Drashot for Shabbat Chol Hamo'ed Sukkot

By Bread Alone

A Drash for Friday, 5 October 2012

This week, for Shabbat Chol Hamo’ed Sukkot, we take a little voyage back a few weeks in time.  Our Torah reading is from Parashat Eikev, which we read in mid-August.  If you remember my words about this portion from back then – or if you wish to revisit the transcript of my drashot on my blog – you’ll see that I see this Torah portion as hinging on the idea of cause and effect.  If you do ‘A,’ then ‘B’ will follow.  In that sense, Eikev is an important lesson for all of life.  Sometimes we fail to clearly see the cause-effect relationship.  More likely, we wish to deny it as a way of denying responsibility for the consequences of our actions.  In this age, we’ve built an entire culture around the idea that we’ll all just innocent victims of someone else’s capriciousness.  Parashat Eikev, with its simple and hard-hitting statements can bring us back to earth.  And that’s a good thing.

Everybody in this room who is my age or older, probably remembers back when ‘bread’ became a euphemism for ‘money.’  Hey, man!  You got any bread??!  This was not a request for a fresh loaf.  It was a request for what to buy it – or anything else – with.  I don’t know where this slang expression started or how.  But the use of the word ‘bread’ as slang for ‘money’ is logical to me.  After all, ‘bread’ is also commonly a euphemism for ‘all that is necessary to sustain life.’  In other words, even as many of us explore carb-free or low carb diets that preclude eating most bread products, we automatically think of ‘bread’ as the sum total of sustenance.  Perhaps this – the carb-free life – is an example of exaggeration to make a point.  And that is that we tend to consume far too many carbohydrates – including bread products – which, in excess, our bodies store as fat.

            And this leads me to the famous declaration, found in this week’s Torah reading.  Man doth not live by bread only, but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.  (This translation from the Hertz Chumash, similar to that of the King James Bible favoured by many Christians, just exudes a sort of grandeur lost in more contemporary translations.)  This declaration follows the reminder that G-d fed the people Israel with manna during their sojourn in the desert.  The provision of the manna was, according to this verse, to teach that man does not live by bread alone.

            The statement is usually understood to not mean ‘bread’ literally.  In other words, it does not come to teach us that we shouldn’t eat only bread but should include asparagus in our diet.  Or broccoli.  Or Felafel.  Or all of the above.  Rather, it is understood to mean that it isn’t only physical sustenance that we require.  The urge to eat, or course must be answered if our lives are to be sustained.  The Rambam called this urge and others that are purely physical, ‘the appetitive urges.’  To him they represented man as the animal species, man expressing his need for self-preservation.  Of course, if we all ate only to preserve our lives, nobody would ever be fighting excess weight.  The planet’s food supply would be sufficient to sustain a population many times today’s.  Whole industries built around joyous consumption of food and drink would be wiped out.  Imagine life without Master Chef Australia??!

            So our consumption of food and drink is a response to an appetitive urge, but it is really much more than just that.  If you remember the famous quote from When Harry Met Sally, one of the all-time best films made:  Restaurants are to people in the 80’s what theatres were to people in the 60’s.  Some of us thought it was witty and true back when we first saw the movie.  But we do understand that we are further elevated if our interests go even beyond restaurant-theatre.

No, if man is going to be elevated beyond being just another animal species, then it is our task to seek ‘nourishment’ in other areas as well.  That’s the very purpose for religion – the reason we’re here today.  And for the arts.  Literature.  For just about any field of learning and knowledge.

            I don’t think that, to convince you of this truth this evening is a hard-sell.  Perhaps the part about religion.  At least, for the some of you who don’t see your purpose for being here this evening as having much or anything to do with G-d.  But that’s another story.  The idea that life as we know it, and cherish it, requires far more than material and physical sustenance, is doubtless a notion near and dear to most of your hearts.

            Nevertheless, we sometimes have to fight our inertia to get out of our homes to see a film or a play.  At the recent theatre evening to see Fiddler on the Roof, tickets for which were quite reasonably-priced, only a handful of the members of our congregation attended.  This, despite the fact that we’re all familiar with the play, and love it, and most of us have seen it more than once.  (By the way, those who did not attend missed a quite good amateur performance of the play.  I’ve seen the original Broadway production but was impressed by what the Gold Coast Little Theatre did.)  In a congregation of some 150 adult members, one would think we could have filled that 65-seat auditorium.  We did not.

            What is the source of this inertia?  I don’t have a definitive answer.  But my gut instinct is that we fight against potentially uplifting situations because we somehow need to be in a spiritually repressed state.  We almost revel in it.  It’s as if we need to feel this way, because it helps to explain the various unhappy circumstances of our lives.  After all, if we acknowledge that we have the power to elevate ourselves, to make ourselves happy, then that implies a tremendous responsibility – doesn’t it?  Maybe on some level, many of us are not quite ready to accept that responsibility.

            So man does not live by bread alone.  But by every word that comes from the ‘Mouth of G-d.’  In other words, the Torah.  The Torah can and does provide us with a means of spiritual nourishment and refreshment.  I’ve been rabbi-ing for 16 years now, but I never run out of new insights to gain from a particular Torah portion.  Each time you turn it over, something new and wonderful, some new insight for life or into human nature, is revealed.

            If we are to be truly nourished, we must acknowledge and participate in life beyond the basic needs of sustenance.  If we are as human beings to soar in flights of soul-elevation, we would do well to enjoy the arts and literature.  Not everything on offer is going to appeal to each one in this room.  Some of you like musical comedy, some opera.  Some of you like classical music, some baroque. Some of you like ballet, some contemporary dance.  Some don’t like dance at all!  Some like novels, some poetry.  If the latter, maybe you can explain to me why! (Just kidding!)  Some like religion that is very tactile, some prefer the philosophical.  Some like contemplative.  In all these pursuits of the soul there is something to grab each one of us if we would only explore and allow ourselves to find it.  I can certainly tell you that in Judaism there is some aspect that will resonate with each person here.  If it doesn’t speak to you, perhaps you’re stuck in one aspect of Jewish life, practice, belief or learning that simply doesn’t work for you.  Try exploring some other aspect.  Look in this month’s Gates of Peace and look at the educational offerings starting up late this month, then tell me which class interests you.

Man does not live by bread alone.  Thank G-d, we have so much more than ‘bread’ to choose from to enable us to truly live.  Shabbat shalom.

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When You Have Eaten Your Fill

A Drash for Saturday, 6 October 2012

As a military chaplain, I was often called upon to give an invocation for an event that involved a meal.  This follows the Christian custom of ‘Saying Grace’ before eating.  The first few times I felt a little funny doing it.  Not because there’s anything wrong with invoking G-d’s role in providing for the meal one is about to eat.  Simply because it is our Jewish custom to give thanks after the meal.  As you know, we begin a meal – when we do – with a very quick and simple blessing, Hamotzi.  Baruch Ata Hashem, Elokeinu Melech Ha’olam, Hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.  We bless You, Lord our G-d Sovereign of the Universe who has brought forth bread from the earth.  In so doing, we invoke the partnership between us and G-d that produced the bread we’re about to eat.  After all, G-d did not ‘bring forth bread from the earth.’  Rather, He blessed the earth with fecundity so that we, through our industry can plant and tend and sow the grain which is then ground to flour and ultimately baked into bread.  The blessing for bread is an acknowledgement of G-d’s part in the process, by which we bring food to the table.

But the somewhat long-winded prayer of thanks, Birkat Hamazon, comes after the meal.  A couple of times, when comparing notes with colleagues I told them of this difference of practice.  Once, a Christian friend asked me:  Why do you give thanks after the meal instead of before?  To answer, I quipped:  If you give thanks after the meal, then you are truly giving thanks, because you have enjoyed it and can give thanks with a full heart.  So my colleague responded:  What if you didn’t enjoy the meal?  Do you now thank G-d?  I had to think for a moment.  You still thank G-d, I told him.  You blame the cook.

            The truth is, the basis for the practice of giving thanks after eating comes from this week’s Torah reading.  When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Lord your G-d for the good land which He has given you.  The whole point is that, we eat and drink to our fill, and otherwise avail ourselves of the bounty of our land to our satisfaction.  If we did not give thanks, then we would tend to start believing that it was only the work of our hands that sated us.

            Now having said that, we should take pride when our hard work and industry results in good provision for our needs and our desires.  It is so important to take our fate into our own hands:  not to wait for the things we desire to drop from the sky, or from the hands of a wealthy uncle.  Day after day, we are faced with so many choices that can and do change our ultimate destinies.  We can work hard and succeed, sometimes magnificently and sometimes modestly.  We can decide that leisure is more important and not work so hard.  For most of us, the ideal is somewhere between the two – a balance between industry and accomplishment on one hand, and time to savour life on the other.  When we manage to find that balance, we should give ourselves a little credit for it.  Pat ourselves on the back.  Because after all, you all know someone who has been given gifts at least the equal to what you have been given, but can’t seem to make a go of it.  They struggle and struggle.  It takes not only hard work, but also vision – the vision of a better life – to succeed where others, given the same tools, fail.  If you’re in the former category, allow yourselves a little pride in that.

            But give G-d His due also.  The point of this commandment is that pride in one’s accomplishments has a way of allowing us to think that it’s all in our hands.  And it’s not.  Each one of us who has succeeded, has enjoyed perhaps a measure of good luck in addition to the talents and gifts we were given.  Or perhaps, our timing was just fortuitous.  They say timing is everything.  I don’t agree, but timing – good timing – sure helps.

            So give thanks to G-d after you have eaten your fill and are sated.  So often we don’t, because we are not in the habit of doing so.  And why not?

            For one thing, the blessing is looooooong.  There’s no getting away from that.  So how about a shortened version?  If you have a bentscher, it undoubtedly has a shorter form of Birkat Hamazon.  Try that form.  Still too long?  How about this abridgement:  Baruch Ata Hashem, hazan et hakol.  Everybody can say that.  Everybody has time for it.  It will not overly embarrass you if you pause to say it in a restaurant, because by the time anybody has noticed you saying it, you’ve finished!  But if you’ve got a reason that you don’t give thanks in the traditional way, and whatever that reason might be, I challenge you to try this.  Before eating, say the hamotzi blessing if you’re going to eat bread with the meal.  If not, but there is some kind of cake or cracker to be eaten, say:  Baruch Ata Hashem, borei minei mezonot.  If there’s nothing like that in the meal, say:  Baruch Ata Hashem, shehakol yihye kid’varo.  Easy.  And afterward, as you’re getting ready to step away from the table, say:  Baruch Ata Hashem, hazan et hakol.  Try to do that every time you sit down to eat a meal.  Help one another by reminding them.  Remind me, because I’m as guilty as anybody else in this room of neglecting giving thanks to G-d.   I want to be reminded.  (It will show me you’ve been listening just now!)  Sure, it would be better to use a longer bentsching, but if you’ve not been doing it at all, try what I’ve just said.

            So how about it?  Do you agree that G-d had something to do with the successful provision of the meal you’re about to eat?  Do you think He is due at least some partial credit for the goodness of which you’re about to partake?  Say hamotzi beforehand, and hazan et hakol afterward.  Let your actions reflect what you’re thinking.

            Don’t even believe in G-d?  Do it anyway.  Trust me, it doesn’t make you a hypocrite!  It just acknowledges that it didn’t come 100 percent from you.  Even if it wasn’t G-d but rather luck, timing, or a beneficent friend.  Stop to give thanks, and you will remind yourself that you’re not alone.  And that’s important.  Because we’re not alone.  Or perhaps more accurately, we don’t have to be alone.  And that’s something worth acknowledging – and celebrating!

            Give thanks.  It’s a great way to keep ourselves in a thankful state of mind.  And that’s the way to feel that we are truly fortunate.  After all, what does it say in Mishnah Avot?  Who is rich?  He that is thankful for his lot.  Let’s learn to be thankful, and then we can all feel rich.  Because then, we will truly be rich – in the only way that really matters.  Shabbat shalom.