Thursday, February 18, 2010

RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH SPIRITUALITY:ADAR ARRIVES, JOY INCREASES: PURIM:HAMAN

 
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH SPIRITUALITY:ADAR ARRIVES, JOY INCREASES: PURIM:HAMAN
Jewish Spiritual Renewal:Shabbat 3/6/10: A Path of Transformation
 
The JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL CLASS list is hosted by Shamash: The Jewish Network a service of Hebrew College and Yeshiva.
 
Shalom my beloved chaverim, talmidim and fellow Rabbanim:
 
Baruch ha Ba, welcome, to those new to the class. Our little international chavurah for study is now at 307 with folks from every continent, except Antarctica. The number is actually higher as many emails are for more than one person. To access last week's class go to please:
Rabbi Arthur Segal: RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH RENEWAL: ADAR ARRIVES, OUR JOY INCREASES: TERUMAH  or [ http://rabbiarthursegal.blogspot.com/2010/02/rabbi-arthur-segaljewish-renewal-adar.htm }. There you will find links taking you back to classes from the start of this third class for  Shamash, a service of Hebrew College Yeshiva.
 
I thank each and everyone of you for allowing me to come into your homes via email. You each make my life a blessing.
 
Last week we began to talk about Vidui, confession, and began chapter Four in
 
Today we will complete chapter Four and I ask you to follow its instructions as your next step in Jewish Spiritual Renewal and life transformation. Vidui helps humble us. When we are humble, our egos deflate. When we don't have ego, we are not hurt by others. More so, we can act altruistically to others and not expect or want anything in return. When we learn humility, and I have a long way to go, we understand what Rabbi Wolf of Strikov meant when he wrote:"" You're not as great as you think, and the world is not as bad as it seems.""

 
The rabbis teach us Kabbalistically:'' Usually, we talk of true faith as a higher vision. The soul, not bound within our little world, sees a reality the mind cannot fathom. From that vision comes the power to face the challenges of a dark, confusing world. But a higher vision still means that there are two and not one: There is you and there is the vision. And if there are two, when the darkness and confusion swells and storms, the two can be separated. That is when we need to reach to the very core of our souls: Not to a vision, but to a sense of being. The sense that this is my God and I am His. That we are one. That there is nothing else.''

Where there is nothing else, there is nothing from which to be separated. We become one with God's universe. Other folks no longer offend us, and more so, if some one doesn't like us, we know its none of our business. It is their spiritual issue. This assumes of course, we have done our Chesbon ha Nefesh, our inventories of our soul, and are not doing behaviors to others that are offensive.
 
At the end of studying the book of Job, Rabbi Yohanan would say: "A person's end is to die and an animal's end is for slaughter and all are poised for death," and then temper his somber words by adding, "Fortunate is the one who grew in Torah and whose toil is in Torah and who gives nachat ruah (pleasure, "nachas" in Yiddish) to his creator and who grew up with a good name and who departed from the world with a good name, and of such a person Solomon said (Ecclesiastes 7:1): 'A good name is better than good oil, and the day of death is better than the day of his birth'" (Talmud Bavli Tractate Beracoth 17a). God is the ultimate oneness, and everything Godly in our world bears the stamp of His unity. All evil derives from the distortion of this oneness by the veil of divisiveness in which God shrouds His creation.
 
For many of us we are at a crossroads. We are used to our own way. Our lives aren't so bad. So what if we have some resentments, we say to ourselves. So we get a bit jealous when someone achieves something. So we strive to get our name in the shul newspaper and be chair of this and that. So yes, we have our Golden Calves (see below's Dvar Torah}, but, hey, we have a house, a car, kids that call a few times a year, and folks we think are our friends.
 
But as we learned so far, this is not the life God wants for us. There is no true happiness, joyousness and freedom, when we are rats scrambling for the top piece of cheese. Our minds have learned a lot just in these first 4 and a half chapters. But we need to get our hearts integrated with our minds. This integration is called Shlema. It is the root word for shalom. Without Shlema we cannot be in shalom, we cannot make shalom with others, and we cannot have serenity. We have conflict with our selves and with others...continually.
 
The Rabbis say   ''our minds and our hearts slowly build a relationship, just as a pet and its master. At first, the mind holds the heart on a leash. The heart screams, "I must have this! I must go there!" And the mind says, "No, we talked this over already and we both agreed you don't need to." And the heart screams, "But now I feel I need to! I can't do otherwise!" And the mind says, "That's because you are a heart. Hearts feel that way. But I am a mind and I know we won't die if you don't."
 
Eventually, the heart learns the paths and become a mindful heart. When we get into Chapter Ten we will learn mindfulness. To many its a Buddhist term. But it is 100% Jewish.
 
The ability to admit our defects via vidui, confession, goes hand in hand with the ability to forgive.

At times, the willingness to overlook and forgive can cause a person's life in this world to be extended, even after Heaven has decreed that his time has come. The Talmud relates in Bavli Tractate Rosh Hashanah 17a: ''R' Huna, the son of R' Yehoshua, fell ill. R' Pappa went to visit him. Upon seeing that he was unconscious, R' Pappa told R' Huna's attendants], "Prepare provisions for him and ready his burial shrouds.'' In the end, R' Huna recovered. R' Huna's attendants asked him R' Huna, "What did you see while unconscious?'' He told them, "Indeed, that is how it was that death had been decreed upon me. But the Holy One, Blessed is He, instructed me, 'Because he does not exact his measure, therefore, do not be exacting with him.' As it is written, 'He forgives transgressions and passes over sins' (Michah 7:18) — whose sin does He forgive? One who passes over sins.''

Now whether you believe in Olam Ha Ba or not, I can assure you that living  a life of forgiveness, and without resentments, and grudges, is 1000 times better than living a life full of hate and distrust of others. The Midrash Bamidbar 16:27, 32-33 states: R' Berechiah said: How destructive is strife! The Heavenly Court does not exact punishment from the living until the age of twenty; the Jewish courts on this earth do not punish until the age of thirteen [for a male]; yet in the dispute involving Korach, infants were swallowed up into the abyss, as it is written, "... with their wives, children, and infants ... The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them and their households .... they and all that was theirs descended alive to the pit."   

The Sages taught: Four are classified as "wicked'': one who extends his hand to strike his fellow, even if he does not actually strike him; one who borrows and does not repay; a brazen person who has no sense of shame before those of greater stature than himself; and one who engages in strife. Regarding this last sinner, it is written, "Turn away now from the tents of these wicked men '' .  There are times, that the Talmud advises us to not hang around with folks who gossip, are cliquish, are mean spirited, and to be careful whom we pick as a teacher or rabbi. Remember Korach had his students too, and they all perished. Some times we must quietly exit, unfortunately, even a shul, if the members, or God forbid the rabbi, engage in strife, or borrows and doesn't repay , or has a temper.

Lastly, As the Talmudic sage Rabbi Ila'a teaches in Bavli Tractate Chullin 89a, "The world is sustained only on account of one who restrains oneself from strife." Be kind to one another. Love. Love intensely. Love the person even if your mind or heart tells you that you don't like him or her.

CHAPTER FIVE (SECOND HALF) VIDUI-CONFESSION: FROM: 001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal - Rabbi Arthur Segal  or [ http://www.shop.jewishspiritualrenewal.net/product.sc;jsessionid=584F18D50C6545DD5C548152F4AE94DE.qscstrfrnt02?productId=1&categoryId=1 }.

Judaism also does not believe in what today is known as "witnessing." We do not publicly announce sins to the world, and then announce that one no longer has those sins (Talmud Bavli Tractate Sotah 7b). For one thing, speaking negatively about yourself is as much a sin as is speaking negatively about others. Also, such brazenness feeds the ego, which, as you have already learned, will eventually lead you to further sin. This is why people end up saying, "All this God stuff is bull feathers!" We see this all the time with movie stars who are arrested for cocaine possession, then get off with community service and 30 days in rehab (whereas the rest of us would spend time carving tally marks on a cell wall). Then, at the direction of a publicist, the wretched soul emerges from rehab claiming to have "found God," and brags about it on the talk show circuit for three weeks before being arrested again with vials of crack in his pocket.

Following this daily approach to confession, toward the end of the silent Amidah (standing prayer) at each service, we turn to God with the words, "Behold I am before You as a vessel filled with shame and disgrace." We immediately continue with a request, "May it be Your will, Lord, my God and the God of my forbearers, that I shall sin no more; and the sins which I have committed before You, erase them in Your abounding mercies, though not through suffering and severe illness."

The source of this prayer is a personal supplication that the Babylonian sage Rava would add to his daily prayers. Another sage, Rav Hamnuna Zuti, would recite this prayer as part of his confessional prayers (Talmud Bavli Tractate Beracoth 17a). One should repent daily, because it may be one's last day, the sages tell us in Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 153a. Judaism understands that humans are not perfect, as God did not create us to be saints. The Rabbis teach that God created Teshuvah (Repentance or Spiritual Renewal) even before creating the Universe (Talmud Bavli Tractates Pesachim 54a and Nedarim 39b). God knew that Man would possess character defects. So He gave us a built-in "fix," a way to amend for our sins and grow from them.

God is waiting with open arms for us to confess to Him. He is all forgiving. God's hand is outstretched to those who want to repent (Talmud Bavli Tractate Pesachim 119a) and He is always waiting for even the most wicked to return (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 104a).

I can assure you that no matter how low you think you have sunk, God, rabbis, priests, ministers and psychiatrists, have heard it all before. One of the elements of becoming spiritual is losing what we call "terminal uniqueness." Proverbs tells us that everyone, those who have lived their lives with God as well as those who have not, have sins to confess.

In the next chapter, you will learn how to ask God to help you rid yourself of your defects.

Every day, a religious Jew was seen praying in front of the Wailing Wall. One day, a non-observant Israeli walked up to him and said, "I see you here every day, seven days a week. Tell me, what are you praying to God for?"

To this, the man replied, "I am telling God of my tsouris (troubles), of my financial problems, my defects, my sins, about my daughter who can't find a husband, and asking him to help me."

"Well," the secular Jew asked, "Does He send you help?"

The man turned to him and said, "No, but what do you expect? It's like talking to a wall."

 

Our goal is to get you better results.

God willing, we will start Chapter Six next week. A d'var Torah for the Shabbat of March 6, 2010 follows:

Happy Purim:

Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
www.JewishRenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
 
 

Parasha Ki Tisa: Exodus 30:11-34:35

Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
www.JewishRenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

"We Don't Know Where We're Going, But The Season's Right For Knowing. I Want You To Join Together With The Band"

Poor Moses. Poor, poor Moses. He schleps to the top of Mt. Sinai and spends forty days and nights in Torah class, with God Almighty as his teacher. He finally descends from Har Sinai carrying the word of God on heavy stone tablets to find his people dancing around a Golden Calf. Poor Moses. What's a tzaddik to do?

Midrashic apologists for our ancestors' behavior say that Moses promised that he would be back in forty days and return in the morning. The masses assumed that the first day of his assent counted as the first day of the forty. But Moses meant he would be away for a full forty days and forty nights and return on the morning of the forty-first day. So we panicked, thought Moses was dead, and built the Golden Calf as a substitute for Moses, but not as a substitute for God. The rabbis also blame this sin on the non-Hebrews who came with us from Egypt, the eirev rav (rabble) who the Rabbis say instigated us.

But if we believe that God is omniscient, we then know this rabbinic interpretation to be false. God says to Moses to hurry and get back to his people because "they have made themselves a molten calf, prostrated themselves to it, and sacrificed to it, and they said, 'This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt.'" (Ex. 32:08). God doesn't blame the goyem. God doesn't say the calf is a substitute for Moses. God saw it and called it like it was.

Should anything in this story surprise us? Are we any different today than we were in Sinai 3,300 years ago? Don't all of us have our Golden Calves that we worship more than God? I am not just referring to the hi-tech toys and gadgets that none of us need but that all of us want.

The Hebrews who worshipped this Calf wished to understand and experience God on their own terms. They wanted to see and feel God in a solid state. They wanted concrete answers to who and what God is. They were dependent upon Moses to be their intercessor to God and in the past two parashot were told the elaborate ways, via the intricate Mishkan and the ornate garbs of the priests and the rituals, they were to worship God. Is the Mishkan or the cult of the priesthood any less of an objectification of God than a Golden Calf? Are the Golden Cherubim (angels) that adorn the Ark, any less idolatrous? Is the construction of the Golden Calf just another way for humans to try to seek answers – just as Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?

The Zohar teaches that Adam and Eve would have eventually been allowed to eat from the tree of knowledge, but only after they first ate from the tree of life. Their sin was not that they ate the fruit, but that they ate from the trees in the wrong sequence.

 In Proverbs 3:18 we are taught, "Torah is a tree of life to those that embrace her." Without the life teachings of Torah, the Zohar says, we are lost in the real world of good and evil. The sin of the Golden Calf, perhaps, is thinking that one can fully and completely understand, know, see, touch, and feel God, without study of Torah and living its precepts.

After the tragedy of the Golden Calf and the slaughter of "about 3000 men that day" (Ex. 32:28), the paradox still remained. How can we, as finite people, understand an infinite God? God is termed, kabbalistically, Bal Tachlit. That is, not bound in any way. That doesn't just mean that God is all powerful, but that we, who see things with borders and definition, and use terms like big, bigger, biggest, cannot and never can describe God as He is indescribable. God is the Ein Sof, the indefinable.

We can bridge this paradox in the realm between God and man. This area is defined and is a place where we can make use of our knowledge of Torah. The Kabbalah calls this place the Hanhaga. Instead of trying to define God, if we understand the divine Hanhaga we will get a glimpse of God himself.

In this parasha, we need not look far for a way into the realm of Hanhaga. Because in Ex. 34:06 God defines thirteen attributes of His merciful side. If we as people try to emulate these ways, and get rid of the Golden Calf false truths that keep us from them, we can reach God and enhance our own spirituality.

Can we vow to ourselves to be more compassionate? Can we strive to help our friends and family avoid temptations and distress?

Can we be more gracious? Can we try to act more magnanimous and generous toward others? Is the social climbing, like rats working their way to the top of the pile where the cheese is, and avoiding those who we perceive not to be in the in-crowd, really the way God wants us to behave at Oneg Shabbats?

Can we be slower to anger? Can we try to see both sides of the situation and give those who we feel have harmed us time to reflect, improve, and repent before we get angry at them? Anger is an unhealthy emotion to carry. It will eat you before it causes harm to anyone else.

Can we be more abundant in kindness? Can we do more acts of ahavath chesed? Can we be kind to those we don't know or foolishly think that we don't care to know? Can we be kind to those at whom we think we are angry? We are commanded to help our enemy's donkey if we see it struggling with its burden. God wants us to make up and not hold grudges.

Can we be more truthful? There are lies of commission but lies of omission as well.

Can we help preserve kindness? Can we work toward making our synagogues a place of Shalom Bayat and not let ourselves be bullied by those who are bigots or snubbers? Do we really want those people on our boards or teaching in our children's schools or leading our adult education programs?

Can be forgive iniquity, willful sin, and error? Can we help those who commit these behavioral errors cleanse themselves as opposed to ostracizing them? Everything that we have – our possessions, our health, our intelligence – is all a gift from God. It is really a loan from God. Can we be more understanding of those who fail to live in "our image?"

What Golden Calves keep us from behaving the way God wants us to behave? What irrational belief systems keep us from behaving rationally? Who or what are we really worshipping? We at times must force ourselves to be decent. God knows that this is not easy. We have free will. We all have two hearts. We want, and yet we feel. We want to visit an elderly congregant we haven't seen in months, but we feel like going shopping instead. One heart loves to do the right thing, the other heart prefers to be selfish.

Is the Golden Calf of the strict laws of Kashrut causing some of us to spend more time reading labels than visit the sick or help the needy? Is the Golden Calf of "we are the correct Jews" allowing some of us to throw rocks (and even assassinate) other Jews?

  Peaceful times demand win-win situations. Win-lose attitudes end with war. Rabbi Elazar HaKappar says in Pirkei Avot, Chapter 5, Verse 28, that the Golden Calves of "jealousy, lust and glory remove a man from this world."

Finally, God gives us another clue about himself. In Ex 33:21, even after two parashot before outlining His "dwelling place" on earth, God calls himself Ha Maqom, the Place. God is wherever man lets Him into his heart. Aaron placated the masses and erred greatly in making the Golden Calf. He spent the rest of his days, as Cohan Gadol taught Rabbi Hillel: "loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them closer to Torah." Let this be our individual mission. By acting and being good, and trying to behave in accordance with God's thirteen attributes of Mercy (chesed), we will help God as partners in tikun olam (repair of the world).
 
Shabbat Shalom:
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
www.JewishRenewal.info
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Spirituality
Eco Judaism
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA

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Posted by Rabbi Arthur Segal at 3:14 PM