“Happy is the person who is anxious always. But one who hardens his heart falls into misfortune.”

Proverbs 28:14

“Happy is the person who is anxious always” does not sound like an effective formula for achieving peace and serenity. To paraphrase from the “Life of Brian” – for an adage in Proverbs - it “doesn’t sound very wise to me.” How can we understand this perplexing statement?

The medieval commentators generally cluster around a singular meaning. Since the Hebrew word for anxious (the JPS translation) is “miphakhed” or fear, a number of interpreters explain that a person who fears God will always be happy because this anxiety will prevent him from wrongdoing. For Rashi, the fear is one of punishment. Fearing the consequences of sin, he will employ self-restrain under temptation. For Abraham ibn Ezra, the bar is a little higher. The constant presence of authority reminds him always to set high personal expectations of virtue.

These interpretations make sense in light of the words but not in light of the overall context. Fear of God or punishment may keep you on the straight and narrow but will not make you happy, even if you are pleased with the outcome these tensions generate. Perhaps we find a clue to understanding in the second half of the saying: “but one who hardens his heart falls into misfortune.” In the chiastic structure of this verse, anxiety is the reverse of hardening the heart. The ability to keep the heart open is a source of personal joy.

My friend Liza recently gave me a book called Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. The title is from a speech that Theodore Roosevelt gave in 1910 in Paris: “…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” Roosevelt gave us the charge of failing as the cost of taking important risks.

Brown gives us the charge of making ourselves vulnerable so that we are able to take emotional risks with others. She contends that when we hear other people confess to their vulnerabilities, we find them to be courageous. When we confess to our own vulnerabilities, we feel weak. She asks us to see the capacity for vulnerability as an expression of courage and strength in ourselves.

Brown relates this discrepancy in the way we view vulnerability as a function of “not being enough.” If we admit a deficiency, we are affirming a position that says, “I am not enough.” Not wise enough, not thin enough, not a good enough parent or a good enough friend. She quotes author Lynne Twist who writes that our first thought upon waking is “I didn’t get enough sleep” followed later in the day by “I don’t have enough time.” She concludes that “before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something.” This position of scarcity prevents us from experiencing life’s many abundances.

Happy is the person who is vulnerable always. This reading also colludes with the verse right before it: “He who covers up his faults will not succeed; he who confesses and gives them up will find mercy” (28:14). When we are able to articulate our weaknesses, we find compassion for ourselves and others feel mercy for us. We are not objects of pity because we admit our mistakes. We become models of authenticity because we do so.

Leonard Cohen wrote in his song “Anthem,” “There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.” Light comes to us when we are not afraid of the crack.

Shabbat Shalom.

“We shall return to you…”

Hadran

Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav praised the gift of human forgetting, believing that if we remembered everything, we would paralyze ourselves. We might be lifted by joys unforgotten but total recall would also mean revisiting slights and anguish, anxiety and punishments. It would mean that we could never emerge out of loss.

Rabbi Nahman implies that the kind of remembering one is forgetting involves the arena of emotions. Our emotional memory fields are deep and associative. We might be in the middle of difficult work and suddenly an emotion grabs us and does not let go. It may be anger or pervasive sadness; when we caught in that maelstrom, it becomes hard to find the exit. Rabbi Nahman’s retreat from memory may not be total, but even in a partial state, it is a blessing. I remember writing an AP English essay for my exam on the quote “Time heals all wounds.” I couldn’t argue with the sentiment generally, but the word “all” felt too smug for all the hurt we humans carry.

I personally need a lot more memory back-up in reading and learning. Rabbi Nahman’s blessing of forgetfulness does not work for me there. When I can’t remember the theme of a book I read a few months ago or maybe even the title, I skewer myself. How can I possibly forget something I just read? There have been a number of articles on the benefits of reading even without recall, but it doesn’t seem right to me. Nietzsche once wrote, “The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” The up-side of forgetting what I read is that I can buy fewer books since I need only read the ones I’ve forgotten again. But I don’t.

There is a Jewish ritual that speaks powerfully to this act of reading and remembering: the hadran. It is a custom to say this prayer upon finishing an entire tractate of Talmud or another major Jewish work to its completion to acknowledge the momentousness of the end, which is not really an end. The Hebrew root H-D-R means glory; in Aramaic it means return or review. If you pay attention to the opening text of the Hadran, you find both of these meanings. Learning is retained when we glorify what we study and when we review it.

We shall return to you [name of book] and your glory is upon us. Out thoughts are upon you, and your thoughts are upon us. We will not be forgotten from you [name of book] and you will not be forgotten from us; neither in this world nor in the world to come…

Another striking feature of the Hadran is the way we personify the book. For the days, weeks, months or years we study it, it is in our mental embrace. We think about it. It thinks about us. It will not forget us. We will not forget it. The relationship is long-term, stretching far into the future. The dialogical nature of this prayer reflects a deeper approach than respecting the act of completion. It surfaces the nature of immersion. If a book is a true friend then not only does it stay with us and speak to us, it never leaves us because we return to it. The Hadran is not a “good-bye.” It is a “see you later” kind of expression.

Many of us who have trouble remembering what we read, have no trouble remembering people who have made their mark upon us. The Hadran makes the comparison between people and texts explicit. If you do not forget who your friends are, make this book into your friend, and it will come back to you. It will only come back to you, however, if you return to it. Learning, in Jewish terms, is not about completion but about suspension. You need to initiate.

Sometimes we can only remember the affection we have for a text; the content has long ago dissipated. It is at those moments that the Hadran gives us more than a ritual finish line. It gives us a philosophy of study. It comforts and inspires us to continue a relationship. Look at your books some time soon and whisper to your friends on the shelves, “I’ll be back soon.”

Shabbat Shalom

"The hardest thing in America is to be what one is softly."
Leon Wieseltier

We insult people by calling them soft. Softness is regarded by some as a limitation. It implies that someone is not assertive or aggressive. He or she may be hesitant, shy, afraid of confrontation, easy to manipulate or lack strength of character. But there's a softer side to soft. Soft is a compliment; it implies someone who is gentle, thoughtful, not worn down by life's harshness. It refers to those who speak tenderly, without the need to dominate or exclude. If you want people to pay attention, don't yell. Speak softly.
 
Soft might also inspire us to think of people the way we might describe an old couch, a piece of fabric or a pillow: comfortable. Unlike loving gestures, aggression can feel rough, harsh and unyielding - it's emotional sandpaper. Softness is inviting and warm. It feels safe and open. Something soft is not sharply delineated. In linguistics it describes a sibilant rather than a guttural sound. 
 
In Hebrew, the word for soft is "rakh," which ironically ends with a harsh guttural noise. In a noted biblical use of the term, it is employed to describe one of our matriarchs: "Leah had soft eyes, but Rachel was of beautiful figure and form" (Genesis 29:17). The way the verse is translated is a study in contrasts. Soft eyes are compared negatively to beauty of form, implying some defect in Leah that made her unlovable. This might explain Jacob's natural attraction to Rachel and his feeling of injustice at having to wed Leah first as a ruse of his father-in-law.
 
One midrash regards Leah's soft eyes not as the fate of nearsightedness or being cross-eyed but a description of her emotional state. She was to be wed to Esau, according to this midrash, and she wept continuously out of righteousness. She did not want to be married to this crass hunter.
 
A different reading might posit this verse as a description of two types of beauty: inner and outer. Leah possessed tenderness. Rachel had the magnetism of external good looks. Tender eyes show compassion and curiosity, connectedness and depth. It is this softness that Jacob needed because his life was symbolized by stones: those he slept on, the one he removed from a well and those he used in his pact with Lavan. Hardness is mitigated by softness.
 
The Wieseltier quote above is from his small and powerful book Against Identity. "The thinner the identity, the louder," he writes there. Loudness can be a function of superficiality. "It is never long before identity is reduced to loyalty." Wieseltier offers us the strange and counterintuitive understanding that the less you know about your nationality, ethnicity or religion, the more you express the veneer of pride. Loud cheering can mask ignorance and incivility. Authentic caring often involves a level of nuance or sophistication that is hard to fabricate or manufacture in absence of knowledge. Today, in politics and entertainment, we have come to believe that the louder someone is, the more credible. Being loud, however, is often a reflection of self-absorption and an incapacity to take in the other.
 
The author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, "Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place." What would it take to be softer? What would you and others gain by having a softer tongue and softer eyes?

Shabbat Shalom

"Friendship or death."
The Talmud

This short quote on friendship packs a powerful punch. Without friendship, the quality of life dwindles. Friendship can save lives; we learn this both in BT Ta'anit 23a and read it in the book of Ruth. Naomi, powerless and alone, rebuilt her life because another woman even more powerless than she, made her a companion for life. Aristotle wrote that, "A friend is a second self, so that our consciousness of a friend's existence...makes us more fully conscious of our own existence."
I thought, reflecting on the two central texts of Shavuot, to merge the Mount Sinai narrative with story of Ruth and Naomi.
 
The Ten Commandments of Friendship I've Learned from the Book of Ruth:
 
#1 Under-promise and over-deliver. Naomi tells Ruth not to follow her because she did not want to be responsible for Ruth's welfare, nor would she be able to find her a husband. But she did, encouraging Ruth to glean in the fields of a relative and prompting Ruth to reach out to Boaz in chapter three. Too many times friends tell you they were going to do something nice but fail to deliver. Intentions are not the same as actions, not in law and not in friendship. It's better to under-promise and over-deliver.
#2 Be a friend when times are tough. The friendship of Ruth and Naomi emerges from shared loss and shared companionship throughout loss. "Wherever you go, I will go" ends with, "Wherever you die, I will die and there I shall be buried." As people, we are often drawn to success and not distress. Note: friends remember who was there at a shiva and who was at a bedside during illness. They see through us when we do not make the time or effort.
#3 Be a friend when times are good. Don't only show up for funerals. Dance at weddings, too. After he won the Nobel Prize, Elie Wiesel shared in an interview that he could tell who his friends were by those who took genuine pleasure in his success and shared his joy. True friendship is not feeling like another person's success takes away from our own or threatens us. It enhances us. Naomi and Ruth are together at the book's end, sharing in the love of a new child as they shared in mourning at the book's beginning. Stick around for happy endings.
#4 Friendship isn't always even. When Ruth makes her magnanimous speech, Naomi does not respond in words. Sometimes we are too personally depleted to offer back much. Sometimes we cannot reciprocate evenly. But life is not even. The great biblical friendships of Naomi and Ruth and David and Jonathan were not even in terms of giving and taking.
#5 Kindness is the glue of great friendships. When Boaz acknowledges Ruth's difficult journey to Judaism in the same language used to describe Abraham's journey, he gives her the gift of kindness and validation. He shows her empathy in a world of harshness. A midrash tell us that these two individuals were divided by every external measure: he was 80, she 40. He was rich and influential. She was poor and an outsider; the glue that transcended these factors was their capacity for chesed, loving-kindness.
#6 Friendship is not static. There are cycles of intimacy and distance. When children are little, they have friends for a day. If you share your snack, you are my friend. If not, I will not speak to you. Adults have better snacks, but they don't always share. Sometimes life interrupts friendship. Good friends understand that friendship is not static. It evolves and changes, just as individual human beings do. We grow out of certain friendships and mature into others. Naomi emerges as a woman who can give more of herself when life begins to nurture her again, and Ruth was there for her.
# 7 Be a giver. We all know friends who are givers and friends who are takers. Ruth and Boaz were givers. Strive to be the giver and not resent the taker. But also identify other givers so that your own friendship energy is replenished, not depleted.
# 8 Great friendship has staying power for generations. The child born to Ruth and Boaz is named Oved. Oved means service in the most authentic sense of the word. Boaz and Ruth saw themselves as servants of others and acted as if serving others was the very purpose of their existence. As a result, their union resulted in someone named for the humility and generosity that translated into the next generation of love.
#9 Great leadership can emerge from great friendships. We all know that we go places by virtue of hard work and connections. Rather than minimize the significance of those you know and leave it all up to meritocracy, we might understand the favor bank in more generous terms. When we invest in social capital, others also invest in us. Ruth's friendship with Naomi led her to love Naomi's people, country and God and eventually produce an heir to it all.
#10 The best kind of friend challenges you to be a better self. Naomi becomes a more generous and loving person as a result of Ruth's unconditional love and nurturing. The older woman learns from the younger and grows as a result. Naomi moves from someone who self-identifies as bitter to someone who can truly love and give again. She does this because her friendship with Ruth is aspirational. Maimonides explains that there are three types of friends: the utilitarian friend, the delightful friend and the ethically inspiring friend. Seek out friends who inspire.
 
If you've learned a friendship commandment from the book of Ruth - or discover one this Shavuot - please send it over.

Happy Shavuot and Shabbat Shalom

“Had the first tablets not been broken, the Torah would never have been forgotten by the Jewish people.”

Rabbi Eliezer

Many of us wonder how it is that we read something and quickly forget it. If only we could remember all that we read and study. Rabbi Eliezer above gives us one hint about retention: if something is engraved upon your heart, you do not forget it. This is how he understands the superfluous words used to describe the Ten Commandments in Exodus 32:16: “engraved upon the tablets.” The verse already mentions the tablets as both the work and writing of God. What could be added by this unusual phrase? R. Eliezer reads it as the relationship we could have had with the original text. Had it not been broken, we would have engraved it within us. It never would have left us.

On Shavuot we celebrate the role of study in our lives by doing additional learning. Many people stay up the whole night immersed in Jewish texts and coffee. Others make a point of attending classes during the daylight hours of the holiday. If you attend as many study opportunities as you indulge in slices of cheesecake, it might help maximize one aspect of the celebration and minimize another!

Another way we celebrate the role of study and how it shapes us as a people is to study the art of studying. How did the rabbis of old believe one should learn and retain knowledge? After all, the great debates of the Talmud are critical not only for their content but also for their method. The rabbis often articulated their notions of pedagogy along with the legal substance of their arguments. They wanted us to know that it is not only about the what and why of knowledge but about the how.

Marilyn Vos Savant (her real name, which means “a person of learning”) made it to the Guinness Book of World Records in 1985 as the woman with the highest IQ (190 before the category was retired in 1990). Here is what one of the world’s smartest people - according to this measure - says about learning, “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”

And here is what some rabbis observed about learning in a section of Talmud devoted to the topic (BT Eruvin 54a-55a):

Beruria: “If the Torah is ordered in your 248 limbs it will be secure. If not, it will not be secure.” Make your body language reflect your learning. Animate the words with movement when you study, and they will become yours.

Shmuel: “Open your mouth and read from the Torah. Open your mouth and study the Talmud, in order that your studies should endure in you…” Say the words out loud so that you hear and ingest them.

There was even a discussion of study as medicine to reduce headaches and throat sores, intestinal pain and bone problems. Why? Because, according to Rabbi Yehuda, “It is a drug of life for one’s entire body.” Some sages believed that engaging in learning as an intellectual and spiritual pursuit distracted the mind, allowing the body to take its natural course of healing. If you are sick, however, please see a doctor in addition to opening a book.

The Talmudic passages also mention the virtue of mnemonic devices and of repetition and review – up to 400 times! Collected together, these statements all point to the most important aspect of learning: retention. In the world of scholarship and mastery, it is not the initial stimulation and curiosity of learning. It is all we do to hold on to what we already know, to engrave it in our hearts.

This Shavuot, instead of learning something entirely new, perhaps we can follow the path of ancient Jewish wisdom and study something we’ve studied before, taking new ownership of it as it seeps deeper into our consciousness. Lather, rinse, repeat. Study, apply, repeat.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Shavuot