LOST OBJECTS.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
Something strange is happening to me. Over the past couple of months, members of my family and I have become the human equivalent of St. Anthony’s medallions, which according to Catholic lore bring the wearer the power to find lost objects through the intercession of that patron saint. This is admittedly a weird metaphor for me, a believing Jew and rabbi, to use about myself. Yet, how else to explain my eerily recurrent experience? Let me illustrate.
First, while with me at a local supermarket, my youngest daughter saw that a man using the store’s ATM had left behind a twenty dollar bill in the cash dispenser. We ran after him to return the bill, and I refused his offer to give my daughter the money as a gesture of his gratitude. Then some time later, after eating ice cream in a restaurant with that same daughter, I noticed that the waitress had forgotten to charge us for an item. I pointed this out to her and she thankfully corrected our bill. Most recently, after returning from a shopping trip, I realized that the cashier had accidentally placed a bracelet lying on the store counter in my bag with the items I had purchased. I went back the next day to return the item to the owner of the store.
I wonder: has God granted me, of all people, the power to find and return the lost possessions of others? I’m the guy who is still late to meetings because I leave my car keys in places no archaeologist could unearth. Upon more critical self reflection, I am forced to admit that my role as finder of lost things possesses none of the spiritual significance or glamour that I might attach to it. Stuff happens, and lost stuff is thrown into that liminal space between our awareness and our sleepy distraction quite randomly and naturally. Finding what is lost is just as random, from my perspective: a confluence of luck, looking around, and location.
Nonetheless, a lucky streak of three “finds” gives me pause to consider what it teaches me. My faith and moral code compelled me in all three instances to return what I found or to make good on what was missing. However, some –perhaps many- people would take that lost property, justifying their behavior with the technical, letter-of-the-law equivalent of finders-keepers-losers-weepers: if you are too irresponsible or spacey to hold onto your property and I find it, it becomes mine. Why should I not benefit from your lack of attentiveness and bad luck, especially since, technically, I did not steal what belonged to you?
I am neither an expert in the study of law nor the study of ethics, but I know when I am touching the edges of the murky realm of borderline dishonesty. This is behavior that cannot definitively be called theft and that is not as blatantly dishonest as the argument that stealing is only stealing if you get caught. Yet, the logic of this version of finders-keepers is equally dangerous because of the dog-eat-dog impulses underlying it, and the rationales we use to salve our consciences when we act upon those impulses. If I can rationalize taking your lost things because of your frailty or temporary disability I will have no problem with many other instances in which I actively benefit from your bad luck or misfortune. This kind of thinking finds its ugliest cultural expression in the insidious and elitist claim that if I have power and wealth and you don’t, each of us deserves exactly what he or she gets. This kind of thinking is nothing new, having plagued haves and have nots alike for millennia.
We will need to leave the massive overhaul of society’s institutionalized selfishness to our new president and his advisors. However, since all politics is local and personal, that transformation will have to begin with how we treat one another. Charity may begin at home, but so do meanness and exploitation. As we begin a painful period of national recovery and healing, our greatest challenge as individuals, person-to-person, will be this: to have the honesty to recognize when we are giving a pass to bad behavior, no matter how good we may want to make it feel, and to have the courage to act on our noblest, not our nastiest, impulses.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Lanes
LANES
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
Some time ago, I mentioned to the parents of a student of mine that I like to go bowling. The boy’s parents, who have been bowlers on the local scene since their student days at Albany High School, responded to my revelation with a mixture of admiration and shock. They admired my motivation to frequent the bowling alley for more than my kids’ birthday parties, despite my admitted lack of skill. Yet they were also shocked to find their rabbi relishing a sport that is often stereotyped as the gritty domain of coarse, beer drinking louts who bum around all day. I forgot about the conversation until the day before the young man’s bar mitzvah ceremony, the Jewish coming-of-age ritual for 13 year old boys. That Friday morning I stood in the sanctuary of our synagogue – a place of holy retreat from the world- taking posed photographs with his family in honor of this milestone. I saw a gift bag that had been placed inside my lectern but I thought little of it, until my student approached me with it, smiled, and said, “This is for you.” Inside the bag was a shiny, new bowling ball. The family told me to take the ball to one of the well known pro shops in our area. They had paid for me to have the ball’s finger holes custom drilled and to have it monogrammed. I was speechless, for I had never received such a unique and sincere gift before, and I was now initiated into the bottom ranks of the elite bowling community. Separated from the “Sunday birthday party crowd,” who can be identified by their frantic search for the lightest ball in the racks as a gaggle of kids clings to them, I knew that I had arrived.
Why am I attracted to the game? I’ve been asking this question since the time I laughed all the way through the Big Lebowski, the Coen Brothers’ comical film noir about bowling. I’ve decided that I like to bowl for at least three reasons. I bowl, obviously, because it’s fun and because I can play it fairly well. I’ve never been much of an athlete, and I don’t expect that state of affairs to change in the future. Yet, when I watch frail looking eighty year old men from the senior league easily scoring strike after strike, I say to myself with conviction: “I want to do that! If they can do that, so can I.” Bowling is a challenging yet simple sport that even I -an uncoordinated man lacking in court sense- can play with success. Bowling is also a kind of spiritual act for me, one in which I pull myself out of time momentarily and focus my awareness on following the directional floor arrow leading to the sacred center pin, the key to a strike or a spare. I suspect that the inventors of the game were spiritual people themselves, for the idea of one ball breaking up ten pins is strangely reminiscent of the Jewish mystical teaching that God, who is indivisibly One, formed the physical world through a chain of ten emanations of divine creativity. Maybe there is some truth to the old school kids’ tale that whenever you hear thunder, that’s just God going bowling. Perhaps my most important attraction to the game is this: Though rich and satisfying, my experience as a spiritual leader feels at time like the proverbial life in the fishbowl. When I get to the bowling alley, the lanes are filled with a very diverse group of people who have no idea that I am a rabbi or even Jewish, nor could they care less. Bowling allows me to transcend my daily circumstances and just be one among many kinds of people in blessed anonymity
I remember stopping by a local alley a while back, still dressed in my suit and tie after a morning meeting. In the lane next to me were two young, tough looking, blue collar workers who were taking some time out of the work day to bowl a few frames. My game progressed, and I felt increasingly inspired as gutter balls led to some spares and then to three consecutive strikes in the last three frames. The computerized score keeper then informed me that I had achieved what is called a turkey. Wondering what that meant and embarrassed that I didn’t know what to do next, I nervously turned to the two men and said, “Excuse me, but the scorer is telling me that I got a turkey. What do I do?” I was terrified that they would start laughing at me. Clearly not interested in wasting too much time on the conversation, they paused, and then said the two words that are every bowler’s salvation : “Bowl again.”
They may not have thought twice about the encounter. However, looking back, I realize that at that moment I had crossed the deep cultural and social divide between us through that most human act of reaching out in need of help and support. On the lanes and in all of life, this universal recognition of mutual need is the basis of civilized community, and an indispensable ingredient in promoting peace and justice. At $2.50 a game, my favorite sport may just prove to be the cheapest form of international diplomacy in the future. Trading in our army boots for bowling shoes, we can spend our time knocking down pins instead of each other.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
Some time ago, I mentioned to the parents of a student of mine that I like to go bowling. The boy’s parents, who have been bowlers on the local scene since their student days at Albany High School, responded to my revelation with a mixture of admiration and shock. They admired my motivation to frequent the bowling alley for more than my kids’ birthday parties, despite my admitted lack of skill. Yet they were also shocked to find their rabbi relishing a sport that is often stereotyped as the gritty domain of coarse, beer drinking louts who bum around all day. I forgot about the conversation until the day before the young man’s bar mitzvah ceremony, the Jewish coming-of-age ritual for 13 year old boys. That Friday morning I stood in the sanctuary of our synagogue – a place of holy retreat from the world- taking posed photographs with his family in honor of this milestone. I saw a gift bag that had been placed inside my lectern but I thought little of it, until my student approached me with it, smiled, and said, “This is for you.” Inside the bag was a shiny, new bowling ball. The family told me to take the ball to one of the well known pro shops in our area. They had paid for me to have the ball’s finger holes custom drilled and to have it monogrammed. I was speechless, for I had never received such a unique and sincere gift before, and I was now initiated into the bottom ranks of the elite bowling community. Separated from the “Sunday birthday party crowd,” who can be identified by their frantic search for the lightest ball in the racks as a gaggle of kids clings to them, I knew that I had arrived.
Why am I attracted to the game? I’ve been asking this question since the time I laughed all the way through the Big Lebowski, the Coen Brothers’ comical film noir about bowling. I’ve decided that I like to bowl for at least three reasons. I bowl, obviously, because it’s fun and because I can play it fairly well. I’ve never been much of an athlete, and I don’t expect that state of affairs to change in the future. Yet, when I watch frail looking eighty year old men from the senior league easily scoring strike after strike, I say to myself with conviction: “I want to do that! If they can do that, so can I.” Bowling is a challenging yet simple sport that even I -an uncoordinated man lacking in court sense- can play with success. Bowling is also a kind of spiritual act for me, one in which I pull myself out of time momentarily and focus my awareness on following the directional floor arrow leading to the sacred center pin, the key to a strike or a spare. I suspect that the inventors of the game were spiritual people themselves, for the idea of one ball breaking up ten pins is strangely reminiscent of the Jewish mystical teaching that God, who is indivisibly One, formed the physical world through a chain of ten emanations of divine creativity. Maybe there is some truth to the old school kids’ tale that whenever you hear thunder, that’s just God going bowling. Perhaps my most important attraction to the game is this: Though rich and satisfying, my experience as a spiritual leader feels at time like the proverbial life in the fishbowl. When I get to the bowling alley, the lanes are filled with a very diverse group of people who have no idea that I am a rabbi or even Jewish, nor could they care less. Bowling allows me to transcend my daily circumstances and just be one among many kinds of people in blessed anonymity
I remember stopping by a local alley a while back, still dressed in my suit and tie after a morning meeting. In the lane next to me were two young, tough looking, blue collar workers who were taking some time out of the work day to bowl a few frames. My game progressed, and I felt increasingly inspired as gutter balls led to some spares and then to three consecutive strikes in the last three frames. The computerized score keeper then informed me that I had achieved what is called a turkey. Wondering what that meant and embarrassed that I didn’t know what to do next, I nervously turned to the two men and said, “Excuse me, but the scorer is telling me that I got a turkey. What do I do?” I was terrified that they would start laughing at me. Clearly not interested in wasting too much time on the conversation, they paused, and then said the two words that are every bowler’s salvation : “Bowl again.”
They may not have thought twice about the encounter. However, looking back, I realize that at that moment I had crossed the deep cultural and social divide between us through that most human act of reaching out in need of help and support. On the lanes and in all of life, this universal recognition of mutual need is the basis of civilized community, and an indispensable ingredient in promoting peace and justice. At $2.50 a game, my favorite sport may just prove to be the cheapest form of international diplomacy in the future. Trading in our army boots for bowling shoes, we can spend our time knocking down pins instead of each other.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
History
HISTORY
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
I am currently publishing a children’s book about the underground railroad. In it, a family of slaves seeks refuge with an immigrant Jewish family from Germany who had never intended to serve in the dangerous role of harboring escapees. Noticing the Jewish family’s Menorah lamp burning brightly in their window one night in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, the African American family mistakes the lights for the lights of a safe house beckoning kindly to people running from plantation owners and slave hunters. Caught in a web of accidental circumstance, fear and suspicion, the story’s four parents are prodded by their four quick thinking children into devising a plan for hiding the fugitive family that night. The plan works, the two families celebrate Hanukkah together, and the Jewish family helps its new friends escape to freedom the next morning. Though based upon historical fact, the story is fiction. The Jews of America before the Civil War were a tiny, politically passive minority that played almost no role in helping or owning slaves. Inspired by a conversation with one of my students, I wrote the book to help young readers imagine the extraordinary potential of ordinary human beings, children especially, to act with courage and compassion in times of great fear, danger and oppression.
True stories abound concerning courageous rescues of oppressed people by others who risked their lives to do so. Many schools in our area have children read Lois Lowry’s award winning Number the Stars, a historical novel which tells about the rescue of Danish Jewry from the Nazis by the Danish resistance. Fourth and fifth graders are introduced to the Underground Railroad, and its narratives of bravery in the face of brutality become commonplace to them. Many of our children watch all or part of Schindler’s List in middle school or high school. It is only a matter of time before similar accounts of courageous compassion emerge from Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Darfur, to be woven into our children’s educations and our everyday language. Inspiring as these stories are, they stand out precisely because they are exceptions to the human apathy, cowardice, and –at times-willing complicity with the evildoing of those in power that we too often witness. Consider the ancient biblical story of how the Pharaoh coopted the Egyptians into allowing him to enslave and murder the Israelites, and how a few courageous women resisted his decrees before Moses came on the scene. This ugly, lopsided aspect of human character and behavior has been with us for a long time. Raised in a toxic atmosphere of tribal hatreds, terror, misinformation and the naked lust for power, too many people, it appears, will at the very least avert their eyes with guilty rationalization as their neighbors are dragged from their homes, never to be seen again.
I find it troubling to contemplate all of this and I wonder: if a knock came on our door in the middle of the night and our neighbors begged us to hide them from state sponsored terror, would we and our children find the courage to let them in? To be fair, even asking this kind of a question openly is much easier for Americans than for people in repressive, less socially diverse societies. All the more reason for Americans to keep asking them, to learn those stories of courageous compassion, and to model for future generations steadfast respect for all human life and a firm commitment to protecting it. Further, we would do well to remember that for all our advancement as a society, America was a state sponsor of slavery only 160 years ago, and segregation was the law in a number of states up until the 1960s. Remembering the past so that we and our children are not doomed to repeat it is not just a curriculum requirement, it is a sacred national obligation. Even more important, telling those stories about the men and women who risked their lives to save the oppressed is a vital discipline of collective conscience: a way of teaching ourselves and the world that human beings have the capacity and the obligation to give one another refuge.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
I am currently publishing a children’s book about the underground railroad. In it, a family of slaves seeks refuge with an immigrant Jewish family from Germany who had never intended to serve in the dangerous role of harboring escapees. Noticing the Jewish family’s Menorah lamp burning brightly in their window one night in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, the African American family mistakes the lights for the lights of a safe house beckoning kindly to people running from plantation owners and slave hunters. Caught in a web of accidental circumstance, fear and suspicion, the story’s four parents are prodded by their four quick thinking children into devising a plan for hiding the fugitive family that night. The plan works, the two families celebrate Hanukkah together, and the Jewish family helps its new friends escape to freedom the next morning. Though based upon historical fact, the story is fiction. The Jews of America before the Civil War were a tiny, politically passive minority that played almost no role in helping or owning slaves. Inspired by a conversation with one of my students, I wrote the book to help young readers imagine the extraordinary potential of ordinary human beings, children especially, to act with courage and compassion in times of great fear, danger and oppression.
True stories abound concerning courageous rescues of oppressed people by others who risked their lives to do so. Many schools in our area have children read Lois Lowry’s award winning Number the Stars, a historical novel which tells about the rescue of Danish Jewry from the Nazis by the Danish resistance. Fourth and fifth graders are introduced to the Underground Railroad, and its narratives of bravery in the face of brutality become commonplace to them. Many of our children watch all or part of Schindler’s List in middle school or high school. It is only a matter of time before similar accounts of courageous compassion emerge from Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Darfur, to be woven into our children’s educations and our everyday language. Inspiring as these stories are, they stand out precisely because they are exceptions to the human apathy, cowardice, and –at times-willing complicity with the evildoing of those in power that we too often witness. Consider the ancient biblical story of how the Pharaoh coopted the Egyptians into allowing him to enslave and murder the Israelites, and how a few courageous women resisted his decrees before Moses came on the scene. This ugly, lopsided aspect of human character and behavior has been with us for a long time. Raised in a toxic atmosphere of tribal hatreds, terror, misinformation and the naked lust for power, too many people, it appears, will at the very least avert their eyes with guilty rationalization as their neighbors are dragged from their homes, never to be seen again.
I find it troubling to contemplate all of this and I wonder: if a knock came on our door in the middle of the night and our neighbors begged us to hide them from state sponsored terror, would we and our children find the courage to let them in? To be fair, even asking this kind of a question openly is much easier for Americans than for people in repressive, less socially diverse societies. All the more reason for Americans to keep asking them, to learn those stories of courageous compassion, and to model for future generations steadfast respect for all human life and a firm commitment to protecting it. Further, we would do well to remember that for all our advancement as a society, America was a state sponsor of slavery only 160 years ago, and segregation was the law in a number of states up until the 1960s. Remembering the past so that we and our children are not doomed to repeat it is not just a curriculum requirement, it is a sacred national obligation. Even more important, telling those stories about the men and women who risked their lives to save the oppressed is a vital discipline of collective conscience: a way of teaching ourselves and the world that human beings have the capacity and the obligation to give one another refuge.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Gladiators
GLADIATORS.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
When I was fifteen, one of my partners in crime was a cousin of mine. At family gatherings, he and I would perform show stopping improvisational comedy skits that had our family members roaring for hours. My cousin probably does not remember this, but he taught me the memorable pun for the word gladiator. You know the old game. The teacher tells you to make a sentence using a word like gladiator. So you say, “A lion ate my mother in law---and I’m gladiator!” At thirty eight, I still chuckle at this retort which I knew carried with it all sorts of popular stereotypes about mothers in law before I even had a mother in law. Mind you, I have a mother in law whom I love and respect, and who I am very glad no lion has eaten. But the absurdity of this word play still tickles me.
What does not tickle me is the frightening truth about the human condition which is conveyed in the recent blockbuster movie, Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe. The movie portrays with graphic precision the total disregard for human and animal life displayed by ancient Roman society, as slaves were hurled into brutal, “fight to the death” contests attended by blood thirsty citizens of all classes. Watching it with my wife one night, I was transported back to 1987 in Italy, which she and I visited together with my in laws. Viewing the Coliseum in Rome, I couldn’t get past an ugly paradox. The Romans, with their advanced culture, employed their mathematical brilliance and their keen aesthetic eye to create this architectural masterpiece which was the site of some of the cruelest bloodshed in human history. I encountered a similar paradox later that year when, touring the British Museum in London, I suddenly realized that the British Empire had gloriously preserved the riches of diverse cultures by raping and robbing them, all in the interests of civilization. I struggle the most with this paradox of “brilliance and brutality” when studying the Holocaust. How could German society - which at the time of Hitler’s rise to power was the world leader in everything from science to the humanities- use its phenomenal gifts for the development of a genocide machine which claimed the lives of eleven million human beings, six million of them Jews? I have to conclude that intelligence is no guarantor of goodness, and that the heart of darkness often blots out conscience and compassion. Aristotle’s assertion that reason is what nobly sets us apart from other animal species has not made complete sense to me for a long time.
My son recently brought home a children’s book about gladiators by a respected educational publisher. It describes in loving detail and colorful cartoon pictures everything you would want to know about these men, including what they ate, the weapons they used, and how to say “Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutamus!,” which is Latin for the gladiators’ salute: “Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!” The educational goal of the book is noble enough: it tries to impart intimate knowledge of the Roman empire and its excesses to the young reader in an objective manner. Yet it is that objectivity which gnaws at me. Certainly, critical and dispassionate inquiry is a hallmark of Western culture. We cherish it as the mechanism for teaching values such as tolerance, respect for diversity, and the rule of democratic law. But I fear that at some point education can become so value neutral and objective that young people will use it to objectify others. Too many cultures have educated generations of the best and the brightest, who used their intellectual skills to act like monsters. Is American education travelling the same path when we encourage students to be competitive, market driven successes while we shy away from teaching moral reasoning, values, and character development?
Admittedly, I am making sweeping generalizations in the form of alarmist questions. I am not suggesting that we erode the separation of church and state by imposing a specific set of values on public education and public life. Yet as a spiritual leader I take my cue from the prophets of ancient Israel who railed against the demeaning of human life and the injustices perpetrated against the weakest members of that sophisticated society: its poor, its sick, its disenfranchised, the ones about whom no one cared and who were often abused. The prophets’ criticisms transcend time and place to speak loudly to us, reminding us that “justice will roll down like mighty waters” and that “nation shall not lift up sword against nation” only when we teach ourselves and our children to strive for those ideals. How about requiring all high schools in America to teach the Anti Defamation League’s excellent “world Of Difference” curriculum which promotes tolerance? How about encouraging an Advanced Placement course in ethical problem solving? Why not establish a year of required national service for all high school or college graduates, to promote their sense of obligation to community and to sharpen their moral leadership skills? Our children -in fact all of us- need to learn more than the value of the profit motive. We need to be motivated by the values of the prophets. To paraphrase the late John Lennon, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one who envisions this kind of America. Awash in big money and deep poverty, great power and political apathy, our divided and often selfish society is hungry to revive its public dialogue about who we are and what we stand for. If we don’t revive it, we risk turning into a culture of moral mannequins: well dressed and pretty but hollow. Our task is to avoid becoming a community of masters and gladiators. Our survival as a civilization depends upon our fulfillment of that task.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
When I was fifteen, one of my partners in crime was a cousin of mine. At family gatherings, he and I would perform show stopping improvisational comedy skits that had our family members roaring for hours. My cousin probably does not remember this, but he taught me the memorable pun for the word gladiator. You know the old game. The teacher tells you to make a sentence using a word like gladiator. So you say, “A lion ate my mother in law---and I’m gladiator!” At thirty eight, I still chuckle at this retort which I knew carried with it all sorts of popular stereotypes about mothers in law before I even had a mother in law. Mind you, I have a mother in law whom I love and respect, and who I am very glad no lion has eaten. But the absurdity of this word play still tickles me.
What does not tickle me is the frightening truth about the human condition which is conveyed in the recent blockbuster movie, Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe. The movie portrays with graphic precision the total disregard for human and animal life displayed by ancient Roman society, as slaves were hurled into brutal, “fight to the death” contests attended by blood thirsty citizens of all classes. Watching it with my wife one night, I was transported back to 1987 in Italy, which she and I visited together with my in laws. Viewing the Coliseum in Rome, I couldn’t get past an ugly paradox. The Romans, with their advanced culture, employed their mathematical brilliance and their keen aesthetic eye to create this architectural masterpiece which was the site of some of the cruelest bloodshed in human history. I encountered a similar paradox later that year when, touring the British Museum in London, I suddenly realized that the British Empire had gloriously preserved the riches of diverse cultures by raping and robbing them, all in the interests of civilization. I struggle the most with this paradox of “brilliance and brutality” when studying the Holocaust. How could German society - which at the time of Hitler’s rise to power was the world leader in everything from science to the humanities- use its phenomenal gifts for the development of a genocide machine which claimed the lives of eleven million human beings, six million of them Jews? I have to conclude that intelligence is no guarantor of goodness, and that the heart of darkness often blots out conscience and compassion. Aristotle’s assertion that reason is what nobly sets us apart from other animal species has not made complete sense to me for a long time.
My son recently brought home a children’s book about gladiators by a respected educational publisher. It describes in loving detail and colorful cartoon pictures everything you would want to know about these men, including what they ate, the weapons they used, and how to say “Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutamus!,” which is Latin for the gladiators’ salute: “Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!” The educational goal of the book is noble enough: it tries to impart intimate knowledge of the Roman empire and its excesses to the young reader in an objective manner. Yet it is that objectivity which gnaws at me. Certainly, critical and dispassionate inquiry is a hallmark of Western culture. We cherish it as the mechanism for teaching values such as tolerance, respect for diversity, and the rule of democratic law. But I fear that at some point education can become so value neutral and objective that young people will use it to objectify others. Too many cultures have educated generations of the best and the brightest, who used their intellectual skills to act like monsters. Is American education travelling the same path when we encourage students to be competitive, market driven successes while we shy away from teaching moral reasoning, values, and character development?
Admittedly, I am making sweeping generalizations in the form of alarmist questions. I am not suggesting that we erode the separation of church and state by imposing a specific set of values on public education and public life. Yet as a spiritual leader I take my cue from the prophets of ancient Israel who railed against the demeaning of human life and the injustices perpetrated against the weakest members of that sophisticated society: its poor, its sick, its disenfranchised, the ones about whom no one cared and who were often abused. The prophets’ criticisms transcend time and place to speak loudly to us, reminding us that “justice will roll down like mighty waters” and that “nation shall not lift up sword against nation” only when we teach ourselves and our children to strive for those ideals. How about requiring all high schools in America to teach the Anti Defamation League’s excellent “world Of Difference” curriculum which promotes tolerance? How about encouraging an Advanced Placement course in ethical problem solving? Why not establish a year of required national service for all high school or college graduates, to promote their sense of obligation to community and to sharpen their moral leadership skills? Our children -in fact all of us- need to learn more than the value of the profit motive. We need to be motivated by the values of the prophets. To paraphrase the late John Lennon, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one who envisions this kind of America. Awash in big money and deep poverty, great power and political apathy, our divided and often selfish society is hungry to revive its public dialogue about who we are and what we stand for. If we don’t revive it, we risk turning into a culture of moral mannequins: well dressed and pretty but hollow. Our task is to avoid becoming a community of masters and gladiators. Our survival as a civilization depends upon our fulfillment of that task.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Forty
FORTY
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
While in a Judaic crafts store a few weeks ago, my wife and I were intrigued by a framed print which bears an inscription from a famous book of Jewish wisdom: “The age of forty is an age of understanding.” The comment is taken from a passage authored by Judah ben Tema, an ancient Jewish sage who lived in ancient Roman Palestine. In it, he outlines his view of the most important achievements toward which a person should strive at each stage of life, from five to a hundred years of age. Because we are turning forty this year and because the print has a unique style, it resonated strongly with us in a way that other pieces in the shop did not. Since buying it and hanging it on a wall of our home, I have been fascinated by the artist’s interpretation of what this bit of wisdom means. Below his very fancy lettering of the quote in Hebrew and English, he has placed a version of Vitruvian Man, a man’s body that is drawn with great mathematical precision and symmetry. It is laid out in such a way that you get the impression that the body parts, the arms and legs especially, are moving. Many such pictures exist, the most famous being those of Leonardo Da Vinci. Their focus on the mathematical dimensions of the body as an example of symmetry and perfect form are based upon the writings of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Roman era architect whose ideas about architecture dominated Europe until the Italian Renaissance. The artist of our print used a version that has the signs of the Zodiac surrounding it in a circle. The zodiac signs are drawn twice, paralleling each other on both sides of the circle as mirror images, complementing the way that the two sides of the man’s body mirror each other. One side of the circle is a rubbing onto a piece of dull gray sheet metal which contrasts with the lighter colors of the drawing paper on the other side.
I have thought a lot about how I would interpret the artist’s rendition of Judah ben Tema’s statement. The word for understanding in Hebrew is binah, which can also be translated as discernment, the ability to distinguish one thing from another with wisdom. The man in the drawing is presented in light and dark colors: at forty we are hopefully wiser about the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and the brighter and darker sides of who we are. Metal and paper divide the drawing in half: at forty, our relationships and perspectives on life have hopefully achieved some balance between a harder, stricter insistence upon justice and a more compassionate and flexible acceptance of life’s imperfections. The inner circle of the drawing contains the picture of a man: flesh and blood moving freely through the world. The outer circle contains the zodiac signs, those tools of ancient astrology which understood human affairs as a matter of divine fate which could be predicted by reading the stars: at forty, we are hopefully better equipped to know the difference between the things that are fully within our power and responsibility to change, and the things which are truly out of our hands. All of these artistic symbols are visually balanced and symmetrical, perhaps reflecting the ideal human life of physical, emotional, and spiritual wholeness toward which we strive at age forty.
I am saddened that this perspective on turning forty is not exactly shared by the culture at large. Since the time that I turned thirty nine, I have been introduced to the anxious American preoccupation with getting “over the hill,” along with its silly theme parties and even sillier gag gifts such as false teeth, adult diapers, and toy coffins. People have begun asking me half serious questions about what it’s like to be nearing old age, implying that I am supposed to be feeling cursed or that I am in premature decay. I am not in denial about the gradual effects of aging upon my body: I am certainly slower, grayer, and heavier than I was at eighteen or even at thirty. I am just uncomfortable with the pejorative assumptions about aging that seem to underlie the “turning-forty-over-the hill” phenomenon among Americans. Our society, which obsesses about the physical perfection and sexual prowess associated with youth, still does not know what to do with growing older. This is despite the fact that we are blessed with healthy longevity and that our older population, that is growing, has become a powerful political and cultural force with which to be reckoned.
I was fortunate to have acquired a different perspective about aging when I was growing up. My father has worked in the nursing home business since the time that I was a small child. He would bring me to the nursing homes in which he worked to meet the residents who lived there, many of whom were very old, weak, and sick. Yet many were also very humorous, wise, and mentally alive. My parents taught my siblings and me to look past older people’s physical appearances and disabilities that could be scary at times to a kid, and to discover the incredible human beings that they are from within. I have internalized these values as I have matured, and they inform the way that I think about my own life. The way that I see it, getting older has not led me over the hill so much as it has helped me to approach life’s summit from where I can see and discern reality a bit more clearly.
From that summit I am forced to acknowledge that as much as the rituals and myths of turning forty can be misguided or ageist, they nonetheless play a role in helping us to confront our mortality. Because we are blessed with average ages of between 76 and 80 in America, we are well aware that forty is roughly the midpoint between birth and death. For all that forty is a time for reveling joyously in wisdom and maturity it is also a time for being terrified: we are passing from, roughly, the first half of our lives into the last half, with death awaiting us at the end. As tacky and offensive as some of them may be, the preoccupations and ceremonies of turning forty are like all rituals. They seek to organize and give coherence to our experiences in times of chaos, crisis, and transition. To paraphrase my teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman, they are threshold rituals that allow us to pass from our first forty years into the next by helping us to confront these changes in our lives with a defiant sort of humor that accepts mortality yet also reaffirms the joy of being alive.
Recently, two dear friends of mine turned forty, and this essay is in their honor. Both of them are fine human beings. One of them is raising five boys, and the other is raising three girls with their respective spouses. These accomplishments alone at age forty should earn them the right to share the Nobel Peace Prize! Their lives are not perfect nor have they experienced uninterrupted joy. Yet they have taken the raw material of life given to us at birth and they have shaped it, each in her own way, into something sacred and meaningful.
And so, hats off to my two friends. Hats off to all forties and forty somethings and almost forties who are meeting life’s challenges and celebrating their big birthdays. My advice to all of us: let’s celebrate and be grateful. We have made it to a time and a quality of life that plenty of needy people in the world may not ever attain. As we climb over that big hill and begin the gradual descent into that valley where the shadow of death will start to grow longer, let’s take our antioxidants, check our 401k’s, and most of all, let’s stop worrying about aging. It’s going to happen to us no matter what we do and no matter how much we rage against the dying of the light. Our goal is to grow older with grace and wisdom, while finding meaning in every moment that we are here.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
While in a Judaic crafts store a few weeks ago, my wife and I were intrigued by a framed print which bears an inscription from a famous book of Jewish wisdom: “The age of forty is an age of understanding.” The comment is taken from a passage authored by Judah ben Tema, an ancient Jewish sage who lived in ancient Roman Palestine. In it, he outlines his view of the most important achievements toward which a person should strive at each stage of life, from five to a hundred years of age. Because we are turning forty this year and because the print has a unique style, it resonated strongly with us in a way that other pieces in the shop did not. Since buying it and hanging it on a wall of our home, I have been fascinated by the artist’s interpretation of what this bit of wisdom means. Below his very fancy lettering of the quote in Hebrew and English, he has placed a version of Vitruvian Man, a man’s body that is drawn with great mathematical precision and symmetry. It is laid out in such a way that you get the impression that the body parts, the arms and legs especially, are moving. Many such pictures exist, the most famous being those of Leonardo Da Vinci. Their focus on the mathematical dimensions of the body as an example of symmetry and perfect form are based upon the writings of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Roman era architect whose ideas about architecture dominated Europe until the Italian Renaissance. The artist of our print used a version that has the signs of the Zodiac surrounding it in a circle. The zodiac signs are drawn twice, paralleling each other on both sides of the circle as mirror images, complementing the way that the two sides of the man’s body mirror each other. One side of the circle is a rubbing onto a piece of dull gray sheet metal which contrasts with the lighter colors of the drawing paper on the other side.
I have thought a lot about how I would interpret the artist’s rendition of Judah ben Tema’s statement. The word for understanding in Hebrew is binah, which can also be translated as discernment, the ability to distinguish one thing from another with wisdom. The man in the drawing is presented in light and dark colors: at forty we are hopefully wiser about the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and the brighter and darker sides of who we are. Metal and paper divide the drawing in half: at forty, our relationships and perspectives on life have hopefully achieved some balance between a harder, stricter insistence upon justice and a more compassionate and flexible acceptance of life’s imperfections. The inner circle of the drawing contains the picture of a man: flesh and blood moving freely through the world. The outer circle contains the zodiac signs, those tools of ancient astrology which understood human affairs as a matter of divine fate which could be predicted by reading the stars: at forty, we are hopefully better equipped to know the difference between the things that are fully within our power and responsibility to change, and the things which are truly out of our hands. All of these artistic symbols are visually balanced and symmetrical, perhaps reflecting the ideal human life of physical, emotional, and spiritual wholeness toward which we strive at age forty.
I am saddened that this perspective on turning forty is not exactly shared by the culture at large. Since the time that I turned thirty nine, I have been introduced to the anxious American preoccupation with getting “over the hill,” along with its silly theme parties and even sillier gag gifts such as false teeth, adult diapers, and toy coffins. People have begun asking me half serious questions about what it’s like to be nearing old age, implying that I am supposed to be feeling cursed or that I am in premature decay. I am not in denial about the gradual effects of aging upon my body: I am certainly slower, grayer, and heavier than I was at eighteen or even at thirty. I am just uncomfortable with the pejorative assumptions about aging that seem to underlie the “turning-forty-over-the hill” phenomenon among Americans. Our society, which obsesses about the physical perfection and sexual prowess associated with youth, still does not know what to do with growing older. This is despite the fact that we are blessed with healthy longevity and that our older population, that is growing, has become a powerful political and cultural force with which to be reckoned.
I was fortunate to have acquired a different perspective about aging when I was growing up. My father has worked in the nursing home business since the time that I was a small child. He would bring me to the nursing homes in which he worked to meet the residents who lived there, many of whom were very old, weak, and sick. Yet many were also very humorous, wise, and mentally alive. My parents taught my siblings and me to look past older people’s physical appearances and disabilities that could be scary at times to a kid, and to discover the incredible human beings that they are from within. I have internalized these values as I have matured, and they inform the way that I think about my own life. The way that I see it, getting older has not led me over the hill so much as it has helped me to approach life’s summit from where I can see and discern reality a bit more clearly.
From that summit I am forced to acknowledge that as much as the rituals and myths of turning forty can be misguided or ageist, they nonetheless play a role in helping us to confront our mortality. Because we are blessed with average ages of between 76 and 80 in America, we are well aware that forty is roughly the midpoint between birth and death. For all that forty is a time for reveling joyously in wisdom and maturity it is also a time for being terrified: we are passing from, roughly, the first half of our lives into the last half, with death awaiting us at the end. As tacky and offensive as some of them may be, the preoccupations and ceremonies of turning forty are like all rituals. They seek to organize and give coherence to our experiences in times of chaos, crisis, and transition. To paraphrase my teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman, they are threshold rituals that allow us to pass from our first forty years into the next by helping us to confront these changes in our lives with a defiant sort of humor that accepts mortality yet also reaffirms the joy of being alive.
Recently, two dear friends of mine turned forty, and this essay is in their honor. Both of them are fine human beings. One of them is raising five boys, and the other is raising three girls with their respective spouses. These accomplishments alone at age forty should earn them the right to share the Nobel Peace Prize! Their lives are not perfect nor have they experienced uninterrupted joy. Yet they have taken the raw material of life given to us at birth and they have shaped it, each in her own way, into something sacred and meaningful.
And so, hats off to my two friends. Hats off to all forties and forty somethings and almost forties who are meeting life’s challenges and celebrating their big birthdays. My advice to all of us: let’s celebrate and be grateful. We have made it to a time and a quality of life that plenty of needy people in the world may not ever attain. As we climb over that big hill and begin the gradual descent into that valley where the shadow of death will start to grow longer, let’s take our antioxidants, check our 401k’s, and most of all, let’s stop worrying about aging. It’s going to happen to us no matter what we do and no matter how much we rage against the dying of the light. Our goal is to grow older with grace and wisdom, while finding meaning in every moment that we are here.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Empathy
EMPATHY.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
Some time ago, as I prepared for worship early one morning while standing by water’s edge on a beautiful Florida beach, the sun rose over the horizon, gleaming a fiery orange. In front of me rolled the seemingly endless expanse of ocean, its waves filled with life and the mysteries of life’s origins. Behind me rose ultra swanky hotels with their ghastly colored facades, each one uglier and gaudier than the next. I was all alone. It was just me, the water, and hundreds of people walking, jogging, slurping coffee and gabbing along the boardwalk behind me. Alone is often a state of mind. As far as I was concerned, I was truly alone as I wrapped myself in my traditional Jewish prayer garb and began to recite the early morning blessings of the Jewish prayer book. I was oblivious to the possible stares and befuddlement of beachwear clad passersby who would see me in my strange worship clothing from a distance. As I tried talking to God through my prayers, my mind wandered helplessly back and forth between the words of the prayer book and the awe inspiring setting of the ocean that can produce almost spontaneous inspiration.
Then I saw him. He was probably in his mid twenties, though his heavy black parka in which he huddled with the hood over his head made him look older. Thick black sneakers with the laces untied came up above his ankles, and he seemed not the least bit aware or disturbed that he was dressed for upstate New York in February while around us a clear, seventy five degree day was dawning. Fairly close to the water, and no more than twenty feet away from him with no one else close by, I was instantly repelled by him. Inferring from his dress and behavior that he was homeless and mentally ill, I was overtaken by a primal fear for my safety. I almost instinctively began planning how to flee him if he approached me. Having encountered my share of mentally ill homeless people, some of whom were violent, when I lived in New York City, I decided that it was in my best interests to avoid eye contact and to move away from him quickly. As I stood near him in a state of quiet panic and suspicion, my mother’s voice –of all things- suddenly broke through the cloud of terror and distraction inside my head: “Don’t run away from him or mistreat him. For all you know, he could be a messenger from God.” All laughter aside at the absurdity of the situation, I wasn’t really surprised that her advice popped into my head just then. From time to time since my childhood, she has reminded me and my siblings of that ancient Jewish folk teaching, impressing upon us that each person is so precious it is always possible for anyone –even the anonymous homeless man walking the beach- to be God’s messenger dressed in deceptive clothing.
I didn’t run away. I stayed to watch him lie down in the sand, oblivious to me and the rest of humanity, as the ocean wind crept gently around us. We were twenty feet apart, both of us out of synch with the world, but still separated from each other by light years of radically different fortunes. I was a privileged, middle class man enjoying God’s sunny company while wearing Bermuda shorts. He was a homeless man, clothed in the winter-dark colors of mental illness. My heart opened to this person who I did not know, who I would never befriend and whose life I could not change. With my compassion for him overcoming my fear, I began to weep as I touched the fragile yet persistent bond of humanity drawing us together. My mother’s voice faded, and from deep within me I imagined hearing God responding to my prayers by asking me: “Is your heart breaking for this man?” “Yes,” I answered between sobs. “Good,” God said, “Now you can truly begin to pray.”
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
Some time ago, as I prepared for worship early one morning while standing by water’s edge on a beautiful Florida beach, the sun rose over the horizon, gleaming a fiery orange. In front of me rolled the seemingly endless expanse of ocean, its waves filled with life and the mysteries of life’s origins. Behind me rose ultra swanky hotels with their ghastly colored facades, each one uglier and gaudier than the next. I was all alone. It was just me, the water, and hundreds of people walking, jogging, slurping coffee and gabbing along the boardwalk behind me. Alone is often a state of mind. As far as I was concerned, I was truly alone as I wrapped myself in my traditional Jewish prayer garb and began to recite the early morning blessings of the Jewish prayer book. I was oblivious to the possible stares and befuddlement of beachwear clad passersby who would see me in my strange worship clothing from a distance. As I tried talking to God through my prayers, my mind wandered helplessly back and forth between the words of the prayer book and the awe inspiring setting of the ocean that can produce almost spontaneous inspiration.
Then I saw him. He was probably in his mid twenties, though his heavy black parka in which he huddled with the hood over his head made him look older. Thick black sneakers with the laces untied came up above his ankles, and he seemed not the least bit aware or disturbed that he was dressed for upstate New York in February while around us a clear, seventy five degree day was dawning. Fairly close to the water, and no more than twenty feet away from him with no one else close by, I was instantly repelled by him. Inferring from his dress and behavior that he was homeless and mentally ill, I was overtaken by a primal fear for my safety. I almost instinctively began planning how to flee him if he approached me. Having encountered my share of mentally ill homeless people, some of whom were violent, when I lived in New York City, I decided that it was in my best interests to avoid eye contact and to move away from him quickly. As I stood near him in a state of quiet panic and suspicion, my mother’s voice –of all things- suddenly broke through the cloud of terror and distraction inside my head: “Don’t run away from him or mistreat him. For all you know, he could be a messenger from God.” All laughter aside at the absurdity of the situation, I wasn’t really surprised that her advice popped into my head just then. From time to time since my childhood, she has reminded me and my siblings of that ancient Jewish folk teaching, impressing upon us that each person is so precious it is always possible for anyone –even the anonymous homeless man walking the beach- to be God’s messenger dressed in deceptive clothing.
I didn’t run away. I stayed to watch him lie down in the sand, oblivious to me and the rest of humanity, as the ocean wind crept gently around us. We were twenty feet apart, both of us out of synch with the world, but still separated from each other by light years of radically different fortunes. I was a privileged, middle class man enjoying God’s sunny company while wearing Bermuda shorts. He was a homeless man, clothed in the winter-dark colors of mental illness. My heart opened to this person who I did not know, who I would never befriend and whose life I could not change. With my compassion for him overcoming my fear, I began to weep as I touched the fragile yet persistent bond of humanity drawing us together. My mother’s voice faded, and from deep within me I imagined hearing God responding to my prayers by asking me: “Is your heart breaking for this man?” “Yes,” I answered between sobs. “Good,” God said, “Now you can truly begin to pray.”
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Drinking
DRINKING
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
We came from Albany, New York, Scottsdale Arizona, and Pensacola, Florida. We came from Washington, DC, Boston, Massachusetts, and New York, New York. We came from Las Vegas, Nevada, Fullerton, California, and Mexico City, Mexico. Like a people journeying to its promised land from the four corners of the earth, we converged upon beautiful Mobile, Alabama to celebrate with close friends of mine as their son became a bar mitzvah, a boy who is coming of age in the Jewish tradition. Representing our family from Albany, my son and I took a long journey down to the deep south, joining other dear family and friends to watch with pride as the boy took his own journey into adulthood through this time honored rite of passage. The weekend went perfectly. The young man led worship services, reciting the ancient Hebrew prayers with a southern drawl, thus fusing the sacred language of his ancestors with the warm, rich cadences of the wider world in which he lives and plays. His father is the rabbi of the synagogue where the ceremony took place. It gave me and my other colleagues who were there incredible pleasure to watch him be the proud father as well as the officiant, something that we clergy don’t often get to do for each other. Their Jewish community demonstrated its unparalleled blend of gracious southern hospitality and haimishness, the Yiddish word for warmth and hominess. “Shalom y’all,” the slightly exaggerated Hebrew greeting of peace peculiar to Jews of the south, was the order of the day. We worshipped together, we ate too much great food, we sang, laughed, and cried, as the boy’s extended family and friends surrounded him with love and pride, thanking God for enabling us to reach that special occasion.
A few months later, my entire family and I were privileged to celebrate with other close friends from rabbinical school days as their daughter became a bat mitzvah, a Jewish girl who is coming of age. Once again, family and friends converged on the synagogue in Washington, DC, where my friend –the girl’s father- is the rabbi. People came from all over the world to wish her well as she began her foray into adulthood, and once again we proudly sang, danced, ate, drank, and worshipped together.
Now that my son is preparing for becoming a bar mitzvah in the next year, I have been thinking a lot about the underlying meaning of these and similar life cycle celebrations. Specifically, who is the celebration really about? At one level, these ceremonies celebrate the life and achievements of the child in the presence of God and community. They are our way of saying to him or her, “We thank God for your having reached this point in your life, we wish you luck on the next leg of your journey, and we have expectations of you as an adult member of your faith wherever you go and whatever you do.” Yet at a deeper, though not too hidden, level these life cycle events are also an opportunity for extended family, parents in particular, to take a long look at what the dramas of their lives have wrought thus far. If our children are reflections of us, then bar and bat mitzvahs, communions, and confirmations are times when we look in the mirror to confront what is peering back, beauty, warts, and all. We invite our friends and family not only because we love them and want them to share in our joy, but also because they have been our supporting actors in our life dramas and they can affirm that we have acted well. We also need them to assure us that the best scenes in those dramas are yet to come, especially since our children’s growth means that we too are gradually aging and nearing death.
At both celebrations I attended, after morning worship and the Sabbath day luncheon were completed, many of the guests went home to rest before evening worship. A small group of us –mostly rabbis and spouses- sat around at a table singing the traditional, Sabbath melodies that are customary in Jewish tradition as the light of the Sabbath day starts to fade and the gradual transition to the new week begins. Drinking scotch whiskey slowly, we sang the twenty third psalm to a popular melody whose somber notes match the days’ serenity and our acknowledgement of the frail, imperfect world awaiting us beyond the protective walls of the Sabbath and those celebrations of life. We chanted my favorite line in the psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no harm, for You (God) are with me.” I have taught one meaning of this line many times to others: from the moment that we are born, we realize that every day of life is a walk in that valley. We are always conscious of the fact that death is shadowing us, and that each day that we live that shadow grows a bit longer.
Nonetheless, we can walk through life courageously, knowing that God’s presence fills our lives when we live with purpose and joy. Sitting with my friends, the proud parents, at their celebrations, and awaiting the time when I will be the proud parent, I now understand the words in a very personal manner. Yes, our children’s coming of age is one more marker that we have passed on our journeys through the valley. Yet we are passing those markers together as fellow travelers who will support each other along the way. Even as we grow older, our children –reflections of ourselves and made in God’s image as well- will take their own places on the journey and carry with them the values and love that are the durable legacies we have given them.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.
We came from Albany, New York, Scottsdale Arizona, and Pensacola, Florida. We came from Washington, DC, Boston, Massachusetts, and New York, New York. We came from Las Vegas, Nevada, Fullerton, California, and Mexico City, Mexico. Like a people journeying to its promised land from the four corners of the earth, we converged upon beautiful Mobile, Alabama to celebrate with close friends of mine as their son became a bar mitzvah, a boy who is coming of age in the Jewish tradition. Representing our family from Albany, my son and I took a long journey down to the deep south, joining other dear family and friends to watch with pride as the boy took his own journey into adulthood through this time honored rite of passage. The weekend went perfectly. The young man led worship services, reciting the ancient Hebrew prayers with a southern drawl, thus fusing the sacred language of his ancestors with the warm, rich cadences of the wider world in which he lives and plays. His father is the rabbi of the synagogue where the ceremony took place. It gave me and my other colleagues who were there incredible pleasure to watch him be the proud father as well as the officiant, something that we clergy don’t often get to do for each other. Their Jewish community demonstrated its unparalleled blend of gracious southern hospitality and haimishness, the Yiddish word for warmth and hominess. “Shalom y’all,” the slightly exaggerated Hebrew greeting of peace peculiar to Jews of the south, was the order of the day. We worshipped together, we ate too much great food, we sang, laughed, and cried, as the boy’s extended family and friends surrounded him with love and pride, thanking God for enabling us to reach that special occasion.
A few months later, my entire family and I were privileged to celebrate with other close friends from rabbinical school days as their daughter became a bat mitzvah, a Jewish girl who is coming of age. Once again, family and friends converged on the synagogue in Washington, DC, where my friend –the girl’s father- is the rabbi. People came from all over the world to wish her well as she began her foray into adulthood, and once again we proudly sang, danced, ate, drank, and worshipped together.
Now that my son is preparing for becoming a bar mitzvah in the next year, I have been thinking a lot about the underlying meaning of these and similar life cycle celebrations. Specifically, who is the celebration really about? At one level, these ceremonies celebrate the life and achievements of the child in the presence of God and community. They are our way of saying to him or her, “We thank God for your having reached this point in your life, we wish you luck on the next leg of your journey, and we have expectations of you as an adult member of your faith wherever you go and whatever you do.” Yet at a deeper, though not too hidden, level these life cycle events are also an opportunity for extended family, parents in particular, to take a long look at what the dramas of their lives have wrought thus far. If our children are reflections of us, then bar and bat mitzvahs, communions, and confirmations are times when we look in the mirror to confront what is peering back, beauty, warts, and all. We invite our friends and family not only because we love them and want them to share in our joy, but also because they have been our supporting actors in our life dramas and they can affirm that we have acted well. We also need them to assure us that the best scenes in those dramas are yet to come, especially since our children’s growth means that we too are gradually aging and nearing death.
At both celebrations I attended, after morning worship and the Sabbath day luncheon were completed, many of the guests went home to rest before evening worship. A small group of us –mostly rabbis and spouses- sat around at a table singing the traditional, Sabbath melodies that are customary in Jewish tradition as the light of the Sabbath day starts to fade and the gradual transition to the new week begins. Drinking scotch whiskey slowly, we sang the twenty third psalm to a popular melody whose somber notes match the days’ serenity and our acknowledgement of the frail, imperfect world awaiting us beyond the protective walls of the Sabbath and those celebrations of life. We chanted my favorite line in the psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no harm, for You (God) are with me.” I have taught one meaning of this line many times to others: from the moment that we are born, we realize that every day of life is a walk in that valley. We are always conscious of the fact that death is shadowing us, and that each day that we live that shadow grows a bit longer.
Nonetheless, we can walk through life courageously, knowing that God’s presence fills our lives when we live with purpose and joy. Sitting with my friends, the proud parents, at their celebrations, and awaiting the time when I will be the proud parent, I now understand the words in a very personal manner. Yes, our children’s coming of age is one more marker that we have passed on our journeys through the valley. Yet we are passing those markers together as fellow travelers who will support each other along the way. Even as we grow older, our children –reflections of ourselves and made in God’s image as well- will take their own places on the journey and carry with them the values and love that are the durable legacies we have given them.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
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