Tag Archives: God

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Speed

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Our generation has changed an amazing amount from earlier generations. In earlier times the only people who ate quickly were bandits or people in an unusual rush for one reason or another. Nowadays, we are in the era of “fast” foods. Mealtime is not nearly as formal as it once was for the vast majority of people.

Not surprisingly, when someone first learns the halachos on today’s amud he gets a big surprise. “One who leaves one domain needs to recite a new blessing?” he wonders. “What if I have something in my mouth and as I am running I leave the first domain? Do I have to remove it from my mouth and make a new blessing?”

When someone asked a similar question to Rav Chaim Kanievsky, shlit”a, he ruled decisively. “Even a child who has a candy in his mouth and rushes out of the domain where he made the blessing must take it out of his mouth and make another.”

On a different occasion, Rav Chaim confided that such a case had actually happened to him. “When I was a child the Chazon Ish once noticed that I rushed out of the house with a candy in my mouth. When I came back in—with the candy still ensconced in my mouth—the Chazon Ish called me over to him. He explained the halachah of changing domain. ‘You need to take the candy out of your mouth and make a new berachah every time you leave a domain,’ the Chazon Ish explained.”

Mishna Berura Yomi Digest
Stories to Share
“Fast Foods”
Siman 178 Seif 1

First of all, I don’t do this. Secondly, I’m not telling you to do this. That’s not my point. My point is the speed at which time or rather, the events of our lives rush past us. It’s like standing on a commuter platform waiting for the train that will take you to work to stop, only to watch is pass by just inches from your nose at 70 miles per hour.

What the heck just happened?

Yes, we live in a streaming video, microwave dinner, high-speed Internet world where everything we want and need (or think we do) is delivered super-duper fast, and if it isn’t we want to know why.

I’ll try to keep this short since I’m sure this has all been said many times before and I’ll just sound like some old duffer longing for “the good ol’ days.”

Did God design us to run at such a high-speed? Are we supposed to rush around from this event to that from birth to death, never stopping to figure out what we’re supposed to be doing in-between?

I’m just like you. I wake up too early, hit the gym for an hour, wolf breakfast down my throat, speed off to work, often working through lunch, hit the road for the evening commute, grab dinner while reading the news on the web, write or edit something, pick up or drop off someone somewhere, maybe watch a little mindless entertainment, flop in bed, get too little sleep, start all over again.

The Digging with Darren blog just retweeted (on twitter) an older topic called Daily Disciples of a Disciple which in which the “tweet” contained the words, “Does your schedule make room for discipleship?”

What’s important to you? What will you slow down for so you can take your time, pay attention, and truly experience the moment?

I mean besides TV, video, gaming, or similar activities.

While the various Rabbinic rulings and judgments take a lot of harsh abuse in Christianity and sometimes in Messianic Judaism, in some cases, I can see the point of the Sages. It may seem rather tedious and unnecessary to recite a new blessing when you leave one domain for another, but even if you choose not to do so, it teaches a lesson. If you had to slow down between point A and point B, what would you pay attention to? Would slowing down for a few seconds carry its own value? Would you have a few moments to remember God and maybe even talk to Him?

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A Creative Life

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The Chazon Ish, zt”l, teaches how we should relate to a new baby. “The astounding miracles of matrimony, birth and raising a child open a person’s heart and eyes and his ears to see that nothing ‘just happens.’ This experience should awaken any thinking person’s ability to be emotionally moved.

“This is the meaning of the Midrash Tanchuma on the verse וילדה זכר And she birthed a male.’ The Midrash applies the verse, ‘ ואין צור כאלוקינו ’ to this. It explains there that the word צורcan be understood to refer to צייר which means one who fashions. In this context the verse is saying that there is none who can fashion like God does. A human makes a picture on the wall. Can it move? Can it breathe? Can it speak? God creates man who moves, breathes and speaks. An expert painter has many types of paint to create a picture. God can create a human from one drop.

“We see from here that one who sees a child should be filled with wonder. Studying a child should bring one to contemplate the works of God. Giving this any thought should lead one to the same conclusion as the Midrash: ‘There is צייר , no artist like God.”

Rav Yechiel Michel Stern pointed out the obvious question on this midrash: “It seems strange that our sages took the verse ‘ ואין צור כאלוקינו ’ out of the simple meaning. Usually the word צור literally rock, means forceful or powerful, and does not refer to an artist or fashioner.

“The Maharsha in Berachos answers this question. Since the verse tells us that there is no צור like God it implies that there are others which should be referred to as צור , but they cannot be compared to God. Clearly, here we are speaking not of the one and only Rock, but of a different meaning related to the root צור!”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Ultimate Artist”
Niddah 41

In Rabbi Yaakov Menken’s commentary on last week’s Torah Portion Chukat, he addresses the mystery behind the sin that resulted in the death of Aaron and Moses being denied entry into the Land of Promise. For many, trying to comprehend what sin Aaron and Moses committed that was worth so terrible a price is extremely difficult. But we must remember that not only were Aaron and Moses born to accomplish a very high purpose, but we see that the more exalted a person’s holiness, the more is required of them. In other words, the higher you fly, the further you have to fall.

Precisely because the Bible is dealing with individuals on an exalted spiritual level, if it were to tell us merely what they did, we would be unable to perceive anything wrong. For those people, their behavior was no less a transgression than if a more common individual had committed a major sin such as murder, adultery or idolatry — and thus the Prophets use severe language, similar to HaShem’s own words that Moshe and Aharon “did not believe” in Him. Just like the anthropomorphic references to HaShem Himself, these passages use language which we can understand, so that we can learn from them, but are not intended to be taken literally at all.

Every human being is just that — human — and no one is perfect. Even as we are humbled by recognition of the heights reached by prophets and great scholars, we should never lose hope, or imagine that those who came close to G-d were truly angels, without inner struggles or difficulties. This is the lesson the Torah brings home to us when attributing unimaginable ‘sins’ to our forebears. And yet it is also incumbent upon us to realize that we could be, ourselves, so close to HaShem that our ‘sins’ would be something we could not even recognize today.

Perhaps one of the reasons why this event in the Bible is nearly impossible for most of us to understand is that the majority of us are not tzaddikim; exceptionally righteous ones. Our worldview does not operate at such an exalted level. In the same manner, this is most likely what made it difficult for Christ’s own disciples to understand him at times and, what continues to contribute to what we often refer to as “the difficult sayings of Jesus” as seen from the perspective of the 21st century believer.

I know most Christians like to think of Jesus as ultimately approachable, friendly, kind, and understandable, but in spite of 1 Corinthians 2:16, we may be forced to admit that the mind of the Messiah is beyond most of us. Even the sins of those lesser than the Messiah but still exalted Holy ones are difficult to comprehend. Hence the following from Rabbi Menken:

On Rosh HaShanah, there is a tradition to go to a body of water and “cast off” one’s sins, as it were, and ask that they be covered over like water covers and hides the fish who swim within it. Many Chassidim have a custom to take bread crumbs along and throw them in, to give physical expression to this idea.

It is said that after a particular Chassidic Rebbe threw crumbs into the water in accordance with this custom, one of his Chassidim bounded into the lake and began to retrieve them. When questioned, the Chassid explained: “what the Rebbe considers his ‘sins’ are Mitzvos where I’m concerned!”

For years, I couldn’t understand this story or its intended lesson. A transgression is a transgression! But then, I heard that the Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisrael Mayer HaKohein Kagan (perhaps the greatest known Torah scholar of the last century) once repented on Yom Kippur for having wasted eight minutes from Torah study during the previous year.

Can we imagine wasting merely eight minutes in an entire year? I would be extremely happy to say that I had managed to waste no more than eight minutes on a given afternoon! Maybe, maybe I’ve spent a few hours without wasting eight minutes once in my life. Maybe.

It’s impossible to imagine being able to account for every moment of every day, save eight minutes (I would almost be relieved to be told that I had heard this story incorrectly). And this is what the Chassid was saying: for us, it would be a great Mitzvah! The sins of great people occur at such a level of precision, that _reaching_ that level, to be worthy of being judged at that level, would be a phenomenal achievement.

Previously, I momentarily seemed to disregard a passage from 1 Corinthians 2, but I’d like to revisit those words in the context of Paul’s epistle:

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. –1 Corinthians 2:12-16 (ESV)

This part of Paul’s letter makes it seem like, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, all believers and disciples of the Jewish Messiah should have an equal ability to comprehend the Word of God, as if we were Jesus Christ himself. But do we? If we did, you’d think that the endless myriad of questions I post on this blog wouldn’t exist or would just be rather moot. You’d think instead of the 35,000+ Christian denominations (and counting) that exist in the world, we’d have only one. You’d think that we would all have the identical understanding of God and the very same template for organizing the community of faith.

You’d think God would have finished writing the Word upon our hearts by now. But apparently, He hasn’t.

As we saw in the “Story Off the Daf” from which I quoted earlier, God can be considered a magnificent artist. He fashions each and every one of us miraculously and He has repeated His artistry in an endless progression from the beginning of Genesis until now. He is creating His “paintings” still, and will continue to do so until a point in time we cannot yet even begin to grasp.

And He has created us for many purposes, all of which serve His will. But all that being true, He gave us the gift of self-determination to the point where only a human being may actively and purposefully defy the will of God. In other words, we can take the incredibly wonderful work of art that was created by the hand of God and turn it into the moral equivalent of a velvet painting of Elvis (and I apologize to all of the fans of Elvis Presley and those of you who enjoy velvet paintings).

I can hardly accuse Aaron and Moses of such a sin against God. It is God who held them both responsible for how they chose to treat His “artwork”. And while you and I (or at least I) are not tzaddikim and we do not operate at the level of Aaron or Moses (and certainly not at the level of Christ), we have been created as God’s handiwork to serve a purpose and a goal. We are responsible for what we do with our lives. There are consequences for choosing not to live as we were designed to live.

The end of the lives of Aaron and Moses give us an idea of those consequences. We also have examples such as Nadab and Abihu.

Who are we and where do we come from? Do we have a purpose in life, or is everything we do random and meaningless? Is this all there is or is there something more?

We spend all our lives trying to answer questions like these. Even those of us who adhere to a specific religious tradition encounter great difficulties in answering what should be the simplest questions about our faith. Now we see that these questions and their answers aren’t just meaningless exercises in philosophy. They are what define us, not just as individuals, but as a species. If we are simply the most evolved animals on the planet, then it pretty much doesn’t matter what we do. Go ahead and destroy the physical environment and contribute to our extinction. It doesn’t matter. The planet will eventually recover and even if it doesn’t, so what? We will have exterminated ourselves, but the Universe goes on.

But what if we have been created by the “Master Artist” for a higher purpose? If there are consequences, for good or for bad, for the manner in which we live out our lives, then our every action does matter, our every decision does have an impact beyond that of the moment. Our words, behavior, and feelings are all part of a greater design that contributes to the infinite tapestry of Creation. Each individual life is personally important as an artistic act of God and it matters to Him how things are going for us each and every day.

Just recently, I compared a life of faith to a bird in endless flight. Given the example of Aaron and Moses, we can see how “dangerous” it is to fly as high as they did, because with one subtle failure, they lost their wings and fell back to earth in disgrace. And yet the wonder and majesty that they beheld, especially Moses who spoke to our infinite “Artist” as one might speak to a dear and close friend…isn’t that worth even so great a risk? Isn’t soaring through space, nearing the court of the Mighty One, tasting the excitement, the freedom, the glory of approaching even the tiniest thread of the hem of the living God worth our time, our effort, even our very lives?

The Artist with His brush, puts the finishing touches on His latest painting and looks upon it with satisfaction. The painting, moments away from birth, stares back at the Creator and smiles with gratitude and love.

Then, as a child might send a paper airplane aloft with a single flick of the wrist, we are sent up into the Heavens and born into our lives. May we fly with the wings of an angel and live with the soul of His Image.

Why can’t He provide simple, clear directions and let us just follow His Divine plan? Why does He place these challenges before us, forcing us to make our own decisions, to chisel out our own paths?

Because He desires a home in our world
—not a home manufactured in heaven and transported downward to earth,
but a home made in our world
out of worldly materials,
chosen, designed and constructed
by citizens of our world.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Made On Earth”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

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Balancing Flight

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These days, my son David and I go to the gym together at about five every weekday morning to work out. This morning, I was on one of the aerobic machines. The last five minutes of a workout, I go into a cooldown mode trying to get my heart rate back down to something more or less reasonable. Often, I’ll close my eyes and imagine that I’m running alone on a path that’s climbing to the crest of a hill. It’s dark, but I can see the light of a new sunrise beckoning ahead of me. The light gets brighter as I near the top. It’s almost as if I can see the breath of God intermingling with my own as we approach each other. I jog toward the crest of the hill but never quite reach it before the timer on my machine gets to zero.

But in the last seconds of my fatal descent from the heavens, I manage to pull back up, avoiding a fiery disaster, and with my wings fully extended and my engines roaring with new life, I begin to climb.

-James Pyles
Climb!

I suppose it’s narcissistic for me to quote myself in order to start another blog post, but I couldn’t think of anything else that fit. OK, how about this one?

I’ve heard that there’s a kind of bird without legs that can only fly and fly, and sleep in the wind when it is tired. The bird only lands once in its life… that’s when it dies.

-Yuddy (played by Leslie Cheung)
from the film Days of Being Wild (1990)
original title, “A Fei jingjyhun”

I’ve never seen this film and probably never will, but when I Googled what I was thinking about, the above-quoted piece of dialog came up. Interestingly enough, I first heard this idea in High School. A fellow in my Creative Writing class (yeah, I was interested in writing even back then) wrote a poem (I think…it’s been forty years) about a bird without legs that was perpetually in flight. Sadly, that’s all I can remember.

But it’s enough.

I had a conversation like this with Boaz Michael at the FFOZ Shavuot Conference last month in Hudson, Wisconsin. During one of his presentations, he was talking about FFOZ being able to “land the plane,” which meant being able to get past the chaos of how various people and groups reacted to their shift away from the One Law theology. The idea was to be able to move on and focus on the primary mission and goals of FFOZ. This includes being able to reach out to the church in an effort to promote a more pro-Jewish message, and reaching out to normative Judaism to promote the Jewish Messiah.

At some point during the conference, I had several opportunities to sit down with Boaz and discuss various topics. One of the things I said is that the plane would never land because there will always be challenges.

I think that’s true of us personally in the realm of faith, too. Once we are introduced to God and realize that we must strive to approach Him, we take flight. But its only when we are in the air that we realize we can never land again. There is no turning back. There is no true sense of rest or peace.

I know that sounds strange, especially to anyone who has a bumper sticker on their vehicle that says, “No Jesus, No Peace; Know Jesus, Know Peace.” But really. You live in a world that is completely hostile to the discipline of religion in general and a Christian faith specifically (I think only Jews and, in some circles, Muslims are more reviled). Once we leave the ground, there are only two options: flight and death.

Sounds pretty grim.

When I say “death,” I don’t mean (necessarily) actually dying but if we choose to leave the faith, we die in terms of being spiritually dead. We no longer have a sense of God. Our relationship with Him is severed. We’ve gotten a divorce.

But considering flight, what a glorious thing it is. Imagine being able to fly without the aid of some sort of machine. Imagine simply extending your arms, raising your head, and realizing that your feet have left the ground. Up, up, up you go. The air is cold and crisp but you don’t feel chilled. Instead, you are invigorated, excited, thrilled. You are sharing the skies with God, seeking Him, soaring up to Him, as a bird might climb high above the clouds to seek out the Sun.

Now imagine that flying is something like running. Eventually all of that flapping will make you tired, just like running a marathon will exhaust you (not that I’ve ever run a marathon). Sooner or later you will want to land, to rest.

And you can’t.

You’re committed. It doesn’t matter how tired you get. It doesn’t matter if you’re exhausted. It doesn’t matter that your wings feel like they’re made of lead and sometimes, you feel as if you don’t care anymore. You just want to rest. Even if you fall. Even if you crash. It’s like Yuddy said:

I’ve heard that there’s a kind of bird without legs that can only fly and fly, and sleep in the wind when it is tired. The bird only lands once in its life… that’s when it dies.

So you can glide. Find a sustaining wind, a jet stream, a thermal and let them do the work. Just hold your wings out and let them catch the air and feel yourself suspended between Heaven and Earth; between life and death.

Isn’t that were we all are right now?

Bette Midler sings the Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley song Wind Beneath My Wings (no, I won’t inflict the YouTube videos on you) and the song ends with:

Fly, fly, fly high against the sky,
So high I can almost touch the sky.
Thank you, thank you,
Thank God for you, the wind beneath my wings.

That last line should probably say, “Thank God, You are the wind beneath my wings.” Without God, how could we sustain such an existence.

We all want to enter into His rest. We all long for the Messiah’s return for just that reason. The character Yuddy said cynically, “I used to think there was a kind of bird that, once born, would keep flying until death. The fact is that the bird hasn’t gone anywhere. It was dead from the beginning,” but if that were true, then faith is in vain. The atheists say that, and they say they are more alive than we are. There are more than a few believers who have been unable to find that updraft to support them, and exhausted and flightless, have collapsed back to earth like a latter-day Icarus, not because they flew too close to the Sun, but because they flew too long with leaden wings. They never found their source or they lost the will to keep seeking out that great imagination.

Now let me tell you a little secret. My wings get tired, too. It isn’t always easy to find a convenient wind to keep me aloft. Sometimes I doze and drift and wake up to find myself in a spiraling descent. I rouse my wings and push and lift and climb.

But sometimes it’s a close call.

Somewhere between Heaven and Earth are the forces that balance flight and falling. I know that God would not have called me into the sky if He only intended me to lose my ability to fly, but like that first generation of Israelites who were called out of Egypt, I sometimes doubt and complain. Like them, I sometimes feel as if God really did call me into the Heavens just to break my wings and send me plummeting back into the mud and tears. Like them, sometimes my faith is shaken. Like them, I fear defeat.

Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.” –Psalm 95:7-11 (ESV)

What a horrible thought that, after all of this effort, after tiring days and sleepless nights, no rest, no sanctuary, no oasis, constantly encountering resistance and opposition, that when it’s all over, I will not enter into His rest anyway.

So desperately terrified of a flight that never ends even after I have collapsed into shredded bone and flesh, I look around for some sign of another thermal. I try to find a way to let the wind lift me so I can rest my wings. I strive to look for the courage and strength to make it one more day in the air. I hope that God will show me, not just the ponderous effort of flying, but the glory of infinitely ascending across the skies.

Because sometimes, that’s all I have left.

Each journey the soul travels takes her higher.

There are journeys that are painful, because there is struggle. Struggle to wrestle out of one place to reach another, struggle to discern the good from the bad and put each in place, struggle to face ugliness and replace it with beauty. But in each of these, a sense of purpose overwhelms the pain and brings its own joy.

Then there are journeys that seem to have no purpose. Where nothing appears to be accomplished, all seems futile. There is no medicine to wash away the pain.

But every journey the soul travels takes her higher. It is only that in some, the destination is a place so distant, so lofty, she could never have imagined. Until she arrives.

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

I hope, I pray, I plead that every day is a journey that takes me higher. But the destination is so far away and the effort to reach it is so great. Yet I dare not consider the possibility of falling. I must climb. I must soar. I must fly.

May God, by His grace and mercy, give me the strength. May He grant it to us all.

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Seeking Out a Greater Imagination

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“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.”

-Matsuo Basho

Rabbi Sholom Ber of Lubavitch used to say that if the hedonists would know the ecstasy of mystic union, they would instantly drop all their worldly pleasures and chase after it.

It is not just pleasure. It is the source of all pleasures.

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

I recently had a discussion with an (apparent) atheist in the comments section of one of my blog posts. As with many other Christian/Atheist discussions on the web, he found Christianity wanting due to its lack of morality. That generally means “lack of morality” as progressive secular humanism defines the term (and the definition tends to shift over time). But is the sole reason for someone to become a person of faith or a person of faithlessness to gain a sense of morality and ethics?

Probably not. At its core, I think a person selects one system of philosophy or theology over another in an attempt to seek a reason for existence. Rabbi David Hartman in his book A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism (chapter 9) says it this way:

As history has shown, the human being is not only a fact-seeking animal, but equally and possibly more so, a value-hungry individual seeking direction and significance in life. We hunger for a frame of reference that orders and orients everyday existence into some meaningful pattern. In spite of the extreme importance of facts, their range does not exhaust the sources from which one constructs a vision of life that gives meaning and direction to existence.

Beyond the quest to determine the moral relativity of right and wrong, and even beyond the desire to understand the nature of the universe, its origins and its development, is the overwhelming desire of human beings to seek out and discover themselves. This is perhaps the greatest mystery within our awareness, greater than the origin of life and greater than the scope of the cosmos.

Who are we? Why are we here? Is this all there is? Is there something more?

I was recently watching the first part of a two-part episode of Star Trek: Voyager called “Scorpion”. The starship Voyager was about to enter an area of space dominated by the Borg, which is a highly malevolent cybernetic race and mortal enemies of the Federation. It is the only path Voyager can take to make it back to the Alpha Quadrant and home.

The Borg are under attack by an equally malevolent race of beings from a realm outside our universe who are referred to only as “species 8472.” The destruction caused by the war between the Borg and species 8472 is vast and multiple star systems have been destroyed in its wake. If Captain Kathryn Janeway (played by Kate Mulgrew) orders Voyager to go forward, the ship and everyone on board will be annihilated. If she turns the ship around to ensure everyone’s safety, she must admit that she will never get her crew home. She’s trapped in an endless loop of guilt and remorse, because it was her decision to save an alien race that stranded the Voyager crew over 70,000 light years away from home nearly four years ago.

As a diversion, Janeway had previously programmed a holodeck simulation of Leonardo da Vinci (played by the acclaimed British actor John Rhys-Davies) and his workshop environment. Janeway takes on the role of Master da Vinci’s student in order to relax, work on various art projects, and be inspired by a holographic replica of one of history’s most innovative creators. In the throes of despair, as Voyager is poised to either move forward to destruction or turn back in defeat, Janeway makes a midnight visit to the Master’s studio seeking a solution she cannot find within the limits of her own resources.

She finds da Vinci sitting in his darkened studio, softly illuminated by dozens of candles, staring at light and shadow as they play upon a blank wall. Janeway sits with him and asks him what he sees. da Vinci (Rhys-Davies) responds:

A flock of starlings; the leaves of an oak; a horse’s tail; a thief, with a noose around his neck… Uh… And a wall, with the candlelight reflecting on it. There are times, Katarina, when I find myself transfixed by a shadow on the wall, or the splashing of water against a stone. I stare at it, the hours pass, the world around me drops away, replaced by worlds being created and destroyed by my imagination. A way to focus the mind.

Out of desperation, with all other options exhausted, Janeway turns to this computer generated simulation of one of the world’s finest minds and imaginations and opens her soul to him.

There’s a path before me – the only way home. And on either side, mortal enemies bent on destroying each other. If I attempt to pass through them, I’ll be destroyed as well. But if I turn around – that would end all hope of ever getting home. And no matter how much I try to focus my mind, I can’t see an alternative.

Then da Vinci replies in a way I found absolutely fascinating, especially since Janeway has always been played as a pragmatic atheist (and after all, she programmed da Vinci).

When one’s imagination cannot provide an answer, one must seek out a greater imagination. There are times when even I find myself kneeling in prayer.

I’m sorry to take you through a mini-tour of one of my favorite Voyager stories (especially if you’re not a Star Trek fan) but this is the point I was building up to. This is what we as human beings are seeking; a greater imagination. I don’t mean one that we can possess, but something beyond ourselves and our reality. Janeway and Voyager are exploring the galaxy, or a non-trivial part of it, as they attempt to travel 70,000 light years from the Delta Quadrant back to the Alpha Quadrant and Earth, but the real journey; the human journey is far more wondrous and vast.

The human journey is the attempt to travel beyond the limits of observation, science, and the very conceptualization of a physical and temporal reality and to find what lies beyond, which must surely be a greater creative imagination than ours and the One who is responsible for everything we now experience.

On a website called The God Debates, a discussion on a cause for the universe’s existence is going on (as I write this). I seriously doubt that the matter will be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, but the need to have this discussion is completely human and shows us how much we need to seek out “a greater imagination.” An even more unusual example of this is a story at Jewish Ideas Daily called Disturbing the Universe. This is Kabbalah scholar Daniel Matt’s review of cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss’s new book, A Universe from Nothing: why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing. In the same article, Matt reviews Alan Lightman’s new novel Mr g: A Novel About the Creation. An article where a Kabbalah scholar reviews both a very serious book on cosmology and a seemingly light-hearted but compelling work of fiction on God and Creation? Definitely worth a read.

However, why does one person seek the limits of the universe in a microscope, a telescope, in a chemistry class, in an archaeological dig, or using the cutting-edge tools of physicists? Why does another person seek to escape the limits of the universe entirely and encounter the infinite wonder that lies beyond the scope of the mechanisms mankind feebly constructs with flesh and blood hands?

Maybe sub-atomic particles and a vast, expanding universe are the only wonders that exist, but I certainly hope not. If it is true that this is all there is and there is nothing more, then everything mysterious, wonderful, and astounding about our existence is potentially within man’s grasp and one day, there will be no more mysteries. The universe will be “solved” and man will reach the end of his own adventure and become his own “god” (if he hasn’t already).

But in seeking God, man longs to go beyond the possible and to engage a mystery that can never be solved. But that’s the greatness of spiritual man: the need, the desire, and drive to seek out the impossible and to experience even the briefest glimpse of the unseeable, the untouchable, the unknowable.

In seeking God, man approaches the real purpose of his being. This is what pushes us past the barriers of despair, loneliness, hardship, and torture. This is why man endures. This is why man achieves. Without the search for God, man’s labors are no more significant than an ant pushing a bread crumb across a dirt lot, regardless of the illusion of “greatness” we bestow upon ourselves.

Some abandon the covenant after the death of a single loved one, but others retain belief in God’s love for and commitment to themselves despite having lost their whole family in the Holocaust. One human being leaves Auschwitz an atheist and another as a person whose belief has grown stronger.

-Hartman

I suppose there are many cynical explanations for why a person who has suffered incredible horrors would retain a faith in God and even increase that faith in the shadow of Auschwitz, or a dying child, or a body shattered in war. Some more “enlightened” individuals accuse us of needing a “crutch” as if atheism is far more courageous and noble. But I don’t think it’s a matter of courage and nobility, and I can’t really say what it is that causes one person to deny God and another to seek him out, even sometimes at the cost of his own life.

The best I can see is that, like John Rhys-Davies’s version of Leonardo da Vinci, even when it seems to defy the person we think we are, we absolutely need to seek out a greater imagination than our own. We find ourselves seeking it and Him by kneeling in prayer.

It is only God who makes it possible for a human being to search for that which exists in a place no man can reach or touch or see. But that’s where we will find Him…and us.

 

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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 with the World, Part 2

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From the anthropological perspective on the problem of evil, therefore, the prime concern is not so much to defend the notions of divine justice and power. It is rather, as in other personal relationships, to determine what measure of continuity, stability, and predictability can enable the relationship with God to survive all shocks. It is to identify the cluster of beliefs that supports a person’s will to persist in the face of tragedy and suffering. If the world I live in requires that I become overly vigilant because of the threat of danger striking at any moment, then how can I sustain commitment to a way fo life predicated on God’s covenantal love and justice?

How do we respond to events that can call into question our whole identity as God’s relational partners?

-Rabbi David Hartman
Chapter 8: “Rabbinic Responses to Suffering”
A Living Covenant: The Innovative Spirit in Traditional Judaism

Note: If you haven’t read Part 1 of this “meditation” already, please do so before proceeding here.

An atheist can dismiss such questions by dismissing God. The presence of tragedy, suffering, and evil can be accepted as conditions of a natural world filled with imperfect human beings. It can also be a world that, while imperfect, is struggling to develop toward a higher moral and ethical reality as indeed, progressivism strongly believes. Human beings then, establish and revise the foundations of our own morality, sometimes radically, as time advances and the concepts of rightness, mercy, and justice continue to evolve in societal consciousness.

The covenantal Jew on the other hand, perpetually wrestles with God as did Jacob (Genesis 32:22-32) before his confrontation with the (supposedly) murderous Esau. But it’s in that battle that a Jew struggles not only with God but with himself.

A covenantal religious consciousness is always vulnerable to self-doubt and to feelings of rejection and guilt. When suffering and tragedy have struck without any explanation once, twice, and repeatedly, individuals in the community no longer know what kind of world they are living in. Like Job, they may ask: “Why do You hide Your face and treat me like an enemy?” (Job 13:24)

-Hartman

But in Rabbi Hartman’s viewpoint, a Jew is not simply a conduit for the cosmic forces of an Almighty Being to use to manipulate the course of history or even personal events.

The acceptance of that responsibility therefore need not entail that paralyzing sense of guilt alleged in Paul’s criticism of the law. Nor does mitzvah demand unconditional obedience without rational discernment, since the halakhah expects from Jews not just a dedicated will to serve God but also a reflective, sensitive, and critical moral disposition.

This takes away the motivation for a covenantal Jew to say that “God told me to do it” when facing a moral decision or in responding to personal disaster. The Torah is not a static set of rules carved in stone but rather a moral imperative written on the living and beating heart of every Jew. Each situation must be examined and evaluated not only against the yardstick of tradition and the mitzvah, but as potentially a wholly new phenomenon that may require a completely unique and unanticipated response, framed within the organic, evolving Jewish moral and historical tapestry.

Returning to Rabbi Freeman’s commentary on Judaism and its response encountering the demands of a progressive culture, the Rebbe felt that modernity didn’t present a set of obstacles but only “challenges. Challenges chiding you to show your stuff. Show that stuff and do what a Jew has to do, and those challenges themselves lift you on their shoulders, carrying you high.”

To continue:

Every talk, every letter, every teaching of the Rebbe must be understood in that context: We are not prisoners within an ominous world; we are the agents of its Master. We are not here to placate the world, but to repair it; not to reform ourselves to its tastes, but to reform it to the tastes of its Creator; not to conserve Judaism, but to be an organic part of its flourishing growth; not to reconstruct it, but to use it to reconstruct our world. Because ours is not a Torah of the past, but one that beckons to us from a magnificent future.

The Rebbe’s response to the challenges of a world and its developing, progressive morality is to move one giant step backward and to take a “metaview” of that world. Human advancement and even human history is transitory. Modern liberal progressive thought acknowledges that morality is not a fixed entity and adapts across time and the needs of the human spirit. While the Rebbe no doubt had a more established sense of moral and ethical standards, he also understood that the world is not ownerless or that, human beings are not the only “landlords” of reality. The world has a Master and we are His agents.

The world of human events wasn’t something to be avoided, but to be encountered and wrestled with. Rabbi Freeman characterises the Rebbe’s response by saying that “he grabbed it by its horns and harnessed it to plow his field.” For the Rebbe, each Jew stands in this place:

When you stand in a place of enlightenment, the Rebbe so often taught, you may have boundless, infinite light—but you do not have G‑d Himself. In the void of light where this world was made; in the darkness of Jewish exile, where we must choose life from the depths and create our own light to find it; in a society that forces us to wake up, take the reins of our own lives and challenge everything—there we touch G‑d at the very core.

A Jew may be surrounded by darkness but he stands in a place of light and it is from that light, regardless of how hopeless the circumstance, he must proceed, carrying with him not only the strength of the traditions of the past, but the infinite hope of a future from which the Moshiach will emerge and where God will rescue His people. Atheism, progressivism, secular humanism are conditions to be wrestled with, to be “grabbed by its horns and harnessed,” but they are not defining, either of a Jew nor the world that is ultimately owned by God.

My understanding of all of this is that Judaism may wrestle with itself, with the demands of society, and ultimately with God, but it is the Jewish identity that remains the one constant that enables them as a people, to move forward, to survive not only challenges, but horrors, and that will see them finally standing at the foot of the throne of God, receiving His promises of life and peace.

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve been seeing a few elements that can be adapted to Christianity and those promises we expect to be fulfilled by our Master at the end of this age. But we must also learn to establish an identity that can engage our environment without fear or despair. Our “liability” as such, is that we Christians are commanded to not only encounter our neighbor and love him, but to attempt to convince him to adopt our faith and our worldview (which is something no Jew must face). In that, we present ourselves as agents of the world’s greatest benefactor while being perceived by many in the secular world as humanity’s greatest enemy.

We are ridiculed and reviled by atheists and humanists and in response, we struggle with our own doubts, retreat into concrete bunkers of inflexible dogma, or attack the inhabitants of an unbelieving world, thereby abandoning our evangelical imperative. But we can neither ignore the world nor hate it. We are commanded to live in it and to live with faith in God. Like the covenantal Jew, we must be anchored to our legacy who, for us, are the Apostles and disciples of ancient times, and also look to the hope of the future when Jesus returns.

In the meantime, like the Rebbe, we need to seize the world around us and live in it, though we are not of it. We must treat each person we encounter with love, respect, and dignity. Our values do not require that they respond in kind, only that we are consistent in imitating the example of our teacher and Master by being involved and by being a light.

We are not trapped between a hostile and violent army and a vast and unconquerable sea. We can move forward. The sea will part. But first, we have to get our feet wet.

Don’t be afraid.

Addendum: Just found an article at Commentary Magazine on liberal intolerance of religious folks (in this case, Jews) called Liberal Prejudice Against the Orthodox Crosses a Line. I can see we have a long way to go.