Yaakov and Urban Theory: On Having It All

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Bronfman Fellowships | Text and the City | VaYishlach 2012

A city! It is the grip of man upon nature.

It is a human operation directed against nature, a human organism both for protection and for work.

It is a creation.

   Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and it Planning, 1929

Randomly, in the middle of the parsha, a city suddenly appears. Israelites in the Torah are nomads, shepherds – not city-folk. The city is mentioned only twice before Yaakov, both in unflattering circumstances, yet Yaacov, having made peace with his brother Esav, decides to reside in a city:

And Yaakov came home, whole, to the city of Shekhem, Which is in the land of Canaan, On his homecoming from the country of Aram; And he encamped facing the city. (Genesis 33:18)

וַיָּבֹא יַעֲקֹב שָׁלֵם עִיר שְׁכֶם, אֲשֶׁר בְּאֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן, בְּבֹאוֹ, מִפַּדַּן אֲרָם; וַיִּחַן אֶת-פְּנֵי הָעִיר. בראשית לג:יח

Le Corbusier (1887-1965), Theorist of the Modern City

Living through an age where rapid shifts in technology are changing the way we understand the world and understand ourselves, I find myself returning to that previous era of technological advancement, the Industrial age and the urban revolution. The theorists of the modern city – like Le Corbusier quoted above – capture the experience of modernity that the city created for its inhabitants, a vision that for all our “post-“ness and virtuality many of us still imbibe on a daily basis. In Yaakov I hope to find a role model for someone who lived through the cravings of modernity, and yet was able to redeem them, if for only a brief moment.The manifestos of the Modernist project read much like an entrance into young Yaakov’s psyche. The city suits Yaakov, for his personality is the epitome of the modern city: mobility, efficiency, entrepreneurship, growth and work. Lots of work. Yaakov was always “too big for this town,” rushing to the next achievement. This “forward-looking” vision is captured by Le Corbusier in the following passage, where he contrasts (modern) Man with (medieval) pack-donkey:

Man walks in a straight line because he has a goal and knows where he is going; he has made up his mind to reach some particular place and he goes straight to it.

The pack-donkey meanders along, meditates a little in his scatter-brained and distracted fashion, he zigzags in order to avoid the larger stones, or to ease the climb, or to gain a little shade; he takes the line of least resistance.

Man governs his feelings by his reason; he keeps his feelings and his instincts in check, subordinating them to the aim he has in view. His experience is born of work; man works in order that he may not perish. In order that production may be possible, a line of conduct is essential, the laws of experience must be obeyed. Man must consider the result in advance.

But the pack-donkey thinks of nothing at all, except what will save himself trouble.  

(The City of Tomorrow and it Planning , pg. 6)

Yaakov is purposeful, rational and directed. His brother, Esav, like Le Corbusier’s pack-donkey, is meandering on the path of least resistance in his thuggish “give-me-soup-now” lifestyle. The pack-donkey represents for Le Corbusier the winding alleys of the European medieval town with its unplanned sprawl. Those meandering pathways of the pre-modern age are contrasted with the efficient, congested, forward-looking, over-worked and hyper-planned modern city of Man, with their grids, tunnels and highways. The message is clear: be a man!

When Le Corbusier describes “A city! It is the grip of man upon nature. It is a human operation directed against nature…” the dramatic entrance of baby Yaakov into the world comes to mind: gripping his brother’s heel. From the very moment of his birth he is defying natural order, and thus receives his name: “Yaakov/Heel-Holder”. This is the promise of the city: constant upward mobility, a constant nature-defying rise higher and higher, further uptown and further up to the top floors of the skyscraper. There is always someone to compete with as you attempt to ascend the ladder of success.

But with Yaakov it becomes pathological. He cannot find satisfaction in what he has: be it being second born, or having Leah, or living with Lavan. This happens because he seems to lack an authentic core: there is no “there there”. Yaakov’s essence does not belong to him, but to the person ahead of him, whose heel he is trying to grab. Yaakov’s MO is one of avoidance and manipulation rather than confrontation. He bribes and parries instead of facing the music. Yaakov learns his lesson: Lavan and his daughters teach him a thing or two about trickery and impersonation. But nothing much changes until the night in which Yaakov stops running and scheming and – scared out of his wits from having to confront his brother – Yaakov confronts “a man”. He only has himself, and that is enough. He confronts, until his own leg is held. In that moment, Yaakov receives a new name: “Not as Yaakov/Heel-Sneak shall your name be henceforth uttered, but rather as Yisrael/God-Fighter, for you have fought with God and men and have prevailed.” (Gen. 32:29-30). Having confronted, Yaakov can own his own story.

The proof that Mr. Heel-Sneak found fulfillment comes in contrast to his brother Esav. As they fight about giving eachother gifts and tokens of blessing, these two now wealthy men disclose their own self perception, as the 16^th Century Polish Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim of Leczyca, author of the Kli Yakar, explains:

“And Esav said: I have much” – meaning I have much but not all, but Yaakov said: “God has shown me favor – I have all”. For some people despite having all the gold and silver in the world still feel as if they are lacking, and they have much but are not satisfied, …and others even the small amount in their hand is sufficient and they are happy in their share, feeling that they have all. (Kli Yakar to 33:9)

ויאמר עשו יש לי רב - שמע רב אבל לא כל, ויעקב אמר כי חנני אלהים וכי יש לי כל, לפי שהרשעים אע"פ שיש להם כל כסף וזהב שבעולם מ"מ נראה להם שעדיין הם חסרים, ויש להם רב אבל לא כל צרכם, ...והצדיקים בהפך זה כי אפילו אם יש מעט בידם הם מסתפקים בו ושמחים בחלקם, ונראה כאלו יש להם כל.

I’d suggest that this paradigm shift, from having “much” to attaining “all” is played out in Yaakov’s action in the city of Shechem: he is drawn to the city, but also keeps a distance, remaining "encamped facing the city".

We are a long way away from Le Corbusier’s wide-eyed modernism. The time of mere accumulation as a sign of advancement is gone. We no longer have the privilege of the illusion of “progress”, or even the comfort of the superiority of rational behavior. Many people would give their “all” for the privilege of some meandering. Yet as we live our lives in cities designed according to Le Corbusier’s guidelines, constantly moving from one place to the next, purposeful, productive, achieving, grabbing the heel of the next challenge and moving on up in our search for “much” - we must also work in some distance and perspective. As we ponder how our surroundings shape our self-understanding, we would be wise to make sure we not only take advantage of “the city”, but also take the time to “encamp facing the city”, as Yaakov did. From that encampment we might be able to recall that it is not about the game of “much”, it is about holding on to the “all”, and working from there.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mishael

P.S. This paradigm shift, from having “much” to attaining “all” is played out in Yaakov’s action in the city of Shechem. What actions? While the Torah merely says that he “encamped by the city”, the Talmud, unsatisfied with these parking directions, re-reads this text as a moment of urban leadership. Understanding the term “and he encamped” – ויחן – as referring to חן – grace – the Rabbis re-read Yaakov as giving grace to the city:

"And he showed grace to the city": Rav said: He established (tikken) coinage for them. Shmuel said: He established (tikken) markets for them. Rabbi Yohanan said: He established (tikken) bathhouses for them.­ Talmud Bavli Shabbat 34a (for the context of this quote, in the beloved Talmudic story of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, see below)

"ויחן את פני העיר" – אמר רב: מטבע תיקן להם. ושמואל אמר: שווקים תיקן להם. ורבי יוחנן אמר: מרחצאות תיקן להם. בבלי שבת לד.

Yaakov is described here as a great urban planner, the establisher of the efficient, safe and clean urban dwelling: currency, commerce and hygiene. Upon arriving at the city of Shekhem, Yaakov embraces his new identity as Yisrael. His shift from “much” to “all” is not a satiated rejection of capitalism, but rather an embrace of regulation. He doesn’t deny the city, rather he seeks to establish in it, establishing being the opposite of pathological competing. He seeks structure, not opportunism. He regulates rather than undermine. He encourages transparency and cleanliness instead of murkiness. These are the actions of one who has “all”.

The midrash about establishing markets and coins becomes a paradigm for “tikkun” in the Talmud. This midrash is quoted in the heart of the Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in the Cave story. Two striking aspects to this quote: Yaakov is described as establishing the three things which at the beginning of the story, the Romans are described as doing (with apologies to Monty Python): “How pleasant are the acts of this nation: They established (tiknu) markets! They established bathhouses! They established bridges!” Moreover, when Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai learns his lesson and leaves the cave, he says: “Since a miracle occurred for me,  I will go and fix some-thing, like our ancestor did,” referring to Yaakov. 

Working Through Banishment: “And Yaakov Left Beer Sheva”

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Bronfman Fellowships | Text and the City | VaYetze 2012

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey…

Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

(Ithaka, Constantine P. Cavafy 1863-1933, Alexandria)

There are some weeks I’d rather the parsha wouldn’t mimic life quite so closely.

וַיֵּצֵא יַעֲקֹב מִבְּאֵר שָׁבַע; וַיֵּלֶךְ חָרָנָה  – “And Yaakov went out from Beer Sheva, walking towards Haran”.

As I think of Yaakov, banished from his home, fleeing a murderous brother, it seems that all around me banishment has taken place these past few weeks.

My sister left her home in Beer Sheva last week as missiles were being shot at her hometown, her three children in tow. Leaving for what they thought would be a brief respite in Jerusalem, they watched as the IDF retaliated and 1500 missiles were shot by Hamas at everywhere from Beer Sheva to Tel Aviv.

From the safety of my home on the Upper West Side, I finally reconnected this week with our building’s doorman, Van, who was banished from his home in Coney Island by an 11-foot wall of water. His elderly mom and he take refuge in Long Island as they figure out if their wet and rotting home is still livable.

From Coney Island to Beer Sheva, from Kiryat Malachi to Gaza City, people have been banished from their homes or found their homes under attack these past few weeks. Without comparing suffering or drawing moral equivalencies, it has undoubtedly been a month of too many Yaakov’s banished from their homes and regular routines, wondering how they will ever return.

As Yaakov goes to bed on that first night of banishment, he is doubtful that he will ever be able to return. But as Prof. Vanessa Ochs pointed out this summer, Yaakov curiously collects stones, marking his spot and turning his forced destiny into a stage for symbolic action. That night, in Yaakov’s moment of trauma and tragedy, revelation happens. Having lost the horizontal relationships of his family, Yaakov receives the option of a vertical relationship, in the image of the angels ascending and descending from a ladder. The trauma becomes a source of creativity; the banishment gives birth to revelation; his ritual creates the space for inspiration.

400 years ago two crazy Kabbalists decided to go on a self-imposed banishment. They began taking walks outside the city, rambling through the hillsides of Tsfat, in search of the Shekhina. Refugees from Spain’s 1492 expulsion of the Jews, they were working through their own trauma by connecting to a metaphysical one. Inspired by the idea that the Shekhina, God’s spiritual feminine presence in this world, is herself in exile, they attempted to channel her banishment in their own bodies.

What is most fascinating about this strange ritual of theirs is that they were not seeking psychological health – they were seeking revelation. Not grand revelation, but rather the elusive taste of the “hidush” – that moment of intellectual and spiritual innovation so craved by creative minds the world over. They recorded their hidushim (innovations) in a book they called “The Book of Banishment”, Sefer Gerushin. The entries start like this:

“On the year of 5308, Friday the 6th of Shvat, we banished ourselves in the banishment of the King and Queen, rambling until the abandoned Beit Midrash in Navoria, and there I innovated this thought…”

“On the 15 of Shvat, we banished ourselves, my teacher and I on our own. And the words of Torah were shining forth from us, and the words spilled forth of their own accord, and we were discussing the verse “I will show you wonders as grand as on the days of the exodus from Egypt (Micah 7).”

“These and other innovations we said there, too many to put to print, all gifts of her Majesty to those who are banished and staggering with her.”

The friends were Rabbi Moshe Kordovero (author of the definitive introduction to Kabbalah), and Rabbi Shlomo Elkabetz (the author of L’cha Dodi among others). Where political action was not at hand, these Kabbalists developed spiritual rituals that allowed them to redeem themselves from being passive pawns of history. In the face of trauma, they created contained rituals of self-imposed trauma, as a method of transcending their earthly bonds, seeking inspiration and connection in an alienated world.

As Prof. Haviva Pedaya, who wrote a book on these rituals of banishment, points out, the original ritual of Kabbalat Shabbat is in itself a ritual of self-banishment. Elkabetz and his friends would leave town before Shabbat, banishing themselves in order to find the banished Shekhina in the fields. They would there “receive her face” – Kabbalat Shabbat – and invite her in: בואי כלה, בואי כלה – “Come bride!” Bringing her in requires banishing ourselves for a moment.

Turning the tables on history, Kabbalists saw their own exile merely as the human reflection of a far greater reality: the Shekhina – mother – has been banished from her home. Since she is in exile, the whole world is in exile. But their real innovation was that human beings have a role to play in this divine drama: We – her children – most follow mother in her banishment. In so doing, we become privy to that “grand connection” of divinity which is the source of all inspiration:

And permission was granted to those souls who were banished from their place, following the Blessed Holy One and his Shekhina, to nest in this connection; for of this it is said: “As a bird wanders from her nest - so a person wanders from his place” – and there is no bird but the Shekhina, and the person who wanders is the righteous one who is banished and wandering like the Shekhina, of which it is said “And the Dove found no place to rest”. (Tiqqunei Zohar, Introduction)

Like Noah’s dove after the deluge, those who survive trauma have no dry land on which to rest their feet. While the logical thing to do would be to wait for dry land to appear, some in fact seek out the banishment, imposing it upon themselves. Psychologically it is a way of “working through” trauma. But where psychologists seek the water of health, Kabbalists seek the fire of hidush. The Ari called it: “connection within exile” להתחבר בגלות. Trauma itself becomes the gateway for inspiration.

We live in a very different world today. Our psychological “working through” seems far removed from spiritual innovation. We have political means to change history, and physical means to fight our destiny. We no longer need to flee physics for metaphysics. But brokenness still abounds, and whether it is be because of the woes of war and natural disaster, or the pain of personal tragedy and loss, we still often find ourselves like Noah’s dove, like the Shekhina, flapping our tired wings with no place to rest. In those moments, the image of two friends rambling through the hills of Tsfat, embodying the tragedy of the world on one hand, and seeking innovation therein at the same time, might seem a meager consolation. But the sparks of one of their hidushim might one day redeem the world.

Sandy and the Flooded Home: Heroic Avraham and Average Lot

To the speedy recovery of homes, families and utilities

in the wake of superstorm Sandy

Après le dèluge, after the natural disaster, begins the race among readers of holy texts to say something stupid regarding the “reason” for the suffering. This is especially tempting when the weekly Torah portion, VaYera, is the tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Personally, and at the urging of Maimonides (Guide 3:11), I find such explanations to be a desecration of God’s name.

Yet at the same time, reading the events of the week into the parsha in search of insight is one of the most important Jewish past-times, a way of fulfilling בכל יום יהיו בעיניך כחדשים– “each day, let the words be new in your eyes”. A delicate reading, searching scripture not for “why” but rather for “what now?” and “why am I feeling this way?”, is a more appropriate way to seek relevance in Torah. What happens when we read the “text” created by the events of this week in light of this week’s Parasha?

***

Without much more than a “trick or treat” knock at our door, Sandy’s waters and winds have rushed in, knocking out power, flooding homes, making cars float, shutting down mobility and washing people’s lives and belongings away.  Whether experiencing the flood firsthand or merely watching from afar, the images that have entered our screens and imaginations ignite one of the deepest human anxieties: that of the permeable home.

Union Beach, New Jersey, October 31 2012

Like a child obsessively building sand castles and moats on the beach only to see them washed away by the ocean, we spend our lives striving to create a protected space in which the waters of the world will not be able to wash over us. We call that protected space “home”, as Maya Angelou put it, that “safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

For many it is only behind safe boundaries, inside the impermeable home (or in America, inside our car), that we can be ourselves. Nothing awakens the anxiety of permeability more than the image of waters seeping through homes. We feel penetrated and debased, and could easily turn inwards, shutting out all that washes over us.

Parashat VaYera is itself an exploration of the question of the impermeable home, in part through the idea of hospitality which weaves through the parasha. When a few angels come to visit Abraham and then his nephew Lot, we are exposed to two very different modes of hospitality. Comparing these two descriptions of hospitality (Bereishit 18:1-8 and 19:1-17) makes for a fascinating comparison. Lot – living in the soon-to-be destroyed city of Sodom – seems to be a most proper host, surrounded by evil men. His hosting is a very structured one, all about the dichotomy of in/out, culminating in a telling pageant around the door to the house ensues – the very symbol of the permeable home. He is clearly during the right things within a very clear structure.

Avraham on the other hand practices a “radical hospitality”. Old (and midrashically recovering from penal surgery) Avraham is described as “running” to bring food for his guests. There is no exploration of doors and boundaries here. In fact, there is no “in” – Avraham lives in an open tent. The midrash describes Avraham and Sara’s tent as open “to all four winds”, seeking to welcome guests regardless of where they come from. Far from a detail of nomadic architecture, Avraham’s tent has become the metaphor for Jewish hospitality and inclusivity. Avraham epitomizes this heroic unbounded existence.

Heroes often grab all of the attention, making the rest of us look bad. Caught between the heroic Avraham and the evil people of Sodom, how are we to carve a path for the rest of us? A mishna in Pirkei Avot explores this tension between the heroic, the evil and the average:

There are four characteristics in people: One who says: “Mine is yours and yours is mine” – is an am haaretz (ignorant). “Mine is yours, and yours is yours” – is a hassid (pious). “Yours is mine, and mine is mine” is a rasha (evil). “Mine is mine, and yours is yours” – this is the average characteristic. And some say: this is the characteristic of Sodom. Mishna Pirkei Avot 5:10 (rearranged slightly…)

ארבע מידות באדם:  האומר שלי שלך, ושלך שלי - עם הארץ.  שלי שלך, ושלך שלך - חסיד.  שלך שלי, ושלי שלי - רשע. שלי שלי, ושלך שלך - זו מידה בינונית; ויש אומרין, זו מידת סדום.  משנה, מסכת אבות, פרק ה, משנה י  (בשינוי הסדר)

The first few categories are intuitive: the boor who doesn’t understand ownership and the evil one who claims ownership of all to himself. The hassid is reminiscent of our Abrahamic hero, self-effacing in favor of the other: the mishna commends him, but does not seem to expect this of the rest of us.

It is the last category which generates some debate: “Mine is mine, and yours is yours”. For the first opinion in the mishna – this is simply being normal. Deriving from a similar place as the anxiety of the permeable home, one can understand the need to “own that which is yours”. We like our personal space, in fact we need it in order to be generous to others – some would content. This middle path is not necessarily selfish; having a strong awareness of the boundary between self and other does not preclude Lot-style hospitality.

Rabbiner M A Amiel
in Tel Aviv

Yet for the opposing opinion “this is the characteristic of Sodom”. It is in this very average behavior that the seed of the most reprehensible evil lies. A hair-breadth separates the “normal” boundary of “mine and yours”, and a Soddom type existence of “homo, homini lupus”. But where does that difference lie? Rabbi Moshe Amiel, the 20^th century Rabbi of Antwerp and of pre-state Tel Aviv suggests the following creative reading of this mishna, using the innocuous “one who says” and “some say” to make a point:

A society where each individual (“one who says”) says “that which is mine is mine”, and everyone simply provides for their own home, is a society of “average” qualities. […]

If however “some say” – in plural: if this basic selfishness becomes the quality of the entire society, then this is “the characteristic of Sodom”. (R. Moshe Avigdor Amiel, 1883-1946)

For Rav Amiel, what is understandable on an individual level – perhaps even necessary – cannot be contained on a community or government level. Institutionalized selfishness has a name: Sodom.

On any given day, New York City seems to be the city which perhaps best epitomizes “what is mine is mine, what is yours is yours”. Cramming yourself into a subway in rush hour is an exercise in having total boundaries with no dividing space. There is much generosity in the city, but it is usually of the Lot-type, strengthening the social structure, a far cry from Avraham’s open tent.

In light of a deluge on homes and boundaries, one could expect society to give in to its anxiety and build even stronger boundaries. In many ways, the social structure is playing out more powerfully than ever in light of Superstorm Sandy. But as is often the case when society faces its fragility head on, we are also seeing a coming together which is most exhilarating. In seeing that גורל אחד לכולנו – “we are all of one fate” – people have been transcending the usual boundaries, those walls and islands we create around ourselves. Victor Turner described this feeling as “communitas”, the receding of boundaries of self, status and society and creation of a feeling of togetherness. Avraham’s hospitality is communitas to the extreme, totally transcending the boundaries between self and other. But communitas develops quickly even among Average Joe’s and Jane’s if faced with the right circumstances.

Sandy’s waters seem to have a sobering effect on our individualistic tendencies. For a moment, we are willing to be more generous with our boundaries. As the waters which made our homes permeable have washed through boundaries and undermined structure, so too people take less heed of impermeable boundaries. It is an opportunity for us to re-jigger our place on the spectrum between Lot and Avraham, to go beyond our average towards the heroic. In the coming days, as the waters and images of Sandy recede, society will probably revert back to the “average” of Lot. Structure will return, and with it the usual boundaries. But as we experience and discuss the events of this week, we should work in more of that Abrahamic anti-structure heroism into our average lives.

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Bronfman Fellowships | Text and the City | VaYera 2012

Travelling to the Tzaddik: The Bronfman Fellowships at 25

Text and the City | Bronfman Fellowships 25^th Anniversary | Rabbi Mishael Zion | Lech Lecha 2012

In honor of BYFI Faculty, 1987 to 2012, who have served as Tzaddikkim to so many Bronfmanim

I shared these words at the Bronfman Fellowships’ 25^th anniversary celebration in NYC last week, where over 300 members of the community came together to celebrate a generation of Bronfmanim. It was an extremely moving, funny and inspiring evening – thank you to everyone who made an effort to join us, and those who where there from afar. While touching upon the broader theme of journeys, these words are very fitting to Parashat Lech Lecha, the parasha of that first journey from which all of our personal journeys flow…

Video of Mishael speaking at the 25th Anniversary Saturday night performance (more videos to be uploaded soon!)

We are a community rooted in a journey. We joined this community by travelling with strangers to an unknown place. Along the way, we've made for ourselves inspiring teachers and acquired valuable friends. That trip ended many moons ago, but the journey is far from over. Now, as adults, we ask: What does it mean to be a Bronfman Fellow so many years after that summer of learning is over?

In a loose response, I offer this short text in which Reb Nachman asks “Why do we go on journeys?” In his language, the journey has a destination: the tzaddik, the rebbe, the teacher. In order to answer this, Reb Nachman uses two old friends: a text about a baby and a text about an object.. In classic Jewish style, he takes these texts far beyond their original intent.

The first text tells of how when we were in our mother’s womb, we knew all of the Torah. A moment before we were born, however, an angel comes and smacks us on the face  (in some modern versions it’s a gentle kiss, but in the Talmud he smacks…). We immediately forget everything, left with only a groove below our nose. And at that very moment we are born…

The second text is the first mitzvah schoolchildren study in the heder: the mitzvah of השבת אבדה – the obligation to return a lost object. It is the foundational Jewish statement of responsibility: “What’s this? It’s not mine! Why should I pick it up? I didn’t lose it! It isn’t my fault I happened to find this! You’re telling me I need to find the owner of this object and return it to him?!”

So why do we go on journeys? Let’s hear Reb Nachman’s  explanation:

Know, that one must travel to the tzaddik

to seek that which one has lost.

For before one is born into the world, they are taught and shown

everything they need to create and labor and achieve in this world.

And once out in this world – it is all forgotten from them, as our Rabbis teach (Talmud Nidah 30:2).

And this forgetting is like losing an object,

as our Rabbis called the one who forgets "someone who has lost",

as they say (Pirkei Avot 5): "Quick to hear – quick to lose".

And one must return and pursue their lost object.

And the lost object is with the tzaddik,

for a tzaddik searches for his/her own lost object

until she finds it,

and once she’s found it, she pursues and searches for other people’s losses,

until she also finds their losses,

until she finds the lost objects of the entire world.

Therefore one must journey to the Tzaddik –

to seek and recognize one's loss, and to find it there again.

But the tzaddik does not return the lost object to the person

until she searches them that they are not a liar or a charlatan

as the Talmud interpreted the verse: "Until your brother searches for it – and return it to him (Deut. 22:2) – Until you search your brother that he is not cheating" (Talmud Bava Metzia 27:2).

Reb Nachman is an existentialist: the human condition is one of being lost. Being born is to have forgotten. But he is also a romantic: there is a purpose to our birth, something we each were born to create and labor and achieve in this world. We just seem to have misplaced it somewhere. The entire world is on a journey, seeking for their missing object – even if they forgot that that’s what they are doing.

This might seem quite depressing, a world of lost people. But the only thing sadder than having lost is not to know that there is something we’ve forgotten, to stop looking for it. I know for myself, at times I tire of the search and take a break, wondering if I’m settling for less. With the passing of time I become cynical of the whole endeavor.

And then, I encounter a Tzaddik: those people who make me yearn for something beyond, who connect me to something greater that I seem to have forgotten. Some of my best tzadikkim are not people at all, but places and books, texts and rituals, communities or times of year. I know of people who have found it in a sharp question from a friend late at night, or in a pine-nut, or a niggun.

For me – and Reb Nachman might have actually meant this as well – the true tzaddik doesn’t find the object for me. It is not about authority, it is about relationship. The tzaddik points in the right direction, asks the right question, and creates the space (or the community) in which we can find our object again on our own.

There is one condition however: You have to be real. “The tzaddik does not return the lost object to the person - until she searches them that they are not a charlatan”. You have to be looking for your lost object – not somebody else’s. This is perhaps the hardest part of it all: we have to bring ourselves, earnestly and honestly. It is about a modesty, an authenticity, an integrity. It is only then that our journey can truly be our own.

This text is at its best when it turns this journey from a self-centered trajectory into an act of giving. For once you’ve found your own object (or one of them, at least), immediately you have a responsibility. You’ve found your object? Looks like you’ve got a real knack for this! Great, now help others find theirs. Some might call this leadership.

This is the endeavor of our community, of being a Bronfman Fellow. Having gone on journeys ourselves, we have some skill at helping others with their lost objects. Wherever we go, we create communities in which such questions can be asked, where ideas matter and different perspectives can be heard; where people are reminded of what they’ve lost, and serve as teachers to eachother along the path. Our journeys take place on different planes, in separate languages, with different norms. For some it is an intellectual journey, for others a spiritual one. But for all of us there is a commitment to create spaces where such journeys can take place, for ourselves and for others.

Even though it has been a while since that journey started at 17, we come together from time to time, in our inboxes and in person, in joint projects or shared arguments, to that place which reminds us of our missing objects and of that which we were created to “toil, work and achieve in this world”. Travellers in diverse paths, we share the same love for the journey, and for the ongoing search for that which we have lost.