Listen to our class on "Averah LiShmah: Is a Sin Ever Appropriate?" here.
Follow along with the sources here.
For further research:
Read R. Aharon Lichtenstein's article on averah lishmah, published in Mussar Aviv, here.
Monday, December 31, 2018
Averah LiShmah: Is a Sin Every Appropriate?
Listen to our class on "Averah LiShmah: Is a Sin Ever Appropriate?" here.
Follow along with the sources here.
For further research:
Read R. Aharon Lichtenstein's article on averah lishmah, published in Mussar Aviv, here.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Friday, December 28, 2018
Parashat Shemot: Horizontal Thought
Horizontal Thought
Thoughts on Shemot 2018
Click here to view as PDF
The Torah’s description of Am Yisrael’s
slavery in Egypt bears several striking similarities to the earlier episode of Migdal
Bavel. Whereas the people of “all of earth” had once come together to
construct a “city and a tower with its top in the heavens” with mortar and
bricks (Bereshit 11:1-4), Am Yisrael were now forced to use mortar and
bricks to build store-cities (Shemot 1:10-14). And similar to the motive of
that initial construction to “make a name” amidst the fear of becoming
“scattered over all the earth,” Pharaoh – “King Rameses” now feared that Am
Yisrael would “go up from the land” and thus commissioned the building of
“Rameses,” a city that bore his name.[1]
What is the underlying message of these parallels?
Consider, in this
context, the Torah’s very next narrative in Sefer Bereshit: the life of
Avraham. God’s first words to him of “Lekh lekha – go forth” (Bereshit
12:1) contrasted to the anticipated settling of Bavel’s city-construction. And
whereas the people of Bavel had futilely pursued a “name” with their stable
city, God then promised Avraham “a great name” (12:2) by means of his movement.[2]
We possess the
ability, as individuals and a society, to grow in two different directions:
vertically and horizontally. Growing upwards means strengthening preexisting
foundations by continuing along the path that was already begun. Growing
sideways, in contrast, means chasing your thoughts or dreams into the
precarious realm of the undiscovered. The “builders of Bavel” had singularly
focused their growth on a vertical trajectory. They feared the
instability of venturing out sideways, and so they built up on steady
foundations. Avraham’s growth was differently focused, however, as he followed
God’s word to spread out and grow horizontally. By doing so, Avraham
endeavored into the realm of the unknown and sought growth along the uncharted
paths that loomed at his sides.
The verdict is
still out regarding the essential role of the Internet to our intellectual
growth. There is no doubt that we have grown by the unprecedented ease of
access to information that it has brought. The question remains, however,
whether our continued intellectual growth as its result points horizontally
or vertically.
Describing the way
that the Internet changed his mode of thinking, Nicholas Carr wrote: “Once I
was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy
on a Jet Ski.”[3]
He explained that a well-rounded mind requires both an ability to find and
quickly parse a wide range of information and a capacity for open-ended
reflection.[4]
Carr therefore bemoaned our increased tendency to superficially skim
information as a result of Google’s immediate search result, and yearned for
the “deep, prolonged engagement with a single argument, idea or narrative”
which he had once enjoyed.[5]
Tom Nichols similarly
suggested that the art of “research” has been lost to people’s “search for
pretty pages online to provide answers they like with the least amount of
effort and in the shortest time.”[6]
Citing studies which found that people don’t actually read the articles from a
search on the Internet, but rather glance at the top line of the first few
sentences and then move on, Nichols reflected: “This is actually the opposite
of reading, aimed not so much at learning but at winning arguments or
confirming a preexisting belief.”[7]
Living in a world
that is increasingly governed by Google searches, our thoughts have become vertical.
We busy ourselves with building higher and higher in our collection of data.
The skill of horizontal thinking, however, is at risk of extinction. We
are slowly forgetting the art of creative and in-depth thinking.
The Torah’s
parallel descriptions of Am Yisrael’s slavery in Egypt and the episode
of Migdal Bavel teaches about the shortcomings of a society stuck in vertical
growth. Although Am Yisrael proliferated in Egypt – “And Bnei Yisrael
were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied and grew very fast, and the land
was filled with them” (Shemot 1:7), their growth was stunted by an inability to
move outward. They were trapped in a land of vertical growth and the only way
out was redemption.
Although distant
from a life of physical servitude, today’s intellectual environment also suffers
from the difficulty of horizontal growth constraints. Paving our own path to
redemption, we must seek return to a world of imaginative thought and
discovery. Embracing our generation’s unique tools for vertical growth, we must
focus our minds upon the path of horizontal growth.
[1] For a further analysis of the similarities
between these two episodes, see Judy Klitsner’s Subversive Sequels in the
Bible (New Milford, CT, 2011), pg. 31-62.
[2] Recall our lengthy discussion
of this in our message for Lekh Lekha, “Movement.”
[3] Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What
the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” The Atlantic July/August 2008.
[4] Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet
is Doing to Our Brains (New York, NY, 2010), pg. 168.
[5] Ibid., pg. 156.
[6] Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The
Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (New York, NY,
2017), pg. 111.
[7] Ibid., pg. 120.
Monday, December 24, 2018
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Friday, December 21, 2018
Monday, December 17, 2018
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Friday, December 14, 2018
Parashat VaYigash: Transitions
Transitions
Thoughts on VaYigash 2018
Click here to view as PDF
Yaakov was caught off guard in the moments after
hearing that Yosef was alive and well in Egypt – “And his heart stopped, for he
did not believe them” (Bereshit 45:26). Once the news sunk in, however, Yaakov
exclaimed: “Enough! Yosef my son is still alive. Let me go see him before I
die” (28). For twenty-two years he had yearned for one last sight of his
beloved son and that time had finally come.
Before entering
Egypt, Yaakov stopped at Be’er Sheva, where God appeared to him “through
visions of the night” (46:1). God initially told him: “Fear not to go down to
Egypt, for a great nation I will make you there. I Myself will go down with you
to Egypt and I myself will surely bring you back up as well” (3-4). The
encounter came at a critical moment in Yaakov’s life. It represented a period
of transition for his family, as they left Canaan, the land of Avraham and
Yisshak, on their way to exile. God, then, was placating Yaakov’s fears by
promising His protection.
Beyond God’s
promises of protection, however, Yaakov’s nighttime visions shifted his general
perspective. Indeed, his vision of God at that time was similar to our own
nighttime visions. As Marina Benjamin remarked, the significance of our
thoughts as we lay awake in bed at night lies not in what we see, but how
we see it: “It is about paying attention to what lies at the peripheries of
our being, or just across the border.”[1]
God’s concluding words to Yaakov changed everything: “And Yosef shall lay his
hand on your eyes.” Whereas Yaakov’s excitement about meeting Yosef had
previously coupled with his anticipation of things to come, God now informed
him that that things would be different. While he would get to see Yosef, there
would be no future journey together. Instead, Yosef would “lay his hand” on
Yaakov’s eyes. Yaakov’s sight would diminish in place of Yosef’s.
R. Ezra Bick
highlighted this transitional time in Yaakov’s life by pointing to the textual
discrepancies in presenting his name. Whereas Yisrael travelled to Be’er
Sheva – “And Yisrael journeyed onward” (1), Yaakov left for Egypt
– “And Yaakov arose from Be’er Sheva” (5). R. Bick suggested that Yisrael
represented his role in actively forging Am Yisrael’s future, while Yaakov
denoted his state of passivity and dependence. Indeed, although he was already
an old man, his travel to Be’er Sheva appeared unassisted, “And Yisrael
journeyed onward,” while his departure was led by his children, “And the sons
of Yisrael conveyed Yaakov their father…on the wagons Pharaoh had sent to
convey him” (5).[2]
Yaakov’s brief encounter with God at Be’er Sheva transformed his vision of self
and reoriented his understanding of the future.
When Yaakov finally
met with Yosef, he eerily repeated his earlier expression, although it was now
laden with a literal meaning: “I may die now, after seeing your face, for you
are still alive” (46:30). Crossing through the liminal realm of a nighttime
vision at Be’er Sheva had changed Yaakov. Entering with the hope that his sight
of Yosef would forbear a bright future together, Yaakov left Be’er Sheva with
the understanding that it would instead represent his passing of the torch from
father to son.
Regarding his great
disdain of sleep, the poet Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “I simply cannot get used to
the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. No matter how great my
weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to
me.”[3]
Although I personally share Nabokov’s hate of the lost opportunities inherent
in sleep, I can nonetheless appreciate the advantages that sleep and dreams
afford us. Matthew Walker, for example, likened REM sleep to a master piano
tuner, as it “readjusts the brain’s emotional instrumentation at night to
pitch-perfect precision.”[4] Alice Robb likewise wrote: “Dreams can help
us become more self-aware; they draw deep-seated anxieties to the surface,
forcing us to face up to hope and fears we haven’t acknowledged.”[5]
Our sleep and dreams, then, play similar roles to Yaakov’s nighttime vision of
God. They sharpen our self-understanding and prepare us for the difficult
journey ahead.
Navigating the
various stages of our lives without preparation will lead us to sure failure.
Yaakov’s nighttime encounter with God conditioned him for the alternate reality
that lay ahead. Deep sleep through the night can sometimes do the same for us.
But several minutes of mindful recollection can also do the trick. Every parent
knows that the few-minute warning before transitioning our children into the
next activity are crucial. The same holds true for adults with regards to the many
phases of life.
As Arthur
Rubinstein reflected upon his career as one of the greatest pianists of the
twentieth century, he reportedly remarked: “I play the notes no better than
many, but the pauses…ah, that makes all the difference.”[6]
Taking time out of
our days on a consistent basis to momentarily pause our stream of thought and
activities and take stock of our current state-of-being and the anticipated
future is vital to our continued growth. It will provide us with the
appropriate mindset for travelling along the uncharted roads of life and serve
as our critical “visions of the night.”
[1] Marina Benjamin, Insomnia (New York, NY,
2018), pg. 104-5.
[2] R. Ezra Bick, “The Twilight
Years,” in Torah MiEtzion: New Readings in Tanach: Bereshit (New
Milford, CT, 2011), pg. 487-8.
[3] Vladimir Nabokov, Speak,
Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (New York, NY, 1989), pg. 108-9.
[4] Matthew Walker, Why We
Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (New York, NY, 2017), pg.
215.
[5] Alice Robb, Why We Dream:
The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey (New York, NY, 2018), pg.
8.
[6] Related by Janice Marturano,
in Finding the Space to Lead: A Practical Guide to Mindful Leadership
(New York, NY, 2014), pg. 58.
Monday, December 10, 2018
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Friday, December 7, 2018
Parashat Mikess: Carpe Diem
Carpe Diem
Thoughts on Mikess 2018
Click here to view as PDF
R. Tarfon said:
The day is short and the work is much, and the workers are lazy and the reward
is great, and the Master of the house is pressing. (Pirkei Avot 2:15)
After hearing Yosef’s
interpretation of his dreams, Pharaoh exclaimed, “Could we find a man like him,
whom is the spirit of God?” (Bereshit 41:38). He then turned to Yosef and
remarked, “There is none as discerning and wise as you” (39). Just as the
cupbearer and baker were overwhelmed by Yosef’s clairvoyant interpretations in
prison, so too was Pharaoh at that time. But were Yosef’s explanations actually
that impressive? Asked to render a plausible solution to those very
dreams in his same circumstance, isn’t it possible that you too might
interpret them like Yosef? What, then, were Yosef’s powers of wisdom and
insight that appeared so remarkable at that time?
Many of the technological
products that we buy and use are designed with planned obsolescence in mind.
The operating systems of our smartphones, for example, slow down significantly
after a mere two years of use. At that same time, their battery life begins to
drain quickly, as well. There is, in fact, a purpose that underlies this
seemingly money-making scam. The systems are able to produce at maximum
capacity because they possess a confined window of time. Building a
lifespan into the usage of our devices ensures their maximum efficiency during
that time period.
Allison Arieff noted the
irony that the same Silicon Valley culture that produces these gadgets appears
obsessed with living forever. She pointed to venture capitalists like the tech
billionaire Peter Thiel who have begun pouring money into anti-aging and life
extension start-ups. Arieff mentioned, as well, that Google has launched the
biotech company Calico to study “the biology that controls lifespan,”
specifically researching the long-living naked mole rat, which shows little to
no sign of aging.[1]
The tech world shares good
company in its obsession with “living forever.” Our society at large has become
possessed by the dream of eternal life. Noting the long list of new books
related to “successful aging,” Barbara Ehrenreich remarked, “A major themes is
that aging itself is abnormal and unacceptable.”[2] And
before detailing the many other ways that this mindset and approach has spread
throughout our culture, she wrote, “You can think of death bitterly or with
resignation, as a tragic interruption of your life, and take every possible
measure to postpone it.” Alternatively, and more realistically, she suggested,
“You can think of life as an interruption of an eternity of personal
nonexistence, and seize it as a brief opportunity to observe and interact with
the living, ever-surprising world around us.”[3]
Peggy Noonan recently wrote
about a depressing outgrowth of our society’s concept of life. She noticed the
adolescent clothing donned by many of today’s well-known business executives –
the casual T-shirts, hoodies and jeans. She pointed out that although our
culture has always honored the young, it has never honored immaturity. The
model of dignified “adult attire” has largely been lost, replaced instead by
“soft clothes, the kind 5-year-olds favor.” The past ideal of a life of serious
demeanor and style has disintegrated to one of childish thoughts and behavior.[4]
Along the path of our futile attempts to “defy death,” we have begun to act and
attempt to “be young” forever.
Joseph Epstein described this
phenomenon over a decade ago, adding to it his own critique and misgivings.
Epstein began “The Perpetual Adolescent” by contrasting the “grown up” attire
one beheld at the baseball games of the 1940’s and 50’s – tailored suits and
fedoras, to the youthful jeans, caps and T-shirts that fill the seats of
today’s games. Broadly observing many of society’s general trends, he noticed a
sharp shift from a society that conceived of adolescence as necessarily
transient to one that yearns for its eternal existence. Epstein viewed this
perspective very negatively. He suggested that it lowered the tone of national
life, took away from its richness, and lowered intellectual expectations. He
argued that an observable “dumbing down” of society is to be attributed to this
mindset, as contemporary journalism has lost its depth by necessarily adapting
to the short attention span with the soundbite, photo-op, quickie take and a
general suppression of complexity.[5]
Leon Kass noticed a similar
trend in his search for the underlying factors for our society’s shift away
from traditional dating and marriage. He wrote about today’s shared clothing
styles, spoken lingo and interest in music between parents and children, and
commented: “Youth, not adulthood, is the cultural ideal, at least as celebrated
in the popular culture.” Kass explained that today’s young man doesn’t feel the
urge to take his father’s place, as he has seen his father continuously running
from it “with all deliberate speed.”[6]
Ancient Egyptian
society was pervaded by a strikingly similar feature to ours today. Leon Kass
explained that Egypt sought to abolish change and to make time stand still in
their pursuit of “changelessness, agelessness and permanent presence.” He
elaborated: “Whether one looks to the hieroglyph in which the mobile world is
represented in static ideograms; or to the worship of the eternally circling
but never-changing heavenly bodies or of the cyclically rising and ebbing
river, with its life-giving overflows; or to the practices of denying aging
through bodily adornment and defying death through mummification and
preparation for reincarnation – everywhere one looks, one sees in Egypt the
rejection of change and the denial of death.”[7]
Indeed, the first thing that Yosef did before approaching Pharaoh was shaving
his beard (41:14). A beard is the paradigmatic sign of “old age” (hence its
Hebrew word – zakan), which was the perfect emblem of the
Egyptian penchant to deny change and conquer human decay.[8]
Attempting to enter the mainstream Egyptian society, Yosef made sure to first
dress the part.
The legacy of Am
Yisrael, in contrast, was built upon the core concept of remembering the
past and anticipating the future. God’s covenant with Avraham was passed down
from father to son in a continuous chain. Adherents of this dynasty lived with
“full awareness of time and with full acceptance of change and unavoidable
decay.”[9]
Consider the
establishment of berit bein ha-betarim, the foundational covenant with
Avraham, when God clearly stated to him: “As for you, you shall go to your
fathers in peace, you shall be buried in ripe old age” (15:15). We were first
taught then to accept – and embrace – the existence of old age and the inevitability
of death.
As Yosef listened
to the retelling of the ministers’ dreams and then those of Pharaoh, this
veritable clash of worlds came to the fore. Denying the inevitable passing of
time, the Egyptians couldn’t possibly fathom that the objects in their dreams –
the vine branches, baskets of bread, cows and ears of wheat – represented the
passage of time. The very concept of a set “deadline” was foreign to their
intellectual conceptions. And as Yosef described their symbolism – first as
three days to the ministers, and then as seven years to Pharaoh, the Egyptian
dreamers were spellbound by its novelty. The idea of the fleeting nature of
time, although intuitive, had been squashed by their culture and society. And
Yosef’s seamless mention of this concept opened their eyes to a hidden truth.
“Carpe diem,”
John Keating (played by Robin Williams) famously shouted to his students in the
classic film Dead Poets Society. “Seize the day, boys. Make your lives
extraordinary,” he urged them. Living in a world which once again seeks to freeze
itself in “perpetual adolescence,” the Torah awakens us to the inevitability of
aging and the concept of a lifespan. It reminds us to seize the day.
[1] Allison Arieff, “Life is
Short. That’s the Point,” The New York Times, Aug. 18, 2018.
[2] Barbara Ehrenreich, Natural
Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves
to Live Longer (New York, NY, 2018), pg. 164.
[3] Ibid., pg. xv
[4] Peggy Noonan, “If Adults Won’t
Grow Up, Nobody Will,” The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2018. Thank you
to Morris Manopla for sharing this article with me.
[5] Joseph Epstein, “The Perpetual
Adolescent,” The Weekly Standard, Mar. 15, 2004.
[6] Leon R. Kass, “The End of
Courtship,” Leading a Worthy Life (New York, NY, 2018), pg. 51.
[7] Leon R. Kass, The Beginning
of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Chicago, IL, 2003), pg. 557.
[8] Ibid., pg. 563-4. Rabbi
Dr. Ricky Hidary commented to me that archaeologists have in fact found that
ancient drawings depict the Egyptians as clean-shaven, in contrast to the
foreigners who don beards.
[9] Ibid., pg. 556-7.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
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