Seek Justice…Justly: A Drash for Parashat Shoftim, Friday 29 August 2014

How many times have you heard the expression “the end justifies the means”?  Usually it is invoked to justify some harm, either inadvertent or deliberate, done as ‘collateral damage’ when seeking some allegedly good end.  I say allegedly, because this week’s Torah portion instructs us very explicitly to employ no unjust means in the pursuit of justice.

          In the third verse of our portion, Deuteronomy 16:20, we read the famous pronouncement:  Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, lema’an tichyeh veyerashta et-ha’aretz asher Adonai Eloheicha notein lach.  “Justice, justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

          The Rabbis are mostly in agreement as to why the word “justice’ is repeated in the verse.  They believe it means that you must pursue Justice, justly.  In other words, there is no “end justifies the means.”  When pursuing a good end, you must use good means.  Full stop.  Any evil caused either deliberately or inadvertently in the pursuit of a good end is, well, evil.

          Dennis Prager, one of my favourite commentators on contemporary life, points out that the vast majority of evil in the world, is done by people whose intentions are good, not evil.  Think about it.  There are enough people of truly ill will around.  But so much damage to others is done with good intentions.

For example, many political ideologies are well-intentioned, but bring about pain and suffering.  Take communism, for example.  It sounded noble, didn’t it?  Workers of the world uniting to take control of the fruits of their own labour.  From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.  Pretty utopian.  Hint:  any ideology that sounds utopian, is virtually guaranteed to bring about evil.  Why?  Because utopia is so eagerly sought, so good, that those trying to bring it about will look beyond any suffering their actions cause.  Because after all, it’s suffering caused in the pursuit of good.  So look at the millions upon millions displaced and even slaughtered in pursuit of imposing utopian communism upon the Soviet Union and the various ‘Peoples’ Republics’ around the world.

Now communism might sound like a bad example because it is an extreme case.  So let’s look at something less totalitarian, at various anti-poverty programs that have been tried in various places in the world.  Who can argue with the sentiment of lifting one’s brother out of poverty?  So in 1964, President Johnson in the USA signed into law the act that came to be known as ‘The Great Society.’  It was an omnibus menu of anti-poverty programs.  It did not eradicate poverty, or even put a dent in it.  But it did lead to what many consider the destruction of the working poor family, especially among black Americans.  In country after country where anti-poverty programs are instituted, the result is the weakening and even destruction of family life.

          Look at religious groups which, in support of the goal of creating a society infused by obedience to God, impose violence and pain.  Such evil consequences are found in varying measures, from the Westboro Baptist Church interrupting funerals to demonstrate for their brand of morality, to Al Qaeda jihadists hijacking airliners and killing thousands.  Speak to any of the perpetrators, and they would have told you that they were working to bring about paradise on earth.  At what cost ‘paradise’?

          War is probably the ultimate evil to impose on the world.  And the Torah has a lot to say about it.  It prescribes conditions under which it is permissible to go to war:  the so-called ‘just war’ test or in Latin, Jus ad Bellum.  And it also prescribes way that war fighters must work to ameliorate the effects of their actions.  In Latin, these ‘laws of war’ are called Jus in Bello.  In Hebrew, they are called, Tohar Haneshek, meaning ‘Purity in Arms.’

          It’s easy to find examples of permitted and forbidden behavior in war, since another round of fighting in Gaza has just concluded.  From the Torah to the Geneva Conventions, war fighters are forbidden to deliberately endanger civilian populations in order to hide their whereabouts or shelter their means.  The first time we heard the term ‘human shields’ used in this context was in 1990, when Saddam Hussein used foreigners caught in Iraq during the build-up toward Operation Desert Storm, in that capacity.  Saddam very infamously gathered them, ostentatiously chaining them to likely coalition targets and daring President Bush to endanger the innocents.  And of course, Hamas has bought into Saddam’s playbook in a big way, hiding missile launchers and munitions storage, not to mention Command, Control, and Communications installations, in hospitals, schools, and mosques.  The more the Israeli Defence Forces tried to take out these installations with a minimum of collateral damage, the deeper Hamas buried these targets into civilian installations, cynically causing their citizens to be killed in pursuit of making the Israelis look like Jack the Ripper.  The sad thing is that much of the world’s press bought right into it.

          The duplicitous endangering of civilians by Hamas is a prime example of the ends never justifying the means.  Of course Hamas wants to neutralize the Israeli Army and end the so-called Blockade.  But to employ evil effect to do so, makes them…evil.

          You can see how, over and over again, people who have allegedly good intentions, who desire a good end, will use evil means.  From suicide bombers to religious zealots, from politicians wanting to save the poor, or the environment, or just save us from ourselves, to a certain congregation’s president who tells her members, in effect, “Yes, we stole your temple…but we did it to save it from ruin.”  In so doing, she and her board…ruined it.

          But the Torah already laid down the ground rules millennia ago.  You cannot employ evil to achieve good means.  No matter how lofty the goal, you cannot employ means that cause pain and suffering.  Or other bad effect.  You cannot justify bad actions in pursuit of something that is supposed to be good.  Because in the end, you will seldom end up achieving anything that is good.  Pursue Justice, Justly.  The means is as important as the end.  Shabbat shalom.

God’s 'Stern' Side: A Drash for Parashat Re’eh, Friday 22 August 2014

I’d like to start my words this evening by referring to last week’s drash and some feedback I received.  As you remember, I spoke about unconditional love.  When I give a drash on Shabbat, I almost always post its transcript on my blog site:  rabbidoninoz.blogspot.com.au.  I also usually record my presentation digitally, and post the audio on my podcast site:  www.buzzsprout.com/15521.  If you need to be reminded of either of these URL’s, they appear in every e-mail I send, directly beneath my signature.  At the risk of sounding overly self-promoting, I would point out that these are great ways for you to see or hear what I had to see on weeks when you don’t manage to get here.  Or, if my words gave you some pause and you want to verify what I said.  Or any number of reasons.  The two media are there for your reference.

          This week’s Torah reading, Re’eh, starts with an important declaration that builds upon the way last week’s reading opened.  This week, Moshe Rabbeinu declares that we face a stark choice.  Blessing, if we follow God’s commandments.  And curse, if we disobey and follow other gods.  That’s pretty black-and-white, as binary as one can get!  Blessing if you follow the law.  Curse if you do not.  It doesn’t seem to offer any ‘wiggle room.’

          It is statements like this in the Torah that lead to the charge that the God of the Torah, of the ‘Old Testament’ as some of our neighbours call it, is a stern and unforgiving God.  It is juxtapositions of such statements, with the same God in the ‘New Testament’ being all about unconditional love, that lead to the fairly-widely-held perception that the Jewish tradition limits God, as it were.  That we emphasise the stern side of God, almost or even completely to the exclusion of seeing the merciful side of God.  Unless you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, you have certainly heard such comparisons.

      But if Moses is painting a stark picture of the choices the people have, it is because Moses is all about making good choices.  Or to put it differently, his teaching and leadership is all about inspiring others to make good choices.

Think about it.  During the 40 years of wandering, which are coming to their conclusion as Moses is speaking these words to the people Israel, Moses’ and Aaron’s leadership have been tested and challenged repeatedly.  Moses is not trying to tell us to accept leadership at face value without question.  Rather the repeated message, as I’ve been pointing out over the months, is that challenges should be for the Good – for the mutual benefit.  But the challenges to Moses’ leadership, as chronicled in the books of Exodus through Numbers, are not motivated for producing Good among the people.  Rather, in experience after experience the challenges are about jealousy:  you’re in charge, but I want to be.  It’s not about the challenger having some insight that Moses lacks.

          In this week’s discourse, Moses is cautioning against disobeying God.  Because disobedience, in his moral universe, stems from wanting someone else to be in charge.  Think about it.

           Whenever we willfully break some rule, we are making a clear declaration.  We’ve been told to do ‘X,’ but we really want to do ‘Y.’  It’s about that preference for ‘Y’ over ‘X,’ but it’s really deeper than that.  Since we’ve chosen to break the rule and do ‘Y,’ we’ve rejected the authority of whomever told us to do ‘X.’ We’ve not only chosen to do ‘Y,’ but we’ve enthroned whatever it is that told us to do ‘Y’ as the ultimate authority.  Whether that voice was something from without, such as an alternative authority.  Or whether it was our own heart’s desire.  Either way, we have rejected one authority and enthroned another.  If the original authority, or command-er, was God Himself, then we’ve declared the alternative authority to be a god (lowercase ‘g’).  And that’s what Moses is talking about.

          Hence the starkness of Moses’ juxtaposition.  We can follow God’s teaching.  We can do that which will assuredly bring blessing.  Or we can enthrone another authority in God’s place.  Whether that authority is some idolatrous regime.  Or the regime of desire, which is also an idolatry when it draws us from following God’s law.

          God is not like a divine puppet-master, controlling us as if we were live marionettes.  We have free will.  At almost every moment in life we face choices.  Each one of those moments is an opportunity to make a Good choice.  Or one that is not so good.  And a Good choice ultimately leads to blessing.  Whereas a bad choice leads to curse…to ultimate misfortune.

          Now that sounds pretty stark.  Of that, there’s no denying.  But it is so ultimately true.  I’m sure that you know people who are basically good people, but who once made a bad choice.  A choice whose consequences have hounded their lives since then.  A ‘gift’ that keeps on giving.  One moment’s indiscretion changed the very course of their lives.  Now, not all bad choices have such far-reaching consequences.  Fortunately, we all make bad choices from which we ultimately recover.  Not all bad choices are forever.  But when we allow ourselves to repeatedly choose poorly, then we create in ourselves a tendency to make bad choices.  So in that sense, every choice matters.  Because if we ‘train’ ourselves to choose well in small matters, then when the really serious matter comes up we will more likely instinctively reach for the Good.

          To give an example.  We all know that we are instructed as Jews not to eat prawns, right?  So what would happen if tomorrow I would be out and just have an overpowering urge to eat prawns?  And were to give in to that urge?  What would happen?  Most likely, nothing!  Prawns are proscribed, along with a number of other foods, in Jewish law.  But if I were to give in to an urge to eat prawns, most likely there would be no apparent, immediate effect.  Except that I will have begun training myself to ignore God’s law.  And I would be increasing the possibility to flaunting God’s law on something that might be of much greater import.  Something whose effect would last far longer than the taste of prawns in my mouth.

          Viewed this way, it is easy to grasp Moses’ teaching.  Without having to see God as consumed with jealousy and judgment.  Rather, to see God as being, to use a contemporary term, holistic.  Because if we make ourselves used to flaunting, or ignoring God’s law, then we are setting ourselves up for curse.  For misfortune.  For falling short of our potential.  And that would be a tragedy.

          God has indeed placed before us blessing and curse.  And at any moment, we can choose either.  But that does not inform us that God’s nature is unforgiving.  Rather, it informs us that, when we make choices, there is often far more to that choice than we might want to see.  Sure, some choices are just a matter of preference.  Of taste.  But others are statements concerning who we ultimately see as being in charge.  So choose wisely.  Shabbat shalom.

Further Thoughts on Unconditional Love

I welcome feedback on my drashes, whether you heard them in person, read them here, or heard them on my podcast site.  Even if you disagreed with something I said.  Perhaps especially if you disagreed with something I said!  If you disagreed, that means that I provoked you to think about the subject.  If you took that disagreement and used it as the basis of a respectful dispute, then you took the opportunity to think more deeply about it.

          Last Shabbat, I gave a drash about unconditional love.  I said the Torah teaches that God’s love for Israel is not unconditional.  But we already knew this,  If you follow the narrative flow of the Torah, you know that Israel’s behaviour often provokes God’s anger.  On at least one occasion, to the point where He suggests to Moses that the two find a new people to bless with the covenant.

          If God does not love us unconditionally – assuming that you accept the premise – how can we expect unconditional love from one another?  A child expects unconditional love from her mother, and it is really the calling of a mother – or of a father for that matter – to love their child unconditionally.  But when we grow up, we must not expect unconditional love.  Not from our spouse or partner.  Not from our friends.  Not from our extended families.  We cannot expect to take advantage of, abuse, or neglect those close to us over time, and still expect their love.  Oh, we should be forgiving towards one another.  We should be willing to tolerate one another’s imperfections, one another’s foibles.  But to say that one should love another endlessly, without regard for how that someone treats you in return, is quite unreasonable.  And in last week’s Torah portion, there was a strong message that we should consider love to be conditional.  That’s how an adult approaches love.

          A correspondent, a friend back in Colorado, challenged me by asking if perhaps God’s love is not conditional, but His favour is.  This friend, who is a very close and treasured friend, is a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.  And of course, in my drash I juxtaposed the very common – some would say essential – Christian view of God’s love as being unconditional, with the Torah’s teaching – at least as I saw in last week’s parashah – that perhaps God’s love is not quite so unconditional.  And perhaps in my presentation last week, I made it sound like something of a polemic against Christian teaching.  So my friend’s reaction made me go back over my words and realize that they did sound something like a polemic.

          But to respond to my friend’s feedback.  We all know that the English word ‘love’ has many different meanings.  Likewise the Hebrew אהב, (ahav) the word most often translated ‘love.’  In the first two verses of Ekev, two different words are used.  In the first case, in Deuteronomy 7.12, the noun translated ‘love’ is חסד, (chesed) which more often translates ‘compassion’ or ‘unbridled mercy.’  In the next verse, 7,13, the verb translated ‘love’ is from the root אהב.  But I think both are talking About the same thing, if in a different part of speech.  Neither is talking about the ‘love’ that is an emotional response to another person.  Both are talking about something that might perhaps better be translated, as my friend suggested, ‘favour.’  When we favour someone, then we desire to be in a deep relationship with them.  We want to bless them in any way that we can reasonably do so.  But we can have love, meaning regard or concern, ro someone even when they have done nother to deserve it…or perhaps have even behaved in a way that would make it difficult to love them in this way.  In that sense, there is not real disagreement between my friend and me.  We both understand that there are different kinds of ‘love,’ and that not all of them are necessarily conditional.  Thanks, Chad!

          The second piece of feedback came from someone who was present at Friday evening minyan at the Southport Community Centre where we celebrated Shabbat together.  He pointed out that a dog’s love for its human companion is unconditional.  And that’s why so many people put up with the hassle of having a dog: to get that unconditional love.

          And he was absolutely correct.  Surely, this unconditional love and loyalty that a dog gives, is the main appeal of having a dog.  There’s got to be some reward after walking the thing and picking up its poo!

          Although I have not owned a dog in a long time, I am a confirmed dog lover.  If you’ve ever had me over to your home and saw how I reacted to your dog, you know this.  And I agree that a dog’s love for its human companion is one of the truest, purest, and unconditional-ist loves around.  But to compare a dog’s love to, say, that of a spouse, is a bad comparison.  A love between two human beings, especially two adult human beings, is far more complex than the love of a dog for its human.  To think that a human companion should love us as unreservedly as a dog is unreasonable.  And to forsake a human companion in favour of a canine companion because of the difference in the way a human loves, is ludicrous.  And I might add, that the friend who pointed out to me the un-conditionality of a dog’s love made it clear that he was not suggesting a dog’s love as a substitute for a human’s love.  Rather, he was pointing out the appeal of dog ownership.  That it comes with the ‘fringe benefit’ of that unconditional love.  Which is something that, even though we should not expect it of one another, still tugs at the heartstrings.

          So no matter how strong the appeal of unconditional love might be, we should not expect it of one another.  What we should expect of those whom we love and who love us, is a degree of forbearance.  We can and should expect to be cut some slack at times by those who know our good and not-so-good moments.  That’s something far different from unconditional love.

          As always, thank you so much for your feedback and for caring enough to dialogue with me!  Shabbat shalom! 

Stuff Doesn’t Just Happen: A Drash for Parashat Ekev, Friday 15 August 2014

This week, Clara and I attended an interesting seminar on conflict resolution.  It’s something I wish we’d taken four months ago!  The truth is that anytime you learn something new about conflict resolution, it’s too late.  After all, our lives are essentially a string of conflicts.  There’s always one that just passed.  On the other hand, conflict resolution skills are always timely.  This, because there’s always another conflict around the corner!  So you can’t win.  But on the other hand, you always win.  Makes perfect sense, yes??!

          So we sat in this seminar all day Tuesday.  And we didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know.  But it’s always good to confirm things you do already know.  To be reminded.  Because in the business of living, it is easy to forget truths that we’ve already learned.

          One thing that’s easy to forget is the rule of causation.  That is, that things don’t just happen.  There’s always a cause.  Sometimes multiple causes.  But things don’t happen in a vacuum.  There’s always a proximate cause.

          This rule causes us no small amount of discomfort.  Because when stuff happens to us, we don’t like to trace it back to its source.  That’s because, the source is often – usually – ourselves!  Oh, I don’t mean that bad things happen because we’re necessarily bad people.  I’m not saying that we intend for bad stuff to happen.  I’m only saying that bad things don’t just happen.  No more than good things just happen.  To every event, there’s a proximate cause.

          Our sacred literature is full of causative statements.  You know:  if-then kind of statements.  If ‘A,’ then ‘B.’ Some scholars, pointing out that the Book of Deuteronomy in particular is full of such statements, call this causative mindset, Deuteronomistic Theology.  Now that’s a mouthful.  All it means that this particular book of the Torah, consisting of Moses’ swan song sermons, repeatedly uses causative reasoning.

This week’s Torah portion, Ekev, starts out with one.  If only you keep these laws, safeguarding and keeping them, then Hashem will keep the covenant and love with which He made an oath to your ancestors. Moshe Rabbeinu is asserting that God’s love is not unconditional.  At least, God’s favour is not.  It’s quite conditional.  If we keep God’s laws, then God will keep the covenant of Moses.  If so, the corollary is also true:  If we do not keep God’s laws, then God will not keep the covenant with us.  Does that make you uncomfortable?  I’m guessing that it does some of you hearing or reading these words, because we have been conditioned to understand that the truest love is unconditional.

Our Christian neighbours after all, believe in a God who loved humanity so unconditionally that he sacrificed Himself to let us live despite our iniquities.  If that’s not unconditional love, I don’t know what is.  Okay, it isn’t really unconditional.  You have to believe it in order to benefit from it.  But belief is a small price to pay for a love that is given otherwise without condition – not based at all on the merit of the recipient.  No wonder there are more than two billion Christians in the world, and a ‘paltry’ eighteen million or so Jews!  How can a theology that offers unconditional love not have great appeal??!

Okay, I’ve simplified to make a point!  Not all Christians believe in unconditional love, but many do.  And they will tell you that a child’s mentality in this regard is a good thing.  It makes it easier to achieve salvation.  Being adult-like is an impediment.  But that’s not the Jewish way of looking at it.

Dennis Prager has some choice words to offer about the concept of unconditional love.  He tells us that unconditional love, such as that of a mother towards her child, is something worthy only of a child.  When we grow up, we should outgrow the notion that anybody owes us unconditional love.  An adult should be ready to earn someone else’s love.  An adult should understand that love is not free.

That’s a bitter pill for some to swallow.  Let’s be honest; there are adults who are little more than overgrown children.  And one of the hallmarks of such a man-child or woman-child is a need to be loved unconditionally.  But Deuteronomistic Theology informs us that God’s love is not unconditional.  God’s love transcends that of any of us, is capable.  So if God does not love unconditionally, then we should certainly not expect unconditional love from one another.  We should be ready to earn someone else’s love.

 So life is causative.  Not always in the deliberate sense; that’s self-evident.  If the young woman hadn’t left the house exactly when she did, she would not have been killed by that drunk driver.  She didn’t consciously decide to be killed by that drunk.  But on the other hand, it didn’t just happen.  There was a chain of events that caused the tragedy.  Likewise, a chain of events and decisions causes virtually everything that happens to us.  That doesn’t mean that we should blame the victim.  Perhaps, it means that we should not be so quick to see ourselves as victims everytime something goes wrong.

This causative effect is especially true in human relations.  It is unrealistic to expect everybody to act rationally all the time.  If you do expect this, you’re setting yourself up for deep disappointment!  Because we human animals tend to be emotionally driven.  Emotions are not necessarily irrational.  Rather, they’ve a-rational; they simply have nothing to do with rationality!  But despite this a-rational aspect of human interactions, we can still have a lot of control regarding outcomes.  Emotional responses cause us to say and do things that we later regret.  So when someone thus responds to us emotionally, we can let it pass and not take offence.  Because often, no offence was meant.

From this week’s Torah reading, we can understand the causative nature of just about everything in life.  But from our understanding of human nature, we can choose to not hold others to an absolute standard.  Because if we do, we will constantly be in conflict with others.  Some conflict is inevitable.  But some, at least some, can be averted.  If we, in understanding human nature, will just cut others a bit of slack.  Think about it.  Shabbat shalom.

The ‘Problem’ of Prayer: A Drash for Parashat Ve’etchanan, Friday 8 August 2014

As Clara and I were preparing to move to Australia over two years ago, a colleague phoned to welcome us in advance.  This colleague was an American rabbi who had also come to Australia to work some years before.  Offering some insights as to what makes Australia a bit different from the USA, she told me: “Australians are more direct than Americans.”

          “That’s good,” I told her. “I’m married to an Israeli, so if there’s one thing I’m used to, it’s directness.”

          “Well,” my colleague hesitated. “It isn’t directness like in Israelis.”

          Now there’s directness, and there’s elliptical-ness, and not knowing how to differentiate between ‘types’ of directness unless she meant degrees, I filed the information away and proceeded to fly to Australia.  The truth is that it didn’t matter much to me what she meant.  Anybody who knows me, knows that I’m direct and that I prize directness to the point of preaching frequently that it is a virtue.  In the communications ‘trenches,’ there is no greater gift you can give someone else than being direct and letting them always know where you stand.  There is no greater gift…and no greater example when, like me, you’re a teacher and one who aims to inspire people to behave in specific ways.

          In my time here in Australia, I’ve come to wonder exactly what my colleague was talking about.  I haven’t found you Aussies to be very direct at all.  And when I’m direct with you, you sometimes find that more than a little off-putting.  But I don’t mention this to criticize you or your lovely country, only to point out an important truth about what is considered desirable and what isn’t here.  And directness certainly falls into the latter category.

          If interpersonal communication can be problematic, how about communication with the Deity?  We Jews, generally, are challenged in that area.  As you know because I’ve told you ad infinitum – or perhaps ad nauseum – that I spent years of my rabbinate working as a military chaplain, in the trenches of interfaith dialogue and cooperation.  So I’m very familiar with the different approaches of Jews, and Christians, to prayer.  To Jews, prayer is like a song, with a set script and melody.  To Christians it’s like a talk in bed.  The song can be uplifting, but it is seldom spontaneous or personal.  The talk in bed is spontaneous and personal to a fault.  And it can be uplifting as well.

          In the fullness of our tradition both kinds of prayer are important, but we Jews largely find the spontaneous kind problematic.  For some of us, it is a lack of belief in a Deity who is listening for, and hearkening to us.  For others, it’s simply embarrassment with a practice that doesn’t feel natural.  To others, it perhaps seems inauthentic, something that alludes to our neighbours’ faiths.

          I addressed this once in a pamphlet I wrote for the Jewish Welfare Board.  I called it The ‘Problem’ of Prayer, and in it I addressed that various kinds of prayer – including spontaneous prayer – are completely authentic to the Jewish tradition.  We would therefore do well to make ourselves comfortable with all the kinds of prayer.  And not just liturgical prayer.

          The JWB rejected the pamphlet because of the title, despite that I’d placed the word ‘problem’ in quotes.  But never mind.  It doesn’t change the fact that prayer is indeed a ‘problem’ to many Jews.  A needless problem.

          It wasn’t a problem to Moshe Rabbeinu – to Moses our Teacher.  This week’s Torah portion begins in the third chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy with the words:  ואתחנן אל-י**ה באת ההיא לאמור; “At that time I pleaded with G-d, saying…”  The word ve’etchanan, ‘I pleaded,’ or ‘I cried out’ is the key.  Moses is telling the people that he was unembarrassed to cry out to G-d in his anguish.

          Most of us have mastered the ability to express a range of emotions.  When we meet someone who has not, who is as I say, ‘emotionally flat,’ we feel uncomfortable.  It’s very true that we can e too emotional, and many of us are at times.  But for better or worse – and largely for better – we’ve learned to express the various emotions that we cycle through in the course of our lives.

          We would do well to approach prayer, our communication with G-d, in a similar manner.  To learn to express different emotions as we approach the Deity.  To soar with elation when elation is what we’re experiencing.  To offer quiet reflection when we’re feeling reflective.  To be hopeful when we’re hoping for something.  And yes, to cry out in anguish when our souls are anguished.  Whether it’s because of a relationship gone sour, or the death of a close companion, or frustration over a personal failure.  The entire range of emotions are entirely valid expressions of our hearts when we approach G-d.  And we can be spontaneous.  A script is wonderful.  But we can go ‘off-script.’ It doesn’t make us Christian, or even Christian-like.  Our ancient master taught us so long ago, and the Torah recorded for posterity, this truth.  Sometimes, it is difficult to express the full range of emotions when we’re limited by a script.  It is not a bad thing to be ready, when your inner spirit warrants it, to cry out in anguish.  To do so is, after all, quite cathartic.  And catharsis is very healthy.

          Directness in the way we communicate with one another is a good thing.  It is always good to know where the other stands.  To not have to guess.  In communicating with G-d, it is good also.  It is good to be able to express ourselves directly, and in the full range of emotions, and spontaneously as well as according to a script.  Some would pooh-pooh the need to do so by invoking the principle that G-d knows what’s in our hearts.  Perhaps He does.  But to express a wide range of emotions in our prayer is catharsis of the highest, and most constructive degree.  Let’s take Moses’ example to heart.  Shabbat shalom.