Discomfort

Tonight is the beginning of the Jewish high holiday of Rosh Hashanah. For those of you who may be less familiar with this holiday lets take just a second and give the cliff notes version. Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the Jewish New Year (we use the lunar calendar), yes I say the beginning for we do not satisfy ourselves with the celebration of something as momentous as the New Year with a single evening of drunken festivities. We take a ten day period of reflection and atonement to be concluded by celebration. We begin with Rosh Hashanah comprising of two days in temple usually spent with family or close friends as a time to step away from work or school and instead spend that time with those loved ones we might not get as much quality time with. For the next 10 days we are to not only remember the past year and think of the future but also take that time to apologize or make amends for words spoken, actions taken and sometimes inaction. No amount of apologies or confessions to God can make up for a transgression made to another person. So we take this time to try to get back to those we might have hurt, or lost souls we may have distanced ourselves from for reasons we can’t remember. This holiday period ends on Yom Kippur where we actually refrain from all food and drink for approximately 30 hours where we make final amends to God and pray for health and happiness in the New Year. It concludes with a festive dinner again with family and friends which tastes infinitely better than any feast throughout the year partially due to the lack of food for the past day and partly due to the lightness of a cleansed soul.

Tonight the Rabbi (equivalent to a Christian priest) talked about discomfort. He made reference to that feeling that many of us feel either in a religious service, in school or even at work where we begin to feel sleep overtaking us during some monotonous lecture or endless meeting, and even sometimes during a sermon. This is not due to the heat or even a large lunch, he surmised, it is due to us allowing our minds to be turned off. How many times have we failed to be able to fall asleep at night because our mind is racing a thousand feet a second. Same principle holds when the mind is not moving at all. So take that time and infinite capacity of your mind and think about stuff. What should you think about? Well in his case for us it was to think about Jewish thought, but I put forth it is anything that stretches your mind. When we travel or pick up a book to read, many times we will pick up trashy ‘throw-away’ novels that although entertaining contain nothing new. But every once in a while we pick up a book that causes us to go, ‘Ha’. A new view point on a conflict we thought we knew everything about, maybe a view of the future which causes some consternation. These are good things. Being discomforted by a thought is what we as free thinkers need to relish, for only through free thought does progression happen.

In many religions new thought is listed as heretical, Jewish thought being no different. In the 1960s there was a belief that anything worth inventing had already been invented, much to the dismay of future DNA, supercomputers, and even deep space travel. How many times in a lecture or in a meeting do we simply recycle what someone else had said or even what the text book identifies as fact. And as the Rabbi identified, although an intelligent and even sophisticated conversation can take place, it is ultimately worthless and pointless for all that is being discussed has already been discussed. It is only with the insertion of new ideas does the conversation create meaning. So let us know shout someone down in our next meeting who has an off the wall idea we might not agree with, let us not fear what we do not understand. Let us pick up a book written by a religious, ethnic or even country enemy and see their point of view. We may never adopt it for our own, but expanding our mind although ripe with discomfort, is ultimately paramount to our survival.

As for me, I chose a temple at random this past week and without knowing a soul I entered into the sanctuary. In some ways it is like every other temple I have been throughout my life and in others unique. The way people enter the sanctuary could have been from any church or temple worldwide. Friends who only see each other once a week or sometimes once a year greet each other with hugs, handshakes and perfunctory kisses, while searching for others they know. Seats are taken nearest the aisles leaving an entirely vacant row for others to climb over. Throughout the service whispers of gossip can be heard gliding over the air vents over who married who, who is dating who and whom lost their job. Children climb over their parents and play with their toys while the parents of older children point to where we are in the prayers to their child whose attention might have wandered. Occasionally you see the tables turned and the child returning the favor for the parent. English sections read aloud begin together but are read at different paces by different readers and end as much as a minute apart reminding us of the tower of Babel. And yet there is a comfort in the community, a sense of being a part of the larger group. It is that warmth that we cherish when we go to a place we can call home.

With the idea of full circle and reflection today is a day filled with much history. In 1932 Iraq a country causing ample amounts of consternation with our citizens and citizens around the world actually achieved their independence from Britain. Yes Iraq was ruled by the Ottomans for centuries before won like a trophy in World War I by Britain. The League of Nations granted Britain the right to rule Iraq, an obligation they took for 17 years. And yet also on this day the reunification of Germany came about. Do you remember where you were on that fateful day when the Berlin wall began to fall I remember coming home from school and sitting at our kitchen table in Milwaukee and seeing pictures on TV being narrated by Tom Brokaw and trying to figure out why it was so momentous. Not understanding that this was a truly a sign that decades of fear of nuclear holocaust with the cold war was slowly coming to a close. That seeing Germany once again as a sovereign country and not a chess piece between two super powers showed an end to threats and posturing throwing the world in such turmoil. We give thanks, but also understand that this has meaning to us in our current day.

Countries will continue to change hands, and no foreign land can successful rule another forever. At some point a people yearn to be free, be it in Germany, Iraq, or the Israel. It is far better to have a people the means to learn to fish, than to hand them some aid for a finite amount of time. How can we as Americans help others help themselves?