For the 4th and 5th days of the Omer I find myself feeling deeply grateful for being able to study the Jewish tradition. Its words anchor me in ways that nothing else really can.
For Omer Day Four
“Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from every man, as it is said: “From all who taught me have I gained understanding” (Psalms 119:99). Who is mighty? He who subdues his [evil] inclination, as it is said: “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32). Who is rich? He who rejoices in his lot, as it is said: “You shall enjoy the fruit of your labors, you shall be happy and you shall prosper” (Psalms 128:2) “You shall be happy” in this world, “and you shall prosper” in the world to come. Who is he that is honored? He who honors his fellow human beings as it is said: “For I honor those that honor Me, but those who spurn Me shall be dishonored” (I Samuel 2:30).” (Pirke Avot 4:1)
And as I look out onto our world, aflame with the destructive certainties of extreme political movements, I take refuge in and am often aware of my own failure to live up to what I consider to be one of Judaism’s most important teachings — the commandment to approach the project of life as we know it with humility and gratitude.
To learn broadly from everyone means that wisdom is not the property of the elite but rather belongs to each of us a collective well, watered with the experience of the infinite number of ways we humans experience life. Learning from everyone means that no singular land, nation, or faith has an exclusive claim to wisdom but that wisdom is the ever-increasing accumulation of lessons learned, potentially, from everyone who has ever and will ever live.
Power is not in the might expended violently — by angry words, fists, swords, guns and bombs — power is most sublimely expressed in our discipline to restrain our destructive passions.
Wealth and richness is not found in the accumulation of the material but in the gratitude for what we have, now, in our present relationships, and how we can most fully live with those: with love, with presence, and with the mutuality of the human encounter.
Honor is realized not in the garland wreaths of reward, in the aggrandizing praised heaped upon those who have seemingly done so much; rather, honor comes to those who honor others, who seek not reward but service.
For Omer Day Five
“Hillel saw a skull floating on the surface of the water. He said to it: ‘Because you drowned someone, you were drowned, and in the end those who drowned you will be drowned.’ "(Pirke Avot 2:6)
We are up to our necks in hate and blood these days and I have had enough. Have you?
The great sage Hillel, who is usually known for his other, less dark teachings, really rings the bell here for me.
He said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. All the rest is commentary, go and learn.”
He said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And, if not now, when?”
But here, Hillel speaks directly to every generation that has known intolerable violence: in the home, in the street, among nations. Rather than describe it in overly broad ways with anodyne terms like “the cycle of violence,” which I believe makes an abstraction of this insidious manifestation of the human experience, Hillel personalizes, even dramatizes it, in Shakespearean terms. He addresses a skull floating on the surface of the water and rather than do what Hamlet did with Yorick’s skull — muse on the futility of life while reflecting on a childhood jester in the royal court — Hillel, more like a Hebrew prophet than a poet, shakes the foundation of our world with his universalist message.
“Because you drowned someone, you were drowned, and in the end those who drowned you will be drowned.” Hillel and the Skull are us. We are doing this to ourselves. And so flow the waters of time.
It’s time we stop.
If not now, when?