Parasha Devarim Do You Believe in Miracles?

In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses assembles the Israelites and recounts the past forty years of their experience together.  As we know that experience includes the miracles of the plagues in Egypt and the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea.   “Yet the Eternal has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear until this day”, says Moses to the gathered Israelites.

What does he mean by this? Moses means that while the miracles were happening the Israelites did not   realize that they were in fact, miracles. Darkness descended upon the Egyptians, but not in the places where the Israelites lived. The Egyptian first born were killed, but the angel of death passed over the homes of the Jewish people. The Sea split, and the Israelites walked through on dry land and the Egyptians were drowned.    Moses says that those experiencing these miracles did not understand that these were miraculous events. Only forty years later, the “until this day” of the above passage, did the Jewish people understand that these were, indeed, miracles. This teaches us that it takes time and distance from the event itself – in this case, forty years – to see the miraculous for what it is.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner tells the story of Reuven and Shimon, two ordinary Israelites, who never once looked up as they crossed the Red Sea. They only noticed that under their feet the ground was a little muddy – like a beach at low tide.

“Yucch,” said Reuven, “there’s mud all over this place.”

“Bleech,” said Shimon, “I have muck all over my feet.”

“This is terrible,” said Reuven, “When we were slaves in Egypt, we had to make our bricks out of mud, just like this.”

“And so it went, Reuven and Shimon whining and complaining all the way to freedom. For them there was no miracle. Only mud.”

The Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai, who died in 2000, writes about this phenomenon in a poem:

From a distance everything looks like a miracle

but up close even a miracle doesn’t look like that.

Even someone who crossed the Red Sea when it split

saw only the sweating back

of the man in front of him

and the swaying of his big thighs,

or at best, in a hasty glance to one side,

fish in a riot of colors inside the wall of water,

as in a marine observatory behind panels of glass.

I think the poet is expressing in these beautiful words that, seen from the proper perspective, all of life can be recognized as a miracle. But when we are too close to it, when we are experiencing it, we often miss it. Like Reuven and Shimon in our story, we are keeping our eyes down, focused on the task, and, never looking up, or around, we miss it! The poem continues:

The real miracles happen at the next table

of a restaurant in Albuquerque:

two women sat there, one with a diagonal

zipper, altogether lovely,

and the other said, “I kept it together

and didn’t cry.”

The narrator of our poem, however, sees the miracles in everyday life. We wonder about the snatch of conversation he reports he hears from the next table in the restaurant. “I kept it together and didn’t cry”. Was this woman talking about confronting her superior around a work issue? Was she leaving her husband? Was the miracle that she “kept it together” where she expected she might fall apart? Or, is the miracle the narrator perceives the fact that we can share our struggles with sympathetic friends, we can receive comfort and consolation from others following a difficult encounter or situation? We don’t think of that as “a miracle”, but perhaps it is. The poem concludes:

And after in the red corridors

of the foreign hotel I saw

boys and girls who held in their arms

 tiny children born of them,

and they held

sweet little dolls.

The poet then moves to the red corridor of the hotel in which he is staying. He sees “boys and girls” holding small children born to them, who themselves hold baby-dolls in their arms. To the older narrator, I think, the young adults he sees with their children are merely, “boys and girls” – children themselves. The baby-dolls held by the children represent the future generation that one day these children will themselves give birth to and nurture. This is the miracle of birth and death in general, and perhaps the miracle of the continuity of the Jewish people in particular.

Think of something that happened to you in your lives, something that, because you were part of it, you saw “only the mud beneath your feet.” Think of an experience that, if you were to take a step back and look at things from a distance, you might say to yourself: “I lived through a miracle. I passed through the sea, on dry land. Only I didn’t see it at the time.”   Shabbat Shalom

Parasha Balak - The Power of Praise

I was browsing through the stacks in our synagogue library this week when I came across a book published ten years ago by one Lita Epstein. I had never heard of the author but I was intrigued by the title of the book:   If You Can’t Say Anything Nice, Say it in Yiddish: The Book of Yiddish Insults and Curses.  As some of you know, Yiddish is a very colorful language. I’ll  share a few  a few choice curses from this book. Just to be clear the definition of curse is an invocation for harm or injury to come upon one. I won’t be using any “swear words”, in English or in Yiddish.

Ale tsores vos id hob oyf mayn hart-en zoln oygeyen tsu dayn kop)  All the troubles that weigh on my heart should fall on your head!

  Migulgel zol er vern in a heng-lay-ter – bay tog zol er hengen, un bay nacht zol er brene . He should be transformed into a chandelier to hang by day and to burn by night!

S’zol dir vaks-en a gesh-ver oyf-en pupik . May a boil grow on your belly button!

Ale tsey-en zoln dir a-roys-falen, nor eyner zol dir blayben – oyf tson-vey-tik.  May all your teeth fall out except one to give you a toothache!

All this by way of introducing our Parasha for this week. The Israelites are on the march to the Land of Canaan. After 40 years in the desert, they are about to enter the land. They have conquered Sichon, king of the Ammorites, and Og, the King of Bashan. They are encamped outside of Moab. The King of Moab, King Balak, is determined to do battle with the Israelites. He has seen the fate of the other Kings that have dared to fight against Israel. King Balak decides to get something that SIchon, king of the Ammorites and Og King of Bashan did not have. Balak feels he needs an edge, a secret weapon, with which to go into battle. So, he tries to acquire for himself cutting edge technology, at least for 1250 BCE.

He sends emissaries to Bilaam, a pagan prophet.  According to the Torah, Whoever Bilaam blesses, is blessed. And whoever Bilaam curses, is cursed. As is the case in much of the Torah, the text is condensed, and a lot is left unexplained. For example, I would have liked to know how Balak went about finding a person in this line of work! Did he google him? Does Bilaam have more “Likes” on his Facebook page? Is he highly rated on Yelp? Did Balak find him through Emily’s List?  Sometimes I forget how we ever found anybody before we had computers, but somehow Balak found Bilaam and hired him on.

At this point, it seems that the story can go one of two ways. Remember that Bilaam deals in both blessings and curses – whoever he blesses is blessed, whoever he curses, is cursed. Will King Balak hire Bilaam to bless? Or, will King Balak hire Bilaam to curse? If he hires Bilaam to bless, perhaps he will ask BIlaam to bless him. If he hires Bilaam to curse, he will surely ask him to curse the Israelites.

Just like Bilaam, each one of us has the power to raise people up or bring people down with our words. It does not have to be, as in our Yiddish examples, with a curse uttered intentionally. In many ways, our self-perception and therefore our self-esteem is molded by the words and actions of significant others in our lives – by our parents, siblings, grandparents,  friends, neighbors, teachers  ,  clergy,  coaches, and so forth.  For example, when I was in the fifth grade, our music curriculum consisted of singing. There were no school bands, no elementary school orchestras. The music teacher led us in learning the American songbook. That year, I was chosen by our music teacher to be part of a small group of classmates who would lead the singing for the annual school holiday celebration. My teacher told me I had a talent for singing. That experience not only raised my self-esteem but made me notice my own voice -- as others seemed to like it. Her comment was a gift that stayed with me for the rest of my life. It gave me the confidence to try out for the high school musical. It gave me the confidence to lead the congregation in my synagogue. But that same music teacher divided her regular classes into two groups – “singers” and “non-singers”. The non-singers were told they simply had to listen when the class sang – they were to remain silent!!! ! Just as it was a blessing for me to be told I  had a good voice , I imagine it  must have hurt my peers  who  were  labeled as “non-singers” by our fifth-grade music teacher. Who knows what the long-term effect was of being told at age 10 that you should not sing?

We all know the word for “Blessed” in Hebrew – Barukh. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the word “Barukh” can also be translated as “praised”. When we praise another person, we truly bless them as well.  Praise is a blessing that we can bestow upon one another every day. A few months ago Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote about a remarkable woman he had known, the late Lena Rustin. She founded a speech clinic in London that treated children who stuttered.  The average patient was 5 years old. But Lena Rustin did not just address the technical aspects of achieving fluent speech. She focused on the entire individual and their families. She believed that for a child to stop stuttering, relationships within the family had to change. She gave each family member an assignment. Every day each family member had to find at least one thing that another family member did and praise them for it. This was especially important for the parents to do with each other. Lena Rustin hoped that this simple gesture, repeated daily, would help build family members self esteem and give them the confidence to change and to grow. Seeing this, the child who stuttered would find the courage to change as well. Follow up interviews revealed that not only had the stutterer been helped, but the marital relationship of the parents had improved. Many couples reported that it had saved their marriage!

Praise is a blessing.  A kind word can boost an individual, improve a marriage, and uplift a family. It is a simple gift we can give one another every day. Let us make an effort each day to find something for which to praise our spouse, praise our children,  praise our friends, praise our employees.

Shabbat Shalom