A Sukkos Message for Finding Happiness

When Thomas Jefferson
was tapped to draft the Declaration of Independence, he famously included something
as an “inalienable right” that wasn’t a right or priority before in a world
that people were simply striving to survive. Every citizen of the United States
of America, Jefferson concluded, will have the right to pursue happiness. 

Though Jefferson
described happiness as a pursuit, we live in a time where it has become an
expectation, an entitlement.  And yet, it
remains as elusive as ever, maybe even more than ever.

Pesach is zman
cheiruseinu, the time we can achieve liberty and freedom.  Shavuos is zman mattan toraseinu, a
time for a renewed commitment to Torah. And Sukkos is characterized as zman
simchaseinu, a time rich with potential for happiness.  I might have assigned those designations a
little differently.

On Pesach we sit at a
magnificently set table and recline as we drink four glasses of wine.  Shavuos we indulge in ice cream and cheesecake,
vehicles of boundless happiness and joy for many.  And then comes Sukkos, which finds us sitting
outside in a flimsy structure, eating off paper plates, fighting off bees,
flies, the cold or the heat, and minimizing the variety of food at each meal so
that we won’t have to carry out and in too many plates.  Which sounds least likely to be anointed “zman
simchaseinu”? 

Rav Kook (Moa’dei
Ha’reiya) points out that we find the sukkah as the symbol of our yearning for
peace.  Prophecies reference the day we
will sit in the great sukkah.  On Shabbos
and Yom Tov evenings, we daven…

הפורש
סכת שלום עלינו ועל כל עמו ישראל ועל ירושלים

“Blessed are You, God, Who spreads
the sukkah of peace upon us and upon His nation Israel and Jerusalem.”  What is the connection between peace and the
sukkah?

Imagine you hire a contractor to
build or renovate your house.  You pay to
build a house, which typically consist of rooms with walls and a roof.  One day the contractor tells you he is done and
you take a look. Lo and behold on one side, the walls don’t reach all the way
to the ground and on the other they don’t extend all the way up to the
ceiling.  The wall has countless holes in
it and the roof has a gap.  Infuriated,
you confront the contractor. Without missing a beat, he replies, “What are you
upset about, the wall comes within 3 tefachim (9-12 inches) off the ground, so
it is as if it is connected.  And the
other wall extends up 10 tefachim (30-40 inches from the ground), but because
it is aligned under the edge of the roof it is as if it extends down to meet
the wall so that is a full wall.  And in
terms of the roof, the gap is less than 9 inches so I consider the roof
complete.”  Would you be satisfied with
his explanation?

And yet, when it comes to Sukkos, we
are obligated to have walls and a roof.  Nevertheless,
Hashem essentially tells us, “You know what, here are creative ways to define
walls and a roof.  Use the leniencies of lavud,
gud asik mechitzta, pi tikra yoreid v’soseim, dofen akuma, and I will view
it as if the walls and roof are complete. 
If your wall comes within 3 tefachim of the ground, lavud, that
is close enough. If you have a gap in the ceiling but it’s less than 3 tefachim,
I will view it as closed, etc.”

When sitting in the typical sukkah,
to see a complete structure you must employ your imagination and creativity to focus
on what is there, not what is missing. 
These are the same ingredients to achieve peace, says Rav Kook. In
addition, I believe these are the critical ingredients to not only pursue
happiness, but to catch up to it.

We can focus on the details, the
minutiae, the deficiencies and shortcomings, what is missing, and the gaps in
our life, and we will be miserable.  Or,
we can employ imagination and creativity and find happiness.  Happiness is not the result of getting what
we are missing, but it is achieved by focusing on what is there and seeing our
lives as complete, even if it often takes imagination and creativity to do so.

Happiness doesn’t come from things,
it comes from experiences and it comes from relationships.  Don’t get me wrong, things are nice, they are
good, and they are enjoyable, but we all know or have heard of plenty of people
with lots of things who are still pursuing happiness who haven’t yet found it.  And there are people who lack many things,
but are very happy.

Emory University conducted a comprehensive study studying the relationship
between wedding expenses and marriage duration. 
The two economics professors behind the study analyzed data from 3,000
married or once-married couples.  They
found that women whose engagement rings cost over $20,000 are 3.5 times more
likely to get divorced than those in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. Men who
spent $2,000 to $4,000 on their wife’s ring got divorced 1.5 times more
than those who dropped between $500 and $2,000. 
Of course, these results are much more correlation than causation.  There are happily married people with
enormously expensive rings, but the study concluded that having an expensive
ring or the capacity to buy other expensive things had an inverse impact on
your having a successful marriage. 

Rav Hirsch writes, “The madness with
which we cling to our worldly possessions leaves no room for our true
happiness.”  Sukkos is zman
simchaseinu because we just finished standing in shul, begging for our
lives and saying the words mi yichyeh u’mi yamus, thinking about the
people who left the world this past year, and wondering and fearing who may not
be here next Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. 

Look back at the year we just
experienced. Think of the people in the Bahamas whose homes right now look less
sturdy or stable than our sukkos and be happy for what you have. Think about
the Jews murdered in Pittsburgh and Poway, guilty only of the crime of coming
to davening, and channel your gratitude for being alive into happiness.  Think about people in your life who would
give anything to sit in a hot, humid, buggy, uncomfortable sukkah with a loved
one who is no longer here. Consider the world around us and all that can go
wrong and choose to see what is going right in your life.  Use your imagination and creativity if
necessary and see what is there, not what is missing.

The Shelah HaKadosh says there can
be absolutely no anger in the Sukkah.  We
cannot and must not contaminate our holy sukkahs, designed to invoke happiness,
with impatience, anger or harsh words. 

In the sukkah, don’t feel the heat
of the sun, feel the warmth of your family. 
Don’t focus on who is not at the table, focus on who is there.  Don’t focus on what spilled, focus on how
much is left to enjoy. 

The Shem Mi’Shmuel points out this
holiday is called “Chag HaSukkos,” not “Chag HaLulav,” because immersing
ourselves in the Sukkah is the secret to finally finding happiness.  Go out of your diras keva, your home
with fixed walls and a full roof and step into your diras arai, an
incomplete hut that takes creativity and imagination to see as a dwelling, and
you will experience zman simchaseinu, happiness and joy. 

According to management gurus, routine not only helps efficiency and productivity but also creativity. Many successful creative people swear by the routines they formed: author Stephen King famously sits down to write at the same time every morning. Routine is also a hallmark of many big thinkers: Geniuses like Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein liked to wear the same thing every day in order to not expend mental energy on wardrobe decisions.

 

The truth is that while there are benefits to routines, when people are too settled in their routines, complacency and contentment result.  Complacency breeds apathy, one of the biggest obstacles to growth and progress.  It also leads to poor decision-making and being blind to new choices and possibilities that could benefit us.

 

On Feb. 5, 2014, London Underground workers went on a 48-hour strike, forcing the closings of several tube stops. The affected commuters had to find alternate routes. When the strike ended, most people reverted to their old patterns. But roughly one in 20 stuck with the new route, shaving 6.7 minutes from what had been an average 32-minute commute. The closings imposed by the strike forced experimentation with alternate routes, yielding valuable results. And if the strike had been longer, even more improvements would probably have been discovered.

 

Researchers have long studied why people purchase name brand items when the equivalent generic is available with a significant cost savings which could compound to real money.  This phenomenon is noteworthy for drugs, when generics and branded options are chemically equivalent. Why continue to buy a name-brand aspirin when the same chemical compound sits nearby at a cheaper price? Scientists have already verified that the two forms of aspirin are identical. The only difference is the label and the price.  And yet, most buy the name brand.  Why?  Habit, ritual, and thoughtless routine.

 

So on the one hand, habits are powerful, they can help promote creativity and efficiency.  But on the other hand, habits and routines can deny us the openness and flexibility to learn, to see new things, to grow, experiment, adjust and make changes that will improve us and improve our lives.

 

One study estimated that 47 percent of all our behaviors are the result of habits we have formed.  That can be leveraged in a positive way.  Just think about it – if we form the right habits—being on time, showing patience, being generous—we have half our day preprogrammed in a way we can be proud of.  However, the downside is that nearly half our lives is not the result of thoughtful consideration, mindful choices, but simply having settled into habits and routines mindlessly.  That is no way to live.

 

The mitzvah to light the Chanuka candles begins after sunset and the Gemara (Shabbos 21a) tells us, it extends עד שתכלה רגל מן השוק, until people are no longer walking around in the marketplace.  The goal and purpose of the menorah is פרסומי ניסא to publicize God’s great miracles and so once there are no longer people present to see the lights, the mitzvah is no longer applicable.  In the time of the gemara, and even the Shulchan Aruch, this time was somewhere relatively shortly after nightfall when people couldn’t function outside without natural light.  Today, with artificial light, the time is significantly later.

 

The Sefas Emes quotes his grandfather, the Chiddushei Ha’Rim, who offers a homiletical interpretation of this measure, one that gives great insight into the essence of the holiday.  עד שתכלה רגל מן השוק, says the Sefas Emes is not describing how long in time the candles must be lit, but how deep the light of the candles must penetrate into our hearts and our habits.  He suggested don’t read it רגל, foot, but rather עד שתכלה הֶרְגֵל מן השוק, we must experience the light of the candles and the richness of these 8 days until it breaks our habits, jolts us from our routine and enables us to take a step back and look at our lives.

 

So many of us are caught on the hamster wheel of life.  We wake up, go to work, exercise, brainlessly relax, go to sleep, wake up and start again. Or we wake up, make lunches, drive carpool, shop, cook, do homework, serve dinner, collapse, wake up and start again.  Or we do some combination of the two.  What they all have in common is being carried by inertia and momentum, moving at such a fast pace that there is no time or space, no margin or room to ever stop, look, assess, evaluate and mindfully determine if we are allocating our time, energy and resources in the maximum way, or if we are just creatures of routines, products of habits that were somehow formed at some time and have become our default, our normal, our assumed.

 

There is a beautiful campaign for Chanuka called Savor the Moment.  It calls for Jews across the world to go screen-free for 30 minutes after candle lighting, the minimum necessary time for the candles to burn.  For too many of us, being chained to our smartphone, tablet, laptop or TV has become routine. The average American touches his or her phone 2,617 times a day. That is a habit that needs to be broken.

 

The Gemara tells us הרגיל בנר הויין בנים תלמידי חכמים, one who habitually lights the candles has righteous children.  The Shem MiShmuel explains that the flame of the candle looks like it is glowing constantly and consistently.  Yet, the fuel that drives it is constantly changing, it is fresh and new.  What our rabbis are telling us is that the only thing we should ever do by rote is never doing anything by rote and the only habit we should form is never doing things by habit.  We should accustom ourselves to be like a candle, on the outside doing the same mitzvos and practices regularly, but constantly renewing and refreshing that which fuels our actions.

 

This Shabbos, we introduce a new siddur at BRS.  Change is difficult and even uncomfortable, but change is also healthy and can revitalize, refresh and renew.  The new font, layout, page numbers, paper and size of the siddur will take getting used to.  Until then, embrace the newness by allowing it to inspire a renewed attitude, understanding, and performance of our prayers.

 

Chanuka provides us the courage and will to תכלה הרגל, to break the habits.  When we do, we will truly see the light, both of the candles and of our lives.

 

The Mishna in Sukkah (29b) teaches that a stolen lulav and a dried out lulav are disqualified from fulfilling the mitzvah.  The problem with a stolen lulav is evident: how could one possibly fulfill a mitzvah through an inherently corrupt and unethical action?  The invalidity of a dry lulav, however, requires closer analysis. After all, once a lulav is cut from the tree, it is going to dry out eventually.  What difference does it make if I shake a lulav that has lost its green color?

 

Rashi explains – When performing a mitzvah we seek something which is beautiful and will best glorify Hashem.  A dry lulav is unattractive and unpleasant, and therefore, is invalid.  The Yerushalmi, however, gives an altogether different reason, suggesting that a dry lulav is not valid because ‘lo ha’meisim y’halelu kah – the dead cannot praise God.’  A dry lulav is dead and therefore cannot be used as an instrument or vehicle for praise.  Indeed, the Ba’al Ha’Turim notes that the Gematria of lulav is 68, which is the same as chayim, life.

 

The Yerushalmi’s insight has broader applications. If a dead, wilted, lifeless lulav cannot be used as an instrument of praise to Hashem, than certainly a wilted, lifeless, dried out, burnt out person cannot connect to the Almighty. Generally speaking, too many of us are spiritually dehydrated.  We are living but we are not alive..  Lo ha’meisim y’halelu kah – we cannot expect to connect with Hashem, family members or others if we have no simchas ha’chayim, no joy in our lives.  Some of us are a lulav ha’yaveish, a wilted lulav, because of the stresses, pressures, and responsibilities of life.  Others are simply burnt out from this intense holiday period filled with long davening, arduous introspection, and painful self-reflection.

 

But now is not the time to burn out, to dry out or to lose the joy in life.  We worked hard to get sealed in the Sefer HaChayim and now is the time to add simcha so we are living with true simchas ha’chayim.  Now is the holiday of v’samachta b’chagecha. We deserve happiness, joy, good food, good friends, a good shluf, a good conversation, and most importantly a good laugh or smile.  We worked hard over the Yamim Noraim and we earned this Yom Tov that is zman simchaseinu, the time of joy and happiness.

 

The following story was related some years ago by a college student:

 

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn’t already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder. I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She said, “Hi, my name is Rose. I’m eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?”  I laughed and enthusiastically responded, “Of course you may!” and she gave me a giant squeeze. “Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?” I asked.  She jokingly replied, “I’m here to meet a rich husband, get married, have a couple of children, and then retire and travel.”  “No seriously,” I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

 

“I always dreamed of having a college education and now I’m getting one!” she told me. We became instant friends.  Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening as she shared her wisdom and experience with me. Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went.

 

At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. I’ll never forget what she taught us.  She began: “We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success: 1) You have to laugh and find humor every day. 2) You’ve got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die. We have so many people walking around who are dead and don’t even know it! 3) There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up. If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don’t do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old. If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight. Anybody can grow older. Growing older is mandatory, growing up is optional.  4) Have no regrets. The elderly usually don’t have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do.”

 

At the years end Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago. One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep. Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it’s never too late to be all you can possibly be.

 

Lo ha’meisim y’halelu kah, the dead cannot praise God. Let’s stop being a lulav hayaveish.  Stop walking around with a farbissina face, a depressed disposition and a down attitude.  Don’t be negative.  It’s hot in the sukkah – so what?  Spiritually hydrate with a positive attitude, a smile, a joy for life and a simchas ha’chayim.

 

Rav Yisroel Salanter said that our faces are also a reshus ha’rabim they are public domain.  The decision to be b’simcha doesn’t only affect us, but is contagious and can positively influence the whole environment around us.  If we are generous with our smiles and if as Rose taught, we choose to be alive, we can truly have a chag sameach.

 

Pesach is all about talking. The Talmud tells us that matzah is called lechem oni, the bread of answering, since it is the bread upon which we declare many things. There is a specific mitzvah to tell the story of Exodus.   We are encouraged not to be succinct, but rather, “It is praiseworthy to dwell on the story and tell it as fully as possible.”

Yet our sages teach, “Say little and do much,” and “one who is verbose and loquacious brings mistakes.” Why on Pesach do we have an entirely different attitude towards speech?

 

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl describes what happened after they were liberated:

 

The body has fewer inhibitions than the mind.  It made good use of the new freedom from the first moment on.  It began to eat ravenously, for hours and days even half the night.  It is amazing what quantities one can eat.  And when one of the prisoners was invited out by a friendly farmer in the neighborhood, he ate and ate and then drank coffee, which loosened his tongue, and he then began to talk, often for hours.  The pressure which had been on his mind for years was released at last.  Hearing him talk, one got the impression that he had to talk, that his desire to speak was irresistible.  I have known people who have been under heavy pressure only for a short time to have similar reactions.  Many days passed, until not only the tongue was loosened, but something within oneself as well; then feeling suddenly broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it.

 

Rav Aharon Soloveitchik, zt”l, writes in his book Logic of the Heart, Logic of the Mind, “Upon delivery from the Egyptian bondage, the Israelites regained their self-expression. As long as they were subjected to Egyptian bondage, their self-expression was stifled and suppressed. But at the moment of Exodus, the Israelites regained their speech. Slaves cannot express or assert themselves properly. They cannot realize their potential. Only the free man is capable of doing so.”

 

The Arizal saw the connection between speech and freedom in the very name of the holiday.  Pesach, he explained, comes from “Peh – sach” – “a mouth converses.”  Part of affirming our freedom on Pesach is affirming the awesome responsibility that comes with freedom of speech.

 

Part of what makes America an exceptional country and a true democracy is the first amendment promises of free speech. Free speech means we can protest, advocate, object, speak our minds, etc.  However, even free speech has restrictions.  One may not use their words to incite or to libel another.  One may not freely share obscenity or plagiarize someone else’s words.

 

Judaism also believes in freedom of speech and indeed sees the capacity to speak as one of the greatest expressions of freedom.  American law tolerates speech, which is negative, insensitive and tactless.  When Justice Louis Brandeis affirmed the freedom of speech in a Supreme Court decision in 1927, he acknowledged that such liberty made possible the “dissemination of noxious doctrine.”

 

Torah has no tolerance for noxious doctrine. Not only are we prohibited from speaking gossip, whether true or untrue, we are enjoined to be mindful of our choice of words.   In contrast to noxious, we measure the acceptability of speech by whether or not it is lashon nekiya, clean, proper, concise and elevating.  Lashon harah is prohibited as it hurts others, and profanity is forbidden because it degrades and hurts ourselves.

 

Pesach and Tisha B’Av are always the same day of the week and share a close association.  Some suggest that on Pesach we are acutely aware of the loss of the Temple and remember how the evening is not entirely complete without the Pascal Offering.  This is why we eat an egg, the symbol of mourning and we remember how Hillel used to eat his sandwich when the Temple stood.

 

However, the Vilna Gaon was opposed to seeing mourning as having any part of the regal Seder night.  What then is the connection between Pesach and Tisha B’Av?

 

Rabbi Avraham Schorr suggests that we open the Haggadah by reciting kol dichfin yeisei v’yeichol, whoever is hungry come and eat as a way of expressing our love for every Jew.  Kol, anybody and everybody are invited to join us for our Seder.  Those to the right of me and to the left of me, those more religious and those less religious, those that agree with me and those who couldn’t disagree more, those who like my candidate and those who support another one.

 

On Seder night, everyone is invited to break matzah with me. My friends are invited, the stranger is invited and even my so-called enemies are invited.  Everybody. On Pesach we seek to fix the damage of Tisha B’Av.  Destruction results from my abusing my power of speech.  Redemption only occurs when I use my speech to build bridges, create connections and repair he world.

 

Celebrating freedom elevates us to a higher consciousness.  Rav Kook, (Orot HaKodesh vol. III, p. 285) wrote: “As the soul is elevated, we become acutely aware of the tremendous power that lies in our faculty of speech. We recognize clearly the tremendous significance of each utterance; the value of our prayers and blessings, the value of our Torah study and of all of our discourse. We learn to perceive the overall impact of speech. We sense the change and great stirring of the world that comes about through speech.”

 

On Seder night, the night of peh-sach, of talking mouths, we renew that promise to use the speech that comes with our newfound freedom to be kind to one another, to be thoughtful and considerate not only in what we say, but how we say it. The Torah doesn’t seek to stifle opinions or suppress perspectives.  The Pesach celebration of freedom of speech is a celebration of our ability to think differently, speak different and write our different opinions freely.  What it doesn’t allow us to do is to ignore the impact of what we write and say on others and how they feel, how our message and messaging triggers hurt or pain in others.

 

On Pesach we are not only concerned with what goes into our mouth, but we are ever aware of what comes out of it.

 

Don’t Forget Where You Came From

 

“Don’t forget where you came from.”  It is often said at graduations, it’s the title of a country music song, and many successful people include it on their list of the most important things to remember.

 

And yet, when Yosef HaTzadik ascends to great heights and power in Egypt, he marries, has his first son and seems to violate this critical principle.  He names his oldest son Menashe – “ki nashani Elokim es kol amali v’eis kol beis avi, God has made me forget all my hardship and my father’s entire household.”

 

What? Yosef HaTzadik, this righteous individual who, when the wife of Potiphar tried to seduce him he triumphed only because he drew strength from the image of his father, is now saying he has forgotten them all?  And is grateful for it?  How is it possible to be so callous, so crass, so insensitive?  Was it a coping mechanism?  Was he simply hardened to his new reality and bitter?  How is it possible that Yosef, who was so close with his father – who grew up as his ben zekunim – could possibly rise to greatness and not only forget about his family but actually name his oldest son “I have forgotten my whole family?”

 

There are a number of suggestions offered.  First of all, it seems to me that if you name your kid “I have forgotten my family” it means one thing – you actually haven’t forgotten your family and don’t want to.  Furthermore, Rav Yitzchak Arama, author of the Sefer Akeida, suggests that Yosef doesn’t mean to say I have literally forgotten them.  What he meant was I have selective memory and have chosen to only look back on my childhood with nostalgia and good will.  I have forgotten the animosity, conflict, and enmity and remember only the good times.

 

Indebted to the Misfortunes as Opportunities

 

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch has an altogether different approach.  He says the suggestion that Yosef could forget his family is preposterous.  “Nashani” in this context doesn’t mean to forget.  Rather says Rav Hirsch, it means what noshe means when it comes to Shemita, to be a creditor.

 

In other words, Yosef celebrates the birth of his son as he enjoys a position of great prominence in the strongest empire in the world.  As he reflects back on what brought him there he says, ki nashani Elokim es kol amali v’eis kol beis avi, God has made my misfortunes and my family into creditors.  What had seemed until now to be terrible misfortune indeed brought me to this most joyous moment, to the point that I am now deeply indebted to my perceived misfortunes and my family who brought them on.

 

Yosef had suffered a string of challenges and hardships.  He had not only survived but astonishingly now found himself thriving.  He could have looked back on the events of his life that led him there in one of two ways.  He could have said, woe is me, I can’t believe I was thrown in a pit, sold into slavery, falsely accused, forgotten in prison, and abandoned for all these years by my family.  He could have been bitter, hurt, and resentful and concluded that his success and achievements were despite his hardships.  Instead, Yosef made the choice to look back at his life and say, I don’t fully understand why I had to endure what I did or why those bad things had to happen to me, but look at me now and the blessings I am privileged to enjoy.

 

We don’t all merit to ascend to power and wealth the way Yosef did.  For many, hardship continues and endures and the light at the end of the tunnel seems as distant as ever.  And yet, I believe the Torah’s message is that no matter the circumstance, if we approach life with humility and gratitude we can identify a blessing in our circumstance, something good that has come out and feel indebted for the positive we enjoy.

 

See More With One Eye Than With Two

 

In a great article, Sight to Behold, L. Jon Wertheim tells the story of Luis Salazar.  A longtime major-league infielder and minor-league coach Salazar had been out of baseball for a year, happily sitting at home in Boca Raton. But in August 2010 he got the itch to return so, with the blessing of Graciela, his wife of 33 years, Salazar sent out his résumé. The Atlanta Braves offered him a job managing their Class-A Carolina League team, the Lynchburg Hillcats.

 

Salazar joined the Braves for their spring training games in 2011 and was coaching third base one March afternoon. As Wetheim tell it:

 

Salazar was 55, a former third baseman whose reaction times were not what they once were. No matter. He had no chance. Not with slugger Brian McCann hitting from maybe 60 feet away and the foul ball traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour. The projectile smacked Salazar in his left eye, making a hideous sound and knocking him backward down the dugout steps. He fractured his right arm in the fall, but that was the least of it. He was unconscious, concussed, and blood poured from his nose, mouth and eye, puddling around his head as he lay face down. As a helicopter transported Salazar to an Orlando trauma center, the players struggled to keep it together, not least McCann, who left the game.

 

Salazar regained consciousness in the hospital that night. He says he saw a white light—”very bright, so bright”—and fell back asleep. He woke up the next day after a surgery, the first of three. “What happened?” he asked his wife. She told him. He nodded. He went to the bathroom and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Then the gravity set in. “It’s scary when you don’t recognize yourself,” he said. “That’s when I knew how bad it was.”

 

Doctors first told him the good news. He was alive. And, blessedly, he’d suffered no brain injury. Then, a few days later, the bad news: his left eye was so damaged it would need to be removed.

 

Six days after he was hit, Salazar’s left eye was surgically removed, his socket suddenly resembling a garage without a car. He conceded, that was “a tough day,” but he was more focused on thanking God that he had come out of the ordeal relatively unscathed. The doctor told him that losing the eye meant only that he couldn’t be a fighter pilot. Otherwise there would be no restrictions. He put a bandage over the eye—beating others to it by making the obligatory Pittsburgh Pirates joke—and went about his business.

 

When Salazar was finally released from the hospital, he drove the three hours from Orlando to Boca Raton. “I needed to do that for myself,” he said. On April 15 he made his managerial debut in Lynchburg. By this point, his story had generated some media attention—particularly among Braves fans—and a capacity crowd turned out to welcome the new manager. Graciela was in the stands as well. “Just putting on the uniform, going to home plate and handing the lineup card to the umpire,” he said. “That was the best moment of my baseball career.”

 

During his season managing in Lynchburg, Salazar often spent the duration bus trips returning voicemails from friends. “In a way, I see more now than I did with two eyes,” he said. “I see friends, teammates I haven’t spoken to in 25 years. I notice more around the ballpark. It’s maybe crazy to say, but in some ways it’s been a blessing.”

 

Chanukah Candles Illuminate What Is Already All Around Us

 

We take as a given that the reason we light the Chanukah candles is to see the flames.  We tend to assume that the pirsumei nisa, the publicizing of the miracle, is achieved by lighting oil and commemorating a miracle from many years ago.  But perhaps we are missing the point.  Maybe the real purpose is not to see the flame itself but to allow the flame to illuminate the darkness and reveal what is all around us.  Perhaps publicizing the miracle is not accomplished through the candle, but rather when we take a moment to consider the trials and tribulations we have been through and yet allow the light to illuminate for us how fortunate and blessed we are nonetheless. The Jewish people’s existence after all these years and systematic attempts to eliminate us… we are the miracles.  Each one of us has struggled, be it with illness, financial hardship, etc. and yet we are here, we are positive and we are grateful.  That is the miracle.

 

The mitzvah is ner ish ubeiso, and perhaps we can suggest homiletically, the mitzvah is to see the candle but more importantly to see ish, to see ourselves and how we are here, and to see beiso, how fortunate we are to have a spouse, children, a home.

 

Louis Salazar says he sees more with one eye than he ever saw with two.  When we light that menorah, like Yosef we must see beyond what our eyes can perceive and see and appreciate the blessings and the miracles that surround us all along.

 

This article first appeared on aish.com

 

On April 11, 1944, a young Anne Frank wrote in her diary:

Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly until now? It is God Who has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. Who knows – it might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and that reason alone do we now suffer. We can never become just Netherlanders, or just English, or representatives of any other country for that matter. We will always remain Jews.

 

Anne Frank was on to something. The Talmud asks, from where did Mount Sinai derive its name? After offering a few alternatives, the Talmud suggests that Mount Sinai comes from Hebrew word “sinah” which means hatred, because the non-Jews’ hatred of the Jews descended upon that mountain when the Jewish people received the Torah there.

 

Torah demands a moral and ethical lifestyle, an attitude of giving rather than taking, a life of service rather than of privilege, that has revolutionized the world. The Jewish people have been charged to be the moral conscience of the world, a mission they have not always succeeded at, but that nevertheless drew the ire, anger and hatred of so many. For two thousand years the Jews were bullied and persecuted simply because of their Jewishness and all that stands for.

 

After the Holocaust, the world gave the Jews a reprieve from their hatred, becoming instead beneficiaries of their pity. But looking at events around the world, it is rapidly becoming clear that the last 70 years was an aberration. We are witnessing the rise of anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe, as the world reverts back to its ageless pattern and habit.

 

The Midrash (Eichah Rabbah 1) teaches that three prophets used the term “eichah” – o how! In Devarim, Moshe asks: “Eichah, how can I alone bear your troubles, your burden and your strife?” (Deut. 1:12) In the Haftorah for Shabbos Chazon, the Prophet Yeshayahu asks: “Eichah, how has the faithful city become like a prostitute?” Lastly, Yirmiyahu begins the Book of Eichah: “Eichah, how is it that Jerusalem is sitting in solitude! The city that was filled with people has become like a widow…”

 

Eicha – How? How is it that anti-Semitism persists? Why must they rise up against us in every generation? On Tisha B’Av we will sit on the floor and wonder aloud, eicha? How could it be Jews in Eastern Europe have to fear for their lives yet again? Eicha – how could it be that today, with all the progress humanity has made, the ADL measures more than a quarter of the world as holding anti-Semitic views? Eicha – how could it be that terror persists, that three members of family gathering together on Shabbat to celebrate a shalom zachor could be murdered in cold blood?

 

Our job is to make sure we can answer the call of ayeka, where are you? Are you taking responsibility?

 

Rabbi Soloveitchik tells us that though the Midrash identifies three times the word eicha is used, in truth there is a fourth. When Adam and Eve fail to take responsibility, God calls out to them and says ayeka, where are you? Ayeka is spelled with the same letters as eicha, leading Rabbi Soloveitchik to say that when we don’t answer the call of ayeka, when we don’t take personal responsibility for our problems and blame others, we will ultimately find ourselves asking eicha, how could it be?

 

We can ask eicha, how could all of these terrible things be, but we may never have a definitive answer. Our job is to make sure we can answer the call of ayeka, where are you? Are you taking responsibility?

 

We may not be able to fully understand why anti-Semitism exists, but we can and must remain vigilant in fighting it. We must remain strong in standing up for Jews everywhere. We must confront evil and do all we can to defeat it. And, we must do all that we can to take personal responsibility to fulfill the Jewish mission to bring Godliness into the world.

 

If individual Jews were hated for being the conscious of the others, all the more so does a Jewish country generate hate for being the moral conscious of the whole world, held to higher moral standards than any other country or state.

 

Our job is not to be discouraged by asking eicha, but to ensure that we can answer the call of ayeka. Anti-Semitism will not come to an end by assimilating and retreating. It will come to an end when we can positively answer the question that the Talmud tells us each one of us will be asked when we meet our Maker: did you long for the redemption and did you personally take responsibility to do all that you can to bring the redemption? Did you truly feel the pain of exile and feel the anguish of the Jewish condition in the world? Do you truly and sincerely care? Did you anxiously await every day for Moshiach to herald in an era of peace and harmony, an end to anti-Semitism and suffering?

 

It is not enough to long for Moshiach, we must bring him. It is not enough to hope for redemption, we must be the catalyst for it. It is not enough to be tired of eicha, we must answer ayeka.

 

If we want to get up off the floor and end the mourning, if we want to finally end anti-Semitism, it is up to us to do what is necessary to heal our people, to repair the world, to love one another, and to earn the redemption from the Almighty.

 

“Mosquito tone” is a 17 KHz sine wave that teenagers use on their cell phone to alert them when they’ve got a text message so the teachers can’t hear it. Studies say that most adults can’t hear much above the 13-14KHz range, but teenagers can.  Our ability to hear high frequencies falls as we age.

I found the mosquito tone online and played it. I heard nothing but my kids in the other room started screaming, “What is that? Turn it off!”

 

Adults have now struck back using the teenagers’ technology against them.  Inventor Howard Stapleton has created the Mosquito teen repellent (I kid you not). He says only a few people over age 30 can hear the Mosquito’s sound.  Stores and parks in England and Japan have begun to use it to keep teenagers from loitering.  The repellent continually plays a high frequency.  Adults can’t hear it and teenagers can’t stand it.

 

The most seminal moment in human history occurred when God addressed millions of people at Mount Sinai in an act of supreme revelation. Indeed, this moment was unprecedented, unparalleled and unrepeated. The Torah says,   “These words that God spoke to all your assembly in the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud and the thick darkness, with a great voice which was not heard again… [v’lo yasaf]” (Deut. 5:19)

 

The simple meaning of the words, v’lo yasaf as explained by the Ibn Ezra and other commentaries, is that the voice and experience were “not to be repeated.”  This was a onetime only deal, an exceptional and transcendent moment in human history, never to be replicated.

 

On the one hand, the uniqueness of this event is significant and special.  We eternally reflect back and recognize that the moment is inimitable and unique, distinct and singular.  On the other hand, its uniqueness forces us to consider the fact that no matter how we live and whatever choices we may make we can never experience revelation like Mount Sinai again.  This generates a sense of disenfranchisement and deflates our spiritual ambition.  If God only spoke once and we missed it, how do we connect today?  How do we access the affirmation that only God’s voice can provide as to His existence and our charge in the world?

 

Commentators were troubled by this dilemma and offer another layer of interpretation of the phrase v’lo yasaf.  Onkelus, the famous convert who lived in the period of the Tannaim from 35 – 120, translates v’lo yasaf not as never repeated, but rather as v’lo p’sak, God’s voice never ended or ceased.  The Ramban brings a few sentences as evidence that the Hebrew root – yud, samech, fey – can mean ‘never stops.’  According to this interpretation, God spoke at Sinai thousands of years ago and his voice and message continue to carry until today and beyond.

 

So, which is it? Does v’lo yasaf mean God’s voice never repeated or does it mean God’s voice never ceased?

 

I believe the answer is up to each and every one of us.  We each have a critical choice to make.  Do we view the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai as part of the past, a historical event and previous occurrence, or does God voice speak to us today?

 

Each year on Shavuos we recall the Sinai experience and challenge ourselves with the question of which interpretation best reflects our life.  Are we going to choose the reading that says the voice of God is no longer heard, or are we going to continue to listen carefully for the reverberation of God’s message in our lives? Are the events of Mount Sinai representative of an ongoing, developing relationship with God, or are they an isolated event?

 

In truth, God’s voice is all around us. Like the mosquito tone, a frequency is playing, the only question is if we can hear it.

 

Each time we open a book and challenge ourselves by learning Torah, expanding and broadening our wisdom, understanding and insight, God’s voice is reverberating. Each prayer in which we are not only physically present but spiritually invested, God’s voice is reverberating. Each magnificent sunrise or sunset that we pause to take in, God’s voice is reverberating.  Each act of kindness we share with others God’s voice is reverberating.

 

There is no doubt that God’s great and mighty voice is all around us.  Shavuos demands of us to consider: are we tuned into the Sinai frequency or do we simply go through the motions, and view God’s voice as something of the past?

 

The choice is yours to make.