What's Charging You?

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As I scroll through Facebook Market place, I can almost conjure the musty smell of estate sales wherein both the objects and their one-time owners have become obsolete. The resulting feeling is always the same: A waft of sadness overtakes me.  Items once cherished-- --are being sold off by a new generation who couldn’t care less. How meaningless it all seems, the summation of a life that can be auctioned off for cheap on Facebook. In contrast, I can’t help but think of the enthusiasm and the long lines that form on Black Friday for the latest things and devices. Sophist that I am, I’m compelled to examine the life that lies between. What is it all really about in the end? What remains of us if the lives we sweated through are trivialized by an “everything-must-go” sale.  

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In this week’s Torah portion called Toldot, we read about the birth of twin brothers, Esav and Jacob, who were so opposite in their view of life that they began fighting while still in their mother’s womb. Their respective affinities were clear: Esav lived only for this material world and all it has to offer and Jacob lived for G-d, for family and the world to come. Esav was so carnally invested in the physicality of this world that for food, lentil stew, he sold his firstborn birthright to his younger twin brother in order to satisfy a life-sapping hunger born from his exhaustive and exhausting sins. That birthright involved responsibility, accountability and obedient behavior, and thus it meant nothing to him. It was just a potential burden to him or as we would say, a pain in the neck. Even without FB Marketplace, for a mess of pottage, he successfully sold his divine mission for which both his grandfather and father had lived and risked their lives.

 Often people who eschew the commandments, like Esav, tend to believe that doing what G-d wants is burdensome and tiring. And yet, the first words we ever hear about Esav in the Torah are that he’s “exhausted” (Genesis 25:30). The rabbis teach that he was exhausted because he was so busy living for the pleasures of the moment that his energy was depleted in the service of himself. And make no mistake about it, Esav was not 100 years old and burned out from his “party animal” lifestyle when both he and the Torah tell us that he was “exhausted.” He was 15. By then he had already been sleeping with betrothed women, was hunting, killing, manipulating, etc. He was already a stalwart example of what NOT to do.

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 How often in our own lives have we said and hear people say, “I’m tired and burned out,” and “I’m not what I use to be.” Observing some people’s lives can be like watching the battery bars on a cell phone. Slowly, slowly we watch the life force draining away.  And they are always far from the charger just when it’s needed most. But in truth, we only decline and drain away when we attach ourselves to false G-ds, when we spurn morality and vacate religion from our lives and unplug ourselves from the ONE true "charger": G-d. The love of money, the fancy cars, the toxic quest for perpetual beauty, the fame, the gadgets, the unbridled promiscuity, the mind dulling entertainments are all false “insulin spikes” that temporarily thrill us and ultimately drain us of our life energy.

 All of our forefathers were very wealthy. Where are their riches now? In the dust with all things that don’t matter. Their last will and testaments did not bequeath us ornate trinkets or mahogany chairs that need slight refurbishing. Their legacy is eternal; it is the Torah and its life affirming light that illuminates our lives in the darkest moments, that energizes us with G-d’s own life force when haSatan tries to deplete us and depress us. When G-d is our “charger” we don’t burn out and fade away; we become like the Chanukah miracle where the light lasts longer than nature expects. We become like the burning bush that is aflame and yet not consumed. We become the radiant light unto the nations that no Nazi’s black boot can stomp out.

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 I think about Black Friday aptly named for a dark mindset that sucks us into believing that we need “stuff” and more stuff. Gadgets rendered into G-ds until they become obsolete, until they end up on an online marketplace, until a stranger with a pickup-truck hauls away a life once treasured. And so my friends I must ask you, what do we leave behind that endures? Every moment is a fight for survival and offers us the opportunity to choose between life and death, to be an Esav or a Jacob. Will we live solely for the here and now and for the immediate gratifications which leave loneliness and painful emptiness as they quickly evaporate? Or will we triumph over the hours, days and years by efforting to be better Jews on all fronts and create a lasting legacy. 

And for the self-excusing delusory romantics who tend to believe that the Almighty loves all His children regardless of how they live their lives, let the L-rd’s own words end this article: G-d says, “...I loved Jacob. And I hated Esav.” (Milachi 1:2-3). 

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What Will Be Left of You?

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Although I am no Alexander the Great, when I set out to New York from Montreal to be a journalist over 25 years ago, I too was ready to conquer the world. Like a military general with a pushpin cork board, I plotted who I wanted to meet, often via ambush, along with the implementation strategies to secure an interview. Today, with eyes ever wiser, enlightened by my continual Torah study and some abrasive life experiences, I question why I even cared at all.

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What does it really mean to conquer? Historically speaking, both the conquered and the conquerors now lie in the dust. Today, my cover stories of famous people are more ancient and irrelevant than a Roman war chariot. For in today’s speedy world, yesterday’s news dies and decomposes while still in the telling. And yet so often, I look to the contents of my weekly Torah blogs from prior years for ideas, and they by contradistinction are everlasting.  Despite 3333 years of enemies and toxic distractions, the Torah can never be vanquished nor rendered obsolete, for it is the Tree of Life--and all who cling to it shall live. 

And then I think about the spirit of conquest that possesses most of us at some point in our lives, whether one wants to be the richest, the best looking, the most fit, the most popular, or the most famous. And I must ask the same question I have often asked my interviewees: Have you paid a price for your success? And the answer is invariably, “Yes.” 

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 As we aim to conquer the worlds we respectively find ourselves in, more often than not, it is we who take the beating. G-d sends us to this earth with our talents, our desires and our ambitions. He also sends us tests along the way. No moment is trivial. If a person doesn’t conquer the moment by making the right choice, the moment conquers him. A war of attrition is launched against our values, our upbringing, our religion, our innocence, our idealism. And indeed with the skills of the best defense attorneys, we justify our dirty deeds and those “deeds” become our army--and then it kills us. We too often conquer the better parts of ourselves to “make it” in this world which the Zohar calls alma d'shikra, “the world of illusion”— “the world of lies.”  And so Perkei Avot teaches: “Do not trust in yourself until the day of your death.” 

 Each moment also offers us not only the opportunity to avert wrongdoing, but also to do good. Instead of throwing coins into a wishing well, give charity. Instead of putting your extra money into another stock, give charity. The ultimate return is much greater.

Instead of watching a marathon of Netflix episodes, watch a Torah video.

Instead of gossiping and complaining endlessly, pray and bless.

Instead of being filled with anger and fuming over what the world owes you, be loving and question when was the last time you did something for someone else, especially when it was hard and inconvenient to do so? 

In this week’s Torah reading, we read about the death of our matriarch, Sarah. It is written by the biblical commentator, Rashi, that she was as free from sin at the age of 100 as she was at 20. Although she was exposed to many challenges and problems in life, she never used them as excuses to spiral downward in life. She was very beautiful and was abducted by both a Pharaoh and a king. She escaped both situations unscathed. Sarah was the conqueror, strong and certain in her service of G-d. Her tent was literally aglow with her greatness and moral perfection.

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The life of Abraham too serves as a perfect paradigm of righteous behavior. G-d instructed him to arise and leave his place of birth. But the Hebrew words Lech Lecha translate as “go to yourself.” Indeed, upon the physical journey, there were practical challenges to conquer, but they mirrored the internal journey and were all whetstones to achieve spiritual perfection. He passed all his tests and rose to the occasions instead of letting them bring him down. He conquered the world with the word of G-d, with kindness and compassion and never compromised his beliefs. 

How will you conduct yourself upon the road of life? What will you jettison to reach your destination: dignity? honesty? integrity?  Torah? (God forbid). How will you affect the people who come across your path? How will you make this world a better place because you were in it? In what way do you reflect an aspect of G-d? What do you leave in your wake? Darkness or light? Hate or love? Jealousy or generosity? Dispute or peace?  When this rat race will be over what will be left of you?

Change your battlefields my friends and you too can walk on holy ground.  

Do you want to be a conqueror?

Start with conquering yourself, and to the victor go the spoils.

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GO!

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Who are you? Do you know? Are you the fancy car you drive? Are you the wealth you amassed? Are you the title on your business card? Are you the designer clothes you wear? The answers may seem simple, but they are not. If one by one all your status symbols are taken away, or your good looks or health, G-d forbid, when do you stop being you?                   

When the pandemic compelled us to work remotely, obviating the need for business suits, were we the same power players in our bathrobes and sweatpants? When we could no longer enter those skyscrapers, our heels clacking against the marbled floors affirming our worth, what happened to our prestige as we did business from our homes with kids throwing Fruit Loops at each other in the background? The social upset caused by that “plague’ certainly offered each of us ample opportunity and time to think and to question, “Who am I?” “What makes me what I am.” Hidden behind masks, many truths about ourselves where revealed.

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 In this week’s Biblical reading, G-d tells the Patriarch Abraham Lech Lecha which translates as “Go to yourself.” The Almighty then gives him directions on how to get there: “Go FROM your country, your birthplace and your father’s home.” G-d’s roadmap to “self” seems odd. Aren’t the familiar backdrops such as country, birthplace and home the very things that make up a person’s sense of self? Many of us in our own lives return to the place we grew up in order to get in touch with who we used to be. But G-d is telling Abraham the complete opposite here.

If we want to “go to ourselves” and to know who we really are, then we need to unbury ourselves from all the fake things we’ve allowed to define us, including our friends and our habits. All the familiar pathways we walk, whether they be the repetitive thoughts we think or the familiar streets we travel, have to be abandoned. For as science teaches “neurons which fire together wire together.” We have to take out the wire cutters and give ourselves a chance to the cut the wires and be self-reflective. So much of what we do and who we are functions on autopilot from our reactions to our breakfast. In fact, science says that 95 percent of who we are by the age of 35 is a set of involuntary programs and memorized behaviors. Basically 95% of our day we are unconscious. We are asleep at the wheel. In fact, the wheel is driving us. And then G-d steps in to wake us up and says “Go to yourself.”

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Make no mistake, Abraham’s journey was not one to find G-d -- he was already aware of G-d’s omnipresence. Abraham had to go find HIMSELF through the trials and tribulations of his journey on foreign terrain. He had to discover whether the pressures he encountered along the way would crush and corrupt him or fortify him and show the measure of his moral mettle.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. When the checks are coming in and the stock market is going up and all is good for us, it is easy to have faith and believe in G-d. But when our circumstances change so dramatically that it seems as though our environment has changed too, it is during that time of upheaval and stress that we, like Abraham, must “go to ourselves” to access the gifts of who we are and to substantiate our faith in G-d, the very One Who has put us upon a fortifying road. Will we walk it with grace and faith or go along kicking and screaming and blaming? For my friends, how we walk through troubled times presents the measure of a man.

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So many of us are experiencing uncertainty and our life’s compass has us spinning in circles. We feel like we are going nowhere and are as stuck as a tire spinning uselessly in eight inches of icy snow. There’s just no traction. But the truth is that we are never in the same place twice, even if we are going in circles. We are rather on a spiral either going up or going down. We have only one mission in life, and that is to create light from darkness. We may go from point A to point B a thousand times, but how have we released the sparks along the way or not is the crux. In every single choice we face in life there is a hidden spark of G-dliness, of light that is waiting for us to uncover, to be rescued.

How many mitzvahs have you done between the two points? Do you walk around with a miserable disposition and bring everyone down or do you make everyone smile? (In Judaism, one’s face is public property, and we have to keep a smile on it and greet people kindly). Do you give charity between your two points? Do you actively search for mitzvot to do with acts of kindness when you set out from your door? If we find ourselves trapped in darkness, it’s usually because we have yet to release the inner light in the areas we repetitively confront. If you are trapped in yourself, it simply means you are selfish.

When G-d told Abraham, “Go,” He didn’t even tell him where he was going. Like many of us, he too had no clear path. For it is from confusion and chaos that creation originates. It is there where we too create ourselves by the choices we make. But when we walk with G-d and with faith in Him we are never really walking into the darkness but actually into a zone of infinite concealed light. In Hebrew, the language wherein there are no coincidences, the word for "test"—nisayon–also means to be “lifted up.” Despite our circumstances and often thanks to them, we can lift ourselves up to great heights. No, we are not angels. It’s not easy. But remember angels leave no footprints; man, however, was meant to make his mark. So, go to yourself!     

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