand. I certainly can’t claim any special insights myself.

But think of the implications here. For an observant Jew, failure to strive in Torah study or approaching Torah study with a rather casual attitude must be looked at by God in a less than complementary fashion. If Torah study is that important, whether you’re an accomplished scholar or someone who can hardly grasp the basics, it is your effort and devotion that results in God’s favor. Imagine how you’d feel if you didn’t try your best, but you still cared about merits from God. Or even imagine if you tried your best and still accomplished very little. You might still feel, regardless of what was quoted above, that you are a failure. You might even have friends or family who are more than willing to re-enforce that opinion of yourself, whether due to poor Torah study or any number of other disappointments.

Yesterday, I tried to explain that each of us, having been made in the image of God, are holy and sacred people. We should treat each other and ourselves with dignity and respect befitting someone who contains a precious spark of the Divine. However, I ended yesterday’s missive with a cautionary note:

Oh, one more thing. All this is far easier said than done, especially finding that “holy” guy in the mirror while I’m shaving in the morning.

Knowledge and insight are wonderful things but they don’t automatically result in wisdom and change, especially when your so-called “holiness” collides into the reality of day-to-day life.

Consider this.

Someone spends most of their life, for whatever reasons, believing that they have little to offer others and that whenever they try to do their best, failure is the result. They have hurt others without meaning to, hurt themselves, and generally made a mess of things. Finally, they come to the conclusion that everyone who they love and want to be close to, resents them and even sometimes hates them because of all the trouble they’ve caused.

At some point, this person, on a cognitive level, realizes that at least some of what they’re experiencing is self-constructed and self-maintained. They learn that “you are what you think” and after reading more self-help and inspirational material than they thought they could stand, they come to the realization that they have the power to change how they think and therefore, how they feel and behave.

So they give it a shot. Maybe they just practice some set of rules or habits that they’ve been told effective people use. Maybe they even go to a counselor of some sort to help get a direction and supportive feedback.

But it doesn’t work.

Here’s why.

Each day for twenty, thirty, forty years or more, this person has added ten pounds of weight on their back. I know ten pounds doesn’t sound like much, but if you added ten more pounds each day, day in and day out, 365 days a year for decade upon decade upon decade, it would eventually become tons…tons of weight on the person’s back. Tons of weight holding the person down.

Each time they employ some sort of method to change their thinking, their feeling, and their behavior, they are taking a small hammer and a wee chisel and chipping off a fleck here and a fragment there of fifty or sixty or seventy tons of concrete and steel, trying to lighten the load. After a few days or a few weeks or a few months, the person tries to stand up under the load. It doesn’t seem any lighter. They still can’t stand. They still can’t move.

On top of all this (no pun intended) the original mechanism of thoughts and perceptions that cause this person to process all outside input as negative and punitive is continuing to add more and more weight on. So as this person attempts to make their burden lighter at an extremely miniscule rate, the weight is being replaced faster than it can be removed, so in fact, change is not occurring at all or worse…the weight is getting even heavier.

Do you think when the Or Zarua says the following, that it applies to our much burdened individual?

When a person honestly does whatever he can and works to the fullest extent of his abilities, God judges it as if he has accomplished what is expected from him, and God will reward him accordingly.

I’m not sure it does. Here’s why.

Only when a person has peace of mind can he really feel love for humanity. Lack of peace of mind leads to animosity towards others. Peace of mind leads to love.

Only if a person has peace of mind will he be able to pass the test of dealing properly with other people. He will be able to [be] kindhearted to everyone. His peace of mind will enable him to tolerate others and be patient with them.

see Daas Chochmah Umussar, vol.2, p.203;
Mussar Hatorah, p.10;
Gateway to Happiness, p.73
quoted from Aish.com

If we are supposed to love God by loving other people and performing acts of kindness and charity, and thus achieve an understanding that we can love ourselves and that indeed, God loves us too, how is this achieved if you cannot perform the first step? I suppose I’m looking at this in too much of a linear fashion. I’ve said before that feelings are not necessary in order to do good. Just do good. And yet, thoughts and feelings of self-loathing, self-deprecation, and the insurmountable weight of depression, like 88,000 pounds of lead crushing you into the dirt and mud, makes it difficult or even (seemingly) impossible to budge an inch. In real life, it takes some sort of motivation to do just about anything, especially something that is out of character and that requires an extraordinary effort.

As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. –2 Timothy 4:5-8 (ESV)

But the encouragements of Paul in the New Testament might seem to backfire in the face of someone pinned to the ground by their faults like an insect trapped in amber.

I know some people read blogs like mine for a sense of encouragement, support, and inspiration, but mine is a very strange “inspirational” blog. Candy-coating life is usually ineffective, and it’s practically insane to deny that some people find emotional survival to be the best they can accomplish on any given day, or at the very least, it’s rather cruel. In the background of life for a person like the one I’ve been describing, it isn’t just the fear that the people they love will get fed up with them and leave, but that God will get fed up as well.

Worry can always provide reason. Maybe G‑d is out to punish you. Maybe you don’t deserve to be saved from the mess you’ve gotten into. Maybe an ugly mess is the only way He has to provide for you.

That’s not called trust. Trust means you have not a shade of doubt that He will deliver. No matter what.

The heavens above mirror the earth below. Trust in Him and He will fulfill your trust.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Forget Punishment”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Telling someone like this that they don’t trust God may seem to be rather “oh duh” at this point. They know that. It’s just another nail in their emotional coffin, just another ten or a hundred pounds added to what they’re already ladened with (though I should say at this point that if you can’t trust God, trusting or even liking most other people is probably out of the question, but here’s the kicker…do you not trust God because people have proven to be untrustworthy or do you not trust people because you believe God is untrustworthy?).

You must treat yourself with respect. To do otherwise is to desecrate something that is holy.

That which doesn’t kill you will usually try again.

Supposedly, you can only go down so far before you start to rise up again. There is a principle in some areas of Judaism that says, “Every descent is for the sake of a future ascent.” Of course, that “ascent” might not occur until the world to come, which means you’re already dead and your life on earth hasn’t worked out at all. Besides, it’s just a saying. You can’t find it in the Bible.

And yet the Jewish people have survived every conceivable defeat, degradation, and humiliation, and still managed to survive and even to thrive due to such teachings added to the promises of God.

Why doesn’t this work for anyone else?

There is an increasingly mythical sacred person buried under endless tons of rock, dirt, and pain. They keep trying to dig their way out of their cave-in using only splintered, bloody stumps of what’s left of their fingers. The light is dimming and the air is running out. When the Divine spark is extinguished, what will be left of the person who was supposed to be holy? When the abyss finally claims its victim, will God still be there to watch?

 

 

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The Broken Starfish

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Do good with all your ego. Say, “I need to make this happen.” Say, “I have to see this done.”

Not only is this “I” permissible, it is crucial to getting things done.

So what is forbidden? To believe the “I” belongs to you.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“The Kosher Ego”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

“If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.”

-Walter Gropius, German architect

On the surface, the quote from Walter Gropius I posted above sounds great. But then, you have to ask yourself if every single human being who ever lived and who ever will live actually ends up making a vital contribution to something. I mean after all, some of us are pretty ordinary. I mean, I know I contribute something, but can I really consider anything I do as vital?

I guess that depends on who you ask. I certainly haven’t cured cancer or accomplished world peace. I haven’t developed safe nuclear fusion power or even built the better mousetrap. I haven’t done anything that would significantly contribute to improving the world as a whole.

In fact, depending on who you ask, my life has taken away from the well-being world. Certainly being male, religious, and conservative automatically makes me a villain in some people’s eyes. If you value youth, diversity of ethnicity (non-caucasian), and “flexible” sexual orientation (anything but straight), then I’m a failure there as well. In fact, as far as the mainstream western culture is concerned, I’m pretty much a flop.

So I haven’t contributed to the betterment of the world as a whole, nor do I belong to any of the groups or “types” of people who are considered positive contributors in the progressive social and cultural values system.

If my culture were my ultimate judge, I’d be in big trouble right now.

Of course, my life hasn’t been a complete waste of time and resources, but you have to look on a very local scale. My family has depended on me bringing in an income to support them for decades.

Oh, but sometimes I’ve been unemployed, so I failed that one.

My wife and children have depended on me to be a sane, calm, organized, and supportive husband and father for thirty years.

Oh, but sometimes I’ve failed at that, too (more often then I’d care to admit).

Gee, what else?

Sorry, it’s hard to get past those first two, but I’m sure there’s a lot more.

Thankfully, I’m gainfully employed at the moment and manage to do some “side work” writing (no, not blogs, alas), so we aren’t starving. My kids are all grown and whatever contribution I’ve made as a father, for good or for ill, is set in cement. As the saying goes, “you can’t unring a bell.”

So what’s left?

According to Yerachmiel Tilles, you can actually learn how to be in exile, but only if it’s absolutely necessary.

“I live in the city of Pest, near which I own several villages, fields and vineyards. Once a large sum of money was stolen from me, and I did not know who the thief was. We had a maid—an orphan—and since we suspected that this was her doing, we took her along to the local authorities. The police there beat her in order to induce her to confess, but she insisted she had stolen nothing, so they sent her home to us. But the harsh treatment that she had endured left its mark. For some days she languished in bed, and then died.

“Two weeks later the thief was found. I was stricken by terror. I had suspected an innocent person, and through my doing, this orphan had met her death!

According to Christianity, Jesus atoned for everyone’s sins, so there should be no guilt among Christians. The blood has been washed from our hands. We are clean; pure and unsullied, white as driven snow.

For the Jewish man from the city of Pest, it wasn’t so simple. Through an act of injustice, he had caused, however inadvertently, the death of an innocent person, an orphan and a servant. He couldn’t just walk away from that and Rabbi Meir of Premishlan felt the same way.

‘Choose one of these three,’ he said. ‘Either you die, though you will be granted a place in the World to Come; or you will be ill and bedridden for three years, while the suffering you undergo will cleanse you of your sins; or for three years you will wander about as a vagabond, as the law prescribes for an unwitting manslaughterer.’

After initially refusing to choose, the man became ill and was near to death. Apparently Rabbi Meir had made the choice for him. Only by pleading for the Rabbi’s prayers was he spared, along with agreeing to walk away from his home, his family, his wealth, everything, for a span of three years.

“If you are hungry, ask no man for money or for food. But if people offer you something out of compassion, you may accept it.”

I suppose Christianity would consider this a fool’s errand and a misguided attempt to atone for a debt that can never be repaid. You can’t return a life, and even living like a homeless person for three years won’t bring that life back.

But let’s for a moment assume this story isn’t literally true. Let’s take a look at it from the point of view of a parable. What does it teach us?

“But then I heard that in Sanz, not too far from here, there lives a tzaddik known as the Divrei Chaim. In fact, I’m heading in that direction now, in the hope that he will guide me. And that is why I will not accept your donation, thank you, because at the moment I am not setting out on another leg of my trek as an exile; I am on my way to visit Rabbi Chaim of Sanz.”

The innkeeper was so curious to know what the end of the story would be that he set out with his ragged guest and escorted him directly to the rebbe’s house in Sanz. The vagabond did not even manage to put his question to Reb Chaim, when the tzaddik said: “Return to your home, traveling by way of Premishlan. Find the grave of Reb Meir, and tell him that the rebbe of Sanz says that two years of exile are enough for you, for you observed them with true self-sacrifice.”

Maybe all this was just an attempt on the now deceased Rabbi’s part to assuage the guilt of this wealthy merchant and maybe it worked. On the other hand, what did he learn about being helpless, weak, poor, homeless, and defenseless? Maybe his wandering didn’t atone for a thing, but it could have taught him a much greater sense of mercy and justice. After this experience, will he ever carelessly be cruel to someone who is in his power again?

Who knows? I hope not.

I once heard it said that, “If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them. Mine can be no worse than someone else’s.” If the Rebbe of Premishlan did not provide for this man’s “penitence,” the merchant surely would have created one of his own. In fact, the illness he suffered soon after the servant’s death may have been of his own (unconscious) doing. It’s funny what guilt and shame will do to you…and what you’ll do to yourself.

That takes care of the merchant from Pest. But what about other failures? Where do I go from here?

Do I accept the gift of Jesus Christ and blow off all of the disappointments I have committed in my lifetime as well as the consequences they created (some of which continue to wield power today), or do I, in my own way, “wander in exile?”

Here’s one possible answer, according to Rabbi Freeman:

In every hardship, search for the spark of good and cling to it. The greater the hardship, the more wondrous the good it bears.

If you cannot find that spark, rejoice that wonder beyond your comprehension has befallen you.

Once you have unveiled and liberated the spark of good, it will rise to overcome its guise of darkness. It may perhaps even transform the darkness fully to light.

I once heard a story about a starfish. Supposedly, if you cut off the arm of a starfish, it will eventually grow back. There was a man who was very cruel. He lived by the seashore and everyday, as he went about his business, he passed an area near the beach with shallow pools of water. In one of those pools, there lived a starfish.

The starfish was very beautiful, illuminating its environment with subtle reds and oranges. The cruel man did not like beauty and hurt the starfish by using a knife he carried with him to cut off one of the starfish’s arms.

By the by the arm grew back, just as it was before. This made the cruel man angry and he cut off the same arm again.

And it grew back.

And he cut it off.

And it grew back.

And this happened over and over again. Eventually, the man noticed something. Each time the arm grew back, it was a little different, a little shorter, a little more twisted and withered. The more he cut it off and the more it grew back, the more deformed and hideous the arm became.

Finally, the man didn’t need to cut the arm off the starfish anymore. It was now as injured and crippled as he was.

Rabbi Freeman says that even in the darkest circumstances, there is some spark of divine goodness. Even if you cannot find the spark, that too is a miracle, for you have a wonderful mystery laid at your feet.

But if I cannot find the spark, then it cannot “rise to overcome its guise of darkness.”

I cannot wander the world for three years as a beggar and it wouldn’t do any good if I could. Assuming God has indeed forgiven me and that the life of the Messiah has atoned for my wrong deeds, then in God’s eyes I may appear clean, but what do you do when your soul, like the arm of the starfish, is malformed and crippled?

Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.” My hands work reasonably well, but what about the “twisted” spirit? There is no art. The sparks remain dark. But in spite of everything I’ve just said, I still can’t stop trying. It’s not like I’m even refusing to give up. I wish I could. I wish I could lay down and rest. But I just can’t.

I just read something Michoel Ogince said:

Imagine: How would the world look if we could see the Divine sparks that animate every physical creation?

Those sparks are supposed to be there (if you are willing to accept a bit of Kabbalah for a moment) in all things, including people. They’re just hidden in the mundane, waiting to be set free and to return to their divine source, that eternal flame; waiting to return to God.

If Walter Gropius is right, everyone who has made a vital contribution to something will have someone to come after them and to pick up the work when their time is done. If not, then whatever you did ends with you.

If the various motivational writers, speakers, and bloggers are right, everything everyone does at some point or another is significant and that on some level, all people are worthy, whether they believe so or not. The trick then, is actually learning to believe it, not so much about other people, but about yourself.

I once wrote something, probably inspired by Rabbi Freeman or another Chabad Rabbi, that said if you treat someone as if they are the person they are supposed to be, as if they have already done great things, as if they are already close to God and have peace and kindness in their hearts, and you keep at it long enough, eventually they will become that person. I suppose it’s the starfish story in reverse. You can injure someone long enough until they become distorted and their spirit mirrors their long torture, or you can treat someone with kindness, mercy, respect, and even honor long enough, and their injuries will heal, if not in body, then certainly in spirit.

But for all the wonderful storytelling, parables, and tales of the Chasidim, how does that ever cross over from the realm of fantasy and mystical wishful thinking into a real and practical life?

That’s my secret…I’m always angry.

Bruce Banner (played by Mark Ruffalo)
The Avengers (2012)

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The Elusive, Invisible, Tzaddik

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The tzadik is one with G-d.

We recognize him because within each of us is also a tzadik who is one with G-d.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“The Tzaddik”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

This is amazingly difficult for me to get my brain around, mostly because I can’t imagine it applying to me, not even a little. But there are only a few sentences here to try and understand Rabbi Freeman’s point. What about how others reacted to this blog post?

*Posted June 24, 2012 by Yaakov Branfman, Jerusalem, Israel
So, in other words, when he goes against the Tzaddik, he’s really going against that part in himself who is a Tzaddik. And, not even talking about going against, but when he simply doesn’t value the Tzaddik, he’s not valuing that part of himself.
When he values a “regular” person, he’s valuing that part in himself, and when not valuing that person, he’s not seeing the good parts in himself.

*Posted Aug 22, 2009 by Anonymous, New York, NY
Yosef is the only one in the Torah was called HaTzaddik. Yet we find that Yosef made mistakes, and struggled, yet overcame his inclination, but is not that he had _NO_ such impulses.

By the way this is a phenomenal pearl of wisdom by written by Tzvi Freeman… If we look at people, and look for the Tzaddik within them… we can _PULL_ the Tzaddik to the surface.

*Posted Aug 9, 2009 by mark alcock, Durban, SA
“Tzaddik, The: A wholly righteous person. In the context of Chabad literature, one who has conquered his animal impulses and is filled entirely with love and reverence for G-d.” One is either righteous or not, not sometimes without sin.

*Posted Aug 9, 2009 by Michal
When I look at it this way,
then even I am a Tzaddik.
Most of the time.
Unfortunately not always !!!

I think what Rabbi Freeman (or the Rebbe) is trying to say is that we should look for the best in other people and the best in ourselves. There is supposed to be some spark of wonder, divinity, and even perfection within each human being and, if we can try to relate to that part of another person rather than the other parts that are imperfect, then maybe they will aspire to be what we see in them, rather than what the rest of the world sees.

That has profound implications. If you know someone who is perpetually sad or angry or cynical or sarcastic, you tend to relate to them by their primary presentation. We all tend to believe that a person is the way we see them and the way they act. But what if we choose to look at and to treat each person as if they were a tzaddik, even if that is the farthest thing from who they actually appear to be?

No, it wouldn’t suddenly change them. Chances are, they’d think you were faking it when you treated them with respect, honor, and deference (how else should you treat someone who is one with God?). Chances are they’d think you were lying. But what if you always treated the other person with respect, honor, and deference, even though their behavior didn’t warrant such treatment and even though everything inside of you tells you that they don’t deserve it?

At the very least, you’d confuse the other person. At the very most, they might, just might be able to see something of a tzaddik in themselves and start behaving differently.

OK, it’s a long shot and most of the time, it wouldn’t work, but how could it hurt? And what if their life is somehow a message to us?

So even if one is your enemy, and justifiably so; even if his moral and spiritual downfall is one of his own making – it could have happened without your having been made aware of it. That you have witnessed it has nothing to do with him: it is a message to you, enjoining you to deal with a similar negative element – be it in subtlest of forms – within yourself.

-Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Chassidic movement

What if someone where to treat you like a tzaddik? How would you react?

Depends.

If you go around thinking you’re pretty cool stuff, you might think that it’s only what you deserve and you’d let it go to your head. That would be too bad, because if you go around all the time thinking you’re pretty cool stuff, chances are, you really aren’t. Chances are, things like humility, honoring God, and loving your neighbor as yourself might have escaped you. Yet none of these things would escape a tzaddik. If even one other person started treating you like a tzaddik and kept treating you that way, do you think those things that had escaped you before would begin to become noticeable?

And what if you look and look but you don’t see the tzaddik in yourself? What if you see a total screw up who, no matter how hard he tries, just can’t stop making mistakes, losing track of important details, and whose past is a ghost attached around his neck with heavy, iron chains, haunting not only his every waking moment but every minute of his dreams? And what if no one ever treated you like a tzaddik, not that you’d ever expect such a thing?

Can you look for and find the tzaddik in yourself or is there only your past, your mistakes, and how everyone else sees you in exactly the same way you see yourself?

Don’t be “this”. Don’t let them define you. If you catch yourself fitting into a definition, contradict it. Never travel a single road.

Be forever walking through the splitting of the sea.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Being Paradox”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

If there is even a tiny spark of the tzaddik in you, then not only can God see it but He placed it there. When a person can see only his mistakes, he also believes that’s only what God sees. It’s not that God can’t see past our flaws, but when we are drowning in our own despair, it’s impossible for us to believe God can see in us what we can’t see. It’s impossible for us to believe that there is something more in us than our own self-definition or the way others see our behavior and choose to define us. It’s impossible for us to think that we can escape the definition and become the paradox. Rabbi Freeman’s commentary on the above statement tells us that only God is truly the paradox:

If we wish to touch G-d Himself, we cannot find Him in any defined, bounded form. He is entirely unbounded, free of any definition. and that can only be discovered in utter paradox.

That is why everything a Jew does according to Torah, is bound up with paradox–because it is divine.

A Jew enters that identity when He is bound up in the Torah. A Christian would have to be bound up in Christ, the living Torah, to transcend the definition as Rabbi Freeman suggests, and to find the tzaddik within.

It would be wonderful to suspend the definition and to find the tzaddik who is completely concealed inside of me. But most days, there’s just who I see when I look in the mirror, and who the world sees when it looks at me, and who knows what God sees? Some days are better, and some days are worse, and some days all there is to see in me is a rasha. Have you even seen the tzaddik in you, let alone met him or her? If so, what is it like?

One of the Alter Rebbe’s great and very close chassidim had yechidus, in the course of which the Rebbe inquired after his situation. The chassid complained bitterly that his financial situation had utterly deteriorated. The Rebbe responded: You are needed to illuminate your environment with Torah and avoda of the heart – (davening). Livelihood and what you need – that, G-d must provide for you. You do what you must, and G-d will do what He must.

“Today’s Day”
Thursday, Tamuz 5, 5703
Compiled and arranged by the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, in 5703 (1943)
from the talks and letters of the sixth Chabad Rebbe
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory
Translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan
Chabad.org

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Struggling in the Dark

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Woman in the darkDepression is not a sin, but it can take you to places lower than any sin.
-Chassidic saying

That is why, every mitzvah must be done with joy, every prayer with song and every word of Torah studied with enthusiasm – not just because without that joyful enthusiasm, you are simply not there within that mitzvah, but because without joy, the Jew lives in a precarious state. “Because you didn’t serve G-d your G-d with joy and a good heart…and so you will serve your enemies.” Meaning: When a Jew acts as a Jew but with a heavy heart, he is fair game for the enemy within – the urges and passions of his animal soul.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Why Did G-d Give Me Depression?”
Chabad.org

And the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you distressed, And why is your face fallen? Surely, if you do right, there is uplift. But if you do not do right Sin couches at the door; Its urge is toward you, Yet you can be its master.” –Genesis 4:6-7

Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, each brought offerings to God. God “paid heed” to Abel’s offering but not to Cain’s. Cain’s “face fell” (he became discouraged or depressed) and subsequent to God’s “pep talk”, in a fit of rage and jealousy, Cain murdered his brother. Yet had Cain already “killed” Abel while God was still talking to him?

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. –Matthew 5:21-22

Ironically, Jesus says something immediately after these verses that directly applies to Cain and Abel, and perhaps to us as well.

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift. –Matthew 5:23-24

Depression, discouragement, and anger get in the way of drawing close to God. Certainly Cain’s feelings for Abel and his disappointment at Abel’s gift being accepted while Cain’s was not, inhibited Cain’s relationship with God, yet God cared enough about Cain, not to chastise him for his feelings, but to try and encourage him. God didn’t berate Cain for bringing an inferior gift but supported his efforts to do better in the future.

But was Cain’s gift inferior? All we know is “Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the soil; and Abel, for his part, brought the choicest of the firstlings of his flock” (Genesis 4:3-4). We assume that Cain’s offering was not the “choicest” of his “fruit of the soil” but what if it was? What if Cain had problems before even bringing his offering? After all, it’s hard to believe that a single incident was enough to drive Cain to murder, something that had never happened before in the history of humanity. Maybe Cain already had “something against” his brother, whatever that might have been. Maybe Cain believed that Abel was generally better or was seemingly more accepted as a son by their parents and as a person by God.

If Cain had been nursing a grudge for sometime against Abel and was nurturing a slow-burning depression and resentment, his “rejected” offering may have simply been the final catalyst that fanned these smoldering embers into a blazing conflagration resulting in a passionate, violent murder.

In Rabbi Freeman’s commentary, he says:

When a person is happy, he’s healthy. True happiness is when every faculty, every sense, every neuron and every muscle is in tune and functioning harmoniously. When happy, a person can fulfill his purpose in life, all of him, all of his purpose. Which is why depression is so despicable. Because depression is a surrender of purpose, of meaning.

Walking in darknessThus being depressed draws us away from the very reason God created us in the first place. A depressed person cannot fulfill the purpose for which God created him or her. The person becomes like Rabbi Yehuda Loewe’s Golum, “an unfinished person – one with all the right aptitudes not yet in the right places…a hunk of clay or otherwise shapeless substance”. We’ve already learned that “every mitzvah must be done with joy, every prayer with song and every word of Torah studied with enthusiasm” and maybe that was Cain’s big mistake. Maybe his offering was indeed the very best his garden had to offer, but he didn’t bring it with the boundless joy that Abel brought his offering.

Maybe that’s the mistake you make sometimes. Maybe that’s the mistake I make sometimes…trying to serve God without joy, song, and enthusiasm. Without joy, even the holiest of actions is performed by an empty heart.

But what is there to do? Rabbi Freeman responds:

Depression argues that you’re a worthless, hopeless scum in whom nobody would ever take interest. So agree with it. Tell it back, “You’re absolutely right. I’m even less than that. I was created with a purpose that I have not lived up to. I’ve messed up again and again. And yet, nevertheless, I have a G-d who has put up with me despite all my failures, who continues to ask me to be His agent in His world, eagerly awaiting my mitzvahs, looking forward to me sharing my concerns with Him three times a day. My purpose still lies before me, and whatever of it I can fulfill, even for a moment, is worth more than all the pleasures of the Garden of Eden.”

The Rabbi admits that he “ripped off” his answer from Chapter 31 of The Tanya (an early work of Chasidic philosophy), but is that really sound advice? The Tanya (and Rabbi Freeman) suggests “reasoning” with depression, but depression is hardly a rational state of mind. It’s a heaviness of spirit that seems to weigh down every human thought and action that tries to oppose it. Is the secret to overcoming depression just admitting that God still waits for you, even when you feel like doing nothing?

There must be something to it. Before psychiatrists and anti-depressant medications, some of the greatest men known to us and to God suffered similar feelings, as Rabbi Freeman recounts:

Looking at it that way, it makes sense that the greatest men and women of history, including our own giants, were people who suffered dark moods to the extreme. Moses cries out to G-d, “I can’t deal with these people any longer! If this is the way You treat me, if I have found favor in Your eyes, please kill me so that I don’t have to see my own tragedy.” King David cries, “I am a worm and not a man; a reproach of man, despised by peoples. All who see me will mock me; they will open their lips, they will shake their head.” The question arises: Without that capacity for inner suffering, would these men have been as great as they were?

And yet it was not their suffering that made them great, but the vital energy that burst out of that darkness.

Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, has a name based on the Hebrew root word “merirut” meaning “bitterness”. “She was bitter about exile, slavery, oppression and she refused to surrender to it. She fought it, defying Pharaohs decrees and encouraging others to do the same.” Midrash considers Miriam’s Song to be one of the “ten preeminent songs in the history of Israel — ten occasions on which our experience of redemption found expression in melody and verse” (Exodus 15:1-21).

Is there a beautiful song in this world with not a tinge of bitterness? Is there a story that uplifts the soul without first striking its darker chords? Is there an act of love that does not contain sorrow, a magnificent scene that does not harbor strokes of blackness?

The Tanya, that classic work of Chassidic thought that I’m always encouraging people to study, describes the joy of breaking out of that tunnel as the joy of returning home. You were lost, forsaken, alienated from your true self, and now rediscover that place where you belong. The child who never leaves home can hardly celebrate being where you’ve always been. You, who have tasted the other side of life, you now know the true meaning of the word “home.”

My brilliant light of selfCain had a choice. If Cain had listened to God and relied upon God to lift up his downcast spirit, he could have risen above his depression and experienced the joy of conquering what separated him from his brother and from God. Jesus tells a parable about two brothers who also chose different paths, but this tale has a different outcome.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father. –Luke 15:13-20

The full narrative is found in Luke 15:11-32, but you’re probably already aware how the story turns out. Instead of completely surrendering to his depression, the son who had fallen away, humbles himself, for after all, he has nothing left to lose, and returns to his father and his brother. While his brother ironically objects, the son’s father rejoices that his son, once dead, is now alive again, and celebrates with great feasting and merriment.

Sometimes, the greatest height of joy cannot be reached without descending onto an equal depth of sorrow and darkness. Every descent is for the sake of an ascent and the purpose of every darkness is so we can fill it with light. While we might not be able to reason our way out of depression in the short run, God, like the prodigal son’s father, is always waiting for us. Even in our depths He is encouraging us, even as he encouraged Cain. Like Cain and like Miriam, we have a choice to either surrender completely to our darkness, or to rise above it in joyous song. In following Miriam’s path “one day you will turn to look back, and discover depression itself has been transformed and all you are left with is a celebration of life.”

The road

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.