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Shabbat
First was a former co-worker (and boss), her husband, and their kids. They belong to a different congregation, but they randomly decided to check us out. I haven't seen them in a while, so it was neat to be able to talk with them. I hope we see more of them. (And I'm past due to have lunch with her.)
While I was talking with them someone who looked vaguely familiar came up to me and said "hi Monica". Think think think... who is this? She said her first name. Think think think... aha! She moved away from Pittsburgh 15 years ago and I haven't seen her since; she just happened to be back for a family simcha. (She also confessed that she wasn't sure who I was until she heard someone use my name, and that confirmed her suspicion that she knew me.) I got a card from her with an email address, so we'll at least have the ability to not let this go another 15 years.
We had a visiting scholar this Shabbat, Joel Lurie Grishaver, a big name (I gather) in Jewish education. He's an author, founder of a publishing company, and organizer of CAJE, a big annual conference focusing on Jewish education. Most of his books seem to be aimed as kids and parents, but he did not make the mistake many do of speaking only to them. He spoke Friday night and gave a class Shabbat afternoon.
Friday night's talk was called "finding God in the family". This was interactive; he told three stories involving parent-child conflict (one from midrash, one from talmud, and one modern) and asked us how we would resolve the conflicts, calling on about half a dozen people for each. I responded to one and feel my answer was under-appreciated, but I'm not surprised. :-) The case involved a king who had a fight with his son and kicked him out, vowing that the son would not set foot in his palace again. Later they reconciled, but there was this problem of the vow. Others' suggestions included: build a new palace and move into it with his son; build the son a house next door; declare that the son was no longer the same person and thus the vow didn't apply (that one's clever); and break the vow. Mine was to interpret the vow narrowly. A vow is a promise to God and he can't just ignore it (besides, what message does it send if the king's word doesn't stand?); however, if what he really said was "will not set foot in", and he's the king and has lots of money and resources, the son can certainly live there without setting foot in the place, at least until Yom Kippur. I mean really; think outside the box. Rules-lawyering is very talmudic.
His thesis was that families are more than just roommates (he said besides mishpacha, the word bayit, or house, is used to mean family in the torah), and there are four core values that govern family interactions. The first is tochecha, rebuke -- but it's rebuke given in a way that the person will hear it, which is hard. The second is teshuva, returning (or correcting errors); he basically outlined the Rambam's description here, which is that teshuva has occurred when you are sorry, when you apologize and ask forgiveness, when you fix the damage you did, and when, in a similar situation in the future, you don't do the same thing. You need all of those. The third is s'licha, forgiveness, which can be harder than teshuva. He pointed out that we all tend to pick at old wounds so we can bring them out in fights years later, and we need to not do this. (Easier said than done, of course, but the first step is being aware that you're doing it.) And I've forgotten the Hebrew word he used for the fourth, which is healing.
When the topic for his Saturday class was published -- "the kabbalah of self" -- I said "eh, no". Kabbalah isn't really my thing. But he was such an engaging speaker Friday night that I decided to go. What he actually did -- and I think the title was a bit off here -- is to distribute a sermon given by Rabbi Nachman of Bretslav, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov (father of the modern Chassidic movement), and go through (part of) it piece by piece, supplying the background to understand this in context and leading a discussion. We didn't finish, but he said we wouldn't and that's ok. So he did teach some about Luria's kabbalah, but through the lens of a particular bit of torah commentary, which was interesting in its own right. (Maybe I'll write more about it later.)
Oh, apropos of nothing, he had a desciption of midrash that seemed to resonate for a lot of people. We sometimes think of midrash as the extra stories that the rabbis, perhaps, made up to fill in the details of the torah text. For example, many of us know the story of how Avram (later Avraham) challenged his father the idol-maker; that's midrash, not in the torah. Or the one about how the angels rejoiced with Israel at the Sea of Reeds and God chastised them, saying "my creations are dying and you sing?". Again, midrash. Most of the "parsha bits" that I post on Thursdays (after giving them at morning services) are from midrash.
So anyway, he described midrash as being like going through a photo album with an elderly relative. "Oh, that's my uncle Morris -- he was a real lush, like that time he..." or "that's the house we lived in in Someburg; about a year later we moved to Somewheresville into the house with the roof that always leaked, including that time we were having the Schwartzes over and...", and so on. The photos, like the torah, are the written record, but they're not the whole story by a long shot.
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