A Pillar of Salt

My wife, Leah, was born without any tear ducts. It sounds strange, but it’s true. When she was born, the gap in the corner of her eye was too constricted for tears to flow through and wash away dust and irritants. So within a few hours of her birth, doctors had to surgically open up her tear ducts. Now she jokes -- and this is her joke, not mine -- that maybe the doctors opened up her tear ducts a little bit too wide, because she went from lacking the ability to emit tears to sometimes lacking the ability to stop them from flowing. We read in this week’s Torah portion a story about tears.

We read this week the story of Sodom and Gemorrah -- cities that God destroyed on account of their inhospitality. Recall that Abraham’s nephew, Lot, lives in the city Sodom -- and when a pair of visitors come through town, Lot, unlike his neighbors, offers them a place to stay for the night. Seeing that Lot is the only righteous person in the entire city, God rescues Lot and his family from Sodom before raining fire upon it. As Lot and his family are fleeing from Sodom, God instructs them to make haste, to run for the hills, and most importantly, not to turn around and see the destruction that will soon befall their former home. And so they take off. But for Lot’s wife, whose name the Torah does not record, the temptation to look back is too great. Despite God’s instruction not to do so, she turns around and looks back at the city. Immediately, she is punished -- by being transformed into a pillar of salt.

Jewish sages throughout the generations have tried to understand why exactly God forbade Lot and his family from looking back -- and why the punishment for Lot’s wife was, of all things, to be turned into a pillar of salt.

Some scholars take a largely pragmatic view -- noting that the area near where the city of Sodom is said to have been, in the Dead Sea Basin, the lowest place on earth, is a geography that contains many salt formations. In this view, the story of Lot’s wife being transformed into a pillar of salt serves a pragmatic function: as an ancient way of explaining why the area near the former city of Sodom is so salty.

Other Jewish thinkers throughout the ages have had different understandings of Lot’s wife’s punishment. There’s a midrashic -- an ancient Jewish legends -- that says that Lot’s wife was a willing contributor to the inhospitality of her fellow citizens of Sodom. According to the midrash, when the pair of visitors arrived in Sodom and knocked on Lot’s door looking for a place to stay, Lot’s wife, no better than her neighbors, refused to let them in. But Lot insisted that they be allowed to stay, and asked his wife to help him prepare a meal for their visitors. So, according to the legend, she begrudgingly went to each of her neighbor’s houses, asking if she could borrow some salt for her cooking. Her neighbors inquired: “Don’t you have enough salt at home to cook for your family?” Whereupon Lot’s wife told her neighbors about the strangers whom her husband was secretly harboring in their home. The neighbors, true to their reputation, grew angry at the thought of these strangers in their midst -- and went out on a hunt to find the unwanted foreigners. So according to this midrashic legend -- just like the city of Sodom was punished for its inhospitality, so too was Lot’s wife punished. She betrayed her guests with salt, and so with salt was she punished.

But a third set of Jewish thinkers provides a much more generous reading of Lot’s wife. This final set of thinkers picks up on an easily overlooked detail of the story. We know that, just before destruction rains down on the city, Lot, his wife, and two of his daughters flee together to the hills. But we might easily overlook that Lot and his wife have more than just two daughters. In fact, they have four. According to the Torah narrative, their elder two daughters are married to men who live in Sodom. And when the family is forced to flee, these older two daughters are forced to make a decision: do we stay behind with our husbands, committing ourselves to the new families we have built -- or do we flee to the hills with our parents, committing ourselves to the family in which we were raised? We might imagine a similar dilemma in any scene of impending destruction -- when citizens are about to become refugees, when decisions must be made about who should stay and who should go, who can flee and who must stay put. The decision is almost too painful to consider. For whatever reason, the older two daughters decide to stay in Sodom -- and their fate, along with their husbands, their children, and their neighbors, is swift annihilation.

Picture now Lot’s wife running away from the city. She has only a few things on her back, only what she could carry. Her husband and her two youngest children are at her side. And although she feels a certain sense of relief at having escaped the impending catastrophe, nevertheless her heart is broken. Although God has instructed her not to, in her mind, she is already looking back at the city she once called home. She thinks of all the friends she has left behind -- the home she and her husband built, the memories they made there, the streets where her children first learned to walk. Soon it will all be gone. And at the black center of her pain, the two children, now grown, whom she has left behind -- awaiting certain destruction. She thinks she hears a voice calling to her from over her shoulder. Can it be? Have they decided to come along? She turns around to see. And in that very moment, she sees not her adult children chasing after her, but rather sees a blinding light flash from out of the sky. In an instant, the city -- and her two elder daughters inside of it -- is evaporated. Her knees buckle. Her entire being becomes one uncontrollable sob. And where there once stood a human being, there now stands only the never-ending, salty tears of a bereaved parent. Forever she will be a pillar of salt. 

When you think about it -- tears are sort of a strange phenomenon, aren’t they? Why, of all possible bodily responses, do strong feelings cause our eyes to produce a salty fluid? Among all the animals on earth, only humans cry tears of emotion. Other animals do have tear ducts, but they serve only two limited purposes: to lubricate the eye, and to protect the eye from irritants. And while other animals do express emotion, they don’t do so with tears. Other animals demonstrate distress through vocal crying. Perhaps you can imagine a dog whimpering or whining -- but never shedding a tear.

From the most ancient of civilizations, humans have recognized the mysterious and powerful quality of tears. Ancient Egyptians believed that human beings were created from the tears of the god Atum. The ancient Greeks believed all rivers were formed from the tears of their gods. Pre-modern philosophers wondered about where our tears come from. In their pseudoscientific way, some suggested that tears come from the heart: that, when our passions rise, our hearts grow warm -- causing the run-off of fluid, which comes out of the body in the form of tears. Others suggested that tears come from a weak brain: that people who are weak-willed don’t have firm, supple brains, but rather, have moist and damp brains -- and that tears are the draining of that moisture.

Judaism has no such negative associations with crying. In fact, our tradition says that crying is helpful to our well-being. The Talmud reports (BT Brachot 32b) that God is not always receptive to our prayers -- but that when a human being sheds a tear, the gates of prayer swing wide open. Of course, this teaching does not mean that, if only we cry, God will certainly answer our prayer. Rather, it indicates our sages’ belief that a prayer that is accompanied by a sincerely shed tear will, at the very least, be heard by God -- taken note of, and that God’s compassion will be extended towards us. 

In the past few decades, humanity’s fascination with tears has coalesced into a whole field of social psychology devoted to the study of crying. One question that researchers set out to tackle is why do humans beings alone shed emotional tears, while other animals do not. Researchers have concluded that the uniqueness of human tears is the result of another unique human characteristic: our vulnerability. Newborn humans come into the world entirely unequipped to negotiate their surroundings. Baby giraffes, by contrast, can walk within thirty minutes of being born. Newborn baby humans behave much like they did in the womb for the first three months of their lives -- the so called “fourth trimester.” Our advantage over giraffes, of course, is that the human brain continues to grow and develop for twenty or more years. We are learning machines: highly adaptable to any environment -- but, as a result, we are also highly dependent, for the first twenty years of our lives, on the help of others until our brains are more fully formed. This means that humans are particularly vulnerable. And this, researchers say, is likely the reason why humans alone shed emotional tears. Our tears help us to signal to another human being when we are in distress. And unlike, say, a dog’s vocal crying, which can be heard equally by the dog’s mother as by a predator, our tears can be shed silently, allowing us to signal our vulnerability to a targeted group, so that our distress is known only to those who would help us, not to those who would do us harm. Our tears are evolutionarily advantageous.

But our relatively slow brain development doesn’t only cause us to be vulnerable. The fact that it takes our brain twenty or more years to fully develop also causes humans to be an exceedingly social species. Because of our slow brain development, we learn to rely on one another, to trust one another. We form intimate relationships -- not only relationships of necessity and protection, but also, over time, relationships of shared experiences and beliefs. And it this, our highly social nature, that is the key to understanding why only humans shed tears of emotion.

The researchers who study human tears have identified three different kinds of human crying. First, we might cry when we experience a loss or a separation -- tears of powerlessness. Picture mourners crying at a funeral, or young lovers crying over a break-up. Second, we might cry when we experience physical pain -- tears of distress. Picture a toddler who bangs their head against the wall and then bursts into tears. And third, we might cry when we see the pain of others, or when we witness an act that is particularly stirring -- empathic, or moral tears. Picture the tear that’s shed when hearing about a firefighter who put him or herself in harm’s way in order to save a life, or the tear that’s shed for a character in a book or a play, whose life and circumstances are entirely imaginary. 

The interesting thing is that, over the human lifespan, the likelihood of our shedding any one of these three different kinds of tears changes. Throughout our lives, the likelihood that we will shed the first of these kinds of tears -- tears of loss or powerlessness, like at a funeral or a break-up -- remains steady and constant. We are always equally likely to cry in situations like these. But the likelihood of our shedding the other two kinds of tears varies and changes over the life-span. Tears of physical pain are more likely when we are young, and less likely when we are old. And conversely, empathetic or moral tears -- for a figher-fighter or for a character in play -- these tears are unlikely when we are young, and grow more and more likely as we age. When we are young, we cry for ourselves; when we are old, we cry for others. When we’re younger, we cry on account of our extreme vulnerability -- and when we’re older, we cry on account of our sociability.

Unlike those pre-modern philosophers who thought that crying was a sign of weakness, of a damp brain, it turns out that crying is a sign of wisdom -- of having made far enough the world that we care not just about what happens to me, but also what happens to others. Crying is not only an evolutionary signal of our vulnerability -- it is equally a sign of our having developed meaningful social relationships. These two factors combined -- our vulnerability and our sociability -- are what it means to be human.

Lot’s wife’s tears so overwhelmed her that she turned into a pillar of salt. And indeed, we and others in our lives may experience times when our tears of loss, separation, and powerlessness are so great that they feel unbearable. Let us remember then the message that our tears are trying to send. As researchers would put it: our tears are there to remind us that we’re all vulnerable, and we’re also all connected to each other -- so reach out, and be a shoulder to cry on. Or, as our own Jewish tradition would put it: when tears are shed, the gates of prayer are wide open. Even when there’s no shoulder cry on, God can hear our tears. God hears them. God sees them. And God’s love for us is stirred.

Living Objects

This past winter, in preparation to help my parents sell their house in Florida, my brother, sister, and I went down to Tallahassee, where we grew up, to help our parents pack up all of our belongings in the old house. Predictably, it was a challenging weekend -- rummaging through old memories, preparing to say goodbye to the house that had been our family home since before I was born. For 33 years our family lived in that house -- and now, it was time to say goodbye.

Maybe you’ve had a similar experience -- or maybe the even more difficult experience of having to pack up a house not because you are choosing to sell, but rather, because the house’s former occupant has died. The house, now empty of life, is full only of things -- of objects, which, themselves must now be emptied out of the house.

And if you’ve been through that similar experience, then maybe you also faced the challenge of how to sort through all of those objects. For our part, as we went through each room, we made two piles of the things we found there -- and had to determine which objects went into which pile. One pile was for things that we no longer wanted -- things we were ready to donate or to throw away. The other pile was for things that we weren’t ready to get rid of, things wanted to keep -- things that would get stored in boxes, loaded on a truck, and hauled off to a storage facility.

In some cases, the decisions were easy. The rake and shovel and gardening tools from the shed -- donate, or throw away. A shoebox full of ping-pong balls and rubber darts from the playroom -- donate, or throw away. Our grandparents wedding photo album -- save for storage. The clay disks in which each of us kids had made a handprint on our first day of preschool -- save for storage.

Jewish tradition has long understood the need for this kind of sorting -- if not the sorting of old objects and artifacts, then certainly the sorting of old papers and documents. We might imagine a congregation that is preparing to relocate from one synagogue building to another. And we might imagine the leaders of that synagogue sorting through all of the old papers and documents in the synagogue building, and dividing them into two piles. A stack of extra copies of the minutes from a board meeting -- donate, or throw away. Parking instructions for the High Holidays? Donate or throw away. But there would also be another pile -- another set of papers and documents that we know we cannot just donate or throw away -- documents that we instead set aside for the geniza, or storage bin, to eventually be ritually buried. A worn out copy of the Hebrew Bible -- stored in the geniza, to eventually be buried. A Bat Mitzvah certificate -- stored in the geniza, to eventually be buried. The prayerbook created specially by the families of the synagogue for use on Shabbat morning -- stored in the geniza, to eventually be buried.

It is striking that our tradition treats objects, artifacts, papers, and documents with such regard. These are just things, after all. They are not people. They never lived and breathed. They had no consciousness, no observable will, no animating life force, no soul.

And yet, we treat them with the same dignity that we would a human life. Our tradition might have provided some other ritual for retiring these objects. Our tradition might have instructed us to turn them to ash, to create from them a plume of smoke that reaches to the heavens. Or, to put them aboard a raft and cast them out to sea -- like a message in a bottle, with hopes that their wisdom might wash up on some other shores.

But no -- this isn’t what our tradition instructs us to do. Instead, we treat our sacred objects and documents with the same dignity as we would a human life. We give them a proper burial.

Our tradition provides us with some guidelines for how to distinguish between those things which we are ready to discard, and those things that properly belong in the geniza. The most basic requirement is that a document must be stored in the genizah if it has the name of God written on it -- on account of our not wanting to destroy or dispose of the name of God. But over time, this narrow definition of what must be placed into the genizah softened and broadened. Some authorities say that any religious document, whether it contains the name of God or not, must be stored in the genizah -- say, for example, a Ketubah, or wedding contract, which is indeed a religious document, but doesn’t contain the name of God. Others authorities broaden the requirements even more, saying that any document written in Hebrew, whether religious or secular, must be stored in the genizah -- say, for example, a book of modern Israeli poetry, which is not religious, but nevertheless is written in Hebrew. Still others authorities broaden the requirements even further, saying that any document written in any Jewish language must be stored in the genizah -- not only Hebrew, but also Yiddish, Ladino, or other dialects that the Jewish people have spoken throughout our history -- whether it is religious or secular document, whether it contains the name of God or not.

And these varied requirements get to the essence of the challenge we face when sorting through an old house after someone has died. Although in some cases, it is easy to determine which things to donate and which things to save, in many cases, that determination is not so simple. What are we to do with that old blue soup pot -- now cracked and warped, the one that our mom used to make matzah ball soup for every Jewish holiday? We have many far nicer pots in our apartment now. But the very sight of that pot brings to mind such vivid memories of family holiday meals, the feel of the warmth in the kitchen, of helping our mom to chop the carrots and the onions, of laughing together when the spray from the onion made our eyes water. Surely this pot is no longer useful -- is too cracked and warped to ever make soup. And yet, the pot means so much more than its usefulness -- stands for something much greater than soup. Though it has a crack in its side and can no longer contain liquid, this pot is a vessel -- a container of memories, which could never seep out of a crack in the side.

Our memories are tightly wound around the objects of our lives. Physicists describe this as quantum entanglement -- some complicated theory that, when two particles interact, they are forever linked to each other. But we don’t need complicated theories of quantum mechanics to tell us what human experience so plainly shows. Our loved ones are forever linked to the objects of their lives. That old green and yellow toy football in the garage vividly brings to mind memories of my dad and me throwing it in the backyard on Sunday afternoons. That old and worn out, and quite honestly, dangerous electric blanket vividly brings to mind memories of my siblings and I snuggling up underneath it on the couch on winter nights. That blue soup pot that our mom used on every Jewish holiday.

Each of these objects is no longer useable. And yet, they give us access to our memories. They are vessels of holiness.

And this is why we don’t throw everything away. This is why we put some things in storage. This is why some things, though they are merely objects, are saved for the genizah to later be buried -- just as we bury the people we have loved. These inanimate objects do contain life. If we look very carefully, we will see that engraved upon them, somewhere, is written the very name of God.

Simchat Torah Story Slam

The Jewish people are a storytelling people. 

At WRT's Simchat Torah Story Slam, we will unroll our Torah scroll -- and hear true stories told live by congregants (in the style of The Moth). We will experience the power of stories not only to entertain, but also to connect people to one another, to bring ideas to life, and to move us. 

Featuring stories told by WRT's own Vicki Assa, Andrew Pollack, Annie Radin, Mimi Rocah, Jeff Simon, Sheryl Spivak-Braun, & Josh Sussberg. 

Sunday, October 20, 2019, 7pm @ WRT

RSVP here: http://evite.me/wrtstoryslam

Hosted by Rabbi Daniel Reiser

Directed by Erika Radin

Organized by Bonni Bleustein and Rochelle Waldman

Wild Things

“On the night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him ‘WILD THING!’ -- and Max said ‘I’LL EAT YOU UP!’ So he was sent to bed without eating anything.”

So begins Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book, Where the Wild Things Are -- one of my and my kids’ favorites. If you go to the library, you will find it shelved among the children’s books. But like any great children’s book, it captures the imagination not only of kids, but also of the adults who read it to them.

Joseph Campbell, the famous scholar of mythology, once described Where the Wild Things Are as one of humanity’s greatest works of literature. The story fits the archetypal hero’s journey -- that literary motif where a character sets out on an adventure, overcomes some obstacle along the way, and returns home transformed.

Max, the hero of our story, does exactly that. He steps into his own private boat and sails in and out of weeks to become king of all wild things. And when he returns home, he has learned an important lesson -- about facing his wild side, about befriending his anger, about mastering those parts of himself that seem most dark and terrible.

On Yom Kippur, we, like Max, must also set out on a hero’s journey. We step into the private boat of our conscience, and sail in and out of the weeks of the past year. We examine our deeds. We consider our flaws. And like Max, we commit ourselves to mastering our own wild things.

And while there is much we can learn from Max about our task on Yom Kippur, it is only half of the picture. Because there is another message about this holy day hidden within the pages of Where the Wild Things Are -- a deeper message, that captures an important truth about Yom Kippur. And that deeper, hidden message comes to the surface when we read Where the Wild Things Are alongside a different, but parallel story -- a story from our Jewish tradition.

Our sages say that on Yom Kippur, we are reenacting the story of the golden calf. It is, after all, a story of wrongdoing and repentance, a story of transgression and atonement. Like Where the Wild Things Are, the story of the golden calf is all about making mischief of one kind and another -- and then about making amends.

This evening, let us put these two stories into conversation with one another. Let us read Where the Wild Things Are alongside the story of the golden calf, in order to discover the deeper, hidden meaning of Yom Kippur -- what this holiday asks of the child inside of us, and what it asks of the adults we have become.

*** 

Let us begin with the straight-forward meaning of Yom Kippur.

Our sages say that the Israelites who built the golden calf were like children testing their parents’ boundaries. To refresh our memory: the Israelites are encamped at the base of Mount Sinai, where they’ve just received the Ten Commandments. And although one of those commandments clearly states that they are not to worship statues, they go ahead and do exactly that, when Moses is not looking. They build a statue of a golden calf, around which they gather in frenzied revelry. They eat and drink and sing and dance around the statue, like Max and his wild things swinging from the vines and howling at the moon -- a wild rumpus at the base of Mount Sinai.

And although the Israelites have clearly broken the rules, our sages view them with sympathy. Some sages say that they acted like children, for whom it is only natural to explore what is off limits. Others say that the blame lies with Moses, who should not have left them unsupervised.

But despite these varied explanations, there is one thing on which all of our sages agree: the Israelites were acting on the basis of their Yetzer HaRa. In the Jewish imagination, the Yetzer HaRa is a character trait that is inherent in all humans. It is our primal, aggressive inclination. It is the chaotic force within each of us that, when left unchecked, can lead us towards destructive behaviors. Other fields of study also recognize this attribute of the human psyche. Freud called it the id. Evolutionary psychologists call it our reptile brain. Maurice Sendak called it our wild things.

Call it what you will, each of us has a Yetzer HaRa. In our evolutionary history, the Yetzer HaRa was a sustaining force. Our aggressive inclination allowed us to fend off predators, to maintain our territory, to procreate. But as human society became ever more complex, our safety and prosperity began to depend more on our shared social structures and less on our individual aggressive inclination.

Having lost its immediate usefulness, our Yetzer HaRa finds other, destructive outlets through which to express itself. It causes us to lust after things we cannot have, to commit acts of violence, to exploit others in pursuit of our own success. We are not proud of these character traits -- but nevertheless, they are real. Every now and then, when we are not being careful, they slip out in our behavior, or flash in the back of our mind. They roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth and roll their terrible eyes and show their terrible claws.

But despite the unsavoriness of our aggressive inclination, Jewish tradition recognizes that it is not all bad. If we can harness its chaotic energy, give it some meaningful direction, our aggressive inclination can be made productive. Our sages say that without the Yetzer HaRa, no person would ever build a house, engage in commerce, or have children. Like Max, we must learn to befriend our Yetzer HaRa, so that we have power over it, and it not have power over us. 

This may be the straight-forward meaning of Yom Kippur. But we have yet to uncover the deeper, hidden meaning of this holy day. If we are not paying careful attention, then we are likely not to notice that, besides Max, Where the Wild Things Are has a second protagonist, who goes on a hero’s journey of her own: Max’s mom -- whose voice we hear only once, and whose face we never see. And it is from this hidden character that we can learn the deeper, hidden meaning of Yom Kippur. 

This, then, is where her hero’s journey begins:

“On the night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another,” he pushed every single one of his mother’s buttons, until she was at her wit’s end. She tried to stay calm, to reason with Max. But the more she tried, the more he pushed -- and the more the situation escalated. Her patience waned, her irritation grew -- until finally, in a fit of frustration, she burst out at him and shouted: “WILD THING!” And she sent him to bed without eating anything.

We have all been there, whether it was with a child or with an adult. We get pushed just beyond our limit. Though we were plainly clear about our expectations, our child breaks one of our rules. Though we are always there to support them, our friend is never there to support us. Though we do everything we can to get their attention, our spouse is too self-absorbed to see that we have needs of our own. 

And it gets to us. It touches off something deep inside of us -- not just about this particular offense, but about all the times that we have been pushed to the limit, all the times we have felt taken advantage of. And rather than responding in a thoughtful and constructive way, we lose it. We yell at the kids. We punch a wall. We take out our frustration on all of the wrong people.

This is exactly how Moses reacts when he sees the Israelites worshipping the golden calf. He has sacrificed a comfortable life in the palaces of Egypt in order to lead this people from slavery to freedom -- and how do they thank him? The minute he turns his back, they flout one of the ten simple rules.

He feels betrayed. He feels abused. And so he storms down from the top of Mount Sinai. In a fit of rage, he grabs the ten commandments and hurls them to the ground. The tablets shatter into a thousand pieces. He confiscates the golden calf, burns it to a crisp, and grinds the ashes into dust.

In the immediate moment, there is a certain release that comes from lashing out against those who have hurt us. But as we unclench our fists, we begin to see that our outburst did little to help our cause. All we have done is created a cycle of pain, in which hurt is repaid by more hurt.

For Max’s mom, this might be where her story begins. But thankfully for us, it is not where it ends. While Max is upstairs in his room becoming king of his wild things, his mom remains downstairs, setting out on a hero’s journey of her own. Somehow, and without explanation, her anger recedes, her irritation fades. And although she had sent Max to bed without supper, she is now at the stove, warming a bowl of soup for him.

How are we to understand this transformation in Max’s mom -- her move from anger to forgiveness, from explosion to compassion? Maurice Sendak does not say. But if we are to uncover the deeper, hidden meaning of Yom Kippur, we must try to understand this unexplained act of grace.

To help us, let us return to Moses, after the golden calf.

After Moses’s outburst, he returns to the top of Mount Sinai to cool down and to confer with God. He is at his wit’s end. The Israelites have pushed him to the limit -- and he pleads with God for guidance about what he should do next.

And here, God says something peculiar to Moses -- something that later Jewish sages would eventually revisit. When Moses is at his wit’s end, God says to him: “I am a compassionate God, slow to anger and quick to forgive.” But God then quickly adds: “V’nakeih lo y’nakeh, pokeid avon avot al banim v’al b’nei vanim. But I do not always wipe the slate clean -- taking the sins of the parents and extending punishment to their children and grandchildren.”

The writers of the Hebrew Bible present an image of God with which we might be able to identify. We overreact; sometimes God overreacts too. Like us, sometimes God punishes too harshly, making children pay for the misdeeds of their parents. Like us, even God contributes to the endless cycle of pain -- in which hurt is so often repaid by more hurt.

There may be some small degree of comfort in knowing that sometimes even God overreacts. But in this story, the writers of the Hebrew Bible do not get the last word.

Many centuries after the Bible was written, our ancient Rabbis would revisit this story and present us with a different image of God. In their retelling of the story, the Rabbis omit the second half of God’s statement to Moses -- where God admits to sometimes punishing too harshly. And in so doing, the ancient Rabbis present us with a different vision of God than the one that is found in the Torah -- a vision of God that is undeniably bold; a vision that requires theological audacity; a vision so powerful that it makes its way into our High Holiday prayer book, in words that we repeat more often than any others on Yom Kippur, words that we chanted only moments ago. When Moses is at his wit’s end, the ancient Rabbis have God say:

Adonai, Adonai, eil rachum v’chanun, erech apayim v’rav chesed ve’emet, notzeir chesed la’alafim, nosei avon va-fesha v’chata’ah v’nakeih.

“Your Eternal God is compassionate and gracious, endlessly patient, most loving and truthful; showing mercy to the thousandth generation; forgiving evil, defiance, and wrongdoing; wiping the slate clean.”

By keeping only the first half of God's statement, the ancient Rabbis present not an image of God with which we might identify, but rather, an image of God towards which we can aspire -- not a flawed, vengeful, and punishing God, like the all too flawed humans that we know ourselves to be, but rather, a God Whose compassion knows no bounds, Who is endlessly patient and unceasingly forgiving. They present us with a God of grace.

We Jews may feel uncomfortable with the word grace, on account of how central it is to Christian theology. But make no mistakes about it: we Jews, too, have inherited a theology of grace.

Simply put, grace is the idea that sometimes we are granted things regardless of whether we have done anything to deserve them. And on Yom Kippur, the freely given thing that we are granted is forgiveness.

This is a daring idea. It means that no matter what misdeeds we may have committed, no matter how defiant we may have been, God is always ready to forgive. Though we make mischief of one kind and another, though we worship a golden calf, God is always prepared to give us a second chance. Even before we admit to our faults, even before we correct our behavior, God is waiting for us, ready to wipe the slate clean. As our Yom Kippur prayer book puts it: the gates of repentance are always open.

We may bristle at this idea. If God is always ready to forgive, then why bother with doing the right thing in the first place? Does not the world depend on a measure of accountability?

Of course it does. Grace does not mean that we are cleared of accountability -- that we can act however we want without consequence. Rather, grace is the mechanism that makes atonement possible. The promise of forgiveness is what allows us to own up to our mistakes and make amends. 

This is the deeper meaning of Yom Kippur -- the message that is hidden within the pages of Where the Wild Things Are. It is not only by mastering his wild things that Max is able to make the journey homeward. Equally important to his return is a moment we never see; the moment when his mom extends the promise of forgiveness; the moment when she is at the stove, heating a bowl of soup for him; the moment when, all around from far away across the world, Max smells good things to eat, and wants to be where someone loves him best of all. When he knows that open arms await him, Max can begin the journey home.

Tonight, as Yom Kippur begins, each of us will set out on a hero’s journey -- in hopes that we might master our own wild things. And before Yom Kippur ends, we will make the journey home, with the promise of God’s forgiveness extended before us. We will wave goodbye to our wild things, step back into our private boat, sail in and out of weeks, and return home from where our wild things are -- into the night of our very own room, where we will find that our supper is waiting for us.

And it will still be hot.

Independence Day

Yesterday, to celebrate our country’s independence, my family and I went to a friend’s lake house to swim, go boating, eat barbecue, and watch the fireworks. It could not have been a more lovely day. As the sun was setting over the lake, and we were enjoying fresh-cut watermelon and a glass of sangria, my friend turned to me and, with not a hint of sarcasm on his face, said: “Well, this sure beats taxation without representation.”

It was a clever line. But as they say -- it was funny because, on some level, it was true. Like many of our federal holidays, the way we celebrate Independence Day has little to do with what the holiday’s actual meaning. Barbecues and boating have little to do with the lofty ideal of independence from tyranny. On the Fourth of July, we are great at the pursuit of happiness -- less good at remembering that all people are created equal.

Fittingly, as if it were trying to remind us of the deeper themes of July 4th, this week’s Torah portion tells the story of a group of revolutionaries who, like the rebels who founded this country, rose up to challenge the political establishment. The leader of the insurrection was a character by the name of Korach. [1] Korach comes from the tribe of Levi -- those Israelites who were tasked with assisting the priestly class in all of their religious functions. On the one hand, it is a position of pride -- an honor to work in the service of God. On the other hand, it is a lowly kind of honor, only ever assisting the priests with their service -- not performing the sacrifices, but cleaning up after them.

Korach and followers, it seems, have grown jealous of the priests. They rise up against Aaron, the high priest, and accuse him of wielding outsized power. “Your authority is too great,” they say to him. “Don’t you know that all of the community of Israel is holy?” [2] Like the American Revolutionaries, Korach and his gang challenge the balance between established authority and personal freedom.

In the case of Korach, established authority won the day. But for the American Revolutionaries, personal freedom would prove victorious -- not just in the Revolutionary War, but throughout American history. Observers have noted that from the time of this nation’s founding, the spirit of rebellion and revolution seems to have been encoded into our DNA. From Shay’s Rebellion to the draft card burners, Americans throughout history have felt it their natural right to rise up against established authority “when, in the course of human events, they felt it necessary” to do so.

This rebellious spirit takes hold not only in the political sphere, but in every sector of American life -- including in our religious lives. The acclaimed scholar of American Jewish history Jonathan Sarna has argued that Jewish religious life in this country has been animated by the principle of personal freedom and independence. As Sarna puts it: if a ragtag bunch of farmers and merchants can rise up and overthrow the world’s greatest colonial superpower, how much the more so in the wake of the Revolution would everyday Jews (and people of other faiths too) feel empowered to rise up and reform their houses of worship.

As proof this revolutionary spirit, Sarna cites several examples from the 1780s and ‘90s of Jewish laypeople officiating at intermarriages, when their rabbis refused to do so -- or nevertheless burying their dead in the Jewish cemetery, under circumstances when Jewish law would have otherwise forbade it.

Perhaps the most obvious illustration of the revolutionary spirit is the emergence of break-away congregations. In the Colonial Era, every city had one synagogue at its center -- one synagogue in Charleston, one in Philadelphia, one in New York -- each with overarching authority in all areas of local Jewish life. But in the wake of the Revolution, that began to change. In New York, a group of young people who had belonged to Congregation Shearith Israel (which we now often call “the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue”) grew tired of the style of worship that was being offered there. In the spirit of the times, they rose up and rebelled -- forming a new congregation called Congregation B’nei Jeshurun (which we now often refer to as “BJ”), that was committed to shorter services, with prayers in English and a weekly sermon. For these early Americans, the Revolution had signaled that established authority can be overturned -- that, as Korach and his biblical band of rebels would have argued, personal freedom and independence are an inherent human right.

Some critics would argue that we in this country have become overly focused on personal freedom -- that we are so independent, we have no one to rely on. Many of us have come to live atomized, disconnected lives -- often unattached from even the people who live next door to us. As the sociologist Robert Putnam has famously described it: the era of crowded Monday night bowling leagues is long since gone. Now, we live in a society that prefers to go bowling alone.

We’ve come to misinterpret the meaning of independence. Independence was never a goal unto itself. The founders of this country were well versed in Enlightenment philosophy, and they believed that society is best seen as a social contract. This idea originated with John Locke, who argued that free individuals get together and contract with one another to create social order. The Revolutionaries’ complaint against King George was not that they should be utterly free to do whatever they wished, but rather that the king had broken their social contract. Take a look at the Declaration of Independence, and you’ll see that the majority of that document is devoted to listing the ways in which King George had broken their trust. [3] They rebelled not so that they could declare their independence from others, but rather, for the exact opposite reason -- because they believed in social contract theory, that there is something we human beings owe to one another.

Yes, we as individuals can and should exercise our independence: to act for our own sake, to be self-reliant, and to rebel against established norms. This is a gift of the United States. But equally, this country has provided us with another gift: to realize that we human beings are social creatures, who rely on one another -- at the very least for safety and sustenance, and if we’re lucky, for companionship, love, comfort, inspiration, artistry, ideas, laughter and so much more.

This Fourth of July weekend, what we need is not a declaration of independence, but rather, a declaration of interdependence. Then, we might live up to the founding insight of this country -- which is: that to be human is to need one another. Do we not hold this truth to be self-evident?


===
[1] For a helpful analysis of Korach’s rebellion, and what differentiates it from the concurrent rebellion led by Datan and Abiram, see Richard Elliott Friedman’s classic, Who Wrote the Bible, p. 172.
[2] Numbers 16:3
[3] For more on this insight, take a listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-our-time-history/id463700741?i=1000368642177 

The Chanukkah Rorschach Test

There’s a hilarious short story about Chanukkah that I love by the novelist Nathan Englander. [1] It tells the tale of a Jewish man named Reb Itzik, the leader of a small Hasidic shul in Brooklyn, who has come upon hard times and cannot afford to keep the lights on in his synagogue. In order to make a little extra money, Reb Itzik takes on odd jobs on the side, moonlighting in order to pay the synagogue’s electric bill.

On a recent December day, Reb Itzik notices a wanted ad in the newspaper. A casting agency is seeking an actor with a particular look for a short-term, seasonal acting job. And although Reb Itzik has no acting experience to speak of, he does indeed fit the look. The casting agency is looking for “a heavy man” -- and Reb Itzik is a bit round in the belly. And preferably, the actor they are looking for will have “a white beard” -- and Reb Itzik, an observant Jew, has never in his life trimmed his beard, which now, in his old age, has indeed faded to white. So Reb Itzik decides to go in for the audition. And before he even has the chance to recite his one and only line, Reb Itzik has been cast… as a department store Santa Claus.

There are many things to love about this story. But the thing that I love most is the way it captures the overwhelming force of the Christmas season. Even this ultra-Orthodox rabbi cannot avoid participating in it. The holiday of Chanukkah is never even mentioned in the story -- but to the perceptive reader, it hovers quietly in the background. A Jew trying to keep the lights on in his synagogue? Sounds familiar -- like the ancient Maccabees who, for entirely different reasons, also struggled to keep the lights burning in their sanctuary. The message of the story is clear: in the United States, Christmas is king, and Chanukkah rides quietly on its coattails. [2]

It might come as little surprise that Chanukkah gets a boost from American Christmas. After all, from the very beginning, Chanukkah has always been something of a chameleon holiday -- able to change its appearance in order to fit the society in which it is being celebrated.

Consider, for example, the story of the miraculous oil, which was only supposed to last for one night, but instead lasted for eight. It is so familiar that even the youngest learners can likely recount it. The only problem is that, if you read the Book of Maccabees -- the earliest version of the Chanukkah narrative -- you’ll find no such story. No oil. No menorah. No miracle.

The story of the oil does not make an appearance until the writing of the Talmud -- at least 400 years after the Maccabean Revolt. In order to understand why the story appears in that time and place, we must understand something about Jewish history. Like their Maccabean ancestors, the rabbis who wrote the Talmud had themselves just lived through a Jewish revolt against an oppressive superpower -- in their case, against the Romans. But whereas the earlier Maccabean revolt had proven successful, this more recent revolt against Rome was brutally crushed. The rabbis were living under Roman occupation -- and they could not afford to provoke the ire of their oppressors. To that end, the rabbis sought to downplay the story of the earlier, successful Maccabean revolt, and instead, to highlight a different story, now famous to us all: the story of the miraculous oil. [3]

Whether the rabbis invented that story from scratch, or whether its absence from the Book of Maccabees can be explained by other reasons, is beyond our purposes tonight. What is relevant is that in one era, Chanukkah was a story about a military victory, and in another era, it became a story about a divine miracle.

So it might come as little surprise that in our era, Chanukkah is largely a story about American Christmas -- and literally so, in the case of Reb Itzik. Chanukkah is a chameleon holiday, able to change its appearance according to the needs of the times. Or, in the words of Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Chanukkah is “a holiday Rorschach test. Every community and every generation has interpreted Chanukkah in its own image, speaking to its own needs.” [4]

This evening, I’d like to explore three contemporary understandings of Chanukkah. If Chanukkah is a Rorschach test, then exploring how contemporary Jews see the holiday should tell us something about the Jewish world in which we live. We will examine Chanukkah through the lens of three major groups -- non-orthodox Jews, ultra-orthodox Jews, and Israeli Jews.

One caveat before we proceed: this analysis is purposefully overly simplistic. Each of us will likely resonate with parts of all three groups. The intent is not to pigeonhole any one group, but rather, to try and identify relevant themes that arise along the boundaries of contemporary Jewish life.

With that caveat in mind, let’s look at the results of our Chanukkah Rorschach test.

Let’s start with non-Orthodox Jewry -- a group that includes Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, secular, and cultural Jews. Non-orthodox Jews tend to think of Chanukkah in spiritual terms. It is a holiday about bringing light into the darkest time of the year. Or, it is a holiday about justice -- about the oppressed overcoming their oppressors. Think, for example, of the lyrics to the Peter, Paul, and Mary song “Light One Candle”: “We have come this far always believing that justice would somehow prevail.” For non-orthodox Jews, Chanukkah’s spiritual message is universal -- applicable to all people, regardless of religious identity.

One particularly compelling example of the universal, spiritual message of Chanukkah comes from the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Perhaps you remember in 2013, when the second night of Chanukkah coincided with Thanksgiving -- a concurrence that was cleverly dubbed “Thanksgivukkah.” The Institute for Jewish Spirituality sent out an email to its supporters, highlighting the shared spirit of gratitude between the two holidays. The email read: “Maybe the deeper ‘miracle’ of Hanukkah is [the way that the Maccabees reacted] when faced with an apparently insufficient amount of oil. Rather than despairing over what they lacked, they saw the good in what they had” [5] -- a posture of gratitude.

Incidentally, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality is not the first group to recognize within the Chanukkah story a theme of gratitude. The ancient rabbis associated Chanukkah with Psalm 30 [6] -- which is a psalm of giving thanks. The psalm tells the story of a person who has experienced a reversal of fortunes. His life had been a mess -- but by the grace of God, he is able to turn things around, and once again believes that life can be beautiful. In the words of the psalm: “[God] turned my mourning into dancing. I shall give thanks forever.”

While the particulars are different, the core messages of Psalm 30 and of the Chanukkah story are the same. In both cases, a bad situation took a turn for the better -- and as a result, we ought to express our gratitude.

These three themes -- light, justice, and gratitude -- exemplify the non-orthodox understanding of Chanukkah. These are universal, spiritual ideals. And indeed, non-orthodox Jewry does understand itself in universal, spiritual terms. Non-orthodox Jews tend to see Judaism as a religion with a universal message -- striving for the good of all people, with little concern for ethnic boundaries.

But this universal, spiritual message brings us face-to-face with our second group: ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Unlike their non-orthodox cousins, ultra-Orthodox Jews tend to understand Chanukkah in highly ethnic terms. To understand why, we need to understand what the Maccabees were fighting for, and what they were fighting against.

Clearly, the Maccabees were fighting for the freedom to practice their religion. Less obvious is that they were equally fighting against the spread of Hellenism. Hellenism was Greek culture, exported around the Mediterranean. Greek culture was highly sophisticated -- producing great works of art, literature, philosophy, and science. It believed in equality between people, and tearing down the barriers that divide neighbor from neighbor. It was the most advanced society that that part of the world had ever seen. In fact, the Greeks believed their culture was so advanced, they thought it was only fair that everyone deserved to get a taste.

The only problem was: not everyone wanted a taste. Regardless of how sophisticated Greek culture may have been, it was not the local culture of kingdoms around the Mediterranean. The Maccabees were fighting not only for religious freedom, they were equally fighting against the idea that everyone ought to participate in the supposedly superior majority culture. They were fighting against cultural homogeneity.

Ultra-Orthodox Judaism was born of a similar story. In the early 1800s, as the changes of modernity began to accelerate, as Jews across Europe were finally being emancipated from behind the walls of the ghetto, as Jewish thinkers began to broaden their intellectual horizons -- as these monumental changes were taking root, a rabbi in Hungary named the Hatam Sofer declared: “Change is prohibited by the Torah.” And with that, ultra-Orthodoxy was established. [7]

The Hatam Sofer based his prohibition against change on a well-known midrash -- which says that the reason the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt was because they never assimilated to the majority culture. Specifically: they never took on Egyptian names, wore Egyptian clothing, or spoke the Egyptian language. [8] The Hatam Sofer argued: just as the Israelites were redeemed from Egypt by virtue of their cultural distinctiveness, so too shall we be redeemed from the seismic changes of modernity by virtue of our cultural distinctiveness. And so still today, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities dress, speak, and name their children in the way of their European forebears -- despite what the supposedly superior majority culture might think.

We need only substitute Hellenism with modernity, and the Maccabees with the ultra-Orthodox, and the two stories are a near perfect parallel.

But the parallel doesn’t end there. Many scholars believe that the Maccabean revolt ought to be viewed as an internal Jewish civil war -- between those Jews who embraced Hellenism and those who resisted it. And while thankfully, Jewish in-fighting in our own time has never reached the proportions of civil war, it is easy to see the fault lines over which such a conflict would arise. The first group we’ve examined this evening, the non-orthodox, looks at the Chanukkah Rorschach test and sees a holiday that is about universal ideals -- like light, justice, and gratitude. Our second group, the ultra-Orthodox, looks at the exact same Chanukkah Rorschach test and sees the exact opposite message: a holiday that is about the triumph of the local over the universal. The fault lines have been drawn.

What does our third group -- Israeli Jews -- see when they look at the Chanukkah Rorschach test?

The early Zionists looked to traditional Jewish sources for symbols and stories that they could inherit as their own. And despite the obvious centrality of the Land of Israel to all of Jewish life, when the early Zionists looked at the Jewish calendar, they found surprisingly little material to work with. The Passover story takes place in Egypt; Shavuot and Sukkot take place in the Sinai desert; Purim takes place Persia; Rosh Hashanah is about the creation of world, which takes place everywhere; Yom Kippur and Shabbat are about the restoration of the self, which takes place internally. [9] Among all the Jewish holidays, only Chanukkah takes place in the Land of Israel. The Zionists had found their symbol.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that travelers to Israel during the holiday of Chanukkah may return home with any variety of souvenirs -- but all are certain to return carrying an Israeli dreidel, which, unlike a diaspora dreidel, is not inscribed “a great miracle happened there,” but rather “a great miracle happened here.” Israel is the land of the Maccabees. [10]

But the connection is deeper than just geography. In his recent best-selling book, Catch ‘67, Israeli writer Micah Goodman describes Zionism in the following terms. For two-thousand years before the Zionist movement, Jewish communities had to rely on outside forces for their protection. There were two options from which to choose: rely on God, or rely on governments. Of course, history proved that neither the promises of the Torah nor the promises of kings, caliphs, tzars, and constitutions could ensure Jewish safety. So the Zionists decided to dispense with God and foreign governments. They would have to rely on themselves.

There are names for each of these moves. Giving up on God is called “secularism.” And giving up on governments is called “statecraft.” And indeed, the Zionist movement originated as a secular statecraft.

Let us deal first with the secular. There is a popular Chanukkah song that was written by an early Zionist poet. It’s call Mi Y’maleil -- or, as it is popularly translated into English, “Who Can Retell?” In Hebrew, the song features classical religious language. It speaks of the Hero of Israel, the Messiah, the Redeemer -- terms that, in biblical lore, are typically reserved for God. But in the song’s final stanza, the twist is revealed. In the Chanukkah story, the Redeemer of Israel is not God, but rather, the Jewish people themselves -- as we sing in the English lyrics: “But now all Israel must as one arise, redeem itself through deeds and sacrifice,” just as the Maccabees did.

Similarly, the “statecraft” component of secular statecraft took inspiration from the Chanukkah story. Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism, recognized that -- like the Maccabees, who were themselves guerilla warriors -- the Jewish people needed to take responsibility for our own self-defense. Herzl concluded his most influential book, The Jewish State, with the following sentence: “The Maccabees shall rise again.” Indeed, an early version of the Israeli flag featured the word “Maccabee” emblazoned in the center of the Jewish star.

The Zionist movement took the Maccabees as their inspiration as they founded their secular statecraft. They looked at the Chanukkah Rorschach test and saw a story of people who had taken responsibility for their own safety -- dispensing with God and dispensing with foreign governments.

The only problem is that, in so doing, they inadvertently drew two fault lines between themselves and the other two groups we’ve examined tonight. Ultra-Orthodox Jews do indeed rely on God. Non-orthodox Jews -- at least, those of us who live in the diaspora -- do indeed rely on foreign governments.

When contemporary world Jewry looks at the Chanukkah Rorschach test, what we see there are our divisions: three fault lines, that keep each group separated from the others.

***

The Talmud records a famous debate between the great sages Hillel and Shammai, over how the Chanukkah menorah ought to be lit. Hillel argues that we should start with one candle, and add one each night, moving progressively upwards to eight -- the way we light our menorahs today. But Shammai disagrees. He argues that we should start with eight candles, and remove one each night, until, on the last night, only one remains. Two sages, two opposing ideas, one an uncrossable fault line between them.

But I’ve heard it said: that, if only for a brief moment, on the fourth day of Chanukkah, late in the afternoon -- as Hillel is cleaning up his menorah from the night before, and Shammai is setting up his menorah for the night ahead -- for that brief moment, both sages are holding four candles.

If only we could make that brief moment last and last and last -- like a jar of oil that burns for longer than expected.

__________
[1] “Reb Kringle,” from Englander’s short story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. My synopsis here is intentionally modified from the original story in order to capture the story’s comedic tone.
[2] Unlike Christmas, Chanukkah is a relatively minor festival. Chanukkah is theologically poor: unlike Passover, when God redeems the Jewish people from slavery, or Yom Kippur, when God forgives the Jewish people of their wrongdoings -- Chanukkah contains little theological material. Christmas, by contrast, is theologically rich: it tells the story of the birth of God’s son. Chanukkah is also unlike Christmas in that Chanukkah has not, historically, been a holiday of gift-giving. That ritual is traditionally reserved for Purim.
[3] Similarly, the rabbis of the Talmud chose as the haftarah reading for the Shabbat during the week of Chanukkah these pacifistic words from the prophet Zechariah: “Not by might and not by power, but by spirit alone” (Zech. 4:6) shall the Jewish people be redeemed from their sufferings. (Zechariah lived during the time of the Babylonian and Persian oppressions.)
[4] The Jewish Way, p. 277. With gratitude to my teacher Dr. Wendy Zierler for introducing me to that book, and in whose classroom many of the ideas found in this sermon first germinated.
[5] Rabbi Marc Margolius
[6] There are a variety of reasons why the rabbis might have chosen Psalm 30 for Chanukkah -- not least of all, because the psalm includes the word chanukkah in its opening verse, which caused the rabbis to believe (incorrectly) that the psalm was composed at the time of the Maccabean revolt. (Most scholars believe that the psalms were completed by the year 400 BCE; the Maccabean revolt began in 167 BCE.)
[7] This history is brilliant traced in Leora Batnitzky’s book How Judaism Became a Religion. For the story of Ultra-Orthodoxy in particular, see, the book’s conclusion.
[8] Nevermind that, despite what the midrash says, the Torah clearly demonstrates that the Israelites did indeed take on Egyptians names. Moses and Aaron are both names of Egyptian origin, to name but two highly significant examples. The irony deepens when one considers that on Chanukkah, our annual cycle of Torah reading brings us to the story of Joseph -- who, upon assuming the role of royal vizier, changed his name to an Egyptian name, married and Egyptian wife, and named his children with names that mean “I have forgotten my father’s house” and “God has made me fertile in a foreign land.” He is so deeply assimilated that when his brothers eventually come to Egypt to beg for bread, they do not recognize him. For more on this topic, see Arnold Eisen’s article here: http://www.jtsa.edu/joseph-hanukkah-and-the-dilemmas-of-assimilation
[9] While the holiday of Tisha B’Av does take place in the Land of Israel, it is a commemoration of defeat and destruction -- useless themes to the early Zionists.
[10] Additionally: perhaps it’s no surprise that the so called Jewish olympics held every four years in Israel is called the Maccabi Games, and that professional sports teams in Israel bear names like Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Haifa.

A Window, Not a Wall

I recently got a call from a close friend whose father had died several years ago. My friend and his family were now cleaning out his old childhood home, helping to prepare his mom to move into a smaller place. He was calling to tell me about the strange experience of cleaning the house, how he felt haunted by memories of his dad -- how old pictures, or handwritten notes, or school report cards, or art projects that had once hung on the fridge brought his father so vividly to mind.

My friend told me that it was a windy weekend while they were clearing out the house -- and that each time he stepped outside to load another box into the U-Haul truck, he felt as if his dad was swirling around him in the wind. And finally, when the last room had been cleared, when the boxes were all packed up and loaded into the truck, when the mezuzah had been taken down from the front door, he and his family went to close the door to his childhood home for what he thoughts would be the last time. But as the latch began to click into the doorframe, a strong gust of wind blew up from the street, and the door went flying open. It felt, he said, as if his dad’s spirit just couldn’t bear to leave the old house behind. My friend told me: “I know that my dad wasn’t actually in that gust of wind, but I couldn’t help but cry. It just felt so real. Is that crazy?” he asked.

We can’t say for sure where the dead go after they have died. It is perhaps the most perplexing problem in the human condition. It is not a question that can be answered by empirical observation. It is not a question that can be addressed by reasoning or logic. Any possible answers lie beyond the horizon of human understanding -- outside the boundaries of what we can know for certain.

Where empirical observation fails, faith and belief must suffice. Some anthropologists suggest[1] that this is the very basis of religion: the longing to understand things that are just beyond our understanding -- to know where it is that we come from, and where it is that we go.

Jewish tradition is full of images of how the dead continue to inhabit the world of the living. One tradition[2] teaches that in the days immediately after a person dies, her soul continues to linger on earth -- confused about how to exist without a body, unsure of where to go next, visiting the people and places that she knew in her life. Another tradition[3] teaches that by saying Kaddish, we, the living, help the souls of the dead to find their way to the next world. Still another tradition[4] teaches that the dead can visit us in our dreams, advise us in our affairs, even intercede on our behalf for the betterment of our lives.

Since the Enlightenment, many Jews have kept their distance from beliefs such as these. We have difficulty integrating anything that isn’t able to be proved.

But we don’t have to be naive or foolish to understand what it is that our tradition is trying to express with each of these images. We don’t have to take these claims literally to understand the message. Judaism affirms that the dead, even after they have died, continue to be present in the world of the living. In our memories, they are entirely vivid. When we long for them, they are present to us -- present, by way of their absence. They even continue to influence our world. Our actions continue to be guided by our memories of them. Our choices are still influenced by the place they occupy in our hearts.

Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, of blessed memory, used to tell a story[5] of how his father continued to act in the world, even long after he had died. Schacter-Shalomi had a complex relationship with his father. When he was alive, his father would keep his feelings pent up, let them fester, and release them in fitful outbursts of anger. One afternoon shortly after his father had died, Schacter-Shalomi was driving down the highway, having just taught a class at a local yeshivah. He was unhappy with how the class had gone, and as he was driving, Schachter-Shalomi was stewing about the experience, letting his anger fester and grow -- just as his father had shown him to do. Immediately, Schachter-Shalomi pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out, and said out-loud to his father, as if he were standing right there next to him: “Papa -- you spent your whole life showing me how to explode with anger. But this is one lesson I don’t need anymore. This one, you can keep.”

Schachter-Shalomi felt full well his father’s still very real presence in his life. In releasing himself from his anger, in letting go, he continued to learn from his father -- in this case, by not following his father’s example. Is this not, on some level, a negative example of how the dead are able to intercede in the affairs of the living?

On Sukkot, we Jews participate in the practice of ushpizin. Ushpizin is an Aramaic word meaning “guests” -- and it refers to the practice, originated by the Kabbalists, of inviting guests into our Sukkah. In traditional practice, each day of Sukkot corresponds to one of seven biblical figures, whom we invite into the Sukkah on his or her particular day, in hopes that we might learn a spiritual quality from that guest. On the first day of Sukkot, we invite Abraham into our sukkah, in hopes that we might mirror his quality of hospitality to guests. On day two, we invite Isaac into our Sukkah, in hopes that we might learn from him how to feel awestruck before God. And so on.

On this last day of the Sukkot holiday, we might practice a different kind of ushpizin -- a different way of welcoming guests -- not by inviting biblical figures to come and celebrate with us, by rather, by inviting in our deceased loved ones to join us in this chapel. We invite her in -- and hope to mirror her quality of an inquisitive mind. We invite him in -- and hope to learn how not to let our anger fester and explode. We invite these ushpizin -- these guests -- into our celebration of Sukkot, because we know that they are with us, even when we don’t invite them in. They are with us, even when we are unaware of the role they continue to play in our lives. Our dead are never really gone, our tradition teaches. The space between the living and the dead is “a window, not a wall.”[6]

A short detour, by way of conclusion: Sarah Ruhl is a playwright who has published a book called One Hundred Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write. In that book, she writes about what happens when an actor opens up an umbrella on stage.[7] We know that it isn’t actually raining on the stage. But when that umbrella opens, it conjures for us the experience of rain. When the actor lowers the umbrella and shivers, we believe that she is getting cold and wet. We believe in the rain, even though we know plain and clear that the rain isn’t really there.

To ask, “Is it raining on this actor?” would be to ask the wrong question. That is a question of truth or falsehood, when the empirical truth of whether it is actually raining is entirely inconsequential. 

Instead, we ought to ask a question not of truth or falsehood, but rather, of meaning.[8] “Does watching this actor lower her umbrella cause us to shiver, to remember what it’s like to stand out in the cold and the rain? Does seeing this non-reality play itself out on stage allow us to access the actual reality of being soaked to the bone, of feeling exposed to the elements?” These are not true/false questions -- but rather, questions of meaning. Does the combination of that real umbrella and the false rain give us access to a meaningful experience?

So what should we tell my friend who recently moved out of his childhood home? Is it crazy to think that the wind blowing the door open was actually his father?

We cannot say for sure. The answer is simply beyond the realm of human reasoning.

But maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Perhaps we shouldn’t be asking the true/false question of: “Was that actually my father?” Perhaps instead we should ask a question of meaning: “When the wind wraps itself around you, do you remember what it felt like to be held in your father’s arms? When the wind blows the door open, does the lifetime of memories created in that house come pouring out -- unable to be contained?”

These are questions we can answer. These are questions that, quite frankly, are far more interesting than a simple test of truth or falsehood. This is where feeling resides. This is where meaning is made. This is where comfort springs. This is where healing begins.

And so we practice the Jewish art of ushpizin -- of inviting our deceased loved ones into our sukkot celebration -- even though we cannot empirically prove that they have entered into our sukkah. Nevertheless, we sense them. Nevertheless, we feel their presence. We continue learn from their lives. We carry them with us always. We believe that, in some way, they continue to remain with us -- and that experience adds meaning to our lives. Why on earth would we need to prove that?

______
[1] Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens, p. 266-267.
[2] BT Sanhedrin 47b
[3] BT Sanhedrin 104a
[4] Finkel, Avraham Yaakov. The Book of the Pious, by Rabbi Yehudah HeChasid, p. 223.
[5] Schachter-Shalomi, Zalman. “On the Afterlife” (audio recording).
[6] Raphael, Simcha Paull. “Grief and Bereavement,” in Jewish Pastoral Care, ed. Friedman, p. 426.
[7] Ruhl, Sarah. One Hundred Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, p. 6-7.
[8] For more on these competing frameworks, see Rabbi Larry Hoffman’s soon-to-be-published essay, “Limits, Truth, and Meaning” (originally delivered as a lecture at the Shechinah conference in the mid 1980s).