Judaism

Halakha, theology, practice, and the inner life of Jewish observance.

OCD and the Days of Awe

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Due to a mishap in my prescription fulfillment, this Rosh Hashana, I’ll be without my OCD medication for the first time since I started taking it.

For those who don’t live with OCD, all they know of it – all they see of it – are some odd behaviors and preferences, some rigidity in personal habits. Those outward signs seem bizarre but trivial, and the mental, emotional, and psychological backdrop and context to them is mysterious at best, ignored at worst, leaving only the visible tip of the iceberg.

For those of us who live with OCD, we know there’s so much more to it. The mental invasions and loops and ruts, the overwhelming pressure and anxiety and need, the emotional disruption and physical anguish, the isolation and the depression. The overly critical view of everything and the desperate search for control. Needing things to be even between right and left, or clean of contamination – that’s just a glimpse into the maddening world of OCD.

It’s definitely not my choice to enter a time fraught with so much legitimate and healthy anxiety and trepidation, with a brain wired for neurosis.

But that’s how my Creator intends for me to go through the sacred process this year. To stand before my King, holy and broken, ready to accept the guiding yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. To hear in the shophar’s voice my own primal cry for release and redemption from my obsession with my failures.

And I’ve certainly done it before – faced this challenge without the help of medicine.

So

A) Wish me הצלחה success in my encounter with my King

B) In the spirit of sweetening judgment, if you know someone who displays signs of neurosis or even just rigidity, have grace and be charitable towards them – you don’t know what it’s like to stand in their shoes, especially at this time

C) If you suspect you may have OCD or another type of neurological misconfiguration / neurochemical imbalance and it’s adversely affecting your life, please talk with a psychiatrist about how medication may help you. Please. I know there’s tremendous social stigma in the West surrounding mental and emotional health, but you’re not alone and you deserve a better quality of life. And those close to you will appreciate it too. 😉

May we all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life ❤️

Rabbi Yosef Adler z”l

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(trigger warning: suicide decades ago)

Just found out that Rabbi Yosef Adler z”l of Teaneck has passed on to his world.

The mark of a good rabbi, imho, is not merely their erudition (that is a sine qua non) but their capacity to successfully lead a Jewish community. To shepherd, not just educate.

The mark of a great rabbi, is their willingness to care for those Jews who are not of their community. To offer guidance and counsel and support when it is needed, beyond what is expected of them by their own congregation.

R Adler was a great rabbi. Not because I agreed with all of his policies or his politics or his decisions, but because he consistently rose to the challenge of providing pastoral care for Jewish people who came to him, from all walks of life.

When I was a small child, long before my family returned in teshuba to an observant lifestyle, my grandmother was coerced into committing suicide by her husband. As suicide is prohibited by Jewish law, many rabbis, while sympathetic to my mother’s distress, shied away from such a radioactive situation with a ten foot pole. R Adler, a congregational rabbi from four towns over, hosted the eulogies and handled the funeral with grace, compassion, and knowledge (I do not know his legal justification but I suspect in retrospect that it was a combination of my grandmother’s having been coerced and the requirement of כבוד הבריות respecting human dignity of my mother).

I will always remember that.

His memory is a blessing, and I pray that his family and congregants are comforted by the heavens.

Sophists and Philosophers

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In a world where we have Gedolé haTorah and Talmidé Hakhamim, we don’t need to make saints of master debaters (sophists), we need to collectively relearn how to think from the masters of wisdom (philosophers).

Reading Life Talmudically

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“A person can read their own life talmudically as such.

Hawa amina: “I thought I would be this kind of person.”

Qushya: Life challenged that assumption.

Teruṣ: I adapted, reinterpreted.

Masqana: My present self is temporary, provisional, awaiting new challenges.”

What I learn from my teacher.

Barukh Hashem.

Shabbath Shalom from the once and future city of Zion

Jewish Is Modern

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“To be Jewish is to be modern, and vice versa.”
– R. José Faur z”l

Understood correctly, Jewish ideas are at the forefront of human development and are produced by a forward-thinking, pro-social outlook that sees law as an instrument of social perfection, both directly and by creating the conditions in which individual spiritual perfection can be obtained. Jewish civilization is nomocratic and egalitarian, based on reason and conscience, and founded upon the principles of social autonomy, rights, and responsibilities.

This naturally aligns with social progress and the concerns of political progressives.

There is also a strong conservative dimension to Jewish culture and society – after all, we are the people of tradition. But the essentially progressive nature of Judaism gets underplayed, misunderstood, and distorted in today’s discourse.

Devastation of Gaza

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The devastation of Gaza can still shock and pain me, as a thinking and feeling human being and as a religious Zionist, and pose a collective challenge to Israeli society that demands a coherent answer, without any need to redefine genocide in order to make it fit the horrific impact of this war on the lives of ordinary Gazans.

Is this how we want to wage war, as a nation?

And what does God say??

If the settled law is not enough, if the poseqim have no creative vision for this day, then Elul is here – according to kabbalistic legend, the transcendent king is accessible in the field of the heart’s imagination.

Pray on this then, and hear what our Creator speaks unto your heart.

Sketch of the Amida

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A rough sketch of the ‘amida:

Through systematically developing a concept of the Creator and making that concept real through the act of dialogic address to the Creator, we bring about the redemption.

First, we establish the grounds for the encounter – praise: the ancestral relationship, the omnipotence, the transcendance.

Then, with those principles in mind, we address the Creator as the provider of, and beseech the Creator to bless us with, the following, in this specific order:

Awareness/Knowledge
Rethinking
Forgiveness
Liberation
Health
Prosperity

Ingathering
Lawful leadership
Punishment of the unjust
Reward of the just
Establishment of the perfected city
Emergence of the messianic archetype

…the whole ‘amida is a step by step process of actualization, each step is made possible by and builds upon the previous, culminating in:

Answered prayer

And then, we are ready for the ‘aboda of gratitude, concluding with the blessing of peace.

No Precept Is Small

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The merit to fulfill even a small precept (מצווה) is truly great, because no divine precept is truly small. 😀

Forbidden War

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I would like to suggest a new halakhic category of war.

We are familiar with:
– Mandatory war (מלחמת מצווה) – with the aim of clear self-defense (still applicable) or of defeating the violently oppressive nations identified in the law (no longer applicable).
– Discretionary war (מלחמת רשות) – with the aim of expanding the political jurisdiction of the Torah (only applicable with an active National Court).

To these I would add:
– Forbidden war (מלחמת איסור) – with any aim other than the above two.

I believe this third category of war is implicit in the biblical precept of “You will not murder” (לא תרצח) and is not explicit in the halakhic literature or discourse primarily because historical and material circumstances did not previously allow for the conditions in which it would need to be so pressingly articulated, and secondarily because it took millennia for humanity itself to recognize war as the (necessary?) evil it is and for this moral growth to natively and organically develop within the Israelite psyche.

However, we find ourselves in the present circumstances, and I believe the hour requires us to include the category of “forbidden war” in our halakhic calculus.

Fetishizing Exile

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Everyone’s entitled to their personal opinion but people who fetishize exile do not and can not represent the Jewish nation, in any serious context.

Whether in the faculty of Harvard, the administration of the Rabbanut, the opinion pages of major media outlets, or wherever else Jewish representation matters and has meaningful consequences for Jewish autonomy.