Get a Torah Fitbit! Erev Shavuos

by | Jun 16, 2019 | Sermons

So a little while ago, I went to the doctor and he told me I have to get some more exercise. I thought to myself, no big deal, I do exercise. I play roller hockey every once in a while. It’s a fast-paced game, great cardio workout – I’ll just play more often.

But it didn’t work.

It didn’t work because there was nothing compelling me to play every Saturday night. I knew it was important to exercise, I liked playing hockey, but it was too open-ended, there was no set goal, and so it never went anywhere.

I thought about getting myself a Fitbit, but I realized it’s a lot cheaper just to count steps in your head. 1043, 1044. Also, I found that Fitbits kind of control people’s lives. You ever see someone pacing in their office, and you’re like, hey, is everything okay? And they’re like, yeah, my Fitbit says I need to take 900 more steps before the end of the day.

Finally, I decide that the only way I was going to exercise was if I had a goal. The goal I decided upon was to run in the Jewish Caring Network’s 5K. (This is not an appeal to support my run. But feel free to, it’s a great cause.) And it worked. It worked because I had a goal. My goal was to run from the start line to the finish line, something I could not have done a year and a half ago. I had a secondary goal to beat all the other rabbis, who for the record all have longer legs than me. I beat them all except for Rabbi Marwick and I was very excited for a rematch this year but apparently, he will be “out of town.”

We all know that exercise is important for our health, but what distinguishes between the casual exerciser, that often times does not get things done, and the real thing is goals. Whether that’s running a marathon, whether that’s hitting the gym a certain amount of times a week, or whether it’s tracking the amount of steps we take each day – without those concrete goals, we tend to not accomplish very much.

I was thinking about my stint as a casual exerciser, and I realized there are other areas in my life, areas of great, actually, far greater importance, where I was also quite casual. Most mitzvot are concrete – you could check off a box if you did it or you didn’t. Put on tefillin, check. Lit Shabbos candles, check. Prayed, check. Gave a certain amount to charity, check. But there’s one Mitzvha that is so important and yet is entirely open-ended, and that is Torah study.

On the one hand, as we said this morning, Elu devarim, these are the things which have benefit both in this world and the next, and it goes on to list all the big Mitzvos, honoring one’s parents, lovingkindness, having guests, etc. etc. v’talmud Torah k’neged kulam, the study of Torah is equal to all other Mitzvos! And tonight, we will say, ki heim chayeinu v’orech yameinu, that Torah is our life, that the study of Torah is the essence of our existence. And thank G-d we do learn Torah! We listen to the baal koreh read the parsha, many follow along in the English translation, some look at the commentaries, some will come to a class from time to time, some have a Jewish book that they are making their way through… but how much of our Torah learning is casual and how much of our Torah learning is goal-driven?

Our Sages in the Talmud teach us that when we get to Heaven, the first question they ask is, kavata itim baTorah? Did you set aside time for Torah study? Not did you study Torah. But did you make it keva. Keva means set, scheduled, goal-driven. Casual Torah study is not enough.

My son came home from school the other day with a flier from a national program called, Masmidei Hasiyum. It’s a program for children in grades 1 – 8. Every verse of the Torah that they study, every Mishna they learn, and every line of Gemara gets them a ticket for some raffles. That’s not unique. What IS unique is how it works. They call a hotline and enter how much they’ve studied each day. And after entering how much they studied, the automated tells them how many verses or Mishnayos they’ve learned in total. And I watch my son call in and hear, “You’ve learned 436 verses.” And that compels him to do more! I’ve done 436, I want to do 500! I want to do 1000! It’s a Torah Fitbit and it works! (http://agudathisrael.org/masmidei-hasiyum-children-take-an-active-part-in-the-siyum-hashas/)

I know many of you know the following story, and so I apologize for repeating it, but it’s worth repeating. My father had a younger brother who was tragically killed as a soldier in the IDF in 1982. To memorialize him, my grandparents invited my late uncle’s friends from Yeshiva and from the army, to come study as a group in my grandparents home, in his memory. And they did. And then three weeks later, they came back to study again. And then three weeks later, they came back again. During this time, the young men grew up, they had families, they moved all over the country, my grandparents moved from Tel Aviv to Bnei Brak to Petach Tikvah, but every three weeks these men would come and learn some Torah together. About a decade ago, my grandfather passed away, they still kept coming. And just over a month ago, my grandmother passed away as well. By providence, a video highlighting the learning of this group aired on the day my grandmother died. Every three weeks for 37 years, these men got together and learned Torah. Using our exercise model, this was the Iron Man of Torah study. And we all thought after both grandparents passed, it was time for this class to come to an end.

In my grandmothers will she wrote, I have one request of my children, only one request – that you continue to memorialize my son the way we always did.

Sure enough, two weeks ago, a group of men made their way to my grandparents apartment. The people who lived there are no longer, but the spirit of Torah, the flame of our Peoplehood, will not be extinguished.

Ki heim chayeinu v’orech yameinu; Torah is the lifeblood of Judaism. It is both a guide to life, it is our family history, it’s a book that our ancestors collectively pored over for millennia, it is the word of G-d, and according to the mystics, a peek into the inner working of G-d’s mind, whatever that may mean. In short, Torah is everything. It is all-important and a casual relationship with Torah is simply not enough.

They say a story of a fabulously wealthy man who lived somewhere in Eastern Europe in the 19th century. One day this man shows up at the top Yeshiva and says to the dean, to the Rosh Yeshiva, “Find me the top bochur, the top student, for my daughter. I’ll take care of him, I’ll make sure he studies his whole life.”

So the Rosh Yeshiva points the top student out, the wealthy man meets with him, they talk about marriage, and the student is on board and so the wealthy man takes him back home with him.

True to his word, even before the wedding, he builds him a mansion, he gives him an American Express platinum card, you name it, whatever this young man needed, and even what he didn’t need, he would give him. At every function the wealthy man would attend, he would take his future son-in-law with him, and let everyone know, “this is my chosson, he’s top bochur in his Yeshiva.” And everyone would look and everyone would nod approvingly.

But there was one problem, the chosson never met his kallah. He was never introduced to his bride. This went on for months. Finally, the groom, a little sheepishly turns the wealthy man and says, “Um, can I meet your daughter? When are we going to get married? What’s going on here?”

And so the wealthy man says, “I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t really have a daughter. But all my friends have daughters, and they show off their grooms, I wanted to also have a groom.” (Rav Elimelech Biederman)

Tonight and tomorrow is the holiday of Shavuos. Shavuos is the holiday that celebrates our relationship with the Torah. I am sure many of you cooked up a storm, you made the best cheesecake ever! You got a haircut, you got new clothing, you bought flowers! Like the wealthy man who went all out for his groom, everything is ready, everything is beautiful and perfect, but we need the bride! Without a relationship to Torah, we’re left with an empty mansion, a wedding without the bride, a chuppah for one.

This is the holiday during which we commit ourselves to this special gift called Torah. Thankfully this is not a one-size-fits-all type of Mitzvah; there is practical law, there is the intellectually stimulating Talmud, uplifting writings of the Chassidim, the philosophy of the great Jewish thinkers, the self-help of the Mussar movement, the fascinating stories of Tanach. There is so much there!

Three thousand three hundred and thirty two years ago, our ancestors, newly freed, stood at a small mountain and committed their lives to the Torah. Let’s make a commitment to their commitment by studying that precious gift, not causally, but with a plan. By choosing a Jewish book, a sefer, a class, a certain amount of pages, of verses, whatever it may be. I’d be more than happy to make some recommendations. Make a goal, a plan, a schedule. Track it. Spiritual exercise is no different than physical exercise. May we merit to taste the sweetness of Torah study and the even sweeter taste of having spiritual goals and accomplishing them.

Cleaning for Pesach with Joy

by | Apr 7, 2019 | Sermons

So I’ve been cleaning for Pesach here in the shul, and let me tell you there is a lot of crazy stuff that’s left around here.

I started in the fridge room to throw away all the accumulated food that’s expired that’s been sitting in our fridge. While there, I found a bottle of ‘Baltimore’s enthusiasm for their baseball team’. Apparently, it expires after three games… Get a grip, Baltimore!

Then I made it to the book room over there, you may have noticed these tremendous boxes taking up the entire room. Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to open them, and you know what I found? I found 500 copies of this! (Healthy Holly) Anyone have any idea what this is all about?

Apparently, it’s not very “healthy” to be caught selling these books for kick-backs. We wish Mayor Pugh a refuah sheleima, and success finding a different job…

We were thinking of selling these books as a fundraiser, but Dr. Klaff recently told me that he plans on growing something really lucrative in the garden outside for this upcoming season. I’ll give you a hint, it’s green, and based on some upcoming legislation, it’s going to be worth a lot of money…

No! What’s wrong with you people?! I’m talking about avocado!

As you may have heard, President Trump is threatening to close down the border with Mexico, and the only impact that the news outlet seem to be focusing on is the projected shortage of guacamole.

Which frankly, as a Jew, on a rather limited Pesach diet, no guacamole is actually a pretty big deal. (Maybe Jews really do run the media?)

So there you have it, for us Baltimore Jews, if it wasn’t bad enough that another mayor bit the dust, and another sports seems to be going nowhere (which is always better than going to Indianapolis…), we have Pesach, the cleaning and the food to complain about. And that’s what I want to talk about today, cleaning for Pesach without kvetching.

I have a couple of Pesach cleaning rules that I’d like to share today, and here they are:

Rule #1, Pesach cleaning is NOT spring cleaning.

Let’s review, It is forbidden to eat even a crumb of chametz, true. In your kitchen, or dining area, you really want to make sure there are no crumbs, because they could theoretically fall into your food. Fine. Clean those areas really well.

But everywhere else in your house, you are not looking for crumbs. You’re looking for things like cookies, and other large substantive pieces of chameitz that are found in easily accessible areas. How long does it take to look for cookies in your home? You don’t have to vacuum the corners of your underwear drawer, you don’t have to move your fridge or couch, just look around. It should really not take very long at all, and if it is, you’re not doing it right. You’re going overboard.

Rule #2 – Pesach preparation must be enjoyable and fun. Really.

Full disclosure, I move my couch when I clean for Pesach, I clean for crumbs. Not because I have to, but because that’s what my family always did. That’s how I grew up. But let me tell you what I remember from Pesach cleaning in my home.

My job growing up was the most thankless job possible. I was tasked with doing two things, and again, these are unnecessary, and honestly, I do not do these in my home – but this is what I did growing up:

One – It was my job to go through the pockets of every single jacket and coat in my house. You have to appreciate, six children, two adults, in Montreal – we had a lot of coats. And after doing so for probably a decade, the only thing I ever found was lint and tissues, and more tissues.

The other job I had, and again, I do not do this in my home, was to go through every single one of my father’s hundreds? Thousands? Of books. My father collects books and I was tasked with taking each book off the shelf, turning it upside down over a garbage, rummaging through all the pages, and making sure there was no chameitz in between those pages.

These were not fun tasks, I did not enjoy doing them, but – my overarching memories of cleaning for Pesach as a child are positive ones. And I was trying to figure out why. Because I also remember complaining bitterly about these jobs, and yet, I look back at Pesach cleaning in my home with these rose-eyed glasses.

And I realized that in addition to the extreme intensity in our house before Pesach, and let me tell you, it was intense, but there was also a lot of joy. One example – my parents, in their stringencies, had a rule that a week or two before Pesach one cannot leave the kitchen without shaking themselves off from all of the possible crumbs. Now I don’t know how or when, but this shaking off of crumbs ritual developed into something we called, the chameitz dance. This was back when you were still allowed to imitate Michael Jackson, and so everyone of my brothers would do their best moonwalk, I would do a little jig, and it was fun. It was silly, but it made this stringency enjoyable.

I also remember, as seemingly insignificant as this sounds, blasting music during Pesach cleaning. Normally, we had a pretty quiet home, but this time of year, for whatever reason, there was a lot of music, loud, fun music, or at least that’s my recollection. So yes, our Pesach cleaning was intense, people were a little but on edge, but there was some palpable joy in the air, and I believe that that made all the difference.

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, in a recent blog post on this topic, shared a new interpretation to the question asked by the Rasha, the evil son in the Haggadah. The Haggadah quotes the evil son asking – what is all this work to you?

And the timing of this son’s question is kind of odd. The Pesach seder is lots of fun. Great food, four cups of wine, good conversation, everyone has the latest ten plagues kit, Seder Bingo, what’s he complaining about? Complain on Tisha B’av, on Yom Kippur, but on Pesach, at the Seder?!

He quotes Rabbi Elimelech Biederman who suggests that the complaint of this son, the hard work he refers to is not in reference to the seder, it’s about the weeks and maybe month leading up to it. It’s the parent yelling, No chameitz upstairs!!, it’s the moaning and complaining as we drag bag after bag of yes, overpriced food into our house with a grocery bill longer than an extra-long roll of toilet paper. And our son or daughter is watching us, and asking themselves, what do I need this for?

We’ve developed these unbelievably creative Seders. Every year, I am amazed by the ingenuity that people put into their seders. An email went out to the shul membership, asking people to email the office with their ideas and memories, and I’m blown away – Disney themed Seder, Harry Potter themed Seder, the Wonderful Mrs. Maisles Haggadah. The thought-provoking questions and games. The shtick – one of the guests dressing up as Eliyahu Hanavi and scaring the whoknowswhat out of the kid who opens the door. It’s beautiful and creates memories that last a lifetime.

But if the weeks leading up to Pesach are hellish, if the weeks leading up to Pesach are filled with gripes and complaints, if they’re filled with yelling and stress, then that son or daughter is quite justified in asking, what’s all this work for you? I don’t get it.

And that brings me to the third rule – Pesach preparation cannot only be fun and enjoyable, it has to be personally meaningful.

Let’s go back to the question of the evil son. He doesn’t just ask, what’s with all the hard work? He asks, mah ha’avoda hazos lachem, what’s this hard work for you?

And I think what he’s asking is this: If your entire seder is gimmicks, if it’s exclusively about engaging the children, and making it fun, but there’s nothing meaningful for you yourself, then your son and your daughter will see right through it.

What the child is asking is, thank you mom and dad for making Pescah great again, thank you for buying me the most amazing Afikomen present and for making the seder fun, but what’s it to you? How are you connecting to this? Because one day I’m not going to be a little child, I’m going to be an adult, how do you connect to Pesach? How do you connect to the Seder?

I’m sorry for using my own experiences once again as an example – growing up my seder was not kid-friendly. There was no shtick at all. Outside of asking the four questions, after stealing and hiding the afikomen, I distinctly remember being bored at times. But overall, the image I have of the Seder is that of my parents, my older siblings, who took it seriously, it was real to them. The conversations they had that I didn’t really follow, the reading through the text because they wanted to, and the singing with real emotion – the success my parents had in passing on the traditions was specifically because it was not directed to me, it was a genuine spiritually uplifting experience of their own that I was privy to attend and watch. As Rabbi Sacks likes to say, values are not taught, values are caught.

And that’s true for the seder as it is for the cleaning. Yes, make it fun. Make it all fun, but also make it real. There’s this new really popular Netflix show called Cleaning up with Marie Kondo. It’s a show about extreme cleaning and decluttering, and no, I did not watch it.

In addition to having some great tips on organization and cleaning, she adds a spiritual component to the cleaning; talking to objects before tossing them, asking one’s self how each object impacts us. I’m not suggesting we start talking to our belonging, but I think she’s on to something when she describes a spiritual side to cleaning-up.

Our Sages explain that chameitz represents the dirt and the clutter in our life; whether it’s the material things we don’t really need, or the habits that we need to kick. How about taking a moment, while we clean, to think about our lifestyle, to think about what it is in our life that we need to get rid of. We all have chameitz, we all have shmutz that needs to be purged; everyone needs a deep spiritual clean once in a while. So while you’re on your knees, scrubbing away, vacuuming your car, think about yourself, about what you need to do to clean up and how you’re going to do so.

(1)Clean only what you need to, (2) make it fun, and (3) make it real.

Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchiv used to observe that we tell people to have an enjoyable Purim and a kosher Pesach. But we have it all wrong, he’d say. In truth, we need to make sure that our Purim is kosher, and that our Pesach is enjoyable. I wish you all a chag kasher v’sameiach; and a stress-free, fun, and uplifting time getting ready for it.