Public Service Announcement

To the person who wished me Chag S'meach yesterday, it is not yet Passover! It is not even erev Pesach. Let's say - generously - that erev Pesach begins two weeks before the holiday. Well, that is not until next Wednesday. So please!


True, our sages tell us to start learning the laws of Passover thirty days before the holiday, and many of us may remember someone at the Purim meal (though I don't; see below) getting up to fulfill this mitzva.


I also fully understand people - like my wife - who begin the slow task of cleaning the house for chametz weeks before the holiday. But I don't really get the people who perform their religious observance in an aggressively public way.


It's a tricky thing really. For a good way to stay away from hypocrisy is to denounce all forms of outward religious observance as inauthentic - to be a kind of antinomian like one of my favorite poets, John Milton. But we Jews have a different mandate - which is to render the world holy by means of our performance. So the trick is to have those performances - in another language, mitzvos - serve as a way of expressing ourselves in service of G-d, and not as a means of the expressing our supposed superiority.


As with any thing, it's a matter of tone. So I don't mind my neighbors who - every year - cheerfully and without any appearance of attitude empty the entire contents of their house on to the sidewalk in their preparation for Pesach (though, it should be noted, this is probably spring cleaning and not Pesach cleaning). But I do find objectionable the women who - last year in the local makholet (grocery store) - shrieked at one of the arab workers who had inadvertently put a cup of instant coffee on the counter for 'treifing up' her vegetables.

The mitzvos are a vessel for holiness, not for our neuroses. So while I know that Pesach is one of the times of year when we attempt to be stringent, if we sense that our observance is turning into the expression of hysteria or self-righteousness - it's called frumkeit - it may be better to turn things down a notch.

The wife of a good friend of mine suffered pneumonia during the winter. Under doctor's orders, she has been instructed not to exert herself this year. Her husband consoled her for not being able to keep the stringincies she has in years past. 'I suppose,' he said, 'we'll have to settle and just keep the Shulchan Aruch' - the laws of Pesach as expressed in the authoritative code of Jewish Law. For the rest of us, that may also be enough.


So happy - oops I almost said it - shabbat shalom!

'Whose Letter is it Anyway?': Aristotle, Esther and the Art of Letter Writing

I think the first philosophical question I pondered was that posed by a Razzles advertisement: 'candy or gum?' My first brush with categorical indeterminacy - Razzles, it turns out, depending on your perspective is both candy and gum (but in both cases revolting).

On Purim, there's another one of those category confusions - Megillat Esther refers to itself as both an igeret, a letter, and as a sefer, a book. Our sages point out this generic ambiguity: 'Megillat Esther is both a book and a letter.' When the Megilla refers to itself as a letter, Esther's name precedes Mordechai; when it refers to itself as a book, Mordechai's name comes first. So whose letter - or book - is it anyway?

A book has permanence, written for the generations; while a letter partakes of the day to day - the quotidian. Our sages tell us that the Megilla's establishement as a book entailed its inclusion among the rest of sacred scriptures, canonized for the generations. But even when included with those sacred texts - older sacred scrolls included not only the five books but the books of the prophets and writings as well - the Megilla has to be on parchment of a different size. At once sacred like the rest of the books in our tradition, but at the same time separate, distinguished from the rest of the books of the Torah - and different. To make matters more complicated, our sages explain that the events that transpired in Shushan had already been written, and were catalogued in the Baghdad Library: 'I am in the Persian Chronicles,' say Esther! So - if we have the chornicles - why do we need another version, the hybrid book/letter which is Megillat Esther?

The events of Shushan do seem - on their surface - to be the stuff of the everyday, material for a letter or maybe even a newspaper report. In the Megilla, there are court intrigues, domestic disagreements, beauty contests, sleepless nights, lotteries. Not the events we associate with the rest of the Torah, not even what we would associate with a successful literary work. In the Poetics, Aristotle argues for the importance of 'unity of action.' All parts of the story - down to the last detail - must serve the end of the plot. If there is an episode that doesn't fit, Aristotle advises the author, 'Get rid of it!' The Megilla, by Aristotelian standards, is a failure - nothing fits! A history that seems without reason, random, episode after episode - like the history present in Macbeth's 'tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.' Pesach, by contrast, the first holiday in the Jewish liturgical cycle, shows the providential hand of G-d at every turn. But in the story of Purim, there is no evidence of G-d's presence; the divine name is absent. Purim is the contemporary holiday - contemporary in the sense of accomodating our experience of G-d's absence. 'Where do we find Esther's name in the Torah?' - our sages ask. In the verse from Deuteronomy - וְאָנוֹכִי הַסְתֵּר אַסְתִּיר - and 'I will hide my face,' anochi hastir astir. Esther - and the work that bears her name - is associated with hiddenness.

And yet. The history that bears no evidence of the divine presence reveals itself - in the end - to show an order which we did not originally suspect. The apparently random details of the Megilla prove to be essential to the salvation which comes at the end. Those events - check them out tonite - which seemed all to conspire towards the destruction of the Jews of Shushan ultimately lead to their salvation. The episodes are intrinsic to the story - with the right perspective, the Megilla turns into an Aristotelian success story - where every event is necessary to the whole. V'anha'fuku - and everything turned around! We didn't know, but the letters from Shushan is sacred.

The Persian Chronicles will not do: for chronicle just lists events; they don't tell a story. Only Esther gives a complete narrative - with all of the necessary links between what readers in Bagdhad may have construed as unrelated events. The version in the Persian Library chronicled an unconnected set of random events; but the Megilla, unified through the consciousness of Esther, tells a story where everything fits, so see even in the apparent randomness of events, G-d's providential presence is revealed. To the question: whose Megilla is it anyway? The answer (the envelope please!) is undoubtedly Esther's. So Esther's name precedes Mordechai when it comes to authoring the 'letter.' But when Esther approaches the sages of her generation, asking to establish her letter as part of the Holy Writings, then Mordechai's name precedes her for his role - as member of the Sanhedrin - in transforming the letter into a book.

Our practice - watch in synagogue tonight - is to unroll the Megilla on the bima before we start reading it. We read the Megilla like a letter, to show that we are not reading from the other books of the Torah (And we also roll it up in the end showing how all the details are collected - igeret also means to colllect - in the scroll). All who hear the Megilla must know that this letter/book is fundamentally different from the other books of the Torah. The Megilla must be read as a letter to emphasize that the what we are reading could be - and is! - on a par with reading a newspaper, current events. A letter is merely transitory and temporal, a disposable witness to the life and times of daily life - a testimony to our own recurrent sense of 'tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.' The events of Shushan are the everyday. But when the Jews of Shushan fasted and repented, then from out of the meaningless randomness of life, the hester panim revealed itself. When at the end, events are revealed through the eyes of Esther, the letter becomes a book. Esther asked of the sages 'make my letter into a Book!'; turn my account of the everyday into a Book on a par with the other Holy Writings! Show the way in which the everyday - the dark repetitions of seemingly unredeemed history - are also a pattern of the divine!

A happy Purim!

Off-Road: Postcards from LA

I remembered that song from my youth - 'it never rains in California, it pours.' So it was - 'Open Minded Torah' on the road (that is, me) ended up in a Friday down pour in LA. Thankfully, I was saved from a day wandering around the drenched UCLA campus by a friend who suggested an afternoon trip to the Getty Museum.

So civilized: the underground parking garage, the tram easing up the hill to the museum complex, the cheerful volunteers in their parkas (it wasn't that cold!) handing out umbrellas upon our disembarking.

I had never been to the Getty. But for all of my love of museums, I had flashbacks to my high school years and what a friend described as 'museum madness' - that dreadful boredom of being dragged to yet another gallery, when all you're thinking of is the hot pretzel or chestnuts outside on the museum steps. When we got to the featured exhibit, 'Captured Emotions' - only in California I thought could the come up with a cheesy name - my own emotions sagged even further. The explanatory text on the wall - who wants to read all that? - while overhearing the museum guide droning: 'in this room alone, there are over three hundred million dollars worth of paintings.' I wanted to escape to the gift shop.

Turns out that the emotions captured were from Renaissance Bologna - though repackaged for the southern California crowd. 'Egyptian Desperate House Wife' in one gallery - that did get my attention - paintings of Joseph attempting to escape from the lustful embraces of Potiphar's wife. In the first by Carlo Cignani, it's the fleshly and buxom wife of Potiphar grasping the resistant Joseph - eyes towards the heavens.


She is pure flesh; her face belies no intelligence, only dumb desire, while the upraised hands of Joseph seem at once to be warding her off and raised up imploring divine assistance. Joseph is enveloped in both her arms and her garment - Cignani's liberty since in the Biblical story, it is the wife of Potiphar who grabs on to Joseph's cloak. Though aher garment, as much as drawing them together, separates her dumb passion from his fearful resistance.

The desperate housewife had staying power in Bologna - Guido Reni painted the scene as well:


Reni's painting provides a different take - it's not dumb desire, more like carnal knowledge. Potiphar's wife may be fleshly, but she looks at Joseph with intimacy and understanding. His left hand is up held up in resistance, though his right hand - is he holding on to his cloak, or reaching for her? - tells a different story. She is fair and white; Joseph is dark with desire - his looks betray him. He is Dustin Hoffman to her Anne Bancroft of The Graduate - 'I know you want me,' her eyes seem to be saying, and the bedpost in the center of the painting, as well as Joseph's ambivalent pose and darkened face seem to show his assent. Cignani's Joseph is at the mercy of the divine; Reni's Joseph is at her mercy.

But then this, also by Reni - a picture of Saint Cecilia, the Christian patron saint of music. The painting has been hiding in Pasadena - why, I thought, is it not in the Louvre surrounded by thousands daily, like Leonardo's mysterious lady?


In this painting, there's the knowledge, to be sure, of Reni's wife of Potiphar, but here it's refined, rendered spiritual. The split between the physical and the spiritual shown in Cignani's picture is absent - it's a pose of intense spirituality, but also beautiful physicality. Her eyes lift upward as if to pull her out of the canvas, the cloak on her arms, seeming to bind her to the ground. But as the whiteness of her neck and her upward glance move upwards, the curve of the violin bow brings her down to earth. And more than that - you can almost see it in the reproduction - the whiteness of her cheeks, brought to life by the slightest hint of a flush under her translucent skin.

I don't know St Cecilia - to me, it looks like how the sages might have imagined Serach bat Asher, who, while Joseph was in captivity played a melody for her grandfather, Jacob, which let him know that his favorite son was still alive. Through Serach's music, the patriarch knew that Joseph lived, that the Jewish people would reach their salvation - that history, the physical world had and would continue to yield to the divine. This is the figure I saw in Reni's painting on the rainy day in southern California - the supple refinement of the flesh, the intense beauty of the otherworldly.

Lighting Up: the Beauty of Chanuka

מצות נר חנוכה מצוה חביבה היא עד מאד

'The mitzva of the lighting of the Hanuka lamp,' says Maimonides, is a very beloved mitzva.' To encounter this passage on its own, you might forget that scholars like to call Maimonides a 'rationalist,' instead we get here a rare expression of enthusiasm - not only an adjective, but even an adverb! There are 613 mitvos in the Torah, and many more decreed by the rabbis, but nowhere else do we find Maimonides in his massive legal compilation evidencing such enthusiasm for a mitzva. We may wonder, adapting the idiom that my kids use when a sibling is evidencing too much enthusiasm for an activity - lama ata kol kach mitlahev? - 'why are you getting so excited?' or more literally, 'why are you so lit up?' Why is Maimonides so 'lit up' by the mitzva of Hanuka?

But there other questions to which we'd have to attend as well. Continuing, Maimonides writes, 'a person should be careful so as to make known the miracle (הנס), and to multiply his thanks to G-d and praise him for the miracles (נסים).' Why is there a disagreement in number? which one is it - miracle or miracles? The inconsistency in Maimonides is paralleled by a seeming inconsistency in the sages. For example, when the sages of the Talmud ask 'what is Hanuka?' - that is, on what basis was Hanuka established as a holiday? - the answer given is the miracle of the oil that should have lasted only one day, but lasted eight days instead. Yet in the prayers on the eight days of Hanuka, there is no mention at all of the miracle of the oil, only the miracles of Jewish victory against the Greeks - that the stronger and more numerous Greek forces succumbed to the weaker Jewish minority. So in the question of miracles - to Maimonides we ask, 'how many?', and to the sages, 'which one?'

The miracle of Hanuka - or the miracles - become clearer in relation to the Greeks and the particular threat they represented to the people of Israel. For the sages, the Greeks occupy an ambiguous position. A Torah scroll can be written in two languages - Hebrew and Greek, but the sages say that it is forbidden for a father to teach his child Greek! Further, while the sages recognize that of all the nations of the world the Greeks have the greatest claim to wisdom, they associate the Greeks with the aboriginal darkness - the חושך - from before the Creation. The Greeks with their decrees, our sages say, darkened the eyes of Israel. The means through which they brought about that darkness, as well as the response of the Jewish people, may provide a way into better understanding the miraculous nature of Hanuka.

The parallels - or better the contrasts - between Hanuka and Purim help in explaining the distinctive nature of galut Yavan, the exile of darkness imposed on the Jews by the Greeks. On Purim, the Jewish people transgressed through attending the feast of the Persian King Achashverus. That is, they transgressed with their bodies, and as a result, the threatened punishment was to their bodies: Haman wanted to destroy all of the Jewish people. He was not interested in Jews who wanted to convert - Jewish father or mother, or even grandparent: their fate would be the same. To avoid the threat against them - they appealed to G-d through fasting, again with their bodies. So when salvation came, the Jews celebrated with their bodies - with drinking and eating, objectifying their joy through physical pleasure. In contrast, the transgression which leads up to the Hanuka story was the neglect of the service in the Temple. As a consequence, the Jews were threatened not with the destruction of their bodies, but their minds and souls. The Greeks had a consistent strategy: they did not destroy the oil; rather they defiled it, leaving its external form, though rendering it impure. So also, they left the Temple in Jerusalem standing, but transformed it internally, turning it into a gymanasia, a place celebrating the primacy of Greek wisdom. So the decrees of Antiochus were not against the body of the Jew: the latter retained his external form, but he, like the oil and the Temple, was defiled internally. The strange exile of Greece - the Jews still in their land! - is the internal and spiritual exile of assimilation. The Greeks were מחלל - they turned sacred into secular - literally leaving a חלל or void in the people of Israel. To avoid this threat against them, the Jews renewed their spiritual efforts, they dedicated their souls - they were מוסר נפש - to divine service. So when salvation came after these trials, the Jews celebrated not through food and drink, but with thanks and praise to G-d.

Praise or hoda'ah - הודאה - is connected to הוד or hod, that is beauty. The kabbalists tell us that the eight days of Chanuka are eight days of hod; the days of Hanuka are days of both praise and beauty. Both words imply flexibility even dependence - to praise G-d is to confess and recognize a reliance upon the divine. Hod is a particular form of beauty - there are many - that defines itself through an acknowledged vulnerability, a yielding. The Greeks emphasized the beauty of the external form, yofi or יופי, but such beauty begins and ends with the external. Unlike the beauty of Greece - yofi - hod represents a beauty that comes about when the physical first joins and then yields to the spiritual. The hod of Moses splenderous face in Numbers is not the external beauty of Greece, but an external testimony to an inner state. Hod is a beauty that breaks forth from the physical, yielding to a force beyond it.

Here is the beauty of Chanuka - in the hod of the Hanuka lamp, burning for eight days. Ask Aristotle how long the lamp will burn, or ask Newton - they will both tell you: one day. The lamp that burns for eight days testifies to a force beyond both the Aristotelian laws of physics and the Newtonian laws of nature. The Greeks are darkness - Maimonides tells us that they were the first of the nations of the world to embrace atheism. Other nations of the world may have worshipped strange gods, but the world of the Greeks was godless. As great as their wisdom was and is, they darkened our eyes, habituating us to a world in which there is nothing more than the laws of nature - a world exhausted by the empirical and defined by the expression 'seeing is believing.'

So Maimonides tells us be careful to make the miracle (in the singular) known - this is the miracle of the oil, the miracle which the eight days of Hanuka commemmorate. But I might ask: why do I have to be careful? I live in a Jewish neighborhood! There are thousands of menoras - of course the miracle is known! Maimonides may emphasize that I need to make the miracle known not only to others, but to myself. Be careful to recognize the hod of the Hanuka lights which testify that nature is flexible; it bends; it yields. First comes the acknowledgement of the hod of the Hanuka lamps, then the hoda'ah or praise for the miracles (in the plural) of the Jewish victory. The Hanuka lamp is acknowledged as a miracle in and of itself, but it also provides a lens through which to see the נסים, the other miracles. The wars between Jews and Greeks can be reduced to a history book example of geo-politics - and they are by the Greeks. But the hod of the Hanuka lamps leads to the hoda'ah or praise for the miraculous nature of the everyday - starting for us with the Jewish victory over the Greeks, but leading outward to the other miracles of our lives. The mitzva of the Hanuka lamps is beloved - חביבה היא עד מאד - in allowing us to thus find light - even hod - in the darkness of Greek exile. Acknowledging the hod of the lamp activates praises and thanks for the miracles that are less easily seen in a world where the Greeks have darkened - and may still succeed in darkening - our eyes. So Maimonides gets 'lit up' by the lights of Hanuka. G-d transformed the oil of the lamp. And through the lamp - if we see the hod - the world we see is also transformed.

Wounding, Vulnerability and Identity: Jacob's Scar

The most famous scar in Western Literature is that of Odysseus. Disguised as a beggar, he returns from his voyages to Ithaka; to prove his identity to the still faithful servants, he shows his wound. Not his driver's license, or his college ID, but the scar on his thigh. Odysseus's scar is what defines him.

What's in a name, Shakespeare's Juliet asks Romeo: 'would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?' The answer for Homer - as for Shakespeare - is no! Odysseus's name is central to his identity: his grandfather, in the Homeric version of the bris, names him: 'I have suffered and caused other to suffer says his grandfather, let his name be Odysseus' - a name which means to suffer and to cause suffering. Not the name that proud Jewish parents would bestow! And so Odysseus lives out the fate of his name, suffering, causing suffering, and winning glory. As a young man, he hunts a dangerous wild boar - which 'hooks him aslant,' ripping 'his flesh just beneath the knee.' The young Odysseus finally triumphs over the wild beast; and when he returns home, he 'spins the tale' of how he got his wound. His wound defines him. When, he returns home, disguised as an old beggar, his old nurse washes him, and only when she runs her hands over the groove of his wound, only then does she cry out, 'Odysseus, it's you!'

Odysseus's scar is famous, but there are other famous wounds.

Fearing the vengeful wrath of Esau after having taken the birthright, Jacob sends emissaries to his brother with gifts; takes special precautions for his family; and then finds himself alone, isolated on the banks of the Yabok river in the middle of the night:

And Yaakov was left alone, and someone wrestled with him until break of day. He saw that he could not prevail against him, so he touched the upper joint of his thigh - which was dislocated as he wrestled with him.

Our sages say that the dust which whirled up from these two wrestlers 'rose up to the Throne of God.' Not any ordinary wrestling match, Jacob was in battle with the 'ministering angel' of Esau - a battle between Israel and the culture of the West which Esau represents. Jacob also suffers a wound - his thigh was dislocated. And as a result, Jacob limps through history. In the end, the sun does shine 'for him,' and the healing light promises an end to the painful traumas - the experience of suffering and exile. But for now, Yaakov limps through history. After their meeting, Esau receives instant gratification - he travels directly to Mount Seir to the seat of his inheritance - Jacob builds a sukkah, a temporary structure, anticipating the path of the people of Israel - a path of wandering, first in the desert, and then throughout history.

Odysseus uses his wound - narrates his suffering - to win himself glory: 'I am Odysseus!' he proclaims to the Cyclops he defeats. Jacob's wound, by contrast, has a different purpose. Following Jacob's triumph over Esau's 'guardian angel,' G-d commands that Jacob abstain from eating the gid hanashe - the sciatic nerve. 'Nashe' means weakness or vulnerability. Odysseus suffers and brings himself glory -through retelling his exploits; Jacob however embraces the law of the sinew of weakness, foregoing the physical strength of this world. Esau in his physical prowess - our sages tell us that he was born with hair, fully formed - cannot recognize the infirmity of others. The law of the sinew - bringing glory or cavod to G-d in its observance - reminds Jacob to embrace his vulnerability, not to forego it. Esau expects - in his desire for instant gratification - perfection from the world. Those of us who are in constant search of 'happiness' or constantly affirming our own contenment may have a bit of Esau in us.

In acknowleding his vulnerability, Jacob is prepared to see the vulnerability of others. When Esau invites Jacob, 'come with me,' the latter refuses, he rather 'leads on softly' - accommodating the pace and needs of his cattle and 'tender' children. Jacob will one day fulfill the fate of his name of Israel - when the dawn breaks, at the end of history, and Israel will prevail over his brother. But in the meantime, he is Jacob, the one who comes from behind, who is incomplete, and who lacks. So Jacob leads on softly.

The wounds of Odysseus and Jacob stand both as a testimony to the sufferings of life. The wounds - in the respective frames - define what it means to be alive. But how does one respond to suffering? Odysseus pursues glory; Jacob pursues cavod shmayim - glory to heaven - all the time recognizing his own vulnerability, allowing him to be open to the vulnerability and needs of others.

Esau to Jacob: 'Carpe Diem, Dude'

The most famous meal in the Bible - Jacob's pot of lentils. His brother Esau comes from the field hungry and asks about the red stew. 'Who died?' - knowing that lentils are the food of mourners. 'Our grandfather, Abraham' -Jacob replied. Esau halted - 'Zeidi is dead?' Jacob nods, Esau pauses, composes himself and proclaims - 'if Abraham is dead, there is no Judge and no Justice,' and sells his birthright to his brother Jacob.

Esau did not think that Abraham was going to live forever. To be sure, Abraham told his children and grandchildren the covenant that G-d had sealed with him - that his seed would inherit the land of Israel. Esau knew as much. He also knew that his grandfather would die - at 'a ripe age,' as G-d had told him - before seeing that inheritance. But there was another part of G-d's message that Esau also remembered: that Abraham's offspring were to be enslaved as 'strangers in a strange land' where they would be 'oppressed and enslaved for four hundred years.' Esau was the first born, and he thought he would bear the brunt of the exile. 'Not for me,' he thought. So our sages reveal the motivation for what the Bible tells us happened next: Esau 'ate, drank, got up and left, and scorned his birthright.'

From Esau's perspective, as long as Avraham was alive, as long as the family dwelled together in the Land of Israel - so long as G-d's presence was immediately felt, then he could believe in the one true Judge and his Justice. But when Abraham died and there was the likelihood of exile, then Esau claims 'there is no Judge and no Justice.' No more birthright. Better to enjoy, to eat and drink. 'Pass the lentils,' he tells his brother. Carpe diem. Sieze the day for tomorrow we die. For now, it's party on.

Jacob however is different. His faith is born when G-d's presence is no longer immediate; in the face of loss and death and exile, he agrees to buy the birthright -with all that entails. Esau knows for a certainty that his grandfather's seed will inherit the land. Just as assuredly as the 'tick' of a clock is followed by a 'tock,' Esau knows that the descendants of Abraham will receive their portion. But the duration between the 'tick' and the 'tock' - between the promise of redemption and its fulfillment - is interminable to Esau. The interim promises too much hardship. So he proclaims: 'There is no Judge, and no Justice.' Jacob by contrast - when he purchases the birthright - shows himselt ready to suffer the long night of exile.

Jacob embodies the faithful waiting of Israel - even after Abraham is dead - when there is no prospect of redemption, but rather suffering. As a people, today, we have our own 'tick'-'tock,' beyond the inheritance of the land promised to the Patriarch. Our 'tick' is Genesis, our 'tock,' the end of days, the coming of Mashiach. Sometimes the wait - the duration between the 'tick' and the 'tock' - seems interminable. So long that we may forget the end: 'is this the promised end?,' Shakespeare's King Lear asks anxiously. Not yet...

When Maimonides lists his principles of faith, number twelve of the thirteen is the belief in the Mashiach, the messenger of G-d - he is not divine himself - who proclaims the end of days. Maimonides does not merely say: 'I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Mashiach.' You would have thought that would suffice, but in an uncharacteristic expansiveness, Maimonides continues: 'and even though he delays - with all of this - I will wait, every day, for him to come.'

Even though he delays, the duration between the 'tick' and the 'tock' does seem endless! Yet even though he delays, אם כל זה - 'with all of this' - I will wait. 'With all of this' - if a principle of faith can be poignant and poetic this quailifes. 'This' - this is what Esau will not bear - the suffering, the anguish, the waiting for redemption. Yet the children of Israel, with all of this they declare, with all of this - they will nonetheless wait every day for him to come. And how much of this there has been!

My twelve year old daughter asks: 'Is Mashiach coming?'

'Yes! He is!'

'We want Mashiach now!'

We are a generation of instant gratification - even when it comes to Mashiach! Children can afford such an attitude. But as adults, it sometimes seems like there is 'no Judge and Judgement,' like the clock has permanently stopped, and that the 'tock' will never come. So we teach our children - and ourselves - not to be like Esau. For with the need for instant gratification comes disappointment, and the indulgence in the pleasures of the moment dressed up in Esau's resigned 'carpe diem!' Yes, we know Mashiach is coming - he is! - but we also know the fine art of waiting. 'With all this' - with Jacob - we still believe!

'No Good Deed Goes Unpunished'?

A friend called the other day: he needed my help. I had to rearrange my schedule to get to his office on time, but the thought of the loss to my work was compensated by the pleasure of the mitzvah: I was happy to help. Then, my phone rang. It was him: 'Never mind,' he said casually, 'I solved it without you.' 'Oh, and thanks anyway' - as he hung up. Never mind?!? Thanks anyway?!? My afternoon was lost, the traffic back to my neighborhood worse than usual; and when I finally got home, it was without my scarf! My favorite scarf! I had gone out of my way - and all I got for my efforts was a 'thanks anyway!' The phrase ran through my mind - I almost said it! - 'no good deed goes unpunished!' As a friend once observed, in the Jewish Bartlett Book of Quotations, 'no good deed goes unpunished' takes special place.

Abraham, our sages tell us, overcame many obstacles on his way to fulfill the divine command to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Coming down the mountain, the test at once fulfilled and averted (a paradox), the father and son meet the waiting lads, Ishmael and Eliezer: we can imagine their hopes for a triumphant homecoming. But our sages tell us that the Satan (or the evil inclination) had something else in mind. Sarah was home, preparing for Abraham's return, when the Satan arrived: 'Know where your husband is?,' he asked. Without giving Sarah the chance to answer, he continued: 'well your husband - how old is he now, in his hundred and thirties? - took your son Isaac to Mount Moriah to sacrifice him.' 'I saw him' - he lied - 'terrible sight, really, your son, screaming, crying, saying he couldn't take it.' At which point, our sages tell us, Sarah died. It turns out that not everyone survived the Akeida - the binding of Isaac. Sarah was its casualty.

When Abraham does return home, it's not to greet her, but to fulfill a grim task - 'to eulogize her and to cry for her.' The laws of mourning - that both accomodate and structure the needs of human psyche - tell us that first one cries and only after gives a eulogy. Before the formality of mourning and speech, there is the expression of raw emotion. It is as if God says, 'do not supress your humanity to please me!' First the outpouring, then the mourning which enables the transition back to the world of the living. But Abraham engaged in the formal act of mourning first.

Abraham was a celebrity. With Sarah, he had dedicated his life to bringing people close to the one G-d. Abraham had no regrets for his actions: the Torah calls him tamim - pure, even perfect, in his acceptance of G-d's will. But he knew how people think. They will say, Abraham thought to himself: 'Abraham has come back from Mount Moriah with his son to find Sarah dead. Surely, he should have expected G-d to reward his deeds, and instead he finds this!' That is why Abraham refrained from crying. For had he cried, the people of Hebron would have thought - Abraham is crying out of regret for having performed the mitzvah of attending to G-d's words! Like us, they would have shaken their heads knowingly and said to themselves, 'no good deed goes unpunished!' There's Abraham regretting the Akeida. So Abraham mourns first, and then cries.

'Be pure' - תמים תהיה - 'with Hashem your G-d' - the Torah exhorts in Deuteronomy. While the nations of the world practice witchcraft and hearken after those who claim to divine the future, the Torah commands, 'be pure with your G-d': don't anticipate what the future will bring, live in the present! Be pure - like Abraham - who makes himself present to the moment, as when he answers the divine call: 'Hineni, here I am.' Presence to the moment - to the here and now - means to refrain from calculating what the future will or should bring. Abraham knows that mitzvos are rewarded, that his portion is with the one G-d but he doesn't know how. In that humble knowledge, he leaves room for the divine, for the unfolding of a future which he does not fully understand, and which may not go according to his expectations. Surely, there are scoffers in Hebron who will want to say that the world is run by a god with a bad sense of humor whose main principle is 'no good deed goes unpunished.' But while they mock Abraham's beliefs, it is they who indulge in divination, who have created an impoverished religion out of their own laziness or stinginess: 'We told you so,' they say, 'your good deeds have done you no good.' 'You lost your scarf,' they deride, 'next time you will know better!' But telling their own stories about reward and punishment is really just a form of avoidance - avoiding the present, the imperative of now, the imperative of saying 'Hineni, I am here!'

In the evening prayers, we turn to G-d and ask: remove the Satan from before us and from behind us. There are not only obstacles which we meet on the way to performing good deeds, but also those we encounter after. Sometimes, the Satan, as in the case of Abraham, does his best to run after us. So we entreat G-d to take away the obstacles that lie before us, as well as the ones that come from behind - that we will be pure like Abraham. That is, we pray that the thought - 'no good deed goes unpunished' - will remain far from our minds!