Many Reform Jews express their connection with the divine through social action and tikkun olam, fixing God\’s world. While all of these are also part of my own life as a Jew, it is study that nourishes my rationalist-traditionalist soul and links me to another realm.
If you are willing to inflict physical pain upon yourself as a service to your god, why not treat others to the same spiritual experience? Paradoxically, they will be killed or harmed because of your love for them.
\”Therefore\” connects all our fine sentiments and deep wisdom with the reality of the world. \”Therefore\” binds us to bring our values out of the vague realm of our subjectivity and into the hard objective world of work, family, politics and power. \”Therefore\” tests all our spiritual aspirations and visions against the limits of our courage, imagination and resolve. \”Therefore\” makes religion real. Every day, someone confesses, \”Rabbi, I\’m a deeply spiritual person.\”
Shavuot commemorates the Jewish people\’s grandest moment of revelation — on a mountain, but definitely not in solitude. Absolutely personal, but not in the least private.
Amazingly, two-thirds of all the people who have ever lived past the age of 65 in the history of the world are alive today, according to Ken Dychtwald, author of \”The Power Years: A User\’s Guide to the Rest of Your Life.\” This suggests that our way-beyond octogenarians in the Bible were the exception, not the rule.
Your child comes home and says she wants to be a doctor someday. Your spouse or serious beau tells you he or she dreams of being something greater. And you douse the dream with a comment: \”You aren\’t smart enough,\” \”You don\’t have the skills needed to do that\” or \”No one will take you seriously.\”
People always tell me that I am a downer, constantly talking about the world\’s problems here, genocide there; conflict here, poverty there. Nobody ever wants to talk to me at a party!
\”You shall not eat anything abhorrent,\” the Torah (Deuteronomy 14:3) tells us. And while the Torah is referring to camels, rabbits, badgers and pigs, I would today include foods that that are high in fat and sugar and low in nutritional value. Foods that have been injected with hormones and antibiotics or treated with pesticides. Foods with a shelf life longer than the average life span.
The fact that Tisha B\’Av falls in the summer is not just a stroke of bad luck. God deliberately destroyed the Temple in the summer. Summer, when the world is outside their closed homes and offices, taking vacations, having fun.
The very flatness and blandness of the matzah remind us of the empty and oppressed lives of the Israelite slaves — and of downtrodden people in all places and in all times.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.