![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
an unexpected conversation
Many years ago, when I was starting to become religious, I asked Micha Berger (who would later become a rabbi) how one made sense of the mitzvot -- why were we doing these particular things, how should we understand the purpose of individual mitzvot? He said something to the effect that understanding is over-rated and that if you do something enough, you may come to understand -- but it doesn't work so well the other way around.1
Yesterday I was the torah reader, meaning I also led the torah service, read the haftarah (in English), and gave a d'var torah (a commentary). I do that fairly often; that's all normal. (I am woefully behind on actually posting my divrei torah, in part because, more and more, I'm speaking from detailed outlines so there's still work to do to properly write them up.)
Yesterday's haftarah reading was from Isaiah 66, which has some evocative imagery in it about Israel's redemption and restoration. After the service a congregant, one who also started caring about religion later in life, came to me. That was beautiful, she said, but how are we supposed to relate to it when that can't possibly happen? I asked her if there was anything that God couldn't do. She looked unconvinced, and I -- I, who have real trouble with the idea of yearning for the moshiach -- said that I thought it was talking about messianic times and when we get there it'll be through God's action, not ours. Human nature being what it is we may never earn such a thing, but our job is to move in the right direction, in our small way to help bring it about, and that would have to be enough.
Blink. Where did that come from?
The oddest things can serve as prompts for conversations sometimes. I don't really spend much time thinking about messianic times; I figure it'll happen or it won't, but there's not much I can do about it anyway and as I said, I don't actively yearn for it (which is my own failing, I suppose). And yet, it's obviously not something I'm completely distant from either, because I don't think I was just spouting comforting nonsense either. How...odd. Usually when people talk to me after services on one of "my" days it's to talk about something I said in my d'var.
1 I'm trying to strike a balance between giving due credit and not mis-stating something I remember incompletely and don't have in writing. R' Berger, if you're out there and feel I'm misrepresenting you, please let me know so I can correct matters.
Yesterday I was the torah reader, meaning I also led the torah service, read the haftarah (in English), and gave a d'var torah (a commentary). I do that fairly often; that's all normal. (I am woefully behind on actually posting my divrei torah, in part because, more and more, I'm speaking from detailed outlines so there's still work to do to properly write them up.)
Yesterday's haftarah reading was from Isaiah 66, which has some evocative imagery in it about Israel's redemption and restoration. After the service a congregant, one who also started caring about religion later in life, came to me. That was beautiful, she said, but how are we supposed to relate to it when that can't possibly happen? I asked her if there was anything that God couldn't do. She looked unconvinced, and I -- I, who have real trouble with the idea of yearning for the moshiach -- said that I thought it was talking about messianic times and when we get there it'll be through God's action, not ours. Human nature being what it is we may never earn such a thing, but our job is to move in the right direction, in our small way to help bring it about, and that would have to be enough.
Blink. Where did that come from?
The oddest things can serve as prompts for conversations sometimes. I don't really spend much time thinking about messianic times; I figure it'll happen or it won't, but there's not much I can do about it anyway and as I said, I don't actively yearn for it (which is my own failing, I suppose). And yet, it's obviously not something I'm completely distant from either, because I don't think I was just spouting comforting nonsense either. How...odd. Usually when people talk to me after services on one of "my" days it's to talk about something I said in my d'var.
1 I'm trying to strike a balance between giving due credit and not mis-stating something I remember incompletely and don't have in writing. R' Berger, if you're out there and feel I'm misrepresenting you, please let me know so I can correct matters.
no subject
no subject
(no subject)
Riffing on "enough"
"That would have to be enough." sounds like an odd parallel to "Dayeinu."
My favorite interpretation of that song is that each gift from God on the way to Redemption "would have been enough" to warrant our appreciative praise. (Or, with a darker spin, considering much of the Book of Numbers, "*should* have been enough.") God could have taken us from Egypt to the Temple in one shot, but He chose to do it step by step, in part, I guess, to give us a chance to appreciate each aspect properly.
Perhaps these opportunities for piecemeal appreciation are also giving us an opportunity to earn - measure for measure - similar treatment from God. "If you had kept My Sabbath and not taught My Torah, it would have been enough to earn My approval," He'll say, giving us credit for each minuscule step we take toward Him. IF we internalize the lesson of Dayeinu and make sure to give Him due credit for all he's done for us.
---
OK, side comments:
- Reading the Torah isn't enough for one person to prepare - you also have to write a speech?
- People (myself emphatically included) need to do more reading and comprehension of Isaiah and the other Prophets. Look what has come of just reading the Haftara in public, in the vernacular.
- You know R' Micha Berger? He is quite the busy guy on the Jewish Internet. The rebooted TorahMusings.com journal has him on the editorial committee. Less prominently, he has popped up a few times on Mi Yodeya. :)
Re: Riffing on "enough"
Re: Riffing on "enough"
Re: Riffing on "enough"
Re: Riffing on "enough"
Re: Riffing on "enough"
no subject
This may be true, but the major problem I have with it is that lack of understanding + lack of observable results = zero motivation to actually do it. At least for me.
So it gets into a chicken-and-egg problem. Without direct inspiration (if you're lucky) or social pressure (traditional, but sigh) I'm not sure what what does about that.
(no subject)
(no subject)