Month: August 2025

I’m a big fan of, and advocate for, therapy. I think every human should have a therapist to meet with and talk to. Some might need more sessions, and some might need fewer, but all would be well served by having a moment to sit with a professional and dig deep into their souls. I make time each week, or sometimes every other week, to meet with my therapist. I disclose this not only to be transparent, but to also destigmatize mental health care for all of us.

Over the years, my conversations with my therapists have been on all sorts of issues. I’m sure when I was much younger, I spoke more about my relationships with friends and teachers and my parents. As I got older, there were conversations about relationships, marriage, career and eventually about being a better parent. Over the course of all these years, I’ve unearthed an enormous amount of regret and have plunged headfirst into trying to find a path to self-forgiveness. It turns out we humans are very tough on ourselves and when we look into the magic mirror that shows us the within, we often see things we’re not happy with or proud of.

In the תורה/Torah we find the golden rule we’re all familiar with:לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י השם/You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow as yourself: I am ה’. (ויקרא יט:יח) When looking a bit closer at this text, we find something very deep, we’re not allowed to hold a grudge against others, and we are to love others as we love ourselves. If the recipe for not holding grudges to other people is loving them, then perhaps the recipe to not holding grudges against ourselves is self-love. In order to love others, we need to love ourselves. We know that and we live that. We know the more hurt and wounded we are, the less we’re capable of compassion and understanding of others. We know the more lost and wandering we are, the less capable we are of seeing people and how lost they’ve become. It’s when we sense we have value, and the ability to come back from bad things, that we become strong and capable of great love and support of others. This is an essential aspect of self-growth and self-realization.

In the words of Psalm 51:12: “Create a pure heart in me, God; and renew a true soul within me.” We come to God when we are crushed or when we need to be uplifted. We come because coming to God shows we matter. If God is concerned with our state and our behaviors, then we have value and worth to God. We turn to God because we recognize we can be better. The optimal word there must be “can” as in “it is 100% possible for us to be better”. It’s when we’re deflated and unable to see past our pain that we fail to recognize we have the power to be better and not drown ourselves in self-loathing. Earlier in the same Psalm (51) in verses four and five the psalmist states: “(4) Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity, and purify me of my sin; (5) for I recognize my transgressions, and am ever conscious of my sin.” We often find ourselves unable to move forward and are stuck in our own hurt and pain, which is the ever consciousness that’s being spoken of. When that happens, we would do well to look in the same mirror again and tell ourselves we’re not alone. We’re in good company with people all around us who have messed up. We need to look into the mirror and see the spark of Divinity that’s within all of us. We need to look and recognize that God is with us when we do wrong so we can change and do right.

I’d like to leave you with the words of my colleague, Rabbi Alan Lew, from his book This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared:

[I.] Self-forgiveness is the essential act of the High Holiday season. That’s why we need heaven. That’s why we need God. We can forgive others on our own. But we turn to God, Rabbi Eli Spitz reminds us, because we cannot forgive ourselves. We need to feel judged and accepted by a Power who transcends our limited years and who embodies our highest values. When we wish to wipe the slate clean, to finalize self-forgiveness, we need heaven – a sense of something or someone larger and beyond our self.

[II.] Self-forgiveness is difficult largely because we hold ourselves to such high standards, higher than it is possible to live up to. And it is precisely when we are hardest on ourselves that we are most tempted to bury our misdeeds – to hide from our reality, to deny weakness, to deny that we’ve done anything wrong.

[III.] The relentlessness of the High Holidays – the long days in synagogue, the constant repetition of the prayers, the fasting – wears down our defenses and helps us open to the truth of our lives. The aspect of the High Holidays that is most helpful in this regard is their holiness. The sense of the sacred is attenuated in the modern world, to say the least. Still, these are and have never stopped being the High Holy Days, the Days of Awe, the days that convey a quality of holiness we can all feel, even if we feel it only dimly. It is precisely this holiness that helps us forgive ourselves. These days create a context of holiness, and if we pay close attention, we begin to notice that everything in our lives is suffused with holiness, even those “faults” we thought we had to forgive ourselves for. Even that behavior we took to be wrongful, we now realize, has a holy spark at its center waiting to be released. This is the essence of self-forgiveness.

Pages 126 – 127

I wrote the following on Facebook a month ago: How many times have you seen someone on the worst day of their lives? Have you felt their pain, or did you laugh at them for their pain? Every one of us has experienced our worst day so far. They vary in magnitude and cause. But none of us would ever want to be judged by that. None of us would want to be ridiculed or be the butt of every joke. Just a thought. Not that I approve of infidelity in any way shape or form. Just some perspective about our culture.

These words were in response to the numerous memes and satires of the infamous Coldplay Concert Kiss Cam incident. I wrote these words because I was tired of the joy and laughter at the expense of others great misfortune. I was tired of the humiliation and the inability to recognize that lives had been destroyed by that awful choice and awful night. Nobody seemed to think of that, but perhaps each of us should be a bit more careful to judge less harshly and to minimize how we laugh at people and cause them pain.

We have a custom that when we fill our קידוש/Kiddush Cups with wine, we add a drop of water. The reason is the wine is seen as the substance of judgement, and the water the substance of kindness. We need to have kindness in the way we judge others, and ourselves. That’s of the utmost importance. We should never judge people when they’re living their worst day as that’s not who they are… that’s not the totality of their existence. When שבת/Shabbat concludes this week, we’ll begin the month of אלול/Elul which is the final month of the year and the one that leads up to the New Years celebration, ראש השנה/Rosh Hashana. Each morning we’ll say סליחות/Selichot and blow the שופר/Shofar. All of this is to awaken within us the power to change and to be better. Each of us is a work in progress… none of us is a final product. Each of us has work to do to make ourselves better… to make our relationships better… and to make our community and world better.

Jonah ben Abraham Gerundi was a 13^th century rabbi from Spain who’s best known for his book: שערי תשובה/ShaArei Teshuvah/Gates of Repentance. Early in his career he had been an opponent of Moses Maimonides and his philosophies. The tradition is that he witnessed the burning of volumes of the תלמוד/Talmud in 1240 and saw this as Divine displeasure for having joined ranks against the רמב”ם/Rambam/Maimonides. He wrote this book on repentance to find a way to repent for his wrongs in the past. In the 28^th entry of the “First Gate,” the first section, he wrote: “The would-be penitent should take a lead from the Sages with regard to humble behavior. They said: ‘And be lowly of spirit before all people.’ (פרקי אבות ד:י) From this, one may deduce that one should neither become angry nor deal strictly with one’s associates. One should pay no mind to anything one hears spoken against oneself. One should view any personal injury caused by others as an atonement for one’s sins. Such action would confirm what the Sages said: ‘Were one to overlook injuries, one’s sins would be forgiven.’ (תלמוד בבלי ראש השנה י”ז:א)”

We must be careful when we judge other people. When we judge other people, we must be aware we’re going down a road that is difficult to navigate and hard to find a way to exit. But perhaps each of us needs to see that Jonah ben Abraham’s instructions to us can help us understand that every person will be hurt in this world and will need to find a means by which to forgive the person who has injured him or her. Each and every person must see that repentance is essential, but so is the act of forgiveness. Each of us needs to look at this אלול as an opportunity to begin to repent for what we’ve done wrong and to start down a new path. At the same time, we all need to find the chance to forgive and let go, since that’s the way we can move forward to a better tomorrow together.

All too often we judge people by their singular wrongs. All of us have had bad days and all of us know what it means to be judged by our poor decisions on those days. Those actions, however, aren’t the totality of our existence and thus each of us needs to open our hearts to the power of forgiveness. Let us begin this אלול in such a fashion.

I once had a teacher with a comic strip in their classroom that said “as long as there are tests there will always be prayer in school.” This has always made me laugh because it’s so relatable. Think about all of the times we had our tests returned to us and we sat there saying to ourselves: “please let it be an A, please let it be an A, PLEASE LET IT BE AN A.” As we aged, we turned this truism into many other places like medical tests, phone calls from relatives and so much more.

We quietly utter prayers to ourselves time and again because deep down inside we have fears and think that these moments of “prayer” and reflection could alter the reality sitting there before us. In the תלמוד/Talmud, there is actually great concern about such prayers as they’re an example of a ברכה לבטלה/Beracha L’Vatelah/wasted blessing. The rabbis talk about the idea of praying for a pregnant woman to be carrying a certain gender, or for the screams we hear when we’re not home to not be from our own houses (ברכות נד:ב). All of these are examples of things that have already occurred, the decision has already been made, this is the same thing as our prayers in school or our spontaneous prayers today for all sorts of issues.

These prayers may be “wasted prayer” but we need to lean into the act of prayer a whole lot more. We need to incorporate prayer into our daily lives. There’s a very interesting read on this week’s פרשה/Parsha/portion: עקב/Eikev by the Ben Ish Chai, an Iraqi scholar from 1835 – 1909. In דברים י:י”ב/Deuteronomy 10:12 we read:

וְעַתָּה֙ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל מָ֚ה ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֔יךָ שֹׁאֵ֖ל מֵעִמָּ֑ךְ כִּ֣י אִם־לְ֠יִרְאָ֠ה אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֜יךָ לָלֶ֤כֶת בְּכׇל־דְּרָכָיו֙ וּלְאַהֲבָ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ וְלַֽעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֔יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ׃

“And now, O Israel, what does your God ה׳ demand of you? Only this: to revere your God ה׳, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve your God ה׳ with all your heart and soul.”

This פסוק/verse has been used to talk about everything that’s known to God, aside from fear of God, in many sources. This means God knows everything and all is predetermined, aside from our faith and our belief in God.

For now, let’s look at the viewpoint that the Ben Ish Chai favored which is that the verse needs to be read a bit differently; we should not read it as מה/Mah/what, but as מאה/meah/one hundred. That would mean that the verse would read: “And now, O Israel, your God ה׳ demands 100 of you? Only this: to revere your God ה׳, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve your God ה׳ with all your heart and soul.” If we read it that way, the question of what is this “100” is answered right after as fear and love and service are the answer. The Ben Ish Chai, and others, hold that this alludes to the idea that God requires us to each make 100 blessings a day.

This concept seems daunting at first glance but perhaps it doesn’t need to be… perhaps it’s aspirational rather than reality. Perhaps we have an obligation to stretch and reach to be cognizant of God and all our myriad blessings as often as humanly possible. Perhaps we need to find opportunities in our daily lives to connect with ourselves, with those around us, and with God. Perhaps we can rise to the occasion to sanctify the ordinary and make it sacred. Perhaps we can hear these words and find blessing all around us. If God is asking for 100 blessings a day from us, we can and should meet God in the world and find those blessings.

 

 

The watch words of our people are the words of the שמע/Shema and they’re found in this week’s פרשה/Parshah: ואתחנן/VaEtchanan (דברים ו:ד). In the תורה/Torah there are many peculiarities in the way the words and letters are written. Sometimes it’s a matter of how they’re laid out and sometimes it’s the unique way a word is spelled. There are times where whole verses are bracketed with letters, and there are times when letters are extra big or extra small. In the case of the שמע, the verse is bookended by two large letters. In the word שמע the letter “ע” is extra big and in the word אחד the letter “ד” is also extra big. The two words look like this שמע and אחד. While the most realistic reason for this is that there’s a concern that the letters could be mistaken for look-alike letters. A “ד” could be mistaken for a “ר.” An “ע” could be mistaken for a “צ” or perhaps for its partner silent letter “א.” Any of these mistakes would cause a total misread of this major central verse of our people. In the case of the “ד” if it were mistaken as a “ר” the word would not be אחד/Echad/One but rather אחר/Acher/Other. God would not be One but rather God would be “other…”

In looking for other, more poetic, reasons for these enlarged letters, we can find deeper value and meaning. For instance, if we take these two large letters and put them together, “עד,” we would have either “Eid” or “Ad.” “Eid” means witness and “Ad” means forever. Let’s take the word as being “עד” a witness. When we say the שמע, we’re testifying to the unity of God. When we say the שמע, we’re standing with fellow Jews from before us, with us and those who will come after us. When we say the שמע, we’re pledging allegiance to our people and to God. It’s a powerful lesson for all of us to understand.

But what does it actually mean to be a witness? In עשרת הדיברות/Eseret HaDibrot/The Ten Commandments/Statements we learn in the ninth (דברים ה:יז) that we shall not bear false witness. We shall not lie about what other people do. But there’s a deeper false witness and that’s the institution of the עד זומם/Ed Zomem/”Scheming Witness” that’s explained in the תלמוד/Talmud in מסכת מכות/Maseket Makot. It’s there we learn about these extra awful false witnesses that are considered scheming, not because they’re lying about what they saw, but they’re lying because they were not even present at all. When I was learning this part of the תלמוד, we took to calling them non-present scheming witnesses. These extra terrible people are considered bad because they were not even there… they didn’t even show up in the first place. The punishment they receive is whatever punishment they were trying to have placed on the person they were testifying against.

So, when we put this all together, we see a picture of what we as Jews need to do when we live by the שמע… we need to show up and be present. We need to stop phoning in our Jewish lives and begin to show up in person and for real. We need to be active and engaged so we can testify we are, indeed, active and engaged and thus thriving. To say the שמע without actively being a part of our people is to be an עד זומם, a non-present witness that has no ability to testify about any of this at all. The שמע is thus calling on all of us to be good upstanding witnesses about God, the תורה, the Jewish people and about our relationship to all the pillars of our religion.