February 2018 – Hebrew Hutong

““Be a great painter, Asher Lev.” He was still looking out the window at the sun and the sky. “That will be the only justification for all the pain your art will cause.”

Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev

I often think about this quote.

As a Jewish man living in what appears to be the end-times of this particular iteration of Western Civilization, the call back to Torah, tradition, and communalism grows daily. Yet do I spend my life studying Talmud, living according to Halacha, or building synagogues or academies? Only to the tiniest degree: most of my waking hours are spent worrying about my family’s well-being, my clients, my colleagues, and my business.

I am sure that will not surprise you. What you may be interested to learn, though, is that this fact is the cause of a great deal of pain in my life, and probably pain in others.

I rationalize it by telling myself that, like Asher Lev, my urges and my G-d-given abilities have led me to succeed in this direction, so this must be a part of His greater plan, and I should not fight it.

And then listen to my soul. And I look at the world around me. And a voice out of the darkest depths of my genetic past calls me back to seferim, Yiddishkeit, and the people of my community.

And in hearing that voice I know a pain that Potok never placed in Asher Lev, but one that I know he must have felt: that the more blessings G-d gives you the greater your soul struggles.

The Master of the Universe, praised be He, blessed us with the gift of free will. Along with speech, this is perhaps the one thing that truly raises us above the animals.

But in His wisdom, He did not stop by just giving us the intellectual wherewithal to make choices. He then gave us His Torah as a guide to making those choices.

He then gave us the choice of whether to follow Torah or to allow our whims and our petty concerns drive our actions.

And He gave us the intellectual capacity, through the faculty of reason, to think through our actions, so that we could justify any course of action so as to ensure we would be able to live with our own choices, no matter how foolish or ill-advised. Or, if we made the choice to follow Torah, to use that capacity to apply its laws with wisdom, with justice, and with mercy.

Because we reason through our choices, our choices become the rungs in the ladders of our character. The internal struggle that precedes each choice we make is the hammer of a blacksmith on the metal of our soul, with each struggle between our instincts and “the better angels of our nature,” either weakening or breaking us when we come out with poor choices, or tempering and strengthening us when we make the choices that uplift us and make the world a better place.

So free will is more than about whether to eat a pepperoni pizza or go t0 synagogue. It is a forge for our character.

Have a wonderful week!

Baruch Hashem for reminding me that, even in the dark hours of the night, everything is going to be alright.

Praise the Lord, He is my Rock and my Staff.

He is the Star by which I guide my life’s voyage,

and through His Torah, the other hand upon the wheel of my ship.

Source: Norwegian Lawmaker: Give BDS the Nobel Peace Prize – Tablet Magazine

Bjornar Moxnes may not be an anti-Semite, but there should be an equally blistering pejorative for those who provide cover and legitimacy to the anti-Semites.

BDS, whatever the positive intentions of the duped innocents that make up its peripheral membership, is aught more than a front for forces who wish to see the Jewish state, and the Jews who make it up, pushed “into the sea.”

(And let us make no mistake: “into the sea” is not meant to suggest pushing us onto boats, ships, or paddle-boards. It is a euphemism for drowning us in the waters of the Mediterranean and dancing on our washed-up bodies.)

It does not surprise me that the frozen wastes of Northern Europe continue to spawn anti-Semites seventy years after the collapse of Nazi Germany, nor does it surprise me that a few of these ice-encrusted neanderthals find their way into government.

What does surprise me is that the otherwise intelligent people of Norway would fail to see through the blatant agitprop that BDS continues to spew, and would fail to inform themselves of the true intentions of Israel’s opponents.

The great virtue for me of daily tefilah is that it serves to remind me that the so-called “real world” is a consensual creation of mankind, existing in a bubble encompassed by the fullness of Hashem’s creation. We can choose to immerse ourselves in that bubble, or we can choose to be of it but not be confined by it.

Month: February 2018

Be A Great Painter, Asher Lev

Free Will Me

Norwegian Lawmaker: Give BDS the Nobel Peace Prize – Tablet Magazine

Touching Reality