RH 5770 -- Run As Fast As You Can!

In Pirke Avot – the Ethics of the Fathers – we find the following saying of Ben Azzai:

Run as fast as you can to do a minor mitzvah.. for one mitzvah leads to another. The Hebrew for "one mitzvah leads to another" is "mitzvah gorreret mitzvah".  In this pithy statement there is only one word you may not know, gorreret, which is sandwiched between a word you do know –mitzvah gorreret mitzvah.

I would have thought that the word between the mitzvahs would be the more common "goremmet" – to cause.  Mitzvah goremmet mitzvah --One mitzvah causes another mitzvah to follow.  But the word that Ben Azzai chose was the less common word, gorreret.  Hebrew words all have three letter roots, upon which the different tenses of verbs and masculine and feminine of nouns are built. The root of this word – garar – is an example of onomatopoeia.  As you remember from 5^th grade, onomatopoeia is the formation of words whose sound is imitative of the sound of the noise or action designated, such as hiss, buzz, and bang. The word "garar" means primarily "to drag" – "to produce a grating, scraping sound".  The word is found in the Talmud. For example – "one may, on the Sabbath, pull or push a couch on the floor."  In another place it is used to describe a door that drags along the ground when it is opened, or a matting which is moved by dragging, or, this intriguing snippet – geraruhu mekivro – they dragged him from the grave.  So the meaning of this text seems to be – If you do one mitzvah, that mitzvah will drag you, by the force of its weight, so to speak, to another mitzvah.  Even if you dig your heals in, and scrape them along the ground, it will drag you to another place. Ben Azzai also teaches that doing one sin drags one toward doing other sins.  Sin also drags you along, as if one sin pulls up the next one. 

Every RH service I recall a minor mitzvah that I ran to.  The year was 1982.  I was attending services at Smith College Hillel in Amherst, MA. At the conclusion of the services, Rabbi Yechiel Lander asked if there were those in the congregation who would like to participate in the upcoming Yom Kippur services.  I had not participated in any religious services since High School – but I had been educated to read Torah as a young child.  I had read the YK torah reading many times, although not in the past fifteen or so years. Still, I was sure I could do it.  So, following services, I approached the bima, introduced myself, and volunteered to read Torah for Yom Kippur morning. Although not aware of it at the time, this "running to a minor mitzvah" constituted a pivotal step that would take me down a path that would change my life.

The following year, I was the Torah reader for both Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur at the Smith College High Holiday services.   After YK that year, Rabbi Lander again called me to say there were 2 students at the local synagogue where he was the part-time rabbi who were having their bar mitzvahs that year. Would I be interested in teaching them?  Again, without being aware of where this was taking me, I gladly accepted.  Gerarrrrr

When the time came for their bar mitzvahs, Rabbi Lander asked me if I would read the Torah. Of course! And, would I be willing to help him out by serving as the Hazzan for the bar mitzvahs. Yes, I said, since I remembered the melodies for the Sabbath morning services of my youth. This process led me to become a leader of services at the synagogue. The next year there were another 2 bar mitzvahs. The following year four.  Then, ten. As the congregation grew, I was slowly being dragged into greater and greater participation in synagogue life.

A few years later, Rabbi Lander asked me if I would lead High Holiday services for Hillel.  His daughter Shira, who had been the Hazzan for the services for many years, would be off to Cincinatti for Rabbinic School and would have a student pulpit for the holidays.  Armed with a tape from Shira and the memories of the High Holiday melodies of my childhood, I eagerly took on this new mitzvah.  Gerarrrrr

One day, my wife Middy said to me gently, "You have a lovely voice, but you don't know how to use it."  That led me to seek lessons with a local voice teacher, who had me singing German art song and Italian arias.  After 2 years, I found Cantor Morton Shames who could work with me on the cantorial repertoire. We met in the music room of his synagogue. Each time I would enter the synagogue to meet with the cantor for our lesson I would think – why am I doing this?  Where is this leading me?  These lessons are expensive. Maybe I should stop.  But I continued to be dragged -- toward where, I had no idea. 

Where THAT led was to a position as the High Holiday cantor for a local synagogue in Western Massachusetts.  The following year, when that synagogue was in the middle of a search for a rabbi, the board asked me if I could be their interim "spiritual leader". 

Mitzvah Gorreret Mitzvah. One mitzvah drags you to the next. One Shabbat afternoon, after serving several months as the interim spiritual leader of this synagogue, I was asked by Rabbi Sheila Weinberg, Rabbi Lander's successor at the Amherst synagogue, how I liked my new role. "I'm having a ball," I replied. "You should become a rabbi," she responded. I was flattered. I had never once in my life thought about becoming a rabbi.  I told her this, and that with a child approaching college I could not possibly afford to quit my day job and go to rabbinic school for five years. She said that there was a seminary she knew that catered to adults in their second career, and if I wanted to know more about it, I should call her.  

I went home that afternoon, and in passing told my wife the flattering comment that Rabbi Weinberg had made. "Marc," she said, "That is just what you have been preparing for.  You have to call her tomorrow, and find out more about that seminary."

And so, every Monday morning for the next five years I literally dragged myself out of bed at 4:30 in the morning to make my 9:30 am class at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York City.  That, of course, led me to stand before you today.

In a collection of rabbinic midrash entitled "Midrash Song of Songs" there is the following: "The Blessed Holy One said to Israel – you need open your heart only as wide as the eye of a needle, and I will make an opening for you through which carriages and wagons can enter."  My journey down this spiritual path began with a small opening of my heart – the desire to read the Torah on Yom Kippur.  Once I made that opening, I was pulled along a path that led me to stand before you today.

Who among us today will make that opening in their heart in the coming year?  When we look at the very first paragraph of the Shema, we see the words "You shall love the Lord your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." But when we look at the second paragraph of the Shema, we see the words, "You shall serve G-d with all your heart and with all your soul". What happened to the words, "and with all your might"?  It has been suggested that the first paragraph of the Shema is directed toward individuals  who have not yet found their special passion, their unique talent or way of serving G-d that is the fulfillment of the root of the persons whole existence.  Then one must serve G-d in all the ways one can – bekhol meodecha – with all your might!!   But once one discovers their special talent or passion for serving G-d in a particular way, G-d wants a person to serve primarily in that way.  To specialize, as it were in a particular mitzvah – not to the exclusion of all other mitzvahs --  but you have discovered that special mitzvah that fulfills your entire being.   There is a teaching that just as each of us has a special mitzvah, each of us has a particular hisaron – a defect – for which the performance of that mitzvah serves a redemptive function. 

My special talent for serving G-d was becoming a rabbi. Your special talent will likely manifest itself in some other way. Opening your heart and running to an easy mitzvah might just put you on a path where you will discover that special mitzvah that will fulfill your entire being.

What path will you start on this coming year?  Are you sitting here today wondering whether you should finally make the commitment to join a synagogue?  Are you saying, "Perhaps I should finally learn to read Hebrew".  If so, you can begin with taking Barbara Bernstein's beginner Hebrew class this fall here at CBS.  Have you ever wanted to study the Talmud? Join me for my "Talmud with Training Wheels" class in October. Want to learn to read Torah? Chant Haftorah? Then you will contact Bernie Newman. Always wanted to sing in our choir? Contact the cantor.  Perhaps you would like to do the mitzvah of working on a committee to organize our community seder for the second night of Passover.  I am inviting you the same way I was invited in 1982 by Rabbi Lander – see me after services.  Will you travel to Israel with our congregation next June?  Call me, or come to the informational meeting on October 27. 

Gerarrrrrr