Summary by Mitch with Adam’s assistance

We met at Base Miami, Adam’s home, a block west of Beth David Congregation, the future site of The Center for Jewish Life Miami. Adam connected his computer to a projector so those physically present might see the Zoom screen on the wall. The trade-off was the display on the monitor was reduced and the CHAT difficult to read. We’ll continue to experiment with the technology. We hope to develop a clear understanding of what we’ll need to facilitate hybrid learning as we build our Center for Jewish Life.

I shared that stories don’t end when our hour together is over. Last week, we learned the story In the Attic and examined closely the character of Shmulik who experienced teshuvah and transformation as he sat mid-way on the staircase. The effect of such a story continues beyond the session. Here’s a continuation that came to me mid-week:

In the future it will be told that one of the participants heard that story deeply and knew it had been told only for him. He felt it described his situation precisely. As a child modeling clay, he had demonstrated his excellence in the arts, particularly sculpture, but his parents had pushed him toward a career at which he might earn his livelihood. He became a doctor, a plastic surgeon, with a large and lucrative cosmetic practice. He found himself in the middle of his life, as if sitting on the stairway, crying as he listened to the story In the Attic. The doctor had a lot of money in hand. He had a big home in Gables by the Sea, a boat out back, kids in private schools. And he was crying. As he heard the story, it was as if the Shechinah herself came to comfort him. As his tears settled, his resolve rose to reduce his practice, to open a studio, to return to sculpture, to take care of his soul. When he opened his hand, it was as if he held shards of clay.

Now a question: Did this happen or is it just a story? Then a second question: What has greater enduring effect, the happening, which would influence the doctor and his family, or the story which might be told and influence generations?

The happening would occur in a single moment, a unique event. The stories might surround it in infinite gradations. The happening would be the truth. The stories would be interpretations of the truth, each from its own perspective.

I displayed a book I have been reading: Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past, by Richard Cohen, published this year by Simon & Schuster. Cohen shows history is a form of storytelling, the truth of an event reported in infinite gradations through the eyes of the storytellers.

Truth in Hebrew is emet. In the liturgy we learn Adonai Elohaychem emet – the Lord your God(s) is/are Truth. We hear this at the conclusion of the Sh’ma – the Lord is One. As there is only one God, there is only one truth. The way in which that truth is perceived is an individualized experience, but the stories expressed to convey that unique encounter with Truth are infinite.

We are instructed not to pursue truth, but to pursue justice. Tzedek tzedek tirdof – justice justice you shall pursue. There is justice on either side of truth. One side argues with the other for the sake of heaven, for the sake of refinement. Truth may never be established with certainty, but soul is refined in the process of the argument.

We talked about how a story for a session is chosen, or how a story chooses us. We need an environment, ideally a community in resonance to induce a story to come to the surface. So, we began again with the two questions we asked last week: “What was your last dessert? What is your intent for this session?” And we asked that each person commit the answers to writing – either in chat, or on paper, or by finger-writing in the air. The expenditure of energy increases commitment.

Remembering our last dessert induces a sweetness for Torah learning. Setting an intention is a common practice in spiritual disciplines. My yoga teacher begins a session by asking each of us to establish an intention for the practice.

I consulted one person on Zoom to choose a book – either Buber’s Hasidic Tales, or the rabbinic anthology, Sefer Agadah. He chose Buber, Volume One, but the story on the first page he suggested was too long for consideration in an hour. Then he chose Page 67 which contained three short stories, each a single paragraph:

• The Sermon

• Like Locusts

• Happy Is the People

The stories chosen may indeed have reflected on the situation of the person who had chosen them, but they surely reflected upon Adam and myself. They reflected on the current institution of the rabbinate. It was as if our participant had chosen these stories for us at this very moment in our lives.

My eyes fell instantly to The Sermon, but the person who had selected the page chose to begin with Like Locusts.

LIKE LOCUSTS

Rabbi Mikhal of Zlotchov told: “Once when we were on a journey with our teacher, Rabbi Baal Shem Tov, the Light of the Seven Days, he went into the woods to say the Afternoon Prayer. Suddenly we saw him strike his head against a tree and cry aloud. Later we asked him about it. He said: ‘While I plunged into the holy spirit, I saw that in the generations which precede the coming of the Messiah, the rabbis of the hasidim will multiply like locusts and it will be they who delay redemption, for they will bring about the separation of hearts and groundless hatred.’ “

I exchanged a glance with Adam sitting next to me. I suspected images and references rose within him as within me which might be politically incorrect to voice in our current environment, so we were silent. Note that it was the Rabbi Baal Shem Tov who voiced an implicit criticism of the rabbis. The Baal Shem Tov – the light of all creation – had the stature to voice a criticism. He was anticipating or perhaps reporting from his own time that swarms of rabbis would be arguing with each other not for the sake of heaven, but for the sake of ego, and so bring dissension into the world.

For me this story had a profound resonance. The institution of the rabbinate is being challenged from every direction.

“Groundless hatred” – sin’at hinam – was the destructive force that brought down the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. Did the Baal Shem foresee that groundless hatred in his time or the generations to come might bring down the Jewish establishment once again?

(Note that after the demise of the Temple rabbinic Judaism took root and flourished. We might consider what is taking root now and what might flourish as we enter this new paradigm.)

We considered “the coming of the Messiah”, the moment of redemption. Redemption – ge’ulah – is a difficult term meaning bringing back something precious out of confinement, like redeeming a family heirloom that might have been pawned. In a spiritual sense, it is as if the Creator has exiled some of its own Essence into space and time to engage in a process of refinement, and then redeems it, bringing it back into Itself, into transcendence. When the total of all the invested Essence has been refined, that will be messianic times, the time of redemption.

Senseless hatred, argument among the rabbis not for the sake of heaven, delays the time of redemption.

We shifted to the first story:

THE SERMON

Once they asked the Baal Shem to preach after the prayer of the congregation. He began his sermon, but in the middle of it he was shaken with a fit of trembling, such as sometimes seized him while he was praying. He broke off and said: “O, Lord of the world, you know that I am not speaking to increase my own reputation…” Here he stopped again, and then the words rushed from his lips. “Much have I learned, and much have I been able to do, and there is no one to whom I could reveal it.” And he said nothing further.

Again, this seemed to be a story intended for me. I began my rabbinic career as a pulpit rabbi preaching. The Baal Shem in the previous story was referred to as Rabbi, for that story was about the institution of the rabbinate, but here he is referred to simply as the Baal Shem who claims he is not speaking to increase his own reputation. Still, he has encountered a dilemma. He cannot deliver a sermon without increasing (or decreasing) his own reputation. Sermons begin and emanate from the sermonizer who becomes an intermediary, at best, between the people and the Holy One. And so, the Baal Shem is caught and stops speaking.

I recognized I was caught after my first five years as a pulpit rabbi. I had learned (a little), but because the congregation expected me to stand and deliver as an intermediary, I did not have a community empowered and ready to share what I was learning.

In 1980 I left the congregational rabbinate. Over the next 20 years, the Havurah of South Florida formed. I stood and coached from the side as Mitch, not as the Rabbi. In those 20 years I never delivered a sermon (other than a one-minute sermon as a part of a Yom Kippur program). I did, however, share what I was learning alongside a community ready and eager to learn with me.

I returned to the pulpit rabbinate for five years in 2001 to restore a center-city Reform congregation. I delivered sermons to meet the needs of those who were accustomed to an intermediary, but also established programs and learning sessions that empowered and energized the community. That energy attracted creative people who in turn generated more energy and the congregation grew and became a stable community.

Now as a member of the program committee of the Center for Jewish Life, Miami, I volunteer my time to adjust those processes to a structure developing in the new paradigm.

We turned our attention to the third story on the page:

HAPPY IS THE PEOPLE

Concerning the verse in the psalm: “Happy is the people that know the joyful shout; they walk, O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance,” the Baal Shem said: “When the people do not depend upon heroes but are themselves versed in the joyful shout of battle, then they will walk in the light of your countenance.”

The happy battle is the argument for the sake of heaven that sharpens and refines the individual soul, and with it, collectively, the communal soul in unison. A limitation of Zoom is that only one of us can be talking at a time. When we are in the Atrium of our new Center, we can have hevruta pairs learning aloud, raising a joyful noise.

We had not looked at this story until the last minutes of the session, but it summed up everything experienced during the session and all that has been written thus far.

Again, my thanks to Adam for risking this program alongside me, and for his contributions to this summary.

Wishing all well and safe – Mitch