Got Torah?

Although we’ve been given the Torah, even now God still has it. He’s the only one who knows the Torah’s core depth, its roads to be walked and how to instill Torah-living into humankind.

How much of the Torah any of us receives is directly related to how much he is willing to sacrifice for it. No pain, no gain. Effort, strain, sacrifice, late nights and early mornings in study. Going the extra mile to attend a minyan and to attend to someone in need.

The more you give of your time, money and body, the more of the Torah you receive and the longer it stays with you. How much do you want the Torah? How much do you want it when it’s going to cost you something? Something precious?

Shavuot is a festival. Enjoying it to rejoice in it is a mitzvah, a way of coming close to God. Celebrate your choseness, that God thinks you’re capable enough, clever enough and responsible enough to dance through life holding His Torah.

agut yom tov!

Chag sameach!

Chosen Person

We’re on the threshold of receiving the Torah, again. As we wrote earlier, one of the reasons we stay awake all Shavuot night to learn Torah, is to awaken our desire for living Torah, despite any obstacles we may face in life. And face obstacles we will.

Rebbe Nachman talks often of the desire to be a Jew, the desire to live Jewishly, the desire to actualize the desire to daven (pray) more/better, learn Torah more/better, be charitable and kind more/better, have stronger faith and love for God, etc. What’s the starting point for that desire? The starting point is to realize that not only are we Jews the Chosen People, but that you, in your Jewishness, are a Chosen Person. Without your having stood at Mount Sinai at the Revelation to receive the Torah, no Jew, not even Moshe Rabbeinu, would have the Torah.

You were chosen to be there and, like the rest of us, you accepted the invitation and the responsibility. And you’re going to fail. Not all the time, hopefully, but often enough to think about quitting or about moving the goalposts (i.e., lowering your standards of Judaism). But this misguided thinking is based on a lack of humility. Your failures—just like my failures and the other guy’s failures—should give you a clearer picture of what your currently capable of and where you need improvement. Your failures, and the humility they breed, should weaken neither your desire nor your resolve for Jewishness. On the contrary—they should strengthen them so much that your failures become stepping stones to Jewish success.

Have a beautiful yom tov. Don’t forget. Being happy that it’s yom tov is a mitzvah. Don’t get suckered into an argument or a funk because the cheesecake didn’t come out right or the rabbi’s class was too long.

Based on Likutey Halakhot, Hekhsher Keilim 4:18

Stay Awake!

Why don’t we sleep on the night of Shavuot? Reb Noson of Breslov, Rebbe Nachman’s foremost disciple, gives an answer.

We already received the Torah at Sinai. So what are we receiving each year on Shavuot? A little more revelation of penimiyut, the innerness/essence of the Torah. The Torah’s panim, face, shines on us a little more, so that each of us can awaken from his sleep. We can wake and look more carefully and honestly at our lives, so that we can evaluate how our day to day life is contributing—or not—to a positive destiny.

When the Torah smiles and reveals to us more of her essence, we realize how many obstacles there are that keep us away from her. We realize that she alone is the one who can awaken us to our destined greatness. Receiving on Shavuot this new appreciation of the Torah’s greatness—and ours—is this year’s revelation.

Coming to realize how far we are from actualizing our potential greatness; coming to realize how impermanent things, false visions and values, and other tricks played on our minds keep us away from the Torah which can bring us to our God and our greatness; these realizations are the Torah we receive on Shavuot.

Staying awake Shavuot night is a reaction to these revelations. It is an antidote to the all too common human reaction of giving up and crawling under the blanket, quitting on the Torah when life gets too hard for us to reach the greatness we know deep within that we can achieve. Staying awake Shavuot night is a cry: I want to be a greater Jew! I can be a greater Jew! Even if I cannot achieve my Jewish goals as swiftly as I hoped, I will never ever stop hoping, and trying, to reach them.

Based on Likutey Halakhot, Hekhsher Keilim 4:26

Worth the Trade

“I threw it all away.” Ruth of Moab

Now, she didn’t really say that, but she could’ve. She was a princess, beautiful and wealthy. She could have had pleasure and power had she stayed in her native land, instead of migrating to the Land of Israel. But she saw something in her late Jewish husband, or in her mother-in-law, Naomi, or in both. When Naomi set out to return home to the Land of Israel and tried hard to dissuade Ruth from joining her, Ruth refused. “Wherever you go, I will go.” Even to poverty, even to risk my life because I don’t yet know everything about being Jewish and may commit a sin. It’s worth all that—and more—to be Jewish.

Ruth never regretted her choice and was never bitter about it. She was such a kind and loving person that anything she looked at became blessed.

So what happened because this woman threw it all away and became Jewish? We ended up with King David and his Tehillim (Psalms). And we will end with tikkun haolam when Mashiach comes, swiftly and soon, in our lifetime. Amen.

Inexplicable Desire

I saw this today and I was just so impressed—blown away, actually—that I felt that I had to share it. Rabbi Yosef Albo writes:

“The love that God has for the Jewish people is called cheshek, as it is written (Deuteronomy 7:7), ‘God chashak loved you and chose you’. Cheshek conveys a love which is beyond logic and reason … as when a man loves has cheshek for a woman. He will desire her even if he finds someone who is more beautiful. Similarly, God loves the Jewish people with a cheshek-love which goes beyond all understanding. All of Shir HaShirim (Ecclesiastes) is based upon this cheshek-love between God and the Jewish people ….

“The verse says: ‘God chose you to be His chosen nation from among all the nations upon earth ….’ The love is a segulah (supra-rational). God did not choose the Jewish nation because of its large population, as it is written, ‘It is not because of your multitudes did God desire (chashak) you’, nor because of their qualities, as it is written (Deuteronomy 9:6), ‘Know that it is not because of your righteousness … because you are a stiff-necked nation’. Rather, the love is an inexplicable desire. The love is entirely dependent upon the will of the lover [and not the actions, beauty or qualities of the beloved].

“A lover considers the small amount that he receives from his beloved, to be sweeter and more precious than greater quantities he receives from others. Similarly, God considers the few good deeds that He obtains from the Jewish nation to be more precious than many acts of worship that He obtains from another nation, or from all other nations together” (Sefer HaIkarim 37:3).

What impresses me? It’s inexplicable. (Yes, I know what Rebbe Nachman says in Tzaddik #407, but I came across this passage while doing work-related research.)

Appetizer

Here’s a simple practice, that should be relatively easy to do. But as with anything worthwhile, it takes time time to establish its place in your life. So you have to take the time to do it, give it time to develop and not give up when you forget to do it. Just cone back to it and start it again.

Rebbe Nachman teaches that before you eat, put something into the pushka. Puskha is Yiddish for box, and colloquially it means specifically the charity box. The amount is not important; the giving is. My suggestion, because maybe you don’t have a pushka, is to make one. I mean, what could be a better recycling project than that? Maybe even make two or three pushkas, because maybe you want to spread the wealth.

And yes, you can do this practice by donating to a charity via Paypal or with a credit card, but there’s also an important element gained by putting physical coins and dollar bills into a pushka. The jingle-jangle of charity coins is a sacred sound (Likutey Moharan I, Lesson #22:5).

Which charity? That’s a tough call. You have to pray hard to be worthy to give to a worthy Jewish cause. In many ways, it’s a personal call. As a Breslover, I incline to Breslov-related charities/causes/institutions. I’m partial to orphans and widows, with the ordinary poor being next. As you pray, you have to search your heart and mind to get the solution.

And when the money adds up, which it will do after a while, remember to give it to whom you’ve been collecting for!

Closing the Door on an Era

I went to a funeral today (41st day of the Omer 5773 [6 May ’13]). The mother of good friends, really good friends. The deceased, Rose Stark, was a personal acquaintance of Dr. Mengele. She was a Holocaust survivor before it was popular to be one.

Rose lived with her daughter and son-in-law, MeeMee and Nachman here, in Jerusalem. (No, they are not Breslovers.) Allow me to digress. I feel sorry for my children’s generation, and for those just a little bit older. They rarely, if ever, met a European Jew, a pre-War-II Jew. Thank God, I grew up knowing a fair number of such Jews, many who had survived WWII, and some the camps. (My father, RIP, survived the war by being in the Russian Army and Siberia.) Those Jews, even the irreligious ones, were in many ways more Jewish than even chareidi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews of today. Their whole being and essence exuded Jewishness and screamed, “I am Jewish!” (And no, it wasn’t the garlic and herring for breakfast that did it.)

Anyway. Rose was special, as one would expect a Holocaust survivor to be. But she was special as one might not expect a Holocaust survivor to be. She wasn’t bitter. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t neurotic and she didn’t try to shield her children from life, from goyim, from Judaism or from God.

She was an authentic person, a Jew who believed in God even when she couldn’t find Him in Auschwitz (nor later, when she repatriated to Sweden.) She was a person with dignity who brought her love for Jews and Jewishness to the fore. She resolved any questions she had in private, and those of other people with gentle humor.

She did not give up after her first husband and first baby were murdered. She did not stop looking toward a better future, did not stop counting her blessings. The blessings kept coming and so did the better future. She turned out to be more of a warrior than any of the leaders of the Third Reich.

To me, what made her a success was her appreciation for what she had, her realization of how precious Jewish life is, simply by virtue of its existing.

A few months ago, Rose’s son-in-law Nachman mentioned to me a theory he has. The success, status and comfort of the Jewish people climbed steadily after World War II, but has declined lately. This, he says, is because the Holocaust survivors are dying. It has been in their merit they we have enjoyed what we have these last 65–70 years. I don’t know if he’s right, but it’s certainly something to think about.

Auf simchas. May we celebrate together joyous news. Amen.

When I Grow Up

I want to be Like Reb Yitzchok Dovid Grossman, the rabbi in the picture. He is one of the most authentic people I know. He is at home with any chassidic group, with any stream of Judaism, with any Jew, learned or not, observant or not. I don’t know him personally, but I’ve had the chance to observe him up close, once on a flight back from Uman-Rosh Hashanah, and once when he turned up at a shul in my neighborhood in Jerusalem a number of years back.

Patience, respect, a warm smile, dignity, no compromise on Torah values or observance, and a love for his fellow Jews—real people, with all their warts, not just in the abstract. The other day, my nephew e-mailed the photo below and I felt I had to let people know what a Jew can be. Rabbi Grossman is so humble he won’t mind having his picture on the Internet and he won’t mind if it’s not on the Internet.

Pre-death Counseling

I learned this today with a friend. It’s from Chayei Moharan (translated by Breslov Research as Tzaddik), #445. Both my mother and mother-in-law are in decline, particularly my mother, so this is something that I may need in the not too distant future.

Many times when Rebbe Nachman was dealing with the terminally ill, he would “speak to their heart,” and tell them, “Why are you so anxious about death? There it is a much more pleasant world than here.”

We were wondering, and role-playing, how we could share this message in a truly comforting way. Is this a message for everybody?

Behar-Bechukotai

Dvar Torah for Parshat Behar-Bechukotai 5773

All Beginnings Are Difficult

Well now. 148West’s maiden dvar Torah. Very exciting, for me at least. After writing “a weekly column” for someone else, I’m doing it for someone else—me. The exciting part is, that no longer working as “an official spokesman” for Breslov Research Institute (blessed be its name) and, by extension, Breslov, I can write about topics that an organization wouldn’t. To have that freedom is exciting.

It’s also a big responsibility. Those who know me, or of me, expect that what I say is Breslov, or defines Breslov, or is the consensus of Breslover chassidim. That’s a definite maybe. I try, in my personal life, to behave (and speak, and think) in accord with what I learn in Rebbe Nachman’s works. (When I say “Rebbe Nachman’s works” I mean also those of Reb Noson, in particular Likutey Halakhot.) Of course, no two Breslovers understand the Rebbe’s teachings in the same way—which is exactly how he intended it, and exactly the way it oughta be.

As I wrote there, on 148West’s home page, I’m not here to preach. I’m here to teach, to share, to probe, maybe even to provide answers. The point is—and I firmly believe it’s the baseline of Rebbe Nachman’s mission—to help anyone and everyone Be. More. Jewish.

Which leads us in to our dvar Torah. Actualizing potential is the major theme of Likutey Moharan Lesson #66. Let’s take a look at a small section of the lesson (the start of §2):

The final outcome starts in thought. For example, when a person wants to do something, to build a bayit (house, home), let’s say, he must first think and consider what his bayit will look like. When he has a clear picture of what his bayit will look like, he can begin to build it. In this way, the ultimate product starts in the mind. And until the potential is actualized, the potential [bayit] is bound to the germ of the idea.

Part of what makes Likutey Moharan so powerful is the perspective it gives us for viewing life, on a grand, sweeping historical scale, on a personal, microscopic scale, and everything in between. For example, the bayit the Rebbe refers to is not just a physical structure, a yurt or an igloo. He means your ultimate bayit, the place you will reside for eternity.

Before we go on, let’s think about this vague word, “eternity.” The Steipler Rov, Reb Yaakov Yisrael Kanievesky obm (1899–1985), gave the following analogy to give us an idea of “how long is eternity.” Imagine, Planet Earth covered around and around by a pile of sand 10 miles high. Now, once every 10,000 years a bird flies in and takes away a grain of sand. How long will it take for the bird to remove all the sand? Eternity is longer than that. Back to our topic.

Did you ever think what your bayit will look like? One room for emunah (faith), one for tefilah (prayer), another for your kindness to orphans and one for your kindness to widows, to the poor. Rooms for the various areas of Torah you studied and others for Torah that you taught. And how well-lit will your bayit be? There’s an old Yiddish expression applied to a person who has passed on: May he have a lichtege Gan Eden, a bright Garden of Eden. You don’t want a small light bulb, do you?

So we need to spend time thinking about our future bayit. We’ve got to think about how we’re going to build it, and get started.

There’s another bayit that needs to be built. Although it doesn’t make sense to talk of God “actualizing His potential,” the world He created needs to actualize its potential. God created the world in order to “dwell” in it, which is one of the reasons we were commanded to make a Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert and build the Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple) in Jerusalem. As we consider building our individual bayit, actualizing our personal potential, we should try our best to see how that fits with building God’s bayit, actualizing the potential of other people as well.

Because sometimes, I can develop and grow a good deal if I focus on myself. On the other hand, if I open myself to giving my time to others, I won’t get as far. but others will make progress that they couldn’t have without me. Some might make more progress than I ever could have made. And some may end up helping so many, many more people than I could ever have dreamed possible.

Thinking I’m making this up? Adam, the first human being, was to have lived for a thousand years. He didn’t keep them all for himself. He gave away 70 years of his life to King David, who was to have been stillborn. But by giving away his time—years, decades of his life!—Adam triggered a events that led to one person’s living a life in which he built the Kingdom of Israel, laid the foundation for the first Beit HaMikdash, wrote Tehillim (Psalms) and began the royal line that will lead to the Mashiach, may he come swiftly and soon, in our lifetime. Amen.

Based on Likutey Moharan I, Lesson #66

agutn Shabbos! Shabbat Shalom!

148 West

NEVER EVER DESPAIR!

Monthly Archives: May 2013