Don’t look backward--There is nothing left for you there!

So often I have heard throughout the Covid-19 plague, “I can’t wait for life to go back to normal.” It makes me chuckle because I recall with great clarity how many of those same complainers were dissatisfied when life was “normal.” I can’t help but feel sorry and much worried for those whose future is obstructed by renovated nostalgia. Firstly, the alleged “normalcy” of the past is problematic in and of itself, i.e., please define normal. Secondly, we are never going back to that world of imagined happiness.  There is a vicious war between good and evil--life and death--with each endeavoring to enlist mankind to its side. It is not a new war, but it is an ever intensifying one. “Which side is winning?” you ask. The one we have been feeding the most. There is the world of truth and the world of lies with no multiple shades of gray--regardless of the comfy accommodations that our excuses conjure. So, my friends, “To which side are you donating?”

“Behold, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil,” G-d warns us. “You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live.”

If those are the only multiple-choice answers in G-d’s test called "Life," why did He really have to tell us what to choose? Which rational-minded person would not choose life? Who would say, “Nah,” I think I’ll pick death, but thanks for the offer”? And yet, more often than we think, we do pick death. Perhaps not in one fell swoop as would an executioner wielding a sharp sickle, but even more cruelly and self-deceptively we choose death by a thousand cuts. Simple examples are the “toxic” foods or drinks we grab for regularly, unhealthy habits and environments. If we would stop and think for a simple moment before we act, and question which side our actions are feeding, our lives would be dramatically enlightened. But most of us don’t and then one day we “wake up dead” and ask G-d or anyone who will listen: "What happened to the person I used to be and where is the one I wanted to be?"

Yesterday, I asked on Facebook, “What happens to our sins?” Well, they too kill us ever imperceptibly, one “small” sin at a time, not only in this lifetime but in the next one as well. Dear reader, I feel you rolling your eyes at me. What, you don’t believe in the world to come? Ok, so go back to watching Netflix, I’m sure you’ll find life’s answers there, in the glamorized sewers of Hollywood.

Quarantine and isolation have given us all time to reflect, like grade-schoolers in timeout, on our behaviors and on those “normal” lives we miss so much. The courageous and honest amongst us will start to remember our complaints and gripes, our disappointments and the gnawing emptiness that materialism and success could not fill. Some of us will even recall in the echo chamber of our conscience that rumbling grumbling sinful sentence: “I hate my life.”

We read about people just like us in this week’s Torah portion, Behaalotecha, in the Book of Numbers. The Egyptians had enslaved the children of Israel with back-breaking labor and embittered their lives, so much so that “The children of Israel sighed from the labor, and they cried out, and their cry ascended to G-d....” So, G-d freed them. Do they send G-d a big “thank you” note with everyone’s signature? Not really. Contrary to the famous words, “Give me liberty or give me death,” the Israelites, once having obtained liberty, said give me slavery. They lamented the fact that were ever taken out of Egypt. “We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free of charge, the cucumbers, the watermelons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.” They wanted to go back to “normal.”

If we don’t fight the fear of change in our own lives, abandon the comfort zone and embrace new versions and visions of ourselves, we will always be crying to return to our figurative ‘Egypts.’ After all, slavery offers routine and therein we find comfort. But the questions are: “Who and what are we serving?” G-d or fear and the fake over-materialistic world that is killing us slowly? If normal as we knew it were such a noble enterprise, why would it be called “a rat race.” G-d Himself sees the G-dly in us. He tells us be holy because I am holy. Be a royal nation. But we prefer to emulate the rat and eat all the garbage and lies that this idolatrous world feeds us. Yet, we learn from Perek Shira that even the rat praises the Almighty and knows its place and says, “The entire soul praises G-d. Hallelujah!" 

As for us, our entire soul praises money and other intoxicating life-sapping charms. And so, it may come as surprise to know that not all the Israelites were spared during the plague of darkness. G-d smote four-fifths of them--2,400,000 died because did not want to leave Egypt. So enmired were they in the darkness of their deeds—their normal-- that it was fitting they died in darkness never to see the light of the Torah which awaited their people. The Torah awaits us still my beloved Jews and it is time to be led by the light. Darkness is not a flashlight that any normal person would use. And yet we called our darkness “normal.” Rather, it was just a place to hide, to die, to lie, to grow fungus and to shirk our responsibilities as Jews.

Look at Covid and rising antisemitism as opportunities, as new flashlights, as G-d’s exit strategy: He opened the sea before us and gave us the Book of Life. Don’t choose death. Don’t look backward? There is nothing left for us there! “…For the Lord said to you, ‘You shall not return that way anymore.’” Let it go. Move on! “DO not be afraid,” the Almighty ensures us. “I will go before you and fight your battles.” So just believe that G-d will and more importantly, give Him a reason to do so.

Hey Jew, GO HOME!

 

No matter how far away from home we go in life, either because we were running away or were lured elsewhere by our imaginings and the world’s trappings, something always drives us home. A family sickness, a funeral, sometimes even something good, but the road which brought us yonder also brings us home.  But when we return to the scene of our prime, the question is, “Will all those mirrors we once gazed in recognize us?” We are richer, skinnier, smarter, etc., how very lovely. But how much of our souls have we auctioned off to make it in this highly ornamented world of lies? Has our soul become a nobody, while we sought to be a somebody? “Mirror, mirror on the wall, surely you see I’ve had a great fall.”

And now I address the Jew in all of us, not the ever-fluctuating definition of Jew that serves our convenience. But rather, the Jew in us that stood at Mount Sinai. The Jew that told G-d, “We will do and we will listen.” He is so far from home. I know your upset the article pivoted because at first you liked where it was going just as you liked where your feet were taking you on your journey away from home. Because in truth, home hurts. It knows who we are; and we can’t fool it. But the mirror is up against all of us now and it’s time to look at ourselves, to look deep. The mirror is antisemitism, and it is doing once again what it has always done, reminding us that we are Jewish when we so conveniently forget and get caught up in all the trappings of the world. Perhaps we should ponder on the fact as to why they're called trappings.

God freed us from Egypt, but we have successfully rendered ourselves into trapped slaves all over again. We are ensnared by materialism, by our citizenship in foreign lands and the temptations they offer, by our success and by our own stupid, moronic and pathetic egos. Not many resemble that Jewish soul that our feet took wandering through the dark crevices of exile.

A great nation blessed by G-d Himself, chosen for “monogamy,” has morphed into gross polytheists and selfish polygamists. Our sin is in trying so hard to fit in when we are destined and tasked to stand out. Hiding one’s Jewishness will not kill antisemitism, behaving Jewish will. How do I know? Because G-d told me. Don’t worry, no delusions of grandeur here, He told you too. But now, time is running out.  How many of our Jewish communities are now on high alert for threats. Mine is. Our faltering footholds are becoming strangleholds, and as always and as promised we are being forced back home. It is foretold that in the Messianic era there will be an ingathering of the exiles from the Diaspora. 

It is a great awakening for those of us who ran from who we are and where we belong because we forsook our G-d and got seduced by a world of lies. In our high-tech modern world, we had no place for an ancient desert G-d. But the world isn’t lying anymore. The old masks have dropped, albeit now we wear new ones.  Anti-Semitism, the one virus for which no vaccine will ever be found, is flooding reasonableness, muddying our waters, building up pressure; and the dam will surely fall.  It’s spreading, it’s infiltrating and all our materialistic and institutional strongholds are exposed for what they are, vapors and illusions. We must look in the mirror and remember from where we come.

Our people attacked, our race forever blamed...and the right to "defend ourselves” is apparently a universal right that doesn’t apply to Jews. The irrational quality of Jew hatred should make us realize that something “irrational,” something exceptional, something beyond the physical reality we cling to, is at play. Rabbi Avraham Tanis says: “Man believes in himself and questions the Almighty, when really, we should believe in the Almighty and question ourselves.”

We have one G-d, one Torah, and one home: Israel. The burden of “never again” falls not to the nations of the world, but upon us. We learned from the smoke and ashes that when we hem and haw and falter, tomorrow is too late. Some adhere to the calling, others are stirred by the shouting. And so I now remember the words of Israel’s former chief rabbi, Meir Lau who evokes the two images of the Prophet Isaiah regarding the return of the exiles to Israel: the cloud and the dove. The cloud is moved by the external force of the wind; the dove has an internal homing sense that returns it to its land. 

No matter what propels us, it’s time to go home. It’s time to return not just to the land that G-d gave us but also to Him and His Torah. For not even in the Promised Land with a million angelic voices singing Hatikva will we find hope, promise and peace if we dismiss the very land deed which bequeathed it to us, i.e., the Torah. Friends we’ve had our run, a long run of arrogance and rebellion; and then there were those who kept us running.  I’m tired of running. It’s time to go home before it's too late. 

Do You Really Count?

 

After the 15 months we have all been through with Covid, filling out a 2021 Census questionnaire was life affirming. What a blessing to still be tallied among the living during an infectious epoch where we’ve focused on tallying the afflicted and the dead.  Nonetheless, it is a humbling thought that our existence, as per the census at least, is a mere statistic. We have been counted, but do we count? 

And if being just a number, a statistic, wasn’t enough, we were further dehumanized by wearing face coverings and driven into prescribed isolation, sometimes more deadly than the threat from which it offered refuge. Some found solace in cooking, others in Netflix, YouTube and various other forms of escapism. But how many turned to G-d for answers? How many self-queried whether it was perhaps a time better suited to seek than to hide?

All our nice clothes were rendered useless; there was nowhere to go. Our fancy offices were closed until further notice; our beautiful dinnerware sets that serve 12, lay dusty throughout our favorite holidays, and served one to none.    Everything we have and are had to be re-calibrated. Simplicity, by mere practicality, obviated ostentation. Literally we all had to wear masks but in a very real sense, the masks finally dropped. It forced us to look at ourselves alone in the mirror and ask: “What have I counted for in this lifetime?” “ Have you been a mere number, a lifeless statistic, or have you counted for one but lived as if were an entire army, an indomitable force that gave life to your convictions, i.e., feet to your ideas, gave love to the world with deeds not words, gave hope to the downtrodden with charity not pity and served the will of God, His way and not yours?  Or are you all the census bureau thinks you are—a digit?

In this week’s Torah reading, Bamidbar, we read how G-d commands Moses to take a census of the entire assembly of the Children of Israel. The sages teach that G-d wants a counting of his people for a different reason than governments. G-d counts out of love. Each is precious to Him. For certain, as the All-Knowing, does He really need to count? But any collector of fine things knows that you count and count again what you love.  But the count is not only precious for the counter, but also for the counted. Imagine having three kids and in front of them only count two. The hurt is unfathomable. We each want to be counted and want to count. But with that acknowledgement comes responsibility. G-d is not just counting his children, He is counting on them as well. He is counting on you: Don’t just be a Jew philosophically, be one physically as well. Try to keep Shabbat a little better, to keep kosher a little more cautiously, to be more helpful to someone who needs you, to honor your parents like you would your best customer and better.

Look deep into yourself, to the part that is oblivious to masks. The best mirror of oneself is the study and observance of Torah. It really shows you who you are, who you are not and what you should be and can be. The statistical odds of being born Jewish is small. Value your uniqueness and rarity. Don’t just be counted or lazily count yourself out: Count for something!  You can fool the whole world, but G-d Himself knows your number; and it’s your duty, as G-d’s treasured children, to add up to much much more!

 

A High Ten

 

"The L-rd rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands He recompensed me." (Psalms 18:21)

I remember, not too long ago, when I’d walk into a store and the annoying salespeople would flank me upon entry with a diatribe of information I’d prefer not to know. Now they welcome me in a snide tone, as if I am an enemy combatant, with the words: “Ma’am. You have to disinfect your hands first.” By the end of a lovely day at the mall after suffocating behind a mask (which has made lipstick irrelevant) my hands are chapped and burning and crying for mercy. Over a year later how compliantly we adhere to the ever-changing guidelines in order to avoid catching the Coronavirus, most especially our attentiveness to hand washing. After all, we want to stay alive. But a Kabbalistic teaching keeps echoing in my consciousness without abatement: “As above, so below; as below, so above.” In modern English: What’s happening in the higher worlds happens here and vice versa. And so I ask, “Why the hands? Why the masks?”

The Ten Commandments, in some sense, are a paradigm. The commandments on the first tablet pertain to G-d--“the Above”; the commandments on the 2^nd tablet are between man and man, “the below.”  The commandment that most highlights our hands is “You shall not steal”; As per Jewish teaching, it corresponds to the commandment of taking the Name of the L-rd in vain. As the rabbis teach: “Stealing from someone compromises our honesty and will inevitably lead to swearing falsely in G-d’s name in order to deny the theft.” Our mouths are masked, our hands vilified. In fact, the first things that sold out when this all started were masks and gloves. Very interesting.

 And so, since everything in this world is a message from the Heavens above, I can’t help but think that “cleanliness protocols” around the globe, ushered in by the lovely Covid-curse, was a wakeup call to us all: It’s time to clean up our acts. Our immoral behaviors are deadly. We steal from each other in so many ways: We steal people’s hearts, minds, time, ideas, reputations, dignity, words, money, etc., and then we start justifying why it’s all okay. Every thief is a make-shift defense attorney and a rationalizer par excellence. After all, a guilty conscience can’t live alone with itself and like a child makes up imaginary friends called Justifications, Reasons and Excuses.  Yes, we have to keep physically clean, but our crimes against each other, are crimes against G-d’s Torah and makes us spiritually dirty, and just as stress manifests as sickness, so does sin. I cannot profess to know, but only contemplate, which of our sins have led to the suffering that we've all endured for over a year. But to say that we have suffered for no cause is antithetical to the teachings of the Torah. And we have only to look into this week's Torah readings to see all the punishments that would befall us if we do not adhere to the rules that G-d has laid down for us.  

There is only so much that hand sanitizer can do for us. It certainly won’t wash our way into G-d’s good graces. For the past 40 days since the second day of Passover, the Jewish nation counted the passage of that time with a special prayer. There are a few reasons for doing so and one is to cleanse our souls from defilement. Each day we grapple with a trait that calls for “fixing”, i.e., purification. That spiritual preparation leads us into the Shavuot holiday, wherein the holy Torah was given on Mount Sinai by G‑d to the Jewish people, and as a gift to all humanity, more than 3,300 years ago. That gift is the eternal sanitizer and the only means through which we can refine ourselves. Sadly, when this pandemic erupted, we  dashed for the Purell and not so much for G-d.  But on the approaching holiday of Shavuot we are given the chance once again to grab our Torah with both hands, 'clean hands' and commit ourselves to being better Jews and better people.  And to that I hope you "give me ten"--a high ten, a very high ten. Shabbat Shalom!