This was the first of our hybrid learning experiments. The program emanated from the home of Rabbi Adam Gindea of BASE, Miami. In attendance were a half dozen in-person participants and close to 50 online through Zoom.

The program was produced by The Center for Jewish Life, in partnership with BASE Miami, Beth David Congregation, and the National Havurah Committee.

THE NEVER-ENDING STORY RECAP

Whether the narrative is a Hasidic Tale, a Midrash, an Aggadah, it begins as words that float on the surface. The story expands like ripples on a pond, then deepens as one dives beneath. Each week we will examine a narrative from Jewish tradition, absorb it, and as a community discover how it might broaden and how it might deepen well beyond its original intent.

The first challenge of the evening was to develop a sense of community among and between the in-person and online participants, then to transform the story into a vehicle to transport each individual within the community as if the story was intended for that individual alone.

We began with a simple exercise, to answer these two questions in writing with a few words:

• What was the last dessert you tasted?

• What do you hope to take away from this hour of learning?

Torah learning, even in story form, begins with a taste of sweetness.

SELECTING THE STORY

I shared a process of the Baal Shem Tov. It is said that when a person came to consult the BeSh”T but was confused as to the reason for coming, the BeSh”T would ask the person to select a book from the shelves, then a page from the book. The two would descend into the text. In the process of learning together, the BeSh”T would gain insight into the person and be able to prescribe a spiritual practice that might be of assistance. It seemed the book and the page were selected at random by the person, but the BeSh”T claimed it was the book and the page that selected the person.

For many months I had been learning one on one with hevruta partners who selected at random stories from Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim or from Sefer Agadah (The Book of Legends), the large compendium of rabbinic tales. Invariably the text selected was just right for deepening our learning. Would such a process work within a mixed community of 50 plus?

I selected one person from those present, one known to me from prior learning sessions, who I knew to be spiritually inquisitive. I asked her to select Volume One or Volume Two of Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim. She selected Volume Two. I asked her to select a page. She selected page 64. The teaching on page 64 was too long. I asked if page 65 would do. She agreed. On page 65 was a short tale titled In the Attic.

The story is told:

Every night the rabbi of Rizhyn was in the habit of climbing to the attic and staying there for two hours. During that time his servant Shmulik who accompanied him waited sitting on the stairs. Once the rabbi’s daughter wanted to fetch something from a cupboard which was in the attic and found Shmulik sitting there and weeping. She asked him what was the matter. “Someone,” he said, “slipped me a lot of money so that I should let him go in to the rabbi, and now he is inside.” He opened his hand and showed her the money. Just then the rabbi came out at the door. There was no one in the room. In Shmulik’s palm lay a few shards of clay.

This was the story selected by a single individual. Were she and I working together, no doubt it would have been just the right story. But could this be just the right story for each individual in our community, just the right story at just the right time?

Some stories lend themselves well to a continuation of the narrative so we might ask what happens next and move from chapter to chapter, each person venturing forth on a subjective journey. Other stories, like this one, float on the surface. The narrative is complete. There is no continuation. One learns by taking the story deeper, each person into one’s own life experience.

Hasidic tales come freeze-dried, tightly packed. Buber leaves them for us to unravel. I asked the community where we might begin? Should we start with –

• The rabbi of Rizhyn?

• The servant Shmulik?

• The rabbi’s daughter?

• The someone who bribed Shmulik?

Or should we begin with an action within the tale –

• Climbing to the attic?

• Waiting on the steps?

• Fetching from the cupboard?

• Sitting and weeping?

• Taking a bribe?

• Shards of clay?

Consensus in the chat column coalesced around Shmulik.

We considered Shmulik. What was he doing? He was attending to the rabbi. He was sitting on the stairs. He was weeping. His hand was closed around money.

What had he been doing? He had accepted a bribe from an unnamed someone. When the daughter, also unnamed, encountered him, he was weeping. Why was he weeping? Consensus was Shmulik was remorseful because he had done something wrong.

We took note of the first four words of the story which had gone unnoticed: The story is told. Buber uses the expression it is told to introduce a fable rather than an episode in the life of a holy master. In fables, characters are often archetypal representations. An unnamed daughter would represent the Shechinah – the indwelling Presence of the Divine. An unnamed someone who inclines one toward evil would be the Yetzer ha-Ra, the inclination to surrender to one’s appetites, in this instance Shmulik surrendering to his greed. And the weeping would represent Teshuvah – sincere repentance.

With this, each person present hearing the story had the opportunity to become Shmulik, to fall back to one moment of surrender to an appetite, one moment where a person might have chosen a different path. What would it be like if one could return to that moment and choose differently? Descending into the story provides that moment. But you might question – can magic happen? Can illegitimate coins grasped in a hand transubstantiate into shards of clay?

I invited each of us to take a moment and find, if possible, a moment, a decision made or an occurrence happening we might like to reverse. Is it physically possible to go back and turn the switch the other way and so alter the chain of cause and effect? That would be magic, a violation of the laws of nature. But then this isn’t a story of a physical happening. It is a fable. Fables are written in the realm of emotions. It may not be possible to turn the physical switch, but it is possible to reset the way in which an event is regarded.

What did each of us find when we searched for that moment we would like to reverse, or, if not to reverse, to reset? Neither time nor privacy considerations permitted us to sample the community, so I suggested a difficult such moment that would likely brook no objection.

A diagnosis.

The word diagnosis was adequate without elaboration. Would an act of earnest Teshuvah reverse a diagnosis? The poetic Hebrew expression is limtok et ha- din min-ha-shoresh – to sweeten the decree at its root. The expression on Yom Kippur is – Teshuvah, tefillah, tzedakah ma-avarim et ro-a ha-gezerah – repentance, charity can alter (or sweeten) the badness of the decree.

Teshuvah - return to the realization of the unfolding cosmic story being written by the Creator.

Tefillah - to dialogue with, to hear and to listen to the guidance of and instructions from the Creator of our role in this cosmic narrative.

Tzedakah - to actually live in a way that furthers our role in that story.

These processes ma-avarim et ro-a ha-gezerah, transform the moments where we missed the mark into moments of growth and evolution. Note, these righteous actions don’t change the physical nature of the decree. Rather they reset the way the decree is regarded.

I shared an experience Walli and I had years back at our home in Pinecrest. We had welcomed a group of cancer survivors. To a person each of them understood the moment of their diagnosis as a moment of rebirth. Never again did they take even the smallest benefit they received for granted.

That reset of how some facet of life is regarded can be life changing. Even toward the end of a life the reset is possible. I recalled being asked to visit an elderly aunt, a childless woman who felt her life had been a failure because she had no children. Her nephew told me she had been a great teacher in the public school system. I visited her in hospice and after introducing myself asked her about her offspring, the great many students she had coached through the world. Just the mention of the word offspring was the toggle switch. One need not have children to have offspring.

We returned to the fable. Shmulik’s Teshuvah had been sincere. The unnamed tempter was nowhere to be found. When Shmulik opened his hand, there was no money, rather shards of clay. What began in the fable as the material expression of greed was transformed into clay, the basic building block of humankind. Teshuvah not only resets how one regards a pivotal moment, it induces a profound humility.

………………………

I’m grateful to Adam Gindea for his assistance with the program and the writing of this summary. Our experiment in hybrid learning will continue next week with another story.

Wishing all well and safe — Mitch Chefitz