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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.
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"
By the way, can you recommend a commentary on prophets (or, to focus it a little more, Isaiah) for the, well, maybe not beginner, but not very advanced? It's sad, but I have yet to make the kind of study of prophets that I've made of the torah. I should fix that, and I can start by just reading them through (not just the haftarah excerpts) but I should probably have something on hand to review in parallel. (Err, should I be asking this elsewhere? :-) )
Reading the Torah isn't enough for one person to prepare - you also have to write a speech?
We do not read the entire parsha. That's pre-existing culture, long before I joined the congregation, but I also note that if we did then we wouldn't have been able to cultivate lay readers as easily. (I suppose we could have by having a lay reader do, say, one aliyah while the ba'al kri'ah does the rest, or something.) My own practical limit is somewhere around a column and a half.
As for the speech, target is 4-5 minutes, not the big fully-developed-and-expounded divrei torah I've occasionally encountered elsewhere. You can see some of mine on this tag. (Sigh. I have really been negligent about writing these up and posting them.)
Oh, and "subcontracting" is allowed -- when you sign up for a week you are responsible for the stuff I listed (plus closing prayers), but asking other people to participate is fine. From the point of minyan management we want one name, but we've had divrei torah from people who don't also read, and occasionally we have somebody who wants to lead the service and give a d'var who recruits a torah reader.
You know R' Micha Berger?
"Know" may be too strong a word. A long time ago when I was starting to try to figure things out, religiously speaking, we had a long correspondence that started on soc.culture.jewish (Usenet) and moved to email, culminating in my visiting him and his family for a Shabbat. It was a very intense and enlightening experience and I'm grateful for it.
He's been on Mi Yodeya? I hope I notice next time.
Re: Riffing on "enough"
You might like The Living Nach. It's in the style of The Living Torah by R. Aryeh Kaplan, in English, and pulls from a bunch of standard commentaries so while you don't get the full text of any of them, you also aren't stuck with just one commentary when things get interesting.
Re: Riffing on "enough"
Re: Riffing on "enough"
Re: Riffing on "enough"
My plan for basic Nach knowledge, "when I get around to it" (tm), is to go through the OU's Nach Yomi recorded classes properly, as if I was sitting in class, with the Scripture open in front of me. I listened to a few books' worth in the car a few years ago and found them to be very high-quality, but I could tell that they would be even more valuable paired with actually seeing the text. http://www.ou.org/torah/index#/nach
> He's been on Mi Yodeya?
http://judaism.stackexchange.com/users/1570/micha-berger
http://judaism.stackexchange.com/users/1558/micha
(Oh yeah, merge alert!)