A Soulful Journey

In Japan, at an international conference on religion, Joseph Campbell heard one American say to a Shinto priest, "We've been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few shrines.  But I don't get your ideology.  I don't get your theology." The Japanese paused as though in deep thought and then slowly shook his head. "We don't have theology.  We dance."  - The Power of Myth Real religion is a feeling in your bones, your limbs, the ebullience and needful expressions of hope and despair that transcends mere thought and reflection.

“I used to see a little grave Upon a tiny knoll, And all the weary way I knew I visited my soul.” -Sada Applebaum   Death should bring an awareness of life; not just the life that we live but the life that springs out of the soul and lives forever.

"In the old days, when people were poor they lived poor.  Today they live rich.  I've discussed this with many wage earners in the eight-to-ten-thousand-dollar-a- year class and, in most cases, they admit that almost everything they own, they don't..."  - Groucho Marx, Memoirs How little has changed in the decades since Groucho wrote those words.  We need to live within our means, not look over our should with envy at those who have more and live a life of debt.

Rabbi Alexandri said, “The world is darkened for him whose wife has died during his days.  As it is taught, “The light shall be dark, because his tent, and his lamp shall be extinguished.”  - Sanhedrin 22a

"There is a teaching that when a person awakes in the morning, he must quickly think of the first and second letters of the alphabet. The first, Aleph, is like the Aramaic Aluf, which means learn. The second, Bet, stands for the number two. That is, we are to learn and remember that there are two worlds, and this world -- what is it but suffering and certain death?  The best we can hope for is an easy exit."  - Yaakov to Herbert Weiner, Midstream, 1967 There is a universe above and beyond us.  Our suffering is eased when we remember this.

"The sight of a gravestone, weighty not only in its granite, allows us perspective on problems as pressing  as burnt toast, taxes and fever." -Donald Hall Our mortality gives a framework for life.  If there were no death we would never allow ourselves to grow to the heights of which we are capable.

 A brilliant young student goes to an old, learned rabbi and defiantly exclaims, “I must tell you the truth! I have become an apikoros. I no longer believe in God.”  “And how long,” asks the elder, “have you been studying Talmud?”  “Five years,” says the student.  “Only five years,” sighed the rabbi, “and you have the nerve to call yourself an  apikoros ?!…” Now, that's a wonderful joke, and it reminds me of another one, which I have found versions of  here ,  here ,  here  and  here ; no doubt there are many others. I would like, however, to attempt my own telling of this joke, which will obviously be based on many hearings of it previously, not all of which I can cite but I will mention my father having told it to me on more than one occasion. There was once a young man in a small Lithuanian shtetl, who was not like the other young men. They would dream of going off to one of the great yeshivas in Vilna, to learn Torah at the feet of the most eminent rabbis in the world. But our