A Soulful Journey

On an airplane a stewardess reminded boxer Mohammed Ali to fasten his seat belt. “Superman don’t need no seat belt,” quipped Ali. “Superman don’t need no airplane either,” the stewardess responded.   Ali fastened his belt. There is a meeting point between confidence and taking precaution.   On one end is stupidity and other is an incapacitating fear.

  “It is often argued that the people who will be affected by a major decision should be involved in it.   Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal in southern Africa, once resolved a dispute between two brothers about a land inheritance they were to share.   Kruger’s decision: let one brother divide the land, and let the other brother have first choice.”   – Louis E. Boone

We work.   We go to school.   We save for vacations.   We raise our families.   We build homes and empires.   With all this busy activity sometimes we forget what it is all for.   What is our goal in life?   What are we doing all this labor for?   Am I putting emphasis where it belongs?   Or have I gone astray? In Ropshitz, it was customary for the wealthy – whose homes were built at the far end of town – to hire someone to watch over their property at night.   Late one evening, when Rabbi Naftali was taking a walk, he met a watchman on his rounds.   The rabbi asked, “Who are you working for?” After the watchman replied he also asked, “For whom are you working, rabbi?”  The question pierced the heart of the rabbi.   He walked silently beside the watchman for a while and finally asked, “Will you be my servant?” The watchman answered, “I would like to, but first tell me what my duties would be.” “To remind me,” replied Rabbi Naftali.   “To remind me.”

“With that nut in Russia polluting the air with all kinds of fancy fallout, no one has time to check the veracity of any statement made by anyone about anything.” – Groucho Marx in Memories It is easy to obfuscate.   Just try weaving together several disparate thoughts and listeners will walk away wagging their heads in despair.   Politicians do it all the time.   But to relate to, and with, others takes focus.

High up in the North, in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock.  It is one hundred miles high and one hundred miles wide.  Every one thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.  When the rock has been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have passed.                                     -   Hendrick Willen Van Loon For us time passes slowly and in the brief span of what we call our life we feel isolated, as if we are everything and everything is us.   Torah teaches that this is not so.   We are part of a vast fabric of time living in the weave of Judaism.   We are part of the universe not the other way around.

  “There is no distinctly American criminal class - except Congress.”   - Mark Twain We need governance.   We require the political process.   Yet, it is so vital to not become tainted by the very process that insures our rights.   Every business, organization, company, and gathering   is a “congress”. Our task is to be true.

  “Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.”   - Abraham Lincoln It is absolutely vital that we pursue the right path, not the one others have laid for us, and certainly not the ones our peers urge us to follow.

“A young rabbi in New York was distressed because he was being unfairly attacked by certain extremists.   He visited the Rav, our great and revered mentor Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, to consult with him.   It was the week that we read the portion Vayetse. The Rav listened to him and made one simple comment on the verse, “And Jacob went ledarkho (on his way) and he was met by the angels of God.”  The Rav told him: If you will go on your way, in the way you are convinced is correct, looking neither to the left nor right, then you will indeed meet the angels of God.  Ignore the extremes and do what is right.”   - Rabbi Norman Lamm

A father returned from a long business trip and brought with him an expensive new wardrobe for his son.   The little boy dressed and strutted in a new outfit.   While in mid-strut, he fell face forward into a puddle an ruined his new garments.   His jealous friend joyfully threatened, "I am going to tell your father and you are going to get a good beating!”   He ran carrying the tale. The son immediately took off after him and rushed into the home sobbing.   “Look what happened, father!   I ruined the beautiful suit you gave me.” When the father saw the grieved expression on his son’s face he compassionately said, “Do not weep.   Accidents happen.   It is not your fault.   I will have the clothing washed.” Moral?   Instead of giving the Tempter an opportunity to denounce us before the Lord we should act first by confessing, praying, and begging forgiveness from our sins. Life gives ample opportunities to learn and grow.   Our task is to use the life experiences we gain and bec

Theologian Ignaz Maybaum once remarked that Sigmund Freud always operated as a Jew and a member of B’nai Brith.   – Louis Jacobs We travel many roads in our life.   Some of them take us very far from home.   But our moorings, our soulful longing, never takes us from our place of origin.

“A Jew was visiting his doctor, and listened to the following report: ‘There is an improvement in your general health.   Your legs are swollen, but I am not worrying about that.’ ‘Well Doctor,'  replied the patient, ‘if your leg were swollen, I wouldn’t worry about it either’. ” -          Friday Night Book 1933 If the mitzvah of “loving one’s neighbor as oneself” is real it means the pain someone else suffers ought to be what we feel.

"There cannot be a God, because, if there were one, I would not believe that I was not He." -F. Nietzsche There is one overriding characteristic that man needs to rid himself of: Conceit.

Every age has its leaders, its despots, its values, and its gods.   They vary only slightly from what was valued by precious generations.   Sure, the names change, dress is different, even language changes.   Yet, our foibles lead us to the same troubled waters. Dwight Eisenhower went into a room packed with enormous computers.   He put the question to the machines, “Is there a God?” And they all start up, and the lights flash, and the wheels turn, and after a while a voice says, “Now there is.”   -Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth While we read and laugh, we make the same misjudgments today.

Every fruit has its season and climate when it blooms and grows.   Some fruits only flourish in golden sunshine and cannot tolerate the cold.   Others wither and shrivel in hot weather.   However, the etrog is the only fruit which grows in winter and summer.   It is able to survive heat, cold, snow, and rain.   As are the fruits so are nations.   Each nation has its place and environment in which it thrives.   The Jews, however, are strewn throughout the world and live sometimes under harsh conditions.   Like the etrog, which is the symbol of the Jew, they overcome all obstacles and manage to survive.   Like the etrog, the Jews will never become extinct. -Unknown

There is an odd thing about the way we live our lives.  We tend to see everything through the lens of how we spend our time.  The expressions we use, the images we emerge out of the tapestry of a woven existence. There is the tale of a prominent rabbi, a member of the CCAR (Reform Movement) who had had passed away.  A colleague was called to deliver a memorial lecture in his name.  In the delivery, he began, “We now remember those colleagues who have gone to the great conference in the sky…” - told by Rabbi Louis Jacobs

In a fiery exchange between Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy, Kennedy asked, “Do you ever admit a mistake?” “Certainly, I do,” replied Khrushchev.  “In a speech before the Twentieth Party Congress, I admitted all of Stalin’s mistakes.” - Rabbi Vernon Kurtz Sound funny but it is not a simple task to admit we have done wrong. It takes courage, trust in oneself and inner personal strength.

One‘s ego is a force to be reckoned.  It exerts a powerful inward pull that accompanies the wacky belief that if we are found to be wrong it will reduce the self to rubble. “There are some people who would rather eat turnips than admit they were wrong.” -Anonymous

“A pious Jew came to the Rabbi to confess a grievous fault. ‘What is it?’ asked the Rabbi. ‘I omitted to wash my hands before having a meal.’ ‘How did it happen?’ ‘I wasn’t eating at home.’ ‘Where were you eating?’ ‘In a restaurant.’ ‘Well, why didn’t you wash your hands at the restaurant?’ ‘I couldn’t’ ‘You couldn’t?  Why?’ ‘There wasn’t a lavatory in there.’ ‘There wasn’t a lavatory at the restaurant?’ ‘No.’ ‘I have never hear of a kosher restaurant where there wasn’t a lavatory.’ ‘It wasn’t a kosher restaurant.’ ‘What?  Not a kosher restaurant?’ ‘No.  But how did you come to eat in a restaurant that was not kosher ?’ ‘I could get into a kosher restaurant.’ ‘How was that?’ ‘All the kosher restaurants were closed.’ ‘All of them?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How was that?’ ‘It was Yom Kippur.’  - Friday Night Book What good thing can you say?  At least he was honest?  As all Jew are supposed to do, he confessed for a sin?  At least we can laugh.

In a moment the mourners will stand to reaffirm their belief in God in the shade of their beloved who are no longer with them.   Then, not long afterward, the Musaf service will have ended.   And it is over.  Like all things, this too will end. Before proceeding it is prudent to pause in soft silence to let our thoughts settle.   Some will remember while other will be looking ahead.   Some have regrets, others hold resolve.   All of us mourn.

Nothing is contained. No thing is so isolated form the universe that it happens in a vacuum.  All things are interconnected.  The mystic text of Kabbalah says this best: “All discussions here on earth are used for the basis of all discussion taking place in the Above, Metivta d’Rakia, the Academy on High,” says the Zohar - Rabbi Louis Jacobs

One of the notable universal events of every parent's life is when their child turns to them and shouts, "Look, mom and dad!"  Like all of us, children want to be recognized, acknowledged that they are valued. Robert Gordis was a famous teacher at the Jewish Theological Seminary.  One anecdote that relates to an exam he once gave.  A paper was returned to the professor which was quite lengthy, over twenty pages.  As it stretched on beyond page twenty the student wrote, "Professor Gordis: If you're still reading by this page, please call me." Later that week he received a call from Gordis, "I just wanted to tell you that I'm on page twenty-one."  Acknowledging another is not hard to do but it is very important.

As it turns out, life is anything but predictable.   Things happen.   And not necessarily the way we want them.   So what do we do? “My sister, Becky, prepared a pasta dish for a dinner party she was giving.   In her haste, however, she forgot to refrigerate the spaghetti sauce, and it sat on the counter all day.   She worried about spoilage, but it was too late to cook up another batch.   She called the local Poison Control Center and voiced her concern.   They advised Becky to boil the sauce again. That night, the phone rang during dinner, and a guest volunteered to answer it.   Her face dropped as she called out, “It’s the Poison Control Center.   They want to know how the spaghetti sauce turned out.”    - Gene Solomon in Reader’s Digest 1994

At moments of clarity we understand the value of life.   They are far too infrequent.   That is why it is good, every now and again to get a reminder of what is important before the opportunity is lost. “Carve not upon a stone when I am dead the praises which remorseful mourners give…. But speak them while I live.” - Edwin Arnold, poet

There are two divergent areas of study in Judaism:   One is halacha, law, and the other, midrash, lore.   They parallel one another but are distinct in their presentation of their understanding of Torah. Dr. Weisberg differentiated between a baal halacha, an observant Jew, who he called a “naked giant” and one who is baal aggadda, one who is a master of lore, who he labeled a dwarf in full panoply.   - Rabbi Jonathan Magonet “Turn the Torah over and over for all can be found in it.”         - Pirkay Avot

Nobody likes a constant complainer.  Yet, the definition of someone who complains a lot will vary from person to person.   One person may reach their threshold when they hear the same comment twice.  Others, well, others are different: Brother Paul joined a monastery and took a ten-year vow of silence.   After ten years the abbot called him in and asked if he had anything to say.   “Food cold,” said Brother Paul. “I’ll look into it” said the abbot. Another ten years passed, and the abbot again asked if Brother Paul had anything to say.   “Food still cold,” he replied.   The abbot said he’d look into it. Ten years later the abbot once more asked in Brother Paul had anything to say.   “Food still cold.   I quit,” he answered. “It’s just as well,” said the abbot.   “Nobody can stand a habitual griper.”      - Clark Hartman quoted in Reader’s Digest