By Sam Glaser
My first exposure to tefillin was in a basement workshop of a holy sofer (scribe) in Jerusalem. I was in Israel for my Bar Mitzvah; a lucky Brentwood, CA boy whose parents opted not only for an LA celebration but also for a meaningful few weeks touring the Promised Land. The culmination of the experience was a second Bar Mitzvah service at the Western Wall where I read Torah at the spiritual “ground zero” of our planet and forged an unbreakable bond with Israel and my people. I remember my new tefillin straps feeling sharp and rough; it would be months before the leather would soften and feel comfortable on my skin. After this trip my father made a point of praying with me in his rich, walnut-lined study in the mornings before school, allowing for quality father-son time and ensuring that my tefillin would actually get some use.
Unfortunately I fell into the pattern of most of my Conservative peers and my Bar Mitzvah year would be the last time I’d have any shred of active Jewish life. Yes, I attended confirmation and a few youth group activities but Judaism as I saw it was for nerds and those without a social life. My
priorities were fitting in at public school, skiing, biking and surfing and playing with my band. I was proud to be Jewish and enjoyed family Friday Night dinners, but my tefillin were relegated to a dark closet never to see the light of day.
Fast forward to my twenties when I was building my first recording studio and working as a full-time composer. I was chasing TV and movie score work, producing my first albums for clients and trying to get a record deal with my own band. I was approached to write some music to benefit the Operation Exodus campaign (Hineni) and a song for a Camp Ramah Hallel service (Pitchu Li) and suddenly found myself referred to as a Jewish composer. Accelerating this awakening was meeting John and Ruth Rauch whose Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity was offering a two-week arts seminar in Jerusalem, all expenses paid. I knew I wanted to get back to Jerusalem and was excited to get some inspiration to write some more Jewish tunes, so I applied and got accepted to the program.
Imagine the thrill of living in the elegant guest artist hotel Mishkenot She’ananim in Jerusalem where creative types of all sorts performed, collaborated and workshopped late into the nights. I wrote another three songs that would become part of my first Jewish album and bonded tightly with the international group of composers assembled from the four corners of the earth. On one of the final nights of the program one of our mentors made a point of having a one-on-one conversation with me. Phillip said, “Sam, I’ve noticed you are a deeply religious guy.” I laughed, waiting for the punch line. “No, I’m serious,” he insisted. I responded that I couldn’t imagine why he might have come to this conclusion and he replied that he had overheard me in dialog with the Israelis on our program and noted that I always took the religious side of our theological arguments.
Phillip concluded that I should further investigate this side of my personality and perhaps it would bear some fruit. When I asked how I might do that he suggested that I choose a mitzvah and make it my own. We pondered the alternatives and he then asked if I had ever wrapped tefillin. “Yes,” I replied, “I have a pair that I received for my Bar Mitzvah.” Phillip told me to try putting them on and using this spiritual activity as a way to remember the connection I felt in Israel. Upon returning home weeks went by before I made it over to my parent’s house and found the aged leather in the exact place where it had been left sixteen years earlier. The next morning in my beachside apartment I tried to put them on. I had very little recollection of how to tie the straps or utter the appropriate blessings. I did know enough once I got them on that it was a good time to say the Sh’ma and V’ahavta, to thank God for the blessings in my life and ponder my connection with my heritage.
Midway through my prayers the phone rang. As I reached for the receiver it dawned on me that this was my time to pray and I shouldn’t interrupt the moment with a call. As I uttered the ancient words, however, I did pause to listen to my answering machine as it picked up the message: it was my friend Jymm Adams from the Sports Channel of LA asking me to do all the music for TV broadcast of the Dodger and Angel home games that season. I reached my strapped up hands to the heavens and said, “We’ll try this again tomorrow!”
I never got another lucrative mid-prayer phone call, but this small daily exercise of faith gave me something much more: a palpable relationship with the Creator of heaven and earth. As long as I was setting aside a few minutes each day to pray I started to navigate the challenging waters of the long winded P’zukei D’zimra (Psalms of Praise) and the central prayer, the Shmoneh Esrai. I added paragraph by paragraph onto my personal ritual, not wanting to bog myself down with too long a service but hoping to increase the fluidity of my Hebrew reading. I was suddenly grateful for the hours of Hebrew School, Camp Ramah and practice with my cantor and Bar Mitzvah tutor. Thanks to those with the thankless task of teaching this class clown, I could actually read the Hebrew and with time could flow through the siddur. Before long I could get through the majority of the Shachrit (morning) service and put on my tefillin like a champ. Eventually I learned to focus on the meanings rather than just pronunciations of the words and learned to close my eyes and simply dwell in God’s presence.
At first the whole binding exercise seemed like a masochistic reenactment of the binding of Isaac, attempting to sublimate ego and will to that of the Almighty in a servant/master relationship. Perhaps tefillin are a physical expression of our being “bound” in a covenant with God. Contracts and covenants are good in that they inspire a sense of trust for each party; I was learning to trust God in my daily life, and I was hoping to become someone that God would consider a trustworthy partner in the healing of the world. As I grew in my spiritual intelligence I realized that tefillin commemorate 
a much greater degree of intimacy that can only be compared to the covenant of marriage: When we wind them around our fingers we utter the betrothal passage of Hoshea that is often recited at marriage ceremonies. For me, tefillin represent a daily “chuppah” moment just like at Mount Sinai, where I get to participate in a loving embrace of my “partner” in creation.
We all know that tefillin are mentioned four times in our Torah, most notably in one of our most important prayers, the Sh’ma. It is these four passages that are carefully transcribed with the same care as a mezuzah or Torah scroll, both in the head and arm boxes. In the Sh’ma our love affair with God is described as one that involves all our heart, soul and might. So too do we wear the tefillin on the arm close to the heart, on the head, the seat of the soul/intellect, and might, the realm of action on our bicep. There is also an idea that the head straps hang unevenly down towards our genitalia. Essentially we are employing a very physical system of checks and balances, a daily uniting of our spiritual and material existence, our yetzer hatov and yetzer harah (good and evil inclinations,) all within the realm of love. Tefillin offer us the chance to walk the middle path, to keep our intellect, emotions and physical being in peaceful coexistence in service to God.
Another virtue of this practice is the idea of unifying the transmission of both the written and oral law. The Chumash (Torah) advises that we place a sign on our arms and between our eyes, but does not tell us exactly where that place is, what that “sign” looks like or even to employ leather and parchment. Yet for millennia Jews have worn the same black boxes in more or less the same way. I remember on that Bar Mitzvah trip how we hiked to top of Masada and learned that the 2000-year-old tefillin that were discovered were indistinguishable from those of today. Clearly Moses was shown diagrams and visions in addition to just taking dictation on Sinai. This oral law gives us the “meat” on the bones of our written transmission of God’s will. By wearing tefillin everyday we deepen the connection of these two worlds of understanding and take our place in the chain of transmission.
I highly recommend Aryeh Kaplan’s book aptly titled “Tefillin” for anyone curious about the role of gender and the deeper mystical aspects of this mitzvah.
These days I wear my tefillin wherever I wander. I find that I am often in airports or on the rooftops of hotels looking for a quiet corner to strap up and say my morning prayers. I know it appears strange to onlookers but laying tefillin makes a definitive statement: “I’m Jewish, this is what we do, thanks for respecting our differences.” I welcome the questions that often ensue. When I’m not in the synagogue, I have a favorite spot on my east-facing porch where I am greeted with the warm morning light, flitting hummingbirds and the perfume of jasmine. With my own kids I am relaxed with pushing them to get to a minyan on Shabbat, but I consider the wearing of tefillin every weekday inviolate. Their willingness to do this mitzvah is a prerequisite to participating in our family vacations or any activities on Sundays. Thankfully they get it, largely because they see me doing it and they intuit the importance of consistency. Hopefully it’s more than guilt that motivates them…they have their own loving relationship with God…why mess that up? As Woody Allen says, “80% of life is showing up.” I believe that faithful behavior like a daily appointment with one’s tefillin elevates elusive faith into the realm of knowledge.
I’d like to finish with a tefillin story. Everyone that I know that wraps on a daily basis has a good tefillin story, usually about their quest never to miss a day under any circumstances. One day on a concert tour/family vacation on the North Shore of Kauai I did my morning service on the beach overlooking a perfect double overhead swell at Hanalei Bay. After davening I stashed my tefillin in the car and paddled out to have one of the most exciting surf sessions of my life. The locals were helping me get into position to drop into some of the smoothest and deepest bowls of bright green glass of my aquatic career. After a few hours of breathless exertion I returned to my rental car surprised that the interior smelled of cigarette smoke. I then realized that someone else had been in the car. I checked under the seat to find that my phone, camera and tallis/tefillin bag were gone.
I searched the area, interviewed onlookers and filed a report with the police, to no avail. My son Max was Bar Mitzvah age but had left his tefillin in LA and I didn’t know of anyone else in the North Shore that might be observant. What would I pray with on the following day, the last weekday of our trip? I had another problem…how would I reach the guy with whom I was supposed to be jamming that night? After my concert the night before, some locals were inspired to get me together with a percussionist to do a show in a club. But now without my precious iPhone, I didn’t have any of their contact information. It dawned on me that some friends of ours from LA were vacationing on the South Shore. Perhaps we could reach them and arrange to get together and borrow their tefillin.
Sure enough the Brant-Sarif family agreed to meet us for a hike on the North Shore. We met on the edge of a certain condo complex where a steep trail heads down a cliff to a system of ocean-side sea 
caves inhabited by giant sea turtles. Following our explorations we scaled the cliff back to the parking lot and went back to their car so that my son and I could daven with tefillin. Time was of the essence since they had to get back down south before Shabbat came in. Just as I strapped up, a warm Hawaiian drizzle started to fall. To avoid getting my friend’s tefillin wet we all dashed into the alcove of one of the condos and shared an animated communal mincha (afternoon) prayer session.
Just as we were davening the owner of this particular condo came walking down the stairs and shouted, “What the…” Upon closer inspection he stated, “my mishpocha!” Sure enough he was a Jewish guy from the mainland that had recently made Hawaii his home. He demurred when we offered him to try on the tefillin but he invited us into his condo for a drink. When I introduced myself as a visiting musician he responded, “You’re Sam Glaser?? We were supposed to jam last night!” Yes, this condo where we were huddled, trying to sneak in our mitzvah of tefillin before Shabbat began, was the very home of the person that I needed to reach the day before.
Wearing my tefillin on a daily basis has been nothing other than a window to perceive the daily miracles in my life. Thanks to this discipline I have a regular rendezvous with the Almighty that is fulfilling and unshakeable. Ensuring that I never miss this appointment has created some truly memorable moments. I’m also reminded of the power of an encouraging word: just like my mentor on that Israel program gave me the idea of tefillin as a way to connect my trip to further spiritual growth, so too do I try to offer similar suggestions to those with open hearts whom I encounter. Finally, tefillin offer access to the deepest realms of the soul: a connection of mind, body and heart, a binding of servant to master and a daily reenactment of our sacred marriage with the Creator of the Universe.
The other night over tofu curry my wife was explaining the concept of fiscal vs. calendar years to my kids. Times they are a-changing: my seventeen-year-old Jesse just opened his own E-Trade account so that he can play the market on his own. He used to hunt bugs in the backyard; now he’s studying corporate cash flow! She told him that most individuals in the US seem to follow the January to December calendar model, making January the back to work month following a holiday vacation and a drunken New Years Eve. My dad’s swimwear business went summer to summer since we shipped everything by May and then had to figure out what to do the next season.
began with overt miracles to God’s working subtly behind the scene. Imagine that you are imprisoned and have a prison guard right outside the cell. Obviously with the watchful guard on the scene you are on your best behavior. When the guard goes on rounds, however, that’s when you can do headstands, scrawl graffiti or go back to digging that escape hole with a spoon. The God of Nissan is an overwhelming presence that limits our freedom of choice, whereas the God of Adar gives us the space to express the fullness of our human gift of choice. I believe that all history is following this same principle and more than ever we live in age where we are stratified into believers and “secular.” That intelligent people can deny God’s presence fills me with mirth. Just look at how powerful God is, like the guard on his rounds, giving us the freedom to perceive God, or not. Amazing!
I am both a music lover and music maker. I’ve learned that the two are mutually exclusive; I have composer friends that minimize exposure to anyone else’s music in order to avoid being unduly influenced. I, on the other hand, regularly thank God for the gift of listening to music…any kind of music! Particularly when driving in LA traffic jams. I’m a fan of many local, US and international bands and I try to be a good groupie and sit in the front row whenever I can sneak out to their shows. I’m a regular at the LA Phil and LA Opera. I’m obsessed with jazz. I have over 3000 CDs of all genres in my collection and I still have my ear out for new sounds. My wife and I share in the Top 40 fun with our three kids and keep abreast of The Voice, Idol and America’s Got Talent. We admit to being both Beliebers and Gleeks. I used to brag that I like every style of music except Country. Well, thanks to dedicated honky-tonk friends I have been converted to the best of southern pedal steel, hillbilly, bluegrass, gospel and even yodeling.
apply. The festival includes side show distractions like yoga on the hour, a kids play area, continuous Frisbee and hula hoops, (go Wham-o!) impromptu jam sessions and a delicious public swimming pool. Incredible alpine hikes are just down the road. And did I mention fifty of the hottest touring acts in the world?
housed the most raucous bands. This tennis court sized space is surrounded by a grassy field on one side and on the other, the tents of a dozen lucky campers that must have run FAST to secure these prime locations. Their “chill” areas are shaded with canopies and tapestries and they abut the concert space so all they have to do is hang out on their lounge chairs.
night. But where would I nap? Now I understood why I saw countless people throughout the fairgrounds passed out on the grass, in hammocks, and some, face down in the dust on the edges of the concert venues. Remarkably, no one bothered these people, save for the occasional Samaritan trying to carry them to safety. I realized that one of the crucial elements of this utopian festival is the fact that in spite of arduous conditions, everyone is smiling, peaceful and looking out for one another.
Houndmouth is a youthful quartet of “easy on the eye” musicians that were having a tough time winning over the ambivalent crowd. Something switched on during their set. I think the initial bias against these seeming pretty boy (and girl) posers disappeared in the light of their excellent material, great vocals and competent musicianship. I have never seen a band overcome indifference to this degree; by the last several songs the audience was SCREAMING for more.
out backstage passes to the Vaudeville tent, allowing the whole Shabbat Tent staff to enjoy the festivities during Lee Field and the Expressions electrifying old-school set. Before I left however, a family that missed Havdalah insisted that I walk with them back to their RV to include the rest of their group. Some high school musicians were leading a full bore jam session in front of their RV next door and it seemed impossible to lead a service amidst the din. I tried another tactic: during a blues number I simply chanted the Havdalah prayer in the form of a blues tune and grooved everyone along to a shavua tov.
focused efforts in the Shabbat Tent to serve as a light onto nations, spreading a compassionate Jewish presence in this alpine love fest. Just like the connections I make when I lead a Shabbaton weekend and really can “get” everyone that I meet, I feel similarly present in this milieu.
The night before my son Jesse left for summer camp in Wisconsin we were sitting around the dinner table discussing discipline. We turned to our sixteen-year-old counselor-in-training to get his feedback on our parenting style. Jesse commented, “Dad, you have never punished me.” “Really?” I responded. “Yep. Never.” I asked my wife if this is a good thing. She responded, “probably not.” I guess I will be remembered as an “old softy” and clearly Jesse has the healthy quality of omitting certain memories. So how do I enforce discipline? My technique seems to be treating my kids like adults and making consequences real. Indeed, there are ground rules in our mostly peaceful household. If they are broken, our kids immediately sense that the placid order of our micro-universe has been altered. Yes, they can keep pushing or nudging and drive us crazy, but why do that? It doesn’t get them anywhere.
consistently repeating. All three of our children take lessons on their respective musical instruments and must practice regularly if they want to continue. We encourage them to find friends that are trustworthy and do not run hot or cold based on ever-mutating peer popularity contests. We teach follow-through and expect them to meet the obligations they have taken on. I regularly emphasize the teaching that the holy ark was lined with gold leaf on the outside AND on the inside. Why waste precious gold on the inside? The lesson in a nutshell is that being consistent isn’t just an outward attribute; a true tzadik is holy on the inside and the outside. Learning to be consistent as kids makes them better sons and daughters and I believe will make them better employees, employers and most importantly, spouses.
reasonable. In other words, not firing on all cylinders at the starting line if that is a pace we can’t maintain. During that first year of marriagewe minimize outside distractions to find a point of deep connection and passion, thereby allowing one’s spouse to feel secure that the pattern of love and duty established is not going to diminish. The true aphrodisiac in a loving relationship is consistency: honesty and reliability that builds real trust and thereby builds intimacy.
writing and tackle them one by one. Too big a mountain and we’ll never try to climb it. Another method is to bring God into the picture. For example, when I have a creative roadblock I ask God for a new song before I go to sleep. I am rarely let down. Some folks feel funny praying on their own behalf. Establish your small goal and ask for God’s help in achieving it, in the same language you would use asking a friend to do you a favor. Finally, allow yourself a sense of triumph when you accomplish each step and reward yourself for being consistent. For me, chocolate ice cream is a great perk. In fact, I think I’ll use that one right now as a reward for getting this essay written.
As a teenager I remember the call as I walked down Kikar Tziyon (Zion Square) in Jerusalem. The call of “Mincha, Mincha,” rang out from the entrance of a small storefront shul. I would do my best to avoid the squat elderly man with a thick Sephardic accent that beckoned in the doorway. God forbid I have my afternoon fun interrupted with 10 minutes of boredom as I stood there pretending to pray. As a young traveler I did not have any tradition of the afternoon prayer ritual. At that point in my life I was aware of Shachrit, the morning service which I avoided since I saw it as far too long and inconvenient. I was familiar with Ma’ariv, the evening service from Friday nights at Camp Ramah. But Mincha? No, Mincha was a foreign word to me, lost in the same summertime wasteland that claimed Shavuot, S’firat Ha’Omer and the “Three Weeks.” If it was left out of our annual Hebrew School lexicon it couldn’t be something I needed to worry about.
centerpiece of my day. The first is my limited attention span. I’m a believer in “living by the mitzvot,” in other words, if I feel a certain mitzvah is “killing” me, I feel no remorse in minimizing it. Shachrit takes a long time and when I’m davening on my own, I take liberties with shortening the Pseukei D’zimra (opening prayers of praise,) for example. Mincha fits in this perfect 5-10 minute window of opportunity where I can dive in and then re-enter the workday.
Our thrice daily prayer ritual reflects the contributions of each of our three forefathers. Avraham gave us the custom of Shachrit due to his early morning service reported in the Torah. Yaakov gave us Ma’ariv due to his intense nighttime experience on Har HaMoriah dreaming of ladders stretching up to heaven. We have Yitzchak to thank for Mincha. He is described as “conversing in the field” before the sun set when his besheret Rivka gets a glimpse of him for the first time. Likely this 30-something young man was praying hard for a wife. It’s no wonder that we too are “in the field” when we daven Mincha, either in the agricultural sense toiling the ground by the “sweat of our brow” or in whatever “field” we are engaged.
God satisfies the desire of those with “chai ratzon,” in other words, those who have a will that is alive. So much of our day is often spent in repetitive tasks and drudgery. We take the same way to work every day, eat the same lunch, see the same faces. Our fire is slowly extinguished by the repetition of the “daily grind” and that ennui can soon turn into hopelessness. The idea of this line of the Ashrei is that YOU must take responsibility for keeping your will alive. Only you can change things around. Take a different way to work, get together with old friends, rediscover activities you enjoy, get physical rather than passive in front of a TV screen or a Facebook feed. Being truly alive requires more than just food, water and an occasional jaunt on a treadmill.
Everybody knows about the famous ones: bris, baby naming, bar/bat mitzvah, marriage and funerals. This month’s column is a segue from last month’s report on the miraculous nature of the bris and is dedicated to certain overlooked milestones that are equally a part of life. All cultures celebrate rites of passage. In the US we have graduations, sweet 16’s, getting a driver’s license, and the holy grail, reaching drinking age. As a parent I’ve noticed that once you have kids there are a few other significant transitions that are rarely discussed.
“reproductively irrelevant.” I always envisioned having four kids. Four is a nice, round number, I grew up in a family with four boys and I felt like four meant you were a real parent. Also, one of our favorite rebbetzins used to lecture us on the importance of Jews having large families to undo the damage of Hitler’s taking 1.5 Million of our kinderlach. I love the sweet adventure and mystery of pregnancy and birth. Of course that’s easy for me to say. I tried to participate in everything, from birth coaching to feeding and the changing diapers. I even got to dispense the milk my wife would laboriously pump.
The next lifecycle event came on the heels of our last child becoming a Bat Mitzvah. Sarah turning 12 means that Max is a senior in high school. Yes, my friends, the empty nest phase is approaching. We are now in the midst of SAT’s, college applications and researching yeshivot in Israel. Last month he went on his senior trip in which the class goes to Israel to see firsthand the top fifteen academies that are recommended for their gap year of study. This is all very exciting for Max. But it’s a bit heartbreaking for me. Our official annual vacation this last January was our last as a whole family, at least for the foreseeable future. Next year he won’t be with us for Pesach. Or High Holidays or Chanukah for that matter. We won’t enjoy his brief appearance at dinner every night. And Jesse, who is only a year-and-a-half younger soon will be following in his footsteps. I’m getting weepy writing this. I know I should be stoic and matter of fact. But I will leave that for my wife, who wears the pants in the family. (Actually I wear the pants, but she tells me which pair.)
What did the moel bring to the bris?
Two days later came the fancy bris of the month. All of the neighborhood big shots were assembled and it was anyone’s guess which bearded sage would be graced with the highest honor of sandek, the person who holds the baby in his lap during the ceremony. It was the father’s fourth child but he was as touched as if it were his first. His beautiful wife sobbed as she looked on. Amidst the pomp and circumstance of this first class affair there was still a simple presence of the Shechina and sure enough I found myself getting misty eyed once again. I was still wearing my tallis and tefillin from Shachrit and even though I had prayed in rote fashion, the power of the words I had already uttered somehow landed in my atria at the moment of the incision. One lesson learned: most attendees come for the mitzvah and not the meal. The ample delicacies were artfully displayed in stations across the vaulted lobby of the Museum of Tolerance and yet about 10% was eaten by the time the room cleared out.
There is special significance in the fact that we are commanded to carry out this holy procedure on the eighth day. Kabbalah teaches that seven is the number associated with the intersection of the human sphere and the divine. That is why our weekly communion with our Creator and Redeemer, the Sabbath, is every seventh day. Eight is one step beyond, entirely metaphysical, the realm of the supernatural. It is interesting that eight is simply the vertical representation of the universal symbol for infinity. Eight is also the number associated with Chanukah where we celebrate the miraculous victory of the Maccabees and the length of time that the single cruse of oil burned. Some say that the miracle of Chanukah is the fact that we bothered to try to light the menorah or fight the Syrian-Greeks in the first place. After all, isn’t it wiser to surrender when all the chips are down, when defeat is inevitable? NO, says Jewish tradition. That is precisely when we must remember that we are a supernatural people that defies all laws of conventional sociology and, with God’s help, we are invincible.
December is a time for new possibilities. Thanks to “holiday spirit” the world becomes a kinder, more colorful place. I just returned from Manhattan where the midtown buildings were transformed into magnificently wrapped presents. Even the cops were friendly. December means that our fiscal year is ending and we ponder what we might do differently when January comes around. Inclement weather demands that we spend less time outdoors, more time with inside activities that make us more internal, intellectual, introspective. The Torah portions of the season deal with dreamers; between Jacob, Joseph, the butcher, baker and Pharaoh we have eight dreams to cross-reference and inspire our own musings. Finally, Chanukah calls on us to fill the darkest, shortest days of the year with light and we are challenged to unveil our own unique light unto the world.
method of inspiring transformation. Like me, he performs and teaches for a living. But I now see that there is a tremendous difference in our approach, thanks to “The Possible You,” a powerful seminar that he has founded. He takes responsibility for every one of the attendees in his Jerusalem-based twenty-hour program. He will work with anyone who is not getting it, and relentlessly pursue those who bail before “graduation.” With an intensely paced delivery of profound insights coupled with music, visual aids and group sharing, a crucial set of life tools are communicated to the full spectrum of learners in all modalities. The results are nothing short of astounding and my brother’s reputation is growing exponentially. He has cobbled The Possible You from the wisdom of Kabbalah, Mussar and Tanach. It’s tailor-made for the Jewish neshama. Now with several thousand graduates, myself included, I see The Possible You changing the world.
Over twenty hours, strangers become allies and loving friends, taking a stand for each other’s success in life. They open the door to estranged family members and experience real healing for wounds gathered over life’s journey. It sounds too good to be true, right? I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes.
My wife buys the smallest packages of food in order to conserve space in our three-shelf pantry. When I open it on any given morning and find one of those 10oz. boxes of Cheerios I cringe and dream of a time when we can shop at Costco. Furthermore, I insist on having a plethora of cereal options so that I can mix and match my breakfast. She retaliates by buying the mini jars of peanut butter. I get the same grief when it comes to my closet full of clothes. She argues that I have more than she does and calls me a pack rat. I respond that I like lots of choices and see no reason to throw my old favorites away, as long as they still fit. So too with my CD collection, the gear in my music studio, my library. Am I too attached to material things? Yes. But I prefer to give my obsession another name.
correctness. We live at a time when conscientious Americans are trying to reduce our carbon footprints, bringing canvas bags to the supermarket, driving hybrids and recycling. I’m not suggesting that we abandon these astute practices, God forbid! I am suggesting that we distinguish between minimizing our consumption and maximizing our joy.
“magnets”; if we prove that we know how to do the right thing in any situation, clearly God can trust us with abundance. God aches to give us more, but we have to CHOOSE the relationship, we have to ASK for what we want and we have to BUILD ourselves into individuals who can handle abundance.
and should use our Jewish institutions to enhance our connection rather than provide a glass ceiling to our growth. My friend David Suissa comments that in religious life we decide, “that’s not what I do” and then defend that stance religiously! We argue: why try a mitzvah one time if it makes us a “hypocrite” for not sticking with it? As Jews, our access to shefa is closely aligned with the mitzvot that we take on. Take a chance! Be a hypocrite once in a while. Suissa quotes Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz as saying “God counts only the mitzvahs you do, not the ones you don’t.”
I just returned from my distant cousin Gene Samson’s funeral. I must admit I left my home this morning a bit frustrated that I was going to “lose” half my day and had to wear a black suit on a 90 degree LA scorcher. But as soon as I entered the mortuary I was immediately uplifted by the faces of my extended family and felt the soul-satisfaction of performing the ancient and powerful mitzvah of participating in the burial of a loved one.
couple married for over 50 years, wearing white, exploring the verdant burial ground of our extended family. I got to cry simply because I love my parents so much, because I miss the relatives that have left us, because I’m human and have a God-given need to open my heart and just have a “good cry.”
Isaac says “Hineni,” (here I am) and seems to be complicit in his own demise. Avraham is asked to destroy everything he has worked for. The midrash tells us that the angels were crying tears of disbelief and awe at the commitment of our patriarchs and that these tears fell into Isaac’s eyes and led to his blindness. These angelic tears are the tears of injury, tears that are real and damaging and stay with us forever. We have all experienced crises, trauma and tragedy. The question is if we let the damage sabotage us or if we rise from the ashes stronger and more deeply connected to our Creator.
alone. This is the time to make a written accounting of who we are, who we want to be, who we’ve wronged and need to ask for forgiveness. Only when we are at peace with our friends and relatives and in touch with our personal mission can we let the cries of the shofar enter our hearts and tear down the walls of complacency.