“Rosh Hashanah is both the last gasp of agony and the trauma of birth”

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

When the Sages say that a man's star sees what escapes man's notice, they mean that if our souls were sensitive to everything that takes place in the universe or could perceive the immense range of phenomena around us, they would sense that the year is dying. 


Rosh Hashanah is both the last gasp of agony and the trauma of birth.

It seems to me that what motivates so many Jews to go to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah is the uncanny, ill-defined feeling of experiencing the death-birth of time, and hence Divine Presence. 

This is why they can proclaim Divine Kingship on Rosh Hashanah. 

It is a spontaneous, unplanned gesture, like so many kinds of human behavior.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Seven Lights, p. 20, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“We have the privileges of children”

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

 

Our real privilege is that we are both sons and servants.

We are permitted to "stray" a little from God, an idea woven into the Rosh Hashanah prayers. 

When the observant Jew and the individual who is satisfied simply to pray on Rosh Hashanah stand in judgment before the King of Kings, they are both in the same situation and share the same degree of anxiety. 

Both are before God and say to Him: "Be my King." 

What did they do to deserve it?

Rabbi Aaron of Karlin was preparing for the morning service on Rosh Hashanah, which begins with the words, "0 King." 

When he spoke these words, Rabbi Aaron fainted.

When he regained consciousness, his followers asked him, "Why did you faint?" 

Rabbi Aaron replied, "Just as I was saying '0 King,' I remembered an anecdote. 

A rabbi came to Vespasian before the latter was made Emperor and greeted him with '0 Emperor!' 

To this Vespasian said, 'If you knew that I am the Emperor, why did you not come to see me sooner?"

The Emperor's question provides a good clue as to why these ten days are called the "Days of Awe."

What could cause you to feel more riddled with anxiety than to hear your king ask:
 
"Where have you been all this time? 

Where were you?

Why didn't you come to see me sooner?"

This is how we feel as servants. 

As sons, however, we have the privileges of children. 

Regardless of what children do, even if they leave home for the whole year, they are still children. 

This is our only excuse. 

For in our position as servants, what could we say for ourselves on Rosh Hashanah?

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Seven Lights, p. 23, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The ‘program’ of the year is conceptualized and stored in memory on Rosh Hashanah”

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

Time is like a plant. 


The year only refines and develops the seed that is born on Rosh Hashanah and that will grow over the entire year. 

To borrow a metaphor from computer science, we could say that the "program" of the year is conceptualized and stored in memory on Rosh Hashanah and that the 364 other days of the year are simply spent running the program. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Seven Lghts, p. 14, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Each has its own life, dimension, and tonality”

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

 

Time is both discontinuous and cyclical. 

For example, every day there are two cycles of twelve hours forming the hours of the day and the hours of the night. 

But no given hour is like another. 

Each has its own life, dimension, and tonality.

According to kabbalists this reflects the twelve different configurations of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton.

Each hour is governed by one of these configurations. 

In other words, each hour has its own code, a unique code, just the way each instant is unique.

The second cycle is the cycle of days. 

Here again each day forms a complete cycle, a self-contained entity, and each morning is a new birth. 

This explains the importance of the prayer that celebrates this birth.

In a similar fashion, the week has its cycle, and the month, whose birth is connected to the moon. 

Finally, we have the cycle of the year.

However, there is a fundamental difference between this cycle and the others. 

All the other temporal organizations are cyclical, but Rosh Hashanah is an absolute beginning. 

Recall that shanah ("year") comes from a root that means "doubling," "repetition."

Indeed, what happens is a repetition of the act of creation and a total renewal of time.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Seven Lights, p. 11, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Repentance is not a recipe that one follows”

Monday, August 30th, 2010

 

The essence of repentance is not a specific action.

It is not a recipe that one follows: so much charity, so many self afflictions, so many fasts. 

Essentially, repentance is a feeling of the heart—regret over the past and a resolution for the future.

The greater the depths of a person’s mind and the development of his maturity, the more clearly he can recognize his problems and the more profoundly he can see each flaw. 

And then his previous repentance may no longer seem to be enough, for he looks downward to levels of imperfection that his previous repentance had not been able to reach.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Understanding the Tanya, p. 51, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Is it reasonable to expect a response to our prayers?”

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

 

Even when we accept the premise that God hears everything, including our prayers, another question arises: is it reasonable to expect a response?

Somehow, people have the idea that their prayers deserve a response that will be the fulfillment of that prayer.

In our world, however, everyone knows that a petition may be received and read, and the answer may still be "No."

So, too, it may happen with prayer; there is a possibility that the answer to a prayer—even if prayed fervently and with all goodwill and sincere intentions—will just be "No."

Often people have an expectation that whenever they ask for something–or at least when they ask God for it–they must get it.

This may be called "the spoiled brat philoso­phy."

In prayer, too, one pleads for an answer, or for an ex­planation, but the response may not satisfy the request.

Only very occasionally does one get a direct, explicit an­swer.

Sometimes a partial answer comes to us many years later.

Something I once did, which at the time seemed pointless or wrong, in retrospect may turn out to have been a very important and successful action.

I may expect light­ning to strike me whenever I do something wrong, but the lightning may come in God's good time, which is, most probably, when I least expect it.

Many times, the answer–which is the most appropriate one–is silence.

And we may very well go through life—at least life in this world–with­out getting any answer whatsoever.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Simple Words, p. 93., by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“How is it possible to love a sinner?”

Friday, August 27th, 2010

How is it possible to love a sinner?

One of the Hasidic answers is derived from the verse "Love thy fellow as thyself."

A person is to love others just as he loves himself despite his intimate knowledge of his own imperfections and flaws and even though he may simultaneously hate himself for them.

We find this idea expressed in the verse "Love covers all sins (Proverbs 10:2.

Love does not conceal facts–rather, it changes the evaluation of those facts.

Although a person recognizes his own sins,his love covers them over and mitigates their severity and hatefulness.

In that sense,"Love thy fellow as thyself" is the challenge to see another as one sees oneself.

It is not that one does not see the sin – but one sees it from a different perspective,and then one's entire attitude toward it changes.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

from Understanding the Tanya Chapter 32, p.135 by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The same idea can be expressed in words, in music, in movement”

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

 

There are extraordinary people who can conceive an idea in more than one kind of symbolic ingredient or "letters" and can even choose their own formulation, in whatever comprehensive structure they feel at ease with, whether words, numbers, colors, tones, or whatever. 

Rabbi Nachman of Breslav is said to have declared that if people were able really to hear his teaching, the melody as well as the words, the dance of it, they would be released from the bondage of reality. 

In other words, the same idea can be expressed in words, in music, in movement. 

There is a basic ground for correspondence of things, a fundamental unity behind the variety of modes of expression or symbols. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
 
From In the Beginning, p.188, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The beauty of the world is in reality the camouflage colors of the various creatures”

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

 

The struggle for survival exists not only among living things. 

Is there a more tranquil scene than the sight of sheep grazing in a green field?
 
But even here the struggle for survival continues, with one animal (a sheep) destroying other organisms (the grass it eats). 

True, the grass is not a living being and may not feel much. But it, too, has the "desire" to develop, flower, grow, and multiply. 

Who pays heed to the desire of plants to flower? 

And is there a big difference between a human being slaughtering cattle, a tiger devouring its prey, a chicken pecking a worm in the dunghill, or a worm gnawing at and killing a plant? 

Everyone eats everyone else-—all destroy and annihilate each other—in fighting for their lives.

This is nothing but a more precise observation of the same phenomenon. 

Big animals chase smaller ones, and the small ones look for even weaker victims. 

Plants spread their roots in the earth, extend their leaves, grab from each other, strangle each other. 

The idyllic pasture is nothing but a field in which an incessant battle goes on day and night: a fight unto death, the struggle for survival.

This war is neither incidental nor temporary:- it is part and parcel of the very nature of things. 

"The strong survive; the weak perish" is its slogan. 

How odd and absurd, then, does this very poetic verse seem—"His tender mercies extend over all His works." (Psalm 145) 

Is it true? 

Does it not seem like scornful, derisive, back-handed language, a description that is as remote as possible from the bitter reality of the worst of all possible worlds?

A tough, cruel, ruthless world in which the strong set the rules; a world of darkness and evil—this is what our world looks like when examined closely, with cold, unsentimental eyes. 

The beauty of the world is in reality the camouflage colors of the various creatures.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
 
 
From On Being Free, p.206, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“To see a miracle as something significant, we must first believe in its significance”

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

 

Since early times, many people have deplored the fact that we no longer see miracles, while others just wonder why we do not have miracles. 

Perhaps miracles do still happen, but we do not observe them. When we do notice them, they are not convincing. 

To see a miracle as something significant, we must first believe in its significance. 

If we do not believe that an event can have meaning, then we will not see anything miraculous. 

The power of a miracle as a proof is not inherent in the miracle itself; it is contingent upon our readiness to accept the phenomenon as a miracle. 

If we do not want to see it as a miracle, we will not; it will be a coincidence, an unexplained phenomenon, or just something that happened—but there it will stop. 

If I do believe that events are significant, that they have some meaning beyond the mere fact of their existence, then I do not need extraordinary, supernatural phenomena in order to see miracles. 

If I am ready for miracles, I can walk down the street and see sunshine, and that is enough of a miracle. 

If I am not ready for miracles, seeing thirty dancing angels will not do anything to me.
 
I will take a picture, send it to the newspaper, and that will be the end of that.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Simple Words, p. 206, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Some people experience love only for a fleeting moment”

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

 

Some people are born with a great gift for love, while others have to learn love from the very basics—possibly by expanding self-love into love for others. 

For others yet, love is a very difficult exercise, and in order to achieve it, even to the smallest degree, they have to make deep structural personality changes. 

Some people experience love only for a fleeting moment. 

Only a few–possibly, those who have this gift from birth–are willing, and able, to attain totally unconditional love.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Simple Words, p. 200, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“A warning to a category of persons who are self-deluded”

Sunday, August 22nd, 2010

 

That which I can possibly understand is not the Divine.

We have here a negative sort of definition.

This is a warning to a category of persons who are self-deluded by their commonsense logic into believing that they have achieved a certain grasp of what God is.

God is that which cannot be grasped, and any claim to have done so can only be mistaken.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
 From The Sustaining Utterance, p. 84, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The Jewish definition of leadership”

Friday, August 20th, 2010

 

The Midrash says that on Mount Sinai, God appeared to each person according to his or her individual understanding.

The Jewish definition of leadership is the ability to react to each person in a different way. 

Perhaps it is a Divine gift to be able to appear different to each person, according to his or her need.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
 
From Simple Words, p. 159, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Suffering is a trial”

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

 

Consider the simple situation of a person in a certain distress, whether of a greater or a lesser degree — a lack of money or illness or a calamity of tragic proportions or despondency. 

The distress is genuine enough. 

There is no point in claiming that one should be glad about it or that one should not do everything possible to eliminate it. 

The usual way of relating to distress is to experience a certain drop of spirit, a sadness, or bitterness, which can be interpreted as stemming from an attitude that one does not deserve the pain and sorrow, that one has somehow been unfairly or wrongly treated. 

This can be remedied by seeing the suffering not as punishment for some wrongdoing that one may or may not have done but as a sort of reward, which is not immediately apparent as such. 

It takes a while to distinguish it. 

Another part of the problem lies in the nature of whatever causes distress. 

What if it gets worse? What if no good comes of it? 

Suffering is a trial. 

For suffering can lead to many things. 

Some rise; others fall. 

Suffering is the test. 

Can a person receive it without sliding into hatred? 

Can he grow from experiencing it?

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Pebbles of Wisdom from Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“A miracle does not really prove anything”

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

 

Sophisticated people, who do not expect to see the Almighty walking around in a long white robe, ask for miracles as proof of God's existence. 

If God does not appear in person, at least He should appear in a miracle. 

If God wants to prove His existence without showing His face, perhaps He could do something obvious and spectacular. 

Philosophically, however—as pointed out many years ago by Maimonides—a miracle does not really prove anything. 

A miracle merely proves that something extraordinary happened, and no more. 

A miracle that goes against what we call the laws of nature is simply what it is: something astonishing. 

It does not have an intrinsic message. 

Turning a glass of wine into a flower is remarkable, astonishing, and spectacular, but it does not prove that two times two equals five and a half, nor that God exists. 

One thing has nothing to do with the other. 

The sea being split or a pillar of fire has nothing to do with anything beyond what they are.

This observation about the invalidity of miracles as proof of God's existence was used at the time when science was far more rigid. 

In our time, it is much less effective. 

What is the difference between a nineteenth-century scientist and a twentieth-century scientist? 

If a devil appeared to a nineteenth-century scientist, he would say, "You do not exist." 

The twentieth-century scientist would look at him and say, "You are a phenomenon." 

The scientist just writes down that he saw a phenomenon of smaller or bigger magnitude. 

However, even this change in the way science views things makes no difference as far as faith is concerned. 

Even if people today accept a concept like "miracle" and do not ignore it, or fight against it, this does not necessarily change their worldview. 

Namely, they may see a miracle, note it, and then go on with their lives, without its having any effect on other spheres of their lives. 

In other words, although science has changed, it has not altered its basic attitude toward miracles.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Simple Words, p. 206, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“In the absence of consciousness and purification”

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

 

In order to be properly receptive to holiness, one needs to have attained a high degree of purification. 

In the absence of consciousness and purification, the sense of holiness may be obscured or even scarcely grasped at all, and consequently, its effect may be the very opposite of sanctification. 

Indeed, the powerful uplifting appeal of a holy place is frequently counterbalanced by feelings precisely of denial and rebellion against its holiness. 

Because wherever there is holiness, there are also those parasitic forces irresistibly attracted to holiness, seeking to live off it and at the Same time to destroy it. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Thirteen Petalled Rose, p. 54, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Just as food can be either kosher or unkosher, so too can money be either kosher or unkosher”

Monday, August 16th, 2010

 

It is possible to perform the mitzvah of waving the lulav (palm branch) with an etrog (citron) only if it is not fruit that comes from a tree in the first three years after it is planted, from which one may not gain benefit. 

Similarly the performance of any precept involving a transgression.

Since it was performed with something forbidden, it cannot rise to holiness.

So, too, money given to charity which had been dishonestly acquired; and similarly with other things.

Just as food can be either kosher or unkosher, so too can money be either kosher or unkosher. 

Although kosher money is not yet holy, one may benefit from it, and thus one may also perform a mitzvah with it. 

On the other hand, one may not gain benefit from stolen, unkosher money; one cannot perform a mitzvah with stolen funds and raise them to holiness.

In this sense, the halakhic determination as to whether something is forbidden or permissible is a statement about its character, about whether or not it can be rectified and elevated to holiness. 


–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Understanding the Tanya, p. 244 by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The mitzvah of charity has the same effect as the sacrifices did”

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

 

When a person gives charity with the intent of doing God's will, he becomes the instrument through which the trait of divine kindness itself gives charity. 

At that moment, he is God's "right hand" working through human agency, and the Shekhinah, God's presence, dwells within him.

The halakhah allows one to give at most a fifth of one's income to charity (see Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh Deah 249). 

That fifth contains all of the strength and life that a person invested in earning it, and so it encompasses the other four parts. 

Because halakhah prohibits a person from donating more than a fifth of his income to charity, that amount represents all of his income.

Moreover, since this money represents all of his hard work, it epitomizes his entire life and being. 

As a result, these rise in holiness.

The mitzvah of charity has the same effect as the sacrifices did: it raises the world and brings it closer to God.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
 
From Understanding the Tanya, p. 176 by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“One should recognize the perils involved in sanctity”

Friday, August 13th, 2010

 

One can so ardently desire to be engaged in holy actions that the satisfaction of experiencing it becomes more important than the action. 

One cannot help getting some benefit from all the holiness one is dispensing, but, as Rabbi Akiva is reported to have said, it is perhaps better to wait until the recipient of one's charity resents you and heaps curses on you before feeling your own worth in the matter. 

The moral here is obviously not that there is a seemingly masochistic ingredient in the process of doing good. 

Rather it is that one should recognize the perils involved in sanctity. 

One may sincerely wish to do something very grand in the realm of the holy and at the same time to feel something of the grandeur of what one is doing. 

In this case, one is doing it for oneself, a sign that its origin is in the shell, for the klipah is always egocentric. 

The shell in fact can be defined as that which is constructed as a private world around the ego. 

When a person is not nullified before Torah, the Torah becomes an independent force not bound to Halachah, and thus severed, it allows for all sorts of interpretations, even the 
most brilliant, all of which end up as aspects of the elixir of death. 

Even if the sanctity of Torah and its Divine revelation is recognized, so long as one is engaged with only  the external facets of Torah, its visible and obviously ethical message, one is still missing the point. 

It is not the Divine Torah that thus engages one; it is something similar, that looks like it. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From In the Beginning. p. 205, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“When the giver is out of the picture”

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

There is a story in the Midrash Rabbah about some scholars who came to a city to raise money for charity. 


They sent one of their number to observe the household of a certain illustrious citizen in order to ascertain how much to ask of him. 

The scholar came to the house and by chance overheard the rich man scolding his wife, insisting that she buy a cheaper brand of lentils for their table. 

The scholars therefore did not even bother to approach him for money but collected their charity from others. 

When they were about to take their departure, the rich man complained to them, "Why didn't you come to me?" 

They explained the reason, and he answered, "Concerning that which belongs to me, I chose to be stingy, but about that which belongs to God I prefer to be generous." 

Ultimately, however, real charity is not only a matter of regarding the needs of others, it is a matter of not seeing oneself. 

If one is truly nothing in his own eyes, one is able to offer up the plenitude of oneself without experiencing a sense of loss. 

There is no reckoning—this one should get so much, that one something else, and I too deserve something.

When the giver is out of the picture, like dust and ashes, there is no one above or below him, there are no levels of value, and the act of giving is spontaneous, natural, and simple. 

Many of the greatest Sages of Israel used to be like that, charitable in this unthinking, uncalculating manner while being themselves unsure of their own worth, constantly in doubt about their spiritual progress. 

True charity makes the giver only a channel for transference of value, one who believes that everything should go to others and nothing is due him —like the Rabbi who could not fall asleep if there was any money in the house. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From In the Beginning, p.123, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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