Milei d'Alma

Ha Lachma Anya

2009-03-27T08:57:00.015-05:00

In preparation for Pesach, I've been listening to some shiurim on the Hagada by Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik; the following is based on some of the ideas in his shiur from 1969. (This is not a summary of the shiur - these are my own thoughts based on his insights.)

The short paragraph which starts out the Hagada, הא לחמא עניא, is rather strange, and its meaning and place in the seder are somewhat obscure. The formula consists of three parts, whose interrelationships are not at all obvious:

This is the bread of affliction (of the poor) which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt.
All who are hungry, come and eat; all who are in need, come and celebrate Pesach.
Now we are here, next year may we be in the Land of Israel; now we are slaves, next year may we be free.

What is the connection between these three sentiments? Why are they said in this order? Why do we specifically refer to the matza here on its own, when we will talk about it later as part of the triumvirate of essential mitzvot of the seder? Why the seeming redundancy or parallelism in the second and third declarations? And why do we introduce the Hagada in this way, instead of just starting with the main part of maggid with the four questions?

Now, there is a mitzva, discussed in detail by the Rambam, that on any Yom Tov one must open his home to the poor; he states that one who locks his doors and does not share his holiday meal with the needy is not fulfilling the mitzva of Yom Tov celebration, but is rather celebrating only his own selfish desires. This formula of Ha Lachma Anya would then seem to fit with this idea - at the beginning of the meal we invite in the poor people. But this is clearly not the whole story. Why specify the matza? Why talk about moving to Israel and being free? Why invite both the "hungry" and the "needy" - is this not redundant? And why do we have such a formula just on Pesach and not for any other holiday? Clearly there is a lot more going on here.

The essence of the holiday of Pesach is freedom. Let us look more closely at this freedom that we celebrate. What is it, and why did we merit it?

To understand the freedom we celebrate on Pesach, let us look at the structure of the mitzva of talking about the Exodus (סיפור יציאת מצרים). The basic structure is that we begin by talking about lowliness, and we conclude talking about greatness (מתחיל בגנות ומסיים בשבח). But there is a difference of opinion as to what specifically this means. The amora Rav says that we describe our forefathers' journey from idol worship to being brought to the worship of Hashem, while Shmuel says that we start out describing how our forefathers were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt and talk about how Hashem freed us from that slavery. In practice, we do both; the Hagada intertwines both versions. Rav Soloveitchik notes that these two narratives correspond to the two types of freedom that we celebrate on Pesach - political/economic freedom, and spiritual freedom. Rav and Shmuel differ on which we should emphasize, but we celebrate and thank Hashem for both.

We see this dichotomy reflected clearly in the last pair of declarations in Ha Lachma Anya, which thus serve as a fitting introduction to the Hagada: "Now we are here, next year may we be in the Land of Israel (spiritual freedom); now we are slaves, next year may we be free (political/economic freedom)."

But we also see the same dichotomy in the parallelism (not redundancy!) of the second clause of Ha Lachma Anya. We call for all who are hungry to come and eat; we open our homes to the poor who are unable to provide for themselves, and so demonstrate our political/economic freedom in the powerful ethical terms of צדקה - with freedom comes the obligation to help the other. When we call for those who are needy to celebrate Pesach with us, on the other hand, we are not inviting people to simply share our food. As Rav Soloveitchik explains, the "needy" we invite in here may be people of great means who do not lack for food or other material things, but people who lack companions for the holiday - they are lonely and in need of the bonds of human fellowship. The need for intimacy and closeness is the essence of spirituality, the desire and the movement of coming close to Hashem. We invite others to share our celebration, to become part of our spiritual fellowship, to satisfy their need for being a part of a collective, and in so doing demonstrate and celebrate our spiritual freedom as part of a holy people.

Indeed, it is that sense of fellowship and brotherhood which merited us salvation from our slavery in Egypt. As Chazal note, the Jews were at the deepest levels of spiritual impurity - the angels in heaven objected to the Exodus, claiming that there was no difference between the Jews and the Egyptians: "These worship idols, and those worship idols!" But Hashem redeemed the Jews from Egypt in the merit of their solidarity with one another, that even in the depths of their individual torment, they felt for and cared for one another. It is telling that Hashem tells Moshe, "I have seen the oppression of my people in Egypt; I have heard their cries before its oppressors, for I know its pain." The cries are those of individuals, but the oppression and pain are shared, and are the common property of the people as a whole, because each individual feels his fellow's suffering. It is this that makes the Children of Israel, a collection of family-based clans, into the Jewish People, a unified nation. We are a nation built on fellow-feeling, on the solidarity of compassion, not on land or possessions or conquest.

And so it is essential that the seder, the celebration and reenactment of our freedom as a people, be opened with a call to all Jews in need, whether physical or spiritual, to share with us the bounty which Hashem has granted us. This goes beyond the normal requirement for צדקה which we are obligated to on other holidays - the call for solidarity is the very essence of the seder celebration.

This is represented by the complex symbolism of the matza. The term לחמא עניא, or in Hebrew, לחם עוני, is given three different interpretations by Chazal. One is "the bread over which we say many things", deriving עוני from ענה, "to answer" or "to say". This "bread of recital" is thus the bread of spiritual freedom, the freedom to worship Hashem. Matza is also a "poor bread", deriving the descriptive from עני - it is a bread lacking any luxurious qualities (no eggs, oil, sugar, etc.), a bread which reminds us of our previous slave state in which we were totally dependent on our oppressors for our material needs, thus reminding us of our current political and economic independence. Finally, matza is the "bread of the poor person", that which even the poorest can afford. This interpretation is the basis for breaking the middle matza at the seder, as a poor person does not even have a full loaf. We might also say that I only have a half loaf, like the poor person, because I share my loaf with my fellow. Thus matza, in all its facets, symbolizes our freedom as a people, political freedom, spiritual freedom, and most essentially, the freedom of compassion and fellowship.

So we see that this strange, concise, tripartite formula with which we open the Hagada is a powerful statement, summarizing in just a few words the nature of the freedom that we celebrating, the reason we merited that freedom in the first place, and the purpose of that freedom that we must fulfill.

שמירת שבת (אף) על גב

2007-12-09T09:07:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Shabbat Hanuka, I was in Los Angeles, with my sister's family. A fine time was had by all - my girls cooed over their new baby cousin, and played well (most of the time) with their older cousins. Shabbat afternoon, my brother-in-law and I went for minha, se`udah shelishit and ma`ariv to one of the local shuls. There had been a bar mitsvah celebration that day, and consequently a few relatives made some (fortunately) short speeches during the meal. One of the speakers was an older gentleman, who gave the following divrei hizuq to the young now-adult celebrant:

One winter, an older, ehrliche yid was traveling by plane from New York erev Shabbos - the plane was scheduled to leave at 9am and arrive by noon, so there was plenty of time to arrive before Shabbos started. But once the passengers were on the plane, they discovered that their flight would be delayed due to weather; after one delay and another, it was getting close to noon and the plane was finally placed number 44 in the line to take off. It was clear that the plane could not possibly arrive before Shabbos. So the ehrliche yid called the stewardess over and asked her to please ask the captain to take the plane back to the terminal so he could get off the plane - after all, he had never been mechalel Shabbos in his life, so could they please do this for him. She went to the cockpit, and came back with the answer that she was very sorry, but that they couldn't inconvenience all the other passengers on the plane - if they went back they would lose their place in line and would perhaps have to wait an extra two or three hours before they could take off. The man, politely but urgently, asked to please speak to the captain of the plane. Since this was before 9/11, they let him go up to the cockpit and he begged the captain, explaining and crying that he'd never been mechalel Shabbos in his life. At this, the captain was very touched, and said, "I see you are an ehrliche yid and very serious about your religion - of course I will take you back." And they went back to the gate so that he would not be mechalel Shabbos. And so, young man, you see the power of true conviction in the importance of doing mitsvos.

Of course, I said nothing, but I couldn't help thinking, "If this story actually happened, what kind of a mitsva was it to cause such inconvenience to all those people?! And what kind of education is it to tell the bar-mitsva that true religiosity lies in inconveniencing others for one's own observance?!" After all, this fellow wasn't flying the plane and could have just spent Shabbat in his destination airport without violating more than a derabbanan or two at the most - but by delaying the other passengers another two or three hours, he caused a hillul Hashem, in addition to likely other ben adam lehavero violations. The attitude evinced by the man in this story (a so-called "ehrliche yid"!) and the idolization thereof is one of the main illnesses of modern Judaism.

The proper attitude is epitomized in the well-known story of R. Yisroel Salanter זצ"ל:

One of his disciples had invited him for Friday night dinner. R. Israel had stipulated that he would not dine anywhere till he had satisfied himself that the kashrut was above reproach. The disciple informed R. Israel that in his home all the Halachot were observed with utmost stringency. He bought his meat from a butcher known for his piety. It was truly "glatt" — free of any Halachic query or lung adhesion (sirchah). His cook was an honest woman, the widow of a Talmid Chacham, daughter of a good family, while his own wife would enter the kitchen periodically to supervise. His Friday night meal was conducted in the grand style. There would be Torah discussion after each course, so there was no possibility of their meal being "as if they had partaken of offerings to idols."" They would study Shulchan Aruch regularly, sing Zemirot and remain seated at the table till well into the night. Having listened to this elaborate account of the procedures, R. Israel consented to accept the invitation, but stipulated that the time of the meal be curtailed by two full hours. Having no alternative, the disciple agreed. At the meal, one course followed another without interruption. In less than an hour, the mayim acharonim had been passed around in preparation for the Grace after Meals. Before proceeding with the Grace, the host turned to R. Israel and asked: "Teach me, rabbi. What defect did you notice in my table?" R. Israel did not answer the question. Instead he asked that the widow responsible for the cooking come to the room. He said to her: "Please for give me, for having inconvenienced you this evening. You were forced to serve one course after another — not as you are used to do." "Bless you, rabbi," the woman answered. "Would that you would be a guest here every Friday evening. My master is used to sit at the table till late at night. I am worn out from working all day. My legs can hardly hold me up, so tired do I become. Thanks to you, rabbi, they hurried this evening, and I am already free to go home and rest." R. Israel turned to his disciple. "The poor widow's remark is the answer to your question. Indeed your behavior is excellent, but only as long as it does not adversely affect others."

(From The Mussar Movement, Volume I, part 2, pages 226 - 228 - thanks to Prof. Yitzchok Levine's RYS Daily.)

לשמח חתן וכלה

2007-11-27T22:39:00.000-06:00

According to R. Abahu (:ברכות ו), someone who enjoys a wedding and causes joy (משמח) to the bridegroom is rewarded as one who has brought a Thanksgiving Offering (קרבן תודה).

Rav Kook explains this notion in Ein Aya as follows. He first notes the apparent oddity of having joy at a wedding, based on the conclusion of our sages that it would have been better for man not to have been created - hence a wedding which will hopefully lead to children could be considered a time of sadness. But we are to be optimistic that the issuance of this union will fulfill their God-given purpose in life, and so be worthy of existence. The Thanksgiving Offering is brought to thank God specifically for an unusual good, that is, one that comes from a confluence of apparently bad or evil causes. The fact is that joy and happiness can only be experienced and appreciated after having been preceded by some time of darkness, as our sages related to the verse, "Had I not sat in darkness, Hashem wouldn't have been a light for me."

The key to realize is that all is ultimately for the good in the end. Therefore, even though it would have been better in the here-and-now for Mankind not to have been created, due to his numerous tribulations, both physical and spiritual, in this world - however, at the end of time human perfection (שלמות) will be achieved, and everyone will be ready for true spiritual enjoyment when the Messiah comes. In the future, then, the hand of Hashem will be seen and understood that all previous tribulations were ultimately a preparation for the good. For this reason, the Thanksgiving Offering specifically will still be brought, since it is just via that sacrifice that we recognize the need for the bad to bring about the completion of the good. The Thanksgiving Offering therefore is the only sacrifice that is brought with leaven (all others are accompanied by unleavened bread), since leaven signifies badness and harm.

Thus, one who brings joy to a bridegroom at his wedding (and presumably to the bride as well) is evincing total optimism and trust in God to help bring about the perfection of Mankind, by rejoicing in the perpetuation of the species despite the tribulations that cannot be avoided. This is as one who brings a Thanksgiving Offering, and in retrospect, appreciates the role of the bad in the eventual production of the good.

I give thanks to God for his kindness in arranging for me to be engaged (and soon to be married) to a truly wonderful woman, and for the opportunity that I have been afforded to see a glimpse of how past trials have led to this wondrous state of joy.

הודו לה' כי טוב כי לעולם חסדו

אם אשכחך

2007-10-16T20:06:00.000-05:00

Wave those leaves & fruit!

2007-10-01T12:36:00.000-05:00

A longer post on my Monsey observations will be forthcoming (bli neder, im yirtseh Hashem, kein ayn hora, vekhu'), but for now, I'd like to share some little thoughts I had on this most atavistic custom of נענועים (shaking the lulav/arba minim).

I was thinking, during Hallel, about why we shake specifically for the verse הודו לה' כי טוב כי לעולם חסדו [Give thanks to God, for He is good, for eternal/to the world is His kindness]. Apart from the fact that we wave in six directions and there are six words in the verse (other than the name of Hashem, where we don't wave). So here's my idea (untainted by any learning about the historical or hermeneutical significance of this ritual):

Hodu/Give thanks: We wave forward, as our gratitude comes from us, moving outwards;
LaHashem/to God: We do not wave, as God is the Unmoving Mover, the Place of the world;
Ki/for: The word כי is a preposition indicating cause or reason. We indicate our right hand, as our main limb for causing effects in the world;
Tov/good: We wave behind us, for good often pursues us (as we read in Psalm 23 - may goodness and kindness pursue us) - we all too often run from it, since we don't recognize it as good;
Ki/for: Again, we speak about causation, indicating our left hand;
LeOlam/eternal or to the world: The root of this word is עלמ, meaning "hidden" - here we wave upwards to indicate the eternal and infinite storehouses of goodness and kindness that are hidden from our sight;
Hasdo/his kindness: We wave downwards, to indicate the direction of His outpouring of kindness to us, in so doing, we bow in humility, and perhaps also commit to imitatio dei in this area by doing more kindness for others.

I suppose this all looks kind of "new-agey" all written down like this. But blame my (prose) stylist. It works pretty well for me in practice (your mileage may vary).

מועדים לשמחה / Happy holiday!!

Instant gratification and eternal life

2007-09-30T15:31:00.001-05:00

Last Wednesday, on my way to spending the first days of Sukkot with old friends in Monsey, NY, I was on the NYC subway. (To get to Monsey from Laguardia, you take the bus to the subway to a private bus...in short, a schlep.) On the subway were the usual assortment of "interesting people", including one young woman who sported several (visible) tattoos, one of which got me thinking. The tattoo in question read "Hawaii" in thick black lettering - not very fancy, nor, to my eyes, particularly attractive. I wondered why one would get such a tattoo. Unless the woman was from Hawaii (possible) or had some close personal connection to the place, I guessed it was most likely that she had gotten the tattoo during a vacation there; she was enjoying herself so much that she wanted a permanent memento of that brief happy time.

I felt (in the afterglow of Yom Kippur) that this indelible inscription of a transitory time of pleasure was a perfect illustration (as it were) in microcosm of the expression "מניחין חיי עולם ועוסקין בחיי שעה" [they leave aside eternal life and busy themselves with temporary life]. This short momentary vacation is now a permanent part of this woman's appearance - if she later decides she does not like Hawaii, she will need to undergo difficult and possibly painful procedures to remove the inscription. If my imagined scenario is close to the truth, it would seem that getting that tattoo was a pretty silly thing to do.

We all, though, do the same thing all the time, often without even realizing it. We have little habits, of behavior or of thought, that arise from transitory needs, but then start to be enshrined in our lifestyles and our personalities. We may stay up late to finish working on something one night, then the next night feel that we can't go to bed before getting more work done, and in no time have developed a habit of staying up later than necessary that leads to chronic sleep deprivation. Or perhaps because of the first late night, we got up late the next day (after all, we need our sleep) and missed going to shul. So the next day, going to shul may not seem so urgent, and in no time, morning minyan isn't a priority anymore. I could certainly make a long list of such habits of my own, and I'm sure most of us could do the same. But if we let them go unexamined and unchecked, then we are tattooing ourselves with permanent inscriptions which refer to past transitory experiences. How ridiculous!

In the modern world, the prayer of Kol Nidre seems strange, even anachronistic, and it can be very hard to relate to. What is all this about declaring our vows and promises to be null and void? (Historically, the prayer comes from a time when Jews would be forced into conversions and the like, so this served as a formal repudiation of such oaths, but that understanding doesn't get into my kishkes at all, I'm afraid.) But I like to homiletically understand Kol Nidre as a declaration that I need not and am not bound by any habits or constraints that I have placed unnecessarily on myself over the past year. As we declare, "ואסרנא לא אסרי" [and our shackles shall not be shackles] - we are not bound by our past decisions or actions to continue in a bad path - we are free to start our path anew.

Judaism's great lesson is that there is always hope. One can always do teshuvah and change and grow. עד יום המות תחכה לו [until the day of death, You will wait for him (the sinner, to return)] - where there is life, there is hope.

May we all find the hope to sustain us in our ongoing efforts to improve ourselves.

Dilbert's dad is a useful idiot, alas

2007-09-23T13:19:00.000-05:00

I used to be a big admirer of Scott Adams's satirical genius, in his comic series Dilbert. Unfortunately, he has revealed his true colors as a useful idiot. He also seems to think he knows something about geopolitics (note especially his ludicrous comments on Israel's system of government). "When you're rich, they think you really know."

What a waste.

UPDATE: See Treppenwitz's fisking of Adams's post.

Please help out!

2007-09-23T10:15:00.000-05:00

Treppenwitz reports that the Pina Chama, the volunteer-run refreshment stand for Israeli soldiers in Gush Etzion, was robbed over Yom Kippur - nothing left. So please send a donation (even $1 would be helpful) to:

The Pina Chama
8/2 Rechov Haziporen
Efrat, 90435
ISRAEL

Or pop over to his post to make an electronic donation.

Start the year off with a mitsvah!!

לפני מי אתם מטהרים

2007-09-21T15:47:00.000-05:00

So, about 35 hours ago, I was preparing, as so many others, to enter Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, we seek to raise ourselves to the height of spiritual purity, that we may return with full hearts to our Creators, and be given a new lease on life, as it were. We dress in white, we abstain from material needs such as food and drink, and spend the vast majority of the day in prayer and supplication. Clearly, this great spiritual enterprise requires preparation to be successful. The near-universal custom, for men, is to go to the mikvah on Yom Kippur eve, as a purification ritual. I went about 2pm last Friday to perform my ablutions.

Here's the spiritually uplifting scene that greeted me as I entered: Crowds of men, in various states of undress, some dressing, some undressing, many dripping water or toweling themselves off - it was crowded enough that it was difficult not to bump into anyone, and I really didn't want to do that, you know. To summarize the metaphysically illuminating nature of the experience - flesh, mostly pale, mostly hairy, often bulbous, usually wet,and either recently, or shortly to be immersed in the same pool of water in which I was there to submerge my naked body in. I had to search through this mostly-naked crowd to find a spare bit of bench and a hook for my clothes, and indeed I only managed by finding someone who was just leaving, and vulture-like, grabbing the spot, and I then began to disrobe. From that point on, the experience was the usual, nodding to friends, acquaintances, and neighborhood rabbis that I am more used to seeing with their clothes on. Not a place for casual conversation, and certainly an odd place for a spiritual experience.

And yet. As I immersed in the warm and murky water of the mikvah (not for cleanliness, certainly), I reflected on how ridiculous this all was, to my modern mind. Ludicrous, really. But perhaps that is part of the point. Outside of that hectic, crowded, wet room, we can dress up and project the images of ourselves that we want to, differentiate ourselves from each other (this one wears a velvet kippah and a suit, this one wears a knitted kippah and jeans), and think that these differences are reflective of our reality.

Yet under all of these diverse clothes, we are all naked. All built on the same physical substrate, and all blessed with a divine soul. Naked we came into the world, and, in a very real sense, naked we all go into Yom Kippur, as God cares not a whit how we dress, what image we project to the world or to ourselves - God is interested in who we really are, what we do with what God has given us, and whether we strive to come closer to Him on this holiest of days.

I recall that when I lived in Israel, for a couple of years I frequented a barbershop on Rehov Havatselet - it's a rather trendy place, staffed by very trendy Israeli 20-somethings. I first stopped in because I was passing by and needed a haircut. The fellow that did my hair had his hair slicked into semi-spikes, with the sides shaved - I told him I wanted just a simple trim, and he smiled and replied, "בלי פטריות ובלי שטויות" [no mushrooms and no nonsense - the "mushroom" was a popular style at that time]; with a little trepidation, I let him go at my hair, and was very happy with the result. So I became a regular. Imagine my surprise when I saw this evident hiloni, not in the shop or on the street, but in the Bak'a mikvah on Erev Yom Kippur! It is there, where all the externals are equalized, that we can truly begin the spiritual work of this amazing day.

Lehavdil, I recall when I served on a hevra kadisha some years ago, that washing and dressing bodies for burial was a deeply spiritual experience - I think because it brought home the enormous gap between our physical stuff, and our spiritual potential as living human beings. It reminds one of the responsibility to use that potential to the utmost, while we still can.

May we all be blessed in this new year for a long, happy, and healthy life.

Signed, sealed, and delivered

2007-09-21T14:00:00.001-05:00

May you be inscribed and sealed in the book of life for a good and sweet year!

Trivial, sublime, and not-quite-absurd...

2007-09-18T13:15:00.000-05:00

What's up in the world? Here's some of it:

Treppenwitz explains how to make a perfect boiled egg (as he received the tradition from his brother-in-law). Tried it this morning, and the method is indeed perfect. My daughters who normally won't touch the yolk, were happy to eat the whole egg (cholesterol worries are hopefully far in their future if at all).
Rabbi Sacks masterfully explains the Jewish response to the current atheistic attacks on religion, and more generally, to utopian movements of all sorts. See the related exposition of similar ideas in the political realm by Yoram Hazony.
Ever wonder about the linguistic properties of spells? Now you can find out all you wanted to know about them...
Talk about cool artwork! Something very Jewish about this, I think - we're a rather linguistic people. Call it Jerusalem meets Athens meets Maori...
Miraculously, allowing people to run their own economic lives actually works for the economy! Israel's economy is booming despite terrorism and war, ever since Netanyahu's unpopular anti-socialist reforms. Why am I not surprised? Heck, even the kibbutzim are capitalists now!

US Memorial Day

2007-05-28T17:22:00.000-05:00

To all of the US soldiers who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep alive the dream of freedom in the United States and the world:

Thank you - may your memory be a blessing to us all!

Intolerant tolerance

2007-05-27T19:42:00.000-05:00

Is modern political culture (in the USA at least) really as debased as it seems? Is civil discourse about political and religious issues really impossible today? In an age of Michael Moore, Ann Coulter, Al Franken, and Rush Limbaugh, it seems that the answer is yes, though perhaps we have not yet reached the awful nadir of this slippery slope. Was it better in yesteryear? One imagines that in the days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite it was; though there were loudmouths (and powerful ones, like McCarthy), there seemed to be a general understanding that one could have civil and reasoned debates about the issues of the day without demonizing one's opponents as "godless", "wingnuts", "moonbats", or the like.

If indeed there is such a phenomenon of progressive vulgarization of the political discourse (and I believe there is), what is responsible for the change?

As with all major social shifts, it is very unlikely, of course, that any one factor can be said to be solely, or even mainly, responsible. There are indeed a number of developments over the last fifty years or so that could have a causal relationship here:

(1) The expansion of media conglomerates, due in part to technological advances in communication, which has brought both economies of scale and greater competition for audience in the information-dissemination business. Unfortunately, getting larger audiences can often be achieved for lower cost by going for the quickly-digestible sensational soundbite, rather than any in-depth analysis (research costs money!). So a political culture of the quick (hence necessarily sharp and un-nuanced) soundbite evolves.

(2) Related to this, we may also point to the growing importance of visual media in political campaigns and discourse, which leads to a greater focus on image and feeling (pathos) than on less visual reasoning (logos). One wonders how much of JFK's "Camelot" mythology depended on his boyish good looks, which enhanced his civil-rights record...

(3) Pure partisans will point, of course, at the other side as the one at fault. US liberals will point at the reactionary fundamentalism of groups such as the Moral Majority as a potent polarizing influence, while conservatives will point at liberal-left moral relativism as a factor that makes reasoned discourse impossible, as all opinions (in principle) are equal, regardless of reason or justification. Or so the arguments would (more or less) go.

I'd like to suggest, though, that another complex of linked causes has, as a particularly negative effect, the coarsening of political debate and the concomitant "dumbing-down" of the polity. We in the West live today in societies multicultural to a degree unimaginable a couple of generations ago, even in the most cosmopolitan of past communities. This change has been catalyzed by modern transportation technologies which have made possible very large-scale immigration as well as the globalization of commerce, involving import/export of cultural meaning-making along with industrial products and processes. This fragmentation of many of the shared values and meanings that gave a foundation to societal cohesion in modern free societies then raised the question of how a cohesive society can function when no dominant normative discourse structures overall political thought (consider, for example, how British legal history (cf. Magna Carta, English Bill of Rights 1689) and Scottish enlightenment philosophy informed the constellation of democratic and republican ideals, the compromising of which shaped the United States).

So how might a society with no agreed-upon normative cultural discourse remain cohesive? Certainly, historically, a common answer to this question has been authoritarianism of various sorts - even the robust balancing-act of the Roman Republic fell into dictatorship when sufficiently threatened by external enemies and internal heterogeneity of its provinces. But modern democratic republics are built upon the notion that suffrage should be as broad and equal as possible, to ensure that all interests are accounted for in the political process. So, without a normative framework for the political marketplace of ideas, the marketplace is apt to degenerate into a cacophony of mutually-unintelligible voices, bringing naked political power to the fore over reasoned argument (though some Foucauldians may argue that such reason is just masked power, there is virtue, I think, to the less violent form).

But this is not all. The well-documented phenomenon of speech being effectively silenced in modern democracies by branding it as "hateful", "antidemocratic", "racist", and the like (sometimes called "political correctness") also has its effect on the character of political discourse as a whole and is intimately related to the difficulties of creating a cohesive multicultural society. The champions of multiculturalism rightfully demand tolerance for all subcultures in the society, so that it may stand; but a key equilibrium is difficult to maintain, in that tolerance must also extend to views that are offensive (yet not directly threatening) to some subcultures. To the extent that a normative discourse is established in which "offensive" speech (to conventionally disempowered groups) is viewed as morally reprobrate, a chilling effect is created that effectively silences authentic political debate. And when an opinion community feels that its concerns are not heard by the larger society (due to such silencing), its representatives are apt to give up on attempting to be heard by those who disagree, and just to speak, in increasingly vituperative and polarizing tones, to the insiders who already agree (an instance of "Group Polarization", see here). Hence an overly-rigid, moralistic, promotion of "tolerant discourse" leads directly to the exact opposite.

Even worse (perhaps) is that this moralistic repression of disagreeable speech has extended even to the realm of scientific research and speculation. Consider the disgraceful treatment of biologist Richard Sternberg, or the incredible uproar over then-Harvard president Summers' speculations about possible innate differences between men and women (for which there is no empirical evidence either way). Whatever one's views of the facts of the matter, in science non-empirical prejudice should not be allowed to silence reasonable speculation or theorizing - the only proper grounds for sanction are willful logical or empirical inconsistency, or outright fraud.

The science of happiness

2007-05-13T00:48:00.000-05:00

So, a Harvard academic (who happens to be Israeli) has discovered the secret of happiness in six steps, which I summarize:

Accept your own humanity (allow yourself to feel pain)
Find meaning in your life, not just pleasure
Focus on how you think, not what you have
Simplify!
Mens sana in corpore sano [a sound mind in a sound body]
Express gratitude frequently

No great surprises here - similar ideas have been expressed throughout the ages. Here's another rewriting, gathered from our sages:

A person should always be humble as Hillel, and not overscrupulous as Shammai
Don't be as one who serves the Master for a reward, rather be as one who serves the Master not for a reward
One who has 100 [talents] will want 200
On three things [not 100 or 1000] the world stands...
You must zealously guard your health
Say 100 blessings each day

Overall, though, I think that the whole modern focus on "happiness" is misplaced. Happiness will continue to elude the one who most assiduously seeks it, and will find the one who pays it little mind. Happiness is to be found in a feeling of fulfilling one's purpose - finding meaning in one's existence and striving with all of one's faculties to do so. The list above (and in the article I reference) mixes in some of the means (staying healthy, for example - optimum functioning requires this) with the ends (focusing on meaningful activity rather than pleasure-gathering).

I wonder if the focus on happiness as a peculiarly modern obsession may be due largely to our relative wealth; as for many things, someone who is struggling to survive does not fret much over whether they are "happy", though they may well be (if the struggle is not overbearing). But we, who must take care not to eat too much, rather than fight to get enough, have this luxury. Too, there is a peculiarly American medicalization of the human condition, in which clinical psychologists study the properties of happiness, and find clinical evidence supporting the age-old notion that people mainly seek to have meaningful lives.

Happiness is not to be found in a pill, or in a therapy (though these may help in some cases), nor is it to be found in physical hedonism of any sort (as I once heard, "I was not put in this world just to tickle a few proteins"). Rather it is a byproduct of well-functioning in meaningful action (Csíkszentmihályi has written most lucidly on this).

I struggle with this myself, as I still seek pleasure and try to plan for happiness; but I recognize more and more that by putting down the ducky of happiness-seeking, I can better play the saxophone of living with meaning. And that has made and will make all the difference.

Oneg Shabbos b'leil Shabbos

2007-05-12T23:57:00.000-05:00

The kids didn't go for it (older daughter said, "I want cow!"), but it was a hit with the grownup crowd:

Lamb Tagine

2 lb. lamb for stewing (in 1 in. cubes, more or less)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 cup water
1 cup red wine
8 oz. dried fruit (prunes, raisins, apricots)

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). In a large, heavy saucepan, sauté onion with ginger until transparent, add garlic and lamb. Once lamb starts to turn grey-brown, add water and spices. Keep turning lamb until well-browned, about 15-20 minutes. If you really want, skim off fat, then turn mixture into a clay/ceramic baking dish with fitted cover. Add wine and fruit, and mix well. Bake for one-and-a-half to two hours. Serve over couscous, preferably with more of the red wine to drink...

Enjoy!