For Your Shabbat Table (ARCHIVE) - Chabad of Rancho Mirage

Terms of Endearment

Friday, March 27, 2020 - 8:48 PM

This last week you’ve been together with people whom you certainly love very deeply, but whom you are rarely together with for so long or so consistently. Many a meme-worthy moment that makes. You’ve also been separated from people whose company you may or may not appreciate but whom you need to make contact with if your business enterprise is to stay afloat and weather this storm.

Inevitably, both aspects of isolation make one consider communication, or as Oxford experts put it: “the imparting or exchanging of information or news”. Oxford would do well to consider the Latin original communicare, to share.

There is the utilitarian function of communication of getting information from Point A to Point B but this is not the heart of communication. At all.

Our Parsha, our weekly Torah rhythm, is referred to as Vayikra, which means And He called. He, meaning G-d, called to Moses. And certain that we’d miss the nuance, the classical Rashi offers that Vayikra is a term of endearment. Endearment: the way angels call to each other. Which begs the question: I don’t know much about angels (I’m far from one) but I know they are not winged, caped, haloed fairies. Rather they are beings not defined by time, space or much of what constitutes the human condition. So, why do they need to “call’ each other? “Hey Raphael, can you send over some healing potion? You were late on last month’s order!”

The heart of communication- its purpose really - is to foster love. This is why angels call to each other. This is how G-d called to Moses and this is fundamentally how He wants us to call to whomever we call. While in isolation, use Effective Communication Methods and other self-help books (note whom these books are designed to benefit) as doorstops. Take out Vayikra.

Rabbi Pam, to whom many turned with their marital issues, reflected that if husbands and wives would stop calling each other from one room to another and instead walk to the room where their spouse is before calling them, half the cases that come before him would disappear.

In isolation distractions are lessened. With focus, our terms of endearment can be heightened. And our blood pressure lowered.

Isolation - We're All in this Together!

Friday, March 20, 2020 - 8:40 PM

Everyone must be in isolation. Everyone. Isolated. Do you catch that counter-intuitive dual dynamic? Isolation does not work unless everyone is unified in separating. Nor does isolation work if an individual decides to "do his own thing". So we can only operate as individuals if we join common cause to do so. We can only be alone if we are together and we can only be together if we are alone.

Those who follow the weekly Parsha rhythm are amused, or amazed, that this dynamic is accentuated in this week's double-Parsha, the last two Parsha of exodus. Vayakhel, as the penultimate parsha is called, means to assemble, that Moses must gather the people together before addressing them, not simply for the practical aspect of 'hear ye! hear ye!' but because when we gather as one we are more sensitive to the message. And the last Parsha (the ultimate one) Pequdei, speaks of the detail, the individual.

We are viable individuals only if we are of the same purpose, in our totality. We are only together if we maintain our individuality. And with this message, the Rebbe reminds us, we conclude the Exodus -- from Egypt certainly, but the ultimate Exodus too, when all mankind will be of one mind and heart. He will gather us in. One by one. Together.

Kenahora Pu-Pu-Pu!

Friday, March 13, 2020 - 6:25 PM

Kenahora Pu-Pu-Pu!

Why did Bubby always say that? And does it really have to do with the evil eye? Is this evil eye a cousin of walking under ladders with black cats on the Friday the thirteenth? The answers, in order, are: Because she loved you. Yes, but with an explanation. No.

Kenahora, although everyone thinks is a Yiddish word is actually three words slurred together in Yinglish – the vibrant language of Native Americans of the Lower East Side: kein, the Yiddish word for no or negating, ayin Hebrew for eye, and hara, Hebrew for Evil.

Now think back to when she used it: “Such a sheine punim, kenahora.” “You’ve grown, kenahora.” “He’s making money hand over fist, kenahora.” (you should only be so lucky)

I have a friend in, well, I’m not saying where they’re from, because I want to protect myself from what will happen if I don’t protect their anonymity. They make in the seven-digits a year (kenahora). They drive a five-year-old station wagon. He once told me why she insisted on it. Their neighbors don’t have as much, and their neighbors’ neighbors have even less (and they’re still not slumming, mind you). If she gets a new car then her neighbor will be compelled to keep up -- and her neighbor likewise. Somewhere down the line someone is going to be hurting from racing too hard. She doesn’t want that frustration to be caused by her. And not for purely altruistic reasons.

Hashem gives us things. Hashem does not give others these same things. This can and does cause jealousy, an unvoiced “Why does she deserve it?” and somewhere on High that energy does not dissipate. It gravitates, and brings into question “Maybe she doesn’t deserve it after all?”

Those-who-have-don’t-show doesn’t have to be grounded in smugness. We don’t want that our good fortune should accentuate what others are missing. Which is why boasting is unJewish. And why when something said could be seen as boasting, it is hurriedly whispered and sandwiched between kenahoras and pu-pu-pu’s.

The pu-pu-pu, incidentally, is spitting noises. Spitting as if in disgust. It’s an appropriate Yiddishism: when you see an exceptionally beautiful child you say “Miyuskeit! Pu!” (“Disgusting!”)

Asking Jewish grandmothers how many grandchildren they have can risk a faux pas. While some won’t hesitate to blurt out a number, others will fidget and mumble. Putting a number on a blessing is considered bad taste.

You might also notice when men are counting a Minyan they won’t count one-two-three but do something more convoluted.

Think it originated in Eastern Europe? This parsha begins with the warning not to count people directly. (There is another reason not to count directly; it negates the quality of Infinite in the person, but that’s for another time.)

See how much your Bubby loved you?

The Night The King Couldn't Sleep

Friday, March 6, 2020 - 2:05 AM

Sleep is not a delicate or romantic. We slobber. We belch. We mess up freshly-pressed linen. We mutter senseless, groggy drivel. And all those contour pillows, satin duvets, imported headboards and lacy skirting -- try as they might -- can’t hide the fact that we, thinking, sensitive, provocative, insightful, caring individuals, have by way of sleep morphed into embarrassing slobs.

And yet, we need sleep. Deprived of it, our bodies simply demand it: the eyes refuse to see, or even stay open; the ears cease to transmit data. As does the nose, as does the tongue as do millions of the body’s sensors. The body shuts them down because important work has to be done: every cell discards its waste and simultaneously rejuvenates. Think of it as your neighborhood supermarket: they close the doors to customers for a time to wash the floors, restock the shelves and count the money you’ve given them. Without this down time the store cannot function at optimal level, if it functions at all. Without consistent, adequate sleep we fall apart, slowly but surely: degeneratively.

Still, sleep feels like a waste of time. It is the least dignified part of our day. Our bodies are all that is working, our minds, our sensitive side, our spiritual quests are all but dead. Or so it seems.

Life for us is asleep. We primarily feel the immediate need of our digestive systems, not our spiritual system. Our stomachs, our businesses occupy the vast majority of our time and thought; our spiritual journeys are inside books or for the books. The word reality conjures physical need, not religious endeavor. That is the way it is.

Because, well, we are asleep. That is how the Psalmist and the Talmudist see our state of life: exile. We are asleep. And so is the Almighty, as it were. We don’t see his connection with us other than in a groggy haze – and primarily as Facilitator-of-All-My-Needs Deity.

It is evident that we are asleep. But we are also sleepers. We will be awakened one day to a different reality. It all sounds a bit, well, dreamy. But then reality usually sounds dreamy when I am asleep.

“On that night the kings slumber was shaken,” cites the story of Esther. The obvious reference is to the wicked king who decreed death to the Jews. He couldn’t sleep at all that night until he remembered that he owed his life to a Jew. That was the beginning of the happy end, or, perhaps, the end to a scary beginning.

But the king who couldn’t sleep at all that night is reference too, to a King on high. Whose connection to his people below resembled the soul’s connection to the body when the body sleeps. Disconnected. Not present. Or present but only in a limited, paradoxical way: the lack of spirit highlights the function of body -- and its connection to something beyond the body.

Sweet dreams. And wake up to something even sweeter.