Homosexuality

August 11th, 2014

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Good evening and welcome back to Toward a Meaningful Life with yours truly, Simon Jacobson. Tonight I decided to do a topic which is quite sensitive, but at the same time, as with many sensitive topics, quite compelling.

 Toward a Meaningful Life has been coined “A Show for Skeptics and Seekers,” one that addresses frankly and candidly many of the issues that we struggle with, and this show is part of a series that we’ve entitled, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Judaism but Were Afraid to Ask.”

This particular show will be on homosexuality. Obviously, being a sensitive topic, some listeners may feel that it’s not appropriate for all family members, which is your decision; at the same time, the reason that I decided to do this topic, although it too may be controversial, is that it’s been in the news a lot lately, and it’s something that people from all different backgrounds, whether religious or secular, have many issues with.

I decided to do this topic because of several personal experiences I’ve had of people speaking to me in my classes and in private that I found really important and compelling to address. Let me begin with a letter that I received from one of our listeners and I think you’ll get a sense of where I’m coming from.

“Dear Rabbi Jacobson,

“I’m facing a serious personal dilemma that I know is an issue for many people. Having attended some of your classes and heard a few of your radio shows, I appreciate your candidness and your knowledge base, and therefore have the confidence that you will be able to reply to my quandary in a sensitive and informative manner.

“Getting straight to the point, my brother is gay. He announced this to the family last year and to say that this has been a source of agony would be a gross understatement. It has been a source of misery and has forced us all to review our entire lives, shaking things down to the core, putting in question beliefs that my entire family always felt safe and secure with.

“Being an observant Jew myself, I’m having a compounded dilemma. In addition to the personal, psychological and emotional issues involved, how do I, as a Torah observant Jew, deal with my brother? What should be my attitude toward him? Ostracization? Should we invite him to the seder table? And what if he insists on bringing his friend along?

“On a broader level, what should be the Jewish community’s attitude? Should we be welcoming those who have chosen this [lifestyle] into our synagogues; give them an aliyah; allow them to be a chazan (cantor) in shul?

“The questions are many, the pain and anguish are deep. I have asked these questions to my rabbi and many rabbis without receiving an adequate reply. Frankly, I was met either with discomfort or incredulousness. Attitudes range from repulsion and complete revulsion to rejecting gays outright to confusion.

“No one was able or willing to address these issues directly and sensitively, and most importantly, in the spirit of Torah.”

This is a letter I received recently, among many questions and conversations that I’ve had in the last few months particularly, but over the years in general with people who are struggling with this issue, not necessarily in an academic, theoretical way, but really personally, whether it’s a family member or friend, or a child. So when I read this letter, I felt that this is not just an issue on a Biblical or a religious level, but on a personal, psychological one, and if this show is not going to address issues like this, then what is it going to address?

So I decided to talk about this topic. Obviously, given the limits of a one-hour radio show, it’s going to be difficult to exhaust it on all levels, but let me first begin by voicing my own personal feelings.

Whenever one talks about the issue of sexuality, on any level, I think it’s important to qualify that we’re immediately delving into and getting involved into something that is subjective and emotional for people.

The reason for this is that we all have a sexual personality. No one is neutral when it comes to that. Therefore, we all have attitudes—healthy or unhealthy, but we have them—and those attitudes are very deep rooted, embedded in our psyches, often from young childhood on, so whenever you discuss a topic like this, it’s extremely difficult for everyone, including myself, to step aside and say, “Okay, how can we address this in a objective, dispassionate light?”

You can do that when it comes to issues like physics and mathematics, even other philosophical quandaries that are not that personal—they’re easier to discuss. But when it comes to this, that emotional subjectivity gets in the way of the discussion, because if someone is invested in a particular choice that he or she has made, or is invested in a life that they feel is meaningful or is giving them some type of nurturing—again whether it’s healthy or unhealthy is not the issue—it is uncomfortable for anyone, including myself, to challenge that, because you’re challenging someone’s comfort zone, and comfort zones, particularly ones that are deeply rooted and deeply embedded in our sexual consciousness, are very, very difficult to broach.

It’s hard to find a person who’s ready to sit down with you and say, “Okay, let’s objectively review this without any preconceived notions,” because none of us are without preconceived notions when it comes to sexuality. And frankly, the topic of homosexuality, as the questioner who wrote me this letter asks about marginalizing—how we address someone, in this case a brother, who’s chosen to be gay—is one that immediately, as he put it, brings people to one extreme or another. Some are repulsed by it and simply dismiss people who have chosen that, and others are completely accepting and feel that they should have equal rights and that it is a legitimate lifestyle choice equivalent to heterosexuality.

Is there anything in between? I felt it’s important to begin with this disclaimer, particularly, as I said, because the topic is emotionally charged, and that’s why, with any question that will be asked, whether it will be from callers who call in by phone, or my own, will definitely be colored somewhat by our own personal attitudes and our own personal emotions on this topic.

With that being said, I want to begin with an overview from the perspective of where I come from. Everyone has his or her perspective, including myself, and just to put this in a context, when dealing with a topic like this, it’s important to distinguish between people’s choices and people. I give a class every Wednesday night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (which incidentally, you’re all invited to, at 346 West End Avenue, corner of 89^th St. at 8pm), and there was someone who came to the class who considered himself gay. He felt comfortable speaking to me, so he invited me to give a talk to a group of his friends who, one would say was a group of gays (I assume that they were all gay), and I agreed to discuss and present my thoughts on the matter based on Torah, based on a spiritual template and intimate spiritual experience that I personally been exposed to in my own life. To say it was a captive audience, one cannot: it was quite hostile, actually, but I felt comfortable saying what I had to say, because I felt that I would sincerely try to transmit my feelings.

The first thing I said was, Listen, I don’t want to be on the defensive here in speaking to you. I don’t want to be accused in some way of undermining your rights to make choices or your personal rights and discrimination and all of that.

The first thing I want to state is that one must distinguish between a person and the person’s choices. I find it offensive, I said, that things have become politicized, where if somebody disagrees with your lifestyle choice, or any other choice that you make, it means that they invalidate you as a person.

That’s not correct. I can have a child who may behave in a way that I don’t find appropriate, and I can still love the child unconditionally, yet that doesn’t mean that I have to condone or endorse every choice that child makes. So clearly we have to distinguish between the two.

Often, when something is politicized, if you want to know what is a good litmus test of the politicization of any given topic, see if people can distinguish between choices and the people themselves.

The Torah, on which this show Toward a Meaningful Life is based, is essentially based on the belief that every human being has a soul, a Divine image in which they were created, that is the inherent right of every human being, man, woman and child throughout their entire lifetime. Nothing can be done to destroy that soul, because it is G-d-given, and that remains consistent no matter what choices a person makes.

For me, that is the prevailing factor in communicating with anyone. Whatever sexual choice a person may make—heterosexual, homosexual—that soul is always there. At the same time, accepting that and respecting someone’s soul and therefore loving them for that, does not mean that none of us can make mistakes. I make mistakes just as every individual is capable of, and does make, mistakes.

What does a mistake do to your soul? It doesn’t destroy your soul but it definitely closes off some of the channels of your soul’s expression in this world.

So I said to this group, “The first thing that I want to state here is, I love you all. Unequivocally, unconditionally. You are human beings created by G-d, and the choices you make are between you and G-d, and this love is regardless of your choices.

“At the same time, I don’t necessarily have to embrace the choice you make in order for me to accept you. I don’t believe that you should be discriminated against; I think that a human being is, as I said, divine, yet, at the same time you have to realize that the choices you make have consequences.

“A second point that I’d like to make is that the issue, from my perspective, is not one of subjective repulsion or subjective liberalism here. In other words, the issue is not about whether I’m repulsed or some individual is repulsed by a certain lifestyle. The issue is more a question of right and wrong. And this touches on the core of the entire issue, which goes far beyond homosexuality, per se, it goes into the area of sexuality, of life itself, of love, of intimacy. It comes down to, as human beings with personalities, how do we see our sexual personalities, and is there such a thing as an objectively sexual lifestyle that is correct and one that is not correct?

Now, if a person makes a choice and says, “Listen, this is arbitrary. Anyone can really choose what they wish,” then the axioms of that type of discussion are different than if we agree upon and say that no, there is a certain definition of sexual personality.

Now, for all practical purposes, since I’m the host of this show, I have to state a certain axiom from where I come from, and that is, since G-d created a human being, and that’s the reason we have that Divine right to personal freedom, and we all have to love one another unconditionally, G-d also defines our sexual personality, and what is best for a human being to express him or herself sexually.

The fact that human beings may say, “Well, my tendency or my lifestyle or my choice is different,” well, we have to weigh that against the backdrop of what our quintessential personalities are in life.

The fact is, people can distort their own personalities in many areas, but even though they’re comfortable with it, it doesn’t mean that they’re living up to their highest potential.

So from my point of view, we live in a time of crisis in the area of sexuality and it’s incumbent, and it behooves us all, to look at ourselves—and the Torah helps us look at ourselves in that light—as to what does it mean to be a sexual human being, what is sexuality, what is intimacy, and what’s the healthiest and strongest way to use that as a tool to self-actualize, and actually sanctify our personal lives.

With that being said, I know I’ve dropped a few little bombshells here, even though they’ve been brief, but I just wanted to lay out the groundwork for the discussion here tonight and reiterate again that it is a sensitive topic, one that is charged and where people have opinions of all extremes. Coming from a Torah approach, I want to clearly state that it’s time that we have a meaningful dialogue on a topic like this, one that does not have to cater to any of the two extremes, whether it’s religious extremism that completely marginalizes and dismisses other people’s choices, or whether it’s condoning or accepting anyone’s choice.

I think that there is an in-between place, and it has a lot to do with the tone and you can even call it the ambience of the discussion. I don’t believe in the fire and brimstone approach, because the fact is that even according to a religious perspective (where the Bible clearly states that homosexuality is not an option), the point is that it’s not an option because G-d said that sexuality is to be lived up to a certain way, and other styles, no matter how comfortable they may be for a person, do not allow a person to live up to his or her greatest potential.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean that someone who is struggling with the issue (and I’m sure many people have struggled with this issue of homosexuality—it’s not something that people just fall into—there’s much agony that goes into those choices), should have it be dismissed; rather, we have to address it in a serious and in a very personal way, which frankly is much easier to do one on one, but I think that this show is a good platform, nevertheless.

Of course one of the aspects of this issue, recently in the news, has been the Reform Judaism’s ruling where they overwhelmingly passed a resolution that the “relationship of a Jewish same-gender couple is worthy of affirmation through appropriate Jewish ritual.”

That’s one of the issues that’s been in the news recently. Here is, I believe, a first within Judaism: that a denomination called Reform Judaism has clearly stated their condoning of and affirming this type of lifestyle.

So I’d like to hear from the callers some of your opinions on that ruling, like, what exactly is the problem with that ruling if you feel there’s a problem with it; do you agree with it, do you disagree with it? What do you think is the attitude that Jews should have toward it? How do we address the fact that in the Bible there’s a clear statement that homosexuality is not an option, that it’s considered an aberration; an abomination? How do we deal with that?

I am specifically avoiding commenting on this ruling because I’d like to discuss it more in the context of the entire picture. When you talk about the entire picture of sexuality, (which as I said is an issue that goes far beyond homosexuality, the real issue is, in general, what is sexuality?), I think I’d like to share one or two points in discussing that because I believe that would put things in context.

By no means am I a doctor or a psychiatrist, and therefore I speak from a particularly spiritual, Torah perspective, which I think is important to state. At the same time, of course, the issues that are discussed when dealing with homosexuality are: is it nature or nurture? Is it the gene, the “gay gene,” as it has been called? and so on. I think that to do justice to this topic, it has to be addressed in an objective medical and scientific forum, but I believe that the Torah and the spirit of the Torah, and particularly its views on sexuality have much light to shed on this issue.

I think if we were able to create some type of incubators where we could interface the scientific and medical community with the Torah’s profound and comprehensive views on sexuality, we could probably come up with a very clear understanding that would transcend the political side of it, because there’s no doubt that politics have played a big role here. Actually, I would recommend, if any of you are interested, a very fascinating book that I’ve read recently called Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, written by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., where he really does a very extensive overview of the entire issue of homosexuality and the politics of it.

I don’t want to quote too much of it (it would be good if any of you listeners actually read that book, because he touches upon the issue in a way which I’m sure won’t be to the liking of everyone who reads it. Nevertheless, whether someone agrees or disagrees with it, it’s definitely legitimate enough to deserve rebuttal from those who disagree with it; it presents an academic, medial perspective on the issue). Essentially, one of the points he makes is that he personally, and many of his colleagues, have treated homosexuality as an aberration and something that was hurting people’s lifestyles, and helped bring change to people who were really committed to change.

To change entirely? That’s another question that he addresses, and one of the important points that he made was that even though one can argue that homosexuality has some natural causes, or that there’s a gene or a genetic element to it, still there are genetic causes to many illnesses and no one would argue that being genetic we cannot battle disease. In addition, genetics, too, is a very complex study. What is genetic? What is nature? How much do nurturing and early childhood affect our brain cells? There are so many factors involved when you’re talking about hereditary and genetic elements. But even if we say that its genetic does not mean that we cannot or should not overcome it. An additional point: we all have dispositions, for example, many of us are born with a mean streak. We may be born with many predispositions that are not necessarily the best for us, and our job is for us to channel and discipline them.

The issue here is not one particularly exclusive to homosexuality; it is relevant even to heterosexuality. A person can behave in a very distorted heterosexual fashion. That too has to be disciplined and channeled.

What Judaism, and the Torah, teaches is that sexuality is a sacred force in our lives; it’s a holy sacred force that when used properly can be the most powerful, potent element that can help you to be not just a loving person, not just a healthy person, but to reach the heavens directly. It helps you sanctify your life; it helps you self-actualize and be the best you can be.

At the same time, sexuality is also a potent force that when misused, or when not channeled properly or disciplined, like any potent force, like nuclear energy, can create much destruction, as we see. Sexuality has been the force of building great good in our lives and it can also be the force of unbelievable corruption, addiction, and obsession, that can drive people to behave in ways that are completely irrational and not in the spirit of anything that is healthy.

So the issue of genetics is not one that is to be dismissed lightly. So that we should just say, okay, genetically someone is that way, so therefore, that’s it: we must accept two legitimate lifestyles. It has to be looked at from a medical/scientific point of view. And there are many doctors who will argue and say that even if it is genetic, that does not necessarily mean that this is the healthiest way for a person to express him or herself sexually.

On the other side, there are many who say that genetics is complicated because there are other factors involved; for example, what happens if a person through early childhood has had a certain experience: whether it was a distant father or an overbearing mother, or whatever it is, there are many psychological forces that cause people to have certain predispositions in their sexual preferences. Forget about homosexuality. Even in the heterosexual world. And isn’t that legitimate enough? If a person, due to his or her childhood experience (forget about genetics) has certain leanings, why should that not be legitimized? So here the issue is not one of, what are the forces that influence us, it’s rather, what is the healthiest way to be a sexual human being, the healthiest way to express our sexuality.

I think that the challenge in our time, the crisis of intimacy, is to get to the root of the problem instead of the politics of it. We must be able to somehow transcend human subjectivity (as much as possible) and get to the root of it. What is really going on at the root of these issues?

Okay, let’s go to the phones. We have Joseph on the line.

Caller: Hello. I think Rabbi Jacobson you already touched upon what I wanted to bring up. I think that perhaps from Judaism and perhaps other religions there’s the concept that G-d put some people to a particular test—some people are put to the test with stealing, for example, while another person isn’t tempted.

For example, I think that “thy neighbor’s wife,” even though there’s no parade for it, has been somewhat legitimized in the same mainstream society that rejects homosexuality and other forms of sexual deviation. Everybody is put to his particular test.

Jacobson: Joseph, I think that’s a very good point; I didn’t really make that point but I appreciate your call. Do you have an opinion on the Reform ruling about this issue?

Caller: Sorry, I have to say that I don’t consider Reform Judaism because I think it’s an oxymoron. The Orthodox Judaism belief is that [the Torah’s] unchangeable, even when sometimes it seems that in certain generations certain rabbis make certain declarations—basically we’re still following the same blueprint, and the word Reform is antithetical… “Orthodox” Judaism I think only arose because people came up with the idea of Reform Judaism. Once upon a time there was no Conservative, Reform… there was just Judaism.

Jacobson: Good points and I thank you Joseph for your call. Both your points are well taken. The point of there being a challenge in life is an important one because the fact is that all of us are challenged, and it’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone else’s challenges. In no way can we judge another person’s challenges because if you were in those shoes you may not be able to withstand it yourself. But I think that’s part of the importance—that even if we come with a Torah perspective that sexuality does have a definition given to us by G-d, the mysteries and mystique of sexuality and intimacy have been given to us and blessed by G-d, and at the same time teaches us how to actualize them, we still need to have that sensitivity, because many people are faced with serious sexual challenges in their lives and this goes far beyond, as stated earlier, homosexuality. It touches upon heterosexual lifestyles as well. We live in a time when sexuality is, at best, confusing, and at worst, one can call it a real holocaust because, as you hear people say, “you can’t live with them, you can’t live without them”—people have a real crisis of intimacy and I think this crosses and touches all people today, no matter where we come from.

Let’s go to Rebecca on the line.

Caller: Hello Rabbi. My brother is in his 60’s; I’m in my 40’s, and he has been with his partner for about 40 years. They met when they were both young men, and I think ideally I would have loved my brother to have been married and to have had a family. I think in my heart of hearts that would have been my preference. But they have had such a stable relationship, probably the only stable relationship in my immediate family—I’m divorced, my sister is divorced—and I guess it’s very hard when someone’s partner has become like a brother to me, to think of it in terms of an aberration. Because I see around me so many heterosexual couples to whom the word “self-actualize” doesn’t even enter into their relationship; there’s so much negativity there. And these two men (again, in my heart I would rather it hadn’t been the case) but particularly his partner toward my brother, we came from a rather dysfunctional family—a lot of violence—if it wasn’t for this partner, I don’t know if my brother would have been here today. He might have committed suicide years ago. It’s difficult sometimes… when parents have children who are gay they have images of them going in and out of these relationships and it’s very self-destructive—and many of them do—but occasionally you do have people who are truly partners for many years and it’s really very difficult to negate it as much as you would like to, but you can’t because you see the validity of it there in their lives together.

Jacobson: Rebecca, I appreciate your call. This show is not for people who just agree with everything I say. I want to ask you a question. Based on what you’ve been saying, should we condone homosexuality based on the exception, for example, in your brother’s case?

Caller: You know, it’s an issue that I grapple with all the time. I have another woman friend who has married, divorced, had very destructive relationships with men, and in her early 30’s, began a relationship with a woman and has basically declared herself a lesbian for the last 15 years. I find that a little bit more troublesome, and there’s a part of me that thinks it’s a by-product of her bad relationships with men. So it’s easier for me not to condone that.

It’s something I grapple with. I wish I had an answer.

Jacobson: Let me ask you a question. Forty years ago, when he made that choice, how did you feel then?

Caller: Well, I was a kid. Now I’m 45. So all of a sudden I remember this young man being in our lives.

Jacobson: And your parents?

Caller: My father passed away many years ago. No one “came out” in those days and I think my parents were in denial for many years. My father loved this guy as a son and accepted him. He would come to our house for holidays, etc. I don’t think my father ever mentally verbalized it, and my mother never did either.

Jacobson: Were there any religious experiences in your family life?

Caller: Mixed marriage. Jewish and Catholic. Both obviously not condoning of homosexuality. But religion didn’t really enter into the picture.

Jacobson: Well if I may say, listening to what you’re saying, I think what you’re describing is more of a testimony to the sorry state of sexuality and heterosexuality in our society than an endorsement or tribute to homosexuality. I personally, and I say this with all respect to your brother and to yourself as well, I personally see that based on two evils, he chose the one that brought some nurturing and some comfort, and the sorry state of it is that there was no alternative. In the sexual environment that children grow up in in high schools today, and I state it again for the record as I’ve said several times on the show here tonight, there’s a sorry state of sexuality that’s affecting all of us. As a matter of fact, I find that most people are offended by homosexuality for the wrong reasons. They’re offended for personal reasons—they’re repulsed by it, they can’t identify with it, they can’t relate to it—and not for the reason that I’m stating here, that G-d gives us sexuality and also tells us the tools how best to experience that sexuality.

There are men who decide that their personal genetic impulses is to have a different partner every night in a heterosexual relationship and they’re completely uncommitted. That’s equally unhealthy. And as a result I think that many people turn to homosexuality almost because of the damage in the sexual area, this being almost some type of outlet, and I say it again with all due respect. I’m not judging your brother and I’m not talking to him as an individual. Every individual has to be loved for who he or she is, but nevertheless, it just states how bad things are that he could not find expression in a heterosexual relationship.

I’m sure that you’ll hear fire and brimstone people who will completely dismiss your brother’s life. I’m not ready to dismiss that because I believe that within the root of any drive lies something sacred; however, the expression of it can either be healthy or not. And that’s where sexuality comes into play, when I see somebody who is in general behaving in a sexually aberrant fashion, my goal is not to have them experience abstinence or celibacy, but to try to channel and get to the healthy root of the need that they have and find a healthy outlet of expression. Because imagine what type of father your brother would have been.

Caller: Absolutely.

Jacobson: He’s not on the phone here so I can’t say much to him, but I say it to you, what you can do about it—I don’t know if you should or could, but your call and your description of your brother’s situation gives me very mixed feelings. On the one hand I’m happy to hear that somebody had some happiness in his life, but on the other hand, in a way, it confirms how bad things are, if you know what I’m saying.

I’ll tell you a story. I remember there was a guy who came to one of my classes. He was clearly stoned when he walked into my class, possibly on LSD or something. And he asked me a question. He said he lost his religious faith as a young man, and he regained it through drugs, through LSD. He discovered G-d through LSD. And he asked me what my opinion was on the matter—this was in front of a group of about 50-60 people—and they wanted to see if I would give an endorsement now for an acid trip as a way of finding G-d. For many, that was the way.

Obviously I was not going to do that so I said, “You know, I’ll give you an example. A person is G-d forbid in an accident, and they’ve fallen into a coma. And nothing helps. The doctors say the only thing we’ll try to do is give them an injection of drugs to shake up the system, to wake him up so to speak. You’d never give a healthy person that type of injection.

Yet this may work. So let’s say the person is revived. What’s the answer? The answer is that there are healthy ways of waking up from a comatose state. You were in a spiritual coma, I told this fellow. For some reason G-d planted into some plants and chemicals, in some artificial way, the power to induce a spiritual experience. But once you’ve come there, there are healthy ways to experience it. To me it’s a sad testimony to the state of religion that it could not bring G-d into your life in a relevant way, and that you needed some type of massive injection, so to speak, to get you out of the coma.

But now that you’re out of it, you should be going and speaking to people, to young men and women who are now what you were like back then, facing similar challenges and telling them there’s a healthy and natural way to achieve a transcendent experience.

I think the same is true with sexuality. Human beings need love and nurturing in our lives. And if we don’t find it in a healthy way, we’ll find it in an unhealthy way. And what we’ll do is we’ll begin to justify it, snowballing the healthy and the unhealthy. You’ll say, well, it may not be completely healthy but it has healthy elements. And look at how many heterosexual relationships break apart, as you described, in divorce.

So from my perspective, we expect people to live up to the divine image in which they were created in the highest standard. Why cut corners? Just because we live in a society that has screwed up so many areas of sexuality, should we undermine, should we not live up to our greatest potential?

That’s what I would say to your brother and to his partner as well. I would say that they both have potential that’s far beyond what they’ve experienced. So in a way, under damage control circumstances, they’ve made the best with what they have. But there’s the best under certain circumstances, and then there’s better. That’s generally my view on the topic. So I appreciate the call and I hope that my comments are taken in the right spirit.

Caller: Oh, absolutely. Thank you very much.

Jacobson: Okay, we’ll go to AJ on the line.

Caller: Good evening. I must compliment you on your very intelligent way of handling this very sensitive subject. But people have to understand that religion is not a moving target; it’s not something that’s supposed to be convenient for everyone regardless of what they might happen to choose. The Ten Commandments were specific and there has to be some sort of specificness in religion, otherwise it’s not going to be religion.

For instance, sado-masochism and masochism is hardly something that we would want to condone, and yet it takes on some very sexual aspects to it time and again, and something like that has to be dealt with and tried to be removed. So, people have to understand that if you’re going to say a thing as a religion, and there are objective truths, you have to come to some point where everything is not just a convenience thing, it’s got to be objective some time or another.

Jacobson: Very well articulated and I really appreciate it. You’ve hit the nail on the head. I do agree—because it’s either anarchy or some type of objective higher truth, and particularly when it comes to sexuality, which we are so subjective in, we can’t really be trusted with our own feelings because it’s just too powerful. I mean, which person has not been consumed at some moment with some sexual passion? We know how distorted and how far we can fall when we’re consumed in that way.

So I appreciate your call. Any other thoughts?

Caller: Well, I’d just like to mention that there are, in the animal fields, animals that marry for life, like the lone wolf. There’s a marriage and that’s it. If one of the partners dies, that’s not just with the wolf…

Jacobson: I think the dove as well.

Caller: He’s a lone wolf for the rest of his life. They choose partners and that’s it.

Jacobson: Is that why they’re called lone wolves?

Caller: Yes. Well the one that didn’t die. That one becomes the lone wolf. Never remarries.

Jacobson: That’s very romantic. Okay, thank you for your call, AJ. We have David on the line.

Caller: Hello, Rabbi. Thank you for taking my call. I wanted to ask your thoughts on something. It seems to me that a lot of the commandments in the Bible, or most of them, make sense in a social way, very obviously, such as the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, and so on. If you break those commandments, it’s very clear that you’re harming other people and harming society. And the thing that I’ve tried to figure out, and I hope you can talk about this, is the restriction against homosexuality. In what sense would you be harming society if you broke that rule?

Jacobson: Okay, thank you David for the call. You’re touching upon the issue itself which I hope I’ve addressed somewhat. What’s key to point out here is, the perspective that I’d like to present, is not just about damaging society, it’s about damaging oneself. When we speak about a G-d that created the system, let me just make a comparison. You buy a computer. You come home with a new computer and there’s a computer manual that tells you how to use it. Someone will say, well, I don’t want to follow the manual, I’ll just use it any way I wish—at the risk of destroying their computer, erasing their hard drive.

So the engineer of the machine has given you a blueprint, a manual, how to use that machine most effectively. Once you’ve mastered that, the sky’s the limit. You can use the machine, perhaps even discover things that the engineer himself didn’t put into that machine, once you follow those guidelines.

If that’s the case with a machine like a computer, how much more so with an organism called life, existence itself. Particularly the complex individuals that we human beings are, and part and parcel of that is our sexual personalities, which perhaps, within the human system is the most complex of the complex. As we see, it continues to mystify us, it continues to be misunderstood, it continues to be the secret to life itself, the secret to intimacy, the secret to love and nurturing. So the belief is that the Torah is the operator’s manual for life. It is your guidebook, your operator’s manual how to live your life in the best way possible.

When a person does not follow an element in the Torah, it’s not just a crime against society, it’s a crime against yourself. It’s like when you put your hand in fire and your hand gets burned, no one is going to suggest that the fire is getting even with you or that there’s some conspiracy—it’s the natural cause and effect of our system. That certain things help that system grow and certain things damage the system. When it comes to sexuality, that’s the case.

It’s hard for us to accept because we’d like to sometimes just follow our own hearts and just live the way we’d like to live, but essentially, that leads toward anarchy.

Now I’m not getting into an argument which way you want to choose your life, everyone has his or her choice to make and that’s between you and G-d, but I will say that there is a strong argument to make that we have a soul, and sexuality is one of the most powerful tools of how to access your own soul. It’s not just about how to have children and it’s not just about procreating and it’s not just about nurturing or pleasure, and having an intimate partner in your life and having the type of comfort that sexuality brings, it’s about accessing your soul, of reaching the most deepest, intimate resources of your personality.

When sexuality is healthy, it spills over and affects your entire life. You become more creative, you become more upbeat. You’re a happier person. It affects your work. It affects your relationship with other people and friends.

Unhealthy sexuality, rest assured, is always connected to isolation. It becomes compartmentalized. It may be pleasurable for the moment, but it does not spill over into the other areas of your life in a healthy way. It may spill over, but more as an obsession that destroys or compromises part of your life.

Healthy sexuality is all encompassing. It becomes something that is seamless, part of your entire life. Because the intimacy that it reveals, that opens up, opens you up on many levels. So there is a manual, and the operator’s manual called the Torah tells us what is healthy sexuality and what is unhealthy sexuality.

That doesn’t mean that unhealthy sexuality isn’t powerful and completely unhealthy. It means that it could have a healthy kernel, but it could be packaged in distorted ways.

I mean, I don’t even know if there is such a thing as healthy sexuality in the world that we live in today. But we’re all aspiring to reach that health. The thing that disturbed me most about the Reform ruling was, without getting into who’s an authority, but the ruling itself, I mean, what are they tampering with here? If we believe in a G-d, that G-d gave us rules of how sexuality is to be lived up to, I mean, shouldn’t we be asking G-d what G-d says about sexuality, not any group of rabbis? This isn’t a consensus issue. It’s not an issue of new medical breakthroughs. It’s an issue of what is the healthiest way you can be and way you can live to your greatest potential. Unfortunately, many of us have succumbed to a certain resignation of “let’s make the best with what we have.” We live in a dysfunctional society, with dysfunctional families, so we make do with the best of what we have.

The Torah says unequivocally no. You can live a meaningful life and live up to your highest potential, and why should you undermine that? Why should you in any way undercut your greatest abilities?

That’s what this is about. So this is much more than just an issue of homosexuality, of the limitations… Some will argue the issues of homophobia of our society. It may be true that people are very homophobic. But even if people are homophobic, it doesn’t mean that homosexuality is the best way to be a sexual human being. You know, it could be that we’re all limited, and this maybe is an opportunity to finally get to the root of seeing ourselves as divine human beings, and seeing sexuality as an inherent component in human growth and in the capacity of a human being to reach the greatest heights.

So in answer to the question that was just asked to me, I would say that this isn’t just about harming society necessarily. While I believe that if you harm yourself you also harm society, this is about harming yourself, it’s about living up to your greatest potential and then ultimately, I think that they’re interwoven.

Why do we mobilize the police force and the fire department when someone wants to jump off a bridge? You could say, suicide is between him and G-d. He’s not harming anyone. Let’s talk about the suicide of a loner, of an individual who doesn’t have a family. But society has determined that if you allow someone to commit suicide it’s a crime against the entire society, it’s the standard of life. Sometimes we have to protect people from themselves, from their own self-destructiveness.

Now this is a touchy area. I’m not suggesting there should be legislation in every private area of a person’s life. Our goal here is to find, as individuals, as a grassroots community, to live up to our greatest potential and to do everything possible to achieve that.

So let me go back to the original question on this show and that was the letter that was sent to me. What should be the attitude of a Torah-observant Jew to his brother who’s announced to his family that he’s gay.

My response is very direct. He is your brother and you have to love him unequivocally and unconditionally. He should be invited to a seder, he should be invited to the shul, the synagogue, and should be treated like a human being. He is a human being, he’s not an animal. Regardless of his choices. And he should be treated with that type of love. We should not allow ourselves to succumb to human repulsion.

At the same time, if you truly love someone, you want them to be the best they can be, to live up to the greatest potential they have. And I think as a brother (I’m speaking to the writer of that letter) you should do everything possible to encourage him to explore his sexuality, to explore what intimacy really means from a divine, Torah perspective. There’s much to be said about the exploration of our inner souls. Understanding the depth of your soul helps you understand the depths of your sexuality.

A person may have strong homosexual leanings and wants to choose that lifestyle, but there are ways to address that in an intelligent manner. Obviously, your brother may be very emotional and subjective about it; he may not be open or responsive to anything. I still would not give up on him. He’s your brother and you have to do everything possible. Encourage him to come to a class. I would suggest the reading of this book that I mentioned by Dr. Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth.

I ultimately believe in the integrity and the honesty and sincerity of people. Even subjective human beings. Each of us has the ability to rise above our subjectivity, which is critical when addressing a topic like this, because you can be doing the greatest disservice to yourself, particularly in your sexual life, if you just allow yourself to be consumed by the immediate passions, the immediate view or the immediate condoning of — that’s based on politics.

How would you like to find out one day that your sexual life could have been so much more profound, so much more intimate, and so much healthier, but simply the politicization of gay politics in some way has undermined that. And I think it’s very important to realize that we don’t want to build systems based on individual passions, individual distortions and sexual preferences, because particularly in the area of sexuality, a society without rules around sexuality—and when I say rules, I don’t mean superimposed rules, I mean divine rules, divine channels with which to express it—will be a society that destroys itself.

Let’s just take a moment for a station ID. This is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. We’re on every Sunday from 6-7pm at 1050AM. You can contact me at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com or at our website: www.meaningfullife.com or by mail at Meaningful Life Center, Suite 303, 788 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11213.

I’d like to also invite you to my weekly Wednesday night class in Manhattan which is an in-depth discussion of topics like you hear here on the radio. It’s at 8:00pm, 346 West 89th St., corner of Riverside Drive. All are welcome. No matter what persuasion, what background, male or female. Please, point yourselves out to me. I’d love to meet any of you who come to the class.

Finally, I’d like to say that since we are in the 49 days between Passover and Shavuos, there’s a book called The Spiritual Guide to the Counting of the Omer. You can obtain it by calling us at 1-800-3MEANING (1-800-363-2646) as well as by email at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com.

I would also like to thank the sponsors of this particular show and namely Ivan Stux and James Garfinkel and many of the other supporters who have always been helping us to bring shows like this on the air. I hope to be able to bring more frank, candid topics like this one that we can all talk about in a very humane way, in a loving way, but at the same time without compromising our standards. I do believe the Torah offers a blueprint for life, a blueprint that becomes a standard that makes us better than we think we can be, better than we expect of ourselves, and there’s nothing greater than to be able to hear from someone, whether a mentor or a parent or a system that says to you, as good as you think you can be, here’s something that can make you even better. I expect more of you.

And I think this controversy and this topic about homosexuality, as any topic, is really a catalyst and an opportunity to address our own intimate sexual lives in a deeper way. Whenever there’s a challenge, it forces us to dig deeper into our treasures, into our resources and see what we come up with. So for me, I embrace this dialogue on whatever level it may be. Obviously we’re looking to experience it in a way that’s humane and also one that we communicate instead of one driven by politics or personal gain.

So you’ve been listening to Simon Jacobson with Toward a Meaningful Life and please listen again next week, 1050AM, 6-7pm every Sunday. Thank you and good night.

Tags: radio transcript, homosexuality
Posted in Social, Sexuality | 10 Comments »

Two Halves of a Soul

August 3rd, 2014

The following is a freely translated excerpt from a talk the Rebbe gave to women’s gathering on Iyar 25, 5744 (May 27, 1984):

The Torah assigns different roles to men and women. Obviously, this does not imply the superiority or inferiority of either sex, only that, in addition to their common mission in life, each has its unique function and role in creation. This can be compared to the human body, which is comprised of various limbs and organs: on the one hand, there are the needs and features that are common to each of the body’s cells; on the other hand, each organ and limb has its distinct needs and features that derive of its specific role within the greater function of the body.

Thus, there are mitzvot–such as the mitzvah to “Love your fellow as yourself”[1] or “To know that there exists a First Existence, who brings every existence into being”[2] –that apply equally to both sexes, as the blood that circulates throughout the body providing nourishment to each of its diverse organs and limbs. But there are also mitzvot that have been commanded only to men, as well as mitzvot that have been delegated specifically to women, in keeping with their specific divinely-ordained roles.

However, G-d is the ultimate perfection, and He has imbued of His perfection in the Torah and mitzvot—the avenue of our relationship with Him. So although there are mitzvot that have been commanded only to men, this does not preclude women from attaining the full spectrum of perfection that is realized by the fulfillment of all the divine commandments of the Torah.

In the words of the Holy Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria: “When the male does the mitzvah [that is commanded specifically to men], there is no need for the woman to do it on her own, since she is included in his performance of the mitzvah… this is the deeper significance of what our sages have said,[3] ‘A person’s wife is as his own body.’”[4] As the Zohar states, man alone, or woman alone, is but “half a body.”[5]

In other words, the Torah’s exemption of the woman from certain mitzvot pertains only to her obligation to perform them. As for the attainment of the specific aspects of our relationship with G-d that is realized through these mitzvot, the woman is equal to the man, attaining them through her husband’s performance of the mitzvah.

Furthermore, also an unmarried woman enjoys the rewards generated by the “male” mitzvot, through their performance by the one who is destined to be her husband.

As the Zohar explains, man and woman, comprising the two halves of a single body, likewise share a single soul.[6] It is only that G-d desired that for a certain portion of its life on earth, the soul should be divided in two–half of it in a male body and its other half in a female body–and that each half should perform its mission in life separately, until such time that G-d unites them in marriage.

This explains the tremendous joy that accompanies a marriage, a joy that has no parallel in any other joyful occasion. For when two half-souls, separated at birth and raised in different homes, different communities, perhaps even different countries, are reunited by the power of He who “sits and matches couples,”[7]—what greater joy can there be?!

Thus, when a young man observes a mitzvah that has been commanded solely to men, the young woman in whom the other half of his soul resides shares in the fulfillment and perfection that this mitzvah achieves, although neither might be aware of the other’s existence at the time.

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber.

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Tags: sexuality, women, men, gender roles, Rebbe, soulmate
Posted in Social, Women & Men | No Comments »

Why Are There So Many Negative Stereotypes of Men?

August 3rd, 2014

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Hello. Welcome to Toward a Meaningful Life with yours truly, Simon Jacobson. We’re here every Sunday from 6-7pm. Today is Father’s Day, and I don’t even know if it’s condoned in Judaism, but some would say every day is Father’s Day, every day is Mother’s Day, every day is son’s day, every day is daughter’s day, every day is secretary’s day… We have to be kind and mentschlich all year round.

 However, since it is considered to be Father’s Day, we are dedicating this show to fathers, to men, in general. The title is “Why Do Men Get Such a Bad Rap?” And do they deserve it?

Someone sent me an email that said, “Men get a bad rap because they deserve a bad rap.” So we’ll discuss that. There’s an interesting convergence of events in my own personal life which is that today happens to by my father’s birthday as well. And in addition, for those of you out there who are interested in my life, my youngest brother, Yosef Yitzchok, became a father Friday night at 9pm; his wife gave birth to a son, their first child. So he’s a father for the first time.

So we have a lot of fathers around and I myself am a father as well, and a son.

So I was asked my brother earlier today, “What was your first immediate reaction to becoming a father? What was the initial emotion?”

And he answered, “Gratitude.” It’s an interesting reaction. Gratitude to G-d I assume, and for the awesome ability to bring a new life into this world. I thought that would be a good way to segue into this show because my follow-up question to him was, “So are you prepared to be a father?”

And of course the answer to that—I didn’t even have to wait for an answer—is that no one is prepared to be a father because there are no training courses to become fathers. There are Lamaze courses in how to give birth and the technical ways to support your wife when she’s in labor and giving birth, but to be a father, none of us are prepared, because until you don’t do it, you just aren’t one.

It’s one of those things that you only achieve by experience, and even experience doesn’t help you, because once you’ve experienced being a father, in a way, it’s too late for your kid. I think that’s an important message and an important way to begin so I would like to open up the phones to fathers and sons out there. I would really like to hear from anyone who has an interesting experience as a son or as a father. Do fathers get a bad rap? Do men get a bad rap?

There’s no one in this world who is not influenced and affected by his or her father and mother. Even though the following story is a mother story, I guess it’s equally appropriate to a father.

Three mothers are on a beach. They’re already retired, in their mid to late 80’s, and they’re sharing about the wonderful sons that each of them has.

One of them says, “My son, on my 80^th birthday, came down to Miami with his entire family. They spent a week. They really catered to me; they wined and dined me; it was really beautiful.

The second one looks at her and says, “Ach, my son took us all for a safari for a month in Africa at his expense and we had the time of our lives.”

And the third one looked at both of them with compassion and said, “You don’t know what a son is until you’ve met my son. My son goes to therapy four times a week. He’s a high-powered attorney in New York so he pays top dollar for this therapy, and all he talks about is one thing. Me. That’s a son.”

The interesting thing, being a son and a father myself, is that it seems easier to be a son than a father, because you don’t have to do anything as a son, frankly—even though we have the mitzvah, the commandment, to honor our parents, which is of course one of the hardest ones to do, but in a way our parents unconditionally love us.

The interesting thing is, our children also unconditionally love us. But being a parent you’re already an adult, and therefore you’re accountable and you’re responsible.

So when we talk about a father and a son, it’s a deep type of relationship. I was reading some articles about some people’s experience with their fathers. Obviously some of us have had very terrible experiences, and therefore, Father’s Day is not necessarily a day for those people to celebrate because they had miserable or abusive fathers, and I definitely want to acknowledge that. It’s not all “hunky-dory” and party time.

But yet, our fathers have had an important impact on each of us, like a foundation. Especially in the hectic times that we live in, you find that many more women are career women, so fathers are, so to speak, reclaiming their position at home, their parenting. Is it true that women are more nurturing and more appropriate parents and the fathers are more detached, like we usually hear?

On a personal note, I love my father, there’s no question about it. My father’s a journalist so my most prominent memory of him is the newspapers all over our home, with him sitting late at night at a typewriter. The things your father does are so magnified in your own life because as a child, your father is almost G-dlike.

In psychology some people even see the father as the Divine archetype. That’s why we say, “Our Father in heaven” as a metaphor to the concept of a father. We’ll discuss a little later what exactly is the quintessential or perfect father. But my own memories of my father are magnified memories of an individual, of a looming presence in many ways—inaccessible because his own life is in his own orbit. A mother is usually more nurturing and more available on a day to day basis, at least in my situation it was such.

But as it is with all foundations, foundations in life are usually invisible. They’re under the ground. And lately, and this is very encouraging, when we hear people talking about their lives, we’re recognizing more and more how parents have an impact on our lives, and our course, the father element as well as the mother element have a very deep impact on who we are and whom we are expected to be.

When you read the story about Mozart, I’ll never forget how his father’s image was always haunting him, that he’d never do enough, never live up to his father’s expectations.

So we all have elements of that and it really defines for us our own masculinity and being who we are.

Another thing I often ask people is, “Are men truly more insensitive than women?”

That’s another stereotype but the question is, is it really a stereotype? Are men truly more insensitive than women? Women are given that role of sensitivity, motherly, nurturing, warmer. Men are more the aggressors, warriors, the hunters. And more importantly, are the roles that we’ve traditionally identified as male or female actually inherent or are they genetic or socially oriented and really acquired? That’s another good question. In other words, who are we on our own and who are we as opposed to what society and our communities have imposed upon us.

And finally, one person wrote to me a good line, “Are there any virtues in being male?” With all this talk about men being insensitive and the rap they’re getting, are there any virtues in being male?

I’d like to believe there are, simply for narcissistic reasons, however, it’s definitely a question that I also want to address.

I have a friend who lost his father when he was a teenager, sadly, and I speak to him a lot about it. Sometimes you need the eclipse of the sun to really appreciate sunlight. This loss had a major impact on his life. I could even say that a certain insecurity settles in, because in losing his father, he lost that undaunting pillar in his life, the person whom you know you can always turn to and just know that he’s there.

So if a person loses his father, often that’s when you begin to appreciate this pillar.

Now many sometimes cover up with bravado, but there’s no question that there’s an impact. And of course the worse scenario is a living dead father, meaning, someone who is not deceased on a biological level, but on a psychological and emotional level he’s worse than deceased because he’s there and he’s not there. And that’s basically an absentee father or someone who’s been abusive, whose son can’t even reach to him and is longing to reach because it’s such an important thing in our lives to have someone who you can talk to in that way.

Even as I speak, I’m thinking about my own fathering of my children. Someone wrote me an email this week knowing that I was going to be talking about this show, and cited something from pop culture, a “pop” song from Harry Chapin, “The Cat and the Cradle and the Silver Spoon.” And he explained the lyrics of the song, that the child waits every day for his father to come home to play ball with him, spend time with him but his father never has time. But he says, “We’ll soon get together again, son.”

And then when the son gets older, the son is always aspiring to be just like his father. At the end of the story he becomes exactly like his father, so when his father calls on him, as an older gentleman, he’s unavailable as well.

And the person who wrote me this email asked, unfortunately, is there a father today who is not that way? Is there someone out there who has really utilized the time and given his child quality time, and realized that fathering children, being a father, is a full-time job and as important if not more important than a career, because it shapes the future forever and ever. It may be the most significant thing a father can do—and I say this to my brother, because he’s beginning to be a father. Don’t learn from me and from our father. Be a better father!

In retrospect, when we think about it nostalgically, everyone would agree that theoretically we should spend much more time with our children. But in reality, you don’t really find fathers doing so, and the question is, can that be reversed?

I just realized something. Maybe the reason I’m not getting some calls is probably that all the great fathers and sons are spending time with each other instead of listening to this show. You know, they say that the only one there’s no hope for is an orator and a writer. Everyone has hope. But when it comes to a writer or a speaker, and I guess that radio show host goes into the same category, there’s no hope. No hope for teshuvah, no hope for regret. You know why? Because every time they hear something inspiring, they think to themselves, “Ah, great material for my next speech, my next show, my next book.” Instead of applying it to yourself personally.

Now, Adam and Eve had no father and no mother. Yet on a somewhat humorous note, I once asked the question at one of my classes, do you think that Adam had a navel, a belly button? We know that a navel comes from, of course, the umbilical cord that’s attached from the mother to the fetus, feeding it through its embryonic stage and pregnancy.

So since Adam was never in any normal pregnancy—he was created by G-d—did he have a navel?

The interesting thing is, the Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, says that there’s a concept called tabur of Adam Kadmon. For the listeners who may not know what that means, it means the navel of the primordial man. On a Kabbalistic, mystical level, it’s a metaphor, a dimension called the navel, which would imply that Adam also had one.

So the interesting thing is, whom was he attached to? He did not have biological parents. Yet, when you think about it, he did have a source. He too was created. And perhaps that’s where we begin to identify with G-d as father or mother, because you do find both references to G-d—sometimes father sometimes mother—even though it is predominantly father. (You do find G-d as shepherd, you find G-d as provider; there are many different metaphors or ways G-d is described.)

But clearly we see that Adam, too, needed to have a sense that he came from something before him, and perhaps that’s the essence of what a parent is about, that we’re not just self-made creatures.

Even realizing the contribution of our parents, most of us think we’re self-made. It’s not that our parents created us—I’ve talked about this on the show many times—it’s G-d that gives us life. Yet there is an element of knowing that life came to you and didn’t just fall out of heaven but that there are parents who provide, who are given the gift of being able to nurture and cultivate and educate us. It’s really a message and a lesson of perpetuity. It’s a feeling of being connected to the past, and as someone once put it (I don’t know what the source is) a good parent provides deep roots and broad wide wings.

I’ll take it a step further, that trees which have deep roots grow taller and bear greater fruit. So the interesting paradox is that it is through our roots, through our connection to the past, that gives us the ability to forge ahead into the future.

Of course, any time a child is dependent upon a parent, there’s always the risk of that parent being abusive or in some way hurting the child. If anything identifies or captures what a child is all about, it’s vulnerability, the epitome of innocence, the epitome of purity. My brother was telling me that when he saw his child, he saw the innocence, that moment of truth that something’s greater than you and I and all the vanity and pettiness of life. A child is completely innocent.

In a way, when we look a child, we’re really looking at ourselves in the purest form. So parents are given this gift, and what do we do with it is the big question.

Well, most of us forget after a while, because we go back to our work, so while that miracle of birth was great for the moment—and it’s great to write about and it’s great to remember perhaps on our birthdays—but on an ongoing basis, that foundation, the roots, become imbedded, they become submerged.

I remember recently Robert Bly came out very strongly with this “Iron John”—men bonding with their own masculinity, reconnecting to their own raw warrior that a man is. So he wrote, I believe, a book called Iron John. Anyway, I read an interesting article by someone who had taken one of these Iron John retreats. You pay $1500 to grunt, perspire, wear leopard skins, animals skins, and just bond with other men. And they went to this $1500 seminar, and when one of the executives came back to work on Monday he said, “I had this great weekend. We were grunting, we were perspiring, we were getting in touch with the man inside each of us.” And there was a construction worker there, one of the employees, a real blue collar type of guy, who in broken English said to him, “If you want to perspire, come with me and work with us one day. Why do you have to go to this weekend and pay $1500?”

So the executive said, “No, I don’t have time to do that every day. On weekends, I can designate a specific time, I can choose when I want to perspire.”

And this construction worker said to this chief executive, “perspiring when you wanna perspire, ain’t perspiring at all.” In other words, if you do it when you want to do it, that’s not perspiring. That’s called planned, premeditated exertion, which is not really exertion.

What struck me about that was his natural reaction that sometimes we don’t need to contrive or create a whole stage of how to become masculine, it just means being secure with your own position and working hard at it.

And that brings me to the roles of men and women. Is it true that a mother is just a more natural parent and a better parent? Or can a father be just as good a parent? I’d love to hear from the listeners your thoughts on this.

Okay. We have Victoria on the air.

Caller: I think men are trying really hard.

Jacobson: I thought you were about to say, “Men are jerks.”

Caller: No, no, quite the contrary. I’m not a parent but I have a good example—a friend of mine who’s in his 40’s. He became a father for the first time a few years ago and is a very active parent. His wife works in New Jersey, and since they live in Manhattan and he works in Manhattan, he’s the one who winds up taking the baby to the doctor a lot of the time. If the babysitter has to leave early, he brings the baby to the office.

He is a very active parent. There’s a new magazine actually that’s coming out called “Dads,” which I think is reflective of men wanting to know more about how to be good parents. I think it’s still a very white-collar phenomenon. I think men who work in offices can bring their work home, they can work from laptops and they can balance it a lot easier.

You were talking about construction workers. My father was a construction worker for many years, so it was very difficult for him to be an active parent with us. He’d come home and quite frankly he was exhausted and we had to leave him alone!

Our mother’s instructions to us were, “Let Daddy take a shower and relax for a while,” because he had labored all day and couldn’t be as active. On the weekends though he was.

Jacobson: Victoria, do you think that women sometimes feed into that and allow men to be that way, or almost babysit for them? Do you think they turn them into almost this immobile parent type of person?

Caller: Sometimes. I’ll take it even a step further. I think mothers do it to their sons. You know, in some households…

Jacobson: Emasculating they call it.

Caller: No, actually the opposite. I think they put them on pedestals. So you have the boys who don’t clean up after themselves. Mom can’t stand the mess so she cleans the room. And they continue this probably in a dorm. And then when they get married, some lucky woman is picking up after them and they’ve never really learned how to take care of themselves in cohabiting with people. So a little bit of that happens.

It’s far more subliminal than it was years ago, but I think there’s a little bit of that that still goes on.

Jacobson: Well, Victoria, thank you for your call. I appreciate it and let’s go to Neal on the line.

Caller: Hi. Well I was listening to your show and I called in to participate. One concern I have about fathers today—and I’m the father of a son, 21, and a daughter, 18—there seems to be, and I don’t think I’m saying anything that’s a revelation to a lot of people, and that’s a marginalization of men in society generally, and certainly in the lives of their children and families.

Jacobson: And you feel that way?

Caller: Yes I do.

Jacobson: Marginalization in the sense of not being treated like an equal parent, is that what you mean?

Caller: Not exactly. More of a lesser importance of their role in the family. I’m troubled a little by the phrase, “single mother.” It’s almost become a heroic title, and I wonder if we’ve turned it completely around from being, I use the word “shameful,” which may be too strong for some people, but we’re going in the right direction, to being heroic. And I think that’s a little bit of a description of what I’m talking about.

Jacobson: If someone asked you to describe the difference between a mother and a father in the perfect scenario possible, what a mother provides, what a father provides for a child, how would you…

Caller: Well that’s a hard question. It’s multi-faceted. Certainly mothers are either stereotypically or truthfully nurturing figures in their children’s lives. They bring their own strengths to the growth and development of their children. I think fathers bring not necessarily opposed strength, maybe complementary in some cases.

In many cases I think it’s just a practical case of having two parents who can share thoughts and strengths and feelings. Perhaps back each other up if you will. I do think that fathers bring all of the things that are attributes of a male personality and character into the fathering.

Let’s say a child of either sex or gender is going to grow up into a world with men and women in it, why not experience that first in the home and see that men and women are different, both from a strength and weakness point of view? And why not let them experience that in the safe harbor of the home, because when they do go out into the world, they’re going to go out into the world of men and of women.

Jacobson: I was reading in an article this past week that because of the increased rate of women working and in careers that there are many men who have begun to really bond with their children at an early age. It’s not just the stereotypical or traditional role as you put it that the mother is the one who cradles the child in the first few years, but that fathers have begun to really take a position, even on a physical level—feeding the child or holding or cradling the child, and in a sense creating a bonding at an early age.

Caller: I think there’s a couple of problems and a couple of fallacies with that. First of all, one of my thoughts about feminism is that we’ve bought into the belief that men and women are interchangeable. That one is equal to the other. Certainly in the work force and therefore in the home. I don’t believe that. I think that they bring different strengths and weaknesses to the family and to each other in various relationships.

So I don’t think you just plug in the father with the mother and say, “It’s the same thing.” That may be why you don’t see as many men at the playground with their children as you do see women. They may take the children and do other things; they may just not be as involved in that way. And yes, it’s great that fathers are bonding with their children, but let’s not talk about it as some peculiarity: they should be bonding with their children and they ought to be part of their children’s lives. Let’s not put it under glass in a museum.

Jacobson: No, I completely agree. Well said. It’s very good that you’re putting it that way. So, do you think men get a bad rap?

Caller: Well, men are getting a bad rap as a spin-off to the feminization and the feminist movement. Absolutely. We’ve become the target of jokes these days. When you look at satires and parodies of our culture, television commercials, you would never see some of the commercials where they poke fun at men turn around and have them poke fun at women.

We’ve done an about face. Unfortunately, we’ve swung to the opposite extreme. We’re now marginalizing and spoofing men, and unfortunately we used to do that to women. So we’ve come no further. We’re just doing it in a different way.

Jacobson: But don’t you find it as a paradox that women at the same time feel that they’re second class citizens, both at the workplace and school, equal opportunities.

Caller: Yes, certainly that may still exist, but that’s the central rationale to feminism, that women were treated as second-class citizens and now it’s their turn to be first-class, but oops! We’re going to do that by making men second-class citizens and I think that’s foolish. I think you cannot in logical and rational terms take a bad situation and just turn the players around and make it a good situation. If it was bad to treat women as second-class citizens, if it was bad to put them in a position below what their worthy status was, why turn it around and now do it to men and then say that that is the way to correct it. It makes no sense to do that.

Jacobson: Okay. Thanks for your call and for your good thoughts, Neal.

I want to add a thought to what Neal said, what provoked me was, I think we live in an age of insecurity. And that insecurity is nondiscriminatory, both in men and women. In a way, men get a bad rap from various reasons and then women get a bad rap that they’re not as mentally competent or as stable or that women are too emotional… What’s happening is that everybody’s being attacked one way or another, and I don’t even know who’s doing the attacking. I don’t even think it’s just women against men and men against women. I think there’s something more going on. There’s this type of erosion of inner security, inner sense of confidence of who you are. There’s no question—and we’ve talked about this on this show many times—that people have a both a masculine and feminine personality; and men and women need both elements.

There’s nothing wrong with that and each of them contributes something. As soon as it becomes an issue of which side is going to win, as soon as it becomes a race, a marathon, then we’re already in a losing situation because we’re in it together. Children cannot be born without a man and a woman, who are partners. In the Kabbalah there’s much discussed on this topic: how Adam and Eve were not even created as two entities, they were one entity, male and female. The Bible puts it very clearly, there’s even a myth about that. People think that first Adam was created and then G-d separated Eve from him. That’s the second part of the narrative. If you look at the Bible, the first time it’s stated, it says, “G-d created the human being in G-d’s image.” What does this first human being entail? It says, “Male and female.” Androgynous.

And it’s only in the second stage that G-d split them into two, meaning that the masculine and the feminine, especially on a cosmic level, are really two forces at work. That’s why there’s a masculine dimension to the Divine and there’s a feminine dimension.

I find that there’s a lot of insecurity about who we are. It’s almost that if you want to establish your turf, you need to knock and undermine someone else’s turf.

So why do men get such a bad rap? My answer is that sometimes men deserve to get a bad rap. However, that needs to be qualified. I don’t know if there’s a man whom I can point to who’s really at fault. It’s become almost a vicious cycle where we are training ourselves and our children by repeating old habits. Both men and women are suffering from this greatly and I’d like to address some of that, how to reverse this process. But first we need to identify the issue at hand.

Many single people who are looking to get married come to talk to me, especially in New York. As people get older it gets a little more difficult because people are locked into their approach to things. We live in a highly career-driven society where income and status and many other superficial things are really much more dominant than personality, and it gets increasingly difficult to create a good, healthy match.

But I do have to say—and I say this as a man—that men are in some ways a little less flexible than women, especially as they get older. They have a certain type of babyish attitude. I think there is a certain emasculation that has happened, and I don’t mean now the brute aggressive, macho type of individual who just has the veneer of toughness, I mean that type of inner strength and certain masculine inner strength.

You now, women have their own strengths. Some even say that women are stronger than men. You find in real times of hardship it’s women who have the type of perseverance to endure. You hear the story about the women who were able to tolerate great famine and other situations, and you see great people in history, whether man or woman, who had that inner type of majesty that allowed them to be who they were.

But I think that our career-driven, highly materialistic society, has completely masked and shrouded who we truly are, both as men and as women. So we say that men get a bad rap… not because a man is in some way an inherently problematic state of being, but rather because society, in its own vicious way, has created these molds, these roles, that everyone has to fit into and they’re not necessarily who we truly are.

I mean, to say for instance that a man never cries, which you do hear. Parents tell that to children. “Men don’t cry.” Or even situations where a man may cry and then he’ll be looked at as, “Oh this person must be weak.”

Tears are one of the strongest things in our lives. Obviously there are times where it’s appropriate to cry and it’s appropriate not to cry. But it’s feeding into a stereotype that women cry. Something happens and it’s the women that begin to cry. Or other stereotypes of that nature.

And they’re not necessarily false stereotypes. They happen to have some truth to them, because you see that that’s how we’re living our lives. But is that truly what makes a man a man? That he never cries?

So to really define what it means to be a man, what it means to be a father, requires real introspection. That’s what I found about being a father. It’s not a state that you can prepare for. You can prepare for a business presentation. You can prepare yourself to run a computer. You can prepare yourself even as an athlete. But there are some things that come with experience that you can only learn with experience.

You know, with an athlete, there’s no question that when an athlete gets into the game or gets “into the zone,” it only happens when it happens. But there are months and years of training like a soldier trains many years for one battle he may fight.

But when it comes to being a parent, there’s no such thing as a parent in training, meaning there’s no camp or course that teaches you how to be a parent.

Do you know when we are parents in training? When we’re children. We’re inevitably all parents in training, just by being. Being around our parents. Being around our environment.

So you’re thrown into the situation. One of the things that I’ve learned is that the key is introspection, to look at who you are. It’s not an issue of what is expected of men in society. I hate that type of expression: what is expected of men. Who’s expecting? Who’s determined the standard?

The way to often describe an individual is not by looking at who we are in the social setting, but rather to look at the quintessential man and the quintessential woman.

I mentioned a newborn child before. You look at a newborn child and do you know why we’re drawn to the face of a beautiful newborn? Because we’re drawn to innocence. We’re drawn to our own innocence.

I know it’s summertime so it’s not really appropriate now, but do you ever remember waking up in the morning when there’s been a real snowstorm at night? You may remember this as a child or even as an adult. I know I’m still enchanted by it even today. Snow falls. And you wake up in the morning and there’s this clean, white blanket of snow that just covers everything. The garbage bags and the flowers. The streets and grime. This white blanket that covers the entire street. There’s a beauty to it.

And as a kid I remember watching and saying, “Okay, who’s going to make the first footsteps on this block?” And then you see the first footsteps and then the second footsteps. It’s still nice because the imprints are there and then you may walk out into the snow and make your first footprints.

But then an hour or two passes and rush hour begins. And what happens? A path is tread and it starts to get a little gray, and then grayer, and then finally black. And then the grime begins. It’s so painful to see in a way. Painful, of course, not as in a tragic way, but as a metaphor, because this clean, white snow is suddenly trampled upon and slowly defiled as the rest of our lives.

Children are like freshly fallen snow. And that’s the beauty to it. The reason we’re drawn to them is that in a way we know that that’s our quintessential self. Each of us has a little boy and a little girl inside us, a little father and a little mother. Because remember, it’s not just being a biological father to a child, you father yourself, you father other people as well in the way you behave as a man. And you mother people in the way your feminine energy expresses itself.

So we want to know, what does the snow look like before it was stepped upon? You know, when I became a father, I already had a father who had a father who had a father. We’ve been walking already in the snow for a long time. Is there some father, some archetypal father that we can find about whom we can say, “Ah, this is our father.”

Perhaps that’s the reason G-d is called a father. Many people have a problem with that today—you know, identifying G-d with the masculine identity with being a father. But father in heaven, Avinu shebashamayim, Avinu malkeinu, has a certain beauty to it.

You see, the reason so many of us have a problem with it is that fathers have given G-d a bad name when you call Him Father. But if fathers were great, we’d say, “How great G-d is; He’s a great father.” Or for that matter, mother.

So I think both fathers and mothers have gotten a bad rap, and therefore calling G-d a father has, so to speak, projected itself on it. But the truth is, when you look into the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, the word “father” as used is used very interestingly. (I’m speaking about fathers tonight, so I’m going to emphasize them. We’ll deal with mothers another time.)

When we talk about the building blocks of existence called the ten spheres, the esser Sephirot, these are ten emanations, or ten energies, that begin with chochmah, binah and daas (wisdom, understanding and knowledge) and then goes into love (chessed), discipline (gevurah), compassion (tiferes) endurance (netzach), humility (hod), bonding (yesod) and finally sovereignty (malchus).

But interestingly, chochmah and binah are called father and mother. Abba and ema in Aramaic.

It’s interesting that of all things, we identify two basic steps in the conceptual process as a father and as a mother. But one of the reasons that we do so is that when you look at it that way, we can in a way study, almost like in a laboratory, in a dispassionate and detached way, what is a father. So we call chochmah father and binah mother.

What is the difference between chochmah and binah? These are the first two steps in any conceptual process. In any creative process, three steps are necessary. One is the concept itself. Conceptualizing. The spark of an idea. That’s chochmah. Like the spark that just falls into your mind; like a kernel or a seed.

The second step is developing or fleshing out the idea. Embellishment. Comprehension of it. Developing it into a larger concept.

And finally daas is that final conclusion where you bond with the idea. It’s almost like you snap your fingers and say, “Aha!” You connect with it. It’s a bridge between intellect and emotions.

But I’m just going to dwell for a moment on the two called father and mother. So you see here, father is identified with a conceptualization that is concentrated in one spark, which of course encompasses everything that will be developed from this innovative idea, from this flash, however it’s not developed yet.

So when you look at it in the context of father and mother on a biological level, the father provides the seed that fertilizes the egg and it’s the mother who carries the child. In other words, the child’s development, the development of the concept, happens within the mother’s womb where the child develops physiologically, emotionally, and so on. It is the mother who gives birth to the child.

However, she cannot give birth without the union and without the fusion of the spark or you can say the male seed that united with the mother.

So father and mother are both necessary to give birth. And do you know who the children are? The children in the conceptual level are emotions, feelings. A healthy intellect yields fruit. The cognitive process is a form of gestation of pregnancy where concepts develop into implementation, and implementation is always connected to an emotional experience. So the emotions are the children of our intellect.

But within the intellect you have the father and the mother. Why am I discussing it on an esoteric level? Because I want to carry it over to ourselves as fathers and mothers. What you find there is that both father and mother are absolutely necessary. But what they contribute, and of course qualifying that each of them overlaps and there’s the father within the mother and the mother within the father, but essentially, what the father contributes is, in a sense, the concept itself.

And what the mother contributes is the development of that—not to say that one is necessarily more creative than the other, it’s just that these are two forces at work. What does it mean in our personal lives? Simply this. One of the things that you always hear from children, especially those who have been deprived of a father, is that they are lacking that type of steady firm oak tree that they can rely upon, a type of security.

That in essence is not the same as when you hear, for instance, of a mother who may spend more time than the father with the child in developing the child’s personality. What is the father contributing? The father is contributing something which is like a steadfast kernel that is the foundation of the home.

So even if the father isn’t there every moment, the child knows, “I have a father there. My father will come and get me. My father’s there as a steadfast foundation.”

A mother’s relationship with the child is much more visible and much more powerful on an ongoing basis. It’s more dynamic in that way. But I must qualify by saying that both are necessary. Fathers can learn much from mothers how to father and mothers can learn much from fathers.

But the point is not to discuss who’s going to be a better parent. We’re dealing with a situation of two partners, with each of them giving something that the other just doesn’t have in quite the same measure. And both complement each other.

You can almost say that, as the Talmud puts it, “The father may be more aggressively stronger, and therefore brings the wheat into the home, and it’s the mother who threshes the wheat and bakes bread out of it.”

So there’s a sense of someone taming the elements of the aggressive world and the other refining it into something that’s usable.

The Talmud even says that the difference between the charity of a man and the charity of a woman is that a man may give money but a woman would give food that is readily available to her.

So you find that there are two different ways of nurturing. Are men truly more insensitive than women? Not necessarily. You can say sensitivity may be a feminine energy, but men have within themselves feminine energy, and there are men who are very much in touch with their sensitivity.

And we live in a world where we do need and require two forces at work: one sublimating the elements and taming a harsh world out there, and another creating that refined, gentle sense of things.

It’s the men who can learn tenderness from a woman and it’s the women who can learn the kernel, the strong foundation, from the man.

Sometimes the relationship with a father is an invisible relationship. When I think about it on this show I definitely appreciate my father. I’m sure when I speak to him next, I’ll probably get into an engaging discussion, in a good way of course, which continues to enhance the relationship.

Those of us unfortunately who have suffered a loss and have no father, or who in a way have a father but don’t have a father at the same time—an absentee father or someone who’s even worse than that—I want to share a blessing that G-d does not deprive us of our fundamental needs. If we can’t find it one way, there’s always “bypass surgery”: you can always find it another way.

And perhaps there are times when we may need to look for another man in our lives, a mentor or a teacher, or G-d Himself, to provide that type of fatherly foundation, fatherly security that we need. I want to wish that upon us all. As I said, each of us can definitely use that.

I’d like to invite you all to our annual camping Shabbaton, which has come to be known as the Woodstock camping Shabbaton, so we will be doing one this year as well for fathers and mother and potential fathers and mothers, and for anyone—it’s not just a family-oriented event, it’s open to everybody. It will be taking place on the Delaware River this year the weekend of August 11-13. Due to the great demand, we suggest that you call us now at 1-800-363-2646 (1-800-3MEANING).

I also would like to thank those who have sponsored this show, which includes James and Georgeanne Garfinkel, James and Anne Altucher, and Robert Klein, and some of the other fathers who are our sponsors. Since we have another minute here, let me go to Helen on the line.

Caller: I’m reaching my 80^th birthday, and I lost my father in 1989 at age 89. There hasn’t been a day that has gone by that I don’t think about my father. One of the things that I wanted to tell you is that as much as my father always told me how much he loved me, he called me his million dollar daughter, I don’t remember ever saying to him, “Papa, I love you.” And that really hurts even though as I say I’m an old lady right now.

I know your father. I know of the wonderful things that he does, and I suggest, Rabbi, that you please call him up, and tell him, “Dad, I love you,” or “Papa I love you,” because it is so important. I don’t want you to reach my age and not have done that.

Jacobson: Helen, that’s a great suggestion. Thank you. I do appreciate it. And I’ll tell my father right now on the air, “I love you.” I’ll also call him afterwards. And I hope all of us as sons and daughters can tell our parents that we love them and for the parents out there, I hope you can earn the right to be loved besides being honored, and that requires sometimes that type of extra effort. Father’s Day is not just for children to buy ties for their parents, but it’s also an opportunity for parents to think about their role and what a father is and what a mother is, for that matter. It’s always a pleasure talking about a topic like this even though it has many issues. May we always truly be fathers to our children and mothers to our children.

This has been Simon Jacobson with Toward a Meaningful Life. I welcome you back next Sunday from 6-7 pm. Thank you.

Tags: men, radio transcript, fatherhood
Posted in Social, Women & Men | No Comments »

Woman Warrior: The Daughters of Tzelafchad

August 3rd, 2014

Tzelafchad was of the generation born in Egyptian slavery, liberated by the Exodus, and granted the Land of Canaan as Israel’s eternal heritage. Although that generation did not merit to take possession of the land themselves, when their children crossed the Jordan River to conquer it they did so as their fathers’ heirs. Each family received its share in the land in accordance with its apportionment among the 600,000 members of the generation of the Exodus.

Tzelafchad had five daughters but no sons. The laws of inheritance as they were initially given in the Torah, which recognized only male heirs, made no provision for his share to be claimed by his descendants. Machlah, Noah, Chaglah, Milkah and Tirtzah refused to reconcile themselves to this, and approached Moses with the petition: “Why should our father’s name be eliminated from his family, because he has no son? Grant us an estate amongst [the heirs of] our father’s brothers.”[1]

Moses presented their argument to G-d, who responded: “The daughters of Tzelafchad speak rightly. Give … their father’s estate to them.”[2] G-d then instructed Moses to include the following clause in the Torah’s laws of inheritance: If a man dies and he has no son, you shall pass his estate on to his daughter.[3]

Two Generations

The Exodus and the conquest of the Land-the two events which framed the 40 years in which we were forged as a people-represent the two primary endeavors of life. “Going out of Egypt” represents the liberation of the soul from all that confines and inhibits[4] its true self and will; “conquering and settling the Land of Canaan” represents the conquest of the material world and its development as a “home for G-d”-as an environment receptive to and expressive of the goodness and perfection of its Creator.

The generation of the Exodus succeeded in the first endeavor but failed in the second. They extricated themselves from the pagan culture and slave mentality in which they were immersed, refining their souls to the point of worthiness to receive the Truth of Truths directly from G-d at Sinai. But they spurned the task of “conquering and settling the land,” loath to abandon their spiritual hermitage in the desert in order to grapple with the materiality of the world and labor to transform “The Land of Canaan” into “The Holy Land.” So it was decreed that they would live out their lives in the desert, leaving it to their children to settle the land in their stead.

On the individual level, each of us faces these two tasks throughout our lives: the endeavor to liberate and actualize our soul’s spiritual potential, and the challenge to make our material life and environment a holy and G-dly place. We each must struggle to make the transition from a childhood and youth devoted to self-development and self perfection to a life of productive involvement with the outside world.

A Different Conquest

But people are different from one another. In the words of the Talmud, “Just as their faces are different, so are their characters different.”[5] There are bold characters and meek characters, aggressive natures and passive dispositions. There are those of us who revel in a challenge, and those who are all but devoid of the warrior instinct and the zeal for confrontation.

Therein lies the deeper significance of the laws of inheritance as commanded by G-d in response to the petition by the daughters of Tzelafchad. “If a man … has no son” – if a person ascertains in his or her self a lack of “male” aggressiveness and combativeness  -he might deduce from this that he has no role to play in the “conquest of the land.” Such a person might be inclined to devote all his energies to the refinement of his inner self, and leave the task of sanctifying an unholy world to those with “sons.”

Says the Torah: conquering and settling the land is not an exclusively male endeavor. Each of Israel’s souls has a “portion in the land” – a corner of the material world it is empowered to possess, civilize and sanctify. Indeed, this is a task which often calls for aggressiveness and confrontation; but there is also a “feminine” way to transform the materiality of our lives into a “Holy Land.”

“If a man … has no son, you shall pass his estate on to his daughter.” The very fact that a person is by nature disinclined toward the aggressiveness of the “male warrior” indicates that he has been granted the capacity to transform his surroundings via his “daughter” – by employing the passive, compassionate, non-confrontational side of his soul.

This is the law of life revealed by the daughters of Tzelafchad: Not all conquests are achieved by overpowering one’s adversary. At times, receptiveness and empathy are far more effective in overcoming the hostility of the “enemy” and transforming its very nature. The absence of a “male heir” in the soul may in fact indicate the presence of a “feminine” self no less capable of claiming the soul’s portion in the world and transforming it into a “home for G-d.”

Based on the Rebbe’s talks on Tammuz 13, 5715 (July 3, 1955) and on other occasions.

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber

_____________________

Tags: Jewish law, gender roles, Moses
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Biblical, Torah Personalities, Bamidbar, Social, Women & Men, Torah, Pinchas | 2 Comments »

Women & Men – Different But Equal?

August 3rd, 2014

After thousands of years of male dominance, we now stand at the beginning of the feminine era, when women will rise to their appropriate prominence, and the entire world will recognize the harmony between man and woman.  — Excerpt from Toward a Meaningful Life

Contemporary society is just beginning to delve into the true distinctions between men and women. Besides the obvious physiological differences, there are also differences in the way men and women think, speak, and behave.

In order to understand the essential nature of man and woman, we must do away with human subjectivity and look through G-d’s eyes. Every human being, man and woman, was created for the same purpose — to fuse body and soul in order to make themselves and their world a better and holier place. In their service of G-d, there is absolutely no difference between a man and a woman; the only difference is in the way that service manifests itself.

What are the differences between men and women?

Man and woman represent two forms of divine energy; they are the male and female elements of a single soul.

G-d is neither masculine nor feminine, but has two forms of emanation: the masculine form, which is more aggressive, and the feminine form, which is more subtle. For a human being to lead a total life, he or she must have both forms of energy: the power of strength and the power of subtlety; the power of giving and the power of receiving. Ideally, these energies are merged seamlessly.

Men are physically stronger. By nature, they are usually more aggressive and externally oriented. In contrast, a woman usually embodies the ideal of inner dignity. Some people confuse such subtlety with weakness; in truth, it is stronger than the most aggressive physical force imaginable. True human dignity does not shout; it is a strong, steady voice that speaks from within. The nature of a woman, while subtle, is not weak. And the nature of a man, while aggressive, is not brutish. For man and woman to be complete, they must each possess both energies.

The answer is not for men and women to try to be alike. All men and women must be themselves, realizing that G-d has given each of us unique abilities with which to pursue our goals, and that our primary responsibility is to take full advantage of those abilities.

What is true liberation for both sexes?

Though feminism rightfully calls for the end of male domination and abuse, and for equal rights for women, it is vital to get to the root of the distortion — that our focus in life, as man or woman, must not be simply to satisfy our own ego or needs, but to serve G-d. True women’s liberation does not mean merely seeking equality within a masculine world, but liberating the divine feminine aspects of a woman’s personality and using them for the benefit of humankind.

After so many years of male dominance, we are standing at the threshold of a true feminine era. It is time now for the woman to rise to her true prominence, when the subtle power of the feminine energy is truly allowed to nourish the overt power of the masculine energy. We have already proven that we can use our strength to slay the demons around us; let us now learn to nurture the G-dliness within.

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Tags: women, men, gender roles, Toward a Meaningful Life
Posted in Excerpts From Toward a Meaningful Life, Social, Women & Men, The Book: Toward a Meaningful Life | 162 Comments »

Women’s Work

August 3rd, 2014

In the forty-four years of his leadership, the Rebbe delivered thousands of talks, totaling tens of thousands of hours. One might therefore think that much of his teachings still awaits publication. In actuality, the very opposite is true: over the years, virtually every word that passed his lips has been meticulously recorded by his disciples. In addition, hundreds of talks have been edited, annotated, translated and adapted in a great variety of publications and other media. In all, more than two hundred volumes of his talks have been published to date. Thus, a hitherto unpublished talk of the Rebbe’s is a rare find. One such treasure was recently discovered in the Rebbe’s library.

In the summer of 1953, a group of six Worcester women made the seven-hour (in those pre-interstate days) trip to New York to meet with the Rebbe. The Rebbe received them in his study, and addressed them briefly about women’s work. One of the participants was a nurse, and this most likely prompted the Rebbe’s use of her profession as an analogy and demonstration of the idea he conveyed to them in his talk.

The Rebbe spoke in Yiddish, but he asked Mrs. Rochele Fogelman, who headed the group, to make an English transcript of his remarks. Mrs. Fogelman did so, and sent her only copy of the transcript to the Rebbe. Nearly forty-three years later, the transcript was discovered in the Rebbe’s library. The Rebbe had added the month and year “Tammuz 5713” (June-July 1953) at the top of the page, and the words “transcript of talk to the women from Worcester,” but had otherwise made no notes or corrections. What follows is a lightly-edited version of this transcript.

The Torah places much emphasis on the responsibility of one Jew for the spiritual welfare of his or her fellows. A Jew is charged to foster in his fellow Jews a closeness to Torah, and to impart to them a love for yiddishkeit so that they should eagerly and cheerfully abide by its precepts and practices.

While this task is incumbent upon both men and women, it is the woman who possesses the greater capacity—and thus carries the greater share of the responsibility—to achieve it. Generally speaking, there are two methods that might be employed when seeking to influence human behavior: stern rebuke, or gentle, kindly words. The way of Torah is the way of shalom, peace, and kiruv, drawing close; G-d is good, and it is His desire that those who do His work apply themselves with kindness and love. Because the woman has been blessed with an innately tender and sympathetic nature, her character is akin to and expressive of the Torah ideal of compassionate kiruv; thus, she possesses a greater capacity to influence her fellow Jews to perfect their behavior in accordance with the way of Torah.

The human being possesses both a body and a soul. The Jew sees the body and the soul as interrelated, indeed bound together. Thus, by examining the way things are regarding a physical phenomenon, we gain insight into its spiritual counterpart.

When a person is ill, he consults a doctor. The doctor, who understands the physical workings of the body, diagnoses the nature of the illness and prescribes treatment. If the case warrants, hospital care is recommended. But the organization of the hospital is such that, whereas the doctor prescribes the treatment, the nurse is the one who usually administers it. Regarding this, it may be noted that nursing is predominantly a woman’s profession—a fact readily discernible in hospitals, where, with only rare exceptions, the nurses are women. This reflects the fact that women are inherently suited to nursing. With their natural tenderness and patience, they can sweeten a bitter-tasting medicine and make a most difficult medical procedure more tolerable.

The same is true regarding the care of the soul. If a Jew suffers from a deficiency in his spiritual health, it becomes necessary to treat him so that he may be cured.  To procure a remedy for his spiritual ills, one must consult the authority that, like the doctor who is the expert for the body’s needs, knows and understands the needs of the soul. For the Jew, these needs are embodied by the Torah and its mitzvot. But the expert who diagnoses and prescribes the treatment is not necessarily the one who is best suited to administer it. Thus we come to the role of the spiritual “nurse”—an individual with the compassion, sensitivity and patience that the task requires.

As is the case regarding physical medicine, the woman has been blessed with a character that makes her optimally suited to serve as a spiritual “nurse”—one who draws one’s fellow Jews closer to Torah with kindness, benevolence, gentleness and love. A woman’s strength is such that she can prevail upon others to fulfill the mitzvot—including those mitzvot that might, on the surface, seem difficult or “bitter-tasting”— with willing acceptance and joy.

A woman’s first responsibility is to the spiritual care of her family. But, as the Baal Shem Tov would say, all Jews are brothers and sisters. Thus, her “nursing” efforts should extend beyond the confines of her immediate family to encompass any and all of her fellow Jews.

May you and your families have a healthy, happy summer. May you have happy Jewish, Chassidic homes, such that they may stand out as an example thereof.  Turn Worcester into a Chassidic city, so that from Chicago to Philadelphia to Pittsburgh all will have heard of, and point to, Worcester as an example of a Chassidic city.

May you realize much nachas from your children: Jewish nachas, nachas that you readily perceive and enjoy.

Please extend my regards to your husbands.

Tags: women, gender roles, Rebbe, spiritual vessels, Worcester
Posted in Social, Women & Men | 1 Comment »

Devarim: When Will We Stop Crying?

July 30th, 2014

Tags: Jerusalem, war, Gaza, redemption, Beis Hamikdash
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Devarim, Israel, Personal Life, Social, Devarim, Torah, Pain & Suffering, Current Events | No Comments »

The World is a Ball: Spirituality in Soccer

July 29th, 2014

Move swiftly, and never underestimate the power of your lower limbs

Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760), founder of the Chasidic movement, famously taught that “from everything a that a person sees or hears about, he or she should derive a lesson in their service of the Creator.”

Hundreds of millions of people, in practically every country and community in the world, follow the World Cup games. That’s a lot of seeing and hearing. So if we’re to take a cue  from the great Chasidic master, in addition to the games’ entertainment and therapeutic utilities, there is some significant lesson-taking to be gleaned as well from the hidden spirituality in soccer.

In an talk he gave in April of 1980, the Rebbe cited the above teaching by the Baal Shem Tov, and proceeded to explain how the game of “football” (as soccer is called outside of the of the United States) can serve as a model and metaphor for our mission in life.

The objective of the game is to move a ball into a “goal” or “gate.” This would be fairly easy to achieve were it not for the fact that facing the players is an opposing team which will do everything in its power to prevent them from scoring a goal. But then again, if there were no opposing team, the full extent of the players’ skill and power would never be actualized. For such is the nature of man: our most potent potentials are awakened only by challenge and adversity.

The ball can be maneuvered with various parts of the player’s body, but the game is played primarily with the feet. The game requires much skill, but no less important is the player’s speed—much depends on whether a player can outrun his opponent and maneuver more quickly than he.

The earth is a sphere—a fact noted nearly two thousand years ago by the Jerusalem Talmud.[1] The objective of life is to move this “ball” into the shaar haMelech—the “gate of the King.”[2] By fulfilling the mitzvot of the Torah, we move the world toward the goal of its creation.

At our every step, we are challenged by a formidable “opposing team,” composed of our own negative traits and habits and a host of external foes, who obstruct our advance toward the goal and seek to move the ball in the opposite direction. But it is the perpetual presence of this opposition that provokes our deepest potentials and maximizes our achievements.
The two key factors in achieving victory are speed and use of the feet. The most skillful player will be quite ineffective if his movements are slow, plodding, and unenthusiastic. Similarly, a person’s life must be animated with alacrity and joy in order that his deeds should translate into scored goals and true impact upon the world.

The other important lesson is never to underestimate the power of the feet. To advance the ball towards its goal, we make use of the full array of our faculties, from head to foot—our minds, our capacity for feeling, our talents and our physical energy. But our most important faculty is the “feet,” which represents our capacity for action and obedience. Although it constitutes the “lowest” and least sophisticated of our faculties, it is our unequivocal commitment to the divine will and the physical action of the mitzvot that has the greatest impact upon our world, and is the most powerful force for its advancement and ultimate realization.

Tags: Rebbe, sports, purpose of life, Baal Shem Tov, your mission
Posted in Beliefs & Concepts, Free Choice, Torah | 2 Comments »

Miracles: With Ken Woodward

July 29th, 2014

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: Good evening. This is Simon Jacobson with another edition of Toward a Meaningful Life. I’m here every Sunday evening from 6-7pm on WEVD 1050AM (in the New York area). Tonight we’re having a special show on “Miracles,” with special guest, Kenneth Woodward from Newsweek Magazine. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

It’s always a pleasure to be here and receive your phone calls and your emails. The different topics and issues that we address here week after week really are a result of your comments. So I decided to do a show on miracles, which is a major experience for many people. Miracles have many meanings. So I invited a friend of mine, Kenneth Woodward, a senior writer and editor at Newsweek Magazine, who’s been the Religion Editor there for 36 years and who wrote a book called The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam.

Ken himself is Roman Catholic, but he wrote this book, which is a very fascinating work, as a study on miracles in the traditions of all these major religions. So I thought it would be a good idea to have him on the show to discuss what the role of miracles are.

Let’s get Ken on the line.

Ken Woodward: Hi Simon, thanks for having me on your show.

Jacobson:  Thank you for gracing us. I’ve been reading The Book of Miracles that you wrote and I find it quite fascinating. The thing that strikes me initially, I must say, is that you are a journalist, a journalist at a secular bastion in America called Newsweek Magazine.

Woodward: If you can call it that, but go ahead.

Jacobson:  Not you, I mean the magazine! At the same time, I see Arthur Hertzberg writes an interesting blurb for your book: “This is a book which both skeptics and believers must read. It reopens the question of miracles in a very modern way because Kenneth Woodward is both a believer and an excellent, unillusioned reporter.”

So that convergence of being a seasoned journalist who has to have that type of objective and even skeptical eye, and at the same time, researching and dealing with this entire book of miracles, I find a very interesting juxtaposition.

Did you find any type of conflict; and how did you deal with that?

Woodward: Well, you know, journalists write books because they want to write something longer and more thoughtful. Sometimes they just want to write longer sentences. Journalism, they say, is the first writing in history, but this book is really a look back. This book was a product of a great deal of reading and a great deal of research.

I do glance, we can talk about it later, at the contemporary manifestations of miracles, but I just said, look, when we’re confronted with a miracle, we’re confronted with a miracle as told to us in a story. Even if something that you considered miraculous happened to you, Simon, you’d have to make a narrative out of it in your own mind. This happened and that happened and here’s the connection, etc. And then you might tell someone about it which you would tell in a story.

So all miracles come to us in stories, and there is no way, dealing with five world religions, that you can say, “Did it really happen?” I think that’s the wrong question to ask. The question to ask is, “What’s the function of this miracle story or that miracle story or miracle stories in general within the traditions?” because a miracle for someone who is Jewish is not a miracle for someone who’s Hindu and vice versa. A miracle for someone’s who’s Buddhist is not a miracle for someone who’s Christian and vice versa.

So we understand miracles because we belong to traditions that help us to understand miracles and they even prioritize some miracles over others.

I’ve forgotten the number, and you’re going to have to remind me, but there are crossings of water umpteen times in the Hebrew bible, and each one of them is an echo of Exodus. It’s that kind of material that I’m trying to get at.

Jacobson:  That’s an interesting way of balancing the two. However, do you find that there’s a belief system which believes in an objective miracle in which all peoples of all faiths need to embrace because it was either witnessed or experienced in that type of way?

Woodward: Well, miracles don’t happen very often in people’s eyes, at least as they think of miracles: something that’s utterly unpredictable. Coincidences happen. So all of us carry a certain amount of skepticism around with us, so again, you tell the story.

To answer your question, I don’t think there are, because let’s say that you belong to one of the most secularized, skeptical ideological sub-cultures in our society: let’s say you’re an academic in the humanities—and you witness this thing—what you’re going to say to yourself is, “Well, I don’t understand it but there’ll be an explanation for it someday.”

You’ve ruled out the possibility of G-d because you don’t believe in G-d, let’s say, and therefore you simply say to yourself, “Well, you know, there are a lot of things we didn’t know in the past and we came to know them. This will be explained some other time. I just rule it out of my belief system.”

That’s what people do. That’s why it’s very difficult to get a miracle which everyone’s going to accept just because it happened.

Miracles never just happen. That’s what I came to discover after I wrote the book. They are always interpretative events.

Jacobson:  So, essentially, what you’re really doing in a way, is presenting miracles for the 21^st century, for even a skeptical, highly materialistic world. A miracle in a sense is part of the study of the human condition in human history.

Woodward: Yes, of course it is. But one of the first things I wanted to say is that miracles, in all religious traditions (I talk about the five major ones) are really very different… all the people who belong to these five traditions are living in the same world. They’re having the same experiences, but they are interpreting those experiences very differently.

That’s in general what goes on in religions.

Secondly, you’ve got to ask the question: What does it mean? I think that’s the important question, particularly when you’re dealing with the classical miracle stories of each tradition. I mean, if I were Jewish, every year I would celebrate at Passover the whole Exodus experience, and, in a very structured way, but I would hope in a very personal way, I would ask, “What does it mean?” And I think that could be applied to a lot of miracles.

When the prophet Elisha raises someone from the dead, as does the prophet Elijah, what does it mean? And how does it fit into all the miracle stories that happened before and the miracle stories that come later?

If you are Christian, I think it helps to know that when Jesus raises the dead, and this story is told by the early Christians, the early Christians who were Jewish after all, and that was their tradition, they knew the stories of Elisha and Elijah. And that’s why they saw significance in Jesus.

The same way, there are certain, if we can use the fancy word “paradigmatic” miracles in Hinduism. And these stories get repeated, but also the miracles get repeated in the great sages and spiritual masters.

Jacobson:  But Ken, let me ask you this. A miracle, essentially, and I speak from my background and my understanding…

Woodward: The only way you can, I think… That’s the best way to speak.

Jacobson:  That’s good when you acknowledge it… is that miracles are a reflection of the Divine intervention in people’s lives. So are you suggesting—we’re talking now from a religious perspective—a religious person who believes in G-d and believes that G-d created the universe and although created the laws of nature, still has the power to suspend them—so in that context it’s not just the message of the miracle, it’s also perhaps G-d, like the Bible would say, is demonstrating that “I am here and I can change the course. I don’t do it often, but I have that power.”

Let’s put it this way, even if G-d doesn’t create a miracle, He has the ability to do so at any given time.

Woodward: Well, I think if you’re going to believe in G-d, you’d better believe in a G-d who’s not handicapped. That was basically the 18^th century deists’ view, which affected Christianity and it affected Judaism to a very strong extent.

But you know, I don’t use the idea of the laws of nature, and I don’t talk much about nature. Do you know why? First of all, the Bible doesn’t for one thing and I have two whole chapters on the Hebrew Bible and then what follows, and then the New Testament, so no, and the people who wrote those didn’t think there wasn’t an autonomous realm for nature. Everything was subject to the will and the power of G-d. They didn’t make the distinctions that we do today.

Very often I find when I talk to people, when they talk about nature, they’re really talking about nature as it was understood in the 18^th or 19^th century. They’re not talking about the way it’s understood today. And if you mean nature, do you mean the way Greeks talked about it, especially Aristotle? What kind of laws are we really talking about?

So that’s why I stay away. I even resist the definition of miracles in my book, and I give all the reasons why definitions fail. But then I say, “Well, for those who like a definition, here it is. ‘A miracle is an unusual or an extraordinary event that, in principle, is perceivable by others.”

I leave out miracles that nobody saw, like Creation. Nobody saw that. That finds no reasonable explanation in ordinary human abilities…

Jacobson:  Scientists today are trying to recreate and see it, but I guess they’re not going to get too far.

Woodward: Well, what they’re doing is crawling back through the process. In any case, what I’m saying is that a miracle is an unusual or extraordinary event that is in principle perceivable by others and finds no reasonable explanation in ordinary human abilities or in other known forces that operate in the world of time and space, and that as a result of a special act of G-d (for monotheists) or the gods (Hinduism) or of human beings transformed by efforts of their own nature through asceticism and meditation (which would take in Buddhism) which does not have a creator, G-d, as you know.

Jacobson:  So let me say this then. What you’re saying parallels a thought of the Baal Shem Tov, who is the founder of the Chassidic movement in Jewish mysticism, who said that the difference between a miracle and a natural event is only in frequency, meaning, that if the sun were to rise once in our lifetimes, everyone would think that’s a miracle.

So essentially, nature is a series of miracles, of redundant or perpetual miracles. I don’t know if that’s exactly what you’re saying, but…

Woodward: Well, as you know, I have a whole section in the book on the Baal Shem Tov and Chassidism and so forth. But behind that is already a long tradition, a reflection, is there not, from the Zohar and the whole Kabbalistic tradition which has different layers and different divisions to it and so forth, but it’s an understanding of the structure of the world so that that’s possible. I find that for example—and it should be obvious to anyone who studies it—that in each of these traditions there are miracles.

Now there are a lot of people, let’s take a lot of Jews who become Buddhists in this country, because an awful lot of American Buddhists are Jewish. And they think they’re leaving miracles behind. They think they’re leaving perhaps heavens and hells behind. Well, in many of the forms of Buddhism, it’s got six or seven heavens and six or seven hells and the Buddha does work miracles, but it’s under a different system.

Well, they may say, I’ll just skip over that part of it, right? And they might want to be selective. I am saying in this book that if you are going to understand religions other than your own, as well as your own, then you’re going to have to take them in their entirety. They all have miracle stories and this book says, how do they function in there?

Jacobson:  But Ken, even if you were not to define nature, I mean, let’s say the sun rises in the morning. There are, so to speak, laws of nature, without even getting into the scientific definition. Is G-d able to create a situation where the sun won’t rise tomorrow morning? Is that in G-d’s power? As you said, G-d is not handicapped…

Woodward: Well, you know, that’s exactly the kind of stuff that I’m avoiding.

Jacobson:  I’m asking why.

Woodward: The reason I do is I don’t think it gets you anywhere, and it’s a different line of inquiry. I mean, if you want to say, “What is the picture that modern physics tells us about the world?” and I do talk about that in a brief paragraph— I say, it’s not the place or my intention to argue the existence of G-d or of gods or of miracles. Belief in miracles has never in any case been a substitute for religious faith. But it is the place, and I’m reading here, “to remind the readers that the great face-off between science and religion is a relic of 19^th century Western culture.”

You don’t find much of it in India, by the way, and I was just there two years ago. Today, many scientists are also people of religious faith, and some theologians are also scientists. No science of course can proceed in any calculation or experiment with G-d as a factor and still claim to be science.

Saints, on the other hand, may and often do, experiment with G-d, as Gandhi did with truth. He called his book Experiments with Truth. This presupposes a G-d who is neither withdrawn from His creation nor uninterested in how it turns out. Indeed, in an evolutionary world where everything is related to everything else, it is not hard to imagine a G-d, who is in a relationship with the universe.

Jacobson:  We live in a very secular world today, secular meaning we have championed the success of technology, of science…

Woodward: Well it isn’t only that. There are various kinds of secularisms, and what we have in this country, as always, are several things going on at once. You have a kind of officially secular public realm. “The culture of the public realm.” For people in New York City, it’s best manifest by the New York Times and its outlook on the world. They just don’t get it, by and large.

Jacobson:  What about Newsweek?

Woodward: Well, Newsweek isn’t. You know, there were times when they would say, “Well, we want to put this or that religious subject on the cover of Newsweek.” There were individual people who didn’t know anybody who was religious or if they were they didn’t talk about it.

That’s all changed. They can read the numbers to realize that religion covers sell consistently better than the other kind of covers.

Jacobson:  Well, you’re right. The Bible is the single greatest best seller. I think your words say it all.

Woodward: Well, there’s that. But there are a lot of covers that we do, and they end up being the first or second best selling on the newsstand every year.

So they can read those numbers, but in a funny way, and your listeners should know this, one of the reasons for this is the rise of what they call, usually pejoratively, the “religious right”—a sudden realization that there are a lot of evangelical Christians out there. These people used not to be in politics and now they are.

I would love to get, say, a liberal Jewish, New York City resident together with a Southern Baptist from the Deep South. It’s like two different planets, and yet, if we’re going to be a news magazine, I have to understand both those cultures, and that’s what I try to do.

But in any case, there are an awful lot of people out there who kept their religion submerged. I know it’s hard for some people to understand this, but they’ve made it possible for a lot of other people who were hesitant, to acknowledge their own religious convictions, to do so.

Now, take my word for it, you can go to a cocktail party and talk about religion and nobody’s going to start running for the door. It used to be you couldn’t. You could talk about sex all you wanted, but you couldn’t talk about religion. Now it’s possible to do that.

I’ve got a little Italian in me, and I go to Italy a lot. In Italy it’s a different culture. In Italy, you’re expected to talk about religion, politics, sex, and art.

Jacobson:  Those are the four. Okay, Ken, let me take a break here. (You’re listening to Simon Jacobson speaking to Kenneth Woodward, the religion editor of Newsweek Magazine for 36 years. He is also the author of Making Saints. His book, The Book of Miracles, will be featured in Reader’s Digest soon, as well as in a special on 20/20 and PBS on television. So this book is waking people up to this issue of miracles.)

(Announcement break For a free newsletter, “Miracles,” from the Simon Jacobson’s Meaningful Life Center, call us at 1-800-363-2646, email at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com, or write The Meaningful Life Center, Suite 303, 788 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11213.)

Jacobson:  Okay, we’re back. I like the interesting way that you in a sense took the high road, Ken, by avoiding the question, which could turn into even a petty debate and argument—do you believe in a miracle or not?—by instead posing the question, “What does it mean in your life?

I’m sure you’ve come across the issue of what we can call a mature or immature approach to miracles, in a sense, where some people look at miracles as being their “sign of G-d,” and without it, they almost wouldn’t believe.

Woodward: Yes. And you were quoting the Baal Shem Tov. Yes, miracles are rare. And I do worry about that aspect of our contemporary culture, some of it evangelical Protestantism, where they think that everything is a miracle. Of course when everything’s a miracle, nothing’s a miracle.

Jacobson:  Well, in Jewish faith, there are times when you’re supposed to make a special blessing or thanksgiving to G-d for some special intervention, whether it’s a healing in a miraculous way, or some other type of situation. If you do that every day, it’s in a sense an insult, because you’re not appreciating those special moments.

Woodward: Yes. There was a yahrtzeit for Abraham Heschel recently, and so I started rereading him, and I quoted him in Newsweek last week in my essay on Jerusalem, by the way.

Jacobson:  You studied with him, didn’t you?

Woodward: You know, I was reading Tikkun Magazine, a Jewish magazine, and the editor had studied with him. Heschel took me under his wing. We just became good friends. And now I see that he did that with a lot of people and they never forgot it.

Now, Heschel talked about the importance of certain attitudes. I would say they are preconditions for recognizing miracles when they happen. The first one is gratitude, and related to that was the sense of awe and the sense of wonder.

Now before I read Heschel, I read some other people in my own Catholic tradition, which said much the same thing so it resonated with me right away. But the sense of gratitude is really important. I believe in miracles because I believe in gifts, and I think it’s fair to say that there is, in both traditions we’re talking about, the sense of grace, of G-d’s presence and G-d’s gift of Himself, through grace.

And I think that’s what the secular mentality can’t understand. Furthermore, even among evangelical Christians who are constantly talking about miracles, I know from doing more than one cover story on the subject of prayer, that they’re not so unsophisticated as to suppose that when they don’t get an answer, or the answer they want, that therefore, “I’m going to walk off and sulk, there is no G-d,” and so forth.

People of prayer understand that they don’t always get what they want. It’s not a “gimme G-d” after all. Nor should prayer be that way. But if it begins in gratitude, lots of things are possible.

Jacobson:  That’s very moving actually. In Chassidic tradition, there’s a saying, “Someone who believes in all the stories of the Baal Shem Tov and the other mystics and holy men is a fool; someone who doesn’t believe them is a heretic.”

Woodward: Well you probably saw that I quote a version of that in my book, and I agree with that. I also say that, on my own behalf, the reader who reads these miracle stories literally, and only literally, misses the meaning. And those who cannot accept the literal meaning, don’t understand why they were told in the first place.

Jacobson:  I have a story in my book, actually, Toward a Meaningful Life, where I talk about miracles, that there were three men sitting at an inn, each one describing his personal miracle. One said that his miracle was that his great rabbi suggested that he invest a certain amount of money, and he made an unbelievably successful investment.

Another one said, “I had a child who was ill, and my rabbi gave me a blessing and the child was miraculously healed.”

The third one said, “My rabbi told me to invest all my money in a certain area, and I lost it all.”

And they looked at him and said, “What’s the miracle?”

He said, “The miracle is that I remained dedicated to my rabbi, and I didn’t lose faith.”

That’s one of the criticisms in general of the secular world on religion in general, and I guess on prayers and miracles, is that it becomes a form of escapism, a form of a crutch.

Woodward: Of course. There’s a wrong way to do these things, and I think to be a person of prayer, it takes considerable maturity. And I would say as a Christian, that it takes grace. I mean, I think that really we’re dependent on grace more than we like to think.

Now the myth in America is that we’re in control of our own lives, or we ought to be. The attitude of prayer is, and notice how we’re not even talking about miracles anymore, it’s kind of interesting…

Jacobson:  Because you, as a good journalist, really directed it to the meaning of miracles…

Woodward: Well, I’d like to think that I can also exhibit good scholarship when I have to, you know? So there’s a disposition and an attitude—and I think the Christian prays quite regularly, “Not my will but Yours be done,”—in Christianity and in the other two monotheisms, Judaism and Islam: putting oneself at the disposal of G-d.

I think you have to acknowledge that it’s hard. It’s easy for me to sit here and talk about it. Probably most of the time I want to be in control. That’s what brings about the kind of tension one expects in one’s spiritual life.

If you want me to talk personally, I come from a family where people pray for each other. In the Catholic culture it’s very common for people to say, “I’ll pray for you. Oh, your daughter’s sick? I’ll pray for her.”

Now that presupposes a kind of connection between me and the daughter I hadn’t met and G-d and the rest. It’s a real communion. And that’s a very different world view from what a lot of people have, but that’s why religion constructs a world view.

Jacobson:  So you don’t find in any of the major religions that they build the proof of G-d’s existence or the truth of their doctrine on miracles?

Woodward: No they don’t. Let me talk about Eastern religions for just a minute, because they’re very popular these days—the religions that come out of India. You have two sources, the religions that come out of the Middle East, which are Judaism, Christianity, Islam and you have the religions which come out the continent of India, and for an Indian, and indeed for a Buddhist, to a large extent, India is the holy land: holy rivers, holy mountains. That’s one reason why Hinduism doesn’t travel very well whole and entire, because it’s really tied to the geography of India.

One of the reasons I did this book was to teach myself about these other religions and to know them better. So in a certain sense, when you pick up my book, you’re learning about these five religions, and I look at miracles from the perspective of each tradition. It’s a technique called “passing over to another point of view.” And usually, what happens is, (and I owe this to a professor at my university, Notre Dame, who’s also a friend of mine, John Dunne who really developed this idea as a theologian), then you pass over into your own life, and you pass over into your own life enriched. And I’ve seen it from that perspective.

At Newsweek, the greatest people that I’ve talked to, and Heschel was one of them, the most deeply spiritual people I talked to, were able to understand, without abandoning their own perspective, because they were deeply spiritual people, they were able to understand other perspectives.

It isn’t just a matter of studying another religion, like, “It’s mostly a Christian country, and if I’m Jewish, let’s say, I’m going to study Christianity so I can know what all these other people are believing in.” Or if you’re a Moslem, doing the same, or if you’re a Christian in a Moslem country, and so on.

It’s a matter of passing over to that perspective so you then you can understand it.

Jacobson:  So are miracles and personal responsibility always intertwined in all the religions that you’ve studied? In other words, is a miracle ever something we depend on, or as I said, proof of G-d, or proof of our truths?

Woodward: Oh I don’t think so.

Jacobson:  If there were no miracles in any of the doctrines, would it have a fundamental effect on the belief system? That’s the real question.

Woodward: Well, because they are in all traditions, I have to think that they’re important. Don’t you think so, or they wouldn’t be there. And I think we try to struggle to understand the presence and the power of G-d, and that’s what these miracle stories, in most cases, are about.

In Buddhism in particular miracles are really extraordinary powers that the person develops, who follows a rigorous, spiritual discipline. Usually it involved meditation, eating practices, and that kind of thing. Then their relationship to their own bodies is such that these powers were released. So it’s a very different understanding of miracles compared to the religions coming out of the Middle East. What you often see in New Age efforts is to combine the two of them and I don’t think you can do that. They’re two very different understandings.

I think it’s one thing to pass over and look at things from another tradition so that you enter another religion by sympathetic understanding. I think we have to do that. But on the other hand, you can’t confuse the realms. I quote the Dalai Lama who gave me a nice blurb for this book, as you noticed. The question came up, “Can a Christian also be a Buddhist by practicing meditation?” And he said, “You can’t put a yak’s head on a cow’s body.”

I even talked to him personally about this. I said, “Is Christianity a valid path toward liberation?” And he said that they don’t look toward liberation. In other words, the goal is different. He was very shrewd and he was very right. He’s also (I should say, I’ve known him for 25 years), a very candid person. So these are different disciplines.

So when I see people trying to mix religion—you know, “I’ll take a little of this and a little of that”—I really have to shake my head, and that’s one reason why I wrote this book. You can’t do that. And if you really understood the traditions, you’d see, especially through the miracle stories, that you’re really living in different worlds.

Jacobson:  In Judaism, the concept of a miracle—as you so accurately captured, but speaking from a more Kabbalistic perspective—is the idea that the spiritual and material worlds are really parallel universes and there are windows that connect them. And when a person does open him or herself to the spiritual, in a sense, they are able to draw G-d’s energy into their lives.

Woodward: Yes. I found that very interesting. In fact, when Harvey Cox of the Harvard Divinity School reviewed my book on Belief Net, which is on the Internet, he remarked particularly on this. He didn’t know anything about that. And I think one should. Now, that’s not a Christian or Islamic perspective, but it’s worked out in a different tradition. But there are parallels to that which I think are very interesting.

What you just described are particular Jewish ways of talking about how we can understand that G-d is present in the world. Am I not right?

And so when you work off your own tradition, what usually happens is, if you know your own tradition well enough, you look for things that look like yours. And that’s the first stage that you have to do, but gradually, you have to be able to understand how it’s different.

And why should you know those things? There are a lot of reasons why, Simon. We’re living in a global economy. “The world gets smaller” is a cliché—we just “have to know.” They’re going to invite 1,000 religious leaders to the U.N. at the end of August to talk about peace. I wonder how many of them understand the religions of the other people they’ll be meeting with.

Jacobson:  Well I find that the key to any type of real communication is ultimately spiritual respect, where you respect the Divine soul that is G-d-given to every human being. Without that…

Woodward: Of course, and you learn. And I think you have to understand that you can learn from other people without converting to that type of thing. But that’s why, very often, on television, and this actually came up in a very practical way recently, they don’t get people of spiritual depth. They get people who have a clientele to serve. And they scream at each other. Heschel would never have done that.

Jacobson:  Well, that’s political religion. That’s bureaucracy and so forth.

Woodward: No, it’s television really wanting people to go at each other. That’s what it really comes down it.

Jacobson:  Okay, but unfortunately, it happens even off television.

Woodward: Right, of course it does.

(Announcement break about Simon Jacobson’s class every Wednesday night in Manhattan, 346 W. 89^th St., corner of Riverside Drive at 8:00pm)

Jacobson:  Let me ask you, Ken. In your own personal life, would you say that you have experienced a miracle, if I may be bold enough to ask?

Woodward: Well, I normally don’t think in those categories. Maybe I’m like you; I expect a miracle to be a big thing. Good and important things have happened to me because people prayed for me. And I think I’ve received gifts, and in that sense my answer to your question is yes.

But because I think of miracles as rather staggering kinds of things, I don’t think staggering things have happened to me—I think I’m like most people. It’s the incremental things. Why didn’t I do the evil thing I could have done where I was inclined to do it? What pulled me back? Maybe something in me, but I really believe there’s a sense that we’re all connected and that comes right out of a very old Catholic tradition. A communion of saints.

I mean, you’re aware that pious Jews will go to the Rebbe’s gravesite. In the Catholic tradition, going all the way back to the beginning, people have the tradition of  praying to saints. The danger, of course, is that you might ignore G-d. That’s what I talk about in my previous book, Making Saints. But the idea is that G-d has friends. Saints are close friends of G-d, and G-d is just never alone. G-d wants to share what G-d is with other people.

I think we all want to grow in holiness. We all want to do what G-d does. I don’t mean that in a sacrilegious sense, you understand. We want to align our intentions with G-d—I mean think that’s what we’re here to do. It isn’t always easy to see. That’s why traditions have rules and practices, and these are honed over centuries, are they not?

And so in a relative way, I think it’s possible to talk about a holy person.

Jacobson:  Okay. Let’s go to the phone. We’ll go to “Happy Man” who’s been waiting and I apologize to you.

Caller: I have had two important mystical experiences, and before I tell you about them I wanted to ask Ken, have you had any mystical experiences?

Woodward: Well, you know, I come from a Catholic tradition and there the mystics are a pretty clear category. They’re quite extraordinary people and they’re people of great discipline, they’re people of deep prayer, and they’re usually at it a long time. I worry a little bit about the word “mystic” being thrown around today. Anybody who has a kind of numinous experience…

Caller: Ken, have you had any mystical experiences yourself?

Woodward: Oh, I don’t know. If I had, they’re kind of ordinary mysticism. Once you develop habits of prayer, and if you start looking for experiences, it’s not a good thing unless they happen to happen as byproducts.

Caller: I’ll share with you a story. I had a defaulted judgment, a sum of money in a real estate deal, with a woman who was buying property. She defaulted and I kept the money, legally and properly. And I found myself wanting to give it back, and that was unusual because I didn’t have any basis for that. It was not my custom to do something like that, not that it happens all the time, but it was my money.

Suddenly the feeling got stronger and stronger over a number of months. I called her up, and I knew she was a churchgoer, and I said, “What’s going on here? Have you been praying for this money?” I had a suspicion.

She said, “Well, I haven’t been praying for the money, but my congregation has been praying for you,” and I was very happy to give her that money back. And I was shocked because I initially didn’t want to, and it was a wonderful experience. I believe there’s a connection.

Woodward: That’s a wonderful story.

Jacobson:  Okay, we’ll go to Rafi on the line.

Caller: Hello. Thank you for taking my call. Listening to your lovely conversation has been very interesting, I kind of hear from what you are saying that all the traditions, all the religions, seem to have something in common, which seems to be maybe a yearning for a connectedness with the Creator, the Divine spirit, and a striving to have this connection and to be aware of it and to appreciate it and to have gratitude.

I think at least for me it is the key. My question is, do you guys believe that? I mean, is there a common thread in all the traditions?

Jacobson:  If I may say for Ken, on one hand there’s a common thread, but at the same time, there’s a risk of blurring the boundaries, because there are distinctions in miracles, and I guess in other elements of faith. Am I right, Ken?

Woodward: Let me put my journalist hat on for a second (as opposed to my book writing hat) because I think it’s a different hat.  What I think is pretty well documented by now is that the polls show that 89% of Americans say they believe in G-d and I forgot the number, almost that amount believes in miracles. And over half of Americans say they’ve experienced a miracle in their own life or witnessed one in the life of someone else.

Well, polls only go so far. Let’s take the notion that we believe in G-d. The interesting question is, who’s the G-d you believe in? That’s the real question.

A lot of people have a very vague sort of G-d. In America, it’s easier to believe in G-d than not. But does G-d make any demands on you? The question that comes up is, what’s asked of you? And then the whole picture seems to change quite a bit.

What I wanted to say, what I’ve noticed, because I have a privileged place from which to observe what’s going on religiously in the country—I get a lot books, magazines, etc, we run polls and all that stuff—is that over the last 25 years, what’s really happened is the inability of the various traditions to pass their own traditions on. So you have a lot of free-floating spirituality and it can very often be very vague.

But we get in New Age is everybody wants to grab a little piece of all the different traditions. They’re like bees that flit from one flower to another; they want to suck the nectar out of them. You can’t do it that way.

Jacobson:  So what trend do you see, Ken?

Woodward: Well, there are a lot of trends going on, but I think it’s demonstrable from the mid-60’s and on, that the various traditions failed to pass on their own tradition. I don’t have to tell you about Jewish tradition, you should know that.

But I can certainly tell you that the Presbyterians, for example, who study themselves a lot, most little Presbyterians don’t grow up to be big Presbyterians. They grow up to be something else or nothing at all, and a lot of that has to do with the culture of the 60’s, and a lot of it had to do with the demographic factor. The biggest bulge of people were the 60’s people. There never was an age group as large as that one and they change every age category they go through.

So very often the kind of religion that hits them is the religion that makes a lot of noise and promises that “Sham-bang, you’re going to have a miracle.”

Jacobson:  Well, that may be the reason for the failure.

Woodward: It may also be why so many people say they’ve experienced miracles.

Jacobson:  Let’s go to Lynn on the air.

Caller: I’m Catholic and my husband is Jewish. I was just wondering if in Judaism they talk about miracles as more of a group, broad-based across the whole religious spectrum, or is it more individual, because being raised Catholic, you hear more about the personalized miracles. I never really heard my husband speak about that from his religion, do you know what I’m saying?

Woodward: Well, look, at Newsweek my Jewish colleagues will often come up to me and say, “Do we believe in that?” And I say, “Well, you tell me.” I just talked about the failure to pass on tradition. I really think that it’s a sociologically accurate statement to say the Jewish community has failed the most.

Very few Jews are religious. And your husband may have been brought up that way, and then secondly, an awful lot of religious Jews were affected by the Enlightenment, which really didn’t have a good word to say about miracles.

Caller: It’s interesting, we went to Ireland a few years ago, a place where a miracle took place. It just seems that I’ve heard the word “miracle” more in reference to Christianity. I mean I’ve been with him for 20 years now so I know a lot about Judaism, which I really enjoy, but I never heard that word bandied about that much.

Woodward: I know, because in American Judaism, there has been, I would say, too much emphasis on ethics and also ethnic identity, because they say, “Well, I’m Jewish and therefore…” and everything comes from that. Well, I’ve learned not to trust that.

In my experience in New York City, I meet an awful lot of Jews who are in full flight from their own religion, and therefore, they’re the advanced guard for secularism.

Caller: Ken, are you a practicing Catholic?

Woodward: Well, as I told Simon, I stopped practicing a long time ago because…

Caller: If you get it right, you don’t need to practice, right?

Woodward: That’s right. Now I know how to do it so I don’t practice anymore.

Caller: Thank you both. I really enjoy your show, Rabbi.

Jacobson:  Thank you.

Woodward: I hope she understands that I’m at mass all the time…

Jacobson:  I think she understands. She seems to be at the same place you’re at.

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Jacobson:  Okay, Ken, we have another minute or two left.

Woodward: Let me say something regarding the woman who was just on. As I talk about this in the book, the Catholic tradition is such that yes, we believe that miracles have happened, miracles continue to happen, which a lot of Protestants don’t accept since they think that miracles were limited to the period of the Scriptures, but because they need miracles of intercession in connection with the canonization of saints, they are highly rationalistic in saying that we have to demonstrate that there is no explanation for this or that particular claimed miracle. So it’s an interesting combination of a world in which miracles can and do happen, but proving that this particular thing was a miracle is something else. And in your particular Chassidic tradition, the miracle is blessing, which is a very rich concept and connected with an understanding of what a Rebbe is. That’s why I used to get very upset when they would talk about Rabbi Schneerson and never give the background to it.

And then, in the Pentecostal tradition, it’s called the democratization of miracles. There, Oral Robert’s motto is, “Expect a miracle.” And they expect miracles all the time, and I have a little bit of a problem with that kind of thing because G-d doesn’t normally work with us in this way.

It’s like the yeast being of grace which grows into something.

Jacobson:  So Ken, since we just have 15 seconds, can you give us a boost as to what a miracle can mean for us in a personal way? What demand does it put on us?

Woodward: Well, I think that we have to learn to be living always in the presence of G-d, and when we do that, we will see those dimensions that we call miraculous.

Jacobson:  Thank you so much Ken for being here with us. We’ll be back next week with Simon Jacobson on Toward a Meaningful Life.

Tags: kabbalah, Zohar, Baal Shem Tov
Posted in Beliefs & Concepts, Miracles, Torah | No Comments »

On the Non-Existence of Evil

July 29th, 2014

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Chassidism, served as reader of the weekly Torah section in his synagogue. One year, Rabbi Schneur Zalman was away from home on the Shabbat on which the section of Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26-29) was read. In the Rebbe’s absence, someone else did the reading.

Ki Tavo includes the “Rebuke” (tochacha), a harsh description of the calamities destined to befall the Jewish people should they forsake the commandments of the Torah. Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s young son DovBer[1] was so greatly affected by the curses of the Rebuke that he fell ill. Three weeks later, when Yom Kippur approached, he was still so weak that his father was hesitant in allowing him to fast.

When the youngster was asked, “Why did the reading affect you so? Don’t you hear the Rebuke every year?” he replied, “When father reads, one hears only blessings, not curses.”[2]

Another Two Stories

“From the Supernal,” proclaims the prophet Jeremiah, in the midst of his lament over the destruction of the Holy Temple and the exile of Israel, “do not emerge both evil and good.”[3] This is a basic tenet of the Jewish faith: G-d is the essence of good, and since everything in existence derives solely from Him, evil has no true existence. There is only “revealed good” and “hidden good.” What we experience as “evil” is, in truth, hidden good—good that we, because of the limits of our perception, are incapable of perceiving as such.

The Talmud cites two stories that illustrate this point. The first involves Rabbi Akiva:

Rabbi Akiva taught: A person should always say: “Everything that G-d does, He does for the good.” Rabbi Akiva was once traveling, when he arrived in a certain town. He asked for lodgings and was refused. Said he: “Everything that G-d does, He does for the good,” and went to spend the night in a field.

He had with him a rooster, a donkey and a lamp. A wind came and extinguished the lamp, a cat came and ate the rooster, a lion came and ate the donkey. Said he: “Everything that G-d does, He does for good.” That night, an army came and took the entire town captive. Said Rabbi Akiva to his disciples: “Did I not tell you that everything that G-d does, He does for good?”[4] (If the lamp had been lit, the army would have seen me; if the donkey would have brayed or the rooster would have called, the army would have come and captured me.[5] )

The other story is about Nachum Ish Gam Zu:

Why was he called Nachum Ish Gam Zu (“Nachum This Too”)[6]? Because whatever happened to him, he would say: “This, too, is for the good.” Once the Jews wanted to send a gift to the [Roman] Emperor. “Who will go?” they asked. “Let Nachum go, for he is well acquainted with miracles.” They sent along with him a chest full of precious stones and pearls. On the way, he stayed at an inn. During the night, the innkeepers took the contents of the chest and filled it with earth. In the morning, when Nachum saw [what happened], he said: “This, too, is for good.”

When he arrived there, he gave the chest to the king. When the king saw that it was filled with earth, he wanted to kill all [the Jews] and said: “The Jews are mocking me!” Said Nachum: “This, too, is for good.”

Elijah the Prophet appeared disguised as one of the king’s ministers and said: “Perhaps this is the dust of their father Abraham, who would throw dust that turned into spears and straw that turned into arrows[7]?” There was a country which [the Roman armies] could not conquer; they tried [the earth brought by Nachum] and succeeded in conquering it. So they took Nachum into the Emperor’s treasury, filled his chest with precious stones and pearls, and sent him off with great honor.[8]

The Difference in Outlooks Between Rabbi Akiva and Nachum Ish Gam Zu

There is a significant difference between Rabbi Akiva’s experience and that of Nachum Ish Gam Zu. Both reacted to seemingly negative events with the confidence that G-d is doing them good rather than evil. But in the case of Rabbi Akiva, the events themselves remained negative: he was left without a roof over his head, in the dark, and he lost his rooster and donkey. The value of these negative events was only that they prevented a greater evil—falling into captivity. Seen in this light, they do not constitute a calamity but a salvation. The fact remains, however, that these experiences were not themselves good, only the implements of good.

In the case of Nachum Ish Gam Zu, the “negative” event itself was revealed as a positive occurrence. The earth the thieves exchanged for the contents of his chest was more valuable than what they took, achieving far more than would a simple gift of gems to an emperor whose treasury was already filled with the same. The only possibly negative element in the whole affair is the anxiety and fear a person of lesser faith might have experienced; Nachum, of course, experienced nothing of the sort, since at no time did he doubt that only good transpires in G-d’s world. Upon waking in the morning and finding the chest filled with earth, he proceeded to the palace to deliver his gift, confident that all would be shown to have been for good.

This difference between the outlooks of Rabbi Akiva and Nachum Ish Gam Zu is also evident in the words they used to express their faith in the goodness of G-d. Rabbi Akiva said, “Everything that G-d does, He does for good.” This implies that while a person might experience certain things as bad, he knows that they are for the sake of a greater good—a good that justifies the negative experience. It does not include the recognition that the event itself is good. Rabbi Akiva did not say that “Everything that G-d does is for good”—meaning that the things He does are positive—only that “Everything G-d does, He does for good”—that G-d’s doing of these things is for a positive end, even if the things themselves are less than good.

But Nachum Ish Gam Zu would say, “This, too, is for good.” Not only am I confident that good shall result from this, but I also perceive this, the event itself, as positive.[9]

Two Generations

The difference between them reflects the different spiritual environments in which the two sages lived.

Rabbi Akiva lived a generation after the destruction of the (second) Beit Hamikdash (Holy Temple) in Jerusalem, which had served as the center of G-d’s manifest presence in the physical world. His was a time of galut—a time of spiritual darkness, a time in which the divine face recedes from view and the divine providence is obscured by hardship, strife and tragedy.[10] Under such conditions, a person is incapable of perceiving the positive essence of every event. At most, he can affirm that there is more to reality than meets the eye—that while an event might remain negative in his perception, he can appreciate that it leads to a greater good. But to comprehend that the event itself is positive is beyond the capacity of one who inhabits a reality that so blatantly belies this truth. He might believe that it is so, but he cannot envision it or relate to it in any way.

Nachum Ish Gam Zu, on the other hand, who was one of Rabbi Akiva’s teachers, was of the previous generation—a generation that experienced the revelation of G-dliness that was the Beit Hamikdash. To them, the quintessential goodness of everything in G-d’s world was close to the surface, and the illusion of evil readily penetrable by a firm faith and unwavering trust in G-d.

The languages in which Nachum and Rabbi Akiva expressed their faith in the ultimate goodness of G-d are indicative of their different perceptions. The Talmud quotes Nachum as proclaiming, “This, too, is for good” (gam zu l’tovah) in the Holy Tongue, while Rabbi Akiva’s words, “Everything that G-d does, He does for good,” (kol d’avid rachmana l’tav avid) are quoted in Aramaic.

The Holy Tongue is the language with which G-d created the world—the language whose words and letters embody the divine essence of creation. A word in the Holy Tongue is much more than an agreed-upon appendage by which to refer to an object or phenomenon; rather, it represents the particular configuration of divine energy that supplies that object or phenomenon with being and life. Words spoken in the Holy Tongue imply a perception of a thing’s essence. Nachum, who lived in an era of divine revelation, was able to say gam zu l’tovah—to express the ultimate nature of every reality.

Aramaic, on the other hand, while closely related to Hebrew, represents a departure from the Holy Tongue’s clear and concise definition of a thing’s essence. When Rabbi Akiva proclaimed the ultimate goodness of everything G-d does, he did so in Aramaic, for his was a more limited perception, a perception veiled by the encroaching galut.[11]

Singing in the Dark

While the (first) Beit Hamikdash was being consumed by flames, Assaf (one of the Levites who served in the Holy Temple) was composing a psalm:

A song to Assaf:
O G-d,
Aliens have entered Your estate
They have defiled Your Sanctuary
They have laid Jerusalem in heaps…[12]

Asks the Midrash:

Should not the verse have said “a wail to Assaf,” “a keen to Assaf,” “a lament to Assaf”? Why does it say “a song to Assaf”? But this is analogous to a king who built a nuptial home for his son, beautifully plastered, inlaid and decorated. Then the son strayed off to an evil life. So the king came to the nuptial canopy, tore down the tapestries and broke the rails, upon which the prince’s tutor took a flute and began to play. Those who saw him asked: “The king is overturning the nuptial canopy of his son, and you sit and sing?” Said he to them: “I am singing because the king overturned his son’s nuptial canopy and did not vent his wrath upon his son.” So, too, was asked of Assaf: “G-d destroyed the Temple and Sanctuary, and you sit and sing?” Replied he: “I am singing because G-d vent His wrath upon wood and stone and did not vent his wrath upon Israel.”[13]

This reflects an “Everything that G-d does, He does for good” conception of evil and suffering, as experienced by Rabbi Akiva. The destruction of the Beit Hamikdash is a terrible tragedy; but it is a positive event in the sense that it prevented the destruction of the Jewish people.

This is the ultimate level of perception of which we are capable in galut: the understanding that despite how terrible and tragic something is in our experience, we know that there is a higher truth, a greater good which it serves. We might eventually discover this greater good, or perhaps never learn what it is; nevertheless, our faith in the goodness of G-d enables us to bear the hardship and pain of the perceived evil in our lives. But we are incapable of recognizing, or even conceiving of, the intrinsic goodness of the “evil” itself.

But there will come a time when the veil of galut will lift, when the divine essence of existence will shine forth, unobscured by the shell of darkness that encases it today. On that day we shall proclaim, “This, too, is for good.” In the words of the prophet Isaiah, “I shall thank You, G-d, for having afflicted me,”[14] for the quintessential goodness of the “affliction” itself will be revealed.
Based on an address by the Rebbe, Av 20, 5711 (August 22, 1951)[15]

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber

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Tags: Alter Rebbe, attitude, exile, positive thinking, Nachum Ish Gamzu, Rabbi Akiva, Rebbe, good and evil
Posted in Good & Evil, Soul & Mystical, Beliefs & Concepts, Devarim, Exile, Spiritual, Torah, Ki-Tavo | 1 Comment »