This ancient prayer, originally written for Rosh HaShanah, is fiercely anti-idolatry. You might think that is it because God has no image and any image of God is therefore a distortion, ”No,” says Heschel, “It is precisely BECAUSE God has an image that idols are forbidden.” What is the image of God? YOU are the image of God on earth. Aleinu. It is upon us to complete the sacred task of perfecting the world under God’s watchful eye.
Rabbi Yael Splansky
8:30 AM Philip Smith
“Everyone is afraid of the dark. Sometimes our world grows dark, because we have sinned; we bring trouble and sorrow upon ourselves. And sometimes the world grows dark, because that’s just the way of the world. It’s important to distinguish between the two.”
Has anyone taken on the American president quite like this? And spoken with such eloquence about our splenetic times?
Watch and listen as Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch speaks on Rosh Hashanah at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in NYC.
[green_message] For more from Rabbi John Moscowitz, please visit www.johnmoscowitz.com.[/green_message]
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When you were at Temple for Rosh Hashanah, you saw that our Renewal Project is truly upon us, and heard a charge from our lay leadership about how this transformational project, so necessary for the future of Holy Blossom, will only succeed if every one of us believes that we must do our part.
In advance of Yom Kippur, please click on the video above to hear Rabbi Splansky’s inspirational thoughts on “Aleinu: It is upon us”.
Also, please note the invitation below. We’d love for you to come on October 10th, for an evening of conversation and shared ideas about our Renewal of Space and Spirit.
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**There will be no personal solicitations at this event**
To RSVP, for this event, please select one of the following links:
Or phone Jonathan Ain at 416.789.3291 ext. 249. See you there!
Shalom Everyone:
During Hebrew class we talked about Yom Kipur and the importance of Selichah – Forgiveness. As we are learning the Kidush, we continued reading it and chanting it.
The students are doing really well and I would like to remind you that they should be practicing at home. They all have a copy of the prayer and to make things easy, I’m including an audio clip in this blurb.
Wishing you all Ge’mar Chatima Tova.
Tali Weiss
===================================================================Dear Parents:
This week Cantor C’s grade six class went all the way back to the beginning of Jewish history. We reviewed each book of the Torah and learned the basic themes in each one. We will begin looking at the times of the Kings and Prophets next week.
G’mar Chatima Tova!
Cantor C.
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This week in Grade 6 we continued our discussion on the Jewish people’s 40 years of wandering in the desert, spanning from the book of Leviticus to Deuteronomy. In small groups, students engaged with differing perspectives on these sections of the Torah, and were challenged to convey those perspectives to the rest of the group. Next week students will work on developing their own opinions on 40 years of wandering.
Rebekah
Dear Grade 7 Parents,
Our field trip this evening to the Pine Villa Seniors Residence was a rewarding experience.
We spent time reviewing the value of bikur cholim – visiting the ill and elderly, creating cards to accompany flowers for those we visited, and then reflecting on the evening prior to the field trip’s conclusion. I admire how the students created cards with thoughtful messages, and the maturity they demonstrated in the company of the residents. This is so good as they continue to grow.
I know that you appreciate the importance of your children arriving home tonight safely. That is why – because we were off-site from Holy Blossom – it was vital that I see the students and their parents greet one another.
Thank you for your understanding and ongoing encouragement of our learning endeavors.
Shana tova, g’mar tov – an easy fast this coming Yom Kippur – and I look forward to welcoming your children back to Holy Blossom next Monday Oct. 2.
Sincerely,
B.
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Rabbi Helfman and Cantor C’s classes went to Forest Hill Place to assist in performing the mitzvah of Bikur Cholim – Visiting the Sick. After a brief lesson on some of elements, the students tried to visit with some of the residents – in particular those HBT members. Unfortunately many of our members were unavailable, but one member was very gracious with her time. It was a good lesson for our students – understanding that even though we had very good intentions, it did not quite work out as planned.
Next week, we will review this past trip and prepare our students for our next field trip to the Imdadul Islamic Centre on October 16th.
Best wishes for an easy fast – g’mar chatima tova,
Post-apocalyptic literature, TV, and movies have been very popular recently. It is hard to find a copy of the “The Handmaid’s Tale” in bookstores. I think the show was amazing, and so do the people at the Emmys. This type of art is often very critical of religion. It works because we can definitely imagine “religious” people doing the things we read about/see in the “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Religion is not necessarily a bulwark against violence, terror, and oppression. We just have to read the paper to know this.
This summer, though, I read another post-apocalyptic classic that paints a different picture of religion. In “A Canticle for Leibowitz”, first written in serial form in the late 50’s, there is a devastating nuclear war in the distant past, and the world is in a dark age. In most of the book, a small desert monestary is preserving scientific knowledge (that they don’t quite understand). They are also keeping moral knowledge alive. The monastery is the foundation and spark of what again will become civilization. Religion is the preserver of truth in a time of violence and deprivation in this work.
In “A Canticle for Leibowitz” this religion is Catholic (and the book does engage a bit with Judaism). This got me thinking about today. God willing our leaders will be wise and prudent so that there will not be some nuclear devastation. I have been thinking about, in our pluralistic time, what is religion preserving and teaching society? All religion, because I think that we have to be in this together. And then I was thinking, what can other religions teach us, the Jews? I want to focus just on what I think we can learn from Christianity and Islam (these are the two religions that the Jewish world has the most historical contact and engagement with), and then what I think Judaism can teach the world.
One word at the outset. Rabbis from the middle ages have been debating what the Jewish view of Christianity and Islam should be because if it is decided that they are idolatry, there are a bunch of biblical prohibitions on interacting with idolaters. For the most part, it has been decided that Christianity and Islam are monotheism. (Islam especially (for monotheism) and Christianity has done a great service to the world in spreading the Bible, even though they have a sequel.) Rabbi Yitz Greenberg writes, “Maimonides makes clear that whatever erroneous doctrines Christianity (or Islam) may teach does not undercut their fundamental contribution ‘to prepare the whole world to worship God with one accord.’”
In various ways, Jews have always engaged in the ideas of these two religions (usually in refutation), and what I want to do is pick out one thing from each tradition that can enhance our understanding of Judaism. What I am not going to do is say that “all religions are the same and can’t we all get along.” Yes, there are very important differences. What I want to show is that there are important similarities, and that concepts in another religion can help us think about ours so that we can live Jewish lives of meaning in conversation with others.
So, let’s start with Christianity. We can learn a lot from Christianity—love, universalism, salvation, God’s grace. These are all concepts in Judaism that we don’t always like to talk about because we think they sound Christian—ahavah, b’rit b’nei No’ach, yeshua, chen v’chesed. So, I want to pick a concept that you might think cannot be Judaized. Incarnation. Classical Christianity believes that God literally made Himself (I said “him” on purpose) human in the form of the real human Jesus of Nazareth. Now, hold on a second, don’t worry, I am not here to say that we should believe in that. I should have my rabbinic ordination taken away if I said something like that. I want to explore what incarnation could mean in a Jewish context because I think it can teach us something very meaningful.
Greenberg: “Obviously, many Jews will argue that closing the biblically portrayed gap between the human and the Divine, between the real and the ideal, by incarnation is idolatrous or at least against the grain of the biblical way. But even if incarnation is contradictory to some biblical principles, the model itself is operating out of classic biblical modes—the need to achieve redemption, the desire to close the gap between the human and the Divine . . .” Greenberg continues that Jews can take from the Christian idea of God’s incarnation in Jesus the very Jewish notion that God needs human emissaries on earth to live out the covenant and bring the world closer to redemption. The late Jewish thinker Michael Wyschogrod even argues in his work “The Body of Faith: God in the Jewish People” that for the Torah, God is incarnate in the whole Jewish people. Christians believe in one incarnation, and according to Wyschogrod, God is in all of us (just Jews). He writes, “The Christian proclamation that God became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is but a development of the basic thrust of the Hebrew Bible, God’s movement toward humankind . . . [A]t least in this repect, the difference between Judaism and Christianity is one of degree rather than kind.”
This Biblical God is not a philosophical abstract, but a real being in whom one can have a relationship. In the Hebrew Bible God takes on human form (called a malach) in many stories—Abraham and the visitors, to the 70 elders, Samson’s parents, etc. And, right at the beginning we are told that we are created in the image of God. I think our ancestors took this literally, and I think that we can take it very seriously. When we look into the face of another—our loved ones, the homeless person at the corner of Eglington and the Allen, a person in a foreign country, we are looking at the face of God. We then know that we are obligated to that person.
I think another important lesson from this way of looking at incarnation is that our bodies are primary. There is no such thing as a disembodied Jewish soul. Judaism is a religion of ensouled bodies with embodied souls, or as Alan Morinis teaches, you don’t have a soul, you are a soul. The Biblical scholar Benjamin D. Sommer writes, “One can imagine a platonic study circle populated by philosophers who have a mind but no body or a church full of certain kinds of Protestants who have only a soul . . . There could be no such beit midrash or beit k’nesset. It makes sense that the traditional Jewish belief in an afterlife involves not just immortality of the soul but resurrection of the body: if we only have souls in the future, then we will no longer have Torah, for one learns Torah with one’s mouth and throat, and one lives Torah with one’s forehead, arms, shoulders, and stomach.”
We as Jews sanctify our bodily processes. The traditional blessing after relieving oneself says, “Blessed are you, Adonai our God, Ruler of the universe, who formed humanity in wisdom and created us with many orifices and cavities. It is revealed and known before the throne of Your glory that were one of them to be ruptured or blocked, it would be impossible to survive and stand before You. Blessed are Your, Adonai, Healer of all flesh who does wondrous deeds.” Also, the tradition wording of the morning blessing thanking God for our soul, our embodied soul, is very incarnational: “My God, the shoul You placed within me is pure. You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me, and You guard it while it is within me. One day You will take it form me, and restore it to me in the time to come. As long as the soul is within me, I will thank You, Adonai my God and God of my ancestors, Master of all works, lord of all souls. Blessed are You, Adonai, who restores souls to dead bodies.”
God is here with us—works through our bodies. I think this is a beautiful way of thinking of God, entering into relationship with God, and living a life of holiness, but it might be taken too far. If God is in us, who is to say that I am not God? And, if I am God, who is to say that I can’t do what I want whenever I want? It might be a theology of narcissism.
So, we move on to Islam. Most forms of Islam (except maybe some forms of Sufi mysticism) see God as totally separate and with no image. A mosque would not have stained glass windows like ours (even though ours do not represent God).
A basic credal statement of Islamic theology in the Quran states: “Say, ‘It is God! The One! God is eternal neither giving birth nor having been born. Nothing is comparable to Him.’”
God is totally separate. Scholar of Islam and Reform Rabbi Reuven Firestone: “ . . . nowhere does the Qur’an suggest that humanity was created ‘in the image of God.’” God is totally ineffable. As I see it, this ineffability leads the individual to humility because of wonder and awe. Haroon Moghul, in his wonderful new memoir/meditation on what it means to be a contemporary American Muslim called “How to Be a Muslim: An American Story” says this, “ . . . a believer—one who is thankful. Shakir. In awe at the privilege of existence.”
We are privileged to be alive. It is not because of my merit that I am alive. That is humility. I see this in the way a Muslim prays. Prostration. In unison with others. (Avraham ben HaRambam, the medieval rabbi in Egypt, son of Maimonides, said that this should be how Jews pray. He even believed that the Muslim were teaching us the original ways Jews prayed. He was over ruled.)
(Talk about experience of Muslims praying at Holy Blossom
Humility—I am not the centre of the universe. God is. And I was created. Moghul: “If the world was created from nothing, and it was, then it is created in distance from God. We are not Him. We cannot be Him. We must be ourselves. Our lonely, terrified, mortal selves. Individuality demands alienation. God, many Muslim will say, created the world so that He may be know.”
Our job is to know God and have that reflected in the way we live.
Humility helps us view of the world realistically. The whole world is not about us. We are part of the community of humanity. We—individually—are not the center. This is a very important lesson at this season of reflection and repentance—this season of t’shuvah. For us to ask forgiveness; for us to right our wrongs, we need to realize that it is not all about me, me, me. For us to forgive, we need to realize that it is not all about me, me, me. Humility is needed to repair relationships, families, and communities.
As we pray in the morning service, “Many of our works are vain, and our days pass away like a shadow. Since all our achievements are insubstantial as mist, how dare we look upon ourselves as higher than the beasts? Yet, despite all our frailty, we are Your People, bound to Your covenant, and called to Your service. We therefore thank and praise You, and proclaim the holiness of Your name. Ashreinu! Mah tov chelkeinu, umah na’im goraleinu, umah yafah y’rushateinu! How fortunate we are! How good is our portion! How pleasant our destiny! How beautiful our inheritance!”
Now, you might have noticed that the big ideas that I bring from Christianity and Islam are also found in Judaism, so what can Judaism teach to the world? Pluralism. Our ancient sage, Rabbi Yehoshua proclaimed that all righteous people have a place in the World to Come. Not just Jews—and to be righteous one had to follow pretty common rules of morality derived from the story of Noah. The 14th century Provincal sage Menachem Meiri says that Muslims and Christians are “people bound by religion, which removes their religion from the category of idolatry and places them fully within the universe of moral obligation of Jews.” And, in a western world where the proportion of religious believers is getting smaller, I would include moral secular humanists.
Now, many liberal Christians no longer believe that one has to accept Jesus to be “saved,” and I think classically in Islam Jews and Christians were not technically “infidels”, a yet Islam and Christianity historically saw their religions as the only Truth. Judaism, for many sages, did not. It is only the Truth for Jews. In our age which might be compared to the Convevencia, the maybe idealized time in medieval Spain when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together, I think it our mission, as our Classical Reformers would say, the mission of Israel, to teach how we can learn from everyone, how our ideas can be a part of the marketplace of ideas, and how we can still have our own identity, practices, and story. Jews have what to teach—about taking a day off from the world, about being a minority in a world of multiple identities, about being a people and a religion, about being obligated in the presence of the other/Other.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg: “This new analysis must include an understanding of God’s pluralism–that no religion has a monopoly on God’s love. The Noahide covenant [between God and all humanity] lives; [all] faiths articulate and extend its mandate, but, in so doing, they do not have an exclusive divine mission that renders other religions irrelevant. On the contrary, they need the help of other religions to accomplish tikkun olam [repairing the world], and they can instruct and enrich the others along the way.”
Yossi Klein Halevi, in his book “At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land” writes: “The one enduring transformation that I carry with me from my journey is that I learned to venerate—to love—Christianity and Islam. I learned to feel at home in a church . . . and in a mosque . . . the cross and the minaret have become for me cherished symbols of God’s presence, reminders that He speaks to us in multiple languages—that He speaks to us all . . . [I want my children] to understand that, even as this land showed its hardest face, we can still receive inspiration from another tradition’s experience of God’s presence.”
May God’s presence in us and God’s presence in the heavens open our hearts to learn and to teach. To listen and learn from each other and from the other. To teach the world to do the same.
Oy, with the news these days I have been kind o f nostalgic for times gone by. You know, life was simpler in the olden days. Days gone by when you didn’t worry that the Constitutional system of American government might implode. Yes, the good old days of the mid 2000’s. Sure, my country was mired in two wars, but in some way, things made sense. Days like the year 2005, before social media was big, before fake news. Actually, maybe there never were good old days.
In 2005 the eminent Princeton University philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote the short book (based on a 1986 essay) called “On Bullsh**” . . . I can’t say the word because this is a family place and, well, I’m a rabbi. The book is called “On ‘Droppings from Male Cattle’”. What Israelis call shtuyot. The book is called “On BS.” That’s as close as I’ll go.
What distinguishes lies from BS is that a liar is trying to trick you. A liar wants others to believe that he or she is telling the truth. But, according to Frankfurt, “For the [BSer], however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or make them up, to suit his purpose.”
Frankfort: “Bullsh** is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of [BS] is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to the topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.”
Huh, do we recognize this in any public figure today? Someone who is too arrogant to say, “I don’t know” or “I could be wrong”, or too lazy to research, or too scared to show weakness.
I’m not going to name names, but we all know that we are living in an age of, let’s say, something more than lies. An age of, what Stephen Colbert called “truthiness”, what the Oxford Dictionary calls “post-truth”, or what Kellyanne Conway calls “alternative facts.”
So, today, I want to talk about truth. Not necessarily truth with a capital T, I don’t want to get too philosophical, but I want to talk about telling the truth and what Judaism stresses with this middah this character trait, of emet. Emet—alef, mem, tav—the first letter, the middle letter, and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It’s as if truth is all encompassing. Truth, as our tradition says, is the signature of God.
I don’t think most of us reach the level of post-truth, or BS, but we all lie sometimes. I know that I’ve been in a situation and everyone is talking about a classic movie that I had not seen, but not wanting to be left out, I said I saw it. Or, of course, I’ve lied to my kids about . . . so many things. Is it to protect them? Well, it’s usually because I don’t want to take the time to explain something to them. Laziness.
Alan Morinis writes, “A student acknowledges that she ‘tells a story’ ‘out of fear of being taken to task, to be seen in a negative light.’ Once she had to miss a board meeting because it conflicted with her husband’s seventieth birthday party. ‘I found myself preparing all kinds of stories that would “protect” me from these fears,’ she said.
“Just as this story reveals, peel back the behavior and you are almost sure to discover that the source of the lie is a fear of one thing or other. We lie because we fear facing someone else’s disappointment, or having disappointment ourselves, or fear of shame, or loss, or any number of other possibilities . . .
“It was not because of her inner awareness, but rather her commitment to tell the truth, that the student hosting her husband’s seventieth birthday party eventually decided not to lie about the situation. What happened next was a revelation: ‘Instead of lightning coming down from heaven, I got congratulations for my husband’s big birthday and a few “your family comes first” remarks. It felt like a bit of my soul was being saved.’”
If we make a practice of telling the truth, even when telling a seemingly harmless white lie is easy, and then when we look inward, we can learn a lot of truth about our fears and other motivations of our behaviors.
Menachem Mendl Lefin: “Lying is the most despicable spiritual illness. At first it stems from the pursuit of permitted pleasure, money, prestige or the esteem of men. It then progresses towards the pursuit of prohibited pleasures. At the end, it becomes an acquired inclination of its own—lying for the sake of lying!”
Louis Jacobs: “Rav Safra was approached to sell something he had and was offered a price which suited him, but he was unable at the time to signify his consent because he was reciting his prayers and was unable to interrupt them. The prospective buyer, under the impression that the rabbi had rejected his bid, kept on increasing the price but the rabbi insisted on selling for the original price to which he had consented “in his heart.” Naturally, this kind of exemplary conduct was not intended for all, otherwise it would not have been recorded for a saintly man like Rav Safra. But the stern injunctions throughout Jewish literature against cheating and dishonesty in business affairs and in other areas of life are directed toward every Jew, as when the prophet says of his people: “They have taught their tongue to speak lies, they weary themselves to commit iniquity”
Forcing ourselves to tell the truth is not the same thing as “speaking our mind,” especially when it might be hurtful to others. We think that people who are overly honest and say what actually pops into their heads are telling the truth, being honest and refreshing, but I think, Jewish thought has a different take. Speech between individuals should not be hurtful. The famous classical example is “The Beautiful Bride.” Our ancient sage Hillel states that all brides should be praised as “beautiful and gracious.” His intellectual sparring partner Shammai asks, “What if a bride limps or is blind, should one praise her as being ‘beautiful and gracious’? Has not the Torah told us, “Keep your distance from falsehood?”’
Morinis: “Hillel tells us that we should not be primarily concerned with how our words correspond to verifiable reality, but rather for the impact our statement will have on another person.”
Tell of radio interview with guy who only told the truth . . .
Michael Leviton
I just have a very unusual family. They valued honesty to an extreme extent.
Ira Glass
Michael’s in his 30s, and he was raised by parents who encouraged him and his siblings to tell everything, the whole truth, all the time, believing that it hurts relationships when we avoid awkward truths, that we all should just man up and talk things through. We should work things out.
And being honest also means being true to who you are, right? Which, obviously, anybody wants for their kids. But hearing how far his family went with this, it makes you really understand how incredibly strange your daily life would be if you were to never withhold the truth. Like, for a long time, Michael believed that if somebody asked him a question– I mean, like, any question at all– he had to answer it honestly.
Michael Leviton
This is funny because in job interviews, people would ask me what my biggest flaw was. And I would go into a long rant about all my flaws and all the negative things anyone’s ever said about me. And people would look at me– I got used to this expression of horror. And sometimes it was kind of comic. People would laugh. Like, wow, you thought you had to actually answer that? You’re clearly supposed–
Ira Glass
That’s amazing. That’s really amazing. Yeah, you are the only person in the history of job interviews to have ever done that.
Michael Leviton
Not the only person.
Ira Glass
That’s true. His brother Josh does the same thing. More on that later. Let’s stay with Michael for now.
Michael Leviton
Now, that was just being honest. I was just telling her all the information necessary, in my mind, to decide whether to be with me. I thought it was my responsibility as a person on a date to explain everything they were dealing with from the first moment of the date so that they could make an informed decision about how to move forward.
Ira Glass
That’s what I love about this story, is that you thought you were doing a good job. You thought you were acing the date.
Michael Leviton
Oh, yes.
I learned a real truth related to this from a politician . . . really. I had the opportunity not long ago to meet a prominent Canadian Muslim politician in an intimate setting in someone’s home. We were talking about many social issues, and someone brought up the claim that free speech was being restricted because of “political correctness.” He said something like, “If by ‘political correctness’ you mean not being allowed to say offensive things because you will be ostracized, that is a good thing.” He explained that we should be allowed to criticize things in society with well-reasoned arguments and talk about things that are difficult—for him this might mean Muslim integration into society. But, here was his real truth, he said, “If the older generation feels something distasteful or hateful but doesn’t say it because of ‘political correctness,’ that is great because the next generation will not even feel it if they don’t hear it.” Meaning: words matter. It might be someone’s truth that “Muslims are terrorists” or “Jews are greedy” or what have you, but saying that is not speaking truth (besides the fact that it is verifiably wrong). Our words should not be used to hurt or ostracize. Saying that Mexican immigrants to the US (documented or not) are rapists, drug dealers, and bad hombres has nothing to do with political correctness or truth.
So, we have to practice honesty in speech, but not saying things that are hurtful. But, in Jewish law, there are times when it is permissible so say white lies. Louis Jacobs: “. . . for instance, where the intention is to promote peace and harmony [Babylonian] Talmud (Bava Metzia 23b-24a) observes that a scholar will never tell a lie except in three instances of “tractate,” purya, and “hospitality.” The commentators explain “tractate” to mean that a modest scholar is allowed to declare that he is unfamiliar with a tractate of the Mishnah in order not to parade his learning. Rashi translates purya as “bed” and understands it to mean that if a scholar is asked intimate questions regarding his marital life he need not answer truthfully. The Tosafot [authorities of a certain later school, commenting on Rashi’s comments] find it hard to believe that such questions would be addressed to the scholar or anyone else and they understand purya to be connected with the festival of Purim. If the scholar is asked whether he was drunk on Purim, he is allowed to tell a lie about it. “Hospitality” is understood to mean that a man who has been treated generously by his host may decide not to tell the truth about his reception if he fears that as a result the host will be embarrassed by unwelcome guests.”
We can only “lie” to practice humility and to protect the modesty of a loved one and maybe to protect someone’s financial situation if too many guests will really put him out. That’s it.
Morinis: “A story is told about Rabbi Israel Salanter that . . . reveals the inner process that a master of truth goes through in ‘executing the judgement of truth’ that is our guideline and goal.
“Rabbi Salanter gave a regular Talmudic discourse. One day, a student asked a very sharp question that seemed to undermine the entire argument Rabbi Salanter was making. He paused for a moment, then he conceded the point and stepped down from the dais.
“Later he told his student about what he had thought in the moment before he stepped down. In that instant at least five acceptable answers came into his mind to refute the question. Even though he could see that they were not ultimately true, he knew it was unlikely that anyone in the audience would see through them as he could. He was tempted to try them, even for positive reasons: his admission of failure might cause the Torah he represented to lose honor, and he himself might lose face, and that might negatively impact his ability to affect people positively.
“After these thoughts, he chastised himself. ‘You study Mussar!’ he said to himself. ‘Admit the truth.’ And he stepped down.
“In the end, he explained, it was in serving the needs of his soul and the souls of others that he had to be truthful. Though difficult, this is the guideline we too must follow . . . Truth is . . . an exercise, a judgment, and a test. The goal is to live truth according to the guidance of your discerning heart, for the sake of your soul you are as well as the souls of others.”
Let’s go back to the beginning. When our leaders keep telling the same lies, the same droppings of male cattle, they are probably hurting their souls, but they are definitely hurting ours. The more we hear something, the more we are resigned to it, or the more we doubt what we know to be true. Yael Melamede writes, “In a recent study [by Dan Ariely] researchers took brain scans during the course of an experiment in which people lied repeatedly and they found that the brain reacts less severely to lies over time.” This is not good for democracy. This is not good for relationships. This is a desecration of the signature of God.
The more we tell the truth, not offensive words, with modesty and humility, the more our relationships flourish and hopefully society. As Shmuel HaNagid writes:
Delay your speech
if you want your words
to be straight and free of deceit—
as a master archer
is slow to take aim
when splitting a grain of wheat.
Oh God of Truth, whose signature is Truth, we know that we cannot know the all of Truth, but help us this year to know in our hearts the ways of truth and to speak truthfully and act responsibly.
Dears Parents.
Today we explored the concept of Teshuvah: the word means return – how can do/behave better in the coming year?
We talked about the things we are sorry for and how we can improve.
Most of the students said that they want to get along better with their brothers and sisters as well as not to talk back to parents or teachers.
So with this in mind I would like to wish: G’mar Chatima Tova to you.
Next week we invite all parents to class for an exciting Succot Program.
Best wishes,
Sandra
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Founded in 1856, Holy Blossom Temple is Toronto’s first synagogue with a rich history of tradition and modernity in our religious and spiritual expression.