- Clergy
- Shabbat
One thing's for sure, Judaism is a practical religion. When the Torah wanted to remind us of our wandering in the desert, humble beginnings and precarious place among the nations, instead of opting for myth, metaphor, or prayer, it demanded the real thing--a week like the one that begins tonight--spent sleeping and eating in a rickety booth. For anyone who has ever taken Sukkot seriously, the Torah's wisdom is abundantly clear. For anyone who hasn't, take my word for it, a week in the sukkah adds up to a pretty good lesson in humility.
Sure, the first day is kind of exciting. We get to build and decorate the whole thing with fresh green palm fronds, gourds and fruit. If we're lucky, there's a gentle breeze to keep us cool while we dine with our family and then drift gently off to sleep. If we’re unlucky the Santa Annas blow with temperatures in the 90s even at night and it feels like trying to sleep in a convection oven. And what about the Jews in Minnesota, Toronto and Odessa freezing their tuchuses off just to observe the mitzvah of dwelling in the sukkah? One year the kids and I got soaked in the middle of the night by the automatic sprinklers we forgot to turn off, and in certain places, especially in Israel, Sukkot is the start of the rainy season and people get drenched beneath the branches and poles. Some holiday, huh?
There's actually a fair amount of thought given by the rabbis to the hardships of Sukkot, especially the eventuality of rain. According to the Talmud if it's raining so hard that it spoils your soup, it's permissible to leave the sukkah, finish your meal inside and snuggle up in your real bed until morning. These seem like reasonable enough accommodations to Mother Nature. But for me, the real question isn't when we can leave the sukkah if it's raining, but why it sometimes rains at all. If we think about it, the idea of rain during Sukkot makes no sense. Why would God command us to eat and sleep in the sukkah and at the same time make that commandment impossible to fulfill by causing it to rain? There are a lot of possible answers to this dilemma. Maybe God doesn't control when it rains in the first place. Maybe God does control the rainfall and a downpour during Sukkot is a sign of God's displeasure with the Jewish people. Maybe there is no God, Sukkot was invented by human beings and rain during the holiday means nothing at all.
Any of these are possible, but I prefer the Talmud’s own explanation. "To what can rain during Sukkot be compared?" the sages ask. "To a servant who comes to fill his master's cup, and the master throws the water back into his face." If we assume that the master is God and we are the servants, then the Talmud is reminding us of a profound, tough truth. For the sages, rain during Sukkot was a reminder that we can do everything right and still suffer tragedy. Bad things really do happen to good people and sometimes that good person is us or someone we love.
Consider the rabbi I knew who ran on the tread mill almost every day but died at the gym from a heart attack in his mid-forties. What about Arnulfo, my religiously devout gardener who works in the hot sun more hours a week and harder than a professional athlete but makes less than one-one-thousandth the money? And of course, Covid-19 has exposed the vulnerabilities of every human in the world, including the president of its most powerful nation. In some ways we are all unique, special even. But in other ways none of us is special and a little humility would be in order.
The first Jew Abraham says of himself “I am but dust and ash.” And what of the other great figure in the bible…the greatest of them all--Moses? The final verses of the entire Torah say: “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses…for all the great might and awesome power that Moses displayed before all Israel.” Great might and awesome power. That was Moses. But from whence did his power come? Why did God choose him? Because, as the Torah puts it when we first meet him, “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” There is great power, the greatest power, in humility.
Of course, humility is difficult to achieve. It comes at the expense of pride. Consider a certain rabbi who shall remain nameless. This rabbi was chosen by Newsweek magazine as one of the 50 greatest rabbis in America four years in a row. He even made the top ten a couple of times. One year, after the article appeared, the rabbi received a beautiful note from a woman in his congregation complimenting him on his preaching and comparing him with the great rabbis of the Talmud. She finished by writing, “I think you are one of the greatest preachers of all time.”
Feeling good about the note, said rabbi took it to his wife and asked, “Sweetheart, how many great preachers do you suppose there actually are in the rabbinate?”
She looked down at the card, looked up at her husband and replied, “one less than you think dear.”
We think a lot of ourselves sometimes. In his commencement address, Wellesley high school English teacher David McCullough Jr. told the graduates, “None of you is special. You are not exceptional. Contrary to what your soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.
Even if you’re one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you….your planet, I’ll remind you, is not the center of its solar system, your solar system is not the center of its galaxy; your galaxy is not the center of the universe. In fact, astrophysicists assure us the universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it.”
This wasn’t the first speech in human history reminding us that we are not the center of the universe. God gave that speech to Job 2,500 years ago. God behaves outrageously in the book of Job. He makes a bet with the devil that he can abuse this good man named Job and this good man will never turn away from God. God takes away Job’s wealth, his business, his family, his health, everything.
Allow me to paraphrase now: Job’s friends say, “You must have been bad."
He says, “No I have not. In fact I have been faithful to God.” Finally, Job challenges God. “I’m a good person God. Why me?”
Does God say, “Look I made this bet and you have done just fine?” Did God try to justify what happened to Job? No. Instead, God asks, “Are you big? I am. Could you fill Leviathan’s nose with harpoons? I did. Can you keep the ocean waves within the shore? Do you make the sun rise? Try it.” In other words, who is little man with his puny powers of thought and reason and judgment to challenge the universe to be righteous as a human would be; to attribute human qualities to the universe? “The universe is a mystery and I am it. I make it rain where no man lives,” God reminds job. “The lizard, the snake, the gnat, a mere patch of sand has great meaning and purpose too. Humankind is not My only concern. You are a fool if you think otherwise. Be humble, know your place if you wish to be wise and at peace with the universe.
To which Job replies, “I have heard thee and now I behold thee.” He renounced his human judgment in the face of the mystery that is God and the universe.
According to the rabbis, everyone should have two pockets, each containing a slip of paper. On one should be written: “The world was created for me.” But on the other, “I am but dust and ash.” It is the dichotomous tension between these two points of view that leads to true wisdom. Neither the person who is totally egocentric nor the person who is consumed with self-doubt will have a successful life. We need both pockets. We need to be exalted and brought low.
So, doubt yourself. Doubt that your side of the story is the only side. Doubt that your perspective is the only perspective. Doubt is so important. “Abolish all doubt, and what's left is not faith, but absolute, heartless conviction,” says author Lesley Hazleton who wrote the biography of Muhammad. “Militant Christian, Muslim and Jewish extremists are not true Christians, Muslims or Jews. They're a cult all their own. This isn't faith. It’s fanaticism, and we have to stop confusing the two.”
Great power without humility is not greatness. It is Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Bin Laden, Assad and others still alive and well and in power all over the world. It is the belittling boss, the abusive parent, the cold, indifferent spouse. Do you want to heal the wounds in your friendships and family? Then inject some doubt into your self-righteousness. Only doubt enables us to consider, “Maybe it is me. Maybe she is right. Maybe he does have a point. Maybe I was unkind. Maybe I was too severe, insecure, self-righteous, aggressive. Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I was wrong.”
The words foolish and pride are often fused together for good reason. Pride--believing only that the world was created for you--brings so much foolishness, hatred, violence and pain to the world and to our lives. Only doubt and humility will heal us. Only doubt and humility make forgiveness possible. Without them, friendships, families and empires crumble. Why must it take a tumor, an addicted child, financial ruin, public embarrassment or a deadly virus—some tragedy of Job-like proportion--to humble us?
There is a beautiful old story about a student who came to a rabbi and said, “In the olden days there were those who saw the face of God. Why don’t they anymore?” The rabbi replied, “Because nowadays no one can stoop low enough.”
Rain on Sukkot, my rabbi friend who died at the gym, my gardener, the one million who have died in just a few months from that pernicious virus, the constant toll of cancer, car accidents, mental illness, old age and more are all an important reminder. Serving God and humanity guarantees meaning and purpose in our lives, it makes us part of a community that will care for us when sorrow comes. But no matter how well we serve the master, once in a while, for reasons we will never grasp, we get hit in the face with cold water, and like a week in the sukkah, it all adds up to a pretty good lesson in humility.
Love and Shabbat Sukkot Shalom,
Steve