Weekly Jewish Wisdom - by: Dr. Erica Brown

Soft

Thursday, May 23, 2013 8:04:01 AM

"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

The Ten Commandments of Friendship

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 1:34:36 PM

"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

Celebrating Wisdom

Thursday, May 09, 2013 8:45:49 AM

“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

Books Matter

Thursday, May 02, 2013 7:46:28 AM

“A book is the most delightful companion...an inanimate thing yet it talks... There is in the world no friend more faithful and attentive, no teacher more proficient.”

Rabbi Moses Ibn Ezra

Last week I finished a book that has lodged itself in my gut. I cannot shake it so I decided to share it: The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. A number of people recommended it, but it sounded heavy so I kept pushing it from mental view. Usually when a book title keeps turning up in my life, it’s only a matter of time before Amazon Prime kicks in. And it did. It was not heavy. It was uplifting.

What I found on Schwalbe’s pages was the true story of a man and his mother and an illness that would eventually take her away. But until it did, the two read together and formed a bond around literature and ideas; conversations about books transformed the last year of their lives together. Schwalbe shares his own observations about the power of books: “They’re how we know what to do in life and how we tell others.” In his relationship, books served as glue, as he described in an interview: “Mom and I were lifelong readers. And for as long as I can remember, we always talked with each other about books. So the main thing the book club did was kept our relationship the way it always had been. When we were reading, we weren’t a sick person and a well person but a mother and son exploring books together.”

Schwalbe’s mother worked hard on behalf of refugees and traveled the world to do so. She was committed to the work of a friend to build a cultural and research center in Kabul that has just recently been completed; the foundation she raised money for created portable libraries for more than 200 villages in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan. Mary Anne Schwalbe saw books as a way to reach out to others: “…reverence for book is what we all have in common…When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter – they just wanted books for their children.”

It’s not hard for Jewish parents to relate to the sentiment. We know that books help stretch our imaginations, help us escape the ordinary and allow us to travel to places we never may get to see. Books change us.

Rabbi Moses Ibn Ezra (d. 1138), a poet of twelfth century Spain, understood this well. He was from a well-known family of scholars and befriended some of the most famous philosophers of his time. His poetry was well-known in Arab circles, extending far beyond the Jewish community. He was exiled from his city at one point in his life, and it may have been this experience of dislocation that influenced his observations on books as close friends. He felt that the book would, “…join you in solitude, accompany you in exile, serve as a candle in the dark, and entertain you in your loneliness. It will do you good and ask no favor in return. It gives and does not take.”

Schwalbe brings us into the moment when his mother was close to death: “For the longest time, I stood there, unwilling or unable to push the elevator button and go home. I stared at her door and for the first time let myself realize fully that soon would come a day when she wouldn’t be behind it, when she’d be gone, when I’d be unable to talk to her about books, about anything. I felt a sharp pain and for a moment thought I was having a heart attack, but it was just panic. And finally, grief.”

Not long after, he lost his mother but kept her spirit. And her spirit lives on in the books that he will read without her as the conversation about books and their influence endures. One of the greatest pleasures of books is our desire to share them with others and create a relationship around words. This week, take time to share a book you love with someone you love.

Shabbat Shalom

Shelter in Place

Thursday, April 25, 2013 8:10:36 AM

“Remain every person in place; let no person go out of his place on the seventh day.”

Exodus 16:29

I don’t know about you, but last week was the first time I ever heard the expression “sheltering in place,” the order residents and businesses were given by law enforcement during the manhunt in Boston. SPW (emergency code speak) is a term to describe the mandate to seek immediate and short-term shelter, usually from fear of chemical or terrorist attack. It’s a way not only to protect large groups from danger but also to provide the necessary space for emergency workers to handle the situation with sufficient room and efficiency.

Shelter sounded way too comforting for what the authorities requested; they basically wanted people to remain secure while the threat of terrorism loomed close to home. The anxiety of not knowing what was happening added to the mounting pressures of Bostonians to manage a situation mentally that seemed to defy all reason. And looking back at last week’s events, we have a little more time to digest them and think about the notion of shelter generally.

My first thought on hearing the expression “shelter in place” took me to a book that Mary Pipher wrote years ago about family dynamics, The Shelter of Each Other. I always loved that title, capturing as it does the sense of family as refuge and safe space, the place captured by Robert Frost in his poem “Death of a Hired Man:” "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Hopefully it is a place of shelter because you also want to be there. Home is a refuge, a haven, an island of sanity in a world that does not always make sense.

The order to stay home was particularly poignant given the situation. At times of nonsensical violence in a world gripped by pain, we want people to take strength in the places that offer them love, tenderness, understanding and compassion. Where better to go than home to have temporary relief from the volatility of terrorism?

My second thought was the book of Psalms, where the notion of God as a refuge or shelter is stamped all over the short bursts of religious meaning and feeling we call psalms. In the close of psalm 25, for example, as stress increases, the need for protection multiplies: “Protect me and save me; let me not be disappointed, for I have sought shelter in you.” In a first-person plea for attention, the petitioner suffers internally and externally, plagued by the weight of his own sins and the punishing attitude of his enemies. He seeks refuge in God and asks not to be disappointed. God as a last resort must provide the comfort he cannot find elsewhere.

It is not only spaces that provide shelter. People provide emotional shelter, and God provides spiritual shelter.

The word shelter comes from the word for “tight battle formation” in Middle English, implying a place where one can find temporary relief and refuge from difficult external conditions. Often we use shelter as a place to escape bad weather or the perils of homelessness for a few nights. We seek protection and find respite. But there is a big difference between a shelter as a place of temporary escape and the haven or refuge that is implied in Psalms. One is temporary. The other is eternal.

The quote above from Exodus describes Moses’ demand that the people remain where they are on Shabbat and not collect manna but collect double portions on Friday. Not everyone listened to his or her own detriment. They did not trust Moses and put their own needs before that of taking refuge in God’s gift of food, given to them with divine conditions.

Remaining in place when you doubt the place you’re in requires a profound level of trust and faith. It is a miracle that of the thousands of people at the Boston Marathon finish line, two suspects were identified and only days later were caught. It happened because a city trusted its caretakers in public service. We owe them much gratitude for their holy work and for asking us to take shelter when they put themselves in the center of the storm. May we honor the memory of those who died. May God bless those in public service and keep them from harm.

Shabbat Shalom