A Soulful Journey

“Magic tries to make the will of God conform to our desires; religion is concerned with transforming our will so that it is one with the will of God.” - Dr. Carol Ochs This is our task; to hear the Word and obey.

“God could effect miracles without assistance; the rabbi generally had to rely upon prayer or merits.” Jacob Neusner Our rabbis, sages and tzaddikim are our teachers but the miraculous is solely the province of God. Rely only on Him.

Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Vibetsk said, “My mission on earth is to recognize the void – inside and outside of me – and fill it.” What a beautiful way to live life! The world is like a puzzle.  We see lacunae, empty spaces, all the time.  These are opportunities to make the world whole.  They are gifts waiting to be redeemed by us. 

A conductor raised his baton for the final concert rehearsal to begin. They orchestra played only a few bars when he stopped.  “Something is missing,” he said.  “I don't hear the piccolo.”  Just then, the piccolo player rushed in and apologized for being late. The rehearsal began again. The conductor nodded and smiled at the piccolo player. What the piccolo is only one of many instruments and it is tiny: only 14 inches long. How could its absence be noted when the orchestra played? The ear of the conductor could tell. - Robert Starkel Everything counts.  Everyone matters.  Every word spoken is heard.

Moishe Lieb Sassover repeated a conversation he overheard between two peasants, while they were drinking. “Do you love me?” one asked. “If you love me,” the first one continued, “do you know my needs or my wants?” “How should I know” was the answer. “Since you don’t know my needs,” the first peasant retorted, “how can you say that you love me?” “From this conversation you can learn," the Sassover Rabbi said, “that to love one’s fellow means to know what he is lacking and to share his needs and sufferings.”

“Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.” - Joseph Campbell

“Whoever spreads malicious gossip is like one who denies God. One is also forbidden to listen to malicious gossip. Our sages taught that four types of people cannot receive the Divine Presence: scoffers, liars, flatterers, and those are spreading malicious gossip."  – Yonah ben Avraham Geronddi

“At that moment a light went on in the distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable gray dawning morning in Bavaria.    “Et lux tenebris lucet” – and the light shineth in the darkness.   Four hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there.  Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch and looking steadily at me.”   - Viktor Frankl Find your light.

“Scr olls are days: Write on them only what you want remembered.”   - Ibn Pakuda

It is said that one day the Maggid decided that the signed the time had come to bring man’s exiled to an end. The decision caused alarm in heaven. He was asked: “Who do you think you are to dare tampering with the celestial order?” --- “I am the Tzaddik hador, this generation’s Just Man,” he replied – “You?  Prove it.”  -- “Very well, my disciples will furnish you proof.” Gathered hurriedly, they were asked point blank: “Am I or am I not this generation’s Just Man?” Thunder-struck, the disciples remained silent.  The Maggid repeated his question; nobody said a word.  He tried a third time and again was met by silence, always the same silence. It was a strange refusal, one that has remained unexplained to this day.  One wonders why these blindly devoted men refused, at the critical moment, to support their Master.  What is known is that, contrary to his predecessor, he never tried again.  It is written t...

“Be quiet,” the older man counsels.  “The Czar’s voice must not be lost in the air.  Like a holy bell, it must sound only for a great sorrow or a great celebration.”  (Advice to son listening to the Czar) –Boris Godunov If this is true for the voice of a human, must less a despot, how much harder should we listen to His Word?

Jim Anderson of the LA Times reported about Margaret, 71 years old. One day her son came home late one night and burst into the house without knocking. He saw on the couch Margaret with her boyfriend in a compromising position. The son was horrified. “That’s it!” he screamed.  That's the end. He slammed the door as he left. Margaret asked, “Did I do wrong?” The best things in life, Margaret, go on forever. Every human being requires conversation and friendship. But why do we assume that the needs of older people stop there? The body may creek a little but there is no atherosclerosis of emotions.  While older people literally hunger for caring, affection, and physical touch just like anybody, adult children and other family members children provide anything more then starvation rations: an occasional kiss. We know that sex is perfectly feasible at any age given good health.   But even when this does not seem appropriate for various ...

“To be loved, certainly is different from being admired, as one can be admired from afar but to really love someone it is essential to be in the same room with the person, crouching behind the drapes.” - Woody Allen Love can be scary. It means self-revelation.

How do porcupines make love? Very carefully. Everyone is tender and needful.  Love always must be dealt with by tenderness.

In one of Arnold Schoenberg’s orchestral works,  Opus 4, Verklarte Nacht- Transfigured Night , he wanted to convey through music the message of the redemptive power of love. He used as inspiration a poem by Richard Dehmel. Transfigured Night tells the story of a man and a woman walking through a bare, cold forest on a moonlit night.  The woman confesses to the man whom she loves that she’s carrying a child that is not his. The child within he womb is the product of sin, she cries. She desperately wanted to be a mother, but there is no one who loved her. And so, as she put it, she yielded her body “to then embrace of a stranger.”  She cries, “Now life has taken its revenge; now I have met you, O you.” She knows that she will now be abandoned by this man whom she truly loves and who has said that he loves her.  They live in a Victorian society; she is a fallen woman; all that she can envision out for herself is the life of shame and misery. ...

A German assimilated Jew  heard about Moshe the Apikores in a small town in Poland.   He decides to go and meet him.   He gets to the town and looks around for Moshe bu cannot find anyone among all the people who appears to be Moshe the Apikores.   Eventually he approaches and asks someone where he can find Moshe the Apikores. He pointed to one of the shteibelech in the town and is told Moshe is there.   He goes in and sees a bunch of people learning. He asks and is directed to Moshe.   He greets him and asks "Are you Moshe the Apikores?" and Moshe answers "Yes." He asks, "If you are Moshe the Apikores why are you here learning?"   Moshe answers "I may be known as Moshe the Apikores but I do not wish to be known as Moshe the Am Ha-retz!" Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen

A tzaddik told that the Baal Shem Tov hoped that one day he would be carried away to heaven by a storm like Elijah.  When his wife died he said, “I hoped I would be taken to heaven as Elijah was, in a cloud of fire.  But this is not possible any more because now I am only one half of a body."

A husband and wife are driving along in a pick-up truck.  It is quiet in the vehicle. The wife then turns to her husband and remarks, "How come we don't sit close any more?" He points to his seat behind the steering wheel and says,"I haven't moved." Look inside to remedy love's absence.

I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. -Alfred Tennyson

Man can try to name love, Showering upon it all the names at his command, And still he will involve himself in endless self-deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom, He would lay down his arms and name the unknown By the name of the unknown… by the name of God.    - C.G. Jung Be still.  Be in awe. Feel the love.

The commandment “to love,”  v’ahavta  occurs three times in the Humash .  First, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” (Leviticus 19:18).  Then, “You shall the love the stranger as yourself” (Ibid).  Finally, “You shall love the Lord with all your heart,” (Deuteronomy 6:5).  Why is love for God mentioned last? Because, answered one rabbi, if you do not love your neighbor and the stranger, you cannot love God. Love for God is attainable only through loving people.  That is why some siddurim suggest that before praying, one should give charity, tzedaka, and accept the mitzvah of loving one’s neighbors.

be of love [a little] more careful than of anything .  ee Cummings

This is how he survived the Holocaust: My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive, I only knew one thing -which I have learned well by now: love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self.  Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he still alive at all, ceases to be of importance. I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my personal life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at the moment it ceased to matter.  There was no need for me to know, nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved.  Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been...