Everyone wants to feel counted. We want to be seen and we want to be included. In a consumer driven, hyperlinked, order it on-line world, what you say and do can count in myriad and unanticipated ways.

The book of Numbers (bamidbar) begins as Moses is told to take a census of the whole Israelite community. A census is more than counting. The modern census is replete with demographic information. But who wants to be merely a number or a statistic? The cyber world seems desperately interested in what you have to say. You aren’t just a number. Your opinion counts. Your click on “like” feeds an algorithm that counts. Grab a peloton bike and enter an on line class where you will be counted. E commerce sites like Airbnb rely on counting up reviews.

Yale Dean, June Chu, was recently suspended for a Yelp review that described an Asian restaurant as being an inauthentic experience for white trash. Before there was Yelp and before there was Twitter you had a better chance of getting away with your prejudices and your anger. June Chu’s words counted, and Yale may decide to no longer count her among their faculty.

I once posted a critique of a hotel on Trip Advisor. I thought my comment was fair. The hotel manager wrote to me quickly to apologize and ask me to remove the comment as bad reviews could cause a loss of business and his staff could lose their jobs. So which was more important, my upset at a lack of sleep at this overrated hotel or the dozen employees? I took down my negative comment.

That Yale dean is just an example of the angry public comment that goes viral. We have a President who counts on his Twitter comments reaching millions to affect public opinion, judicial action and government policy. But you could have guessed I would have done the jump to Trump by now. So I’m counting on you to read a bit more here.

I’ve too often seen people expressing anger, misstate facts, and blame unfairly in on-line forums. In Hebrew this is lashon hara, the evil tongue, which is gossip. There is a parable about how gossip is like feathers shaken from a rooftop. The Internet is the energy that shakes the feathers out of a pillow; spreading them far and wide to land in places unknown and never to be gathered again. So it is with the words we write on listservs, or google docs, or group emails.

I have better advice. It comes from Torah. People count. No matter what your opinion, consider the impact of what you write before you hit send. Is your expression more important than the pain or loss you might cause by your words? If so, right click. If not, swipe left. Count on your words having a negative impact because your mobile device might not be an instrument of holiness. When your opinion counts, your words can be an instrument of pain, or of healing; an instrument of ego, or of truth; an instrument of ugliness, or of righteousness. It’s up to you to choose. How you use your on line accounts will determine the holiness of your devices and how you are counted.

R’ Evan

“Facing adversity, building resilience, finding joy.”  That is the subtitle of Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Option B.  I’m about to download it to my kindle. You likely have heard her story – one of the most successful business people in America faces tragedy when her husband suddenly dies while they are on vacation. Resilience in the face of adversity is not a new tutorial. The lesson is as old as Judaism. But it is a message that we need to hear often, with great repetition, until the truth of our own resilience becomes the story of our lives.

We all know a person, like Sandberg, who has overcome a great struggle or tragedy. I know a lawyer whose client was involved in racketeering – so the FBI wrongfully arrested the attorney as well as the mobster. There’s a client who endured a physically abusive marriage and escaped with her child to save their lives. Or in the Torah, there is the story of Aaron, the High Priest, whose two oldest sons in an overzealous demonstration of their priestly duties are consumed in a flash of holy fire.

And then there’s you and me.  We’ve struggled too. Some more than others but this isn’t a competition. Your illness, or your unsuccessful business, or your failed relationship or your loss – that is the adversity chapter of the story of your life. Sandberg’s book is about living life accepting that sh*t happens and then finding a way to live in Option B.

We all can tell stories of those who overcame adversity by finding courage and building up character. They suffered the trauma and swore that no joy would be had again; that no favor would enhance their lives. And then, sometimes, they find new relationships or create new businesses, or build new homes. The lucky ones go a step further. They become advocates for other families.  Or fundraisers for curing an illness.  Or mentors to those who have struggled.

Even after believing that you will never be happy again or never take pleasure in another day, that morning comes where a smile creeps in, a chuckle emerges and a laugh lights up your soul. Even better, if we are blessed with friends or family or caring professionals, we can better confront our pain, be encouraged to act despite our fear and together we find joy again.

For some, the source of strength, the courage of rising and the return of happiness all comes because God.  That’s what Judaism instructs. For example, the haftorah for the week’s reading Acharei Mot – Kedoshim is from the prophet Amos. After a prediction of impending doom, God promises to lift up the fallen sukkah of David, to repair its ruin and build it firmly again.  Sometimes we are fallen and we find the strength to rise up.  Sometimes we feel our lives are a ruin and yet the day of restoration arrives.

Discussions of adversity often focus on blaming God. Upbraiding God is always available to us. I want to offer another possibility without diminishing the pain of adversity. How about praising God for recovery, for resiliency, and for restoration? Thank you God for providing option B.

Sheryl Sandberg’s husband died at an early age and option A for her life, a life with her husband, was no longer possible. Two painful years later she is writing and speaking about living her life with dignity, courage and even joy, although she can now only live Option B. What she may not yet realize is that almost all of us live Option B. Our lives are never as we expect. It is not our nature to generally anticipate that life’s twists and turns will be car crashes and cancer cells.  Yet, it should be our anticipation that God will be with us when we stand up again and when we laugh. At least that’s my guidebook for Option B – God is in the courage that emboldens us and in the joy that enlivens us.

The poet Rainier Marie Rilke wrote in God’s voice: Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me.

When next I see you, I hope I recognize your strength to overcome adversity, to build resilience and to experience the joy of living.  And maybe you’ll see mine. And in that moment, we’ll both say, halleluyah or amen, because God.

R’Evan

Jews spend a lot of time talking about food. There’s nothing like Jewish holidays to get Jews talking about food. During Passover we compare seder menus and debate matzah brei recipes (crispy or pancake style?). Sometimes it seems that the majority of our Passover conversation is about food and not so much about the freedom which was supposed to be the point of the holiday.

We need a reminder that Passover isn’t the holiday when we long for bread, just as Yom Kippur isn’t merely the holiday when we crave food. Sometimes our attachment to food is so fully identified with our emotional state that we diminish the potential of food as a spiritual experience. If food is such an important topic for us as an ethnic and religious group, can it also be a prompt for feeding our spiritual selves?

Food is supposed to be an important way to reach the hearts and souls of Jews. The Jewish relationship with food can also provide spiritual nourishment. In parshat Shemini, read on April 22, 2017, we are given a first lesson on the many rules regarding the kinds of animals we may eat. We get religiously restrained when we view the kosher rules as a culinary criminal code. Rather, we might view our associations with food as reminders of a need for spiritual sustenance.

Every time I am in a restaurant and I see the bacon or lobster I won’t order, I get a little spiritual lift. That boost comes from the reminder that I am making a choice about what I put in my mouth, so that I can remember to live according to “higher” standards rather than personal impulses. Food choices remind me that I am a Jew and that being Jewish means aspiring to improving the world that God is creating. Therefore, choosing just to eat kosher food is not by itself sufficient.

I have chosen, for example, to limit my consumption of red meat because it is bad for my health and also bad for the environment – just Google “cow emissions global warming.” This is how Reb Zalman Schachter- Shalomi z”l taught us about eco-kashrut. Farmed fish is often a source of pollution raised with harmful concentrations of antibiotics, pesticides and fish feces. I check packaging carefully before buying fish. In this way, our eating choices are spiritual exercises that have consequences for our selves and for all humanity.

If you gave up hametz for Passover, and are now returning to your regularly scheduled diet it is a good time to consider what it means to make food choices as a Jewish person should – for the sake of both spiritual growth and the health of our planet. These are worthy goals emanating from simple rules starting with choosing which animals we eat.

R’ Evan.

Some values are timeless, but how we express them can change over time. This week’s Torah portion (Tzav) uplifts this idea through the example of how we handle shame and guilt.

What Torah calls us to do – uplift shame and guilt – often isn’t our first impulse. Torah expresses this truth with “sacrifices,” the ancient currency of giving offerings to God in contexts ranging from gratitude to hope to penance. The purpose was to feel closer to the holy – which is what “sacrifice” literally means in both Latin (sacrificare) and Hebrew (korban).

That’s why this week’s Torah portion features sacrifices. Ancient sacrifices had common features. One gave them freely from choice possessions. One placed them on a fire always kept burning so it’d be accessible immediately (Lev. 6:5-6). Sacrifices were transformed into heat and light, and their smoke rose upward (Lev. 6:2). The sacrifice was even called an olah – “the thing that goes up.” Sacrifices for “sin” or “shame” (Lev. 6:17), and “guilt” (Lev. 7:1-2), were uplifted just this way.

Fast forward to today. When we feel shame or guilt, how often is our first impulse to ignore it rather than act immediately? How often is our next impulse to suppress it, to shove it down, rather than lift it up? How often do we diminish it rather than offer it our choice commodities of attention, time and care? How often do we keep it in the dark rather than turn it into light?

Suddenly the ancient symbolism of sacrifice, expressed in modern language, can make sense in a whole new way. What Torah asks us to do, when we feel shame and guilt, is to turn upside down the natural impulse to ignore, delay, suppress, diminish and darken. Understood this way, shame and guilt become calls to attention, immediacy, uplift and light.

But how? No offense, Torah, but burning a chicken won’t do it for me.

Thankfully, today we have other tools to draw close to the holy. We can start with speech, calling things what they are. We can speak them to others, so we’re not alone. We can make tangible amends to people we’ve wronged. We can make it easier for others to make tangible amends. We can give to charity. We can volunteer. We can pray. We can love.

All of these, each in their own way, can draw us closer to the holy. In these ways, shame and guilt can become holy updrafts. Find yours and make them real, with amazement that ancient ways we long ago outgrew still offer hands-on wisdom to make our lives a blessing.
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Rabbi David Evan Markus

Frequently (maybe too frequently), I wonder, “How much is enough?”  Have I enough money for retirement in my IRA? Did I make enough food for everyone coming to dinner?  Why do I have that feeling that there’s never enough time in the day?

A new book “The Stranger in the Woods” describes the life of a hermit in the woods of Maine who spent more than two decades by himself apart from society.  For him just being alive was enough. I felt terrified just reading the book review.  He was alone, in the woods, by himself, foraging for food – and my initial panicked reaction was to wonder whether he’d have enough money to retire. Of course, the more obvious question was whether he’d find enough food in the winter.  For me, the most challenging question was what he did with all his free time.

Sufficiency rarely seems to be a theme in my life – perhaps “enough” is only a coda to life lived in a modern society. Yet, in this week’s Torah reading, we learn that, at least for a moment, the Children of Israel had enough. Asked to contribute items to construct the traveling mishkan – place of indwelling holiness – for the newly received Ten Commandments, the people gave with a willing heart. Moses even received a report that “the people brought much more than enough” (Ex. 36:5). Motivated by willing hearts – which I read as love – there was more than enough.

I live in a community where most of us have enough – enough in the bank to meet an emergency, enough to eat for every meal, enough time to exercise at the gym and watch Game of Thrones. What a blessing to be in a community where so many have enough and more. Yet the community Torah describes is not about a community that has enough, but rather a community that gives more than enough.

How does your giving measure up?  Do you give more than enough money and time to endeavors worthy of what is holy? The more we give from the love of a willing heart, the more we give (and the more we receive from giving). This is the enough-ness of Torah and spiritual tradition.

If you’re an anxious person like me, you might wobble between feeling that you have enough or not enough for retirement, or made or didn’t make enough for dinner guests. Maybe the wobbles focus on the wrong sort of enough-ness.  Now, I’m also asking whether I give enough, and whether we as a community give enough – more than enough – so that we exercise our love muscles sufficiently.

When we do, then we might experience that day, just like the children of Israel, who gave so much that it was more than enough for holiness to dwell.

R’ Evan J. Krame