Rabbi Bruce Dollin – HEA Denver

>Shmot; Birth of Moses and Leadership

Our Torah reading this morning deals with the towering character of Moses. It is an unusual story, akin perhaps to the stories of Joseph. As a narrative, it stretches the bounds of plausibility: for Joseph, a slave in Potiphar’s household becomes a viceroy of Egypt. And in the case of Moses, a slave baby becomes a prince of Egypt. Clearly, both texts are implying that the hand of God is involved. It is God that makes sure that the people have just the leaders they need at just the right time.

Moses in particular. For the Torah, Moses is the quintessential leader; the most important, the most central: the savior and the law giver, from military leader to wilderness guide. Moses takes on the Pharoah, deals with a cranky stiff- necked people, stands down a dangerous rebellion, brings God’s rebuke to the people and delivers their salvation. In the case of Moses, God is directing history, as He does in all the other stories of the Bible.

But Moses is unique. There is something more to Moses; something different from all the other characters in the Bible. For Moses has a distinct personality: we can learn from his central place in the history of our nation, but we can also learn from his well defined and compelling character. Moses, as a man, can teach us how to be leader. And ultimately, Moses, as a man, can teach us how to be a complete human being. Let’s take a look.

We learn the most about the young Moses in his first interaction with God. God says to this one time prince and now simple shepherd: “I have seen the affliction of My people in Egypt…and now go, I will dispatch you to Pharaoh and you shall take My People, the Children of Israel, out of Egypt.” And Moses’ famous reply, “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and that I should take the Children of Israel out of Egypt.” Rashi paraphrases Moses, “ma ani chashuv ledaber im melachim,” Moses asks God, “ am I important enough to speak with Kings?”

Moses, of course, grew up as the son of a King –why wouldn’t he think himself important enough? The text tells us why in the Book of Numbers: “v’ha ish Moshe anav meod mikol ha adam asher al p’nai ha adamah.” The man Moses was the humblest man on the face of the earth.

Humility, the first and most important character trait in a leader. The great Musar master Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pekuda, 12th century Spain, wrote in his work, “Duties of the Heart,” that “All virtues and duties begin with humility.” Proverbs 18: “Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honor goes humility.” Moses seemed more than comfortable with his lot as a shepherd: sheep don’t rebel, for the most part, they don’t whine and complain. For Moses, even growing up as a prince of Egypt —he did not see himself as the savior of God’s chosen people; in fact, he did not see himself special at all.

Humility requires that a person take an accurate assessment of the self. Moses knew himself quite well, Chapter 4, verse 10 “Please my Lord, I am not a man of words….for I am heavy of mouth and heavy of speech.” Moses argues with God about his ability to fulfill this Divine mission; Moses is not engaging in self-abasement, here; he challenges God’s choice in him because of a recognized lack of skills. God is not deterred; God will be with him, Aaron will be with him: God essentially says, “ you don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect leader.” But you do have to be humble.

Humility leads into the next essential quality of leadership. The Pharaohs of Egypt built great monuments to themselves. Go to Cairo and visit the great Pyramids which cost thousands of lives to build in order to entomb one, single Pharaoh after he dies. The Pharaoh’s looked out at the world and saw them. Their concern was their honor, their glory, in fact, what they considered to be their divinity. Moses grew up in the Pharaoh’s household but was different. And this is how he was different. The text says, “it happened in those days that Moses grew up and went out to his brethren and observed their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man of his brethren. He turned this way and that and saw that there was no man, so he struck down the Egyptian… “
What I find important about this verse is the phrase, “observed their burdens.” After he grew up –matured, became an adult, he went out and observed the burdens of his people. There is a saying: “if you want to truly know me, you have to see and understand what it is that causes me pain.” The Pharaoh looked out over his kingdom and saw no one but himself; his own needs and desires. Moses looked out over the kingdom and saw the injustice: saw human beings with heavy burdens; he saw his brethren in pain. A true leader focuses away from the self and witnesses and responds to the pain of those he presumes to lead.

And finally, a leader must honor incertitude. Moses was unsure how the people of Israel would respond to his mission to lead them out of Egypt. He asked God, “behold when I come to the Children of Israel…..and they say to me, what is [this God’s]Name? What shall I tell them?” “ And God answers Moses, I shall be what I shall be. And[God] said, “so shall you say to the Children of Israel, “I Shall Be has sent you.” Well, one might rightly ask: what kind of name is that? It doesn’t sound like a name; it doesn’t make sense. Moses is launched into his mission with uncertainty. He doesn’t understand how he is going to achieve his goal. He is unsure about the Pharaoh, he doesn’t trust his own people and now, the God who sends him is incomprehensible. Moses begins his prophesy with more questions than answers and must tolerate that uncertainty. Here is the ugly truth about leadership. No leader knows exactly what he is doing. No leader can predict the future and know what will happen as a result of any decision that is made. A true leader must fully understand that and share that with those he leads and yet remain focused on his goal. A leader or anyone else who purports to know the whole truth regarding anything is a deceiver. And if he believes it himself, he is naïve and even worse, dangerous. Leadership is a messy business. Moses understands that, shares that with his people and yet succeeds despite the uncertainty.

When I speak about Moses as a model for leadership, I am really speaking about all of us. We are all leaders in some part of our lives. At work, in the shul, as parents. We all must stand before others at some time or another and express our ideals, our vision, our goals. So the character traits of Moses: humility, a concern for others even at the expense of our own needs and accepting the fact that we don’t know everything –these characteristics are important for us in our everyday lives. They are the necessary characteristics of leadership, but they are also the necessary characteristics for being an adult; for being a mentch.

Shabbat Shalom

>Power and how to use it. The Jewish people’s relationship to power is ambivalent. We see that clearly from the sacred texts we access during the holiday of Hanukah: the last day of which we celebrate today.

We light candles, exchange some presents; we have parties during Hanukah, seeing this time of year as focused mainly on children. As the sun goes down early in December, we use the Hanukiah to light our homes and bring a bit of holiday cheer to our lives.

Interesting to note, however, that this holiday is based on a deadly serious historical event and since this event, the Jewish people, particularly the Rabbis in the Talmud, have not known what to make of it.

What was the event? It happened in the second century BCE. The Syrian Greeks, led by Antiochus Epiphanes IV, trying to shore up control over his kingdom which included the Land of Israel, sacked the Temple in Jerusalem, desecrated it with pagan idols and outlawed Jewish practices. He thought by doing so, he would break the will of the Jews, pacifying them. Just the opposite happened. The Jews of that time were furious and led by a rebel of the Hasmonean household, named Judah Maccabbee, a small band of soldiers, took on the Greek army and by virtue of their prowess, and a lot of luck, beat the army of Antiochus and regained control of the Temple. Many died in this battle and most of the Hasmonean household including Judah Maccabbee would die in subsequent battles. As for the Temple, the Maccabbees cleaned it up and rededicated it on the 25th of Kislev in the year 165 BCE. The Hasmoneans would have sovereign control over the land of Israel for the next 100 years.

The first book of Maccabbees, written more than likely by a court reporter of the Hasmonean household, focuses almost entirely on the military successes of the family. If there was a miracle that happened there, it was that a small group of soldiers beat a large foreign regular army. No mention of oil. No miracle with the Temple Menorah.

So then came the Rabbis of the Talmud writing more than 200 years later, during a time of an iron-fisted occupation by the Roman Empire. They looked at the military victory of the Maccabbees and it caused them anxiety. They had seen the results of Jewish rebellion in their era, the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the disastrous Bar Kochba revolt of 132 CE. The last thing the Rabbis wanted to see were more Jewish rebellions, leading to more slaughter, so they played down, even ignored the Maccabbean battles. In the Talmudic tractate Shabbat we read a passage about the meaning of Hanukah which discusses the of oil that should have lasted one day but ended up miraculously lasting eight. The miracle wasn’t military, it was ritual. And in the Haftorah of Shabbat Hanukah, again, selected by the Rabbis, we read the verse “Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord.” Military might is not necessary, implies the Talmud. God will fight for us and send us the messiah and perfect the world and our job is to believe and wait.

And this has been the Jewish way up until the 20th century. Jews lived in other countries, Jews kept to themselves, Jews did not rebel but followed the laws and the will of their host countries. There was almost 2000 years of Jews keeping a low profile and hoping for the best.

Of course, the best rarely happened in the Diaspora. Crusades, Inquisition, isolation, persecutions, massacres, expulsions and genocide. But the Jews waited none the less, as directed by the Talmud. It was just too dangerous, they thought, to fight back.

The last time, before 1948, that the Jews were in sovereign control of the Land of Israel was in the second century BCE, during the time of the Maccabbees. The last time before Zionism, with just a few exceptions, that Jews fought back to defend themselves to save their own lives, was in antiquity. How long would it be before Jews took their own fate into their own hands?

In 1980, I spent a year in Israel, taking classes at Hebrew University. Interestingly enough, our history teachers would cancel classes around Hanukah as they were all called up for reserve duty in the army. Why were they called up during Hanukah? Because during Hanukah, they would lecture to the Israeli army troops about the Maccabbees and what happened when Jews fought back. In Israel, there is a different ethic regarding the military which has influenced Jews around the world. Since 1948 and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, Jews have felt differently about themselves. We still wait for the messiah, but when necessary, we deploy an army to protect ourselves. Jews in this country become political activists to protect the interests of our people. Jews act in the world now, like the Macabbees did in their time. We are no longer passive in the face of our enemies. It is a different world now for the Jewish people.

President Obama gave what I believe to be the most important speech of his presidency thus far. When he received the Nobel Peace Prize, he did not hesitate to mention the irony of a war time president receiving a prize for peace. And he said the following, “we must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations –acting individually or in concert –will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.” He said, “make no mistake, evil does exist in the world.”
I believe this speech is so important because it goes to the anxiety felt by the Rabbis in the Talmud and by Israel and the world Jewish community today. There is evil in this world and our people and all people must protect themselves from it consuming them. It has happened before and we must never let it happen again. Israel, as do all Democratic nations, wishes to be able to lay down their arms, dismantle their missiles, and send their soldiers home to their families. But to do so today would be an act of unforgivable naiveté and national suicide. As the President implied in his speech, this dream of world peace will probably not come true in our lifetimes.

The Rabbis in the Talmud knew that Jewish rebellion during the times of Roman occupation and repression was a lost cause. But Jews had no power then and remaining passive was good policy. That is not the case today nor must it ever be the case again. The world is very harsh on the State of Israel when it seeks to defend itself from its enemies. Perhaps the world is more comfortable with the idea that Jews are victims; they were victims for two millennia and so it should remain today.

And to that, we say no. The Maccabbees, not the rabbis, should be our model in modern times. Sometimes the careful, moral use of power is necessary and indeed, according to Jewish law, obligatory to defend one’s life. I think that is clear to our President and it is certainly clear to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. As it should be.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Hanukah

>One of the most famous dreams in all of Jewish history is described in this week’s Torah portion. If you remember from last week, Jacob and Esau had a terrible falling out. Jacob tricked his brother out of his father’s birthright and blessing and Jacob just assumed now that Esau wanted to kill him. So Jacob takes off by himself. He is headed towards Haran to take refuge with his mother’s family.

As he approaches the border of Israel, he makes camp. And he lies down presumably to sleep. He has a dream of a ladder with angels of God descending and ascending the ladder and when he wakes up, he is surprised and says, “God is in this place and I did not know it.”

The language of this story has the rabbis of the Midrash perplexed. The text says that Jacob, “v’yishkav b’makom ha hu,” he laid down in that place, and then he dreams the dream. He laid down, but it doesn’t say whether or not he actually fell asleep. Perhaps this dream was more like a vision, a waking dream.

In verse 16, the text says, “v’yikatz yaakov mi’shenato,” that Jacob arose from his slumber” to be astonished by the dream and the holiness of the place. But the Rabbis even challenge this verse as they question how Jacob could have even slepthel at all with all that was happening in his life.

Rabbi Yochanan in the Midrash says “me shenato” does not mean, from his slumber. Because even though the Hebrew word “shana” means sleep, the Aramaic word “shana” means something else. Shana in Aramaic is similar to the word mishna which means to study or to teach. So for Rabbi Yochanan, Jacob was studying Torah all night when he suddenly realized that he was in a holy place and that God was speaking to him directly.

The great Hasidic master, Rav Nachman of Bratzlav played on the words “me shenato” as well by saying that it means an “awakening” as it relates to the heart and soul. Jacob had been asleep spiritually up to that point in his life and suddenly, as he is about to lose his home and family, he wakes up to the presence of God and realizes that God is in this place; that God was with him all along and he simply did not know it.

Jacob is my favorite character in all the Bible because through the stories of the Torah, we watch him grow up. We watch him change over the course of his life. He improves himself; he grows both emotionally and spiritually. It is gradual growth; it is painful growth, but it is a genuine and lasting growth that we can all relate to and learn from.

My colleague Rabbi Michael Graetz makes a wonderful point in his writings. He says that rabbi Yochanan’s statement in the Talmud reveals a profound truth. Jacob was aroused from his studies. He was so immersed in study that he failed to see God’s presence. Even if we assume that he was studying torah, his total immersion in God’s word almost caused him to miss the presence of God Himself.

In the Talmud, we read, “ha omer, ein lie eleh torah, afilu torah ein lo” “the one who says all there is to me is Torah, misses the point of Torah and is a risk of losing the Torah all together” (Yevamot. 109b). The point of Jewish study is to tease out the will of God from sacred texts. If there is no God in one’s study, then one’s study is pointless, an intellectual exercise that bears no fruit.

And I think there is one more point one can make from this. The text says that Jacob was aroused, “mishnato,” which could also be translated that Jacob was aroused from that which he had learned, from all that he had come to believe, from his sense of certainty.
One of the great misconceptions of adulthood is that when a person becomes an adult, he or she should already knows everything there is to know. Adults hate to admit that they are unsure about something, that they have their doubts, that they just don’t know something, for certain.. And the more insecure the adult, the more that person is likely to cling desperately to claims of certainty, to, in fact, claim that he or she knows the truth and will not hear arguments to the contrary.

How many people do we know like this? Perhaps we ourselves are like this. When I started at the Alliance, a member of the congregation came up to me and said, “I have to tell you the truth rabbi. I just don’t believe any of this stuff. I know my own mind and I think Judaism is fine and all, but the religious stuff, I don’t believe in it and that is just who I am and hope you can accept me for who I am.”

I remember feeling a bit surprised by this declaration. The man was in his 40’s. He sounded to me as though he had never changed his mind or learned anything new in 20 years. How could he be so certain about Judaism? How could he be so certain about his own mind? How could he be so certain that he wouldn’t learn something new about his faith and actually change?

Jacob was a crafty fellow as a young man. He had incredible chutzpah and probably thought of himself as very clever. But his cleverness caused his family to break apart and it caused him to flee into exile. And in our parasha this morning, he suddenly wakes up. He learns something new about himself. He learns something new about God and he is astonished. God was in this place and he just never realized it.

We are all Jacob. The young men and women among us and the seniors among us, we are all Jacob. We all have more to learn and understand about God and our relationship to God. We are all asleep to God’s presence in some way. Our eyes are closed. Our minds are made up.

But the Torah knows better. We are human beings and human beings can learn at any age. We can wake up to God’s presence at any time, in any stage of our lives. We often open our eyes to God’s presence at the most astonishing times, the birth of a child, an insight during Torah studies, feeling well again after an illness, our child’s wedding, holding a grandchild for the first time. These are occasions that give us windows into God’s presence. They are times that make us certain of one thing, that we don’t know everything, that life is mysterious and will always continue to surprise us.

This is what Jacob learns as he arises from his slumber. He opens his eyes for the first time and sees God and it changes him forever.

The Torah this morning urges us not to be so sure. Don’t be so certain. There is always more to learn, always more to grow, astonishing things to see, if we would only awaken from our slumber.

>There is a certain satisfaction in having a good guy and a bad guy. Those of us who grew up watching television know this quite well. Think of the westerns we watched when we were kids: you had the sherrif of the town and you had the bank robbers. The sherrif was good, the bank robbers were bad and more often than not, the sheriff would catch the robbers, put them in the local jail and then more bad guys would come to break them out of the jail and so it went, western after western. Bonanza, The Rifleman, even the Lone Ranger; good and bad, clear as a gun fight at high noon.

You might think that the stories of the Torah, written almost three thousand years before the first western ever hit the big screen would portray its characters in a clear good and bad guy format. But this is not so. Our parasha this week is a good example of just that.

We have a struggle going on between Jacob and Esav , twins in the womb of their mother. Rebecca conceives and carries these twins who are causing her great pain and strife in utero as they struggle with one another to be born first. We find the rabbinic commentary on this story trying to make it into a western. Esav is portrayed as the evil one and Jacob can do no wrong. The midrash imagines that when Rebecca passes the yeshiva of shem and aver, Jacob struggles to emerge, from the womb, presumably to study some Torah. When Rebecca walks by a pagan idol, Esav tries to emerge, to worship the false gods. The midrash continues in this vein throughout the story. Jacob good and Esav bad.

But I’m not sure the rabbinic approach to this story is so accurate. These characters are both good and bad and I contend that these characters are symbolic of two sides to the human personality. And in order to be a complete human being, we need to allow expression to both aspects of who we are.

Let’s take a look at Jacob and Esav. Esav is born first “admoni kulo k’aderet se’ar,” he was earthy and hairy, “ish yodea tzayid, ish sadeah, “a man who knows how to hunt, a man of the field.” Now this immediately makes us feel ambivalent about Esav. A hunter? A man’s man; a guy who camps out in the woods and lives close to the earth as his description indicates “admoni,” a man of the earth. And Yitzchak loves him more because he enjoyed eating the meat Esav brought home to him.
And then there is Yaakov; born clinging to the heal of Esav, presumably trying to pull Esav back into the womb so he can be born first. His name Yaakov means heal; even in the womb, he tries to get the advantage over his brother. He is called, “ish tam, yoshev ohalim,” a smooth skinned man, who sat around the tents,” presumably with his mother.

When I think of these two characters, I think of Esav as Daniel Boon or Hoss Cartwright. Jacob, I see as, well, Woody Alan.

Now the story in our parasha goes on. Esav comes out from hunting in the field, famished, and Jacob, true to form, is cooking. Esav is consumed with his hunger and believes he is going to die without something to eat and sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of red lentil soup: again, red, like the earth. So the text then says: “v’yochal, v’yesht, v’yakom, v’yelech, v’yivez” These are five action verbs in a row: he ate, drank, arose, walked away and spurned his birthright. Esav is a man of action. He’s out in the world doing things. Conventional niceties are of no concern to him. He does was he feels is right; he is a man full of passion.
Then as the story goes, Jacob, in cahoots with his mother, tricks Yitzchak into giving Jacob the blessing of the first born that should have gone to Esav. And in a heartbreaking scene, Esav approaches his father and “cried out an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father,’Bless me too, Father” And then Yitzchak says, “Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.” . And Esav says, “have you but one blessing, father. Bless me too father” and Esav rasied his voice and wept.”

A man of action, a tough guy, a hunter and a man of the earth, pouring out his heart to his father whom he loves and who loves him, asking for a simple blessing. Esav is out in the world, but he cares deeply about his family.

To my mind, Esav gets a bad rap by the rabbis. What is there in the story to criticize in Esav’s behavior. He is who he is, and if any character is behaving poorly in this story, it is Jacob who is a sly trickster, deceiving both his brother and his father. And we know that Jacob is the one with questionable moral character as Jacob receives his punishment in the next parasha. He tricked his father as his father was blind and could not see. And in the next parasha, Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Leah instead of Rachel by sending Leah into Jacobs dark tent. Jacob is blind in the tent and is tricked by Lavan, just as Jacob tricked his father.

So what can we make of this story? As I see it, Jacob and Esav are two sides of one personality. All of us have both characteristics in us; we are like Jacob, smooth, sensitive, intellectual,people who create homes and use our wits to get by. But we are also like Esav: people of action; strong, passionate, trying to make a difference out in the world.

The rabbis of the Talmud favored Yaakov because they were, at the time, under the thumb of the Romans (who they attributed as descendents of Esav). The rabbis knew from experience that rebelling against the Romans would bring upon themselves, certain death and destruction. They wanted the Jews to be pacifists and live by their wits, not their brawn. And it is this Rabbinic preference which characterized the Jews throughout history; even to a certain extent, to this very day.

But I believe we need to rehabilitate Esav and express this aspect of our people’s personality, as well. Since the Six Day War in 1967, we regained our confidence as a People that we could physically protect ourselves from our enemies. No longer would we depend on others: emperors, kings, czars or the like. We created an army in Israel and for the first time since the Maccabees two thousand years earlier, we took our physical destiny into our own hands. Alan Dershowitz calls this “chutzpah.” We need no longer cower and keep quiet lest our enemies see us and persecute us. In Israel and in this country, Jews can and must act like Jacob and Esav. We can think and plan and work towards peace in our homeland and in our lives. But if it comes to self defense, particularly in the State of Israel, we must protect ourselves in whatever way is necessary.

We, as a people, are Jacob and Esav: the thoughtful and the physical. For Jews to live in this world with meaning and in safety, we need both. Shabbat Shalom.

>I just saw the movie by the Coen brothers called “A Serious Man.” In the movie, a nice but nebbishe Jewish guy from Minneapolis, has bad things happen to him.” I will talk about the movie in a minute but first, a little theology.

The question here is “why do bad things happen to good people?” Our parasha today has a very succinct answer to the question and it is how most of the Bible answers this question, “bad things don’t happen to good people, only to bad people.”

Take a quick look at our parasha today. God comes to Abraham and says, “I am going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness.” Abraham says, using good Biblical theology, “how can You (God) destroy the good people in the cities along with the wicked?” And here is the theology: “chalilah lach, ha shofet kol haaretz lo yaaseh mishpat?” God forbid, says Abraham to God, the judge of all the earth, Himself, will not do justice? And God agrees with Abraham. He will not sweep away the good people with the bad. He will not bring bad things upon good people. This is the theology of just about the entire Bible.

But then comes the Biblical Book of Job which stands Biblical theology on its head. Job is a completely righteous man who enjoys God’s blessings: good health, wealth, love, children. Satan says to God, “of course Job is righteous. Look at all the blessings you have given him. Take those blessings away; afflict Job with tzuris and just watch how fast he curses God.” So God takes it all away and Job does not curse God but he does ask a pretty poignant question, “why me?” Three friends come to Job, one after the other, and repeat to Job Biblical theology saying: “maybe, Job, you just don’t remember. But you must have done something to deserve the evil that has befallen you.” But Job, in fact, didn’t do anything wrong. The friends are wrong. At the end of the book, God comes to Job from within a whirlwind and says to him, “who are you who gives dubious counsel without knowledge?” This essentially means that Job, you cannot possibly understand the ways of God. Deal with what you have, the good as well as the bad.” Conversation over. This is the revolutionary theology of Job.

So the movie, “A Serious Man. ” a comedy. The movie was made by the Coen brothers who brought us “No Country for Old Men,” “Fargo,” and my favorite, “The Big Lebowski.” The serious man in the movies Larry Gobnick, a Jewish physics professor up for tenure. He’s a good man, who resists the temptations to do evil. Yet, his wife is leaving him for Cy Ableman, who is an obnoxious family friend. And if that isn’t humiliation enough, his wife and Cy convince Larry that it would be best for everybody if Larry moved out of the house and into this cheesy motel. Larry moves out. Then it gets worse. Cy dies in a car crash and his wife convinces Larry that it would be best for everybody if Larry paid for Cy’s funeral, which he does. More problems. Larry’s daughter is stealing money to save up for a nose job. Larry’s son is stealing money to buy marijuana from his Hebrew school classmate. In fact, his son likes marijuana so much that he smokes it the morning of his Bar Mitzvah and has some trouble, understandably, reading the Torah in front of the congregation.

Things are bad for Larry all around and everyone he talks to tells him to go talk to the rabbi. He can help. There are three rabbis in his shul, the assistant, the senior rabbi and the wise and mysterious Rabbi Emeritus whose name is simply, Marshak.

The first two rabbis are like Job’s friends who are of no help to the suffering Gobnick. The third Rabbi, Marshak, doesn’t have time to see him because, as his secretary says to Gobnick, the rabbi is busy “thinking.”
God finally takes Larry’s health away from him and a whirlwind comes in the final scene threatening to whisk away his son and his classmates. The movie ends abruptly here without God saying anything and the rest of us asking, what the heck is going on here? In the credits, the Coen brothers reassure us, “No Jews were injured in the making of this film.”

Good stuff for a sermon. A very funny movie but I think a serious movie as well.
It asks: Why is there evil in the world? Why does God allow the innocent to suffer? What does life mean, why are we here?

When Larry seeks out help from his religious tradition, he is frustrated as the rabbis he talks to come off as foolish. The junior rabbi seems to be facing his own religious crises and the senior rabbi tells Larry a silly story that doesn’t have anything to do with Larry’s problems. And he can’t even get in to see the emeritus. In other words, Judaism doesn’t help Larry in the existential crises that he faces.

But not so fast. The Coen brothers do seem to have some answers for us in the film if one looks closely. And these answers are very Jewish answers.
The first answer is right out of Job. We are human beings and we must live in this world with a sense of humility. We cannot know the mind of God. We cannot fully understand the good or the bad that happens to us. Gobnick is a physics teacher and in one scene, he illustrates the mathematical formula for Werner Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle.” He says to his students after writing the formula all over the board that the formula basically says we can’t know anything for sure. Then he says to his students:, “you are responsible to know this formula on the midterm.” Even the physics teacher teaching math using a precise equation concludes that we can’t know anything for sure. Even so, we are responsible to live our lives the best way we can. We have to live this way in a state of simply not knowing.
Secondly, again, from Job. The world can baffle us and even break our hearts but we can still turn to God. Here were Jews in a Minneapolis suburb, bad things are happening; the Jewish community looks shallow, the clergy silly. But the Coen brothers’ characters, interestingly enough, never question the existence of God. Disagree with God. Be angry with God. Perhaps even curse God, just don’t turn your back on God. The funny characters in the movie never turn their back on God. This is a very Jewish response to the problem of evil.

And finally. The Jewish approach to the problem of why bad things happen to good people. This is put in the mouth of the elderly rabbi emeritus, Marshak. Unlike his father, Larry’s son, the stoned Bar Mitzvah boy, does get a single brief audience with Rabbi Marshak who has been listening to the boy’s transistor radio. When the radio was confiscated a week before by the Hebrew school teacher, it had been playing Jefferson Airplane’s song: “Don’t You Want Somebody to Love.” We hear this song playing throughout the movie as its theme song. So now Marshak, in a thick Yiddish accent repeats the song’s first words to the boy. And here are the words: when the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies.” And then the great rabbi gives the radio back to the boy and says, “be a good boy.” And that is it from Marshak, the wise one, but that is enough.
Our lives don’t always make sense as the song says; when the truth is found to be lies. And sometimes, life breaks our hearts, as the song says: and all the joy within us, dies. And, of course, we finish the song in our minds, “you’d better find somebody to love.” This is the first answer from Marshak via Jefferson Airplane. “You’d better find somebody to love” Loving others, perhaps, is all that is true and meaningful in our lives. It is the balm for the broken heart.
And then Marshak says finally to Larry’s son, “be a good boy.” This comes right out of Ecclesiastes when King Solomon, failing to make sense of his world, in exasperation, says: “the sum of the matter, when all has been considered, fear God and keep His commandments, for that is man’s whole duty.” In other words, be a good boy.

What does the wise rabbi teach us in the film? What pearls of wisdom do the Coen Brothers leave us with? Despite the pain and confusion we experience in our lives: do good, as best you can. Love others, the best you can. And leave the rest up to God.

Another Coen Brothers triumph. A very Jewish movie, a funny movie, but serious as well. Indeed, no Jews were hurt in the making of this film. None hurt, but most likely, enlightened.

>To show you what a forward thinking,and hip kind of guy I am, I want you to know that I just starting using Facebook. I can hear my kids saying now “Abba, that’s been around for 6 years now; there are only 23 million people who have already figured this one out.” Well ok, but its cutting edge for me. And by the way, I need more friends. If you are on Facebook, please be my friend. Rabbi Katzan back in New York has 1700 friends and I have about 50. So you Facebook people: you know what to do.

So what is Facebook about, anyway? It’s a computer program that enables you to keep in touch with friends whether they live in your neighborhood or across the country. Seeing a friendly face, even on a computer, who says hi, what’s going on, happy birthday. People like it; it’s kind of comforting; it’s affirming. And I think, most importantly, it serves as a temporary antidote to the stress we feel when we look at what else is going on in our world.

It takes an act of courage to open the morning paper. Reported in the New York Times two weeks ago: the Iranians now have enough fissile material to fast track a nuclear bomb. Hundreds of thousands could die in a single strike. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons and an unstable government. Egypt could explode at any time. The poverty and degradation there is astounding. It was reported that Egyptians were killing their pigs because they thought they carried swine flu. But then the garbage piled up on the streets because the pigs eat the garbage!

And then you have the real disaster states: Somalia, Sudan, Kenya; in which there is violence, drought, starvation with their corrupt governments doing nothing.

Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century said “The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” And you know what, it is like that still, for millions of people around the world: poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, disease: and early death. That’s their daily experience, and that is despite the fact that we have the power and knowledge to prevent the worst of it. Why are people still suffering so?
My grandmother would have said, “it’s a shanda.”

These are big problems. None of us can solve them alone. Many must be solved by governments doing the right thing. But governments won’t do the right thing unless their people demand it of them. And for that to happen, the people have to believe the right things.

Perhaps Thomas Hobbes describes the world as it is. But Judaism tries to focus us on what the world ought to be and must become. And it starts, of course, with you and me.

Here is the Biblical corrective to a Hobbesian worldview: Leviticus 19:18 “V’ahavta L’re acha kamocha.” Three simple Hebrew words that can change the world: “v’ahavta l’reecha kamocha, “and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is arguably the best known phrase in the entire Bible. It sounds so reasonable and right and obvious, and yet I propose to you tonight that it is a mitzvah that is summarily ignored by almost all of us. I am not even sure most of us know what it means. Does it mean I should be nice to others? You should be, but it doesn’t mean that. Does it mean I should be a good person? You should be, but it doesn’t mean that either. Love your neighbor as yourself is a very big concept; it is a difficult concept and it places enormous demands on how we live our lives.

Rabbi Akiva in the Talmud says that this commandment is the fundamental principle in the Torah; everything else in Judaism follows from it. If you understand this mitzvah, you will understand how we must remake ourselves in order to remake the world.

Let’s take a closer look at it by breaking it down.

Love your neighbor as yourself. What do we mean by love?

This has been a topic of debate in Western Civilization for 4000 years. No one has determined what it is, definitively. It is an elusive concept which virtually every culture has tried to define for itself.

Well, there is one thing that most cultures, including Judaism agree love is not. Love is not feelings. I always think of that song when I am on this topic by the group “Gemini:” “Feelings, nothing more than feelings, trying to forget my feelings of love.” This is a great song: not love. Anyone who has been married more than a month knows that feelings for one’s spouse are not the bases of love because feelings change over time. In fact, feelings can change several times a day. One can feel angry or frustrated or charmed or passionate or feel nothing at all at any given time. But the love remains because love is a fundamental commitment to the other. It is a focus away from the self and onto someone else.

The Jewish psychologist Eric Fromm wrote a great little book called “The Art of Loving.” I read it in high school and I still remember three of his fundamental characteristics necessary for genuine love: care, responsibility, and respect. Care means an active concern for the life and the growth of whom we love. It is a focus on the needs of the other. Marriage counselors often cite the typical change in attitude of lovers who date and then get married. When you are dating, it is all about the other person; every little need, every desire, you jump right on, you do whatever you can to satisfy the other. But then you get married and all of a sudden, it’s your own concerns that take precedence and everybody is surprised. Caring is a focus on what the other one needs.

Responsibility. For Fromm, responsibility means, responsiveness. You care about another’s needs and you stand ready to respond to them. Their growth, challenges, troubles, stresses, triumphs, dreams and pursuits: in love, those become your concerns as well. In this sense, the one who is loved is never alone. There is always a partner there to help carry his or her life’s burdens.

Respect. This means appreciating all that is good and noble in the other’s life. The character flaws and deficiencies of another person are always quite readily apparent. We must look beyond them. We read in Pirke Avot, “dan l’chaf zechut,”judge everyone favorably. Find and appreciate the decency and humanity and the good in all people; that is respect.

So what does it mean to “love” your neighbor? It means to see the best in them, to be aware of their needs and to stand ready to respond to them when they need you.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Your neighbor. It is hard to be concerned about one’s neighbor if you don’t know who they are. Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone,” writes that there has been a breakdown in civic society. There are less people on the PTA’s, Fraternal Organizations, neighborhood councils. When I was a kid, we used to have “block parties.” The police would close down the street and we would eat together, play games and have fun. I have often heard the stories of the old West Side of Denver on the High Holidays; hundreds of people out in the neighborhood. Kids playing ball, walking in and out of each other’s homes to find the best treats. These affairs gave us the opportunity to know our neighbors and understand their needs and help them where we could. Today, most of us don’t even know the names of our neighbor’s two doors down.

Our world has become impersonal. We tend to isolate ourselves perhaps to keep a rather frightening world at bay. And I think this isolation gives us an excuse not to care. We can’t love the neighbor who we don’t know. We can’t love the neighbor to whom we pay no attention.

The term for neighbor in Hebrew is “rae’eh, which we can understand in broad terms. It can mean one’s fellow who is close to you, who may be very much like you,or it can mean people who are not close and who may be quite different from you.

We read in the Midrash, “when a human being creates coins from the same mint, they all come out the same. But God makes every human being in the same image, His image, and yet each is different.” Difference is the human condition. There are thousands of cultures in the world, close to 8,000 living languages. However, the first phrase of the Midrash is the key, here. Even though every human being is different from the next, each is made in God’s image, each is equal, precious, of infinite value. And each, according to the Torah, is deserving of our love. Loving one’s neighbor really means loving all humanity by finding in them the Divinity that we all share.

Of course, it is hard enough to love the neighbor next door. How are we supposed to love all of humanity?

There was a great Peanuts cartoon. In it Linus says: “I love humanity, it’s people I can’t stand.”

We don’t start with humanity, we start by loving people; the people in our own lives. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of Britain, writes, “the universality of moral concern is not something we learn by being universal but by being particular. Because we know what it is like to be a parent, loving our children, we come to understand what it is like for someone, somewhere else, to be a parent, loving his or her children. By coming to know what it means to be a child, a parent, a neighbor, a friend [we understand the lives of others in our community and even around the world who are children, parents, neighbors and friends]. We learn to love humanity by loving [the] specific human beings [in our lives].” We come to understand and care for our neighbors, near and far, because we see ourselves in them.

You shall love your neighbor by showing concern and being responsive to the people in your own life and then to the people in your community and then to the people around the world.

Now if the commandment stopped there, “love you neighbor,” it would be hard enough to fulfill. But the commandment includes one more word: “kamocha.” The commandment reads: “v’ahavta l’rea’acha kamocha,” you shall love your neighbor, “as yourself.”

We have to get a little more personal at this point, and quite a bit more specific. What is it in our lives that we cannot do without? What needs do we have in our lives that we insist must be fulfilled? Loving your neighbor as yourself means that what you insist on for yourself and your family, you must seek to provide for others who cannot provide it for themselves.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow once did a chart on the hierarchy of basic human needs. These are needs that must be satisfied for any single human being to flourish in this world. Here they are.

Maslow’s first level consists of basic biological needs: food and water. Simple isn’t it? Would we not do everything humanly possible to secure basic sustenance for ourselves and every member of our family?

There have been times in history when Jews suffered from starvation, in the pale of settlement, in the ghetto, in the camps. But today, thank God, we live in a Jewish community that enjoys a level of prosperity our ancestors could never have imagined. Yet as we thrive today, there are a billion people in the world that don’t have enough to eat to stay healthy. Every six seconds, according to U.N. statistics, a child dies somewhere in the world from malnutrition. In the United States, the most advanced country in the world, it is estimated that over 36 million citizens including 12 million children, suffer from what they now call “food insecurity,” which means a family that can’t afford to get enough food on the table to satisfy a normal diet. Some 7 million Americans avail themselves of emergency food services each week. A Jewish organization called Mazon raises about 5 million dollars a year from the Jewish community and disburses it to soup kitchens, food pantries, food banks, and a host of other anti-hunger agencies throughout the United States. Our own Jewish Family Service runs a food pantry right over here at Tamarac which was created by our members Bobbie Carr and Jerry Carr,of blessed memory. Jerry just passed away this week. Jerry and Bobbie’s food pantry disburses hundreds of pounds of food each month. There are 2,000 of us here tonight. We are all fasting for the next 24 hours. If we were to donate the cost of the food we would have eaten today to one of these agencies, hundreds of people’s lives would be improved in the weeks to come. As we would insist on sufficient nutrition for ourselves and our families, we must insist on it for others as well. “kol dichpin yatev v’yechul. We say this Passover but it is a mitzvah all year round, “all who are hungry, let them come and eat.”

Maslow’s next level of human need. To flourish, says Maslow, a person needs safety and security. No person can live in chaos. Everyone needs a roof over his head and structure in his life. There are between 1 and 2 million people in this country without adequate housing, many are children. The HEA is partners with other churches and synagogues in Denver, together with Habitat for Humanity. We have built 7 houses so far here in Denver and we are working on our 8th. We raise money then we go out and work on the housing site. We can all participate in this. We insist on adequate housing for ourselves and our families. Must we not insist on doing what we can to provide it for others?

Maslow’s next level of need. Every human being has a need for love, affection and self respect. We all need a place to be where we are known, a place where we are cherished and paid attention to.

There are many in our community who are alone. They are mostly elderly with children who live far away. Many are shut-into their homes or into nursing facilities. Our staff and clergy try to visit them when we learn about them. We visit them as often as we can but it’s never enough. These people need our regular attention; they need affection and they need to know that they belong here, that they are valued and a part of our community. We have a chesed society here at the shul that pairs our members with those who need visitors. The Jewish Family Service has something similar called ‘para-chaplains.” It’s good satisfying work. Tell us if you know of someone who needs a friend. Let us set you up as a friend. We would not allow for our mother or father or child to be alone. We say tonight: “al tashlicheni l’et ziknah,” do not cast me away, oh Lord,in my old age. We must not cast anyone away when we have the power to do something about it.

And Maslow’s final level of need, the need for self-actualization. Maslow explains this as being able to do what one was born to do, to make full use of one’s potential, to go as far in life as our skills can take us. This requires the opportunity for a decent education. It takes good parenting, mentoring, tutoring, support in the home, correct values. These are all things that we would never think to deny our children but are denied to children all over our community. We have in Denver a program called Jewish Coalition for Literacy, run by the Synagogue Council, which sends volunteers into some of the Denver Public Schools to read with kids and help them with their homework; perhaps instill in them a love of learning. No child will thrive in this society without a good education and the correct values to succeed. Our tradition says that if you save a single life, it is as if you have saved the entire world. Save one child and you have saved the whole world.

Here is what I recommend. Make a “chesed circle.” Chesed means performing acts of kindness and concern for people in need. Find 5 or 6 other people that you can work with, friends or those with whom you would like to become friends. Meet a few times and decide as a group what the group might like to do to make a difference in our community. Support each other in selecting where to put your efforts and then help each other follow through. You might speak to some of the members of our synagogue community who are already heavily involved in this work, like the Toltz family at Dependable Cleaners who distribute thousands of winter coats each year to the poor. They call it “Coats for Colorado.” Or Kim Turnbow who together with her friends deliver homemade knitted blankets and other items to the poor on Native American reservations in South Dakota. She calls her organization“Warm Woolies.” Or Sara Kornfeld who works to provide money to and information about those suffering in Darfur. She calls her group; “It only takes Sense.” Or speak to us at the shul; we can help your “chesed circle” find meaningful work. Let your goals be modest ones. Make life easier for even one other human being in this world and you will have done a great mitzvah in the eyes of God. Emily Dickenson: “ If I can stop one heart from breaking; I shall not live in vain. If I can ease one life the aching or cool one pain or help one fainting robin unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.”

Loving your neighbor as yourself. Love: we love others when we are responsible for and responsive to the needs. Your neighbor: no matter how different they might be from us we recognize in others God’s image and our common humanity. As yourself: what we demand for ourselves in our own lives, we must seek to provide for others in need.

There is the story of a wise woman who was traveling in the mountains. She found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry and the wise woman opened his bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone in the wise woman’s bag, admired it, and asked the wise woman to give it to him. The wise man did so without hesitation.

The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the jewel was worth enough to give him security for the rest of his life.

But a few days later, he came back, searching for the wise woman. When he found her, he returned the stone and said, “I have been thinking. I know how valuable this stone is, but I give it back to you in the hope that you will give me something much more precious in return. If you can, give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me this stone” (Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul).

We pray tonight that God should give us the wisdom and the desire to truly “love our neighbors as ourselves.” Then we shall be truly blessed.

Shana tova tikatevu v’techatemu. A good and healthy new year to all.

>OK, sometimes I am a little bit grouchy. I am a serious guy and I probably don’t smile enough. So last summer, a member of the congregation came up to me, noticing the lack of expression on my face and asked me, “Rabbi, are you happy?”

Wow! What was I to make of a question like that? Happy? I am not sure I ever gave that one much thought. I have asked myself many questions in my life: Am I good? Am I satisfied? Do I give enough? All kinds of questions-never that one.

You might agree with me here: it has been a lousy year: the economy has put everyone on edge there are people out of work: everyone is making do with less –there is not a person, business, or institution (and I include the Alliance in this) which hasn’t been hurt. This is a tough year to talk about happiness because so many people today seem so unhappy. But one might say: it is this year, perhaps more so than at any other time in the recent past: that we should talk about what it means for a person, to be happy.

My Dad, who was a beautiful soul: and was himself: once or twice accused of being a grouch, used to say to me: Bruce, it doesn’t matter what you do in life as long as you are happy. I dismissed that one liner as a teenager; and never gave it much thought until now: because this past summer at a difficult time, in a difficult year: someone asked me: “Rabbi, are you happy?”

I typically need George Burns at a time like this. His take on take on happiness: “happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close knit family… in another city.”

So let me ask all of you the same question: Are you happy? And what does that even mean?

I didn’t actually answer the question straight away. I wanted to think about it. I thought I’d study the issue and see what our tradition had to say about it.

And as with most things: Judaism has quite a lot to say about happiness. Our tradition says that not only is happiness a good thing; but every Jew has a moral obligation to be happy. It’s a commandment! Here it is in the Torah: Deuteronomy 26: “you shall rejoice with all the good that the Almighty has given you.” And the Rambam codified this law in his Mishna Torah which reads: “Be neither frivolous nor sad. Be consistently happy, and carry a pleasant facial expression.”
Kashrut, Shabbes, Tzedakah —Jews pay attention to all these commandments: yet how many of us ever learned from our Jewish studies that we have an obligation to be happy?

Here are what some other Jews have to say about this: Baruch Spinoza: “what everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.” Anne Frank wrote in her diary: “we all live with the objective of being happy.” And not just Jews expressed this desire: Listen to Aristotle: 4th century BCE: “happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human experience.”

Happiness is what we all want! Judaism insists that we acquire it. We should probably then come to some agreement about what it is!

Well, let’s start with what it is not.

There are actually people who study happiness scientifically: they use interviews, longitudinal studies, attitude surveys: the whole thing. And in these studies they have determined that what most people believe about happiness is wrong.

Myth # 1: Happiness is out there somewhere, perhaps just beyond our reach. If only certain things were to come to pass, I’d be happy: like marrying my true love, securing a dream job, living in the perfect city. Not true. Studies show that people, who are fortunate enough to have these things, do not report any more happiness on a happiness scale than those who do not.

Myth # 2: If only I were beautiful, I’d be happy. Again, not true. The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons found that after surgery, those who reported that they were most satisfied with their post surgery appearance, felt happy, but only for a short period of time. There was a happiness boost right after the surgery, but it eventually just faded away.

Myth #3: If only I had a lot of great things, I’d be happy. Great car, flat screen TV, big house: I’d be happy then. Nope. In the 1940’s, a third of American homes did not have running water, indoor toilets, bathtubs, or showers: more than half of those households had no central heating. Today most Americans have all of these things and more. Yet the percentage of people today who say they are happy? A few percentage points lower than the percentage of people reporting happiness in 1940.

So what if I was famous: a great athlete, movie star, and musician? Wouldn’t I be happy then? This isn’t scientific but read People Magazine: most famous people are a mess: broken marriages, problem children, addiction, depression and sometimes early death: I am thinking of Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, and this past summer; Michael Jackson. My sense and probably yours as well: famous people do not score very high on a general happiness scale.
One last myth: and the most common. Wouldn’t I be happy if only I were rich? The studies say not necessarily: No correlation was found between wealth and happiness. People in extreme poverty who don’t have basic needs met report lower levels of happiness than others: but once basic needs are met: there is no difference in reported levels of happiness between the rich and everyone else.
So if happiness is not wealth, it’s not fame. What is it?
The problem here is it is not so easy to define. It is like the Supreme Court’s ruling on obscenity: “you [kind of] know it, when you see it.” But there is a dictionary definition which we will just have to use. You can find it in the Merriam-Webster dictionary: “happiness is a state of well-being and contentment.”
Notice the definition says a state: it does not say a feeling of well being and contentment. Feelings come and go: they are fleeting. We know happy people: they have good moods and bad but that doesn’t seem to change their overall positive and optimistic attitude towards their life. We read in the Psalms: a happy person is like “a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season; its leaf shall not wither…” Happiness is a resilient state of well-being and contentment: resilient like a tree beside a river. Whatever winds and storms come to blow it down: it weathers them all: Life is very difficult; it breaks your heart; there is suffering and there is loss and there is disappointment. But somehow, the happy soul retains its footing: it has deep roots: it finds nourishment and remains stable and strong and giving, despite all that comes its way. There is profound power in the soul of a person who is genuinely happy.

To my mind, there are three necessary components to happiness. The first: count your blessings. The second: cherish people. The third: live meaningfully. Let’s take a look at each of these.

Count your blessings. The Psalmist says: “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” And what this means is that our days are numbered. Life is short and it is fragile. Every day must be savored as any day could be our last.
Now I use the word “savor” intentionally. Savor, in Hebrew is “taam” which means to taste but it also means to discern with all of one’s senses. Taam means to recognize and appreciate with one’s whole being those blessings that are right in front of us.

Even the simplest of blessings: even something as simple as our food. How fast do you eat? Do you appreciate the taste of each bite of your food?. I have to admit, I don’t. I can wait ten minutes before members of my family start eating and still finish before everyone else. While Tammy sits and enjoys her food, I am already stacking the dishwasher.

And wine. There are people here that enjoy fine wines. God bless them. But my recommendation to all of them: don’t drink it with me, because I tend to drink wine like most people drink beer, you know, “down the hatch.” Wine people are horrified at me. They tip the glass to look at it, smell it, and sip it. Who’s got time for all that? For me, wine’s ok, never loved it. And it is no wonder why. I don’t enjoy wine because I never slow down enough to taste it.

And vacations. My kids have been trying for years to teach me how to go on vacation. I am a slow earner, but that is all that is slow about me. We went camping this summer. I wanted to get up to the camp site fast, no stops in the car. We had ground to cover. Once we got to the camp site, we got that car unloaded, the tents up, sleeping bags, mattresses, we had to move it because as I told my brood: “we were burning day light, here.” So quickly and efficiently, and….. quickly, we were off for the first hike.

The next camp site over, the dad was sitting on a chair drawing circles in the sand with a stick. The mom was fiddling with the flap of the tent, kids were playing hide-and- seek or something.

I went speeding by them, in the zone, time to hike –and I looked over at them and thought, “hey, what’s wrong with them?”

A couple of years back, one of my kids wrote this poem. It read: “Interesting, the life of a bee: work, work, work, fly, fly, fly. Eat, sleep, fly, work. Busy, busy, busy, busy.” Where did he get all that from?

The Chasidim do this right. They say that when you pray, you do one word at a time, with kavannah, with intention. Say the word “shema” and make that word you whole prayer. Then say “yisrael” and make that word your whole prayer. Slowly, thoughtfully: savoring each word.

After we eat, we say grace: “birchat ha mazon.” We say: “achalta, v’savata, u’verachta et adonai elohecha,” eat, yes. Be satisfied, yes, and then wait. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t rush off for the next thing. Bless God. Remember God. Recognize the miracle that we have food to eat. Take a little time to enjoy it and then be grateful.

There is a story about a man who goes to heaven and stands in judgment before the throne of the King of Kings: the Creator of All Things. He makes his argument before God: “I was righteous, I performed good deeds. I was learned and productive and giving.” But God waved his hand and dismissed his argument saying, “you were indeed a good man. But I condemn you. I condemn you for all the pleasures and joys that I created for you in the world that you passed them up.”

There is no happiness without appreciating the pleasures and the blessings in one’s life every single day.

The second component to happiness: cherish people.

The car I drive came with a GPS. You may have heard that men hate asking for directions; so the women of the world created the GPS. You plug in the address and then a deep, sultry, woman’s voice begins to tell you, “make a right at the light, go straight, your destination is on the left.” Now men appreciate this and they kind of get attached to their new lady friend because this is a woman who can read a map! Do you remember the commercial. The driver wants to take his relationship with the GPS lady to the next level and she just continues to give directions and he says to her,“ok, you’re right we’ll keep this strictly business.”

We are meant to be with people; the real kind: the ones with flesh and blood. Our happiness is dependent on being with people.

We learn in the Mishna: “al tifrosh min hatziboor,” do not separate oneself from the community. Community exists for one fundamental reason: to bring people together in a way that makes relationships possible. Those of you who come to services on Shabbat morning have probably noticed something interesting. Most people spend about two hours in the service, which is a good amount of time. But they spend at least that long and often longer at the kiddush. And do you know what? We set the day up this way intentionally. Now don’t go telling people I said this, because I will deny it. But listen, here is the truth: the Kiddush is as important as the service. It is as important as the service and this is why. It is at the Kiddush where we build this community. It is where people get to know each other so that they can share their lives with one another. Our relationship with God is important. Our relationship with each other is every bit as important.

“Lo tov hayot ha’adam, levado, it isn’t good for man to be alone.

There is no happiness without genuine relationships. There is no happiness unless we truly cherish the people in our lives.

Meaning. The third necessary component of happiness is living a meaningful life.

Victor Frank was a Holocaust survivor who spent time in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. He wrote in his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” that the concentration camp inmates who still retained some sense of purpose in their lives, whether it was to survive to be a witness to the horror or to be reunited with loved ones, these were the inmates more likely to survive the camp. Frankl wrote that “striving for meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.”

Dennis Prager remarks in his book, “Happiness is a Serious Problem,” that there are two kinds of meaning in one’s life that we must consider which are both necessary to living a satisfying, and happy life. The first is a sense that one’s own life is meaningful.

I saw the movie, “The Matrix” again this summer. People in the movie from birth are plugged into this machine that simulates life for them in their minds. They just lie there in this goop thinking that they are living. But, of course, they are not living. Their lives are a lie because they are not out in the real world making a difference. Their life is not worth living because their life means nothing.

A happy life, a life of satisfaction requires that we make some kind of impact in the real world.

I too often sit with families who have suffered a loss. We sit and they talk to me about their loved one: they tell me a little about where the person was born: what schools he or she went to and what he did in his work. But then the members of the family begin to relax a little; and sometimes they even smile, as they begin to tell me what this person was really like. : The special moments shared with spouses or children or friends. They mention humor and kindness and charity. They mention involvement in the community. And they mention what their loved one did to help others less fortunate. That is the real information I receive about someone who has passed away: not what they had, or where they lived, but what they did in the world that made a difference in people’s lives. That is what a life means.

The psychologist Martin Seligman did an experiment with college students. He set one group out to have fun: hang out with friends, go see a movie: get some ice cream. He then set another group out to participate in a service project that directly helped others in need. The next day, both groups wrote a paper on their experiences throughout the day of the project. The results were interesting. The group that went out and had fun said their day was ok. But the group that did the service project reported that their day was great: they felt satisfied and good about themselves. They said they were friendlier during the day, that they were better listeners and more appreciative for what they had in their lives. In fact, they reported, that at least for that one day, they were… happier. Happiness and contentment come when we can make a positive impact on others.

Prager says that the second kind of meaning in life is the sense that not only is one’s own life meaningful, but that life itself is meaningful. For the Bible, the world makes sense. The world is moving on a particular course: a course that gets better with each successive generation. In fact, the world is moving towards perfection: towards a messianic era in which there will be no hunger or disease: an era in which there will be world peace and every person on earth will have their needs met and feel complete satisfaction.

Now this is the Bible’s view. But then come the Rabbis of the Talmud to add something critically important. The world will get better, yes, and God will do His part to make this happen, yes. But for the Rabbis, the real work of perfecting the world falls upon human beings: l’taken olam b’malchut shadai, tikkun olam.”: We are obligated to fix this world, to keep it on its course. God created the world unfinished and made us partners with Him in moving it towards perfection. That is why we are here on this earth. That is our purpose: that is what our lives mean and what all life means.

George Bernard Shaw wrote the following: “this is the true joy of life, [a life] being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.”

So what is happiness? It’s not fame, beauty, or riches. It is not a life without illness or loss or suffering as these are inevitable in every person’s life. Rather, happiness is an approach to life. An approach that recognizes and savors the blessings we have in life however many or few. It is engaging fully with others in our families and communities creating strong and abiding relationships. And it is living with a purpose and a cause, to make this world into a place worthy of God’s creation.

I recently read a story about an elderly man and his daughter who enter a senior housing facility. His wife of over half a century recently died and he was no longer able to take care of himself. As they approached his new room, the daughter says to her father, “I have arranged all the furniture for you; I think you’ll be happy with it. “I love it,” said the old man. “Dad, how can you love it; you haven’t even seen it yet? “My dear,” said the father. “I have lived a long life; I was married to your mother for 56 years and I loved her every day of it. Together we raised you and you became a kind, and decent human being. I worked hard all my life. I had a little and I gave a lot away. I decided long ago that I would be happy with this room, as I decided long ago that I was happy with my life. Thank you for arranging the furniture in the room. But my happiness comes from how I arranged the furniture of my life.”

So are you happy? I don’t know about you, but I still have some work to do in this regard. God says “you shall rejoice with all the good that the Almighty has given you.” Happiness is a mitzvah that we must continually try to fulfill.

So let me wish you all a shana tova: a good year, a year of good health and a year of…….happiness. Shana tova tikatevu.

Rabbi Bruce Dollin; Rosh Hashana 5770