Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

Tov! Chapter 7 -- Lying!

On “The Good Place” Chapter 7 is the classic lying episode, and on the podcast Rebecca Rosenthal and I jump off from the Talmud’s analysis of white lies to talk about truth and relationships, how and when we tell people important truths, and how truth emerges between people not just by telling.

(Also the Klingon death ritual....)

Listen and delve into the show notes here!

Launching Tov! The Podcast About "The Good Place" and Jewish Ideas

If you're a fan of "The Good Place" and at all connected to Jews or Judaism, try out my new podcast that I'm creating with a bunch of colleagues!

Tov! is on all the major podcast platforms, and it will be a fun and interesting way to explore some Jewish texts and ideas. Check out the website for episodes and show notes, or search for it in your app and try it out!

It's launching right as we begin Elul, the month in the Jewish calendar leading to Rosh Hashanah. This is the time of year when we're all Eleanor Shellstrop, trying to improve our lives as though everything is in the balance.

Seders Are Done, But Passover Isn't!

My column for the April 2019 bulletin for Temple Beth Abraham:

One way to experience Pesach (Passover) is: Two nights of Seder, followed by a week of matzah. Two nights of a unique happening – around a table, with people very familiar and/or new to you, part recitation and part roleplaying, with symbolic foods and special foods, detours for discussion, hopefully much singing. Then – a week of just figuring out how to eat.

In fact, Pesach is meant to be so much more expansive. A long, immersive experience of first-time freedom. The Seders are supposed to launch us into a week-long new year festival. We’re intended to continue to read and reflect on the meaning today of our people’s Exodus from Egypt. We’re meant to experience freedom as though these were our first free days and our first free steps.

The Seder scripts the very first steps, just as the Torah says our ancestors were guided step-by-step through the days leading up to and through the first Pesach. But part of freedom for them meant that they didn’t have a simple script for the next days, the first days as a free nation.

And it’s the same for us. It’s on us as Jews to define what those first days of freedom are going to be like. We have special food for the journey – matzah and other Kosher for-Passover things. What will we make out of our freedom?

In the Talmud, the sages Rav and Shmuel argue over what freedom essentially means. Shmuel says the story of the Exodus begins: “We were slaves in Egypt.” Rav says: “Long ago, our ancestors worshipped false gods.”

For Shmuel, the story culminates in the final escape from Pharaoh. For Rav, the story peaks when the Jews arrive at Mt. Sinai, to make a covenant and speak directly with God. Shmuel argues that the Exodus is primarily about physical and political oppression. So Pesach is a celebration of being freed from tyrants and tyrannies.

Rav argues that it’s about spiritual oppression, about being freed as well from the falsehoods of Egypt. So Pesach is about how we get ourselves to Mt. Sinai, how we decide to use our freedom.

This year, we need both a Shmuel perspective and a Rav perspective on our situation as Jews. We should use the whole of Pesach, not just the Seders, to reflect and learn about what it means to be free Jews today, and commit ourselves to some actions as a result.

In a Shmuel perspective, we need to reflect and learn about anti-Semitism, from the murders in Pittsburgh to the slanders of Rep. Omar. Here’s a book to read during Pesach, if not before: Anti-Semitism: Here and Now by Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt. Prof. Lipstadt is one of the most sought-out teachers and commentators on the matter. She is a Holocaust scholar, the central figure in a major trial in the U.K. about Holocaust denial, and someone up close to campus anti-Semitism from the left. Read her book or find her writings online.

And if you have been feeling paralyzed by reappearance of anti-Semitism in any or all of its forms – resolve to take some action. If you are within a group that needs to be called out, do that from the inside. If you can be an ambassador for Jews and Judaism, among people who might know very little, do that. Invite someone to services with you, or invite them to coffee with you and if you like with me.

In a Rav perspective, we should remember that true freedom has to be for something, toward something. Pick something new to learn about Judaism. Come to a class, engage with the weekly Torah reading online or with a study partner or with me. Get your own copy (or borrow a child’s copy!) of Rabbi Telushkin’s Book of Jewish Values. While you are eating your matzah, resolve on a way you can strengthen our own Jewish community. In a joyful way, through Shabbat meals or at services or celebrations. Or when we need each other the next time you see an announcement about a house of mourning.

And as you take your first steps from Pesach toward Mt. Sinai, think about the next mitzvah that your soul is begging to focus on. It could be some aspect of tzedakah (giving) or lashon ha-ra (gossip). Maybe you even want to partner up with someone to do it together – create the next Beth Abraham tzedakah collective, or buddy up on a gossip management project and check in each week!

Whatever you do – don’t let Pesach just be about something that happened more than 3000 years ago. Don’t let the days after the Seder slip away without savoring the first moments of freedom and responsibility, without noticing that the way you’ll notice every crumb of matzah in the seat cushions!

Wishing all of you a Zissen (Sweet) and Kosher Pesach,
Rabbi Jon

The Art of Apology: Lena Dunham

Over the weekend in the world of celebrity, actor and writer Lena Dunham generated a stir over an interview in which she commented on being seated at an event next to athlete Odell Beckham Jr.  Ms. Dunham noticed Mr. Beckham on his cellphone, and she said that she imagined he was avoiding her because of her looks and body type. (See the full interview here.)

After much reaction, Ms. Dunham quickly issued the following apology through social media:

I owe Odell Beckham Jr an apology. Despite my moments of bravado, I struggle at industry events (and in life) with the sense that I don't rep a certain standard of beauty and so when I show up to the Met Ball surrounded by models and swan-like actresses it's hard not to feel like a sack of flaming garbage. This felt especially intense with a handsome athlete as my dinner companion and a bunch of women I was sure he'd rather be seated with. But I went ahead and projected these insecurities and made totally narcissistic assumptions about what he was thinking, then presented those assumptions as facts. I feel terrible about it. Because after listening to lots of valid criticism, I see how unfair it is to ascribe misogynistic thoughts to someone I don't know AT ALL. Like, we have never met, I have no idea the kind of day he's having or what his truth is. But most importantly, I would never intentionally contribute to a long and often violent history of the over-sexualization of black male bodies- as well as false accusations by white women towards black men. I'm so sorry, particularly to OBJ, who has every right to be on his cell phone. The fact is I don't know about his state of mind (I don't know a lot of things) and I shouldn't have acted like I did. Much love and thanks, Lena

What do you like about this as an apology? Feel free to post a comment.

 

 

E-Maggid: Halacha

Why is Jewish law known as halacha -- the walking?

 

Possibly, the term flows from the opening line of this week's Torah reading:  If you walk in My laws, and keep watch over My commandments, and do them… (Leviticus 26:3)

 

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev taught that this verse describes stages in the performance of a mitzvah.  Actually doing a mitzvah is only the third stage!

 

Since "walking in the law" is just the first stage, he says that it must refer to getting the idea of performing a specific mitzvah for the first time.  Rabbi Levi Yitzchak imagines that inside of us, there is a lot "walking around" when we consider a mitzvah.  There is a battle between inner voices.  One calls on us to listen to God's command.  Another says:  This mitzvah is irrelevant.  This mitzvah is inconvenient.  As soon as God detects this movement, God is drawn into us, so to speak, and helps us refine our thoughts toward taking on that mitzvah.

 

Even before we commit to the mitzvah, the step of considering it earns us "the reward for walking."  Rabbi Levi Yitzchak says that a person who is "walking" through the first thought about a mitzvah is just like the person who is already observant and "moving" into deeper meanings.

 

Which specific mitzvah has you moving?  Is it a potential new dimension of Shabbat?  Noticing a situation when you are prone to gossiping?  Moving might be mulling it over, or trying it out.  Halacha gives us not just a general way of life, but a specific practice to focus on.  Just by focusing, we are walking.

Tazria-Metzora: A Teaser On Gossip

The word metzora means one who is afflicted with a certain skin disease (probably not leprosy, the usual translation).  The rabbis take the word metzora apart and play with it, turning into motzi ra or motzi shem ra -- one who brings about a bad name (reputation) for someone else.  So traditionally, this parasha is described as the symbolic punishment for one who engages in gossip.

I'm going to speak about gossip and lashon hara, literally "bad tongue", on Shabbat.  Here is the first text I will teach, a defense of gossip I found in the voice of the narrator in Amoz Oz's novel Elsewhere, Perhaps.  To be continued (and rebutted) on Shabbat in shul!

Whoever objects to such gossip betrays his own lack of understanding of our collective life [the narrator is referring to the 1950s kibbutz where the novel is set].  Gossip plays an important and respected role here and contributes in its way to reforming our society.  In support of this claim, let us recall a statement we have heard made by Reuven Harish himself:  the secret lies in self-purification.  The secret lies in judging one another day and night, pitilessly and dispassionately.  Everyone here judges, everyone is judged, and no weakenss can succeed for long in escaping judgment...We polish each other as a river polishes its pebbles...

...Gossip is simply the other name for judging.  By means of gossip we overcome our natural instincts and gradually become better men. Gossip plays a powerful part in our lives, because our lives are exposed like a sun-drenched courtyard...Gossip is normally thought of as an undesirable activity, but with us even gossip is made to play a part in the reform of the world.

B'haalotcha -- Is Prayer Your Steering Wheel or Your Spare Tire?

On the sign in front of Gurney's Automotive on Broad Street, there is always an inspirational saying of some sort.  Last week (and today still) it reads:  Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?

The spare tire part -- that's easy to understand.  When something's broken or gone wrong, we might respond in part by praying.  We might not be conscious of prayer other than when we have a need, something specific to pray about.

How could prayer be a steering wheel, though?

I found one part of an answer studying Parashat B'haalotcha last week.  At the end of the reading, in chapter 12 of Numbers, there is an incident in which Miriam and Aaron, the siblings of Moses, badmouth his wife.  According to the commentaries, it wasn't an issue of spreading a false rumor.  They may well have been just passing judgment on something true about her.  God punishes Miriam.  It won't be long in the Torah narrative before all three of the siblings learn that their period of leadership is over and each will die.

In Judaism, lashon hara or bad speaking is not only about spreading falsehoods.  It's about speaking truthful things when they are meaningless, irrelevant, misleading, gratuitous.  Judaism teaches that we should in general just reduce the amount of talking about other people that we do.

How do we achieve that?  Prayer can be a steering wheel.  When we are engaged in prayer, we are speaking words in a very elevated way.  We recite words that have been carefully chosen and selected through the ages.  The subjects of our prayers are meaningful.  Before we say the Amidah, the part where we approach God individually with our prayers, we say "Adonai, open my lips so that my mouth will tell your praise."  Or -- God, help me shape this speaking I am about to do so that what comes out of my mouth is worthy.

At the end of the Amidah, we say, "My God, guard my tongue from doing-harm, from lashon hara."  As we emerge from prayer-speaking toward the end of the service where we will be talking with other people, we ask God to help us keep the speaking habits of prayer, so that we take that way of talking out into our regular conversations.  Our tongues need guarding, they are always threating to leap into action.  It's a great image -- hold my tongue in place when I feel it starting to move!

Whenever we come to pray in the synagogue, we should pay special attention to those words at the beginning and end of the Amidah.  They can become our steering wheel, a way that the routine of prayer can affect how we live our daily life.  If we make these phrases our own, we can start to notice when the tongue needs guarding.  There are so many moments when we begin to speak about another person and we can hold back for a moment, ask ourselves:  Do I need to say this next thing?

Guarding the tongue is not easy, but it is very rewarding.  It's purifying and cleansing to stop yourself from uttering even an innocuous word about a third party.

So notice that end of the Amidah when you get to it next time -- Guard my tongue from lashon hara, help me watch what I'm saying about company not present.  Take an extra 30 seconds before you sit down, and get comfortable behind that steering wheel.