B”H Dear Friends, In an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times – “ Stairway to Wisdom” David Brooks analyzes various approaches to researching a social problem and identifies four levels or steps: 1) collection of data 2) academic research to analyze the data. A third level he identifies is, “to … dive into the tangle of individual lives. You have to enter the realm of fiction, biography and journalism. But even this isn’t the highest rung on the ladder of understanding. Statisticians, academics and journalists all adopt a dispassionate pose. Academics rely on formal methodology and jargon. Journalists observe from behind the wall of their notebooks. The highest rung on the stairway to understanding is intimacy….. Love is a form of knowing and being known. Affection motivates you to want to see everything about another. Empathy opens you up to absorb the good and the bad. Love impels you not just to observe, but to seek union — to think as another thinks and feel as another feels.” Pretty heady stuff for a NYT op-ed column! The Providence of the piece seems rather striking for two reasons. 1. The seven week Omer period of which we are in the midst, is effectively a 49 step program toward human emotional development and refinement. The gist of Brook’s op-ed piece is that human issues cannot solely be analyzed from the ivory tower of the mind. To truly help another, to truly understand them, you must feel for them. In the mind connections exist, in the heart connections live. That’s why, much as the Torah is wisdom and knowledge , we spend seven weeks preparing to receive it by working the emotions over. To live Judaism it cannot be an academic experience, it must be a personal one. Emotions are where things get personal. The second timely connection to the op-ed piece is Lag B’omer. Observed the world over this Saturday night and Sunday, on Lag B’omer we celebrate the life of the 1st century Talmudic sage, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. After spending thirteen years hiding from the Romans with his son Rabbi Elazar, during which time they incessantly studies the mysteries of the Kabbalah they were finally free to venture out. The intensity of thirteen uninterrupted years of intense immersion into the Kabbalah, set Rabbi Elazar’s soul on fire, so much so in fact that he almost burned the world down with the mere gaze of his eyes. He couldn’t fathom why anyone would allow themselves to engage in mundane affairs like jobs, and his disapproving look would burn up the fields that people were working. His father Rabbi Shimon on the other hand, looked for ways to improve people’s lives even at a very mundane level. The difference between them ? Rabbi Elazar’s intense academic experience left him disconnected from the world around him. Rabbi Shimon integrated his mind and heart, enabling him to empathize with others and seek their welfare. One of the viral videos of the week is of Conan O’brien interviewing Lisa Kudrow about her son’s “Drive By Chabad Bar Mitzvah” and how a couple of Chabad students put teffilin on her son in a shopping mall, effectively making it his Bar Mitzvah celebration. CLICK HERE to see video algemeiner/2014/05/15/lisa-kudrow-chabad%E2%80%99s-new-%E2%80%98friend%E2%80%99-video/ Some within the “Jewish establishment” decry this kind outreach, making a religious ceremony that belongs in a house of worship, in a mall ?? Sacrilegious ! The Rebbe , like Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai saw it differently. If you love someone, you don’t wait till they come knocking on your door. It’s all fine and well to train Bar and Bat Mitzvah kids who are members of the synagogue and attend the Hebrew school. What about the kid who’s “house of worship” is the mall?? When you truly love that kid, you don’t wait for him to maybe show up at your house of worship , you go to his ! The spirit of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai lives on today more than ever before. Go on line on this Saturday night and watch hundreds of thousands of people dance at his burial place in Meron, come to Marlins stadium this Sunday morning and march with pride at the Lag B’omer Parade and then join us at 5:00 p.m. for our Jewish Unity BBQ. ( see details below.) Good Shabbos and Good Yom Tov! Rabbi Ruvi New
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 19:34:51 +0000
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