COMPASSION.
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.
It is amazing how we are able to draw together in our minds the disparate images of our daily experience in order to understand the truth. Consider what happened to me recently, at the beginning of the war in Iraq. One Sabbath evening, I taught my congregants about the concept of the Sabbath as a day that helps us to transcend the world and all of its imperfections. For twenty five hours each week, we put the world as it is on hold and live on an island in time, thus giving ourselves a taste of paradise, the world as it ought to be. The next morning, on Saturday, I woke up before everyone else, and the blessed stillness lent my house a feeling of Sabbath serenity. One of my children woke up after me, snuggled with me on our sofa, and asked me to read aloud with her Lois Lowry’s Newbery Medal winner, Number The Stars. The book had been assigned by her English teacher as family reading in preparation for Holocaust Memorial Day on April 29. Using a fictionalized account of two friends, Annemarie and Ellen, it tells the true story of Danish resistance to the Nazis and how the Danes courageously saved their Jewish community from being murdered by the German army. Annemarie’s non-Jewish family takes in Ellen, a Jewish girl, and hides her to protect her from being deported to a concentration camp. My daughter and I began at chapter two. It opens with a scene of Annemarie and her little sister, Kirsten, lying in bed telling stories of good and noble people living happily ever after, until Kirsten drifts off to sleep, leaving Annemarie with her thoughts about her people, the war, and her late sister, Lise, who died while on a resistance mission. Imagining these two little girls cradling each other in bed as shelter against the brutality of war while holding my own daughter near me, I was unable to restrain the feelings of despair, fear, and deep sadness that we hopefully all feel for the children of a world at war, whatever our opinions about any specific war happen to be. The serenity of the Sabbath day was broken for me as I started to cry. I could barely finish the chapter, and my daughter asked me, “Dad, are you crying?” Yes, honey,” I replied. “Why?” she asked. “All I could say was, “Well, it’s a very sad book.” She burrowed her head into my sleeve a little deeper, perhaps trying to create her own protection against the evils of the world and the scary feelings brought on by her father’s tears.
The next morning on Sunday, prior to my leaving the house to lead morning services at the synagogue, I looked at the front page of the New York Times. The newspaper had printed a photo from the frontlines in Iraq of a U.S. marine medic sitting on the ground cradling a four year old Iraqi girl whose mother was killed by Iraqi crossfire near a place called Rifa. With his eyes shut and his mouth tightened into a grimace, he is frozen momentarily by the unspeakable suffering and grief that he holds gently in his arms. The girl appears eerily calm with her arms stretched upwards playfully towards the soldier, as if her now dead mother was just around the corner and the man was her babysitter. If pictures are worth a thousand words, this photo is a Tolstoy novel about good people in army fatigues and innocent babies whose lives are thrown together in the web of cruel fate and implacable powers, and whose shoulders are crushed by the weight of the world. Remembering my spontaneous outburst of sadness from yesterday, I quickly put the newspaper aside, frightened by my potential reaction to it at the beginning of a work day, yet promising myself to return to its haunting images of the man and the girl.
I got to morning services, and towards the end of the worship, a friend of mine who was praying with us picked up her baby to nurse. Cradling the child near her body, she lovingly pressed the baby near her chest, then draped her tallit –her prayer shawl- around herself as an act of modesty and propriety. Mother, child, and sacred garment came together in a simple, reflexive, and ancient act of compassionately sustaining life that is deeply imbedded in our consciousness and is a key to human survival.
Within the span of one day all three disparate experiences came and went, but as each etched itself in my memory all three became a unified theme for me. Despite being traumatized by the bloodiest carnage that we inflict upon ourselves, our voices barely audible over the sound and fury of war politics, we human beings instinctively cradle each other. It is as if we know at the most primitive level that compassion is our one shield against this terrifying inheritance of ours that we call aggressiveness. As we go about the business of war for purposes both noble and detestable, it is one of the few threads binding all of us together and preventing each of us from unwinding entirely into chaotic spools of personal misery and insanity. We have little or no control over the decisions of international leaders about war, and we know it. Yet we have what no firearms can snuff out, if we hold fast to it: the gentle sweep of our own arms cradling a crying, orphaned baby as we sing to it of the peace that is yet to come.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Bridges
BRIDGES.
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.
Last March those big electronic traffic information signs began to appear in the Albany neighborhood where I live and work. They warned motorists and pedestrians alike of the construction project which was to take place on the route 85 overpass bridge that connects Albany and Guilderland. The State’s Department of Transportation would repair and widen both sides of the bridge, as well as knock down and rebuild other overpass bridges nearby. Our bridge, open to non-motorists during the project, would be closed to vehicles in each direction at different times. Everywhere we would be dealing with detours.
Detours are the price we pay for improvement, so my friends, family, and I were ready to put up with the inconvenience. Yet I became keenly aware of just how disruptive the repairs might be to the life of the synagogue community of which I am the spiritual leader, since our congregation is right near the bridge. The work and the detours began the day after a popular Jewish holiday. As if descending from heaven, a makeshift congregation of construction workers, engineers, and contractors filled the area around the bridge and near the synagogue, bringing with them jack hammers, cranes, back hoes, portasans, hard hats, trucks of all shapes and sizes: the tools of their work. My kids were overjoyed by all this cool construction stuff. I was overwhelmed and a bit put off. As a rabbi I live in the quiet, though very intense world of worship, counseling, education, and spirituality. I help people to examine their inner lives and their spiritual commitments. This construction crew was the exact opposite of my daily experience. Here were strong, tough looking people doing the hard physical labor of building that bridge with machinery whose sheer size and power could be intimidating.
Each day, driving to work near the construction site I see the same people out there building, repairing, tearing things down, and directing traffic. From one’s car it becomes easy to ignore them after a while. You drive on to what you need to do, accepting the fact that a bunch of hard hats whose names you do not know have invaded your community to do all this endless work which becomes background noise to your busy day. You conveniently dismiss them as people with whom you have nothing in common who will soon be gone.
However, as a pedestrian without the protection of a vehicle, your perspective changes. As a religiously observant Jew I don’t drive on Saturday, which is the Jewish Sabbath. I walk everywhere, including over that bridge. Lately, the workers have been putting in a lot of time on Saturdays in order to get the project done before the Winter. As a walker I come into much closer contact with each of them. I see the details of their faces. I hear them laughing with each other and barking orders. Some of them are men; some are women. They are Black, White, Hispanic, Asian. Even for the briefest moment we stop to say hello or to exchange a lighthearted comment about the weather or their work. “So you guys gonna be finished by November, huh?” I ask one of them, trying pitifully to sound like a tough guy myself. In good weather, one of them sounds almost like a preacher when he reminds me that this is a day worth being thankful for. Walking instead of driving, I remember that each of these people has a life which in many ways is no different from my own. These workers aren’t interlopers to be tolerated until they leave our community: they are our community.
As we were walking home from worship one day, one of my friends suggested that, when the bridge is done, we should invite the whole crew to join us at the dessert reception which follows our services, and that we should say the traditional blessing which you recite upon reaching a special occasion. Thinking about what I share with this group of folks I recognize that, though it probably won’t come to fruition, this idea holds a great truth. The 19th century spiritual master Rabbi Nachman of Breslau once taught that life in this world can be compared to a very narrow and dangerous bridge. Our job is to try to never be afraid as we walk over it. I, wearing my traditional skull cap, and these construction workers in their hard hats are doing the same thing: we are working hard to widen the bridge and to make it safer to cross.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY.
© 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.
Last March those big electronic traffic information signs began to appear in the Albany neighborhood where I live and work. They warned motorists and pedestrians alike of the construction project which was to take place on the route 85 overpass bridge that connects Albany and Guilderland. The State’s Department of Transportation would repair and widen both sides of the bridge, as well as knock down and rebuild other overpass bridges nearby. Our bridge, open to non-motorists during the project, would be closed to vehicles in each direction at different times. Everywhere we would be dealing with detours.
Detours are the price we pay for improvement, so my friends, family, and I were ready to put up with the inconvenience. Yet I became keenly aware of just how disruptive the repairs might be to the life of the synagogue community of which I am the spiritual leader, since our congregation is right near the bridge. The work and the detours began the day after a popular Jewish holiday. As if descending from heaven, a makeshift congregation of construction workers, engineers, and contractors filled the area around the bridge and near the synagogue, bringing with them jack hammers, cranes, back hoes, portasans, hard hats, trucks of all shapes and sizes: the tools of their work. My kids were overjoyed by all this cool construction stuff. I was overwhelmed and a bit put off. As a rabbi I live in the quiet, though very intense world of worship, counseling, education, and spirituality. I help people to examine their inner lives and their spiritual commitments. This construction crew was the exact opposite of my daily experience. Here were strong, tough looking people doing the hard physical labor of building that bridge with machinery whose sheer size and power could be intimidating.
Each day, driving to work near the construction site I see the same people out there building, repairing, tearing things down, and directing traffic. From one’s car it becomes easy to ignore them after a while. You drive on to what you need to do, accepting the fact that a bunch of hard hats whose names you do not know have invaded your community to do all this endless work which becomes background noise to your busy day. You conveniently dismiss them as people with whom you have nothing in common who will soon be gone.
However, as a pedestrian without the protection of a vehicle, your perspective changes. As a religiously observant Jew I don’t drive on Saturday, which is the Jewish Sabbath. I walk everywhere, including over that bridge. Lately, the workers have been putting in a lot of time on Saturdays in order to get the project done before the Winter. As a walker I come into much closer contact with each of them. I see the details of their faces. I hear them laughing with each other and barking orders. Some of them are men; some are women. They are Black, White, Hispanic, Asian. Even for the briefest moment we stop to say hello or to exchange a lighthearted comment about the weather or their work. “So you guys gonna be finished by November, huh?” I ask one of them, trying pitifully to sound like a tough guy myself. In good weather, one of them sounds almost like a preacher when he reminds me that this is a day worth being thankful for. Walking instead of driving, I remember that each of these people has a life which in many ways is no different from my own. These workers aren’t interlopers to be tolerated until they leave our community: they are our community.
As we were walking home from worship one day, one of my friends suggested that, when the bridge is done, we should invite the whole crew to join us at the dessert reception which follows our services, and that we should say the traditional blessing which you recite upon reaching a special occasion. Thinking about what I share with this group of folks I recognize that, though it probably won’t come to fruition, this idea holds a great truth. The 19th century spiritual master Rabbi Nachman of Breslau once taught that life in this world can be compared to a very narrow and dangerous bridge. Our job is to try to never be afraid as we walk over it. I, wearing my traditional skull cap, and these construction workers in their hard hats are doing the same thing: we are working hard to widen the bridge and to make it safer to cross.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY.
© 2010 by Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Ascending
ASCENDING.
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.
During a recent retreat, I took a break from writing and walked outside the forest cabin in which I was staying. Poking through a hazy sky, the sun setting in the west cast its receding rays on the clouds and the woods with that mix of light and shadow so dreamlike and intense a person cannot easily describe it. As I began to chant the first line of my afternoon prayers, I walked to the side of my cabin and spotted a small bird perched perfectly upright with its feet clinging to the branch of a wild bush. It barely moved and it would not fly, yet it did not seem to be in distress or pain. It wore white tufts of hair or down on the sides of its head that reminded me of pictures of Albert Einstein. Its white back was speckled and streaked with brown, and its underbelly was a dull white. As I stood there so close to the bird yet not touching it, my eyes met its eyes that seemed to show no fear. I wondered silently: where had this bird come from and why wouldn’t it fly away? Was it sick or injured? Was it a baby or perhaps a baby owl? I brought over the gardener of the retreat center; he confirmed for me that it was a baby bird, that it would have to be nursed with a dropper if we were going to care for it, and that I shouldn’t touch it or the mother bird would reject it. I later learned from him that this is no farmer’s legend: apparently some species of birds will not touch their young if they smell the scent of another species on them. The director of the retreat center came over, and together we watched this tiny creature balancing itself silently on the branch. She remarked that, sadly, nature would have to take its course because the center could not care for injured or stray wildlife. We slowly surmised that the bird had tried prematurely to fly from a nest in the tall tree high above my cabin. We marveled at this baby’s maiden voyage: unable to fly well, it must have tumbled onto the forest floor, miraculously landing on that supple, green branch unharmed, with its feet wrapping around the limb and holding on for dear life. When a fully grown bird appeared, hovering tentatively on the low hanging branch of a nearby tree, we stepped away, believing that this was the mother waiting for us to leave so she could care for her fallen child.
Before I drifted off to sleep that night, I listened to the composer Ralph Vaughn Williams’ delightful piece, The Lark Ascending. The solo violin paints a light and beautiful musical picture of a lark flying higher and higher into the heavens, its view of the ground becoming increasingly expansive and distant. “When will you ascend, baby bird?” I thought to myself about my new friend who stood five feet outside of my cabin window. Right after I woke up the next morning I walked outside to see what had happened to the bird. There it still stood on the branch, seemingly unfazed by its nighttime vigil in the cold air that could have resulted in its being eaten by a predator or its freezing to death. An hour later, as I prepared to leave the retreat center, I looked for the bird and it was gone. Had it finally ascended like the lark?
I got into my car, drove away from the retreat center and pulled onto a winding road to get home. Driving along the way, I was startled by a bird that suddenly flew in low from the right side of the road and under my car. Unable to stop my car quickly and safely enough as I rode from that point where it met the bird, I glanced in my rearview mirror. The bird lay dead on the road, and it rapidly faded from my sight as I drove along. My remorse was matched by my sense of tragic irony. One bird wanted to start its life by ascending in flight like the lark but did not yet know how. Another bird knew how to ascend like the lark and ended its life in flight, yet probably did not know why. I think about those birds as two depictions of the same truth. As we grow, from time to time we need to soar, ascending into freedom flight like the lark. Yet the risk of suffering and death comes with those ascendant flights of freedom. Hopefully we find the wisdom and the courage to accept that truth as we leave the comfort of our many nests over and over again.
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.
During a recent retreat, I took a break from writing and walked outside the forest cabin in which I was staying. Poking through a hazy sky, the sun setting in the west cast its receding rays on the clouds and the woods with that mix of light and shadow so dreamlike and intense a person cannot easily describe it. As I began to chant the first line of my afternoon prayers, I walked to the side of my cabin and spotted a small bird perched perfectly upright with its feet clinging to the branch of a wild bush. It barely moved and it would not fly, yet it did not seem to be in distress or pain. It wore white tufts of hair or down on the sides of its head that reminded me of pictures of Albert Einstein. Its white back was speckled and streaked with brown, and its underbelly was a dull white. As I stood there so close to the bird yet not touching it, my eyes met its eyes that seemed to show no fear. I wondered silently: where had this bird come from and why wouldn’t it fly away? Was it sick or injured? Was it a baby or perhaps a baby owl? I brought over the gardener of the retreat center; he confirmed for me that it was a baby bird, that it would have to be nursed with a dropper if we were going to care for it, and that I shouldn’t touch it or the mother bird would reject it. I later learned from him that this is no farmer’s legend: apparently some species of birds will not touch their young if they smell the scent of another species on them. The director of the retreat center came over, and together we watched this tiny creature balancing itself silently on the branch. She remarked that, sadly, nature would have to take its course because the center could not care for injured or stray wildlife. We slowly surmised that the bird had tried prematurely to fly from a nest in the tall tree high above my cabin. We marveled at this baby’s maiden voyage: unable to fly well, it must have tumbled onto the forest floor, miraculously landing on that supple, green branch unharmed, with its feet wrapping around the limb and holding on for dear life. When a fully grown bird appeared, hovering tentatively on the low hanging branch of a nearby tree, we stepped away, believing that this was the mother waiting for us to leave so she could care for her fallen child.
Before I drifted off to sleep that night, I listened to the composer Ralph Vaughn Williams’ delightful piece, The Lark Ascending. The solo violin paints a light and beautiful musical picture of a lark flying higher and higher into the heavens, its view of the ground becoming increasingly expansive and distant. “When will you ascend, baby bird?” I thought to myself about my new friend who stood five feet outside of my cabin window. Right after I woke up the next morning I walked outside to see what had happened to the bird. There it still stood on the branch, seemingly unfazed by its nighttime vigil in the cold air that could have resulted in its being eaten by a predator or its freezing to death. An hour later, as I prepared to leave the retreat center, I looked for the bird and it was gone. Had it finally ascended like the lark?
I got into my car, drove away from the retreat center and pulled onto a winding road to get home. Driving along the way, I was startled by a bird that suddenly flew in low from the right side of the road and under my car. Unable to stop my car quickly and safely enough as I rode from that point where it met the bird, I glanced in my rearview mirror. The bird lay dead on the road, and it rapidly faded from my sight as I drove along. My remorse was matched by my sense of tragic irony. One bird wanted to start its life by ascending in flight like the lark but did not yet know how. Another bird knew how to ascend like the lark and ended its life in flight, yet probably did not know why. I think about those birds as two depictions of the same truth. As we grow, from time to time we need to soar, ascending into freedom flight like the lark. Yet the risk of suffering and death comes with those ascendant flights of freedom. Hopefully we find the wisdom and the courage to accept that truth as we leave the comfort of our many nests over and over again.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.
Welcome To Dan Ornstein's Blog
Welcome, everyone.
I'm pleased to present my new blog to you. The title, Four Bright Lights, is taken from my forthcoming children's book by the same name, to be published by Ben Yehuda Press. The story follows the adventures of an immigrant German Jewish family and an African American slave family. They meet each other quite by accident...or maybe not so accidentally...on the underground railroad in the 1850s. The four bright lights represent the four bright lights of the Hanukkah menorah burning that third night of Hanukkah when the two families meet. They also symbolize the four courageous children from the two families. The book is a tribute to people of all faiths who see the image of God reflected in all humanity, and who have the courage to help those in need.
On this blogspot I will post sermons and divrei Torah (in English, "mini sermons") that I have written, based upon the teachings of Jewish tradition. I am also posting essays of mine that have aired on WAMC Northeastern Public Radio,located in Albany, NY. Finally, members of Congregation Ohav Shalom (Albany, NY) and I will be traveling to Israel for a mission/pilgrimage in the coming months. I will be staying on afterwards to explore and write about some of the spiritual scene in Jerusalem, one of the holiest cities in the world. I will be posting from Israel during that time, and I hope you enjoy and find meaning in what I write.
All the best, and enjoy!
Dan
I'm pleased to present my new blog to you. The title, Four Bright Lights, is taken from my forthcoming children's book by the same name, to be published by Ben Yehuda Press. The story follows the adventures of an immigrant German Jewish family and an African American slave family. They meet each other quite by accident...or maybe not so accidentally...on the underground railroad in the 1850s. The four bright lights represent the four bright lights of the Hanukkah menorah burning that third night of Hanukkah when the two families meet. They also symbolize the four courageous children from the two families. The book is a tribute to people of all faiths who see the image of God reflected in all humanity, and who have the courage to help those in need.
On this blogspot I will post sermons and divrei Torah (in English, "mini sermons") that I have written, based upon the teachings of Jewish tradition. I am also posting essays of mine that have aired on WAMC Northeastern Public Radio,located in Albany, NY. Finally, members of Congregation Ohav Shalom (Albany, NY) and I will be traveling to Israel for a mission/pilgrimage in the coming months. I will be staying on afterwards to explore and write about some of the spiritual scene in Jerusalem, one of the holiest cities in the world. I will be posting from Israel during that time, and I hope you enjoy and find meaning in what I write.
All the best, and enjoy!
Dan
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