Drashot for this Shabbat...Enjoy!

To Die Alone

Recently, someone here asked me what was the most unpleasant part of my job as Rabbi.  Now there’s an obvious answer to that:  Politics.  That is, trying to operate effectively in an atmosphere where a group of people are working to influence the actions and policies of a group – the congregation.  That would be difficult enough, but as Rabbi I’m also expected to lead while having little real authority.  Some days it seems that the task of trying to manoeuvre through the emotional attachment that people bring to various issues, is a never-ending struggle.  But as I said, this answer is obvious!  Many of you have complained to me of similar people-challenges in the organisations and companies where you spend your professional lives.  Why should a synagogue be any different?  Okay, perhaps I shouldn’t open that Can of Worms just now…

I make it my business to never assume that someone wants from me an answer that is obvious.  Therefore, I responded honestly to my questioner.  There isn’t really any one task in my portfolio that is at all unpleasant.  Of all the specific tasks I’m called upon to do day in and day out, all are rewarding in their own way.

But Rabbi, my questioner insisted, unsatisfied with my answer.  Surely there’s something you find unpleasant?  Surely you don’t think funerals, for example, are a pleasant duty?

I told my questioner that I find no particular unpleasantness in officiating funerals.  And I was telling the truth.  But had he asked the question today and not several weeks ago, I might have answered differently.  Let me explain.

          A week ago today, we received word that a Jew at large in the community had passed away, and that he had requested a ‘traditional Jewish funeral’…from a Liberal Rabbi.  No, don’t laugh…that’s actually not such an unusual request!  What was unusual in this case was that the deceased left no names of living relatives.  And, as nearly as we were able to determine, nobody in the community knew him.

          This morning I was talking about this with someone who wasn’t Jewish, and he told me it wouldn’t surprise him.  A real estate agent, this man told me he’d sold homes and flats to many elderly people who came up here from Sydney or Melbourne who then, maybe a couple of years later, in turn sold their property.  They would tell him that they were returning from whence they came, because they knew nobody here and were unable to make friends locally.

          When I hear such pronouncements, I rebel against them with every fibre of my body.  I’ve been told by a number of you, our most active members at Temple Shalom, that you were never active in a shule until you came to the Gold Coast.  And why did you change your habits when you came here?  Because you were looking for friendship, and you found it here in our congregation.

          And that’s not to say that we’re perfect.  Forgive me if this bursts your bubble, but we could do still better – far better – making newcomers to our shule feel welcome from the first minute.  All of us, myself included, are guilty of this complacency.  But generally speaking, we do a good job of taking the first time visitor and drawing them in with our warm and welcoming attitude.

          So no Jew in this community, even if they have no living relatives which is highly unlikely, has to die alone, like a stray dog in an alley.  And yet, it happened last week.  And this week, I buried him in the Queen Street Cemetery.  I and three others from our congregation.   Keith Heritage and one of his employees put the number up to six.  And it was cold, dreary, rainy day.

           Okay, I know it sounds as if I’m whining…and I guess I am.  But I’m not criticising.  Not you, if you didn’t attend the funeral.  It would have been better had more members of our funeral attended.  And I would certainly ask that, next time you receive a sudden e-mail from Jan or whoever informing you of a funeral, that you simply attend without consideration as to whether you knew the deceased…or whether you liked him or her.  Accompanying the dead for burial – leviyat hameit in Hebrew – is, according to Mishnah Pe’ah, one of the obligations without measure.  But my purpose here is not to criticise those of you who were not there.  The reality is that mobody here knew the deceased, and it was a weekday…a cold, rainy weekday.

          And my point is not to criticise the deceased either.  God forbid.  Even though he, who had apparently lived some years here on the Gold Coast, had never taken the opportunities to participate in Jewish life.  It certainly would have been better if he had.  Better for the Jewish community, which can always use more active participation.  Who knows what talents, what abilities this man had, which could have contributed in some way to making our community stronger?  We’ll never know.  But it would also have been better for him.  I refuse to believe that any person, no matter how gruff a posture they might take, desires to be alone.  Not at the end of his life, and not at any other time of life.  We are hard-wired to need the society of others.  Sure, we all have moment when hermit-hood sounds attractive.  Most of us need solitude from time to time, unless we’re an absolute extrovert.  But to live and die alone?  Again, no criticism.  Just regret at the tragedy of such a life and death.

          So, no criticism from me.  Not of you, not of the deceased.  I only speak of this experience tonight, because it teaches us an important lesson.  And that is the lesson  that we must nurture our relationships while we still have time.  If you’re listening to my voice, or reading my words in my blog tonight, I want to you make a list of those whom you avoid because you’ve quarrelled with them.  Relatives, of course, but also friends.  Or those whom, perhaps, you once considered friends but no longer do because of…whatever.  I urge you, in the next days, to reach out to them.  Every one of them.  The sibling against whom you harbour some pique.  The distant cousin with whom you have no particular quarrel, but from whom you’ve drifted over time.  The friend from whom you’ve withdrawn…or who has withdrawn from you.  Reach out to them one by one.  Don’t wait for them to reach out to you.

          Then, listen to the announcements this evening.  About the plethora of Jewish activities going on in our community.  The adult singles gathering tomorrow night.  The Hebrew reading class on Tuesday morning.  Don’t look surprised, we announce it virtually every week when it happens.  The Senior Schmoozers on Wednesday afternoon.  The Judaism for Dummies class on Wednesday night.  The family cheder activity Sunday week.  Nobody is expected to attend everything.  But ask yourselves:  if something going on sounds interesting, why am I not making an effort to attend?  Don’t drive anymore?  Call a cab.  And if you truly can’t afford a cab, then tell me and I’ll find someone to pick you up.

          None of the offerings are interesting to you?  Hard to believe; more likely you just aren’t free when they’re offered.  So tell me what interests you, and when you’re free.  And we’ll put our heads and our energies together and organise it.  Stop waiting for someone else to do it.

          I’m not here to criticise, and I ask that you do not construe anything I’ve said tonight as criticism…of you or anybody else.  But I am here to goad you on to doing good things.  And the burial of a lone Jew this week has given me cause to strengthen my sense of imperative.  So consider yourselves instructed.  Heal your relationships.  At least, try!  And don’t let another week go by without participating in something that might be interesting and uplifting.  As I have said before, Time is our Enemy.  Every day we live, is a day we will never get back.  And our days are finite.  None of us can know how many days we have.  But when today is gone, we all have one less day.  Of this, there is absolutely no ambiguity.

          Funerals are not always unpleasant.  When the funeral is truly a Celebration of Life, as they’re sometimes called, then there’s nothing unpleasant about escorting the deceased to the Next World through the simple act of showing up and remembering.  Especially when we conspicuously have positive things to say about that person.  And when they’ve lived a long and full life.

          But funerals can be unpleasant, as I can now authoritatively say.  They can be very unhappy occasions.  And perhaps the most unhappy occasion is when we must escort someone whom we didn’t know.  Whom, as far as we can determine, nobody knew.  That’s a tragedy.  Let’s all decide that our own passing, inevitable as it is, will not entail such tragedy.

Pick Up and Move On

I’m guessing that everybody in this room, or reading this on my blog, has seen Fiddler on the Roof, and probably both on the stage and on the screen.  Probably many times.  It’s a favourite not only of Jews, but of general audiences all over the world.  We’ve all laughed – and cried – along with the story and its characters.  We can all hum, and probably even sing, most of the songs.

          So everybody surely remembers the scene of the wedding of Tzeitl to Motl the tailor.  We remember how it was broken up by a group of ruffians under the charge of The Constable, who is portrayed as a more-or-less decent man ‘just following orders’ in leading ‘demonstrations’ against the Jews.  The film version of Fiddler came out when I was a pre-teen.  I remember how the ‘Cossacks’ in the scene broke and shredded a few wedding gifts but otherwise just frightened the Jews until the party broke up.  I asked my parents if that was the extent of the atrocities of the pogroms of 1905, the events depicted in the story.  And of course the answer was that the pogroms were brutal.  Many Jews were killed, and many more were injured and burnt out of their homes, synagogues and shops.  The depiction in the film was ‘sanitised’ in an era when filmmakers did not feel compelled to be as graphically realistic as they are today.  But back to my point…

          At the end of the ‘mischief’ by the Cossacks, Tevye turned to his family who were the only ones left in the yard where the wedding had taken place. “Don’t just stand there,” he growled to his wife, daughters, son-in-law and his future son-in-law Perchik the Revolutionary. “Pick up!  Pick up!”

          Indeed, pick up!  For some reason, and especially after I became more educated of Jewish history, the line resonated with me.  We Jews mourn all the misfortunes that have befallen us at the hands of others during our history.  But we also celebrate that after every disaster, after every pogrom, after every setback, we have reacted similarly.  We’ve turned to one another, sighed, and picked up the mess.  We’ve rolled up our sleeves and cleaned up.  We’ve often internalised the lessons of the disaster.  We’ve rebuilt as much as possible of what existed before.  And we’ve moved forward.  Even after 1945, when the Allied victory in the Second World War brought an end to the Nazi Holocaust.  With roughly a third of the pre-1933 world Jewish population dead, and much of the rest traumatised.  With the entire world of European Jewry literally destroyed.  We picked up and cleaned up.  We rebuilt and built anew.  The refugees, the survivors of the Shoah found places to sojourn.  The Jewish spirit rejected defeat.  Of course, we did not forget.  Now, almost 70 years on, we have not forgotten.  But still, we moved on.

          That’s what is happening in this week’s Torah reading.  Last Shabbat we read from the beginning of the portion ‘Balak.’  But at its end is the narrative of how a large group of Israelites allowed themselves to be tempted into serving the pagan gods of the Midianites.  As a result, a plague saw the destruction of 24,000 idolatrous Israelites.  While the killing was going on, a group further flaunted God’s Law by organising the public debauchery of Zimri the son of Salu, a chieftain of the tribe of Shim’on, with a Midianite woman named Cozbi daughter of the Midianite chieftain. 

Let me make it clear.  The offence wasn’t sexual immodesty.  It wasn’t that the two slept together without being married.  Rather, that they did so in front of the entire people, as a sordid exhibition, while a plague was killing off their brother and sister Israelites who had led the idolatry.  The act was not just degenerate in the sexual sense, as a breach of the boundaries of permitted behaviour.  It must rather be seen as a flaunting of the Torah in its entirety, even a clear statement that there were no longer any boundaries at all.  Pinchas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw the act of Zimri and Cozbi for what it is.  He took his spear and impaled both them in one thrust.  With this act, we’re told in the Torah, God’s anger was stilled and the plague ended.

So…if it had entered your mind that this narrative is a prude’s response to the stretching of sexual boundaries, you can put it out of your mind now.  This is about the utter and deliberate rejection, not only of God’s law, but about the very idea of law.  And that is anathema.  We can disagree on the specifics of law.  But there is simply no disagreeing on the idea that there must be a law.  The act of Zimri and Cozbi must be seen as an abrogation of law, period.  And Pinchas’ reaction is a defence of the concept of law, the concept that to live together we must recognise the need for restraints against our behaviour.  That anarchy is not a good thing.

          But all that was in last week’s sidra.  As this week’s sidra opens, the perpetrators of last week’s debauchery are named.  Then the Israelites are ordered to make war against the Midianites.  And then, they’re ordered to take a census.  A census of the exact same parameters as the one that opened the Book of Numbers a few weeks back.

          The instruction to take another census after the plague, sends an important message.   The actions of Pinchas stilled the plague.  Now, after all is said and done, the people Israel must get on with their lives.  They must continue with the business of forging a group of fugitive slaves into a nation.  They must continue preparing themselves to conquer the Promised Land.  In order to do this, they must take stock and see what they’ve got left in terms of human capital.  They must regroup and reorganise, as any people must after any setback.  They must not wallow in the past, but point themselves to the future.  They’ve ‘messed up’ terribly and have paid a dear price for their offences.  They have lowered themselves to debauchery and it has not availed them. And now they have business to conduct…so to speak.

          How many times must we turn away from a mess of our own making, or imposed upon us, and say ‘Pick up’?  How much resilience must we have?  How many times must we step past yesterday’s disasters and move forward with optimism?  Who knows? 

Remember at the end of Fiddler on the Roof, when someone pointed out to the Rabbi that they’ve been waiting for the Messiah all of their lives.  The Rabbi answered quietly:  We’ll have to wait somewhere else.  In other words:  Who knows when redemption will come?  Who knows when there will be no more suffering?  Who knows when we’ll have no more need for resilience in the face of life’s disappointments?  Until then…regroup, count who is left, and pick up! 

Drash for Shabbat Balak

Going Free-lance

Many are the times that we are given a certain measure of power over others, to be used only within specific constraints and for specific purposes.  But such is the seductive call of power, that even good people have a tendency to abuse it.  We’ve all heard the saying:  Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The saying is usually attributed to Lord Acton, a Nineteenth Century figure.  But similar sentiments have been attributed to the Eighteenth Century William Pitt the Elder, Prime Minister of England, in a speech to the House of Lords.  For most of us, whether we know of the saying’s origins or not, and regardless of who coined it, it rings true.  That’s because many of us have personal knowledge of someone in power, abusing that power to the detriment of someone else.

Power comes in many guises.  Many in history have been those who have been believed to have special knowledge of, or influence with God.  There are those who have been ascribed such power who have proved to be saintly individuals worthy of the trust.  There are also those who have proven to be charlatans, abusing such trust for raw self-interest.  In this week’s Torah reading we see an example that some or the Rabbis think is the latter.

Bilaam son of Be ‘or, is a Prophet in Pethor which is believed to be a city on the Euphrates River.  The Torah reading, from the 22^nd chapter of Numbers, represents him as a gentile Prophet of the God of Israel.  But the Rabbis are divided on whether he genuinely was, or whether he was a charlatan.  For the sake of argument and today’s lesson, let’s assume that from the start he’s genuine.  He has some special knowledge of the God of Israel and has a calling to share it with the nations.  For this, he was known far and wide, even to Balak son of Tzippur the King of Moab, located hundreds of kilometres away across inhospitable desert.

Balak sent emissaries to Bilaam to ask him to go with them to curse the people Israel, whom Balak feared.  Praying about it overnight, Bilaam received the unequivocal message that he was not to go with the men.  He was not to curse God’s chosen people.

Balak was a mighty king and not one to take ‘no’ for an answer.  He sent a second group- of emissaries to Bilaam and offered him great riches if he would do the king’s bidding.  Praying about it again, Bilaam received the answer:  he can go with them, but he must only do as God commands.

Most of us are familiar with the oft-repeated doctrine that God is steadfast and unchanging.  It is one of the Rambam’s 13 Principles of Faith, articulated in his commentary on the Mishnah.  If you saw The Frisco Kid, one of my favourite movies of all time, you saw Gene Wilder as Rabbi Avram Galinski.  Speaking to Chief Grey Cloud, he proclaims:  “[God] doesn't make rain. He gives us strength when we're suffering. He gives us compassion when all that we feel is hatred. He gives us courage when we're searching around blindly like little mice in the darkness... but He does not make rain!”  [Thunder and lightning begin, followed by a downpour]  “Of course... sometimes, just like that, he'll change His mind!”

As funny as Wilder’s performance was, most of us, if we believe in God at all, do not see Him as willing to change his mind – as it were – to accommodate our whims.  So it is surprising in our Torah reading when Bilaam, after Balak’s second request, went back to God in prayer expecting to hear a different answer.  What changed from the first deputation, where Bilaam enquired of God and was told in absolute terms not to go to Balak and try to curse Israel? 

It would appear that the only thing changed is Balak’s level of desperation, leading to the extravagant offer:  “I will reward you richly and will do anything you ask of me; only come and damn this people for me.” And Bilaam’s greed, brought to the surface by knowledge of the power over Balak that he clearly wielded.  That’s what changed.

Bilaam was sorely tempted by Balak’s entreaties, despite God’s earlier, unequivocal judgement.  Does this prove whether he was a genuine Prophet or simply a charlatan?  I don’t think so, but it probably does prove that he was drunk with power.  Even the best man ever born would be in danger or losing his integrity if offered a promise of unlimited riches by a powerful king.  Since by definition, only one man can be the best man ever born, that means that the rest of us are even more susceptible to temptation!  And we see the results of these temptations, the results of our susceptibility to abuse of power, every day.

Bilaam isn’t one of the most corrupt men to ever live.  He’s simply one of the few whose corruptibility made it into the Torah narrative for all generations to read.  And as such he provides us with an important negative role-model.  He provides us with an important lesson on the importance of integrity.  With an opportunity to receive great reward for doing something that God has already told him in no uncertain terms not to do, Bilaam goes free-lance.  Instead of accepting that his power derives from a unique facility he possesses, and using that power within the constraints that come along with it, he decides to become his own boss.  The rest of the narrative, where Bilaam’s donkey tries to stop him from travelling to Balak, implies this.

I’ve written a piece on integrity as a core value for the issue of our congregational newsletter, Gates of Peace, which will be published in a few days’ time.  In it, my thesis is that, If we don’t have integrity, we can have little else going for us.  Bilaam, in acceding to Balak’s second entreaty, acted without integrity.  Unwilling to accept God’s answer in the face of the promise of untold riches, he re-opened the conversation with God in order to get the answer he wanted.  For a Prophet to try to manipulate God in that was, shows a lack of integrity.  And what is a Prophet without integrity?

Bilaam teaches us of the futility of life without integrity.  And he teaches us of the danger of power.  Even if Lord Acton was not correct, and power is not in its very essence corrupting.  After all, it can’t be argued that countless individuals over history have wielded power of various types without being corrupted!  But we nevertheless understand the temptation.  And Bilaam’s plight illustrates the pitfall.

 May our Sabbath prayer be that those who wield power among us, prove themselves able to do so and retain their integrity.  And may each one of us, if give the gift of power, be steadfast in using it only for good.  Amen.

Drash for Shabbat Chukat

Is Anti-Semitism Dead?

A lifetime ago, I was contemplating studying to be a rabbi.  I read the book A Certain People, by the sociologist Charles Silberman, about the Jewish experience in America.  I was a young man who had then been serving in my country’s uniform some 13 years.  I could therefore certainly relate to Silberman’s analysis of how easily and completely so many Jews had assimilated into American society.  Not that we were successful:  Jews are often successful wherever we live, and whether we feel especially welcome or not.  Silberman’s point was that Jews in the USA, more than any Jews in the world of the Jewish diaspora, identified closely with their country of habitation.

I went to Hebrew Union College for my rabbinic program admissions interview.  Dr Gary Zola, one of the members of the committee, looking over my application, noted that I claimed to have read Silberman’s book. “What was the big controversy about this book?” he asked me.

Oh, pooh!  I thought.  I’d read it, but hadn’t been involved in any discussions where it was considered controversial.  And I’d been able to relate to its message completely; I had no idea why it would be controversial.  So like many when cornered, I reverted to the dictum:  if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with B.S.

I grasped for one message in the book that might have been construed as controversial. “If there were something I’d have to call controversial in the book, I guess it would be his statement that new converts to Judaism make up for born Jews drifting away.  Not that I would challenge this demographic reality, but that we shouldn’t feel complacent about our demographics and the challenges of keeping Jews engaged just because we’ve managed to welcome thousands of seekers.”

After I gave my answer, there was a silence in the room.  Following this awkward moment, Dr Zola piped up again. “Actually, the controversy was Silberman’s thesis that anti-Semitism is dead.”

Of course, I’d recognised this meta-message in the book, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it should be controversial.  Silberman supported it by documenting how Jew-hatred had essentially been forced to the fringes in the America of the late 1980’s.  How one only heard fulminations against ‘The Jews’ from the most marginal reaches of society.  How Jews in every other sector participated and succeeded.  And while some Jews – irrationally, in my own opinion at the time – hid their Jewishness, legions of proud and affirming Jews, religious and secular, managed to perfectly integrate their Jewish and American selves, day in and day out.  In all my years of military service, nobody could have identified me as other than a Jew.  And yet, I was never made to feel marginalised or oppressed in any way because of that fact.

I was thinking about this long-ago conversation this week after a more recent conversation about anti-Semitism with some of our members here.  Anti-Semitism is a topic that evokes strong feelings, as of course it should.  How can Jews, in the wake of the Shoah, be entirely complacent about the spectre of anti-Semitism?  Of course, we should expose it and speak out forcefully about it whenever it rears its ugly head.  But at the same time, I believe we should much more sparingly identify incidents as indicative of the presence of anti-Semitism.

A good example of what I mean is the Australian national election coming up.  Several of you have pointed out to me that the upcoming Election Day, 14 September, is Yom Kippur.  And you have suggested that this is a manifestation of anti-Semitism on the part of the government.  Now I’m not in the position to either agree with, or dispute this appraisal of the Gillard government.  But to consider the scheduling of the national elections on Yom Kippur as affirmation of this notion is, well…a bit over the top.  After all, according to the Frequently Asked Questions on the Australian Election Commission website:

What do I do if I can't vote on Election Day, 14 September 2013?

Early voting is available for electors who are unable to vote on Election Day. This includes electors who for religious reasons are unable to vote on Saturday 14 September 2013. The dates for early voting are to be confirmed but commence soon after the declaration of nominations for candidates standing in the election during the election period.

The site then goes on to explain that postal voting is also possible.  So the idea that the scheduling of the election on Yom Kippur manifests anti-Semitism is far-fetched to me.  Especially so, when your elections are always on Saturdays.  So, any election will interfere with Shabbat!  But all you have to do is declare that you cannot vote that day for religious reasons, and vote on an alternative day.  Rather than seeing the scheduling of the election as a manifestation of anti-Semitism, I advise seeing yourselves as privileged that you get to vote without waiting in long, Election Day lines to do so!  But that would require making a mental shift:  from thinking of oneself as a member of an oppressed minority, to thinking of oneself as being privileged to claim the title, Jew.  And depending on the degree of your emotional investment in thinking yourself oppressed, that might be a very great shift to manage.

I guess you can start to intuit where I’m going with this.  Often our biggest, most reliable source of our oppression is within ourselves.  Even when others fail to oppress us, we will see their actions as doing so.  That comes from within, not from without.

Is anti-Semitism dead?  No, it’s not.  I feel more strongly about this today, in the year 2013 than I did in 1991.  Twenty-two years makes a big difference!  And Australia is a little different from the USA.  But my advice remains steadfast.  Celebrate the degree, to which your non-Jewish neighbours think of your Jewishness as irrelevant, or even a positive, when they assess you.  Don’t look for anti-Semitism in incidents that carry no malevolence toward Jews.  Like scheduling elections on Yom Kippur.  My fear is that, if we continue to be so quick to see anti-Semitism where none exists, then we will anesthetise our countrymen against real anti-Semitism when it appears.  And that would be a tragedy, since real anti-Semitism is not dead…yet.

So 22 years ago, I was admitted to rabbinical school even if I didn’t come up with the answer that Dr Zola was looking for.  Obviously, my not recognising the controversial nature of Silberman’s thesis was not a ‘fatal’ mistake where the admissions committee was concerned.  Many years have passed, the world has changed markedly, and I have a much fuller view now.

Yes, why feel oppressed for being a Jew when you can feel privileged!  And no, I don’t mean because you get to avoid Election Day lines.  I mean because you are an heir to a faith-tradition that has brought so much good into the world.  That you identify with the people privileged to present the Torah to the nations.  To model life in the Image of God.  To show the world a better way and to live out that way.

  When I look at the lives that you live here in Australia, I maintain that anti-Semitism is not a force that has any kind of significant impact on your lives.  No more than it was for me in America of 1991.  Some of you are not convinced.  May you find it from within yourselves to allow yourselves the ‘luxury’ of life without oppression.  Shabbat shalom.  

Drash for Parashat Korach

Chicken or Pasta?

I know I’ve told you this before, but it was after all almost two years ago.  When I fly transoceanic, I always look forward to hearing the cabin attendant ask me those three immortal words:  Chicken or pasta?  What do I want to eat for dinner?  Chicken or pasta?  It’s always the same choices.  Now I can report that Virgin Australia is no different in this respect from Qantas, or from United, or from Lufthansa, or El Al, or…whatever.  Chicken or Pasta?  It’s one of those choices we make in life that absolutely does not matter.  Why not?  Because whichever you choose, it is almost guaranteed to be more-or-less edible…and completely unmemorable.  When was the last time you had a memorable meal when flying?  I mean, unless you flew First Class or perhaps Business.  But in Economy, there’s never a meal to write home about.

It’s refreshing to be asked to make a choice that does not matter one whit, because so many of our choices in life are important…and the choices we make may have lasting repercussions.  Choices like what major to matriculate in university.  Whom to marry.  Where to live, as in what country or what city.  All these choices will have great effect on our ultimate happiness in life.  We therefore should make them only with great consideration and even trepidation.  But Chicken or Pasta?  Who cares?

As I related to you before, my son Eyal sweats every decision.  Faced with the choice between Chicken or Pasta, he’ll ponder until there’s a danger of the flight attendant moving on, with the result that Eyal won’t get any dinner at all.  Similarly, one night we were out with an equally-fussy friend of mine on a summer holiday in Moab, Utah.  Dinner was easy; it was a pizza buffet!  But we decided to go to a different local place for ice cream after dinner.  Eyal and my friend had to try half a dozen flavours on those little plastic spoons they use to give samples.  I think they both even asked for a second sample of one or two before making up their minds.  I had already finished half my ice cream and they were still discussing.  Come on, guys, I urged them.  It’s just ice cream!  Just pick a flavour and enjoy!  To which Eyal replied:  But Abba; it could be life-changing!  Now some choices are life changing, but what ice cream flavour to eat, is not one of them.  Neither is Chicken or Pasta.

The last time I related this story, I know it resonated with at least one person then present.  One of our members related to me that, a few days after hearing my drash, she’d had trouble making a minor decision.  And her daughter scolded her:  It’s just like the Rabbi said, Mum: Chicken or Pasta?  It doesn’t matter!

This week’s Torah portion is Korach.  I’ve been asked before:  how long does it take me to prepare the Torah reading each week?  And my answer is:  it depends.  Because we’re not reading a large quantity of Torah each week, it is generally quite manageable.  And that’s a very good thing.  Especially so on weeks like this one when I arrived in town only on Wednesday and very jet-lagged from flying across the USA and the Pacific Ocean.  But when I looked at this week’s Torah reading yesterday and began preparing to read it, I realised that I already knew the text.  That’s because Korach was Eyal’s bar mitzvah portion.  I struggled with him over several months to teach him the first Aliyah, which is our reading here this year.  I also prepared another young man, years earlier in England, to read the same text for his bar mitzvah.  I was therefore pleased to find that I could prepare this week’s Torah reading with a minimum of effort.  (So, looking forward to seeing you in shule tomorrow, to share it with you…)

The portion Korach is about choices.  Korach, of the tribe of Levi, leads a rebellion against the leadership of Moses and the priesthood of Aaron.  As I pointed out last year when talking about this portion, there was really no valid reason for the rebellion.  Korach and his gang didn’t find Moses’ leadership wanting in any way.  They just wanted to be the ones in charge.  They made a choice, an emotional one, to reject Moses’ leadership even though they could make no case for their own superior fitness to lead.  They simply wanted to be the Top Banana themselves.  In making their power-play, they caused their own demise and that of many innocent people.  Last year, I offered you a lesson to take away from this episode.  When we make bad choices, the consequences can be far-reaching.  Not only for us, but for those close to us.  Korach and his company made a very bad choice.  This was no Chicken or Pasta decision.  This was one that mattered.

          Our task, as we go through life, is to make good decisions.  But additionally, our peace-of-mind requires that we learn to discern between the decisions that matter a lot, those that matter little, and those that don’t matter at all.  Because we do want to consider most carefully when making the big, important decisions.  But we don’t want to be paralysed with fear when faced with decisions that don’t matter.  Like Chicken or Pasta.

          Korach was faced with the all-important choice of accepting Moses’ leadership, or making a senseless power-play to usurp it.  He chose poorly.  He and his consorts would have done well to sit down and really think about why they wanted to challenge Moses.  Just like so many others in organisational life, who make power plays for no reason other than self-aggrandisement.  Imagine if all the energy expended on the gossip, back-stabbing and other intrigue that goes along with such power-plays were instead directed towards positive and helpful ends.  Our world would be so much better.  Both our micro-world, and our macro-world.

          On the other hand, we should learn not to sweat inconsequential decisions.  Like what flavour ice cream.  Or, Chicken or Pasta.