My Zaida was a rabbi

A very religious Jew traveling through Europe stopped overnight at a B&B. He noticed a mezuzah on the door and wondered if he could rely on the kosher standard of the institution. He approached the bare-headed owner, who was manning the front desk and asked if he served kosher food.

“Look there,” the proprietor announced, indicating an aging photo of a man with a tangled white beard, “That was my father! Surely, you can rely on the kashrut of my food!”

The guest smiled slightly and replied: “If this was your father’s establishment and he had a photo of you hanging on the wall, I’d feel more comfortable eating here.”

Jews love to tell you about their pedigree, how frum their father or grandfather was or how their grandmother chaired the ladies’ guild back in the “old country”. “Oh, you’re a Hurwitz, are you related to the famous Kabbalist Rabbi Horowitz?” (When I introduce myself, I usually: “Is that a Jewish surname? I’ve never heard of it before...”)

Rabbi Dovber, the successor to the Ba’al Shem Tov, watched his house burn down when he was a young boy. His mother was devastated and he tried to console her, arguing that valuables are replaceable. But, she explained that her family tree, tracing their pedigree to King David had gone up in flames and could never be recovered. Little Dovber grinned and assured her that he would make sure to start a new famous family tree.

It’s each man for himself in Judaism. You can’t ride on the achievements of your parents, nor can you blame your failings on theirs.

Avraham’s father was an idolator, yet he became the father of monotheism. Rivkah’s family were crooks, yet she became one of the most pious people ever. Even Moshiach’s lineage is embarrassing. His original ancestors include Moab, a child born from the incest of Lot and his daughter.

Don’t tell us who you parents were; show us who you are.

We all mess up sometimes

One step forward, two steps back. Ever find yourself doing that?

You manage two full weeks back at gym, but oversleep one morning and go downhill from there. Business seems on track, then suddenly goes quiet. Your Rosh Hashanah resolution looked promising, but you don’t feel so motivated any longer.

It can get frustrating to have a setback as you start making progress. No matter how motivated you feel or how convinced you are that “this time” you’ll stick with the programme, there will always be an obstacle along the way. Life’s speed bumps can bring us to grinding halt.

Backsliding is nothing new. 3900 years ago, Avraham had a similar problem. G-d Himself appeared to Avraham and set him off on a journey of discovery by telling him “Lech Lecha”, or as Johnnie Walker would say: “Keep walking”. “Lech lecha” doesn’t just mean “go”, it means continue to progress and develop in an unbroken upward motion. G-d essentially promised Avraham that he would never fail.

Yet, shortly after reaching his objective, the land of Canaan, Avraham had to leave. Famine in the land forced him to travel to Egypt, Earth’s most immoral country.

One second! What happened to the up-and-up message of “Lech lecha”? How could G-d promise Avraham consistent spiritual development and then send him off to Egypt? Avraham and Sarah had a rough landing when they got there- Sarah abducted by Pharaoh and Avraham scrambling to protect his own life. It seems a far cry from the grand Divine promise.

Read the story and you’ll notice that Avraham remains unperturbed by this unexpected twist of fate. He was a wise man, who understood the meaning behind life’s disappointments.

Avraham appreciated that growing spiritually and becoming a better person is not only about going up. You need to slip too. You need to mess up so that you can fix up; fail so you can grow stronger. Avraham trusted G-d that heading “down” to Egypt was really part of the process of rising up. Because he had the right attitude, Avraham bounced back, changed the trajectory of humankind and fathered the Jewish nation.

Next time you get all motivated and then let yourself down, remember to make it part of your journey to rise even higher.

The Babel... uh Nobel Peace Prize

I’ve been wondering about the Barack Obama Nobel Peace Prize thing for a while now. Either Obama has achieved incredible believability in record time or they’ve changed the Nobel Prize requirement from “creating change” to “pledging to make a change”. Obama’s “audacity of hope” clearly got the Norwegians hoping.

People like Tobias Asser (1911 Jewish Peace Prize winner), Sir Joseph Rotblat (most recent Jewish Peace Prize winner) or Ada Yonath (also Jewish, this year’s chemistry laureate) all worked for decades to earn their Noble accolade. Obama was cited for the prize a mere ten days into his presidency. When he jets off to collect the prize in Oslo, his country is likely to still be at war on two fronts.

What’s more intriguing than the question of why Obama made the grade is the question of why so few Jews have ever received it. 22% of all Nobel Prize winners are Jewish (that’s not bad coming from less than 1% of the World’s population). We have impressive numbers of Nobel laureates for medicine, chemistry, physics and economics, but only nine Peace Prize recipients!

That’s strange. Jews have always been peace activists. Our belief system pivots on peace, we end our daily prayers with a plea for peace and our Sages teach that the G-d gave us the Torah for one sole purpose: to bring peace to the world. How, then, were we overlooked in the Peace Prize race?

You can solve part of the mystery by referring to this week’s Torah portion. After the Great Flood, we’re told, people banded together to build a great new civilization. Earlier generations had undone their society through strife, jealousy and simple disrespect and G-d had destroyed them. Their descendants figured they could fix those ills by building a single society, built around a massive iconic tower that would always remind everyone of this ideal. Babel’s citizens wanted peace.

Strangely, G-d disapproved. He swooped down, thwarted their plans, mixed up their languages (they had all spoken Hebrew until then) and made sure they could never work together again.

Does G-d have something against peace?

A closer inspection of this story reveals a deeply profound message. Yes, they wanted peace; yes they wanted to live in harmony; yes they dreamed of a united humankind. But they wanted it for the wrong reasons. In outlining their plan, their leaders announced: “Let us build a city, with a tower reaching the Heavens... so that we will not be dispersed across the Earth”. Sounds noble enough, doesn’t it?

It would have been, but they inserted one corrupt phrase into their proposal: “Let us build a city… to make a name for ourselves”.

If you want peace, chase peace. When you pursue peace because you want to make a name for yourself, to leave a legacy, to earn the title “Man of Peace”, you’ll never achieve peace. In fact, you will likely create terrible conflicts.

Peace stretches beyond individuals and their egos. Peace is the foundation of Life itself. To reach peace, you need to forget yourself.

This story and, in fact, all of Torah has taught us one fundamental lesson: Jews are into peace, not prizes.

Some water with your wine?

Imagine you’re at an upscale restaurant for dinner. You order lamb chops and a glass of Merlot. Your waiter returns, bottle in hand (cloth draped over his arm), pours your wine and tops your glass up with some mineral water...

The Romans and Greeks used to dilute their wine to temper its potency, but modern connoisseurs would cringe at the thought of adding water to theirs. It’s not just a matter of taste- Judaism teaches that the difference between wine and water runs deeper than flavour and colour.

Nowadays, you can find a wide range of filtered, mineral and flavoured waters and you can probably taste the difference between different water brands. But, good ol’ water was never known for its taste. You drank water to survive, not to enjoy. Wine was what people would drink for pleasure, as we do today. Water keeps you alive; wine makes you happy. These two beverages may mix in the glass, but they don’t mix in concept.

Back in Temple days, Jews would bring daily offerings to Hashem that included wine. You’ve surely heard people compare Torah to water, but we compare it to wine as well. Just as you enjoy the ta’am, the taste of wine, you enjoy the ta’am, the rationale and meaning that Torah offers. We are a nation of thinkers who boast Talmudists who could run philosophical circles around Socrates and minds that have revolutionised science, psychology, politics and entertainment. We enjoy our “wine”.

As delicious as wine is, we also need water to survive. In fact, we need water more than wine.

Every Sukkos, they would pour water on the Temple’s altar. Ironically, the wine libation was par for the course; drizzling water on the altar was cause for celebration. The Talmud notes that the merrymaking that accompanied the drawing of this water was so intense that anyone who missed seeing it doesn’t know what real rejoicing is. You’d have thought that more wine would mean more joy, yet Judaism finds joy in water.

Human nature dictates that if we understand what we’re doing, we enjoy doing it; if we don’t understand it, we do it mechanically. Judaism flips that theory on its head and tells us that a Jew needs a good balance between intellectual appreciation (wine) and loyal commitment to the Cause (water). Just as they used to pour both wine and water on the altar, we need to build a relationship with G-d that comprises both dimensions.

We imagine that we will find greater satisfaction if we understand Judaism. Actually, we find exponentially more delight in our dogged dedication to simply doing what He expects of us.

Light a candle of truth

The Jewish world stands a little straighter this week, emboldened by Prime Minister Netanyahu's telling-it-like-it-is at the UN last Thursday.  Bibi lashed out against Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-myth rhetoric, blasted the UN's anti-Israel bias and reminded the crowd that the message of world peace engraved on the entrance to the UN was composed by a Jewish prophet, Isaiah, walking in our land 2800 years ago.

Time will tell if Netanyahu's courage will carry from the General Assembly podium to Knesset decision-making. But, the speech was clearly impressive, "Churchillian" they're calling it- direct and brutally honest.

Where did Bibi get the guts to stand up to the world? Was he inspired by his older brother Yoni, the Sayeret Matkal commander who gave his life to save others at Entebbe?

Bibi's spontaneous answer, to an Israeli journalist just outisde the General Assembly, is surprising. Netanyahu was appointed Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in 1984. Shortly after taking the post, a friend suggested he attend the Simchas Torah celebrations with the Lubavitcher Rebbe at Chabad-Lubavitch HQ in Brooklyn.

Before the festivities kicked off, the Rebbe spoke to Netanyahu for forty minutes, much to the surprise and frustration of the Chassidim who were eager to start the proceedings.

"The Rebbe told me," Netanyahu explains, "You are going to the UN and you will find there an assembly hall filled with infinite falsehood and utter darkness. Your challenge is to light a candle of truth in that darkness."

25 years later, last Thursday, Bibi got to light that candle.

Last week was Rosh Hashanah and we flipped the calendar page to 5770, which has all the markings of a powerful year. 770 has the gematriya (numerical value) of "poratzto", meaning to burst forth, break barriers and shift paradigms. Less than a week into this special year, Prime Minister Netanyahu did "poratzto" in the UN. 25 years ago, the Rebbe planted the seed that burst into the open last week. Hopefully, Israel will keep the "poratzto" momentum and stand strong and proud.

You and I may not be able to change Israel or address the UN. But, we can shift our own paradigms. We all have a "hall of lies and darkness" inside our own minds: self-doubt, apathy and an urge to please the world. Tonight is Kippur, time to reasses and reinvent ourselves, time for our personal "poratzto". Time to confront our personal "hall of darkness" and tell it where to get off.

G'mar Chatimah Tovah!

Stand on your head!

This week I heard a poignant story from a colleague overseas. A woman in his community shared a unique anecdote about her father as a child. It was Yom Kippur and the young boy accompanied his father to Shul. During the service, the congregation’s focus was disturbed when the lad walked to the front of the Shul and did a handstand in front of the Ark. Embarrassed, his father quickly led him back to his seat and then asked what had possessed the boy to do something so strange.

The youngster replied simply: “You told me that we have to do something difficult on Yom Kippur, and for me that was difficult”.

Different people experience Yom Kippur differently. For some, it’s a meaningful, focused and inspiring time when they are swept up in the experience of the day, barely noticing the fast. Others struggle with not eating or, more often, not drinking but push themselves to daven and to try connect. Then there are those who check in for the main services- Kol Nidrei, Yizkor and maybe Neilah- then quickly check out. Some Jews don’t even get to Shul, they simply sleep the day away and count the hours till it’s over.

Group A often looks askance at the others, who they feel miss the point of what this special day is about. Well, maybe they are the ones who have missed the plot. Those of us who understand the service and get involved and inspired because we appreciate what’s going on feel comfortable in Shul. We’re not in Shul out of dedication nor do we find it difficult to be there. Those who come to Shul begrudgingly because they “have to” are challenging themselves. If someone comes to Shul and cannot read Hebrew or doesn’t relate to the service they clearly are not there for their own benefit- they’re out of simple dedication to G-d. Dedication is worth far more than going through the motions or even feeling inspired.

This Yom Kippur, we need to challenge ourselves; to find something difficult to do; to take our commitment over those 24 hours to a completely new level.We need to stand on our heads. G-d always responds to us in line with our movement towards Him, hopefully He will take the tzoris in our lives and turn it on its head too.

Leshana Tovah ti... how do you say it again?

Every Rosh Hashanah people get tongue-tied trying to pronounce the official First-night greeting. Having a different formula for men, women and groups doesn’t help, especially if your Hebrew is not so hot in the first place. The good news is, you can say it in whichever language you prefer. What is more important is that you mean it.

From sunset on Friday evening until the first morning of Rosh Hashanah, G-d judges the world and determines everything that will happen for the next year, It’s an unnerving time and we’d certainly like to do whatever we can to ensure He sets up a good year fo us.

We come to Shul, pray with extra focus and hope we can convince Him that we’ve been good and deserve blessing.

Here’s a secret that can help us all guarantee ourselves a good year ahead: Wish other people a good year. Sound too simple (or perhaps superficial)?

We make a serious mistake- we don’t take our own blessings seriously enough. The Talmud warns that you should never underestimate even a simpleton’s blessing.

When he was just fourteen, the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe commented how he could sense the tremendous joy on High that people’s “Leshana Tovah” greeting would generate. His father taught that two angels accompany every Jew to Shul on Rosh Hashanah. When they hear us bless each other with a good year, they fly up to Heaven and argue that we all deserve blessings for the coming year.

Jews believe that G-d wants the best for us and that He enjoys the greatest nachas from seeing us wish each other well. Praying in Shul is important, but wholeheartedly wishing your neighbour a good year might be even more valuable.

Whether you know the correct formula or not, make sure that you mean it when you say whatever you say. And make sure you say it to as many people as possible.
 

Shana Tovah, may you have a year with less stress and more cash, sustained spiritual growth and good health, extra nachas and inner-peace, all enjoyed against the backdrop of a stable and tranquil world awakening to spiritual awareness- or as we Jews like to say: Moshiach now!