Yitro 5785: The Vanishing Line

Yitro 5785: The Vanishing Line

The beginning of this month marked five years since I began working at IJS. Half a decade later, I am grateful that I continue to wake up every day and get to do this amazing work with these amazing colleagues—including our professionals, our volunteer leaders, and the thousands of people who participate in our community in one way or another. That includes you, as a reader of these reflections. So I begin with gratitude: Thank you for the opportunity to be part of your life, and to hopefully do some good.

While by this point I feel genuinely comfortable in my role, when I first started it wasn’t necessarily obvious that that would be the case. Among other things, I am the first man to lead IJS. And (not unrelated) I’m also the first of our leaders who doesn’t hail from the liberal Jewish community. My ordination is from YCT Rabbinical School, a modern orthodox institution—with a feminist and often liberal bent, no doubt, but still.

So I’ve observed moments over these five years when the part of the world I’m working in and the part of the world I come from operate with different sensibilities. For instance, most of the people I work with and serve don’t observe Shabbat or practice keeping kosher in the same way as I do. Our communities have different orientations around the liturgy of the prayer book. They have different cultures of text study and language. The encounter of these worlds inevitably produces tension for me—tension which Jewish mindfulness practice has helped me to manage. And most of the time, I find that tension is a productive one, like a passing storm that yields a gentle rain—for me, at any rate, and hopefully for others too.

Yet sometimes the storms can be, well, stormier. Such a case happened this past week, as I watched how these two worlds responded to the president’s announcement that he intends for the United States to redevelop the Gaza Strip and, in the process, aid in or force the relocation of the area’s millions of residents. Much of the liberal world responded immediately that this was wrong: It amounted to ethnic cleansing. Much of the orthodox world responded that not only was Trump’s idea not wrong, it was right: To oppose the opportunity for Gazans to relocate was immoral, as was the status quo, which would consign Israel to perpetual warfare with Hamas.

My own first instinct was closer to my liberal friends: Of course I’m against ethnic cleansing. I likewise believe the people of Gaza should have freedom to leave if they wish, and I also believe Israelis and Gazans alike should be able to live free of Hamas’s rule.

But my point here is not so much to espouse a political position (there are plenty of columns that do that) as to take note of this phenomenon I experienced in straddling the worlds that I do, and the way my own practice has aided as I’ve done so (there are far fewer columns that do so).

One of the benefits of my job is that I don’t have to make excuses to meditate—I, like, literally get paid to do that. So I found myself deepening my own practice this week, and really trying to stand on the balcony and observe this Bizarro phenomenon: Two views of right which appear to be diametrically opposed—and with enormous practical, political, historical, strategic, and moral stakes. I tried to resist the urge to react, and just sit with this profound, quite jarring phenomenon.

As I did so, what arose for me was a midrash about the miraculous nature of the revelation at Sinai, which we read in this week’s Torah portion: Each person heard according to their own voice—women heard the Divine voice in the voice of a woman, men in the voice of a man, etc. Or, as the Talmud puts it, “Moses would speak and God would answer in a voice”—in what voice? In Moses’s own voice (Brachot 45a). I understand this interpretive tradition as an attempt to answer a bedrock conundrum, or series of them: How is it that we each can relate to the Divine Presence uniquely, and yet we can agree that all of us encountered the Divine Presence? How is it that I can have my own experience of reality, which is inherently different from yours, and yet we can both acknowledge that we share a reality?

The philosophical, social, and legal questions proceed from there: How do we communicate, since my experience of language and your experience of it are always going to be different on the most intimate levels? (One is reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s quip: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”) How do we agree on the meaning of a promise, or a law, and that we are each bound by it? How do we come to a shared understanding, and what happens when we don’t? How do we know that others are operating in good faith—or even that we are doing so ourselves?

As I observed these questions coming up for me, I found myself arriving at the other end of the Torah’s socio-political spectrum, which is summed up in the sentence: “Each person did what was right in their own eyes.” This is a catchphrase of the Book of Judges, repeated over and over again to illustrate what can happen when a society is not bound by a shared commitment to authority, and setting the stage for the establishment of centralized government in the Book of Samuel. Yet what I realized as this verse arose in my mind alongside the midrashim about revelation that I shared above is that the line between these two experiences is, perhaps, vanishingly thin: When Ploni (Hebrew for John Doe) was standing at the foot of Sinai and heard God speaking in the voice of Ploni, was he hearing God’s voice or his own? How did he know? How would he know? And how would others trust that judgment—or their own? It doesn’t take long before the philosophical knots proliferate.

Revelation, recognizing the Divine voice and discerning the truth of the moment, is not easy business. It can be messy and contradictory and really hard—not only to discern what is right and true, but to live in community with others with a shared language of what is right and true. We are living through a period when, in my lifetime at any rate, as both Jews and Americans, we are being challenged on these most fundamental levels in ways we’ve never been challenged before. As individuals and as a collective, now is a time to lean into our practices even more, to resist the impulse to react with words and, instead, take the time to be quiet, to listen, and only then to speak—with more compassion, with greater wisdom, with deeper trust.

Four Elements Meditation

Four Elements Meditation

As Tu BiShvat approaches, take a moment to reconnect with the earth—not just as a place we inhabit, but as the very essence of our being. In this guided meditation, Rabbi Sam Feinsmith invites us to explore the four elements within and around us, awakening a deeper sense of rootedness, flow, breath, and warmth. May this practice help us live in greater harmony with the world that is not separate from us, but a part of who we are.
Beshallach 5785: Don’t Make It Worse, Make It Better—Maybe

Beshallach 5785: Don’t Make It Worse, Make It Better—Maybe

I don’t have much occasion to go in the backyard during the winter. For starters, January is pretty cold in Chicago, and the dog is perfectly fine if we just let her out the door to do her business and then run back in.

But the other day it was a little warmer, and Phoebe seemed like she would enjoy playing fetch. So I bundled up and took her out.

After a few rounds of catch and release with a stick, my eye noticed a large ice formation on the side of the house—under an outdoor faucet. Channeling my inner Moses, I thought, “How wondrous is this sight.” So I went to look.

Turns out we had a leak that, drip by drip, had built up into quite a large piece of work over the weeks.

Like a lot of homeowners, we have a membership to a service that supposedly vets and rates professionals to come to your house and fix stuff. While we had someone there, I figured they could also repair another outdoor faucet in our side yard that wasn’t working properly. I knew that the expensive plumbing service we’ve used for major repairs in the past would take a week or more to come (they’re popular), and there was an offer from this online outfit to send someone the next day for a good price. So I took it.

Lesson learned (again): You get what you pay for. The guy was nice enough, but he didn’t have the right parts, so he went and found some cheap PVC plastic spout that would take care of the leak and would also fix the other faucet.

Which it did—until the next day, when I arrived home from a walk with the dog to notice a giant puddle forming on our driveway. I went to investigate, and the workman’s cheap fix had exploded. The side yard faucet was now gushing water, and the backyard faucet had sprung a leak too—worse than the original!

I turned off the faucets from the basement to stop the gushing (something the repairman had neglected to do), and then I called the expensive plumber. They’re coming next Thursday. The online outfit gave me a refund when I told them I’d cancel my membership.

As I reflected on this story, I found the words of Gil Fronsdal ringing in my ears. Gil, who I’ve mentioned in this space before, teaches a wonderful short maxim of mindfulness: Don’t make it worse. We may not always be able to make things better, at least not right away. But generally we can try to avoid taking action, in word or deed, that makes it worse. As my case illustrates, good words to live by. Oops.

Now you might say, “Don’t make it worse” seems like a low bar. It’s not exactly the prophet exhorting us to “break every yoke and let the oppressed go free” (Isaiah 58:6). But, shifting into some other registers, I find that it’s often a very high bar indeed. As a partner or a parent, it’s not unusual to find myself trying to discern whether and how best to communicate a thought or feeling: Say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I can definitely make things worse. The same goes with relationships at work, in friendships, with my neighbors, or as a citizen. And as a (very minor) public figure, it’s a question I think about all the time: Are the words or actions that I’m contemplating going to improve things, or make them worse?

And on a deeper level, this is a two-step I think we do all the time. It’s reflected in the rhythms of Shabbat: Engage in the world for six days, withdraw from the world for one. Or, as my colleague Rabbi Marc Margolius teaches, engage for six minutes or six seconds, withdraw for one. (This is microdosing Shabbat, as Marc says.) This reflects a feature, not a bug, of the human condition: a little higher than my dog, who is constantly engaged with the world; a little lower than the angels, who exist on another plane.

“A person must consider himself as nothing, forgetting himself completely and praying only for the good of the Divine Presence,” teaches the Ba’al Shem Tov. “Then he can attain a level that transcends time – the world of thought, where everything is equal: life and death, ocean and land. This is the meaning of the Zohar: ‘Why do they cry to Me?’ (Exodus 14:15) – ‘to Me’ specifically, for the matter depends upon Atik, that part of the Divine that is beyond all duality and difference.’ The Israelites had to abandon themselves completely and forget their own danger in order to enter the World of Thought, where everything is equal.”

This is a lofty teaching from the Besh”t: If we can withdraw from, or transcend, the physical world, then we might behold the infinitely deeper reality that lies beyond its appearance. That’s what happened when our ancestors crossed the sea.

Yet consider this teaching of Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira on the very same words, from two centuries later: “The Blessed Creator cares more about the dignity of the people of Israel than God’s own dignity… And since Moses prayed before the Holy One for God’s honor, God responded, ‘Why do you cry out to me?!’ Which is to say, ‘Why do you cry out to me for my sake? Rather, speak to the children of Israel and tell them to move!’ More than I care about my own dignity, I care about the dignity of my people.”

Rabbi Shapira would seem to push against the Ba’al Shem Tov: In a moment of such dire worldly concerns, God doesn’t want our self-abnegation and transcendence—God wants our action, our very physical engagement with the world.

Both readings are true, of course, and one may be more true than the other depending on the circumstances. Both can be, and probably are, even true simultaneously.

An essential part of our practice is discerning the circumstances in which we find ourselves, determining whether this is a moment for engagement or withdrawal, action or rest, speech or silence. We do this all the time—in our relationships, our work, our citizenship. We aim to hold, simultaneously, in our minds, hearts, and hands, the goal not to do harm and actively repair the world.

This a difficult practice. But it is one we are invited to engage in every cycle of Shabbat and the workweek, in the unceasing flow of moments of engagement and withdrawal, Shabbat and chol. May we be blessed to practice it and manifest it in our lives today.

Josh in Conversation with Andrés Spokoiny

Josh in Conversation with Andrés Spokoiny

We are grateful to Andrés Spokoiny for sharing his insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.

Andrés Spokoiny, CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, is a longtime Jewish communal leader with a history of leading successful organizational transformations. He served as the CEO of Federation CJA in Montreal and, prior to that, for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Community (JDC) in Paris. As Regional Director for Northeast Europe, he was responsible for a number of pan-European projects.

Before his Jewish communal work, Andrés worked for IBM and was responsible for training, development, hiring, and recruitment for IBM’s Latin America Southern Region during a period of major restructuring. Originally from Argentina, Andrés has a multidisciplinary academic background including business, education, and rabbinical studies in different institutions around the world. He is fluent in Hebrew, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Yiddish, and is proficient in Russian. He’s the author of the novel El Impio (Penguin, Random House – Mexico) and a non-fiction book, Tradition and Transition: Jewish Communities and the Hyper Empowered Individual (Gefen Publishing).

Tradition and Transition is now available for purchase.

Bo 5785: The Age of Unsurance

Bo 5785: The Age of Unsurance

“Insurance is one of finance’s great gifts to mankind. Through the statistical magic of risk pooling, an individual can obtain peace of mind and protection against devastating loss.”

A perhaps unexpected opening sentence to a Shabbat reflection from yours truly. But the article it comes from, by Wall Street Journal writer Greg Ip, really grabbed my attention. I had always kind of assumed that, if legislators couldn’t figure out how to address climate change, then ultimately the insurance market would do it for us, as the rising risk of disaster got priced into our insurance premiums. Ip shows why that assumption doesn’t actually work out, and I found it illuminating.

Now, of course, I am neither a climate scientist nor an economist. My interest here is more in the social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of risk. Note Ip’s description of what insurance does: It can help us “obtain peace of mind.” Now he’s speaking my language. (And, incidentally, he’s casually invoking the name of a book by Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman that spent 58 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in 1946-47.)

Where does peace of mind come from? For most of us, safety is pretty crucial for that. We want our borders to be safe, our homes to be safe, our schools and vehicles and children to be safe. When something is safe, it means there’s minimal risk associated with it. And when risk is minimized, we generally feel less anxious and more peaceful in our minds. That reality is reflected in the very word insurance, which provides a level of surety. We can feel more sure, more secure, more safe.

Today, though, I feel like we’re living in an age of unsurance: We’re not sure what the next day, or even the next hour, may bring. The weather has changed and will continue to do so. Disasters are striking in places like Asheville, NC, where no one thought a hurricane could wreak the kind of destruction they experienced last fall. The Federal government, under the new administration, is rapidly changing many large sectors of policy–and doing so in a disorderly, chaotic fashion. For me, and perhaps for you, peace of mind feels harder and harder to come by.

With Parashat Bo, we reach the highpoint of the Exodus: the end of the plagues and the moment of liberation after centuries of enslavement. We remember the instructions Moses gives the Israelites: Before the final plague passes through Egypt, the Israelites are to paint lamb’s blood on their doorposts, which will keep out the Angel of Death, and to hold the very first Passover Seder–while they are still slaves in Egypt.

But it’s unclear: Which side of the door is the blood supposed to be painted on? Does God really need a visual reminder to know not to enter a particular home? Commenting on Exodus 13:13, “And the blood shall be a sign for you,” Rashi explains: “It shall be a sign for you, and not for others. From this we may learn that they put the blood only inside their houses.”

This is a significant detail. The blood on the doorpost is not some kind of lock that keeps out the forces of destruction and ensures safety. Rather, as the 13th century French commentator Hizkuni ben Manoah observes, “It is a symbol that you have observed the divine instruction,” that you have been able to live with trust and faith even as the swirl of destruction and uncertainty rages outside. (Gratitude to my brother Aaron for reminding me of this gloss this week.)

We are living in the age of unsurance. And that is certainly something to mourn, because pooling risk through insurance and mitigating risk through wise policies and governance contribute so much to physical, psychological, and spiritual safety. But that doesn’t mean we are out of tools–indeed, we have an enormous array of them. They can be found in our Torah, in our spiritual practices, in our mitzvot–the opportunities to connect with and be supported by the Divine Presence and one another. We’ve been doing that for 3,000 years, and we can do it today.