Counting the Omer: Sunday night, 1 May 2016/24 Nissan 5776

Today is Day Two of Week Two of the Omer.  That is Day Nine of the Omer.   The theme of the Week is Relationships.

If you know me, you know that one of my all-time favourite movies is My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  (The sequel, My Big Fat Greek Wedding II, not so much; it was just okay.)  Clara and I can recite much of the dialogue from MBFGW.  When we first saw it, we barely stopped laughing between the film’s start and its finish.  The movie was well-done to be sure, one of those low-budget sleepers that ends of succeeding wildly.  But what brought it alive for us, was that they could have substituted ‘Jewish’ for ‘Greek,’ and then it would have just about told the story of our – Clara’s and mine – meeting, courtship and marriage.  Because, even though we’re both Jews-by-Birth, our family backgrounds are so different as to make use seem, at times, like the unlikely couple of ‘Ian Miller’ and ‘Toula Portokalos.’  Ever since we saw MBFGW the first time, Clara has taken to referring to my family as ‘toast family,’ and there’s more than a germ of truth in that.

          Being from such different backgrounds – I Ashkenazi, American, small family; Clara Sephardi, Israeli, big family to name a few aspects – I’ve tried to broker my marital experience into a perspective that can help others in ‘mixed marriages’ find clarity.  I’ll never forget the first time I had an Aha! moment that this might be a unique calling for me.  A couple came to me for counselling when I was stationed in Germany.  They had asked specifically for me, because I was his unit chaplain and he had heard me speak at a Commander’s Call.  So the couple came into my office, and they were an ‘unlikely’ couple:  he a white Southerner, she an African-American.  They unloaded their respective stories and my first thought was:  Yes!  I can help this couple!  I have an insight to share with them!  And it was based in the differences between their respective cultural backgrounds.

          One of their presenting issues had to do with family.  He didn’t understand her rejection of his ‘calling the shots’ about minor issues.  The difference stemmed from the authority structure in their respective cultures.  Southern white culture is somewhat patriarchal.  The husband and father as the head of the household doesn’t feel compelled to consult his wife on every small decision.  He just decides, and acts.  African-American families have a very different feel.  Decisions are much more consultative; nothing is decided until everybody – and usually not just the husband and wife, but members of the extended family as well – has had his or her say.  So she couldn’t understand why he would decide something -  no matter how small – without first discussing it.  For her part, she had a hard time accepting that they include his parents – for example, in time spent visiting with them – since they had not embraced her very warmly and made little effort to reach out to them.  I explained to her that among white Southerners, respect for elders is not as conditional as for African-Americans.  Her husband’s parents didn’t have to earn his love and respect.  It was just a given.

          This couple had additional issues, with which I struggled to help them.  But on the cultural divide I had the clarity to share with them, that helped them to understand and transcend part of the conflict between them.  I suppose that, as a Jew operating in a non-Jewish milieu, and as an Ashkenazi married to a Sephardi, I had enough personal experience with cultural divides to understand them.

          This is a theme that I see playing itself out over and over in marriages.  In our highly mobile societies, we don’t mix only with others of similar cultural backgrounds.  This, unlike the Jews of Adass Yisroel in Melbourne, a community of the Belz Chassidic sect that was the subject of a recent installment of the program Untold Australia on the SBS channel.  (If you didn’t catch it, you can see it here:  http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/665379395693/strictly-jewish-untold-australia)  Members of that community mix almost not at all with Jews outside their own sect, much less non-Jews.  But for the rest of us, in the workplace, in the university, in our neighbourhoods…we mix freely and often comfortably with people from cultural backgrounds quite different from our own.  This is the biggest driver behind the phenomenon of Jews ‘intermarrying’ or, as it is more often referred to here in Australia, ‘out-marrying.’  But even when a Jew marries another Jew, as I found in my personal life, there are often different cultural cues that conspire to provide for difficult moments.

          Remember West Side Story, and the attraction between Anglo Tony and Hispanic Maria?  What did the other Puerto Rican girls say when they found out?  There was a song in the score:  Stick to your own kind / One of your own kind!  I never thought about it as marching orders, but once a friend repeated that line from the song in telling me about his first, failed marriage to a woman very a very different cultural background – he an Italian Catholic, she a WASP – and his more successful second marriage to a woman from a background more similar to his.  It’s true that marriage is a difficult enough proposition that a couple might find it easier to succeed in the relationship if they do share the same cultural cues.  But it’s not a guarantee of success, nor is it required for success.  Because at the end of the day, the important element is to understand, respect, and accept one another’s unique set of cultural assumptions and find a modus vivendi through them.

          An inability to see and navigate the cultural differences between them, is a very frequent source of marital tension.  It is especially difficult, because the principals often can’t see the source of the differences.  They can’t articulate that they stem from different cultural backgrounds.  But they are important.  The specific culture out of which each of us came, is a complex composite of race, religion, region, education, and other elements.  It is difficult to define and characterise.  But it is an essential part of who each one of us is.  If we could better recognize our own cultural cues, and accept our partner’s, we would have far less marital strife in the world.  Let’s get to work!   

Counting the Omer: Saturday night, 30 April 2016/23 Nissan 5776

Today is Day One of Week Two of the Omer.  That is Day Eight of the Omer.   The theme of the Week is Relationships.

A couple of days ago, Clara and I sneaked out on a weekday afternoon to go to the movies.  Okay, it wasn’t really sneaking.  Since I work all kinds of hours when others are at leisure, I don’t begrudge myself a couple of hours at the movies when I’m caught up on the highest-priority work.

          So we went to the movies and saw Mother’s Day, a romantic comedy of very recent release.  (Obviously, with Mother’s Day coming up in one week, the film’s release was deliberately timed.)  I hope I’m not calling my masculinity into question when I reveal that I like this genre of films, commonly referred to as Chick Flicks.  And believe me, I like ‘bloke-y’ films enough:  military, espionage, and crime thrillers, for example.  But every now and then, I feel like a good cry in the anonymous darkness of a theatre!  And it turned out to be a very good flick…although with a cast featuring the likes of Julia Roberts, Jennifer Anniston, Kate Hudson and Hector Elizondo, that could have been predicted.

          The film is a series of vignettes with overlapping characters, all of whom are either related or good friends, built around the theme of making peace with mothers and motherhood.  The first sub-plot was divorced mother, Jennifer Anniston, confronted with her-ex-husband’s new wife’s desire to bind with Anniston’s children – the new wife’s step-children.  Anniston’s character has cast her eyes upon the eminently eligible Jason Sudeikis, whose character is a retired USMC Master Sergeant widowed after his wife, also a Marine, was killed in Afghanistan.  And Jason’s character is not ready to let go, despite the urging of his two daughters and various friends.  The next sub-plot is a mother and famous author and media personality, Julia Roberts, who as a teenage mother gave up her daughter for adoption, and her reunion with that daughter – Britt Robertson – whose research had revealed her mother’s identity.  Meanwhile the daughter, given her history (or lack thereof) with her mother, is reluctant to get married to her boyfriend, a budding comedian played by Jack Whitehall.  And then there’s Grey Nomad mother Margo Martindale, whose two grown daughters – Kate Hudson and Sarah Chalke – cannot bring themselves to tell her the truth about their lives:  one is married to an Indian doctor of whom her racist parents won’t approve, and the other is a lesbian.  Mom and Dad show up unexpectedly for Mother’s Day and find out the truth.

          As always happens in films of this genre, each of these conflicts works itself out – and all on Mother’s Day, hence the title.  If only life could be a romantic comedy!  But alas, it is not.  Real life, unfortunately, more often resembles a soap opera such as The Bold and the Beautiful.

          Anybody who follows my blogging know that I’ve developed a fascination with The Bold and the Beautiful.  Why would a Rabbi spend time watching such a show?  The initial attraction was that I see so many people in real life, acting like the characters in that show.  And the show’s writers are quite expert at weaving a plot where one character is stabbing someone in the back this week, then making peace with the aggrieved party, who then a week or two down the line stabs the same person – or someone else – in the back.  And the truth is that almost all the characters – with the possible exception of Quinn, who can be evil personified, are essentially good people who, as Clara would put it, listen to their hearts instead of their heads.  Like most people we know.  Whose roads to hell are paved with good intentions.

          That’s the nature of human life.  As Dennis Prager, the American Jewish commentator who brings an unusual clarity to such things likes to declare:  The majority of evil in the world is caused by people with good intentions.  And believe me, I hear it all the time after someone is confronted with the fact that they hurt someone else, sometimes spectacularly:  I meant well.

          It’s good to mean well, but it is equally important to do good.  We charge through life, not thinking things through, causing hurt and pain to others, because we didn’t think through our actions first.  And unfortunately, in so many interpersonal dramas we do not somehow manage to transcend the conflict as all the characters in Mother’s Day did.  Instead, these conflict fester, ruling our lives because pride keeps us from finding a way to go beyond them.  It’s a tragedy on a global scale, because in a world with no shortage of defeats, hurts, and dangers, it would be so wonderful to be able to take refuge in our relationships:  family, partner, friends.

          We have entered the second week of the Counting of the Omer, our seven-week journey from liberation to revelation.  As we have re-enacted our liberation from the Egyptian Pharaoh’s slavery and the constricted air of Egypt. Let us continue to prepare our hearts for the re-enactment of our receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai.  I propose that, as the next segment of that journey, we think hard about relationships:  how we enter into them, how we nurture them, and how we destroy them.  Somewhere between two and three million Jews stood at the foot of Mt Sinai at the Big Event some 3,500 year ago.  Three million individuals would not have been able to receive the Torah.  But a nation, of one mind and spirit rated the chance to possess and protect it.  In order to find unity with other Jews, it is important first to find peace with those closest to us.  May we find success and happiness in this endeavour.  A good week to all!   

           

Counting the Omer: Friday night, 29 April 2016/22 Nissan 5776

Today is Day Seven of Week One of the Omer.  That is Day Seven of the Omer.  The theme of the Week ending, is Slavery.  The theme of the Week beginning, is Relationships.

Last week, my senior colleague from Sydney, Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple shared some of the thoughts of the Rav – that is, Rabbi Joseph B. Solovietchik, of blessed memory – on slavery.  The Rav wrote about the difference between ‘juridic’ slavery – that imposed by a political system – and ‘typological’ slavery which is moral or intellectual, or both.  It got me to thinking about the many forces from within and without, that conspire to enslave us today.  In the slavery of limited horizons and possibilities.  In the slavery of corrosive behavior.  In the slavery of jealousies and entitlement mindset.  In so many ways, many of us live our lives bounded by slaveries of our own or others’ design.

It reminds me of how Rabbi Simcha Bunim suggested that every person walk through life with a slip of paper in each of two pockets.  On one slip would be written:  For me the world was created.  And on the other:  I am dust and ashes.  The point is balance; one would have a ready encouragement for when the world seems to beat one down.  And an antidote to thinking It’s all about me.  A more contemporary source, and forgive my inability to cite the author’s name, offered a counterpoint:  Drop the slip of paper with ‘I am dust and ashes.’  There is already enough in modern life that conspires to drag us down, to destroy our spirit.

I see a lot of truth in the latter statement.  In so many ways, contemporary life seems designed to drag us down, to kill our spirit, to remind us constantly that we are but dust and ashes.  And that’s why I’ve chosen to write on the things that tend to drag us down – to make us feel as if we were still slaves – and hope that in doing so you will find some sense of liberation just as you do from the Passover Seder.

I’m going to end the week by providing my final choice of the ‘Top Seven Contemporary Slaveries,’ and segue into my series for the second week of Sefirat Ha-Omer.  We are slaves to broken and dysfunctional relationships that we feel powerless to heal.

Why are so many relationships dysfunctional?  Why are so many families full of members who won’t talk to one another for years, who profess to hate one another?  Of grown children who did not grow up with the advantage of having two participating parents because, first, they divorced, and then after divorcing couldn’t find a modus vivendi for putting their grievances toward one another aside to work together and raise strong healthy children – the children they had made together?  Why do those who should band together as a bulwark to keep some sanity in their shared lives, struggle with one another all their lives?  Why are we dragging one another down, rather than supporting one another?  I could ask the same questions with regard to the wider circles to which we belong:  workplace, organisations, and congregations.  But let’s start the enquiry at the most basic level:  that of family.

And of course the answer is…it’s complicated.  If there was a ready and simple answer to these complex issues, then we would run with it; we would accept it, put it into effect in our lives, and live happily ever after.  Right?  Well…maybe.

The root of the problem is not really so complicated.  But the solution – acceptance of others as they are, stepping back from one’s own ego to work with them, and learning to give and compromise – that’s difficult, and perhaps complicated as well.

 How is it possible to train oneself to find such solutions?  How is it even possible to learn to recognise the problems?  When I was an Air Force chaplain, probably two-thirds to three-quarters of my time and energy went into listening to people’s problems and trying to help them clarify them and find solutions.  I hadn’t received any particularly useful training, that I would be able to do so.  The closest thing I received was a brief mentorship by a senior colleague who declared concerning the human relations aspects of the rabbinate:  It’s all sechel. (common sense)  Well, that was helpful!  On the other hand, it is important to recognise that it isn’t rocket science, that we should throw up our hands and say the heck with it.

But as I waded deeper into the mire of human relationships, out of necessity as that’s the help that people wanted from me, I realised that that – people just throwing up their hands and saying the heck with it – is really at the root of the problem.  We feel incompetent to deal with our lives, our relationships, and our destinies.  So we lash out at one another, because when we do, we don’t feel so powerless and helpless.

Therefore, Dear Reader, I am going to spend the next segment of Sefirat Ha-Omer writing about human relationships and things we can do to make them better.  I’ll share insights that I’ve gained from the experience of being presented with the same kinds of issues over and over, by different individuals in different circumstances, from different cultural backgrounds.  Some of what I present, may give you an Aha!  moment, some might resonate, and some might make you disagree.  It doesn’t matter.  My job is not to provide solutions for all your problems.  My job is to get you thinking.  So let’s embark together on a tour of the battlefield of relationships, and see what we can learn…and apply.  Shabbat shalom and Chag Sameach! 

Counting the Omer: Thursday night, 28 April 2016/21 Nissan 5776

Today is Day Six of Week One of the Omer.  That is Day Six of the Omer.  The theme of the Week is Slavery.

         

          As we’ve progressed through this week and I’ve offered daily thoughts on the various ways that we are enslaved even today, even as we celebrate our liberation from the slavery of Egypt three-and-a-half millennia ago, I’ve received some really good and thoughtful feedback from you, my readers.  Thank you!

          Tonight I’d like to write about the slavery that results from entitlements and the entitlement mindset.  I’d have to say that this is one of the most prevalent types of slavery in our societies today.  It permeates the social fabric in the USA, and I find it perhaps even more so in Australia.

          In my lifetime, as well as those of many of you, our respective societies have been transformed in many ways.  And not all those ways are bad.  But the entitlement mentality is something that has not served our countries well.  Both Americans and Aussies have traditionally been known, among the peoples of the world, for exemplifying a self-sufficient, ‘can do’ spirit.  In both my native land and the one where I’ve lived for the past four years, I find that the person who operates from a mindset of self-sufficiency, is exceptional.

          Charles Murray, a sociologist and political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, shows how the Modern Welfare state destroys human community and human initiative by providing guaranteed income and benefit for those who fail.  He coined the Law of Unintended Rewards:  Any social transfer increases the net value of being in the condition that prompted the transfer.

I have to say that I very much see this law at work on both sides of the Pacific.  The Welfare State encourages pregnancies by teenage girls and young women who do not yet have the maturity and responsibility to raise children.  Why not make babies?  I get a stipend from the government for each one I make.  And the welfare state has surely exacerbated the problem of absentee fathers.  Why worry about whether the father of my children is around?  If he’s absent, I get more money from the government.  If he’s around, he might contribute but I have to put up with him.  And, lest you think I’m singling out unmarried mothers for vilification, I also know a number of able-bodied men who deliberately stay well underemployed so as not to put a dent in their Centrelink benefits.  The ease of applying for, and receiving benefits makes it an attractive alternative to working in minimum wage and similar jobs.  It makes it far too easy for so many to wallow in their sense of hopelessness rather than reach for better things.  It kills enterprise and weakens our respective countries. 

It is not considered polite to criticise the welfare state, and even now I’m sure that there are those reading my words who think me selfish for singling out the most vulnerable in society for criticism…or something like that.  But I keep thinking about Maimonides and his Eight Levels of Tsedaka, or charity.  The highest of the eight levels is to empower someone, by teaching them a new skill, employing them, or giving them a loan to start a business.  In other words, to give them a boost to make them self-sufficient.  Back in the 1990’s in America, under President Bill Clinton with more than a nudge by a Republican Congress which was inspired to a large degree by the writings of Charles Murray, a series of welfare reforms were enacted that did just these things.  Sadly, over the decades since, things have reverted.  Today in the USA, almost half of all citizens receive public assistance – not including old-age pensions which in America are more like an annuity than an outright entitlement.

The main problem with the Welfare State is not that it comes out of taxpayers’ pockets – although that is bad enough – but that it kills initiative, makes relationships extraneous and weakens family structures.  The superficial attractiveness of receiving benefits, creates multi-generation assistance recipients.  It is a hole, out of which it is difficult to dig.  It represents a modern form of slavery, robbing whole classes of citizens of the joy that comes from making one’s own way in life.

The entitlement mindset has built a societal ethos where it is the rare young person who wonders how he or she might find a satisfying and meaningful life’s work.  Instead, legions of school leavers are only wondering how to maximize their social benefits, to get as much of a free ride as possible.  In doing so, they don’t recognize that they are making their ultimate happiness more and more elusive.

Clara and I have always tried to impress on our children that nobody owes them anything.  Their futures, their happiness, their ultimate satisfaction from a life of meaningful work, is completely in their own hands.  We hope that we are not just two feeble voices, not heard above the siren song of entitlements.  How we hope our children will live a life in the freedom of work and initiative, freed from the bondage of entitlements and the slavery of thinking that society owes them.   

Counting the Omer: Wednesday night, 27 April 2016/20 Nissan 5776

Joel Edgarton and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby, 2013

Today is Day Five of Week One of the Omer.  That is Day Five of the Omer.  The theme of the Week is Slavery.

I want to thank you, my readers, for the feedback you’ve been giving me on this series of thoughts.  Even when you correct me!  Someone wrote last night to point out that Barry Bonds must have played for the San Francisco Giants, not the 49ers as I wrote, since the latter is the city’s Football team!  And of course, she’s correct!  So I know that I goofed.  But I also know that another person took the time to read my offering.  Maybe I should announce a contest to find the Rabbi’s mistake for the day…

So yesterday I wrote about the slavery of low self-expectations and asserted that it is us and our lack of self-confidence, more than anything else, that limits us.  And I used as an example, the competition between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, in the 1998 Baseball season, to set a new Homerun record.

What I didn’t mention yesterday – because after all I need to leave enough to write about for the rest of the week! – is that we also find ourselves succumbing to the slavery of living up to others’ expectations.  This, rather than forming our own self-expectations based on our own values.  I will write later in the Omer weeks about values and how we might make sure that ours are sound.  For now, suffice it to say that it is important to have sound values that truly reflect our philosophical underpinnings.  And that the lofty self-expectations that we will now all set after reading Rabbi Don’s eloquent appeal yesterday, will reflect our own values and not someone else’s.

I say this, because one cannot assume that the popular values that others go for, are truly worthy values.

I’ve already mentioned the pitfall of lusting after stuff.  Material goods.  Shiny objects that we think will bring us happiness.  So you already know that I completely reject that notion:  stuff will bring you no happiness whatsoever.  But that doesn’t mean that I’m anti-stuff.  Believe me, I like stuff as much as the next guy.  That I possess very little stuff, doesn’t indicate that I don’t like having stuff.  Rather, it reflects that, over the years, I’ve tended to choose other things over stuff.  Because thank G-d, I learned at a relatively young age that stuff as much as you might enjoy it, does not lead to happiness.

So, when I assert that it is our own lack of self-confidence that is the biggest contributor to our not finding success,  I don’t mean that you should look at everybody who has not achieved wealth, everybody who does not have a higher degree, or a lucrative and prestigious occupation, everybody who is not at the top of his field, and think:  There’s one who lacks self-confidence,  And, if you’re the one about whom any of the above can be said, I certainly do not mean that you should crawl under a rock lest everybody around you see you for the failure that you ‘are.’

Rather, each one of us should sit down and decide what measure of success our own values would demand.  And then reach for that!  If you were a professional Baseball player, chances are that setting a Homerun record would be a no-brainer for a goal.  But for most of the rest of us, our personal goals might not be so obvious.  And we should not enslave ourselves to work for what someone else’s goal might be.

I don’t know what would make you happy.  But I can easily predict that, if you busy yourself working to achieve someone else’s goals, or the goals that you think you aught to pursue, that is not the road to happiness.  And any success that you achieve in pursuing goals not your own, that you don’t buy into deep in the kishkes, will be a fleeting success.  As success that brings little satisfaction.  As proof, I know many individuals – and I’m sure you do, too – who have achieved success by conventional measure.  Perhaps fabulous success!  And yet, are thoroughly miserable people.  No need to name names; everybody knows somebody who fits the description.

Yes, it is important not to succumb to the slavery of self-imposed limitations.  But it is also important not to succumb to the slavery of working our tails off for goals that are not out own.

Counting the Omer: Tuesday night, 26 April 2016/19 Nissan 5776

Today is Day Four of Week One of the Omer.  That is Day Four of the Omer.  The theme of the Week is Slavery.

I live in the land where Cricket, Aussie Rules Football and Rugby Football are king.  But I come from the land where American Football, which Aussies call ‘Gridiron,’ is king…and Baseball is the national pastime.  But I imagine that even those with little knowledge of the game of Baseball, know what I’m talking about when I invoke the word ‘Homerun.’

As the Baseball season of 1998 began to wind down, a competition heated up between Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs, and mark McGwire of the St Louis Cardinals.  Both had had outstanding seasons in terms of batting, and both were poised to break the record for the number of Homeruns hit in a single season.  The record at the time, 61, had been set by Roger Maris 37 years before.  In the end McGwire won, setting the new record of 70.  But Sosa also bested Maris’ record with 66.  And here’s the rub:  McGwire’s record stood only three years, until 2001, when Barry Bonds of the San Francisco 49ers hit 73 in one season.  So what happened to cause the sudden breaking, and then breaking again, of the record which had stood so long?  Was some new bat and/or ball technology brought online, that made players hit the ball farther?  Did someone develop a new technique that only had to be exploited, to turn Baseball players into Homerun machines?  Was the season extended to more games, to give players an easier shot at breaking the record?

None of the above.  It was pure psychology.  Someone had set the bar higher, and others stepped up to match, and beat, it.

When someone succeeds beyond people’s wildest imaginations, there is a tendency to attribute it to some unfair advantage.  Someone made a fortune because he first inherited a fortune.  Or cheated.  Or exploited others.  Someone succeeded at Harvard because his family’s connections ensured it.  The pop idol made it because her father was a pop star.  The eminent Rabbi came from a line of eminent rabbis.  It is so easy for the rest of us who lurch through life, having to be satisfied to make enough to pay the bills, or to be a so-so student at a minor university, be satisfied entertaining patrons in pubs, or ministering to only a handful of Jews, to cry ‘foul.’  And many do succumb to that pitfall.  Those of us who manage to achieve only marginal success – by popular measure – often use the canard that the system is ‘rigged,’ to justify to ourselves and others our lack of achievement.

Look, life is not fair at the end of the day.  Everybody does not have the same chance at the Big Score.  But in reality, the biggest factor that limits us is our own lack of confidence.  We wallow in the chains of the slavery of low self-esteem.

Sosa and McGwire began racking up the Homeruns in 1998, not because they suddenly found themselves to have superior talents.  Rather, the success of each fed off the success of the other.  Each looked at the other and said to himself, I can do that, too!  And off they went.

Most of us can never reach that I can do that, too moment.  Instead, we look at others’ success – in whatever area – and say, I could do that, too…if.  If I’d had an inheritance to get me started.  If I’d had successful parents.  If I’d had the family connections to get into the ‘right’ schools.  And so on.  So we make ourselves slaves to what we don’t have, instead of stepping up to the plate with what we do have, and using it to the best of our ability.

I promised you a week’s worth of thoughts on slavery.  I can hear some of you, out there, thinking:  He’s using ‘slavery’ as a very broad metaphor.  If that’s you thinking that, to you I plead guilty.  But think about it; so much in life is about what we believe possible.  If we refuse to believe, and therefore don’t give it a shot, we limit ourselves to our own truncated self-expectation of ourselves.  Yeah, sure, others may had helped to plant that low expectation.  Lots of low achievers relate being told, repeatedly, by multiple parties, that they’d never amount to anything.

The Rabbis seem to endorse the use of the Exodus narrative as a call to develop higher self-esteem.  They point out that Mitzrayim, the Hebrew name for Egypt, is linguistically related to tzar, meaning narrow.  Being in a ‘narrow place’ was an impediment to the Israelites’ taking flight and achieving their true potential.  But it wasn’t only the physical separation from the place that was needed in the end.  Because they could not shake their slave mentality and embrace freedom, only their children – born in the purer air of the desert – would be given the go-ahead to constitute themselves as masters of their land and destiny.

Of all the slaveries that beset us in our day, the slavery of low self-esteem, and therefore low self-expectation, is one of the most insidious.  Isn’t it time to shake it, to reach for our potential?  Let’s all make that a goal.  And hit some Homeruns.

Counting the Omer: Sunday night, 24 April 2016/16 Nissan 5776

Today is Day Three of Week One of the Omer.  That is Day Three of the Omer.  The theme of the Week is Slavery.

For the past two days, I’ve been talking about the forms of slavery that exist in our world today:  in other places in the world, and even right under our noses.  Whether or not we can actually see the people in bondage, we need to know that they’re there.  And we need to know that the choices we sometimes make – out of ignorance – can and do feed these forms of slavery.  It is said that ignorance is bliss, but if so now I’ve spoilt it for you!  Really, we should think more deeply whenever we spend our money.  Because people in Western countries such as Australia spend so much compared to people in so many other parts of the world, our personal spending has a big impact.  It may seem like a small gesture to refuse to buy products from certain sources, but it matters.

Yesterday I cited the Rav as identifying two types of slavery.  The first is ‘juridic,’ which includes the exploitation of workers in places like the Muslim world and China.  The slavery that results from the twin plagues of prostitution and drugs, whilst not connected to political or ideological causes, is similar.  The second kind of slavery that the Rav identified is that which he called, ‘typological.’  This is understood as the slavery that is largely self-imposed by our outright willingness to be enslaved, or else by the bad choices we make – or which others have made for us – and their consequences.

Once, when I was much younger and in the US Navy, I bought a VW camper van.  This was not way back when such were the vehicles of choice of ‘hippies’ and other counterculture types.  I’m not that old!  This was in the 1980’s, by which time the Westphalia conversions of the VW ‘Vanagon’ were a premium item.  It was something of an impulse purchase; we had talked briefly about looking into buying one, but had not researched it before we swung by the dealership to look them over.  Long story short, we found ourselves bowled over by the demonstration of its capabilities and drove home in a new Vanagon camper.  I won’t say how much it cost because it was less than people typically pay for a new car today, but when I contacted my credit union to obtain financing, they told me they could not possibly finance that amount given my salary and my housing costs at the time.  So we returned the van to the dealer, explaining that we hadn’t gotten the financing.  But that ‘wasn’t a problem,’ because the dealer had already gotten financing approved through a loan company he used.

Of course my credit union had made the right call; the monthly payment on the Vanagon was burdensome for us.  And then there was the matter of assignments.  I was, at the time, in Russian language school.  A few months after we purchased the van, I had to negotiate my next assignment after the school.  The assignments guy wanted to send me to a base in Japan; he said that given my rank and tenure in the service, that would be the best assignment for me from what he had available.  But I had to ask for something else, because personnel going to Japan could not ship personal vehicles due to stricter smog standards there.  I couldn’t sell the Vanagon without taking a big loss, and I couldn’t afford to live in Japan if I was making the monthly payments on the van.  After consultations, I decided to request an assignment to Turkey for one year with family separation because of the financial bind we had put ourselves in.  Now the tour in Turkey turned out to be an okay career move, but you can see my point; I had put myself into a form of slavery to the shiny object I had desired and bought on impulse without due consideration as to the consequences.

This was, comparatively speaking, a mild example of slavery to ‘stuff’; I know of people who have enslaved themselves to possessions to a much greater degree.  As an example, I know someone who bought a unit in the Washington, DC area in 2006 just when the real estate market there was incredibly overheated.  They bought the unit because housing prices were almost in a situation of hyper-inflation.  Not wanting to get left behind, this person bought with the smallest down payment they could get away with.  You can guess the rest of the story; the next year the bottom fell out of US housing due to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market – which had been one of the primary drivers of that inflationary spiral.  For years, this person has been making payments on a unit with negative equity.  And being employed, they are far better off than others who lost their jobs in the economic downturn that followed the housing bust.  Millions and millions – in the US and elsewhere in the world – have dug themselves financial holes because they bought more house than they could afford.

Buying on credit is a tender trap.  In a healthy economy, it keeps people employed because consumers can make purchases they would be able to otherwise.  But it is a severe pitfall for those who buy just because the finance department says ‘yes,’ but their personal financial condition cautions against it.  As a result, there is a pandemic of people whose debt level is dangerously high.  In Colorado, I was a director of a non-profit that offered help to families who were temporarily homeless because of loss of jobs, that sort of thing.  Almost without exception, they lost their homes because, instead of building themselves a cushion of savings when the money was coming in steadily, they spent and ran up debt.  So even a short-term loss of income, say for the couple of months it might take to find alternative work and get the paychecks coming in again, would find them out on the streets.

Becoming homeless because of one’s spending on stuff, and losing a job on top of that, is a worst-case scenario.  Many who never lose the roof over their heads still find their lives essentially ruled by the reality of crushing debt that remains long after the shiny objects of their lust have lost their lustre.  Few people plan to take on excessive debt.  But they are fooled into doing so by the mindset of ‘gotta have it now.’  And interestingly, this is a form of slavery that affects people across the socioeconomic spectrum.  I know of people who have been well-to-do, even exceptionally wealthy, who have ruined themselves financially because of their lust for prestigious homes, fine automobiles, yachts…sometimes all three, because lust for shiny, expensive objects often transcends one or two categories of such goods.

My unconsidered purchase of that shiny VW Westphalia Camper affected my finances for only a few years.  The payments eventually finished.  I was never in danger of bankruptcy because of it.  A lot of people dig themselves financial holes which take them far more years to get out of, if they ever do.  But for me, it was still an expensive, and important lesson that I have heeded since then.  And here’s the rub; because the van was such a financial drain, we never really enjoyed it!  Every trip seemed forced, like another rebuke for buying an object we simply couldn’t afford.

Slavery to stuff is real slavery in that it takes away our choices and can radically change the course of our lives.  When we think about the ways that slavery still besets us, we cannot ignore this form.

Counting the Omer: Sunday night, 24 April 2016/16 Nissan 5776

Today is Day Two of Week One of the Omer.  That is Day Two of the Omer.  The theme of the Week is Slavery.

Yesterday, in addressing this week’s topic of slavery, I wrote about something that we all know, but try to ignore.  That is, that actual, physical slavery every bit as dehumanizing as that endured by our ancestors in Egypt – and perhaps even more so – still exists today in places that are distant from where we live.  But these places – and therefore the slavery practiced there – are not entirely separate from our own, safer parts of the world.  This is because our everyday economic choices can, and often do, feed the economies that thrive on the exploitation of human beings that are the modern equivalent of slavery. 

My colleague from Sydney, Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple, citing Rav Joseph B Solovietchik, referred to this as ‘juridic’ slavery.  Rabbi Apple explains ‘juridic’ as caused by the political system of a country.  Of course, attributing it to politics alone misses the interplay between politics and various authoritarian or totalitarian philosophies.  It is two of the latter – Islam and Communism – that are at the root of much of the juridic slavery in today’s world.  These systems, which deny the autonomy of human beings, find it so easy to sanction the taking of human beings and turning them into chattel.

But there are forms of slavery that are not caused by politics or ideology.  And these forms are also rampant in our world today.  And one needn’t travel so far afield to see them at work.

The twin plagues of slavery of prostitution and the slavery of drug dependence, are often bedfellows that, together, conspire to enslave people who live in our own neighbourhoods.  They exist in our very communities, waiting to snatch our children into their rapacious grip.

Some call prostitution ‘the world’s oldest profession.’  But even referring to it as a profession, lends it a legitimacy that it does not deserve.  Likewise, the use of the phrase ‘sex workers’ instead of ‘prostitutes.’  ‘What does your daughter do for a living?’  ‘Oh, she’s a child care worker.  How about yours?’  ‘She’s a sex worker.’  No parent can imagine having such a matter-of-fact conversation regarding a child of theirs caught in the snare of prostitution.  The phrase ‘sex worker’ seems like an attempt to sugarcoat something in which there is not a shred of good.

The ugly truth is that most of the ‘workers’ in the ‘sex industry’ are there against their will.  They might be captives of pimps who keep them in their stables with violence or at least, credible threats of violence.  Or they might do what they do to feed a drug habit, in many cases created by a pimp getting them hooked on drugs to begin with, as a way of adding to his stable.  Or they might be runaways with no other skills to support them.  However the individual prostitute might have gotten into, or stays in the ‘business,’ it is pure evil.

Prostitution and drugs are often tied together in a Gordian knot.  But even drugs absent prostitution are a form of slavery.  The drug addict gets caught in the prison of addiction, which ultimately comes to rule his or her life.  At its worst, drug addiction becomes the very focus of one’s life.  At the very least, it provides an escape that prevents the addict or abuser from standing and dealing with his or her problems.  Losing oneself in the bliss of a high, is much easier and more immediate.

Some refer to prostitution and drugs as ‘victimless crimes,’ but believe me the victims of both litter our landscape.  So when someone ‘innocently’ makes use of a prostitute or buys illicit drugs, they are surely feeding a terrible business that causes incredible social rot.  And they are therefore guilty, as guilty as any other lawbreaker.

Even where and when prostitution and drugs are legal, they are not victimless vices.  Prostitution, where it submits to the regulation of the state, is legal here in Australia.  I believe that this should be a source of shame to Australians.  

No young woman, asked what she’d like to do in life, answers, ‘I’d like to be a prostitute.’  Illegal or legal, it is a trap that will ultimately bring her unhappiness.  And even the clients or ‘Johns,’ who think they’re making a simple transaction of a sum of money for a brief interlude of pure pleasure, are potentially destroying their marriages or, if not married, their ability to relate to women as whole human beings rather than as objects for their gratification.  For many lonely men, going to a prostitute can bring temporary relief.  (Yes, there are male prostitutes who service lonely women, but that is probably a statistically irrelevant proportion of all prostitution.)  But that does not mean that it is not destructive.

  And nobody grows up thinking how cool it would be to abuse, and become addicted to, illicit drugs.  They often serve as a balm for one’s failures and disappointments.  They provide a handy escape from ‘real life.’  But there’s no escape from drugs, except for the long, twisted, and difficult road to sobriety.

For this reason, we should resist the temptation to use illicit drugs, or to hire – or be – a prostitute.  The trap we would be setting for ourselves is not worth the short-lived gratification that either provides.  And in the greater scheme of things, both are the root causes of an incredible amount of social rot that undermines our societies.  Drugs and prostitution, either together or individually, represent a slavery no less dehumanizing as that, which the ancient Egyptians imposed upon the Israelites.

Counting the Omer: Saturday night, 23 April 2016/15 Nissan 5776

Today is Day One of Week One of the Omer.  That is Day One of the Omer.  The theme of the Week is Slavery.

As promised, I’m going to write about Slavery this Week.  After all, the whole point of Pesach is to remember that we were slaves.  And to rejoice that we no longer are slaves.  But you may know that there are still many people in the world who are held in actual, physical slavery.

Remember the 276 Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped a year ago last week?  57 managed to escape, meaning over 200 of them are still being held – assuming they’re still alive.  Last week on the first anniversary of their abduction, Boko Haram, the group that took them, released video of 15 of them.  So at least 15 are still alive.  But who knows what happened to the rest?

Boko Haram.  No, it’s not a 1980’s punk band.  The name means ‘Western Secular Education is Forbidden.’ Boko is actually West African for ‘falsehood.’  It is an Islamist terror group, a cousin of ISIS, operating in West Africa.  They took the schoolgirls, all Christians, as an expression of their contempt for any kind of education other than Islamic.  And, perhaps, to use as pawns in bargaining for freedom for some of their terror operatives who have been captured and jailed by the Nigerian government.

But Boko Haram – which is believed to be forcing at least some of the girls into marriages with their terrorist captors – is not the only force that is keeping alive the disgusting institution of slavery in the world.

I have seen it first-hand, in the Persian Gulf Emirates and Sultanates.  Yes, I’m talking about those ‘western-leaning,’ ‘moderate’ Muslim countries located on the south shore of the Persian Gulf.  Kuwait.  Qatar.  The United Arab Emirates.  Employers in these countries entice poor, low-skill workers in some of the most impoverished countries in the world – countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines – to sign on to work in their wealthy sheikdoms.  Then they exploit the hell out of them, paying them far less than promised, with working and living conditions far more arduous than promised, for longer terms than promised.  They snatch the workers’ passports, holding them in extended bondage that amounts to virtual slavery.  I saw it when I was deployed to the Persian Gulf to support Operation Iraqi Freedom.  The legions of workers doing the manual labour of various sorts on our US bases, were provided through contracts with local employers who sent exploited third-country nationals to work for us.  We US military personnel, separated from our homes and families to bring hope for the future to the people of Iraq, were forced to close our eyes to the enslavement of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and others to do the housekeeping for us.  When I once enquired as to why we accepted this status quo, I was told that the workers were paid and treated much better than those working in the cities of these sheikdoms.  That was little comfort.

I’ll give one more example of present-day slavery, this in a non-Islamic country so you don’t accuse me of fomenting Islamophobia.  The Red Army of the People’s Republic of China is considered to be running the world’s largest string of gulags peopled with slave labour for the producing of the many cheap products with which China floods the planet.  The factories are manned by Chinese who have been imprisoned for various crimes.  The army takes custody of them and put them to work for slave wages and under duress in the world’s largest operations of its sort.

My first thought for this time of counting and preparation then, is that whilst we are no longer slaves to Pharaoh, many others in the world are slaves to various pharaohs even in our time.  And the truth is that we can do something about it, to make sure that at least we as individuals are not supporting it.  Actually, we can do somethings. 

First, we can avoid flying on the airlines of these Gulf Emirates and Sheikdoms, and cease stopping over in their countries when we do, and stop raving about what wonderful Arab Disneyland’s they are.  I get it that it is difficult to fly to Europe from Australia without passing through these places, but it can be done.  Why would someone want to support slavery?  Fly via Singapore, or Bangkok instead.

Likewise, we can stop dreaming of visiting China, and taking a selfie atop the Great Wall, and avoid buying Chinese products.  I know, I know…so much of what we have on offer, comes from China!  But that’s our fault, every one of us who has bought for price alone rather than checking the source.  And even though China seems to have a monopoly on certain products, that monopoly is not absolute.  There are usually alternatives from countries that are not guilty of slavery.

In the same way, we can insist on Fair Trade coffee, tea, and chocolate among other commodities.  We can at least show as much compassion for exploited workers in the world’s poorest countries, as we do for caged hens and stalled cattle in our country.

You don’t often hear calls for ‘social action’ of this sort from me.  That’s just not the usual focus of my teaching.  But if we are truly grateful for our own liberation from slavery, how can we contribute, even indirectly to someone else’s?  Maybe it’s time to truly celebrate our passage from slavery to freedom by trying harder not to provide, through our economic choices, support for those places that still enslave others.  Chag sameach!  

Sefirat Ha-Omer: A Beginning. A Reflection for Erev Pesach, 22 April 2016.

Those close to me in organizational life, have surely heard my thoughts on the ‘tired old’ program.  That’s the program that came into being for a worthwhile purpose.  But over the years, it became ossified.  It became a fixed item on the organisation’s calendar.  As such, nobody even questioned that it would happen each year.  Over time, the beneficiaries of the program had lost their interest, because it had become so ossified as to not speak anymore to them.

          I’ll offer an example from my experience as a military chaplain.  One of the big outreaches of the US Air Force Chaplain Corps to the larger military community – that is, to the majority of those on any given installation who have no particular use for the weekly services and classes that are the chaplaincy’s stock in trade – is National Prayer Breakfast.  It’s a program that has been going on for decades.  But in recent years, it’s one that simply doesn’t generate much interest.  We chaplains would pour out energies into putting on this program.  The chaplain serving as the Project Officer would be ‘unofficially’ charged with out-doing whoever had the honour the previous year.  And he would try to do just that, by oganising such a spectacular program that members of the greater community would flock to it.  Every year, in the after-action meeting, we would wonder how to draw people in.  This, because in the end, most of the people who had been in the room were either representatives of the command, for whom attendance was more-or-less mandatory.  And the same faces we would see at our weekly services.  So every year, when the grousing would begin regarding not reaching the wider community, I would always suggest that we consider whether National Prayer Breakfast was just a tired, old program that was not serving anybody’s needs anymore.  When I did, colleagues would look at me as if I’d committed heresy.

          One more example, from a different sector of organisational life.  At the last congregation where I was ‘employed’ as Rabbi, here on the Gold Coast, the first Friday evening after the Annual General Meeting would be designated for the installation of the incoming Board of Management.  Every year, almost none of the board would show up to be so recognized.  And no more of the congregation would show up than any other Friday night.  But when I suggested that this service was not resonating with anyone anymore, it was as if I’d committed…heresy.

          So I guess I’m sensitive to the idea of questioning annual programs, to applying the test of relevance and, if they don’t pass, wondering whether they should continue.  To me, it is part of working smarter, rather than harder.

Last year, I posted a thought for each day during the Counting of the Omer.  It was a response to someone challenging me to do so.  And it was a challenge, to sit down and something that I thought would be helpful to a reader, day after day.  But in the end, I found that very few people read them.  I had feared from the start that people who received the e-mails unsolicited from me, would learn after several days to ignore.  Why then, am I back for a repeat performance this year?

One unsuccessful try does not prove that a program is unwanted.  If it isn’t a resounding success, it at least pays to try once more.  But to change the way one does it.  To search for a different formula, one that might resonate more deeply.

Last year, I themed my thoughts on the Sefirot, the emanations of the Divine that make up the Tree of Life.  I wasn’t being original; search for daily meditations through the Counting of the Omer, and you’ll find most of them are based on the Tree of Life.  That’s because of the linguistic association between Sefirot, Emanations, and Sefirat, ‘counting of.’ ‘Counting the Omer,’ in Hebrew, is ‘Sefirat Ha-Omer.’  The Sefirot are used to organize one’s meditations during the Sefirah.

I find that most Jews don’t find the Tree of Life helpful in their efforts to apprehend the wonder of G-d.  When I start explaining it, eyes glaze over.  It’s really esoteric.  And in saying that, I’m not asserting that it isn’t a brilliant system that is useful for some people.  I just find that, for more, it isn’t helpful.  As one of my students told me:  It makes my head explode.  I can imagine someone getting daily, unsolicited e-mails referencing these concepts, learning to ignore them.

That said, I do want to give the daily thought for the Omer another go.  The journey from Redemption to Revelation is just too important for me to ignore.  I’m doing it again this year, but I’m going to leave the Tree of Life aside.  Instead, I’m going to return to the themes that have been important in my rabbinate.  If it begins to sound like a valedictory, that’s okay.  One of the themes I’ll touch on along the way, is:  Live Like You Were Dying.  Similarly, one whose calling is to teach and inspire, should do so as if it were one’s last opportunity to do so.  If I did any less I would be, as my wife Clara would say, a Couter.  I’ve never heard this term from anyone else.  It’s not Hebrew.  Perhaps Arabic.  Clara says it means, memaleh makom.  The phrase means a ‘place holder.’  It’s the equivalent of, in the military, referring to someone as ‘ROAD’: ‘Retired On Active Duty.’

So, lest I be accused of being ‘ROAD,’ I’m going to offer daily thoughts during the coming Seven Weeks of the Omer, that I think are relevant.  And if they sound like a valedictory, that’s okay.  But the idea of preparing our hearts anew to accept and embrace the Torah, deserves nothing less than our Ultimate Effort.

Each Friday during the Counting, I’m going to use the occasion of my Weekly Reflection to introduce the overall theme of the thoughts for the coming week since each week of the Counting begins on Saturday night.

The first week, which begins with the second day of Pesach, my theme will be Slavery.  I can hear you thinking:  that’s really original, Rabbi!  Well of course it isn’t, in that Slavery – or our liberation from same – is the very theme of Pesach.  As we sing at the Seder:  Avadim hayinu le-Faro be-Mitzrayim.  We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.  But in reality, most of us are slaves even today.  And in numerous ways.  I feel it whenever I’m speaking to people, whether individually or in groups.  The kind of physical slavery still exists today, although baruch Hashem not many Jews are afflicted by it.  But it’s still there, and warrants discussion.  And beyond that, are forms of emotional and spiritual slavery that do afflict Jews along with our neighbours.  So, the first week of the Counting of the Omer, I’ll write each day about slavery and offer my thoughts of how we may find liberation.

Subsequent weeks’ themes will take various twists and turns.  The goal is to provide thoughtful reflections to prepare the reader to really celebrate Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, with the joy that it deserves.  But trust me, I’m also being not a little selfish in doing this.  I need that preparation as much as you do!  And my producing a thought for each day, based on a weekly theme, helps me to make the journey as well.  So join me, and a Joyous Pesach to you.