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Accidental Mutineers
With Rosh Hashanah less than a week away, our thoughts turn to starting a new year, and, we hope, improving on the old one. The theme of asking for forgiveness is a common one. But we pay less attention to the other side of the same coin: have we created an environment that lets others apologize to us?
We usually find it easier to see the faults in those around us than to recognize our own. The shortcomings of family members, coworkers, and friends leap out at us in vivid detail, while our own imperfections remain obscured behind veils of psychological obfuscation.
So what do we do when we see that a parent is needy or a boss insecure, a spouse jealous or a friend unsupportive, a child ungrateful or an employee combative?
Like all instruments of power, our knowledge of other people’s faults — so clear to us and yet invisible to them — can be a force for betterment or for destruction.
In this regard, the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny is a brilliant study of how we deal with what’s wrong with other people.
Captain Queeg, in command of the U.S.S. Caine, is a well-meaning and capable commander, but years of combat have taken their toll and he is also nervous, obsessive, and prone to paranoia. As is frequently the case, those around him see his faults right away, while he himself remains practically unaware of them.
What, then, do his shipmates do?
Rather than try to work with their captain, rather than accepting his failings and trying to help him overcome them, rather than compensating for what he cannot do, the officers of the ship antagonize Queeg. They scoff him. The provoke him. They follow the letter of his orders even when they know it’s a bad idea.
In this combative and unsupportive environment, Queeg’s insecurities worsen and his paranoia becomes more pronounced. “Sometimes the captain of a ship needs help,” Queeg pleads. But his subordinates use his weakness against him. “Look at the man. He’s a Freudian delight,” one officer tells another, hoping to make a case that the captain is unbalanced.
Eventually the ship finds itself maneuvering around a typhoon. The crew no longer trusts their isolated captain, and they relieve him of command.
The key to the movie is the trial for mutiny. The crew are found not-guilty, because by the time the typhoon hit, Captain Queeg was unable to make sound decisions. But they are also found morally culpable, because they paved the way to the captain’s demise, in the process almost destroying the boat and ending their own lives.
What will we do next year when we see the shortcomings in those around us?
Like the officers on the Caine, we have a choice. We can try to create a tolerant, forgiving environment. Or we can use other human beings’ flaws to our own short-term advantage and amusement.
Will we choose well?
Or we will become accidental mutineers?
Count On It
[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]
Numbers pop up in the most amazing places. Today we’ll look at a few. And we’ll start with one of the Hebrew words for “few,” because almost paradoxically it’s the plural of the word for “one.” One way to say “a few words” is milim ahadot, literally, “words ones.” While in the singular, “one” means “one,” in the plural it means “some.” Leave it to Hebrew to have a plural for “one.”
Haviv Rettig Gur on Israel and America
Haviv Rettig Gur has an essay in the Jerusalem Post in which claims:
Here’s a theory: Israeli society has a profoundly different and deeply moving way of defining the very notion of Jewishness. [read the essay…]
The essay sets the stage for his theory and expands on it. It’s well worth reading.
Video of 3,700-Year-Old Jerusalem Wall
CNN has a video of the wall that’s well worth watching. (You have to put up with a brief commercial.)
Jerusalem Wall from 700 Years Before King David
From the Israel Antiquities Authority:
An Enormous 3,700 Year Old Fortification was Exposed in the City of David
The fortification rises to a height of c. 8 meters [26 feet], and it seems that the Canaanites used it to defend the path that led to the spring.
The excavations are being conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park and are underwritten by the Ir David Foundation.
A huge fortification more than 3,700 years old….
Side by Side
[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]
What do apples, oranges and tomatoes have in common in Hebrew, as opposed to mangoes, bananas and carrots? Let’s find out. (Here’s a hint that won’t surprise you: The difference between the two groups has nothing to do with the foods themselves; it’s a matter of grammar.)
To get started, we look at a construction called smichut in Hebrew – literally, “closeness” – translated as “the construct” in English (creating the unfortunately alliterative phrase “construct construction”).
It’s The Little Things
[Reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post]
It is not unusual to hear Israelis yelling “die!” at each other. That’s because, in Hebrew, dai literally means “enough,” and it’s a common way of telling someone “that’s enough already; now please quit it.” (Two American parents took their children to Israel for the year. One day the five-year-old daughter came home from her new Israeli school and reported that she’d learned a Hebrew word: dai. She reported “it means ‘stop fighting.'”)….
All I Ask
The Jewish month of Elul is traditionally connected to Psalm 27. And with its familiar haunting melody, the 4th verse of the Psalm is particularly well known: “I ask only one thing of God — it is what I want: To live in God’s house all the days of my life, to gaze upon God’s glory, and to visit God’s Temple.”
The nuances of the words — is it “glory” or “beauty,” “visit” or “seek,” etc. — are less interesting to me than the obvious contradiction in the line, because after specifically claiming only to want “one thing,” the Psalmist lists three: The Psalmist wants (1) to live in God’s house, (2) to gaze upon God’s glory, and (3) to visit God’s Temple.
What are we to make of this? Why can’t the Psalmist count to one?
I see insight into the nature of being human and wanting.
The Psalmist wants to live in God’s house not just for the sake of being there, but for what it will lead to, namely, seeing God’s glory. The next lines, verse 5-6, continue in a similar vein: …because in times of trouble God will hide me and keep me safe, bring me safely out of reach, and bring me victory over my enemies who are all around me. The Psalmist has the whole thing planned out. If he can only manage to live in God’s house, he’ll see God’s glory, then get God’s defensive protection, which will naturally lead to an offensive victory over his adversaries. “If only I could live in God’s house,” the Psalmist thinks, “I could finally beat them!”
The Psalmist has perpetrated his own internal bait-and-switch on himself, confusing what he wants with how he will get there. The result is a jumble in his mind, with tranquility, Godliness, safety, and retribution all mixed up.
It seems to be human nature to confuse our desires with the paths that might lead to them, and advertisers exploit this trait of ours.
Coca Cola’s website, for example, displays a prominent image of a Coca Cola bottle with the caption “open happiness.” Who wouldn’t like a little more happiness? The advertising at Coca Cola nudges us into thinking that Coke will lead us in that direction. Next thing we know, we get confused between buying Coke and becoming happier.
Most of the material goods we think we want work the same way. We get confused and think that they are a path to happiness. Then when we buy something and it doesn’t make us happy, we come to the reasonable but wrong conclusion that we have bought the wrong thing. Like Charlie Brown — who is the only one who doesn’t know that Lucy will never cooperate — we think that all we have to do is try again and buy something else. Most of us keep stumbling, and we never learn that what we really have to do is play a different game.
Non-material desires are really no different. We want power, a loyal following, recognition, or what-not, but for what we imagine they will lead to, not for what they are.
I have nothing against money or material possessions. (As the Russians say, it’s better to be healthy and rich than sick and poor.) Money can buy really important things like medicine and education and food, and make it easier to visit friends and fix the world, just to name a few benefits. On a smaller scale, if buying new clothes makes you happy for a day, it seems like money well spent.
We just have to be careful not to get confused. The Psalmist’s mistake is not that he wants to be with God or that he wants to defeat his enemies. His error is right at the start of verse 4: “I ask only one thing.”
We are seldom seeing clearly when we think that our lives lack only one thing or that with the addition of one thing our lives would be perfect. Yet even without the incessant prodding of advertisers, it would be part of our very nature to make this mistake. Ignore it, and we can’t even notice when “one” is “three.”
But once we see past it — once we differentiate between what we want and what we think it will do for us — we begin our journey toward spending our time, money, and energy wisely.
Tripping Over Words
One of my favorite activities is meeting with pre-bar/bat mitzvah students to talk about their Torah and Haftarah readings.
I recently asked a student, Jennifer, about Parashat Korah, and, in particular, about the sequence of events that involves Korah and Moses. I explained that in her Torah portion, Korah, a prominent Israelite wandering in the desert under God’s leadership through Moses, was unhappy with how Moses was handling things. But rather than try to work things out, Korah instigated revolution. Numbers 16:3 reports that Korah publicly chastised Moses, and then one verse later, that Moses “fell upon his face.” I asked Jennifer if she knew what “fell upon his face” means.
I didn’t expect her to know. How could she? It’s a biblical expression that we don’t have in English, and, in fact, as a translator I wouldn’t even use that odd phrase in English.
But Jennifer surprised me and answered the question with remarkable and unusual insight. She told me she thought that Moses tripped over Korah’s words.
Wow.
In that one answer, the student brilliantly understood what is widely regarded to be the point of the story, and she based it firmly in the larger context of Judaism.
Our words have power. Judaism is clear on that. This Yom Kippur — as we do every year — we will read from Deuteronomy about the power of words. God puts before all of us blessing and curse, commanding that we choose blessing over curse. The point there is not “cursing out” (though that’s probably a bad idea, too), but rather actual curses: saying something bad to make something bad happen. Contrarily, blessings are when you say something good to make something good happen. On our holiest day of the year we remind the congregation that we all have the power to bless and to curse, and that we are commanded to choose blessing.
Of course, the connected notions that our words have power and that we have to choose wisely are not confined to Jewish thought. We find the same sentiments in aphorisms — “The pen is mightier than the sword,” after all, and “if you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all.” — and in laws against slander.
We actually have two Torah readings on Yom Kippur. The first, as we just saw, deals with the power of words. The second, generally called the holiness code, comes from Leviticus 19. It’s a detailed description of what to do and what not to do in order to be holy.
Some of the ordinances seem to be particularly innovative and forward looking, as in Leviticus 19:15, which warns against judicial favoritism based on economic position. That’s something we’re still grappling with thousands of years later.
By contrast, Leviticus 19:14, just one verse earlier, seems to prohibit something so cruel that, one would hope, we wouldn’t need a warning not to do it: “Don’t place an obstacle before the blind.” Is that something people were doing? Is that, like favoritism, something we have to worry about?
Yes, says my student, because the obstacle can be our unseen words. When Korah spoke out publicly against Moses, he put an obstacle before him. And because even Moses couldn’t see spoken words, Moses was like a blind man, and he tripped.
Korah’s unkind actions had a short-term and long-term impact, and neither of them was good. First, 250 people died. Then 14,700 more. All because of Korah’s words.
When children think of power, physicality most naturally comes to mind. One of my projects for the upcoming year is to make it clearer that words — of education, praise, consolation, and support, but also of misdirection, condemnation, antagonism, and back-stabbing — all have power. When we open our mouths, we change the world.
I’m going to take my cue from Jennifer who insightfully connected both Yom Kippur readings. There’s the easy part: we shouldn’t make the blind stumble. And there’s the harder part: if we’re not careful, our words can be the instruments of damage. And there’s the lesson from Leviticus: when we fail, the whole community suffers.
I hope you’ll join me in looking forward to a year free of verbal stumbling blocks.
Summer is for Planning
By Joel M. Hoffman
According to Proverbs, summer is a time for preparation: “Who gathers food by summer is wise,” we learn in Proverbs 10:5. Later on in 30:25 we read that, “Ants are not strong, but they prepare their food by summer.”
Although summer is usually counted as the second season, it has a certain feel of finality to it. We’ve made it through another year. The winter has passed. The days are getting longer. The laziness of summer sunshine, barbecues, and summer camps awaits.
For educators in particular, summer is very different than the other three seasons. Because class is not in session, it really is a time to plan. And the first stage of planning is reflection. How was the year? What went well? What worked? What needs improvement? What might need to be completely reworked? And how do we know?
So here are some of my reflections on what we’ve done this year, and some hints of what to expect in the fall.
This year we implemented weekly musical worship services on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Each week, grades 3 and higher met together in the sanctuary for worship, and the younger kids had their own weekly worship program. To judge from the enthusiasm I saw in the sanctuary and the smiling faces on the students, to say nothing of the positive reports I’ve received from parents, services are going very well. The students are learning the prayers, learning how to pray, and even sometimes praying. And I personally look forward each week to hearing over 100 children sing the Shema together.
We expanded the “Hebrew Center,” a forum for one-on-one or small-group instruction. I challenged the Hebrew-Center teachers to create an environment where every student would thrive, and they rose to the occasion. A good classroom teacher usually reaches around 80% of a class. The Hebrew Center is for the other 20%. We require weekly Religious-School attendance of every student, so I think we have an absolute obligation to make sure that each week is worth attending. The Hebrew-Center is one way we do that. (In spite of its name, it’s not just for Hebrew.) It’s important to me to keep in mind the words of my teacher and friend, Rabbi Manny Gold: “No one fails Judaism.” The Hebrew Center of part of making sure that Judaism doesn’t fail any student at Temple Israel.
In addition, the year was marked by numerous special programs, including field trips, holiday celebrations (most teachers offered a model Seder of some sort), guest presenters, art projects, the creation of a music video in Hebrew (it’s on the school website), nature walks, and much more.
We even augmented the food we serve midweek, offering vegetables and chicken in addition to pizza.
Most of the students seem to like being in school. More than once, we had to remind students that their ride home was waiting, and that they had to leave, because frequently they didn’t want to. They were enjoying one last moment of class, or laughing with friends in the entrance, or talking to me or one of their teachers. It’s hard to learn when you’re not having fun, and, I think, the level of joy here is rising.
So what will I work on over the summer?
We have a new cantor coming, which means we’ll be planning a new music program, and better integrating Religious-School services into the broader worship life of the Temple.
Our curriculum needs work, and summer is the time for that.
Grades 7-10 are crucial ages in personal religious development, so I’ll pay particular attention to re-evaluating the programs we offer to those ages. Look for exciting changes soon.
I’m also looking forward to my own learning. My background in linguistics means that I know a lot about teaching Hebrew. And my own teaching experience has given me significant insight into working with older kids. I know less about young children. Fortunately, other people on our staff are strong in that area, and I hope to spend some time with them, learning from their experience and expertise.
“Im ein torah, ein kemach” the Mishnah teaches. If we have no learning, we have no food. This summer I hope you’ll join me in heeding the words of Proverbs and the words of the Mishnah, gathering not just food but also learning.
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Joel M. Hoffman, PhD 