Living Life on Tippy Toes

Life is short. This old cliche became a cliche because it is so true. Nevertheless, we ignore this piece of wisdom, and live our daily lives as if we’re immortal. That is, until we confront a tragedy. Then, we are shocked by how absurdly fragile life really is, and realize that time flies by ridiculously fast. All of a sudden, we’re no longer immortal, and life is much too short. And we’re left wondering how to deal with our lilliputian lifespans.

Well, if you observe some of the shortest people, children, you’ll see they have a fascinating way of coping with shortness: they stand on tippy toes. If they have to look over a taller person, they stand on tippy toes. If they have to reach something up high, they stand on tippy toes. They seem to be forever standing on tippy toes, trying to be just a few inches taller.

Perhaps what we need to do is live life on tippy toes. Yes, life might be short, but we can always find ways to stretch it a bit further.

One way to live life on tippy toes is by grabbing hold of peak moments. To a clock, all time is absolutely equal: each second has a uniform length. However, for humans, all minutes are not created equal. There are many mediocre minutes and some sensational seconds. For us, a minute spent standing under the chuppah waiting to get married is far more important than a minute spent standing in line at the grocery. One experience is forgettable; the other is a peak moment. Life stretches just a bit longer when we seek out and savour our peak moments.

Exceptional events like weddings and Bar Mitzvahs are clearly peak moments. But there are other peak moments, less obvious but no less remarkable. Like volunteering at a soup kitchen. Tucking a child into bed. Taking your mom out for lunch. Going for coffee with your spouse. Having Friday night dinner with friends. We overlook the little peak moments, and often do more "important" things, like work. But no one ever sat on their deathbed wondering why they didn’t spend more time working. But I can attest, people do sit on their deathbeds wondering where the pitter patter of little feet have gone, and why they let their loving spouses slip away. They wonder why their lives seem so short, having neglected to live on tippy toes.

The Midrash says at the end of holiday season, God asked the Jews to stay for one more day of rejoicing. After a wonderful week of festivities, God simply can’t let go of a peak moment, and needs one more day of celebration. I believe this is meant as a model for all of us; we must try to hang on to our peak moments, stretching time a bit further. We do this because life is short, and we must live on tippy toes.

The Wounded Healer

We all remember the nicks and scratches of childhood.I vividly remember an incident in the third grade. It was after a schoolyard fight, and two friends ignored me all through recess. As we were walking back into school, one of them pointed to me and said “we aren’t talking to Chaim; he’s not normal, you know. He doesn’t have a father, and anyone who doesn’t have a father must be crazy.” The remark really hurt; it’s never enjoyable to be an orphan; but the cruel schoolyard teasing poured salt into an open wound.

What is remarkable is how the pain of childhood misfortunes persists. Absent or abusive parents, deprivations, sibling rivalries, and a host of other issues remain a part of us dozens of years later. And we spend a lifetime searching for relief from lingering wounds.The search for relief takes us in many directions. The self help section of the bookstore. Comfort food. Scotch. Shopping “therapy”. Psychologists. Kabbalah water. Prozac. We open up. We let it out. We bear down. We move on. And in fact, some of the legitimate techniques (and even some of the phony ones) actually help.

But what’s fascinating is that some of the emotionally wounded are drawn to help others, reaching beyond their own pain to extend a helping hand. They become what Henri Nouwen, the French theologian, calls a “wounded healer”.

The wounded healer uses his own suffering as a source of healing. He realizes certain scars are permanent, and even the best therapies leave a residue of pain. So he searches for a positive response to suffering, and finds it in kindness and altruism. His own pain is now a guide for healing others. And in helping others overcome broken hearts, the wounded healer finds some redemption from his own suffering as well.

Jews have always been wounded healers, using the negative experiences in our history to repair the world. Abraham the nomad becomes exceptional at hospitality. The nation that suffered as outsiders in Egypt take the stranger as their special responsibility. And the wandering exile searches constantly for the redemption of the entire world.

Immediately after the August suicide bombings in Beersheva, I visited Siroka hospital in Beersheva. The emergency room ambulance, the very same one that had carried injured victims of the previous day’s bombing, bore the following inscription:“Given by the wife and children of Benzion Rosenswajg, of Melbourne, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, 6 August, 2004. And in memory of his wife Sarah Chana, children Yechiel Shlomo and Yitzchak Meir and siblings, Nathan Moshe and Feige, who perished in the Holocaust.”

I know nothing about Mr. Rosenwajg. But when I saw that ambulance, I realized he is a wounded healer, transforming tragic memories into the gift of life.

Carrying Your Own Weight

It was a heartbreaking trip. A pair of bus bombings in Beersheva had killed 16 and wounded 107. I was one of four representatives from Montreal that went to visit our sister city, Beersheva, immediately following the bombings.

The horrors related to us were overwhelming. A reporter who was at the scene told me about bodies strewn all over the place, and the awful smell of burnt flesh and blood. Members of ZAKA, a volunteer organization that recovers body parts, related to us the gruesome details involved in gathering 12 large sacks of body fragments for burial.

We went to funerals, visited shivas and the hospital. What can you say to the woman in the burn unit who just lost a three year old son? What words of comfort are there for parents sitting shiva for their 23 year old daughter? It was an extremely depressing trip.

But I did salvage something from the trip. I learned the Jewish definition of carrying your own weight.

Teddy Roosevelt, who coined the phrase “carry your own weight”, used this phrase to describe a philosophy of self reliance. But for Jews, self reliance is simply not enough. To us, “carrying your own weight” means to carry your family, your community, and even the world with you.

I learned this insight from Olga, a 15 year old Russian immigrant who was on the bus with her 12 year old brother Boris. A ball bearing from the bomb pierced Boris’ midsection, and he was bleeding profusely. Olga took Boris and carried him on her back a quarter mile to the emergency room. Boris was operated on and stabilized, and now he’s doing well.

Olga understood the Jewish definition of carrying your own weight. It requires taking the less fortunate along with you, and if necessary, to even carry them on your back.

This story gave me a new perspective on a Midrash. The Midrash relates that one day Moses was watching his sheep, and a young lamb ran away. Moses finally caught up to the lamb when it stopped at a stream to drink. Moses said to the lamb: “ I’m sorry; had I known you were thirsty, I would have given you to drink myself. Now, after this long run, you must be tired, so I will bring you back myself.” And Moses lifted the lamb on his back, and carried it back to the herd. God, upon seeing Moses’ compassion, said “he is the one to lead my people”.

Now I understand this Midrash. It is teaching us is that before being called to lead the Jewish people, Moses had to demonstrate that he knew the true definition of “carrying your own weight.” If he understood this principle, he could inspire the Jews to transform the world.

Moses taught us well. 15 year old Olga already knows what “carrying your own weight” means. It means you carry your brother on your back when he needs it, no questions asked.

Defining Moments

The most difficult decisions in life aren’t between right and wrong. Ethical decisions are easy. Yes, we often fail and make the wrong choice. But even in moments of moral weakness, we at least know what was supposed to be the right choice.

The truly difficult choices in life are between right and right. There are times when there are too many good options for us to pursue. The Supermom, running from demanding job to carpool to the gym to volunteer work, has to reconsider her priorities on a daily basis: should she take out clients for dinner, take her kids swimming, or go to a charitable function? These “all good choices” decisions are difficult to make, because whatever you end up doing, you feel guilty for having overlooked something important.

Because the “all good choices” decisions leave us feeling guilty, we try to avoid them; we’ll run ourselves ragged doing everything so we don’t have to choose. Then, when we’re finally exhausted, we’ll choose in an impulsive fashion . If we’re feeling insecure about work, we’ll work late; insecure about family, we’ll run home early; insecure about our contributions to society, we’ll go to more community meetings than we can handle. But we are so uncomfortable with these decisions we rarely think about them in a comprehensive fashion. And that’s a shame, because these choices offer us an opportunity to truly define ourselves.

Joseph L. Badaracco Jr., in his book Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right, notes that the decisions between right and right are our truly defining moments. We have many deeply rooted values; how we prioritize them defines who we are. That is why the “all good choices” decisions are so important. We cannot simply decide to be “good people”; we must also follow choices that reflect our own personal mission.

There is a wonderful anecdote about the Chassidic Rabbi Zushe. He explained to his students that after one dies and appears before God for judgement, God doesn’t ask you why you weren’t like Moses or Abraham; Rather, God asks you “why weren’t you Zushe?”.

Reb Zushe is teaching us the importance of having an authentic identity. God didn’t make us to be like everyone else. Each of us is supposed to be our own “Zushe” (or “Chaim”, or whatever your name may be). Our job is not to imitate the success of others, but rather to to discover our own unique mission on this world.

It is during defining moments that we can best discover ourselves. We have to choose not only what is right, but what is right for ourselves. Instead of trying to be everything to everybody, these moments allow us to pursue our own destiny, to find out who “Zushe” really is.

The Art of Mourning

Tragedies don’t have silver linings; they are black holes of sadness filled with pure pain. There is nothing good about death and destruction. Considering this, it would make sense for us to push tragedies out of our minds. So why do Jews focus on catastrophes?

Indeed, year after year, we have days of mourning for the various traumas of our history: exile, the destruction of the Temples, internecine strife and the Holocaust. Even on the holidays, we say Yizkor, a memorial prayer for family members who have died. We continually pick away at old wounds, repeatedly reviewing and remembering our saddest moments.

Why not forget? Some selective amnesia could make our lives, and our history, a lot more palatable. We could “move on”, and stop paying attention to dead relatives. We could consider the Holocaust, the Inquisition, the Crusades, and all the exiles and expulsions to be the irrelevant past, events that could only interest professional historians. And in so doing, the uncomfortable burden of Jewish history would finally be lifted off our shoulders. Perhaps we might even be happier.

Yet we make a point of revisiting our national and personal traumas. We do so because mourning is not merely a form of suffering; it can be a supremely creative act as well. There is a Jewish art of mourning. This remarkable art is actually a form of alchemy; it allows us to take the emptiness of suffering and transform it into redemption.

How does this happen? Well, first of all, we have to realize that discomfort is not such a bad thing. Who will change the world? The complacent, happy with their suburban homes and pensions? Serious change always begins with righteous anger. We revisit these dark moments to remind us that complacency in the presence of evil is the same as complicity to evil.

Even sadness can spur a positive response. Excess sadness can be extremely dangerous, and lead to debilitating depression. Yet the art of mourning can find a positive use for sadness as well. This is best expressed by the verse “and you shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The newly freed slave may not become a master; he must become an abolitionist. The Torah is teaching us that the response to tragedy may not be depression or cynicism or hatred; the only correct response is compassion. Rather than feeding an endless cycle of violence, the suffering stranger is commanded to transform his anguish into love.

Tragedy and suffering in and of themselves are empty, meaningless events. But it is still possible to offer a meaningful response to suffering. The art of mourning is to use tragic memories as a roadmap for fixing the world. And in this way, the art of mourning becomes the first step on the road to redemption.

An old piece I forgot to blog......

Maximizing your 15 minutes

You can’t summarize a life in 15 minutes” is an oft-repeated platitude. While it’s true that you can’t recite a person’s biography in 15 minutes, you can summarize a life in 15 minutes. I know this, because I summarize lives all the time. I give eulogies.

Eulogies are more than mere summaries. When I perform a funeral for someone I didn’t know, often when I meet the families, they are (understandably) quite nervous. “You must mention this,” a family member will admonish me, as they recite critical information. Certain phrases are repeated compulsively, trying to make certain that I, an outsider, get the story right. It’s important to the family, because the eulogy is no mere summary. Rather, it is a public statement of legacy and memory. And legacies matter.

No one wants to live a forgettable life. This is not due to vanity. It is an essential, existential need. Man’s most powerful quest is the search for meaning. We hope that we’ve made a genuine contribution, that the sum total of our labours will have made this world a better place. And after all is said and done, we hope that’s how everyone else remembers us as well.

Maybe it’s because I’m closing in on 40, or maybe it’s because I attend too many funerals, but I’ve started to think about my own legacy. Perhaps it’s odd, but at funerals, when I listen to the family pay tribute, I wonder what the 15-minute summary of my life will sound like. I suspect I’m not alone in doing this, and that many of you think about your legacies as well.

My experience at funerals has taught me what a real legacy sounds like. First off, (for those of you in the market for sports cars), in the nearly 300 funerals I have been to, not once has the deceased’s car been mentioned. Nor have the person’s children spoken about how large his house was or which caterer he used for simchahs.These may be biographical facts, but they aren’t a part of a legacy.

The eulogies that I remember years later are about mothers who worked full time to support their family, and woke up at 3 a.m. to cook dinner; about teenagers who volunteered to fight in the Israeli army during the War of Independence; about grandmothers who lovingly baked cookies; about Holocaust survivors who had the courage to survive and rebuild; about restaurant owners who regularly fed hoboes.Genuine legacies are made of love and courage, determination and devotion.

Biographies can takes hours to recite, only to be forgotten immediately. Legacies can be summarized in a few short minutes, but they’re always unforgettable. For my 15-minute summary, I’m striving for an authentic legacy.

“The Point of it All”

““It’s all pointless; who cares what I do?”.

It was the first crisis of my young rabbinic career. I was 22 years old, and a summer intern at a California synagogue. I was on the phone with J.K., a young man who had attended several of my classes, when he started to tell me that his life was awful, his finances disastrous and his family bitterly dysfunctional. He was planning on solving all his problems by swallowing a bottle of aspirin. And he was confiding in me, (an extremely inexperienced Rabbi to-be), his grisly plan. (A call to the psychiatric hotline prevented J.K.’s suicide).

To this day, these words ring in my ears. I felt that I dropped the ball when I spoke to J.K.. With all my Rabbinic training, I wasn't able to answer a basic question: Why not commit suicide?

So let me try again.

Indeed, a long philosophical tradition endorses suicide for the distressed. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus writes: “Above all, remember that the door stands open. Do not be more fearful than children. But, just as when they are tired of the game they cry, "I will play no more," so too when you are in a similar situation, cry, "I will play no more" and depart”. Voltaire, Hume and Schopenhauer are all advocates of suicide. Today, Dr. Jack Kevorkian is the leader of those who believe in a “right to die”.

Philosophy aside, I get the gut feeling that a cavalier attitude towards suicide is often based on the nihilistic belief that “it’s all pointless”. If there’s no point to it all, there’s no reason to bother with a difficult life.

That’s why in Judaism there is no right to die. Life is a sacred gift, and we must survive, even in hellish conditions. Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, the Rabbi of the Kovno ghetto, was asked if it was permitted for someone to commit suicide rather than watch his family be murdered. Oshry’s response, (while filled with compassion), was absolutely not. Indeed, Oshry takes pride in the fact that there were few suicides in the Kovno ghetto, despite the enormous suffering.

Now life in the Kovno ghetto was pure torture. So why is Oshry so fanatical about suicide? Because he realized the value of life. The economics of suicide ordain that life is less valuable than suffering. And that is simply not true. If there is one lesson of Jewish history, it is that a life filled with ideals is worthwhile, even at the cost of suffering. That is why we still have Jews today, despite generations of persecution.

So, this is my belated response to J.K.

Rabbi Oshry and his compatriots suffered more than anyone else in history. Yet, despite their suffering, they persevered because they knew that the future of humanity depends on people who follow their ideals, no matter what the cost.

J.K., that’s the point of it all: idealism. Because life in the service of ideals is worthwhile, despite the suffering.