Signpost: Cities of Refuge

July 29th, 2014

The court is obligated to straighten the roads to the cities of refuge, to repair them and broaden them. They must remove all impediments and obstacles… bridges should be built (over all natural barriers) so as not to delay one who is fleeing to [the city of refuge]. The width of a road to a city of refuge should not be less than thirty-two cubits[1]. “Refuge, Refuge” was written at all crossroads so that the murderers should recognize the way and turn there.

Mishneh Torah, Laws Regarding Murder and the Preservation of Life, 8:5

The “cities of refuge” were six cities in the Land of Israel designated as havens for murderers. A person who killed would flee to the nearest city of refuge, where he would be safe from the vengeance of his victim’s closest relative (the “avenger of the blood”) until he was brought to trial before the sanhedrin (a tribunal of twenty-three judges that tried capital cases).[2] It was the court’s responsibility to ensure the accessibility of the cities of refuge by improving the roads leading to them and posting signs with the words miklat, miklat (“refuge, refuge”) to show the way.

On the spiritual plane, there also exist six “cities of refuge” for the spiritual “murderer.” Life, in the true and ultimate sense, is connection with the divine source of being and vitality;[3] an act of transgression against the divine will is a subtle form of “murder,” as it hinders the flow of vitality from G-d to creation. The words of the Torah, say our sages, are the “cities of refuge” for the destroyer of spiritual life;[4] if he flees into the Torah and immerses himself in it, the Torah will protect him from the adverse results of his deed. Specifically, there are six “constant mitzvot” that apply to every Jew, at all times, and in all circumstances, so that they are readily accessible to one who seeks refuge from his faults and failings, whomever he might be and wherever and whenever the desire to rectify his life might strike him.[5]

But a haven is of little use if it is inaccessible or its location is unknown. As is the case with the physical cities of refuge, it is the community’s responsibility to “straighten the roads… to repair them and broaden them… remove all impediments and obstacles” and post signs at all crossroads.

This imperative has special meaning to us today, when the roads of life are teeming with spiritual refugees. It is our sacred duty to station ourselves at all the crossroads and serve as living signposts, calling out “Refuge! Refuge!” and pointing the way to the haven of Torah.

Based on an address by the Rebbe,  Shabbat Parshat Mattot-Massei 5712 (July 19, 1952)[6]

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Tags: murder, cities of refuge
Posted in Weekly Parsha, Beliefs & Concepts, Exile, Torah, Matot, Massei | 1 Comment »

Modern Miracles

July 28th, 2014

Mike Feder: Good evening. This is Toward a Meaningful Life. I’m Mike Feder and I’m here with Rabbi Simon Jacobson. Tonight the subject of the programs is modern miracles; miracles in the modern world. Let me start right off. First, let me tell the listeners that there is a chapter in your book Toward a Meaningful Life on miracles. It is chapter 29 in the book and you can read it…we’ll talk about that a little later.

Okay, when people think of miracles they automatically think of something ancient, antique, something that happened a long time ago, something biblical. In all the holy scriptures of all religions there are these divine interventions, which I presume are usually beneficial.

Let’s take one example so we can start right off. The typical miracles that people think of when they think of the Bible is G-d parting the Red Sea for Moses and the Hebrews who just came out of Egypt. G-d also stopped the sun in its course outside of Jericho for Joshua. And throughout all religions there are these kinds of things.

But two questions come to mind right off: what exactly is a miracle, and is there any such thing in the modern world?

Simon Jacobson: And how do we address the skeptic who says, “Hey, come on. Miracles just don’t happen. And if they ever did happen, when did they stop happening?” And perhaps there wasn’t a miracle that they experienced in the Bible, it was simply some event that can today be explained away with nature.

I’m just adding questions to the pot.

Feder: Some scientific phenomena explains all of this…

Jacobson: Very legitimate questions. Let me begin with a question of my own, if I may, that almost precedes all these questions. When we were discussing doing this topic, I had mixed feelings because in a way the topics we’ve been addressing previously have been very personal—people dealing with their struggles in life—and dealing with a topic like miracles in some way, for me, particularly when this radio show is entitled “Meaningful Life,” which is about adding meaning and relevance to our lives…

You know, I deal with people every day and I see, including myself of course, the struggles that people are grappling with, whether it’s issues of abuse, issues of marital strife, barely making ends meet financially, psychological peace of mind… So in a way I always feel like when we’re dealing with a topic it should always be brought to the issues that we are struggling with. And I abhor, almost, going off on some academic tangent where you have a purely intellectual discussion (even if it’s a nice discussion). I always like to bring that personal side to it.

On the other hand, I think miracles can be addressed that way as well.

Feder: That’s something I’d like to hear, because it does seem abstract.

Jacobson: And my focus, our focus, should be on what it means to us today. Even if someone says, “Yes, the sea can part. Great. Does that help me? If the sea parts, does that help me at home? Does it help me dealing with my spouse, my children, making a living?” So I’d like to connect it and integrate it with our own issues and that way we can focus the subject of miracles into a meaningful experience.

Feder: I guess that also would define, in the course of the explanation, what a miracle is, right?

Jacobson: Right. Now, as you stated, most religions base some of their “divine revelations” on the concept of a miracle. And since G-d performed a miracle at some point in history it’s almost a demonstration of G-d’s power. The Bible does say that in Egypt, one of the reasons or intentions of the miracles—the Ten Plagues, a suspension of nature—was to demonstrate G-d’s power to the Egyptians who refused to accept G-d’s will.

Feder: Or that there is a G-d at all.

Jacobson: Right. And religion often, or at least in some people’s minds, is based on that principle: that a miracle occurred so there must be a G-d, or at least there must be a G-d who intervenes in our lives.

So I want to correct that understanding—at least from the understanding of where I come from, from a Torah or a Jewish perspective. G-d’s existence is not proven through miracles, because if you want to deny G-d, you can deny a miracle as well by explaining it away through natural occurrences, and most importantly, for a mature adult, the approach should not be that, “Oh, I see a miracle, so suddenly I’m going to change my entire life.”

I’d like to know that if the Atlantic Ocean suddenly parted in a miraculous way, do you think millions of people would suddenly embrace morality and ethics and just become better people and say, “Yes, I’m responsible to G-d because G-d showed me the ocean parting?”

I highly doubt it. And, as a matter of fact, I’d like to address a skeptic by playing a skeptic. I believe that people reject G-d, and therefore by extension miracles (or at least question them) not because they haven’t seen a miracle or because they may not believe in them, or they could explain everything with science, I think people are extremely uncomfortable and uneasy with having a personal G-d in their lives, because it means real responsibility.

I rarely meet the person who academically denies G-d’s existence. There’s always something else…because G-d always has implications. In other words, if you accept that there’s a G-d in your life, that means you have to live up to a calling that’s higher than your own. And I would submit (I can’t prove this because anyone could say, “No, I’m ready to accept any truth…”) but I speak for myself as well that we are all objective as far as our comfort zones will allow us. I’m not suggesting that people don’t search for truth, and there are certain truths that emerge, often, unfortunately, when we’re broken through trauma in our lives. When we lose our security we suddenly wake up. Even then not always.

So I would say that just to discuss this in an academic way is a good way to play mind games, but I don’t what practical benefit it has. In my book Toward a Meaningful Life in chapter 29 it says, “Miracles are a good way of looking at not whether you believe in a miracle, but whether you accept an intervention of G-d in your personal life.” I think that’s really the issue more than whether or not there’s an actual miracle.

There was a real skeptic who came to one of my classes and he said, “So tell me. Tzaddikim, righteous people like Moses, could they fly?” His question was obviously meant to poke fun. So I told him, “I’ve never seen a tzaddik, a G-dly person, fly, but frankly, for a person like that, it’s as miraculous to walk on this earth as it is to fly.”

Existence itself is a miracle. Birth is a miracle. The fact that we breathe is a miracle. If you just look at the odds of one mutant cell, being born with one mutant cell, G-d forbid, and what kind of havoc that wreaks, the odds of billions and billions of cells working in coordination together…is that any less a miracle than the sea parting?

I would submit that it’s a greater miracle. Because the parting of the sea is out there in nature, it doesn’t affect you and me right here. The fact that you walk into a hospital, and G-d forbid, you see someone struggling to breathe makes you appreciate the miracle of health. Or you see children born not in the healthiest way, you can ask a doctor and he’ll tell you, “Well, it was one mutant cell out of billions. And that was it. It happened.”

I would submit that the fact that healthy children are born, though it happens every day, thank G-d, does not make it any less miraculous. And one of the quotes that I use in the book is the Baal Shem Tov’s quote, which I think is as powerful as it gets, he says: “The difference between a miracle and a natural occurrence is only frequency.”

If the sun were to rise once in our lifetimes, you’d have media crews and photographers coming to look at this astonishing phenomenon. (Look, we just saw people’s fascination with the solar eclipse). It would be like a miracle. But since the sun rises every morning, we get accustomed to it. Human beings needs a new rush of excitement.

So I like to look at miracles as: what does it really do to you? If you can see the extraordinary within the ordinary, if you’re able to appreciate every flutter of a butterfly’s wings, every breath a human being takes, the magnificence and sheer synchronicity of nature itself, if you can appreciate it and it makes you a person who is in awe of this bigger thing called nature, or G-d, that there’s a higher force at work and it makes you a better person because you see you’re just one component in a larger composition of music, then that means that the miracle has affected you and has made you into a different type of person.

If someone says to me, “I believe in miracles. I’m a very religious person,” but in no way do you find harmony in their own life (they may be abusive or obnoxious, etc.) so then their statement is just an academic statement. What do you mean, you believe in miracles? Do you believe that G-d intervenes in your life? Do you believe that every moment you have to be responsible?

So the words “I believe in miracles” is a very abstract term.

Feder: Yet throughout history, people of every sort on every place on the earth have always seemed to need some type of demonstration, from time to time, of the power of the unseen. It’s almost like it’s human nature in a way, isn’t it?

Jacobson: I think so. And let’s put it this way. From a Jewish mystical perspective, it does discuss the concept of a supernatural miracle. You see, I’ve directed the conversation to more of recognizing the supernatural within the natural, but just because nature is a perpetual continuation of habit, so to speak, doesn’t make it less miraculous.

However, as a wake-up call, in Jewish mysticism, it does discuss the idea of a sheer miracle that actually suspends or supercedes nature, but not as a common statement. As a matter of fact, when it comes to miracles that suspend nature, the Talmud states that G-d does not perform miracles everyday.

Feder: The big shows.

Jacobson: The big shows so to speak. And G-d doesn’t do supernatural miracles without a reason. It’s not just a common occurrence. Because in a way, G-d bound Himself to the system, the structure, and in a way created a partnership with us humans. It’s up to us to be wise and recognize that we shouldn’t become bound and limited by the structure ourselves but we should realize that there’s more to it.

So from time to time in history, according to Torah thinking and Jewish belief, there will be a spectacular event that will demonstrate that there is, so to speak, a voice from another place, with the goal being for us to recognize the Divine hand in our regular daily lives, seeing that it’s not so regular.

Now that does require faith, yes, it requires faith that at one point in history the sea parted. I can’t prove that here on air. I have no empirical proof for it. It’s an event that happened and once it happened it was over. So that requires faith. But my point is that faith is not based on the miracle. Should someone say to me, “You know, I believe in G-d but I don’t believe in that miracle,” I think, fine, I’m not going to get into an argument. I don’t see it as one of the Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith that you have to accept the parting of the sea. But if you do accept that there’s a G-d, what difficulties would you have in believing that the G-d who created nature should suspend it? It shouldn’t be that impossible.

I do agree that you don’t just have to blindly believe everu miracle claim. Someone will say, “Well, a miracle just happened to me yesterday, a completely supernatural thing, no one else saw it but me.” I too would tend to be skeptical and say, “Maybe it wasn’t a miracle, maybe it was your imagination.” But not because I deny conceptually the possibility. I just know that human beings can sometimes believe what they want to believe.

But I do accept the Biblical truth, and for me it’s not a question… if there wasn’t a parting of the sea, G-d could have intervened some other way. So I think it’s more of a holistic approach in relationship with G-d, with understanding life in a deeper way.

Feder: It’s interesting that you should say “life in a deeper way” because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about. I’ll explain with a small experience I had that may seem superficial. When I was a kid—I grew up in a skeptical family, a sort of religious family—I thought I’d give this G-d business one try. I was about ten years old and I went out onto the front lawn one day near a tree we had there and I said, “I’ll believe in G-d if when I wake up tomorrow morning there is a box of Oreo cookies sitting there by magic (I don’t mean to be facetious or anything) at the bottom of the tree.”

So I came out the next morning, and of course there was nothing there, and I said, “That’s it, there was no miracle,” do you know what I mean? All of which to say that it seems as if it almost requires an evolution—a growing up—to really understand what you’re trying to say because most children are taught in almost all religions about these big shows and not always the way you’re describing it.

Jacobson: And I’ll take it a step beyond. I think insecure religion is built on promising children or adults that a miracle is going to happen if you do so and so.

Feder: If you pray…

Jacobson: Because it’s like relying on something outside of yourself. Now prayer in Judaism and religion in general is clearly the ability to intervene. You pray if, G-d forbid, someone is ill in the hospital or suffering in some other way, you pray to G-d to intervene. And though the destiny may state one way, we ask G-d to please change destiny.

Feder: Really?

Jacobson: Yes. We ask for a miracle. So that is a basis in religion…

Feder: So you can pray for a miracle.

Jacobson: You can pray for a miracle, you can pray that destiny should change. But I remember a very sad story with a Mrs. Waxman in Israel a few years ago when her son, an Israeli soldier, was taken hostage by some Hamas terrorists. She is a religious woman and she was praying—and of course the entire nation was praying with her—that her son should survive. Now the army did storm the place but they came in a minute late and unfortunately he was killed in the process.

So afterwards, some of the skeptical journalists—and Israeli journalists can be quite harsh—said to her, “So what happened to your prayers?” I mean, how they can ask such a question to a mother who just lost a son is beyond me (that too is a miracle in the other extreme) but they did, and she answered with that type of dignity and majesty that you see in a person of true, mature faith. She said, “We prayed and we asked G-d, and G-d answered. He said no.”

In other words, faith means that you can expect, and you can hope, and pray and even demand of G-d to do a miracle, but faith also means it doesn’t always work the way you have it planned. And it’s not dependent on your comfort zone. In other words, “I’ll accept G-d if I get my Oreo cookies…” I’m not criticizing you…

Feder: I was ten years old.

Jacobson: No, of course, I don’t mean it that way. We all do it in different ways, it’s human nature. But my point is that faith is a deeper, mature experience as you pointed out. It’s more than that, like the story I tell in Toward a Meaningful Life in this chapter that there were three gentlemen sitting near a fireplace on a winter evening and they were each telling their miracle stories. This one said, “Let me tell you about my Rebbe, my great master…I had very little money and my Rebbe suggested that I invested it somewhere and a miracle happened and I made money beyond anyone’s expectations in a totally losing proposition. I made a lot of money.”

Then another fellow said, “Well, I had a child who was ill and the doctors had given up hope and my master, my Rabbi gave me a blessing and prayed and my child healed miraculously to the amazement of all the doctors around.”

And the third chassid, the third student said, “Well, here’s mine. I had a lot of money and I had a suggestion to invest it somewhere and my Rabbi said I should invest it and I lost it all. My investment went bad.”

So they said, “So what’s the miracle?”

He said, “The miracle was that I remained dedicated to my master. That it didn’t shake my faith.” The point is, it’s a human tendency to depend like a crutch on a miracle or some kind of intervention and that is definitely part of faith in G-d. But faith in G-d is not exclusively determined by that, because then you’re dealing with a relationship that is uneven; G-d is the great giver and you don’t take any responsibility.

There is a famous story that most people know and whenever I tell it everyone says, “Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard that,” in some version or another, about this town that was being flooded and all the townspeople were escaping. There was one guy, a man of faith, who refused to leave with the trucks going out and he said, “No. G-d will save me.” And the water’s rising, it’s coming in through the door. The man goes up to his roof and people come by in a boat and tell him to get aboard but he’s not going anywhere and he says, “No. G-d will save me.”

And the helicopter comes around, once, twice, and drops the ladder, and he won’t grab the ladder because he’s waiting for G-d to intervene. Finally it’s his last chance and he refuses any rescue attempt. Of course, he drowns and comes storming into the heavenly courts and says, “I was the only man of faith; everyone else escaped. They used all kinds of natural means but I waited for your intervention and me you let down. What kind of response is that to a man of deep faith such as mine?”

And the voice came back and said, “My dear friend. I tried saving you three times. I sent a truck, a boat and a helicopter and you just refused.”

Feder: Yeah, I heard a version of that story.

Jacobson: In other words, intervention doesn’t always happen in the way we expect it.

Feder: So it doesn’t have to happen with all kinds of lights, and phenomena…

Jacobson: Cecil B. De Mille style. No, it doesn’t need to be sensational. It can be, but as I said, faith in G-d means anything can happen. But more often than not, miracles happen to us and we don’t even pay attention.

Feder: If I get up tomorrow morning and I feel okay, and my wife is feeling okay, and we had a nice sleep and we have our breakfast and we get the food there and we digest it and we go to work and we have a good day. That’s a miracle, right?

Jacobson: Don’t you have any greater expectations?!

Feder: No, actually, I don’t! That’s my idea of a great life.

Jacobson: Well, some people would call that damage control…

Feder: No really, I should look around me and say that this is all working and it’s a miracle that it actually works that way. I mean, anything could go wrong.

Jacobson: I’d like to rephrase it somewhat, because it sounds a little bit like people would say that’s resignation.

Feder: Fatalistic.

Jacobson: I think a part of it. If your appreciation of that translates into your becoming a better person and saying “Tomorrow I want to do it better,” I would agree with that. But I would not like to say that today’s a miracle and tomorrow let’s just hope that it’s as good as this and… that’s almost like a fatalistic approach where you almost have a fear of things not working and you thank G-d that it did.

Feder: So it’s like seeing everything in the negative almost.

Jacobson: Yes. But some of it is correct. I’ll use a Midrash. The Midrash is one of the oral interpretations in Torah thought. King David writes in the conclusion of his book of Psalms, which is a beautiful book of prayer, how he turns to G-d in his (King David’s) need. His last verse is, “Every soul praises G-d.” And it repeats the word soul twice, “Every soul and soul.” The Midrash explains this verse in Psalms: “What’s the emphasis and why does it use the word “soul” twice?”

Interestingly, the word “soul” in Hebrew (neshamah) comes from the same root and has the same pronounciation as the word “nishimah” which means breath. And the Midrash says that “Every breath I take (every breath and breath) I praise G-d.” So it’s not just that souls are praising G-d, it’s the appreciation that every breath is a precious miracle and has value.

In that sense, yes, if a day goes by and things went relatively well (there are no disasters—but it’s not just that there are no disasters, it’s just that things went well) then G-d deserves praise, but not because G-d is waiting for our praise but it should be for ourselves: the appreciation that we have for the gift of life, and as I said, the understanding that we have to do something with it. It’s not just enough that we acknowledge it, we have to do something with that breath. What did you do with all those breaths that were given to you.

Feder: So a miracle is not only a Divine gift, there’s also a responsibility attached to it?

Jacobson: Of course, definitely. As a matter of fact, in Jewish law we acknowledge a miracle by making a special blessing. And a special blessing doesn’t just mean that we pay lip service to it, it means an awareness that lifts you up to another place. Actually the word for miracle in Hebrew, nes, always means a flag, as in the verse, “A raised flag on the mountains.” It’s a process that’s meant to lift your spirit and lift you to a greater place with the intention that even if it’s a spectacular or a sensational event, you become transformed.

Feder: Okay, let’s take a break here to identify who we are and then we’ll move on. You are listening to Rabbi Simon Jacobson, and this is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. My name is Mike Feder and we’re here every Sunday night on WEVD, 1050AM in New York City from 6-7pm, talking about issues that we hope are inspiring to you. We’re talking about miracles and what they are; what they are in everyday life, and we’ll have some more questions, too.

Once again, you can give us a call, and ask us a question or give us your opinion at 212-244-1050.

We really want to thank everyone who has emailed us or written or called us. Here are some of the ways you can get in touch with us, and we want to hear from you. The most important thing is the telephone number: 1-800-3MEANING or 1-800-363-2646. You can also email us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com. You can always write to us at The Meaningful Life Center, 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11225.

I’d like to also tell you that we have a new website where you can download transcripts of this program, and previous and future programs. It’s www.meaningfullife.com. And don’t forget, most of what we’re talking about here, the foundation of all of it, is the book Toward a Meaningful Life by Simon Jacobson, which is available in stores now.

Now, just following up on something you said before: a miracle, is that something that’s always—as people usually believe—something good or benevolent or uplifting? And you just said that the uplifting aspect is an integral part of it. Yet before you mentioned that the plagues in Egypt were miracles: I suppose that’s because they were good for one particular group of people—but they weren’t so good for a lot of other people. I mean, miracles are not always good, are they?

Jacobson: No. The definition of a miracle is essentially an intervention. It can be a positive one or it can be a negative one.

Feder: Oh, so it’s not always a benevolent thing.

Jacobson: No, not necessarily. There’s always a message in it; there’s always something that we can learn from. But we find in history there have been negative types of miracles.

I do want to add something to what we were discussing earlier. In a way, today, the fact that we have science allows us to have a deeper appreciation of G-d and miracles of nature. In the 19^th century w a great battle raged between science and religion where the new science claimed that we now have a natural explanation for all these primitive beliefs that once were understood as being some type of G-d’s intervention or even the solar eclipse… you read how this was seen as a terrifying experience and different civilizations and cultures had prayers and they did all kinds of things in order to deal with that bad omen, or good omen, or whatever it was. The same with other natural disasters—earthquakes and volcanoes—and science, so to speak, came and said no, these are natural events that can be predicted, we can understand them, we know it’s part of the solar system, the same is true with earthquakes and volcanoes. But today we have a much more sophisticated appreciation of nature and science where I would submit that we don’t have to see G-d and science as diametrically opposed. Just because we have a scientific and natural explanation for events doesn’t mean that there isn’t a miracle involved.

A miracle doesn’t mean that you can’t predict it. A miracle can mean that the way G-d set up the system is that there are, from time to time, events that wake us up. A wake-up call doesn’t have to mean that it’s a shocking experience that nobody predicted.

So a solar eclipse can have a message to it. It can wake us up to the appreciation and understanding of the solar system, the solar movement, the lunar movement, and in Jewish mysticism there’s much discussion about solar and lunar energy. It’s no different from recognizing special providence, or Divine providence in our daily activities. So there are events that have that power.

You know, I was thinking just today, you walk in the streets here in New York City, or for that matter anywhere, and just the sheer volume of cellular phones, radio, television stations, beepers, pagers….You think, who would ever imagine that in this space, the street here, there are millions of waves and, of course, once in a while we have interference, but it’s miraculous. And who would think that space would allow for so much communication going on? And I’m not talking about wired phones, I’m talking about wireless communications.

Feder: Just the very fact that the atoms and molecules allow for all these things…

Jacobson: And on the subatomic level you have so much flowing and dynamic energy, and the fact that so many people are communicating with each other. We have learnt to manipulate nature itself, all the way to the sub-atomic level.

If someone had suggested today’s technological innovations a hundred years ago, they would have thought, that’s a miracle. It’s ludicrous.

Feder: Or telephones, or the subway, or any of those things.

Jacobson: Exactly. You read the predictions at the end of the last century, the end of the 1800’s… someone resigned from his position at the patent office of the United States because he said, “Everything that could be discovered, has been discovered.”

All major inventions! (This was in 1897 before Einstein, before the computer, before the automobile, before the airplane) I mean if you think back, it’s almost the other way around. All the greatest inventions happened after that, not to take away from those that preceded. But I’m not counting. No one would make such a prediction now because it would be ridiculous. We have no idea what nature still holds.

And you just look at how much we understand about our own human bodies. The best doctors will tell you that even though they know more than they ever did about medicine and the human body—I’m not even getting into the human brain—they still are only touching the tip of the iceberg.

Feder: So people generally, even scientists perhaps, are more accepting than they used to be of the fact that miracles could occur at any time in any way, right?

Jacobson: And they may not even call them miracles in the same sense. They’ll say, nature is a miracle, or nature contains the potential for all kinds of miracles. Again, does this prove G-d’s existence? I think proof of G-d’s existence is dependent on other factors. Nothing proves G-d’s existence if you don’t want it to.

I’m not discussing this in the context of proof, I’m discussing it in the sense that once you believe in a higher reality, nature and the mysteries of life demonstrate that there’s something more, call it as you wish.

Feder: You know, these battles (the end of the 1800’s in the 19^th century) never stop. I mean, I think the biggest battle that was left over in the 20^th century, the most famous one, is the Scopes Monkey Trial…

Jacobson: Which ended up being a hoax, I believe.

Feder: No, no. This was a real trial that took place in Tennessee, where Clarence Darrow pitted himself against William Jennings Bryant. Bryant believed in the literal word of the Bible, in other words, that there was no such thing as scientific evolution. Bryant’s stand was that the world was created in seven days, all that kind of thing. There was this tremendous battle, which really came out sort of equal in the end finally. Did you ever see the movie “Inherit the Wind?” It’s a wonderful explanation of this. But now we go back, and three or four days ago a Kansas school board, influenced by fundamentalists out there, decided that on the reading list there will no longer be any books about evolution or Darwin’s evolutionary theory. They will not be put on the reading list, which is as much to say as they are not going to be taught.

So in other words, in a lot of places in the world what’s called fundamentalism is recapturing this sort of anti-scientific attitude, saying that only these “big miracles” that the entire world was created in seven days, are to be taught to our children. So are you suggesting that both things can exist side by side, that both things can be taught? Is that the idea?

Jacobson: Well I’m not going to comment per se about evolution which is a theory, and acknowledged by scientists as such, but generally speaking, scientific truths cannot contradict Divine truths. Because one G-d created the entire universe. Both the natural and the supernatural. So no way can a supernatural event contradict the laws of nature that G-d Himself put into place.

I see nature as being Divine for that reason. When a scientist searches for truth for the laws of nature. When Einstein discovered his theories. When any scientist or physicist today discovers different elements of nature and learns to manipulate them, they essentially have uncovered new dimensions of G-d’s mind, from my perspective.

Now G-d’s mind manifests itself in several ways. One way is in the mysterious and awesome laws of nature, and another way is perhaps from time to time in an event that may suspend nature, for instance, no scientist would have a problem if he or she witnessed a miracle that could not be explained.

I know many scientists who would say, “That’s true. But that does not mean that the laws of nature that G-d put in place are not accurate?” The answer is: Once in a while G-d Himself may choose to intervene; it does not in any way weaken the consistency and reliance on nature. Because the Torah itself encourages and commands the use of natural means. Interestingly, from a purely observant perspective, one who observes Torah law and who believes in G-d and believes in the parting of the Sea, and believes that all these events happened, the same Torah says that when you’re ill, go to a doctor. The same Torah respects science and the laws of nature and the fact that we have to do what’s necessary in nature. It’s not like we should live our lives thinking “Okay, maybe today there will be a miracle.” There’s a certain system that G-d put in place and respect for that system is equally important as respect for a miracle.

Feder: So now we have a deeper, or maybe a better word is a clearer understanding of what a miracle really might be, but, you know, a lot of people look at the Scriptures and the Holy Books and it says, “G-d created the world and everything in it in seven days”…

Jacobson: Six actually. On the seventh, He rested.

Feder: Okay, so in six days He created absolutely everything that ever was and that you could ever see. Now, I wouldn’t want to put you on the spot here or anything like that, but a lot of people say, “That was a great miracle.” It confuses you sometimes.

Jacobson: I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t see that as a great miracle at all in a way. Because if you believe in G-d, He could have done it in one minute. Creation is creation. Only a Creator can create existence. If he can’t do it in six days, he won’t be able to do it in 6 thousand days. If you don’t believe in G-d, then what do you need, 6,000 days? I mean, what difference does it make?

Feder: Well maybe I’m wandering far afield here but it’s an interesting conversation, why is it in the Bible that it took six days? Where did that come from? Why didn’t it say, “And then in the course of billions of years, G-d in His wisdom…”

Jacobson: Well, remember, the Torah (the Bible) accepts itself as truth. You’re asking a question, if that’s the truth, it tells you the way it was.You’re speaking from a skeptical point of view…

Feder: I guess so…

Jacobson: Well, if you’re a skeptic, then don’t cite the Bible. The Bible is predicated on belief—the belief that G-d created…the first verse in the Bible is “G-d created heaven and earth” and now we will tell you, with documentation, how it happened. So if it would have happened in thirty days, that’s how it would have been related.

Feder: So we either believe it or don’t believe it, right?

Jacobson: It’s not an ultimatum, because a person can say, “I believe in growth, pace by pace. Study the Bible, embrace what you can, and grow with that.” Frankly, even from a skeptical point of view, I don’t see what the problem is with six days. As I said, what I think the bigger problem is, are you responsible to G-d?

Now on a mystical level, six has a very deep significance: why it was six and not ten and not thirty. But it’s not because it had to be six. G-d could have chosen to create the universe in a billion years or whatever it may take, but I feel that’s going off somewhat on a tangent. By the way, I don’t feel on the spot at all, but I do feel that topics like this require some introduction or else it sounds radical. I mean, I don’t mind if you try to corner me and say, “Okay, is there some miracle…” I don’t believe that the Jew’s belief and faith in the Torah in any way is radical to the point where someone listening to that will say, “I can’t accept that.”

I think when people say I can’t accept that they’re really responding to the way it was presented to them, where perhaps religion is based on miracles, and I’ve made that very clear that that’s not the basis of it.

I think the relationship with G-d is much more mature and more profound than just a miracle, as I mentioned with the story with Mrs. Waxman. And I think that the real question, the real issue that should be addressed, is what kind of relationship do you have, and can you have a relationship? And miracles extend from that. The fact is that there are people who have that deep faith in G-d and an awareness of a higher reality, it helps them in their personal lives, it makes sense of life, it helps you understand nature not just as this merciless flow of habit. Everything has its deeper meaning and purpose, and a miracle for a person like that, who’s divinely aware, would be when you walk in the street, you recognize the miracles that are happening. There are messages: the people you meet, the places you travel to.

Feder: So this almost anticipates another question I had. What state of mind should a person, or would a person be in to be prepared to understand this deeper understanding? Is it necessary to have humility, in other words, or can you hurry a miracle? How can you walk around in the world and hold yourself to see these things?

Jacobson: Good question. You know, physical reality, as we experience it, is like the tip of the iceberg. It’s the surface level. From a mystical perspective, a Torah perspective, there are forces at work beneath the surface, beneath the tip of the iceberg. Just like in human nature, there are subconscious forces that inform and affect our conscious expressions.

So a person cries and tears come out of their eyes; it means that some deeper feelings have welled up inside of them. An outburst or eruption of anger may be a result of repressed resentment or repressed forces at work from childhood on.

To take that a step further, look at an eruption of a volcano and rain falling on the street as similar to teardrops and anger eruption; not in the literal sense but in a metaphorical sense that there’s more going on than meets the eye. And essentially, when you understand that our material, physical reality is somewhat like the tip of the iceberg or like the glove, where the hand inside the glove is a spiritual reality that creates a channel, a bridge, between the two worlds, and when you create that bridge you essentially have the power to perform a miracle.

Feder: A person can perform a miracle?

Jacobson: Yes. Each of us. Or, let’s put it this way. We can open ourselves up to the channel of energy that allows that physical reality to be changed.

Feder: In other words, we don’t usually create or perform a miracle, we sort of allow ourselves to be a vessel for it, or a channel for it.

Jacobson: You can put it that way. So as I said, true faith in G-d, a true belief in a spiritual reality that transcends our physical one is only a step away from accepting that the spiritual reality can affect our physical one. And when we can accept that, the physical reality changes.

There is a story that happened with me personally—but there are many similar stories—that doctors gave up hope on a certain woman I knew. But her faith, her optimism, the strength of her family just allowed her to fight through it. And she came through it and the doctors said that it was a miracle. Let’s use that word.

What does the miracle mean? Not like the parting of the sea, but basically by the laws of nature as they understood them, and medical interventions, it should not have happened. The odds were against it. The cancer was too far gone, or whatever it may be.

My response to that is that the spiritual channel opened up and sent energy into the physical reality and it just changed the course. Of course you can explain it away as a skeptic that of course it’s never 100% and there’s always a chance, etc. That’s true. But it happens to be that this was a person of faith and optimism.

But as I said, every miracle can be dismissed if you’re a skeptic. But if you’re not, if you look at it, so don’t call it a miracle, call it “her faith, her optimism.” Something affected her immune system that gave her that power. I see that as a spiritual reality affecting the physical reality.

Feder: So she became a sort of reception station for the broadcast of a miracle.

Jacobson: Exactly. Had she resigned herself and accepted the fate that the doctors had decreed upon her and given up, she may have closed herself up from getting energy from another place.

A simple example would be, you can have a limb that has been atrophied or has been paralyzed, and you begin to exercise it. Blood starts flowing and energy starts flowing into it and you’ve seen people who have really suffered handicaps that have gotten beyond it because they had the faith.

I’m just using it as an example. It means that there are resources of energy in the human system, both physical and spiritual systems, and if we tap those reservoirs, new channels of energy can be accessed.

However, I must qualify this by saying that after all is said and done, we do not know G-d’s mysterious ways and His plan for each of us.

Feder: Well you know there are people in the world, probably in every religion, I guess, called faith healers. Everybody knows about these people, you can see them on TV. A famous one is named Benny Hin and they get on TV and people come up in the hundreds or thousands and they have everything wrong with them and he just touches them and they’re healed.

Jacobson: I, being a natural skeptic of my own…

Feder: Wait a minute. I’m supposed to be the skeptic here. What’s my role then? Do I have anything left to do here?

Jacobson: You’re the believer, the seeker. I think each of us has both personalities, Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I’ve seen you in the most noble ways saying statements of faith that I would challenge. I don’t do that because I don’t want to play your role, but I think intelligent healthy people have times of both. I think you once asked me on the radio if I’ve ever had a crisis of faith. And I remember smiling to myself at the time thinking, “What, he thinks a guy with a yarmulke is a completely pious person who never has temptations, challenges, evil inclinations, nothing?” And I responded, “Every moment of my life I have a crisis of faith.” Why? Because how could you not have a crisis of faith when you believe in G-d and you see innocent people suffering.

It’s a constant challenge. I always talk to my skeptical friends, people who claim that they’re atheists (I don’t believe that there’s such a thing called an atheist—but we’ll discuss that on another show) but I once challenged one of them, “Tell me, you think it’s more difficult to be a person of faith or an atheist?” So of course they said, “An atheist. When you have faith it’s a crutch, it’s easy, you just explain everything away with G-d.”

I completely disagree. A person of faith has to constantly reconcile a good G-d with all the harsh realities of life. An atheist can say, “Eh. Why expect justice? Why expect good? Why expect innocent people not to suffer if there’s no G-d anyway?”

So I don’t know which is the cop-out. The point I want to make right now is that being a skeptic somewhat, when I hear a story like the faith healer, the first question I ask is, is this real, is it people’s perception? Not that I conceptually believe that it’s impossible, I believe it’s clearly possible, but there are enough con artists to challenge it.

But if it could be proved, I don’t even want empirical proof, if there’s enough to testify to it—so I’m not surprised that there’s a possibility for people who have an ability to open up a spiritual channel to a physical one, but I would first rule out all other options, that it isn’t sleight of hand, it isn’t some type of giving people what they want to believe, you know, that type of thing, a set-up, but conceptually, I have no doubt that it’s a possibility, and as I’ve stated, I often hear and see stories, whether it’s medical miracles or others, that are clearly miracles. I believe that if you ask most Americans, except a certain part of the media, most Americans believe in miracles, and more importantly, believe that miracles happen to them.

Is that folly? Is it their naivete?

Feder: And you mean these everyday miracles too, right?

Jacobson: I don’t know if it’s everyday, but once in a while. I would love even to have some caller share with us something of that nature. But they have to be ready for you, and even me, to challenge them.

Feder: Oh, you mean for someone to report that a miracle actually happened to them?

Jacobson: A miracle or for that matter any conscious experience of Divine Providence. I’m sure there are listeners who can share experiences of that nature.

Feder: Well we do have a few minutes left before the end of the show, but if anybody out there has had such an experience and wants to share it with us, our number is 212-244 1050, although I know most people like to keep those things to themselves, but if anybody wants to tell us about them…

I guess I’ve had a few miracles in my life that I could report, too.

Jacobson: But as I said, it’s not so much what we call it, whether we call it by the name miracle, it really comes down to what you do with it and how it reflects on your general relationship with other people, with G-d, and so on. If there was a miracle healer that was actually proven to be so, I would like to see that the people whom he touched and affected actually went away being better human beings.

I think a miracle, perhaps the greatest miracle of all, is when a human being goes against the grain of his or her own selfish nature and helps other people. That’s a miracle.

Feder: Well we do have a few calls. We’ll see if they have reports or maybe some skepticism. Who knows what. Stanley, go ahead, you’re on the air.

Caller: I’m actually agnostic and I really don’t believe in miracles. I have a Master’s Degree in Divinity but that was a long time ago. Unfortunately I lost my faith in G-d. My sister is an anesthesiologist, an MD, and she is an atheist, and she deals with human life every day. She could kill people with one slip of a switch.

Feder: Well, what caused your loss of faith?

Caller: I just observed human life and realized that a lot of people… I do see the suffering, like in Turkey, for example. I should be there. I’m a registered nurse. I would willingly go and try to help them. I mean 50,000 people dying. That’s a serious number.

Feder: So basically you’re just feeling kind of lost, right?

Caller: Well I’m going to see a shrink tomorrow, but there was a miracle today, I think. They pulled a 55-year-old woman out of a building in Turkey…

Feder: So you do see that as a miracle, so there are miracles… Okay. Thank you for calling, okay Josh, you’re on the air.

Caller: I’d like to comment on the Scopes Trial that Rabbi Jacobson said he thought was a hoax. He probably was thinking of the case of Piltdown man where they found some fossils in 1908 and they put it on their chart of the natural development of man. But in 1950, after a lot of tests, they discovered that it was a hoax, and then the person who perpetrated it actually admitted to it.

Feder: So Josh, did you ever encounter a miracle in your life?

Caller: Well, yes, I see Divine intervention all the time.

Feder: Thank you for that. John, you’re on the air.

Caller: I just want to say that I personally do believe, and I’ve had miracles in my life. A recent one is that the doctors had diagnosed my granddaughter with MS and we prayed and prayed, my wife and I, and the whole family prayed. We took her back to the doctors and they took all the X-rays and MRI’s and they asked what we had done with her in the last couple of weeks and we said that we just prayed, and they said that whatever we did, it worked. They couldn’t believe it. They took MRI’s and CAT scans 3 times and said she was fine and there are no problems.

So I do believe.

Feder: Well that is uplifting to hear.

Caller: I’ve always believed. I’ve never lost my faith. I’m a Christian, but I’ve never lost my faith. You know, you see bad things, and there will be an answer for those bad things. But you also see a lot of really good things that you could say only G-d could have done this. Only G-d could have stepped in and done this.

Feder: Well, I’m happy for you to hear that.

Caller: Yes, we were thrilled. My children, they teeter. They’re still young as I like to say. And they saw us praying and joined in and I said really, you have to believe. And if you don’t have a cure or if there isn’t something there, there’s still going to be an answer and you have to depend on faith.

Feder: Well, we’re going to have to unfortunately cut this a little bit short cause we’re at the end of the program.

Jacobson: I appreciate that. That’s very uplifting to hear. And I wish John and all others miracles of that nature.

Feder: Well, in the miracle of radio, bringing you all this information, it still must come to an end. Miracles come and go and they reappear. So let me just say that you can call us at 1-800-363-2646. You can email us at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com, and go to our website at www.meaningfullife.com to download transcripts of this radio program.

And also I’d like to say before we end that we have received many requests, in fact, from people asking how they can donate to the Meaningful Life Center, which is the organization that brings you all this, the radio show and the web site among other things. The Meaningful Life Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing a sense of peace, light, inspiration and meaning into the world. All its activities are made possible by donations of listeners just like you who receive the center’s publications and tapes and who listen to this program and visit the website.

When you contribute to the Meaningful Life Center, you become a partner in the work that we’re doing here, so we ask you to please consider funding these radio programs, sending us money. It’s a great opportunity for honoring someone you love perhaps, or bringing meaningful inspiration to thousands of people that we’re trying to reach.

You can dedicate a program to the memory of a loved one, someone’s birthday for instance, wedding, or any kind of occasion. But the spiritual value is there. That’s what you’re investing in. And believe me, we really do need your help. A donation of any sort, a dollar, or we’ll take $100,000 would be greatly appreciated.

Please call us at 1-800-3MEANING (1-800-363-2646). When you pledge, make sure you ask to receive our newsletter, Meanings. And remember, we don’t have commercial sponsors, you are our sponsors. We count on you the listener to make this show possible.

To help bring you the miracle of tonight’s program, our underwriters have been Stefan Stux, Jeff Rudy and Mark Fisher.

We have a few minutes left. Any last words to say on miracles.

Jacobson: There are no last words. The last call from John tells it all in some ways. It’s how you look at things and how you see things. Some of us do fall back to an agnostic or atheistic position, which I think is more of a comfort zone or even fear, but I believe that the greatest gift of all is to be able to see the miracles in your daily life, that when you wake up in the morning and you look at your children and your family and you look at your own health, acknowledging that, when you go to work or when you travel, you meet new people, there are miracles happening, there are messages, there are answers to your questions, there are solutions to dilemmas, and by opening yourself up to that deeper spiritual reality allows that channel to come through.

So a miracle may pass you and you may have your eyes closed. Or you may not have allowed yourself to experience it. So if anything I would say to our listeners: keep your eyes open, your ears open, and your spirit open. You do not know whom you may meet, and what kind of message you’ll get if you listen.

The worst scenario, even for a skeptic, is that you may learn something new, experience something new, and if you want to write it off as something that just happened, fine. So be it. Sometimes we don’t acknowledge it as a miracle, so we see it as a natural event.

Feder: Okay, thank you again. We’ll be back next week talking about the entertainment industry. Entertainment in America: Are we amusing ourselves to death?

Thanks again for your wisdom and your enlightenment.

Jacobson: Thank you Mike and it’s always a pleasure.

Tags: radio transcript, attitude, accountability
Posted in Beliefs & Concepts, Miracles, Torah | No Comments »

The Determined Chooser: Choice vs Determinism

July 28th, 2014

Much ink has been spilled on the polemic of “Choice vs Determinism.” How much control do we really have over our actions? Some people seem to be naturally good, while others are forever struggling with negative character traits and ominous perversions. One individual is raised in a warm and loving home and, from earliest infancy, is impressed by educators and role-models exemplifying integrity, compassion, and idealism, while his fellow has only violence and corruption to emulate. So can man be held accountable for his behavior? Is the good we do truly to our credit?  Is the evil our fault? Isn’t it all a matter of genes and environment?

Struggling Twins

From the womb, Esau and Jacob, twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah, seemed destined to vastly different paths in life. Rebekah, the Torah tells us, had a tumultuous pregnancy: “The children struggled within her.”[1] “Whenever she would pass a house of prayer or house of study,” explains the Midrash, “Jacob would struggle to come out… and when she passed a house of idol-worship, Esau would struggle to come out.”[2] Also, “They were struggling among themselves, fighting over the inheritance of the two worlds (i.e. Olam Hazeh, the “present world” of materialism, and Olam Habbah, the “future world” of divine perfection).”[3]

G-d then tells Rebekah: “There are two nations in your womb; two peoples will separate from your innards.”[4] When the children mature, Esau develops as a “cunning hunter, a man of the field,” while Jacob grows to be “a wholesome man, a dweller in the tents of study.”[5] Jacob’s descendents become the nation of Israel, chosen by G-d as His “kingdom of priests and a holy people.”[6] Esau fathers Rome and its culture of bloodshed, cruelty, gluttony and perversion.

There are several puzzling aspects to this account:

A. Esau is frequently referred to as “the wicked” while Jacob’s righteousness is extolled. But did either have a choice in the matter? Their fate seems predetermined from the womb.

B. Where do Esau’s “evil genes” come from? Abraham, too, had both a good son, Isaac, and an evil son, Ishmael. However, Ishmael’s mother was not the righteous Sarah, but Hagar, daughter of Pharaoh, ruler of Egypt, the most depraved society on earth. Esau, however, was Jacob’s twin. Both were born of the same saintly parents, both were conceived and raised in the same “good Jewish home.” Were Esau to turn bad later in life, we could attribute this to his freedom of choice. But why did he gravitate to paganism from the very start?

C. Indeed, there is a Midrash that clearly indicates that Esau also started out on the right path. “Also Esau was part of it – only later did he ruin himself with his deeds.”[7] The Zohar goes even further, interpreting the verse “And the children matured”[8] to mean that under the tutelage of their grandfather, Abraham, the two attained spiritual greatness.[9] Does this not contradict the Midrashim quoted above?

D. Why were they “fighting over the inheritance of the two worlds”? This would seem to be one area in which they have no quarrel: Esau wants the selfishness and the materialism of the physical world and shuns everything that is G-dly and spiritual, while the opposite is true of Jacob. So what were they fighting over?

The Crest and the Climb

In the famed “Eight Chapters” of introduction to his commentary on the Talmud’s Ethics of the Fathers, Maimonides describes two types of personalities: the ‘perfectly pious’ and the ‘one who conquers his inclinations.’ The ‘perfectly pious’ individual despises evil and desires only good; since evil does not entice him, his life’s work consists only of increasing and enhancing the good in himself and the world. On the other hand, the ‘conqueror’ struggles with the negative in himself and his environment and, in the struggle itself, sees his mission in life.

In this way, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (founder of Chabad), explains the deeper significance of the verse, “Prepare for me delicacies, such as I love.”[10] The Almighty is speaking to the community of Israel, telling them that there are two kinds of gratification (“delicacies”, in the plural) that He seeks from them. The analogy is to earthly food, in which there exist two kinds of relishes: sweet and luscious foods, and tart and sour foods that have been spiced and garnished so that they are made into delicacies which gratify the soul. Similarly, there are two kinds of gratification before G-d. The first is caused by the good accomplished by the perfectly righteous. But G-d also savors a second “delicacy”, the conquest of evil which is still at its strongest and most powerful in the heart, through the efforts of the ordinary, unperfected individual.[11]

If Jacob is the ‘perfectly pious’ individual, and Esau the potential ‘conqueror,’ we can now understand their pre-natal argument over the ‘two worlds.’

Olam Habbah, the perfect future world of Moshiach, is not a reality that is disconnected from our present existence. It is the result of our present-day efforts in dealing with and perfecting the material world. The world of Moshiach represents the ultimate realization of the divine potential invested in creation, the era in which the goodness inherent in man, and in all of the created existence, will come to light.

So for both the ‘perfectly pious’ and the ‘conqueror’ the present world is the means and the future world is the goal. Also the ‘perfectly pious’ man ‘needs’ the physical existence as the vehicle which leads to ultimate perfection. And the ‘conqueror,’ too, sees perfection as the goal to which his efforts lead. For although his pur­pose in life is defined by the process itself, every meaningful process must have a goal.

Thus, both ‘Jacob’ and ‘Esau’ lay claim to both worlds as part of their lives’ endeavor, but their priorities are reversed. To the ‘Jacobs’ of the world, the material world is but a tool, the means to an end. To the ‘Esaus,’ man’s material involvements and the struggles they entail are what life is all about. A futuristic vision of perfection is necessary, but only as a reference-point that serves to provide coherence and direction to the “real” business of life.

The tension between them over their differing visions of the “two worlds” is not a negative thing. It is the result of two world views, both positive and necessary, both indispensable components of man’s mission in life.

From an address by the Rebbe, Shabbos Toldos 1980

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber

 

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Tags: Rebbe, divine providence, good and evil, free will, choice, Jacob and Esau, challenges, goals
Posted in Bereishit, Free Choice, Toldot, Torah | 1 Comment »

What is a Miracle?

July 28th, 2014

The difference between a miracle and a natural event is only in frequency.
— The Baal Shem Tov

Miracles are all around us; we must open our eyes to see them.
— The Rebbe

A group of college students had a private audience with the Rebbe.  One student asked the Rebbe if he could perform miracles.

“This physical, natural world,” he explained, “ is not a separate entity from the higher, spiritual world — rather, it evolved from it. And so, when someone connects himself to the spiritual world, to G-d, he can affect things in this physical world in a way that cannot be anticipated.  Every person is given the choice whether or not to connect themselves to the spiritual world.

“We must make the right choice,” the Rebbe continued, “and use all our strength to live virtuously, to introduce harmony to everyone we meet, to encourage others to increase goodness and defeat evil — in effect, to make the world a better place.”

The Rebbe concluded:  “So, in essence, by inspiring students like yourselves to go into the world and perform good works, yes, we can perform miracles.”

What is a Miracle?

Do you believe in miracles? To answer this question, we must define what we mean by  “miracle.”

The word is used so often, sometimes for such trivial events, that it has become a cliché. On a superficial level, some people consider a miracle to be simply an unexpected event or a wonderful surprise; for others, however, a miracle is the belief that G-d has intervened supernaturally in their lives. People may disagree whether events in their lives are indeed miraculous or can be explained naturally. Some see miracles as a true affirmation of G-d’s presence in their lives; a more skeptical person may think of a miracle as an unrealistic hope, something to cling to in the face of life’s harsh realities.

The question of miracles is really a question of how we understand G-d and the role He plays in our lives. By analyzing the anatomy of a miracle and understanding your feelings about miracles, you can learn much that will help you find deeper meaning in your life.

So what do we mean by “miracle”? If we agree that a miracle is a beneficent occurrence that cannot be explained by the laws of nature, then we must first ask the question: What is a natural event? Why wouldn’t any natural event that awes and excites us be considered a miracle?

Truth be told, we don’t really understand the “laws” of nature. Yes, nature operates according to a design that we have come to accept as normal. But while this makes life more predictable and, therefore, comfortable, it doesn’t necessarily make it any more understandable. When we know, for instance, that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, we feel a sense of order and control; but we still have no idea as to why nature was created this way. Just because we label something “natural” doesn’t mean that we understand it any better than we understand a “miracle.”

The difference between a miracle and an act of nature is only in frequency. Imagine that the sun were to rise only once in our lifetime. Everyone would rush to see it, proclaiming it the most miraculous event they had ever witnessed. But since we experience a sunrise every day, we see it as just another ordinary part of our lives.

This is an inherent human trait — we become so accustomed to something that, no matter how extraordinary it may be, we take it for granted. We constantly need a new rush of excitement to arouse our interest. Someone will say, “If I only saw a miracle, then I would believe, then I would change my life!” What are we waiting for — the splitting of the sea? Miracles are happening around us every moment. Life itself is a miracle; consider for just a moment the sheer wonder of human birth. In fact, we do often refer to  birth as a miracle; why, then, do we so easily forget that every person on earth is the product of a miracle?

Since we are so distracted by the daily struggle to survive, by our responsibilities and obligations, we tend to ignore such simple facts. The very noise of life drowns out the underlying sound of what should be most real to us. It is not that we don’t believe in miracles; we simply stop taking the time to appreciate them. To see a miracle means to appreciate the uncommon within the common, the extraordinary within the ordinary.

When you can recognize the extraordinary within the ordinary, supernatural occurrences are not so significant.  Your faith — and life — is not dependent on such miracles, for you have a mature relationship with a reality that is higher than yourself, and you realize that the ultimate miracle is our very existence.

Just contemplate the awesome design and balance within any one family of the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom, to say nothing of the beauty of the human body or the elegance of the solar system. The miracle of nature is not to be found in its once-in-a-lifetime events, but in its relentless regularity. Whereas every creation of man is ephemeral, every part of nature is boundless, permanent, and inexplicable — in a word, miraculous.

Yes, we can explain away many events, even “miraculous” ones.  But then again, a good mind can explain away anything.  Just as you have a choice in everything you do, you can use your mind to either seek out the miracles in life or deny them.  Only you will know the degree of sincerity with which you are trying to understand your life and instill it with meaning.

ACTION

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A man had driven some distance to attend a gathering with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and he stood in line along with several thousand others.

“I don’t come just for the inspiration,” he explained to the person in front of him.  “I’ve heard of numerous miraculous incidents at these occasions.”

Upon reaching the Rebbe, each person in line held out a cup, into which the Rebbe would pour some wine.  When the man finally reached the Rebbe, he held out the cup in his left hand, but the Rebbe motioned for him to hold it in his right.

The man made no move to change hands, and the Rebbe did not pour the wine.  An attendant urged the man, “Please hold the cup in your right hand.” With obvious trepidation, he extended his right hand.  He looked on in disbelief as the Rebbe filled his cup.  The people behind him were annoyed with the delay, but he wholeheartedly forgave them.  How could they have know that his right hand had been paralyzed?

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Posted in Excerpts From Toward a Meaningful Life, Beliefs & Concepts, Miracles, Torah, The Book: Toward a Meaningful Life | 2 Comments »

The Soul of Evil

July 28th, 2014

And G-d said to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh; for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants in order that I might show My signs in their midst…”

Exodus 10:1

Why does it say, “Come to Pharaoh”? It should have said, “Go to Pharaoh” …. But G-d brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the… supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve…which Moses feared to approach himself…

Zohar, part II, 34a

Among the fifty-three sections of the Torah, several stand out as milestones in its narrative of the history of humanity and of the people of Israel. The section of Bereishit recounts G-d’s creation of the world in six days and Adam’s banishment from Eden; Lech Lecha describes Abraham’s journeys to bring the truth of the One G-d to a pagan world; Yitro includes the revelation at Sinai and the giving of the Torah to Israel; and so on.

A list of pivotal Torah sections would certainly include the section of Bo (Exodus 10–13), which tells of the exodus of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt. The Exodus marked our birth as a people,[1] and we are enjoined to “Remember the day that you went out of Egypt, all the days of your life.”[2] Indeed, when G-d revealed Himself to us at Sinai, He introduced Himself not as the Creator of heaven and earth, but as “…your G-d, who has taken you out of the land of Egypt”[3]! For the defining element of our relationship with G-d is not that we are beings created by Him (of which there are many others in G-d’s world), but that we are free beings—beings in whom He has invested of His own infinity and eternity, beings empowered by Him to transcend the constraints of the material world and the limits of their own natures.

The Name

Bo means “come.” The name derives from the section’s opening verse, in which G-d instructs Moses to “come to Pharaoh” to warn him of the seventh plague (the plague of locusts) and once again deliver the divine demand that the ruler of Egypt set free the children of Israel.

The Torah considers the name of a thing to be the articulation of its essence;[4] certainly, such is the case with the Torah’s own names for itself and its components. The name of a Torah section always conveys its primary message and the common theme of all its subsections and narratives.[5]

One would therefore expect the section of the Exodus to be called “Exodus,” “Freedom,” or some other name that expresses the significance of this defining event in the history of Israel. Instead, it derives its name from Moses’ coming to Pharaoh—an event that seems but a preliminary to the Exodus. Indeed, the concept of the leader of Israel coming to Pharaoh’s palace to petition him to let the Jewish people go—implying that the Jews are still subservient to Egypt and its ruler—seems the very antithesis of the Exodus!

The phrase “Come to Pharaoh” also evokes much discussion in the commentaries. Why does G-d tell Moses to come to Pharaoh? Would it not have been more appropriate to say, “Go to Pharaoh”?

The Zohar explains that Moses feared confronting Pharaoh inside his palace, at the hub of his power. (On earlier occasions, Moses had been directed to meet Pharaoh in other places, such as on the king’s morning excursions to the Nile[6]). So G-d promised Moses that He Himself would accompany him to Pharaoh. The word “come” is thus to be understood in the sense of “come with me”; G-d is saying to Moses, “Come with Me to Pharaoh.”

The Zohar goes on to say that Moses is being invited by G-d to meet with the innermost essence of Egypt’s ruler and god. Thus we have another meaning of the phrase “Come to Pharaoh—“come” in the sense of “enter within.” To liberate the people of Israel from the “great and mighty serpent,” it was not enough to merely go to Pharaoh; Moses had to enter into the core of Pharaoh, into the very root of his power.

My River

Who is Pharaoh and what does he represent? What is his “innermost essence”? Why did Moses dread confronting Pharaoh in his palace if G-d Himself had sent him there? And how does “coming into Pharaoh” hold the key for the Exodus from Egypt and the liberation of the soul of man?

The prophet Ezekiel describes Pharaoh as “the great serpent who couches in the midst of his streams, who says: ‘My river is my own, and I have made myself.’”[7] In other words, the evil of Pharaoh is not defined by the promiscuity that characterized the pagan cults of Egypt; not by his enslavement and torture of millions; not by his bathing in the blood of slaughtered children; but by his egocentrism, by his regarding his own self as the source and standard for everything.

For this is the root of all evil. Self-centeredness might seem a benign sin compared to the acts of cruelty and depravity to which man can sink, but it is the source and essence of them all. When a person considers the self and its needs to be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, his morality—and he might initially be the most moral of men—is devoid of significance. Such a person is ultimately capable of committing any act, should he regard it as crucial to himself or to his self-defined vision of reality.

Ultimately, every good deed is an act of self-abnegation, and every evil deed is an act of self-deification. When a person does a good deed—whether it involves contributing a single coin to charity or devoting an entire lifetime to a G-dly cause—he is saying: there is something greater than myself to which I am committed. When a person violates the divine will—whether with a minor transgression or with the most heinous of crimes—he is saying: “My river is my own, and I have made myself”; good is what is good to me, evil is what is contrary to my will; I am the master of my reality, I am god.

The Secret

So is the ego evil? Is this fundamental component of our soul an alien implant that must be uprooted and discarded in our quest for goodness and truth?

In the final analysis, it is not. For the cardinal law of reality is that “There is none else besides Him”[8]—that nothing is contrary to, or even separate from, the Creator and Source of all. The ego, the sense of self with which we are born, also derives from G-d; indeed, it is a reflection of the divine “ego.” Because G-d knows Himself as the only true existence, we, who were created in His image, possess an intimation of His “sense of self” in the form of our own concept of the self as the core of all existence.

It is not the ego that is evil, but the divorcing of the ego from its source. When we recognize our own ego as a reflection of G-d’s “ego” and make it subservient to His, it becomes the driving force in our efforts to make the world a better, more G-dly place. But the same ego, severed from its divine moorings, begets the most monstrous of evils.

When G-d commanded Moses to “Come to Pharaoh,” Moses had already been going to Pharaoh for many months. But he had been dealing with Pharaoh in his various manifestations: Pharaoh the pagan, Pharaoh the oppressor of Israel, Pharaoh the self-styled god. Now he was being told to enter into the essence of Pharaoh, into the soul of evil. Now he was being told to penetrate beyond the evil of Pharaoh, beyond the mega-ego that insists “I have created Myself,” to confront Pharaoh’s quintessence: the naked “I” that stems from the very “self” of G-d.

Moses did not fear the evil of Pharaoh. If G-d had sent him, G-d would protect him. But when G-d told him to enter into the essence of Pharaoh, he was terrified. How can a human being behold such a pure manifestation of the divine truth? A manifestation so sublime that it transcends good and evil and is equally the source of both?

Said G-d to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh.” Come with Me, and together we will enter the great serpent’s palace. Together we will penetrate the self-worship that is the heart of evil. Together we will discover that there is neither substance nor reality to evil—that all it is, is the misappropriation of the divine in man.

If this truth is too terrifying for a human being to confront on his own, come with Me, and I will guide you. I will take you into the innermost chamber of Pharaoh’s soul, until you come face to face with evil’s most zealously guarded secret: that it does not, in truth, exist.

When you learn this secret, no evil will ever defeat you. When you learn this secret, you and your people will be free.

Based on an address by the Rebbe, Shabbat Bo, 5752 (January 11,  1992)[9]

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by Yanki Tauber

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Posted in Good & Evil, Biblical, Weekly Parsha, Soul & Mystical, Months & Holidays, Passover, Shmot, Bo, Beliefs & Concepts, Torah Personalities, Spiritual, Torah, Nisan, Pharoah | No Comments »

Why Does Israel Dominate Headlines?

July 25th, 2014

The Enormous Soul of a Tiny Country

We ask not what will be? But what can we do about it? – The Rebbe

All our eyes are glued to events in the Holy Land. Our hearts and prayers cry out for our brothers and sisters in Israel, and for the senseless loss of life and fear prevailing all around. We especially acknowledge and pray for the young soldiers who are sacrificing their lives to protect the innocent.

Even as we offer our physical and financial support for Israel and all those in need, there is something more, much more that we can do.

But before we get to that, let us address the biggest question of all: As much support as we give, many of us are left paralyzed with the question: G-t in himmel: vos vet zein? G-d in heaven: what will be? Israel has been embroiled in crisis almost from the beginning of time. In the last 76 years alone Israel has been in a state of war. Besides for four major wars fought in the land (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973), and another six battles at least (in Lebanon, Gaza and the Intifadas), the Promised Land is surrounded and filled with enemies sworn to its destruction, rendering it in effect in a perpetual state of war. Thank G-d these lethal toxins flare up only once in a while, but it nevertheless is a simmering powder keg, with no end in sight. And nothing we do seems able to change the overall situation. Anything we attempt – and any support we provide – seems to only be a temporary band-aid, not solving the root issues.

Rabbi Yisrael Lau, former chief Rabbi of Israel relates a story that happened with him the first time he came to the USA in 1974. He was then a rabbi in a small synagogue in Netanya, and came to Brooklyn to visit the Rebbe. In middle of their conversation, the Rebbe asked him what Jews are saying these days in Israel (it was right after the 1973 Yom Kippur war). Rabbi Lau replied that Jews are asking each other: “Vos vet zein”? “What will be?”

The Rebbe grasped Rabbi Lau’s arm, and vehemently said: “Yiden fregen nit vos vet zein; zei fregen: vos geit men ton!” Jews don’t ask what will be; they ask: What are we going to do!

“What will be” is the question of a victim. “What are we going to do” is a proactive question. When you are at war, the last thing you want to hear is your commander-in-chief questioning, “What are we going to do?” You want to hear that we have a plan, a direction, a strategy – and we are forging ahead!
Accordingly, there is something very powerful that we can do to forever alter the state of affairs in the Holy Land.

*

Why does Israel so dominate the headlines? A country barely the square miles of New Jersey, with a population less than most countries in the world, captures people’s attention far more than any other. No topic creates a charged response from all, heated debates, and polarized opinions as does Israel.

And this is not “new” news. Israel has always been in the news. From the beginning of history people, nations and religions have been fighting for control of the Holy Land. Disproportionate to its size the Promised Land carries unparalleled influence throughout history. What is the mysterious power of this small piece of the map that has everyone consumed with it?

Like everything in life, the mystique of Israel can only be understood by getting to its soul-root.

When you want to understand the true nature of a phenomenon you must always travel beneath the surface into the underlying causes. Not just the symptoms, but also the biological, anatomical, chemical and other variables that shape life. Mysticism explores the spiritual structure that lies within it all: The soul inside the “body” of the phenomenon.

When we see how Israel so illogically dominates the news, and not just today but for millennia on end, there is no way to understand this mystery without getting into the deepest roots of existence itself. The same can be said about the Bible, the “best selling” book in history, and one that continues to top all charts. What lies behind its power?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the… annals of Jewish mysticism.
The world in which we live is actually made up of two parts: One part matter, one part spirit. Everything in life consists of a body and a soul. The Kabbalists call it container and light, but you can also define it as form and function, style and substance, package and product.

On an individual level: Your physical body is a container that carries within itself your personality, your soul and all its faculties. The naked eye that only views the body does not see what lies inside; it may have no inkling of what lurks within your psyche. Indeed, it may even have a distorted view of who you truly are. The macrocosm is just like the microcosm: The “body” of the universe conceals the potent forces that lie within. The outer layer of the material universe is like a shell, a peel – a thick skin that conceals the enormous spiritual energy within.

But one big question remains: Even though spirit and matter are in actuality two sides of one coin, they are perceived by us as two separate entities. Indeed, one could even deny the existence of the spirit within (as many claim they do). In Kabbalistic terminology this denial or dichotomy is possible, nay, necessary as a result of the great primordial Tzimtzum, in which G-d concealed the conscious Divine energy, so that existence as we know it could emerge and experience itself as a distinct entity, not overwhelmed by the Divine unity.

So here’s the big question: Is this concealment airtight? Is it ever possible to reach a place where these two worlds meet? Or are we doomed to live either in the world of matter or spirit?

Can we reach beyond the doors of perception and truly live a life of integration – a life of peace between body and soul, between matter and spirit? Is there an intersection that connects the two worlds?

The answer is Israel. The Holy Land is the portal between heaven and earth. The split between the two worlds is deep indeed. Yet, G-d left one door open between them, the Promised Land. This is what makes this land holy. Holiness means something that simply has less egocentric layers that block out the inner Divine energy. G-d left this door open so that the holiness of Israel will ultimately transform the rest of the world.

Israel – Eretz Yisroel as its accurately called in the Torah – is the spiritual ‘center’ of the universe. The sages tell us that Israel has ten levels of holiness, one greater than the next, with the highest point being Jerusalem, and within it the Temple Mount. Jacob called it “the gate to heaven” (Genesis 28:17).
Israel is the place that bridges heaven and earth. The word “Israel” is the name given by Esau’s angel to Jacob after their all-night wrestle. “Hereafter you will be named Yisroel, for you have battled with the Divine and with man and you have prevailed” (Genesis 32:29). There is a battle between the Divine and man, between spirit and matter, and Jacob prevailed, allowing for the fusion of the two.

Jacob’s victory as reflected in his name Israel manifests itself in space in the land called Israel.¹  The Holy Land of Israel is the physical manifestation of the fusion between the spiritual and the material – between the human and the Divine.

The centrality of Israel in Torah is actually a psycho/spiritual centrality. The Holy Land represents a state of sanctity within each of our souls, and its ability to integrate with our physical lives. It’s role as Promised Land – the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the land that consumes the journey of the Jewish people throughout the wilderness – is the destination to which we all aspire.
And that’s why everyone gravitates to this land. Unconsciously, every nation, religion and individual senses that the Holy land is the spiritual vortex of existence, the place where the doors open up to reach the Divine.

The collective unconscious of the universe is obsessed with Israel. Not with China, land of 2+ billion, not with India, not with the USA, a country 10 times younger than many walls in Jerusalem. The only place on Earth which continues to dominate headlines, today just as it did 3500 years ago, is this small country (1/19th the size of the state of California) called Israel!

But the question begs: If Israel is the bridge between heaven and earth why is there no peace in the Holy Land? Why don’t we experience this unity? True, one can sense a mystical presence in Jerusalem, Tzfat and other cities, but why has it not permeated the people that live there, and for that matter, why hasn’t it spread to the rest of the world?

The entire point of Israel’s centrality is to serve as a spiritual hub which will bring peace to the entire world. It is a place that is meant to serve as a model of what the world would look like when heaven meets earth. So where are the results?

Ahh, this brings us to the crux of it all. The thing called “galut.” Galut means exile. A better translation is displacement – a spiritual dissonance, in which we become misaligned from our source and our purpose.

Health is a sound soul inside a sound body – body and soul aligned in one seamless whole, and the body serves as a container that allows the soul to freely flow through it. What happens when there is an impediment, G-d forbid, when the soul’s energy cannot freely flow through the body? This is the definition of illness.

So it is with spiritual and psychological health. A healthy organism, a healthy person, nation or religion is one in which the “body” is one with the “soul.” However, when “what you do” is not one with “who you are,” when there is a dichotomy between your physical activity and your soul’s aspirations, you are in “galut” – spiritually and psychologically displaced.

This galut is perhaps most acutely felt in the Holy Land. As demonstrated by the events that took place this time of the year – The Three Weeks – when we remember and honor the siege and destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, which began this long exile.

In the spiritual vortex of the universe any dissonance is most keenly experienced. A speck of dust on your arm is hardly noticed. The same dust on your eyeball is quite irritating. Israel is called the Divine “eye.” Every disparity in the world is amplified in the eyeball, in the soul.

In our prayers we declare: “Because of our iniquities we were exiled from our land.” Everyone says this prayer, including the Jews living in Israel. But they are living in the land, how can they say, “we were exiled from the land”? Because exile is much more than physical displacement; it is spiritual displacement – and that is the state of affairs in the universe for the last 19 centuries, actually, from the beginning of time. Until the day when we actually integrate matter and spirit, we are living in an unhealthy state of displacement and disconnection. The fact that we may feel healthy only accentuates the disconnection.

But the good news is this: The cause for this displacement is our iniquities [sin]. Why? What is a sin? It is displacement.

Unfortunately, the word sin is loaded today, as have many religious references. No one has a problem with being told that spilling water into your hard drive will destroy your computer. Or that eating poison will harm you. We don’t call this a “sin,” we call it “destructive behavior” and as a result of “cause and effect,” destructive behavior will result in damage to the system.

Once you get beyond the stereotypes and distorted myths surrounding sin, you discover that the true meaning of sin is displacement, a behavior that is inconsistent with what makes the “machine” of life work best. As a result, according to the rules of “cause and effect,” we were displaced (exiled) from our land. Not as an incidental punishment, but as an effect of our behavior. When you wander away from your calling, you in effect have wandered away from “Israel” – your soul and the collective soul and conscience of the universe.
Yes, as painful as it is, you can live in Israel, but Israel may not live in you. Just as you can eat kosher and not be kosher.

Two important qualifications, before you criticize what I just wrote. One, the Holy Land retains its inherent holiness despite our displaced exile. Two, it is a great mitzvah to live in Israel, and one of the great miracles of our time is the renaissance of Jewish life in Israel today. And perhaps the noblest role of all is the one played by the IDF, Israeli soldiers sacrificing their lives to protect their brothers and sisters.

However, the challenge still remains for all of us, both those living inside and outside of Israel: Is Israel – the true spiritual nature of Eretz Yisroel – living inside of us?

As we are left grappling with the situation in Israel, reeling by the terror, fighting a war on the ground and for public opinion, as more lives are broken – what better thought to ponder on than our own relationship with the spiritual center of the universe?

We thus have the solution to resolving the battles in Israel once and for all: By strengthening the spiritual core of the land, which is the source of its power.

In addition to our immediate support on every possible level, we must never forget the root of all our problems in Israel: Our misalignment and displacement from our spiritual hub.

Our call today is to realign our lives with the spiritual Israel within and without. As the Tzemach Tzedek told one of his Chassidim: “Make here (the place in which you live) Eretz Yisroel.” Wherever you are – inside or outside of Israel – you must battle the forces that separate man from the Divine, you must take your life and transform it into “Eretz Yisroel,” a spiritual force that prevails over all. And prevail we will.

The angrier you get about events in Israel, the more you should channel that intensity into positive action to create a spiritual revolution in your life, in your home, in your community and in your corner of the world. This is the true conquest of Israel.

And we are told, we are promised that a positive shift in your life wherever you may live, positively shifts the state of affairs in Israel. A shift in the spoke shifts the hub. By building our “spiritual Israel” within we build physical Israel.

Here’s a suggestion, posited by the Rebbe:

Our sages teach us that by studying the laws and details about a specific entity, we help rebuild it. So even when we cannot physically perform a certain mitzvah (e.g. bring an offering in the temple, build and serve in the physical Temple), we “perform” the mitzvah by studying and “recreating” the experience as best as we possible can with the resources we have available to us. You can call it cognitive actualization: Cognitive focus generates practical reality. Sometimes when we can’t perform a certain action, we can focus our mind on it, thereby setting in motion a force that gets actualized in the process. A form of positive projection, if you wish. By thinking about the action we project and actually create it.

Based on this concept, here is the suggestion: As a show of solidarity with Israel and a way to help “build” the true Israel both in body and soul, let us organize classes to study in depth and detail the nature of the Holy Land and specifically the Temple – both its physical and spiritual nature. By exploring the spiritual and psychological parallels of Israel and the Temple in our lives today we bond with the land and its holiest core. Israel’s geography, its personality, its very terrain – mountains and valleys, fruits and deserts, all reflect our own spiritual personality. To appreciate and preserve the power of Israel we must recognize and access its soul.

This of course is in addition to all other ways in which we support Israel – financially, emotionally and so on. Obviously, a powerful way of showing support is by visiting the Holy Land or even deciding to live there. But even for those of us that cannot do that, we are not released from the obligation of building Israel within our lives and having Israel live inside of us. Indeed, perhaps our obligation may be even stronger, and it behooves us to find deeper ways to bond with Israel as the soul of the universe and recognize its integral connection to our own soul.

This week we conclude the fourth book of the Torah with the reading of Massei, the journeys of the Jewish people during their 40 year trek through the wilderness. “These are the journeys,” we read, “of the children of Israel as they left Egypt,” concluding with their last stop on the east bank of the Jordan River, poised to enter the Promised Land.

My dear friends, we are still on this journey. Even for those living in Israel the full realization of the Promised Land eludes us.

But, the good news is that we are well on our way, just a breadth away from crossing the threshold to the Promised Land together with the rebuilding of the Third Temple in its full glory.

After years of traveling, both physically and spiritually, after so much wear and tear, trials and tribulations, we are right at the finish line.

Just a few more steps.

Your one act, your one final forward thrust can and will bring us over the line to our destination.

That one step and when it will happen is up to us.

* * *

—————–
[1] One of the most eloquent ideas in Kabbala is the interwoven unity of time, space and the human being: Everything that exists in one entity also exists in the other two. Everything in time and space is also contained in microcosm within each of us. And vice versa: Everything within the human system manifests somewhere in time and space.

Tags: war, Gaza, Beis Hamikdash, Jerusalem
Posted in Soul & Mystical, Israel, Beliefs & Concepts, Social, Exile, Spiritual, Moshiach & Redemption, Current Events | No Comments »

Light That Dispels Darkness: Why Do Good and Evil Exist?

July 24th, 2014

A person must see himself and the world as equally balanced on two ends of the scale;  by doing one good deed, he tips the scale and brings for himself and the entire world redemption and salvation — Maimonides, Laws of Repentance, 3:4

Evil is simply the absence of good; it has no real existence of its own, and is dispelled in the light of goodness — the Rebbe

Why do Good and Evil Exist?

We all struggle to fathom how a good and righteous G-d could allow so much suffering and could permit such atrocities in the world. An obvious question inevitably arises:  Why did G-d create evil, and how can we reconcile it with His goodness?

To answer this, we must take one step back and ask a far more basic question: Why did G-d create life? For without life, there would be no evil and no pain.

G-d created our material world because He wanted us to refine it and make it His home.  In order to achieve this, we must first perceive ourselves as an independent reality. So each of us was granted free will, the ability to choose between selflessness and selfishness, and between good and evil. This freedom is the greatest gift G-d gave us; without it, there would be no point to life.

G-d does not want evil; He wants us to do only good. Nor does G-d ever commit evil; only man commits evil. But in order for man to be a true partner in life, he must have the autonomy to choose. Even though G-d cannot bear the pain when one man causes another to suffer, it would be even more painful to take back the free will He has given us.

So we have the potential to do either good or evil. And by overcoming the temptation to do evil, the temptation to advance ourselves at any cost, we reach a far higher plane than we otherwise could have. The greater the challenge, the more strength it draws out from us. And just as a light in the night seems brighter and is more appreciated than the same light by day, an act of kindness shines with all the more intensity when compared to the wrong-doing we could have committed instead. There is a certain risk in G-d’s having granted us such a choice, but risk is inherent in growth.  For a child to learn to walk, he or she must be allowed to fall.

 A writer who once visited the Rebbe asked a question that many visitors would often ask:  How can G-d permit evil to exist?

The Rebbe explained that evil has no real existence, that it is only a potential state of being that appears to have a real existence so that man might have free choice.  The Rebbe suggested that the writer think about a knife.  “On its own, a knife is surely not evil, although there are occasions on which it could be used for an evil purpose,” the Rebbe said.  “When a doctor uses the same knife for surgery, though, it serves a good purpose.  G-d allows us to choose how we will use the knife.   To believe that evil has its own, positive existence is to believe that there are two divine powers rather than one.”

Are We Naturally Inclined Toward Good Or Evil?

Some thinkers contend that good and evil are two equal powers, and some would even argue that evil is the more powerful of the two. They consider man’s nature as essentially selfish and morality as a superimposed condition to allow us to coexist in peace. Most people, the argument goes, are controlled by their evil inclinations, and the world at its root is an uncaring or even a wicked place.

The Bible teaches us that this is unequivocally wrong. There is only one G-d and G-d is good; therefore, all of G-d’s creations, including man and our world, are essentially good.  In our hearts, we all have a natural propensity for justice and virtue, and are repulsed by injustice and abuse. We maintain a deep hope and faith that things will be better than they are.

The fact that we live in a world where, often, “the wicked prosper” and where selfishness prevails, is a result of our giving priority to the material world and disregarding the spiritual. After Adam and Eve sinned, a dichotomy was created between matter and spirit.  Instead of being seen as a “container” for spiritual divine “light” within, the world began to be seen as an independent, self-contained reality. This distortion allows room for evil; but whereas goodness is a real and tangible virtue, evil has no power on its own.

The fact that the wicked prosper, then, is not a reality on its own, but a result of limiting our vision to the one-dimensional material world, or our failure to recognize the container as concealed light for us to reveal. Rather than battling evil, we should concentrate on cultivating the goodness within ourselves and others. After all, since evil has no independent existence, focusing on it only gives it more opportunity to grow.

The best and most effective response and solution to evil is to attack not only its symptoms, but its cause: through selfless acts of goodness, we destroy evil at its root.

When teaching a child, or when you see yourself or a friend succumbing to selfishness, it may be tempting to reprimand him, to frighten him by warning of the terrible consequences that will surely befall him if he continues his behavior.  But the positive approach is ultimately more successful. Tell the person about the goodness within him, of his pure soul and great potential; show what a great injustice he is committing by not living up to his potential. Such advice will foster confidence and pride, while a grave warning demoralizes a person and closes up his soul.

We have the ability to counter the forces of evil by shining the light of goodness on them. And we have the certitude that good will prevail. This confidence goes beyond common optimism. Because goodness is the natural state of the world and humankind, its effect is eternal and cumulative. All of man’s good works throughout the ages are building blocks, leading up to a final triumph of goodness in the world.  Moral relapses are not flaws, but by-products of this process: It is to be expected that when the forces of goodness show strength, the forces of evil will endeavor to retaliate, and that they will make their final stand just on the verge of their total collapse.

This is an excerpt from “Toward a Meaningful Life – The Wisdom of the Rebbe” by Rabbi Simon Jacobson.

Tags: good and evil, light and darkness, attitude
Posted in Good & Evil, Beliefs & Concepts, Personal Life, Torah, Pain & Suffering | 3 Comments »

Individuality and Religion: A Frank Discussion About the Divine Service of Individualism

July 24th, 2014

Rabbi Simon Jacobson: This is Rabbi Simon Jacobson, not Mike Feder. Because of the abbreviated show this week (due to sports programming), Mike will be off this week and we’ll welcome him back next Sunday at 6:00.

So please indulge me in these 35 minutes, and I hope to be able to elaborate more in the coming weeks.

As I promised, I would be discussing a particularly appropriate topic this week, in light of the art controversy with the Brooklyn Museum, and in general, an issue that has touches all of us one way or another, which is, individualism and G-d, or individualism and religion: Are they reconcilable? Are they antithetical and diametrically opposed to each other?

When you ask most people within religion or outside of it, they’ll say that religion essentially is conformist. They’ll say that because it’s driven by a higher need, a higher good, and justifiably, because human beings can be tempted and have their selfish interests at heart, then for the greater good, there has to be a certain type of conformity to a greater communal good. Essentially, they’ll say, that’s the heart of religion: dictating the terms and imposing upon people a set of laws that are absolute and considered to be, by religious people, Divine.

So most people consider that to be quite antithetical to anything that is individualistic and self-oriented. What struck me recently was last week’s Sunday Times Magazine special issue on the millennium entitled, “The Me Millennium,” and their subtitle was, “We Put Ourselves at the Center of the Universe. So now, for better or for worse, we’re on our own.”

One particular article that struck me, besides all of them (it was quite an interesting issue) was one on radical selfishness, where someone writes about how it is to be thirty-something, overpaid, and totally disconnected.

And this is a recurrent theme and undercurrent in this entire issue. When surveys are done asking people what their priorities are, self-expression is always on top there, and interestingly, only the second or third priority is faith in G-d. However, religion is down at the lowest end of the spectrum, and the explanation of the people who did the survey in the Times is that religion is considered to be a formal, denominational commitment, whereas faith in G-d is more of an individualist thing.

So I want to address this topic and I really look forward to getting your calls, as always, at 212-244-1050 at WEVD.

But let me first, in a provocative way perhaps, lay certain elements on the table and that will make for a much more interesting dialogue.

So the issue is individualism and G-d. As I said, most people would assume that religion is quite conformist, because it has a set of laws—it’s not moral relativism, it’s an absolute set of laws: Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do that. And essentially it’s a Divine law set down, where human beings must live up to this law if they do accept G-d.

However, I must say that there’s a primary and a fundamental flaw in the entire thinking about this so to speak conflict between individualism and G-d, both in the understanding of what the self is and in the understanding of what G-d is.

You see, with most of us, our perception of G-d is as a superimposed type of entity that dictates laws of how we are to behave. But if someone were to say to you, okay, you’re a person of free expression, your self can express itself, does this mean that you can put your hand in fire? So everyone would understand that that is not exactly an expression of freedom, because the laws of the universe, the laws of nature, simply do have parameters, and putting your hand in fire will burn your hand. It’s not a punishment, it’s not limiting your freedom, it’s just living within the structure of existence itself.

Now, if we are to understand G-d in a more sophisticated way, one has to understand that G-d is not a superimposed entity: that first human beings exist and then a religion appears. But if G-d is to be understood in any legitimate way, you have to see it as the engineer of the universe. It’s like getting a computer with an operator’s manual.

So someone will say, “Well, I don’t have to follow the operator’s manual. I want to press these buttons. I’ll erase my hard drive.” Of course you can do that, but then you are essentially destroying your machine.

Life, too, is a machine, a complex organism. And we receive an operator’s manual with it which is not a collection of superimposed laws (you must do this, you must not do that), but a manual that tells us how the machine works at its best.

So it’s not a question of imposing upon us certain laws that you must do, it’s telling us, “Do you want to be the best you can be? Here’s how you can manipulate the parameters and the boundaries of existence, and how you can learn to soar and allow your spirit to fly.”

The problem is this, however. Religion has become so bureaucratic and G-d has become so stereotyped into a superimposed being with a dogmatic set of laws…

One hears the joke where the atheist asks his uncle, who’s a religious, pious man, “You know, uncle, you’re so religious, if you had to choose between G-d and the truth, which would you choose?” And without missing a beat the uncle says, “Of course, G-d,” without even realizing that if G-d and the truth are not the same, what kind of G-d is it?

Because religion has become sometimes an end of its own, and so many people have been killed and persecuted in the name of religion, there has been a rebellion, for very good reason, against the authoritative, established religions in the past.

So I want to say something which may sound somewhat radical, but I think after you think about it, you may reconsider. We consider this millennium to be a celebration of the self, as the Times put it. In this millennium the self has emerged, and we’re on our own, for better or for worse, as opposed to the first millennium, where G-d was the center of the universe.

Back then, most people, or all people, did not have surnames, did not have private space (there was no such thing as private rooms). The center of the universe was G-d, religion, the church, or the monarch. And human beings were not only denied their individual rights, there wasn’t even an expectation of individual rights.

Essentially, the greater good was served by people submitting themselves, repressing their individuality, and conforming to a greater good. Now, if the leader happened to have been benevolent, that may have been a fine system. However, if he was a dictator or if he was in any way a fascist, he could of course abuse his position, because to be a monarch was considered to be a Divine right, whereas the masses had to follow blindly and obediently.

However, in this millennium, in the waves of the Renaissance, Emancipation, and the Enlightenment which began to sweep across Europe and spread across the world, individuality rose to the surface. Individual freedoms, the Bill of Rights, which in essence and in truth, as I’m going to explain, is not really a contradiction to G-d. But I’ll say this. When Nietzsche writes that G-d is dead, it’s a misconception and people feel that he was an atheist. What he was saying is that the G-d that we have been educated with, the G-d that we have been presented with in our homes and in our schools, in our religious environments and institutions, is dead, is corrupt, is essentially bankrupt.

However, I always tell the story of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev who responded to an atheist, “The G-d that you don’t believe in, I also don’t believe in.” In other words, we have to know what definition of G-d we’re talking about. A god that is a contradiction to individuality perhaps is not a true G-d at all. Because it is G-d who created the individual. Our individuality is not our own creation, it is a Divine right: as the Bible puts it, you were created, every one of us, of you, was created in the Divine image.

So individuality is not just an inherent right of birth, it’s actually a Divine right, a sacred right, given to us by G-d. So in no way could G-dliness, or a Divine institution in the spirit of G-d in any way contradict, repress, suppress, or compromise that individuality.

But once there is a distortion in how we see ourselves and how we see G-d, then there arises a competition. Either I’m following G-d’s rules or I’m following my own. Well, one has to look at, who are you and who is the self?

I would pose it this way. In Jewish tradition we read one portion every week of the Torah (the Chumash, the Bible), and in this week’s portion we read about Abraham and about Abraham’s search for G-d. And a friend pointed out to me that Abraham’s search for G-d, once he came to the recognition of a G-d who was not manmade [it was the year 2,000 from creation, because according to Jewish belief, we are now in the year 5760, so we’ll call it the second millennium from creation (not in the Roman calendar but in the Hebrew calendar)], was when Abraham really went out and began to influence the world to recognize a G-d, who was not manmade.

So, in essence, when you look at it in a historical sense, you can say that at the beginning of time, when man and woman (Adam and Eve) were created, their sense of self, their ego, their individuality and G-d were completely aligned with each other. It was one agenda. G-d created us. We’re here to serve a greater purpose. And part of our self-expression is actualizing all of our talents and abilities to transform this world.

That was essentially their recognition. However, with the eating of the Tree of Knowledge, their self, their ego, suddenly became, you can say, divorced and split off from the Divine agenda. Suddenly individuality for the first time suffered a crisis, an identity crisis. Who am I? Why am I here?

As G-d tells Adam after he sins, “I don’t recognize you. Where are you?” Suddenly the individual identity of the human being got misaligned from its higher purpose and mission.

Now what happens then? G-d, in a sense, is compromised and the self is compromised. Because if your spirit, if your person, your personality was viscerally aware and instinctively sensitive to its higher purpose, then we would have an alignment between spirit and matter, between our inner selves and our outer selves, and then there would be no contradiction between individuality and G-d.

But where the ball started rolling and created a snowball effect was when G-d became a superimposed reality. Oh, there’s a G-d out there, some of us have faith in G-d. But then I have an individual self. How do I reconcile the two?

And what slowly happened, and what Abraham came to recognize, was that this is a complete distortion. We have to understand that these are two forces, both individuality and G-dliness, can work side by side and be integrated.

But as generations passed, and the self became more selfish, more narcissistic, more self-contained, G-d was relegated to a second level of our existence, and so the conflict began.

Now, in essence, I would say that this second millennium, this rebellion or the emergence of the self and individuality, in many ways was healthy, because it was responding to an unhealthy G-d. When I say an unhealthy G-d, I don’t mean G-d, I mean how G-d was represented by corrupt leaders, by authoritative people, who were not necessarily representing how G-d wanted to be represented but their own power and their own control.

So the rebellion in that millennium was a rebellion not against G-d the way G-d was meant to be, as Abraham recognized Him, that fits and is completely consistent with our own individual expression, but it was a G-d that was inhibiting personal expression. It was a G-d where you ceased to be an individual created in the Divine image, where you could be killed by another human being who decides that he wants control.

However, like any rebellion, there are positive elements and there are negative elements. So now we come to the end of the millennium, and we’re about to enter the third millennium, and here, I would say, that the real call of our times—and this is where I emphatically disagree with the New York Times—that we have put ourselves at the center of the universe for better or for worse, we are on our own. No. “We have put ourselves at the center of the universe,” was one stage where we rebelled against a corrupt representation of G-d. But now the time has come to recognize that we’re not on our own. That we can reconcile our individuality with a G-d, and let’s call the next millennium, instead of being the “Me” millennium, perhaps the “Us” millennium, where you can understand that the Divine system is not one that imposes itself or in any way asks us to conform, but rather teaches us how to be the best individual we can be.

To use a simple analogy, and then I’d like to reidentify ourselves and go to the phones, a simple analogy would be music. There’s nothing more structured than musical notes. There are twelve musical notes on the scale. Now, some great musician could say, “I don’t want to be a conformist. I want to create a 13^th musical note. Or only use eleven. That’s ludicrous! There’s a structure, this is what sound is. The spectrum of sound breaks down into this number of notes. However, within the structure, you can play an infinite number of combinations of music and song that can transform hearts and souls, that can transport us to another time and place, as we see in the power of music.

So it’s not structure that’s conforming, it’s what you do with the structure.

Existence has a structure. There are parameters. The human being can’t fly. We can’t walk into fire and just remain intact. That doesn’t mean that we are necessarily limited. It means that you have to learn how to ride with the waves instead of battling them. And that is the function of the Divine system of laws in the Torah, the body of mitzvahs. It is not meant to inhibit us in any way; it’s meant to teach us how to use the parameters of existence to soar and transcend these parameters.

Now this is a topic that deserves, as always, much more time, but I just wanted to lay that down on the table, that individuality and G-d can be reconciled and we can be a complete healthy self, an individual, and at the same time, rise to our higher calling.

Now we’re here at WEVD, 1050am, every Sunday evening 6-7pm. This is Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson, who is sharing some of his thoughts with you. We’ve been touched and moved by many of the letters that I continue to receive, so please keep them coming. You can contact me at my organization, the Meaningful Life Center, through email at wisdomreb@meaningfullife.com. And we have a website which is www.meaningfullife.com. We have all the transcripts of the radio shows available there. You can also contact us by “snail mail” which is The Meaningful Life Center at 788 Eastern Parkway, Suite 303, Brooklyn, NY 11213. And finally, our 800 number is 1-800-3MEANING or 1-800-363-2646.

And now, if any of you would like to call in and rebut what I have been saying or argue about it…it’s definitely an explosive topic because most people would say “religion is quite conformist” and wouldn’t agree with what I’ve said, so please call. We do have a shorter show today so I can’t promise that I can elaborate as much as necessary.

Meanwhile, let me continue on one more note regarding this issue, which is, I would say, a philosophical point, however it has very far-reaching implications. In Jewish philosophy there has always been a debate whether the self, that individual, self contained sense that you and you alone have, is this self a healthy force or is the root of all evil. Remember everyone outside of yourself you experience from the “outside in.” You see someone, even if it’s someone you love, from the outside—you don’t feel them from within. You look at their face, you look at their body language, you communicate with them. But with yourself you don’t need to look in a mirror and you don’t need to be told what you feel like. You feel yourself. We are self-contained individuals.

So the debate and the question which has always plagued many philosophers and thinkers is, is this sense of self inherently a problem or inherently healthy? Because some argue, then, that inherently it is the root of all evil. Though the ego, per se, is not necessarily a negative thing, but the ego in the sense of a self-contained self, is the root of all selfishness, greed, and ultimately the power to hurt another to advance your own goals, as we’ve seen in history.

So even though it can be tamed, in essence, this is where all problems begin, because a person who has that sense of self and self-preservation in excess, can hurt others, can be abusive.

But there was a great Torah teacher, a Chassidic master, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, who lived in the 18^th century, the founder of the Chabad movement, and he was a student of the great Maggid of Mezeritch, who in turn was a student of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement.

And he writes in his classic magnum opus, the Tanya, a fascinating thing. He writes that this sense of self, the feeling we have that we’re self-made (though logically we understand we have parents, and though logically we understand that every effect has a cause, and our parents had parents and so on), emotionally and instinctively, we don’t feel that we’re an extension of our parents; we feel that we can do what we wish. And that’s why we see that individuals can rebel against their parents and can even hurt them.

We don’t feel that we have a source; we don’t feel that we’re coming from somewhere. So he explains that that sense is not something unhealthy at all. That self-contained, so to speak, self-made instinct that a human being has comes from G-d Himself. Because G-d, as he puts it, in Hebrew, mitziuso mi’atzmus, a “causeless” self, an existence that has no cause, as opposed to every other type of existence that does have a cause. And because G-d created us, G-d instilled within the human being that same self of being self-contained, as if you have no precedent, no preceding cause.

Now, the far-reaching implications of a thought like that is obvious, because it tells us that though that self can turn into selfishness, greed, abuse, harming others or being cruel to others, that is only its manifestation. In essence, the kernel of that sense of ego, that sense of self-containment, is a very healthy one, it’s a Divine one. And the goal, the objective, is to use that self to become an extension, to become a channel for a higher calling.

The fact of the matter is, I’m sure for all of you and I know for myself, that when you do something like volunteer work, for example, something that’s not driven by personal self-interest, even though there’s definitely a voice inside of us that says, “why waste your time doing that, perhaps better to advance your own interests,” however when we do something like that, there’s something deep inside of us that feels very good.

And when we do something good like that, it’s not that we feel inhibited or that we gave away part of ourselves. It’s true, if you give $50 to charity (you have $100 and you give $50 of it to charity), in a sense, on a material level, you’re now $50 poorer. You share a piece of food and you don’t have the same amount of food to consume. But there’s a certain gift that you receive in return, the gift of giving, that gives you back something that enhances you.

Anyone who’s ever been truly in love knows that though love includes sacrifice—you love a child, you love someone, a spouse—you’ll stay up at night, you’re not going to start thinking, “Hey this isn’t convenient for me. I have to get to work tomorrow,” because love doesn’t make those calculations.

So someone may argue, well love, therefore, is like a sense of giving away a part of myself. Is it worth it? Now in a very mathematical sense people could say, yes it’s worth it because I get something in return. But true love, true unconditional love is such that you really love someone not because you’re getting something in return but because love is love.

Now, you do get something in return and that is that you have the ability to transcend yourself. That ability to rise above your own personal needs, that you’re not just taking care of your own self is, in itself, the greatest gift.

So my point is that self and selfishness are not the same thing. A self can also be selfless and still be completely intact. It’s critical for a human being—as important as it is to survive and pay our bills and eat and sleep—to be dedicated to a cause greater than ourselves.

Because when you’re dedicated to your own needs, you’ll only be as great as you are. But when you’re dedicated to something greater than yourself, then you also become greater than yourself. And when you’re dedicated to something that’s eternal, and not temporary, not transient, not impermanent, you too become eternal.

And this is, in other words, the point that I was making earlier about integrating individuality with G-d. The idea here is not to limit the human being but to free him or her.

I want to give an analogy for this idea with music that I used earlier. But I also want to give another analogy that is connected to music with the nightingale. I might have mentioned it on the air but I’d like to share it again because I think it’s very beautiful.

Tradition goes that when G-d created the nightingale with a beautiful voice (no one is ever happy with one’s own goods), so the nightingale comes complaining to G-d: I thank you for my beautiful voice, I sing and I love it, and others love it, however, I also attract predators. Because someone looking for a nice free meal, who are they attracted to? A piece of flesh, a little bird perched on a branch that is its next meal. You need to give me something to protect myself with. Some defense system.

So G-d offers the bird a beak. Now the bird examines the merchandise, looks at the beak and says: Please G-d. I’m a beautiful bird. It’s unbecoming that a beautiful, elegant bird like me should have a nose like that. So G-d offers the bird claws. And again, the bird looks at the claws and says, “Please. To give a bird some uncomely and unbecoming long nails?”

So G-d at this point finally turns to the bird and says: I’ll give you a set of wings. The bird looks at the two wings and says to G-d: You’re the Master of the Universe. You created us all. I don’t understand. I have enough body weight to carry with me when I need to escape predators. So you’re giving me two more pieces of flesh that just add more weight and will make it more difficult for me to escape.

So G-d says to the bird: No, little bird. Let me tell you. I’ll teach you how to use those wings, to fly with those wings. And when you learn to fly with them, you’ll be able to soar and escape from your enemies.

Now, the fact is commitment, responsibility, a mitzvah, a good deed, is yes, more body weight. It’s easier, so to speak, more comfortable, to never have anyone to answer to. You wake up when you want, you go to sleep when you want, you do what you want, you eat what you want. It’s easier, seemingly. It’s seemingly more comfortable. So responsibilities and commitments add bodyweight to a human being, there’s no question. However, I don’t think there’s a bird in existence that would rather have no wings and less bodyweight than have wings.

It’s very sad to see a bird that’s grounded and cannot fly. So the fact that we have extra commitments and responsibilities does not necessarily mean that it does not help us grow. It’s the way you look at it.

Unfortunately, many times one grows up in a family or a community where the Divine laws, the mitzvahs, are presented as extra bodyweight. We’re not taught how to fly. Because there’s one thing sadder than a bird with no wings. It’s a bird with wings that doesn’t know how to fly. Because there, the bird has all the potential. But unfortunately, there was a part of history and it still exists where G-d’s laws are presented as extra bodyweight.

There’s another analogy. If you’re given 100 pounds of stones and you’re told that if you carry them across the street, they will belong to you. So every one of us would decline. Who needs 100 pounds of stones? But if someone said to you: Here are 100 pounds of diamonds, carry them across the street and they will be yours, everyone would say: Give me 200 pounds! Why? Do 100 pounds of stones weigh more than 100 pounds of diamonds? No. But it’s worth the exertion because you see the value, you see the value of your labor, the fruit at the end of the road.

It’s not that we’re afraid of commitment or responsibility, or that we’re even afraid of following certain laws. If we see them as being freeing, as giving us return, to help us fly and soar, if we saw them as wings instead of extra bodyweight, dead weight, everyone would embrace it.

And that is the challenge of our time. So to talk about the emergence of the self as opposed to a millennium where G-d or religion is at the center of the universe, we have to understand it in context. That perhaps the time has come for us now to integrate the self and G-d. Today we have a more sophisticated understanding of G-d, of science… In the beginning of the 19^th century, there was this battle between science and religion which almost seemed irreconcilable. You had a science that replaced all the religious beliefs.

But today we have a more sophisticated understanding, a knowledge that we’re dealing with two different parts of existence. Science, trying essentially to understand the laws of nature, cannot make any statements about G-d, cannot make any statements about good and evil, about moral choices. Science is essentially morally neutral, and that’s the way it should be.

So with a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of where we’re headed, I think the millennium, the dawn of a new age, offers us the opportunity to begin to learn that perhaps the G-d of our forefathers did have it right when the self was created, and that we can learn to coexist with G-d and actually, not only co-exist, but be enhanced by G-d and soar and fly with wings.

In closing, I want to extend my thanks to the sponsors of this show and to all the shows that have been brought to you, because I really feel a personal indebtedness. These people, who have great faith in the human spirit, have initiated and motivated me to do this show and I do feel I want to acknowledge them because I would not be able to do it without their financial help, moral support and general inspiration.

Namely, Ivan Stux, Robert Klein, Sharon Gans, James Garfinkel, Ted Doll. And many others who have helped, however these are the pillars, who set an example and inspire other to help us. I really look forward to the support both from them and all of the listeners because for a show like this to carry on, it has to be a grassroots effort. So I welcome all of you to support us in any way possible and to call us after the show at 1-800-363-2646 and pledge any kind of support.

We will send anyone who does contribute the free newsletter that we will be publishing called Meanings, so please call us.

Finally, just to conclude, I would like to say that this issue of self and G-dliness is something that I think touches us all. I do want to give an example that I think all of us can apply in our own lives, and that example is: Giving to another person is not just a moral obligation, it’s the right thing to do.

It also does something for you, more than what you do for the person you give to. It warms you and it’s nourishing to the spirit. It nourishes the part of you that has a need to give, and in that context, giving is not just an obligation, not just a tax-break, it’s also that something that nourishes your own spirit and soul. It’s not just extra bodyweight, it’s a way to free yourself, to fly and to soar.

I hope that this show can help us all do that. Toward a Meaningful Life with Simon Jacobson. I look forward to speaking to you next week and in the weeks to come.

Tags: divine providence, free will, individualism, conformity
Posted in Beliefs & Concepts, Free Choice, Torah | 2 Comments »

An Omnipotent G-d versus Free Will

July 24th, 2014

Rabbi Akiva would say… All is foreseen, choice is granted, and the world is judged in kindness
Ethics of the Fathers 3:15

These three points, expressed by Rabbi Akiva in one sentence, are interconnected. The statement, “All is foreseen,” raises two questions.

The most basic truth about G-d is that He is omnipotent: infinite, all-knowing, present and active in every point of time and space even as He transcends these parameters. But if such is the case, can man’s actions be the product of his independent choice?

It’s not just a question of “If G-d knows what I’m going to do, how could I have chosen?”; the more basic problem is: “If G-d’s knowledge of the future is the product of His all-pervading and exclusive power, how can I possess any power that is not utterly subservient to His?”[1]

Yet the principle of free choice is basic to our very definition as moral beings. In the words of Maimonides, if man’s actions were not freely chosen, “how could G-d command us through the prophets ‘Do this’ and ‘Do not do this,’ ‘Improve your ways’ and ‘Do not follow your wickedness’…? What place would the entire Torah have? And by what measure of justice would G-d punish the wicked and reward the righteous…?”[2] How is this to be reconciled with the equally axiomatic principle of G-d’s omnipotence?

The second question raised by the statement “All is foreseen” is: if man is constantly under the scrutiny of G-d, how can he possibly maintain the standard of behavior that this demands? The Talmud says that to make a single superfluous gesture in the presence of a king is a capital offense.[3] If we are perpetually in the presence of the King of all kings, who is the man that might be found righteous before His exacting judgment?

It is to address these two questions that Rabbi Akiva adds, “choice is granted, and the world is judged in kindness.” In answer to the first question, he says: “Choice is granted.” Indeed, man cannot possess any power or volition that is independent of G-d’s. But man does not intrinsically possess the capacity to freely determine his actions; rather, freedom of choice has been granted to man. G-d, who can do whatever He chooses, has given man a capacity that, in essence, belongs to Him alone.

To answer the second question, Rabbi Akiva says: “The world is judged in kindness.”

It is true that “G-d stands over [man], and the entire world is filled with His presence; He looks upon him, and searches his reins and heart, to see if he is serving Him as is fitting.”[4] But it is also true that when “G-d first wanted to create the world with the attribute of judgment, He saw that the world could not survive it; so He combined [the attribute of judgment] with the attribute of mercy”[5]; that G-d says: “I do not demand of [My creatures] according to My capacity, but according to their capacity.”[6]

A person is always in the presence of G-d, at all times subject to the divine scrutiny and judgment; but this is a scrutiny sensitive to his limitations and vulnerabilities, a judgment tempered with empathy and kindness.

Based on the Rebbe’s talks, Shabbat Parshat Emor 5738 (May 20, 1978); Sivan 23, 5740 (June 7, 1980)[7]

This is an excerpt from “Beyond the Letter of the Law” by Yanki Tauber published by The Meaningful Life Center.

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Tags: divine providence, free will, choice
Posted in Beliefs & Concepts, Free Choice, Torah | No Comments »

On Faith and Trust

July 24th, 2014

The entire story of the Egyptian exile and exodus in the Book of Exodus (Shmos) is about fear and courage, about anxiety and faith. Our essential beliefs are most challenged – and crystallized – when faced with darkness.

In the first chapter of Exodus, after G-d charges Moses with the mission to redeem the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage, Moses argues “But they will not believe me” (Shemot 4:1). By contrast, after the parting of the sea and the demise of the Egyptians at the conclusion of the Exodus, the Torah tells us in this week’s Torah portion (14:31): “They believed in G-d and in His servant Moses.”

Ever sensitive to the nature of suffering people and to their miserable plight, Moses understood the great challenge that pain poses to faith and hope.

He anticipated their inability to see ahead, to believe the promises, to even listen to a message of hope. As it turned out: “They could not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and hard work” (6:9).

However, the suffering of the people strengthened them. “The more they were oppressed, the more they proliferated and spread” (1:14). Their faith was tested – and grew. The more they endured, the stronger their faith became.

Indeed, our sages tell us that the people were actually redeemed in the merit of their faith.

What is the secret of this faith? “Rozo d’mehemnusa.” How does one build such faith? In light of our own challenges today, as we face our own demons – inner and outer – what can we, you and I, do to bolster our spirits and vanquish our fears? What can we learn from our ancestors who discovered freedom, perpetual and eternal freedom, through their faith and hope in the belly of the Egyptian beast?

The key to the secret of faith is the connection to the eternal.

Everything in life around us is mortal, temporary – impermanent. Everything erodes, ages. Change is the only constant. This is true even when life is going well; how much more so under duress, which shakes the very foundations of our beings. The only way we can transcend change – and especially the ever-shifting center of gravity resulting from the painful scars of oppression – is by connecting to the eternal, something that is not subject to the mortality and variations around us.

The only way the enslaved people in Egypt could rise above their predicament and prevent demoralization was through faith. Their faith in G-d and His promises of redemption allowed them to hold on, to hold strong, to endure all, despite the hardships. They were sure – absolutely sure that they would come out of the hell, and nothing could shake this conviction.

The profound faith of the Jewish people in Egypt – which emerged under enormous pressure – revealed the deepest dimensions of the human spirit and the power of faith.

In fact, faith is actually the beginning of an extensive journey into the mystery of hope and confidence.

Beyond faith (‘emunah’ in Hebrew) there is trust (‘betachon’). Faith alone can be a passive state: one believes that G-d can change an impossible situation for the better.

Trust is not just that things can get better, but that they will get better.

Trust is not just being at peace with any given situation because you trust in G-d and His plan. Faith and trust are actually the certainty that you can change destiny. In the words of the Tzemach Tzedek to someone in need lf healing: “Think good and it will be good.” Not just “think good” period. Not merely positive thinking. But that by thinking good “it will be good.”

Trust is the absolute conviction that goodness will prevail, and that we have the power to make it happen. This conviction comes from the innermost recesses of our soul that is connected to the eternal.

“Think good and it will be good” also implies that trust is an active effort. It’s not like you either have it or you don’t. Trust takes work and cultivation. We are obligated and given the opportunity to work on ourselves and discover in the depths of our soul the power of trust. And this exertion in turn, actually has the power to change the course of events – ‘think good and it will be good.”

Yes, we are empowered to be partners with G-d. Our attitudes can change the way things will turn out.

When the Jews find themselves stuck between the pursuing Egyptians behind them and the Red Sea before them, and are confused as what to do next, G-d tells Moses: “V’yisou,” “Forge ahead.” Don’t just think about it. Do it.  And when they did, the sea parted before them…

With all the uncertainty surrounding us today, with all the losses that we are experiencing, with all the dysfunctionality of our generation, with all the scars that each of us carries — we have been given solutions to face every challenge. “In G-d we trust” — the words engraved on the mighty American dollar — resonates today more than ever.

Trust is tool, a resource, a faculty of the soul. But it needs our work to uncover its power. And when we do, it can mean the difference between life and death. As Nachshon ben Aminodov demonstrated with his resolute walk into the water. He was the first to move, and as he did the sea split.

So, start moving!

Tags: faith, trust, still small voice
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