Divre Harav – Words from the Rabbi

Psalm 41

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Adonai, God of Israel, is the source of Blessing from the eternal universe to the eternal universe. Amen and Amen. (41:14) End of Book One of Psalms.

The book of Psalms is divided into five parts, just like the Torah. Each part ends with a verse of praise (or in the case of the conclusion to Book Five, an entire Psalm of praise). The word ‘amen,’ signifying affirmation or agreement, is found in the statements of praise which end the first four books of Psalms.

The word olam denotes endlessness in both the dimension of space and the dimension of time. It’s hard to capture the sense of the word in English – universe captures only the physical dimension, and eternal captures only the temporal dimension. The opening word of the Hebrew, barukh, is also tricky to translate. I’m never sure what is meant by the phrase, “blessed is God.” Surely it cannot be meant in the sense of “May God by blessed,” for I cannot imagine that human beings can bless God. It must be meant to say that “God is the One from whom blessings flow.” The word barukh is similar in sound to the word b’reikha, which means “pool,” as in a pool of water. Thus, when I think of the phrase barukh ata Adonai (which except for the word ata, “you,” is the same as the opening words of verse 14), I associate it with an image of God being a spring of blessing which gushes fourth in the form of animating energy onto the world.

This article not only represents the conclusion of 1/5 of the books of Psalms, but also the final bulletin article for the first year of Psalm Reflections. If I am able to keep up the pace of one Psalm a week, I will finish all 150 Psalms in a little under three years. I intend to keep writing and posting over the summer. You can follow the reflections either at AhavasIsraelGR.org or directly from the blog site, EmbodiedTorah.WordPress.com.

Are you engaging in daily and/or weekly Jewish devotional learning or practices? If not, I encourage you to find something to connect you to your Judaism on a regular basis, to nurture your Jewish soul. Read Jewish books, learn Jewish texts, help out at a synagogue minyan or come to Shabbat services. Enjoy the summer, and make Ahavas Israel a part of it!

Psalm 37

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“Be silent for Adonai …” (37:7)

There are many times in our lives when we are called to speak up and let our voices be heard. This verse, however, focuses our attention on the time that we are called to be silent. I am thinking of my favorite part of dovening, the silence of the amidah, the part of the service where we create the opportunity for intense, directed, focused prayer.

The amidah is intended to be a period of time in which we address God directly. This is true prayer, during which we might pour out praise, thankfulness, sadness, hopes, requests, focusing on the quality of the day, focusing on our own needs, and focusing beyond ourself to the needs of the Jewish community and the world as a whole, using both our own words and the words of the Siddur. Externally, the most notable quality of the amidah is that it is prayed in complete silence.

There are different qualities of silence. There is silence of reprobation, there is the silence of shame, there is awkward silence, there is the silence of confusion, there is the silence of anger, and then there is the silence of acceptance. When a community agrees to hold each other in their prayers together in silence, it is a silence that embraces and supports.

The amidah is a time during a service where a roomful of people fall into a warm silence together. Not a word is heard. God, who has no ears, does not listen by means of air pushing through vibrating vocal cords, sound rippling through the room. Ideal Jewish prayer uses the merest whisper, audible only to the speaker. Prayer could be expressed through pure thought, being being human, we pray best if we activate our thoughts. But the mildest whisper of air while our lips enunciate the words, so quiet as not to disturb a neighbor standing only a foot away, is enough to focus our prayers and send them on to the Blessed Holy One.

There is a time to act for God, there is a time to raise one’s voice up to God, there is a time to sing for God, there is a time to shout for God, and there is a time to “Be silent for God.”

Psalm 33

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Note: My psalm reflection leading into April on Psalm 33 is in honor of the celebration of Pesah. For more information about Pesah, you can download a detailed Guide to Passover from AhavasIsraelGR.org or contact the synagogue office to request that we send it to you, either by email or by regular mail.

For God spoke, and it was; God commanded, and it endured. (33:9)

I learned recently that in the Biblical idiom, “God spoke” or “God said” in Genesis 1 means “God thought.” God’s speech does not need to be audibly pronounced, because speech is a physical human action that involves breath and mouth/nose and teeth and lips pushing and shaping sound. God, lacking human anatomy, does not need to manipulate wind and sound to make something real. A though or an idea, which to us is only a potential reality depending on action to make it concrete, to God is a reality. In the higher world of God’s reality, if something can be thought than it is real.

Told through the lens of God, Passover should therefore have been a quick story. God would needed only to speak/think and the Israelites would been free. The story would have been brief and to the point – Now we’re slaves, , now we’re free! But the Hagadah doesn’t opens its telling of the story this way because we don’t tell the story of Passover through God’s lens – we tell it through the lens of human experience. Maggid (the storytelling) begins Now we’re slaves – next year may we be free. We human beings don’t transition quickly. Unlike God’s immediate though to action, we need time to adjust from one state to another. We need to draw out the story to give us time to become free, so we have 10 plagues (which in the Rabbinic imagination are multiplied to 50 and 250) to give Pharaoh and ourselves time to prepare.

I shared a d’var Torah recently in which I suggested that a critical component of leadership is presence. One can be a great visionary leader, but only if one also is able to enlist others to fulfill the mission and get the job done. There will be times of crisis during which writing memos and issuing orders will be insufficient. The leader needs to demonstrate presence, that he or she is involved in the process of getting the work done. Enduring visions are those which are sufficiently compelling so that people stick around to do the work and to see what comes next. The story of Passover wasn’t a story of slave people who scattered to the four winds, each in pursuit of their own vision of freedom but rather the liberation of a people who remained together. 3500-some years later, we are still that same enduring people, telling the same story of how God’s plan came to be. Have a happy and kosher Pesah!

Psalm 25

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After a year in which all of the holidays have been “early,” we finally arrived at the month of Adar on February 1. In order to adjust the calendar so that Passover will fall in the Spring, this year is a leap year. This means that the month of Adar is doubled, and Purim is celebrated in the second month of Adar. Passover will begin on April 15. I guess we can all start complaining that the holidays are late again!

There are 150 chapters in the book of Psalms. I have now finished 1/6 of the book, 25 Psalms. The structure of Psalm 25 is an alphabetical acrostic; the theme is that of sin and forgiveness.

Let me know Your paths, Adonai; teach me Your ways; guide me in Your true way and teach me … (25:4-5)

Where do we look for wisdom? How do we know what God wants of us? There is no simple guidebook for life, easily searchable. There is no Siri for life, to whom we can ask, “Should I tell my boss I am not willing to be less than 100% honest with our customers if it might mean losing my job?” “Can I lie to get out of jury duty?” “Is it OK to choose not to aggressively treat my terminal cancer?”

For Jewish wisdom, we have Torah, Tanakh, and all of the literature of commentaries and Midrash and Mussar (ethical training) and ritual, civil, and criminal law that for centuries has grappled with such issues. Nonetheless, it is not as easy as finding a simple and direct answer in a book. The instruction to “Do what is right and good in the sight of Adonai” (Deut. 6:18) means that we ought to life a life of good character; engage in acts of hesed (love); celebrate the Jewish calendar; eat holy food; and continually engage in study of Torah.

It is the last item, Talmud Torah, Torah study, that is the key to the rest. It is a mitzvah to learn. Through learning in its broadest sense, we catch glimmers of wisdom that will serve to center us as we encounter the questions of life. We will have the wisdom and skill to examine the questions with equanimity, to analyze, to hear and learn from the sacred texts, find answers that we might ultimately reject. We will discover the values that inform our decision making, and use them to find a path illuminated by God’s ways.

Psalm 20

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How much has the world changed in the last 2013 years? How much has it changed in the last 5744 years? Is there anything that has existed for the entire timeline of recorded history?

My friend and colleague Rabbi David Seidenberg wrote recently that what is possibly the oldest living culture, the Australian aborigines, is about 60,000 years old (see his writings at neohasid.com). That’s pretty old, possibly as old as the earliest development of symbolic culture and language. For the rest of us, our religion, culture, traditions, laws, and rituals are a whole lot younger. Still, our cultural and religious systems provide a measure of stability and continuity over time. The Psalmist, in Psalm 20, reflects on what is temporary and what is permanent.

They [call] on chariots, they [call] on horses, but we call on the name of Adonai our God. They collapse and lie fallen, but we rally and gather strength. (20:8-9)

When you get down to brass tacks (what does that really mean, anyway), what do you find at the core? The Psalmist presents two contrasting world views, that of gashmiyut vs. ruhaniyut — materialism vs. spiritualism.

All material objects are temporary. Living creatures eventually die, and their (our) bodies disintegrate, slowly turning back into more basic elements.

I remember flying in and out of New York, looking at all of the buildings and thinking that even such enormous structures cannot last forever. I used to try to imagine Manhattan tens of thousands of years in the future, the buildings covered with vines, slowly eating away at the material, slowly crumbling. I never imagined that the end of the two most imposing towers at the South end of the island would be so dramatic as the one we witnessed in horror on September 11, 2001.

Gashmiyut, materialism – Horses and chariots, mortal beings and material objects, will all eventually collapse and disappear. Everything that we create will ultimately be destroyed.

Ruhaniyut, spiritualism – The existence of a Divine realm over and above us assures us that there is the possibility of a transcendent set of values and meaning for our existence. We can gather together in community and call upon the name of God, we can find strength in rallying together under a banner of a religious community whose purpose is to do good in the world.