Quote of the Week 45 - Optimism

Many of the Hasidic rabbis were noted for their optimistic faith in their fellow men, which could not be weakened in the face of overwhelming evidence of man’s perverseness. “Rabbi,” one of the disciples complained, “some of the congregants are gossiping in the midst of prayer!” “How wonderful are Thy people, O Lord,” the rabbi retorted. “Even in the midst of gossip, they devote a few moments to prayer!”

Source unknown

Hebrew Mantras, Part Two

Quote of the Week 44 - The Temple Sacrifices

“Now, some people say…when we are able to build the Temple again, we will resume offering animal sacrifices. But they misunderstand something: it wasn’t that the Temple was destroyed and therefore we could not offer animal sacrifices but that the form of offering animal sacrifices to God had already been outgrown. It was not a functional system anymore.”
- from Wrapped in a Holy Flame, Teachings and Tales of the Hasidic Masters, by Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi

Hebrew Mantras

-->

Quote of the Week 43 - MLK Jr.

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
“This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept – so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force – has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: ‘Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.’”
“As Arnold Toynbee says: ‘Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.’”
“We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Beauty of Holiness v The Holiness of Beauty

At the suggestion of a friend, I have been studying the weekly D’var Torah (commentaries on Torah portions) published by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. You can access these at www.chiefrabbi.org. A recent entry on the portion Vayakhel stirred the following response from me.

In the context of Bezalel’s work on the Ark and Mishkan, the Rabbi speaks of the tradition of art within Judaism and makes a distinction as follows: “Religious art is never ‘art for art’s sake’. Unlike secular art, it points to something beyond itself.” Shortly thereafter, he concludes as follows: “The Greeks believed in the holiness of beauty …Jews believed in the opposite: hadrat kodesh (Ps29:2), the beauty of holiness. Art in Judaism always has a spiritual purpose: to make us aware of the universe as a work of art, testifying to the supreme Artist, G-d himself.”

I have always had difficulty in drawing these lines between the sacred and mundane/secular, the sacred and profane. I have also had difficulty with the tendency of religious Jewish thinkers, both contemporary and historical, to portray Judaism as superior in contrast to another culture, people, ethnic group, whatever. It seems to me the distinction the Rabbi is rather emphatically making is much more subtle to the point of almost being a distinction without a difference. Isn’t it part of a spiritual life to cultivate the perspective to regard everything as sacred, as everything emanates from the Divine? This is not to say there is no difference between special spiritually charged rituals or sites. A hard-boiled egg sitting on a Seder plate may rightfully be regarded differently than a hard-boiled egg sitting on your morning breakfast plate. Going to the bathroom involves a different quality of activity than approaching the bimah. But to me, these are just varying degrees of sacredness, and I wouldn’t make such a bright-line distinction between what is sacred and religious, and what is not.

I am a great believer in art for art’s sake, because I believe that any truly inspiring art, even what the Rabbi would probably consider “secular”, originates from Divine inspiration and points to it. I cannot think of any art that does not point to something beyond itself; I think that is inherent in its definition. If a “secular” artist paints a still life of a bowl of fruit and titles it simply “Bowl of Fruit”, is that any less inspiring than a comparable still life drawn by a Torah scholar that is entitled “Bowl of Fruit as a Depiction of Some of G-d’s Many Wondrous Creations for the Benefit of His Children”? I think they both contain the same message. Any still life worth looking at carries this message inherently. To me, any kind of art exists for the very purpose of drawing attention to the unique and wondrous qualities of what is being portrayed, to make us pay proper attention and homage especially to what we may usually regard as merely a mundane subject or object, to call our attention to the awesomeness of creation, and thus it is inherently sacred, whether it be deemed the holiness of beauty or the beauty of holiness.

Quote of the Week 42 - Magic of the Ordinary

“All is preordained,” taught the second century Rabbi Akiva, “and the choice is yours to make”.

The fine line that separates our reality from the Ultimate Reality is, however, illusory. It is known in ancient kabbalistic lingo as the par’gawd, or the Veil of Illusion. This is the illusion that separates our spirit self from our body self, that fosters disharmony between our soul and our body only when we experience it as a line of demarcation rather than one of integration. The par’gawd is experienced as either a partition between us and Creator or as a meeting of lips, as in a kiss. Which one it is, depends on our choice, and determines the power of our prayer and ceremony. How real you feel that God is to you will determine how real you feel that you are to God. Faith Healing is then more than just some prayer or miracle that works. It is the act of channeling the God Will to heal that is placed before us always, only waiting for us to access it by believing it is real.

- from Magic of the Ordinary, by Rabbi Gershon Winkler