Framing Holiness – Rosh Hashanah 5772
Judaism trains our minds to frame what could otherwise be unremarkable moments and transform them into sacred occasions.
On a January morning in 2007, in the middle of rush hour, a young man stepped out of a subway train into L’Enfant Plaza Station in Washington DC and positioned himself against a wall near a trash can. By most measures, he was nondescript: a 30-something white man in jeans and a T-shirt wearing a baseball cap. From a small case he removed a violin; strategically tossed a few bucks and some change in the case, and he started to play.
But this fiddler was no ordinary street performer. He was part of a social experiment arranged by a reporter from the Washington Post named Gene Weingarten. And, to make the experiment interesting, Weingarten asked a professional musician to help him. The man playing violin at 8 am, next to a garbage can, in one of DC’s most trafficked Metro stations was none other than Joshua Bell, one the greatest violinists alive today, playing his 1713 Stradivarius worth millions of dollars.
People around the world pay hundreds of dollars to see Joshua Bell. And here he is in jeans and a T-shirt playing in the subway for free. Weingarten wanted to know how people would react, so he set up a hidden camera to capture the whole thing. Joshua Bell played some of the most sublime pieces ever written for the violin, in his characteristically energetic style, for 43 minutes during which time eleven hundred people passed by.
Eleven hundred people walked by. Guess how many people stopped to hear Joshua Bell playing violin in the Metro station! Guess how many people stopped to notice!… Seven. Over the course of 43 minutes only seven people stopped, most of them very briefly. Out of those seven, only two people stopped for more than a few minutes. One guy, a mid-level supervisor at the US Postal Service stopped for about five minutes and, thought, “this guy’s pretty good.” He himself plays the violin and he was impressed by the musician’s skills. In the last few minutes Bell was playing, a woman stopped to listen. As it happens she had seen Joshua Bell give a concert a few weeks earlier. She was the only person who recognized him. She stopped and said, “hey, that’s Joshua Bell!” But, of course, what happens when you say “hey, that’s Joshua Bell!” in the middle of a crowded subway station?… people walked by.
Gene Weingarten wanted to know why people walk by. How is it possible that something of such exquisite beauty can be right in front of us and we just walk by? And, what is it about our modern experience that renders us so unconscious?
LINK TO ARTICLE AND VIDEO CLIPS
For his article, Weingarten interviewed psychologists, philosophers, and artists, as well as 40 of the people who were in the Metro station that day.[1] The answers he offers are complex – technology, the pace of life, the way we’re conditioned to navigate the urban landscape all contribute to the phenomenon. Part of the answer, of course, is the age in which we live. In a world in which anything you could imagine can be generated on a glowing screen, we’ve become desensitized to mystery and beauty; we’re hard to impress.
The 20th century philosopher, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his book, God in Search of Man, “Wonder, or radical amazement, is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward nature and history. One attitude is alien to his spirit; taking things for granted, regarding events as the natural course of things.”
Religion, for Heschel, is not primarily about accepting a prescribed set of beliefs or dogmas. Religion, for Heschel, is a way of encountering the world. Religion is a habit of mind, a way of seeing, a way of thinking. The opposite of religion, taught Heschel, is not atheism or secularism. The opposite of religion is boredom – it’s walking through this world and failing to take note of the miracles that surround us at every moment.
But what Heschel is talking about is something more profound than taking time to be grateful. He’s talking about encountering traces of God in our world. One of the interesting observations Gene Weingarten made in his article was about children. Every child that walked by that morning tried to stop and watch; and every single time, a parent scooted the kid along. Why is it that children were compelled to stop, but grow-ups were not? It isn’t an easy question to answer. Those kids weren’t late for work and they weren’t distracted by adult concerns. Nonetheless, one of the differences between adults and children is their curiosity.
We are born hard-wired for curiosity and wonder. As children, we seek out meaning and yearn to understand the world in which we live. If you’ve ever spent time with young children you know the most common question a three year-old asks: “why?” My son Micah, in particular, can ask a seemingly endless string of why questions. Children want to know why? They want to know the hows and whats and wheres of life. What happens to us that we stop asking those questions? Religion – when done well – is about asking big questions. So how do we cultivate sensitivity to wonder and holiness?
One of the more interesting discussions in Weingarten’s article is around framing. What do I mean by framing? The philosopher Immanuel Kant observed in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment that the ability to appreciate beauty is related to the observer’s frame of mind. In other words, context matters.
If you were to take a painting worth millions of dollars from the Denver Art Museum, remove it from the frame, walk down the street and hang it in a coffee shop, no one would notice it. By the same token, if you take one of my kids’ finger paintings and you hang it up in the Denver Art Museum, you could probably have a good time watching pretentious yuppies huddled around deconstructing its meaning. Your frame of mind matters. (And the truth is, when you’re child comes home from preschool and holds that finger painting up in her cute little fists and proudly says, “look what I made!” it is a masterpiece.) That’s framing.
There are a lot of reasons that go into explaining the Joshua Bell story, but I want to focus on framing. Because framing a moment of beauty, a moment of deep meaning, a moment of transcendent truth, doesn’t happen on its own. It is rare in life that we have those moments of epiphany. It is rare that we achieve that frame of mind by accident. I don’t blame people for walking past Joshua Bell. I probably would have walked by too… but, what I want to know is how I can train my mind to notice the next time.
This morning, as we do on the 2nd day of every Rosh Hashanah, we read the Akedah, in which God asks Avraham to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac.[2] The story comes from a parsha in Genesis called Vayera – which means “[God] made himself seen.” One of the recurring themes in the parsha is sight. As much as anything else, the Akedah is about the ability to see or the failure to see. In just 19 verses, there are 8 references to seeing or sight. For starters, the place God sends Avraham is called Eretz Moriah, which means “the Land of Vision”! The Akedah is dripping with irony. As Avraham and his beloved son are climbing up the mountain, Yitzhak breaks the tense silence with a nervous question: “Father,” he asks, “Here are the fire and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” Avraham, who as far as we can tell at this point is planning on sacrificing his son, offers a feeble reply: “Elohim yir’eh lo ha-se le-olah, b’ni.” “God will see to the burnt offering, my son.”
Can you imagine what is going on in Avraham’s heart? Is Avraham trying to hide his plans, or is his response wishful thinking that perhaps there will be a way out of this terrible test? They continued on up the mountain in silence. And what comes next is the equivalent to slow motion in a scary movie. Avraham binds his son. He places him on the altar. He picks up the knife. And, just before Avraham’s hand comes down to slay Yitzhak, an angel calls to him: “Avraham! Avraham!” So intent on his task is Avraham that the angel has to yell his name twice! The angel tells him not to hurt his son, because Avraham has proven his loyalty. And then something remarkable happens. The Torah says, “Avraham lifted his eyes, and he saw, and here was a ram, behind, caught in the thicket by its horns. So, Avraham went and took the ram and offered it up in place of his son.”[3] Avraham found the way out. God showed him the alternative to child sacrifice.
Despite his hopes of finding an alternative, he failed to see the ram at first. According to Rabbinic legend the ram caught in the thicket was there all along.[4] In fact, God made it on the 6th day of Creation for this specific purpose and it had been waiting in that spot since the beginning of time just to be seen by Avraham.
How often do we walk by rams and fail to see them? How often are we searching for an answer to a big question in our lives and the solution has been right in front of us all along? How often are we looking for a way out of our pain, our confusion, our shortcomings and we can’t see the way out? How often are we searching for the answer to an ethical dilemma when we know in our gut what is right?
How often do we fail to see beauty and holiness in our midst? How often do we fail to appreciate the person with whom we share a bed? How often do we fail to see our children as the miracles they are? How often are we distracted from seeing the hurt in a friend’s eyes? How often are we willfully blind to the suffering of a stranger asking for help? How often do we fail to see the spark of the Divine in ourselves when it is calling on us to pursue justice and compassion?
Again, it’s about framing. The path that leads us to vision and seeing and noticing is all about how you frame a moment. For Avraham, it took divine intervention – no less than an angel called out to him. One of the lessons of the Akedah is the challenge of paying attention. If it was difficult for a man as pious as Avraham, how much more so for the rest of us!
I don’t blame people for walking by Joshua Bell, nor do I fault Avraham for walking by the ram. I’m not criticizing us for all the times we fail to see either… it’s natural. It’s impossible to be open and alert at every moment; and it would probably be exhausting. There are a thousand reasons why we fail to see. But the important thing is: what does it take to open our eyes more often? What does it take to train our minds and our hearts to receive holiness, beauty, and wisdom more often?
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk once put this question to his students: “What was the hardest part of the Akedah for Avraham?” Was it the initial call; was it the long walk to Moriah; was it binding his son? The Kotzker Rebbe’s answer: the hardest part was coming down the mountain. The hardest part was leaving that place of prophetic vision. The hardest part was walking away from a peak moment.[5]
We’ve all experienced peak moments in life. We’ve all had moments when deep and abiding truths about life come rushing in; moments when we’ve appreciated beauty; moments when we’ve felt the profound connection to another person; moments of adversity that render wisdom; moments when we’ve been moved to tears by compassion. But what happens afterward is the truest test of our sincerity. The hardest part of the High Holy Days is not the praying and the fasting. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the sound of the Shofar wakes us from our slumber and we resolve to do better in the year to come; but, the real test comes two months later, when we have to keep the promises we’ve made.
It’s not hard to appreciate beauty in a concert hall; we can have deep insights into life in moments of crisis; but the question is, how do we find those truths in our day-to-day lives? How do we find our way back to Har Moriah – the Peak of Vision?
Judaism offers us a roadmap… a way of framing moments in life with meaning. Mitzvot and rituals train our minds for the possibility of encountering God in the world.
One of my favorite passages in Rabbinic literature is a story about our ancient sage Hillel who was revered for his capacity to make every moment sacred. One day Hillel and his students were learning in the beit midrash when he suddenly got up from his seat to leave. His students called to him, “Master, where are you going!?” Rabbi Hillel replied, “I’m going to go do a mitzvah?” “And what, dear teacher,” the students inquired, “is the mitzvah you are going to do?” “I’m going to the bathroom,” replied Hillel, “because taking care of your body is a mitzvah.”[6]
I love that story for two reasons: first, I love that story because I have the sense of humor of a 7 year-old and it always makes me smile. The second reason I love that story is that it illustrates a profound truth we find in Judaism – that every act, even the most mundane (and there’s nothing more mundane than going to the bathroom) – can be elevated and framed in holiness. Indeed, there’s a prayer we say after using the restroom. Any occasion in life, any choice in life, any action in life can made holy… if you have the right frame of mind, if you take the time to make it holy.
The Book of Leviticus sums up the highest challenge to human beings: “Kedoshim ti’hiyu ki kadosh ani” – “Be holy,” commands God, “just as I am Holy.” This is Judaism’s prime directive. If you had to put Judaism on a bumper sticker; if you had to tweet the essence of Judaism, there it is. What is this characteristic of God’s that we are commanded to emulate? What is Kadosh – Holy? Consider how the word appears in Jewish life:
A family, a circle of friends, gathers around the Shabbat table. A cup of wine is raised. There’s nothing sacred about the wine – it’s Manishevitz! What is sacred, Kadosh, is the bond that brings us together to celebrate and enjoy the restfulness of Shabbat. So, we recite a prayer called Kiddush.
Two people in love stand under the huppah – it’s little more than a cloth draped over 4 poles. A simple, unadorned ring is slipped on a finger, and a few words are said, “harei at mekudeshet…” “behold, in this moment, you are kadosh to me – you are sacred to me…” We call this ritual that transforms two lives into one Kiddushin.
We lower a simple pine box into the earth. We stand at the grave of a loved one with tears in our eyes surrounded by the loving embrace of a community to declare that even the catastrophe of death cannot sever the bonds that hold us together. We call this prayer Kaddish.
Kiddush, Kiddushin, Kaddish, Kadosh, Kedusha – they all mean holiness. They are ways that we frame what could otherwise be unremarkable moments and transform them into sacred occasions.
What is the opposite of holiness? In Hebrew, the opposite of Kadosh is Chol. It’s translated as profane or mundane… Chol is also the word for “sand.” That which is undifferentiated; that which has no framing – one grain of sand blends in with all the others.
When we fail to take note of holiness in the world, the days we have on this earth can slip through our fingers like grains of sand.[7] The pursuit of holiness is more than cultivating the capacity to appreciate beauty or garner wisdom from life’s challenges. Indeed, it is at the heart of Judaism – it is the belief that God is ever present in our world and in our lives. Our challenge is learning how to see.
There are Joshua Bell moments in life – moments when we encounter sublime beauty; moments of transcendence. There are Akedah moments in life – moments of heart-wrenching anguish, moments of impossibly difficult decisions, moments of crisis and doubt. The truth is we live most of our lives somewhere in between. And the challenge is to see holiness in every one of those moments.
How do we do that? Kedoshim Tihiyu – “Be Holy,” says God, “just as I am Holy.” And what’s interesting about the commandment to be holy is that it is followed in the Torah by a section of laws about how you treat your neighbor, how you care for the poor, how you conduct your business, how you act in the world. The section concludes with the most radical demand in the Torah – “v’ahavta l’re-echa ka-mocha” – Love others as you love yourself.
Imagine now looking at your spouse a little more often the way you saw him or her framed by the huppah on your wedding day. Imagine looking at your children more often the way you saw them on this bima at their bar or bat mitzvah. Imagine looking at your family the way you see them around a Shabbat table. Imagine looking into the eyes of a stranger and more often seeing the tzelem Elokim – the image of God – that calls us to greater compassion and justice.
The ultimate goal in Judaism is to cultivate the capacity for holiness and love – to be a more like God. It is the capacity to open ourselves up to finding God in everything we see and do. It is the capacity to act as vessels for holiness in how we treat others, how we care for God’s creation, how we pursue justice and righteousness. It is what Rabbi David Wolpe calls “growing our souls.”
When you realize that’s the goal; when you understand that is the objective of Jewish living, you will practice a different kind of Judaism. You will pray, but pray differently. You will keep Kosher, but differently. You will say blessings, but differently. You will give to others, but you will give differently. You will make ethical choices, but you will make them differently.
Our Mahzor declares, “ha-yom harrat ha-olam.” Today the world stands as at birth. The question is: can we see it? Can we see God’s creation renewed today and every day? Today, we too are reborn. Today, we are renewed for another year. Today we leave here perhaps with new eyes, better prepared to see holiness in our day-to-day. In the year to come, may we grow in our capacity to find Godliness in our world. May it be a year of framing moments in our lives and infusing them with kedushah. May it be a year of truly seeing.
Shanah Tovah
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html. A video of the “concert” can be found here: http://youtu.be/hnOPu0_YWhw
[2] Gen. 22
[3] Gen. 22:13
[4] Pirkei Avot 5:6
[5] At the very end of the Akedah, Avraham called the place “Adonai Yir’eh – the place where God appears.” In Jewish tradition, this location is timeless. Har Moriah, the mountain of vision, becomes Mount Sinai, the place where every Jewish soul had a direct encounter with God. Har Moriah becomes the Temple Mount – the location to which we are commanded to appear with our offerings and the place where once a year, on Yom Kippur, the High Priest encountered God on our behalf.
[6] Avot d’Rebbe Natan 1:30. Another version of the story has Hillel going to the bathhouse. He explains that if statues of Augustus are regularly washed in order to show respect to the Emperor, how much more so should we keep our bodies fit and clean, seeing that we are created in the image of God. One of Hillel’s sayings was “wherever I go, I’m going to do a mitzvah.”
[7] Heschel also observed: “Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogenous, to whom all hours are alike, qualitiless, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at that moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.” (Heschel, The Sabbath, p. 8)
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