Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Art and Healing Go Hand in Hand

06 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Art, Health and Well-Being, Life Cycle, Quote of the Day

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After I posted this morning my piece, “Music and the Arts – A Spiritual Necessity” my cousins, Susan and Leonard Nimoy, passed along to me the following video link from CBS News on the extraordinary modern art collection hanging on the walls of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

In explaining the significance of art and medicine, one physician said that “artwork and doctor’s work complement each other.” Leonard remarked that a “hospital should be sterile physically, but not emotionally or intellectually.” And the piece ended with the reporter saying, “Even the walls are therapeutic!”

A terrific story once more emphasizing the importance of art as a necessity in life – http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7407646n&tag=stack

Music and the Arts – A Spiritual Necessity

06 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Art, Health and Well-Being, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day

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This address by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the music division at The Boston Conservatory, though already 8 years old, came to me from a friend this week. I was so moved by it that I wanted to share it with you.

Paulnack says:

“I have come to understand that music is not part of ‘arts and entertainment’ as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.”

Mr. Paulnack concludes his address with these words:

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Paulnack’s is a powerful statement of what music is and does in particular, and what the arts as a whole bring to the human condition. Parents, schools, politicians and government officials, budgets, philanthropists, and people of faith – take note!

My only problem with his address is his broadsided critique of religion as a vehicle of human wrath. That characterization is not religion. Rather, his is really a critique of human avarice, greed and ego. It its pure form, religion and the arts have the same spiritual goal – to bring us close to Oneness, to God, to our highest selves and that is healing not only of one’s particular tribe or community, but of all the world.

His address is worth reading.

http://greenroom.fromthetop.org/2009/03/11/karl-paulnack-to-the-boston-conservatory-freshman-class/

Yehuda Amichai Poems on this Yom Haatzmaut

26 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Poetry, Quote of the Day

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No nation in the world honors its poets as does the State of Israel, and Yehuda Amichai is among Israel’s greatest poets.

An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion / and on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy. / An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father / both in their temporary failure. / Our two voices met above / the Sultan’s Pool in the valley between us. / Neither of us wants the boy or the goat / to get caught in the wheels / of the “Chad Gadya” machine. / Afterward we found them among the bushes, / and our voices came back inside us / laughing and crying. / Searching for a goat or for a child has always been / the beginning of a new religion in these mountains.

Jerusalem

On a roof in the Old City / laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight: / the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy, / the towel of a man who is my enemy, / to wipe off the sweat of his brow.

In the sky of the Old City / a kite. / At the other end of the string, / a child / I can’t see / because of the wall.

We have put up many flags, / they have put up many flags. / to make us think that they’re happy. / to make them think that we’re happy.

Wildpeace

Not the peace of a cease-fire, / not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, / but rather / as in the heart when the excitement is over / and you can talk only about a great weariness. / I know that I know how to kill, / that makes me an adult. / And my son plays with a toy gun that knows / how to open and close its eyes and say Mama. / A peace / without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares, / without words, without / the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be / light, floating, like lazy white foam. / A little rest for the wounds – / Who speaks of healing? / (And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation / to the next, as in a relay race: / the baton never falls.)

Let it come / like wildflowers, / suddenly, because the field / must have it: wildpeace.

The Song of Songs – An Allegory of the Love Between God and Israel

12 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry, Quote of the Day

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“The world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.”

So said Rabbi Akiva, who regarded The Song as an allegory of the love between  God and Israel.

On first reading The Song is a secular poem celebrating young, sensuous, erotic love, a “love stronger than death.” Read more deeply, it holds the Presence of an Ineffable Other.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Cook expressed the mystic’s longing with these words:

“Expanses divine my soul craves. / Confine me not in cages, / of substance or of spirit. / I am love-sick — / I thirst, I thirst for God, as a deer for water brooks. / Alas, who can describe my pain? / Who will be a violin to express the songs of my grief? / I am bound to the world, all creatures, all people are my friends, / Many parts of my soul / are intertwined with them, / But how can I share with them my light?” (Translated by Ben Zion Bokser)

The Biblical Song of Songs is read on the Shabbat during the festival of Pesach.

The Destructive Power of Ego

12 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Quote of the Day

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In watching “Game Change” on HBO this weekend about the rise and fall of Sarah Palin, as well as the controversy around Rush Limbaugh’s nasty slander of a decent young woman activist and law student, the scandal in Britain emanating from the hubris of Rupert Murdoch and his empire, the rise and fall of Glenn Beck after calling the President of the United States a racist, and the failure of Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Donald Trump among the Republican presidential contenders, one character flaw seems to be held in common by them all – egotism.

Frank William Leahy, a Hall of Fame college football coach, once said that “Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.”

The Pirkei Avot (4:1) offers counsel to those of us whose egos rage out of control:

“Who is the wise one? The one who learns from all people. Who is the strong one? The one who subdues his/her passions. Who is the wealthy one? The one who is satisfied in what s/he has. Who is the honored one? The one that honors her/his fellows.”

Don’t Run Away From Politics Despite Good Reasons To Do So!

22 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Quote of the Day

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Thankfully, we living in California have been spared the most recent barrage of SuperPac political advertising and candidate trashing of each other. Unless we read the national press we have also been spared the right wing’s wanton distortion of the truth of President Obama’s record and what he inherited upon assuming office three years ago, as well as the candidates’ pandering to the nation’s very worst angels of greed, self-interest, arrogance, aggression, self-justification, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia.

In listening to the lies and distortions that daily pour out of the candidates’ mouths it would be natural for decent people to run far from politics. That a two time admitted adulterer and hypocrite and an unrepentant corporate raider who has not a clue about what the other 99% of America has to deal with on a daily basis are the two leading candidates of the Republican presidential contest is enough to make any decent person despair.

Plato reminds us, however, that “The penalty that good [people] pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by [those] worse than themselves.”

Pericles adds, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

Rather than run away, each of us has to become even more engaged. If we run then we deserve whoever we get.

The Creative Impulse, Solitude and Genius – Anticipating Sabbatical Leave

16 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Art, Health and Well-Being, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day

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Six years ago Daniel Pink published A Whole New Mind: Why Right-brainers Will Rule the Future. There he made the case that in business, manufacturing, construction, law, medicine, the sciences, education, religion, and the arts creativity will be the competitive difference that distinguishes one thing from another.

A key requirement of creativity is the need for solitude, as discussed by Susan Cain in her thoughtful piece this past weekend (“The Rise of the New Groupthink,” NY Times, Sunday Review, p. 1): http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?pagewanted=all

Ms. Cain writes:

“…most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy. To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move beyond the new groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time. And we must recognize that introverts…need extra quiet and privacy to do their best work.”

For me, almost nothing creative comes when I am working in my synagogue office. To make matters more difficult I deliberately leave my door open because I want to send the message that I am accessible and welcome all comers. Yes, I can get certain kinds of work accomplished even with this open-door policy, but almost nothing new or inspirational will come to me in that environment. Creativity happens for me at home when I’m alone studying, reading, thinking, and writing. Creative ideas also come during worship services, when I’m teaching, listening to others teach, and during pastoral counseling when two hearts, minds and souls are engaged with each other.

The novelist and Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck wrote:

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. She must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency she is not really alive unless she is creating.”

Though artists are special human beings whose sensitivity and talent are more exquisitely developed and tuned to their environment than the rest of us, we all have the capacity to create and that creativity can come in a multitude of ways. Yet, we are, most of us, deluged with too much noise, too much interaction with others, and we are plagued by intellectual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual fragmentation and exhaustion that stops creativity altogether. As individuals and a community, this state of being is deadly and self-destructive. We need to be able to encourage ourselves and our institutions (as my teacher Rabbi Larry Hoffman has recently written) “to create environments that catalyze the greatness within us and within our people by encouraging brilliance, supporting genius and rewarding excellence” in every arena.

To begin, we need to reclaim solitude as a necessary element of our lives, and then when we reemerge, energized and inspired, we need to find ways to share our gifts.

In two weeks beginning on January 29 my congregation has granted me Sabbatical leave that I will take in two pieces over the next 18 months. I will return from the first segment in mid-April. The remainder will be in the Fall and Winter of 2012-2013.

In this first period I will be traveling to Israel (leaving on February 1) to study on Ulpan in Jerusalem in order to improve my spoken Hebrew and comprehension. When I return home I look forward to quiet and uninterrupted time to read, study and write. I will most likely continue to post here from both Israel and home during that time.

I am grateful to Temple Israel of Hollywood for this time away.

“What a Wonderful World” with David Attenborough

26 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Art, Beauty in Nature, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry, Quote of the Day

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As the year 2011 comes to a blessed close, the lyrics of “What a Wonderful World” originally set to music by the great Louis Armstrong (lyrics: George David Weiss, George Douglas, and Bog Thiele) has been reinterpreted by David Attenborough on the BBC with exquisite nature photography – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8WHKRzkCOY

“I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (zal), filled with wonder always, put it this way:

“Our radical amazement responds to the mystery, but does not produce it. You and I have not invented the grandeur of the sky nor endowed [hu]man[kind] with the mystery of birth and death. We do not create the ineffable, we encounter it.

The awareness of the ineffable is that with which our search must begin…The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide…reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh.”

May your soul rejoice and your heart sing!

L’shanah tovah chiloni

Rabbi John Rosove

 

“Again we begin anew, as all begin…” Natan Yonatan

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Poetry, Quote of the Day

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In the morning liturgy, we express gratitude for consciousness and life (Birchot Hashachar), for the workings of the body (Asher Yatzar) and the Divine origin of our souls (Elohai N’shamah), and we begin each day (indeed, every moment) as if for the first time. This poem by the Ukranian born Israeli poet, Natan Yonaton, reflects this wondrous spirit.

“Again we begin anew, as all begin; / The plougher, the collector, the poet, / The falling leaves on the wind, / The pearls of dew / And the returning wave to the sloping shores.

Again we begin anew, as all begin; / We’ll sing the song with the same words / Which never tire, as the waves / That endlessly return / To the vast sea / To the sandy, sloping shores.”

Taken from “Again We Begin Anew” by Natan Yonatan (1923-2004), translation from the Hebrew by Rabbi Maya Leibovich

On Being Grateful While Living in Both “Light” and “Shadow”

23 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Life Cycle, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day

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Tennessee Williams said, “You know we live in light and shadow. That’s what we live in – a world of light and shadow; and it’s confusing.” (Orpheus Descending)

None of our lives is simple, but along comes Thanksgiving each year and the expectation is for us to emphasize that for which we are thankful regardless of how we might feel.

For some of us, gratitude comes easily, and for others feeling grateful is a significant challenge. I believe that nurturing gratitude is one of the most effective means to dispel the “shadow.” For some, pharmaceutical help is indicated, and I urge it if that is your situation. For most of us, we need a way to help ourselves get out into “light.”

I have a suggested exercise that may help. If each of us were to take out a blank sheet of paper and list on one side all the good things in our lives and all the negatives on the other, which side would be longer? Spare nothing in compiling your lists. On the positive side, start with “I am alive!” even if you are sick or in pain. Include all that you have – home, food, medical care, family, friends, the ability to see, hear, walk, use the bathroom, to help others. Take your time and make the list as detailed as you can.

Then list all the negatives. Include every ache and pain, every loss from which you have not been able to heal, the holes in your heart, your frustrations and aggravations, your unmet dreams, your overly thin-skin, your inability to control rage, envy, jealousy, resentment, your feeling victimized, etc.

Now, given the two lists, which one takes most of your time, vitality and attention?

For me, thankfully, the side in “light” is so much longer than the side in “shadow,” yet there are times that I spend proportionately too much time in “shadow.” Not good for me or for those around me, and I know it.

On Yom Kippur, I made a commitment that I would emphasize the “light” of my life and not the “shadow.” The good news for me is that I feel and express gratitude easily despite my spending more time in “shadow” than is good for me.

Yet, I wake up each morning usually feeling refreshed, and excited about the morning sun, the new day, new opportunities to learn, think and create, to be with the people I love and enjoy, and to do meaningful work in my synagogue and friendship communities.

If you too often find yourself in “shadow”, perhaps these quotations on the theme of gratitude can help make this Thanksgiving Day happier and every day more meaningful.

“Hodu l’Adonai ki tov, ki l’olam chasdo” (“Give thanks to God, for Adonai is good…God’s steadfast love is eternal.” –  Psalm 136 (9th century, B.C.E.)

“When you arise in the morning give thanks for the morning light, for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself.” – Native American Prayer, Tecumseh Tribe

“How strange we are in the world, and how presumptuous our doings! Only one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to fulfill. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.” – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)

“Ingratitude to a human being is ingratitude to God.” – Rabbi Samuel Hanagid (993-1056 CE)

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” – William Arthur Ward, American scholar, author, pastor and teacher (1921-1997)

“Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.” – Anne Lamott, writer (b. 1954)

“Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily.” – Jean Toomer, poet and novelist (1894-1967)

“We should write an elegy for every day that has slipped through our lives unnoticed and unappreciated. Better still, we should write a song of thanksgiving for all the days that remain.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach, author (b 1948)

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.” – Cicero, Roman philosopher (106 BC – 43 BC)

“If the only prayer you say in your life is ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.” – Meister Eckhart, German theologian, philosopher (1260-1328)

“I can no other answer make but thanks, and thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks.” – William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Happy Thanksgiving!