Friday, April 15, 2005

Midot, Lacrosse, Mussar, Faith

I was just listening to a tape of Rabbi Paysach Krohn in which he cites his father. King David wrote that a person should labor in Torah day and night. His father noted that it doesn't say Torah, but actually says his Torah. His take was that every person should have his own area of Torah which he specializes in. One benefit of this would be that people could pool together and between us we could know a great deal. His examples are all in the realm of halacha. I would add that people may choose mussar (spiritual introspection) and machshavah (philosophical studies) as their field of focus.

Which reminds me - a student told me that she needed to talk to me today. So we set up an appointment in the afternoon. I failed to guess that what she wanted to talk about was the possibility of starting a girls lacrosse team. She had a whole list of questions about it and felt comfortable broaching the topic with me. After our chat about lacrosse there was a gap of time while we waited to speak with the head of sports. During that time we took a little tour of the library and perused the books.

This student was told, and authenticated the fact that, in every book in the library on the same page (35) there is a school stamp. She finds this amazing and while I was trying to tell her about some books of interest she kept going back to how cool it is that every book is stamped on the same page. While the thought did enter my mind that it would be fun to ask a kid to take any book out of the library, hold it up to my head and then "guess" what page it is stamped on, I was also interested in talking about the books themselves, even the non-stamped pages.

We looked at Orchot Tzadim, which was originally aptly called Sefer HaMiddot - the book of the character traits. We read two parables. One of the two analogies was memorable to me from many years ago. The one I didn't recall was about how you have to know what various coins are worth if you're going to be using money all the time. Some coins are of little value, some are like hitting the jackpot, and some have been ruled illegal for use. Similarly, with character traits, we need to pay attention to the value of every characteristic.

The image I remembered was of a string of pearls. The pearls are each valuable, but the knot at the ends of the string holds it all together. Similarly, all of our character traits, temperments, dispositions are beautiful and important. We string all of out inclinations and attitudes together, but what holds it together is our connection to and awe of G-d.

Rabbi Krohn's father's thought reminds me of a comment of the Rambam. We regularly recite the statement that G-d wanted to give us extra merit so he gave us an abundance of mitzvot/commandments. The Rambam's undertannding of this is that because there are so many mitzvot everyone is able to find the one that they are able to focus on and master. In other words, everyone should have their special, specific mitzvah.

There's a story that a man learned this Rambam and went and asked his rabbi how to choose his mitzvah. The rabbi told him to pick the one that he found hardest for himself, rather than the one he was most inclined to do.

On the topic of faith and strenth and awe, here's a poem.

In 1963 Rabbi Samuel Adelman put out a book called Windows To My Soul. With one exception (David Ebner) I don't know of any other traditional rabbi who has published a book of poetry since then.

His inspiration for this poem was watching his son, observing his pure faith on his tenth birthday. He longed for that faith the way we all should.

Faith

Dear Lord, in thine abounding grace,
Let me ever see thy face
Though years may their sorrow bring,
May the winter be like the spring.

Keep fresh in me the love I felt,
When first I met thee as the snows did melt,
When as a child, I asked not why,
Only to see thee in m y soul's eye.

I plead for the vision of my heart,
By which alone I see the part,
Thy spirit plays in making live
The stars above, who strength do give.

May I look at each blade of grass,
And see thine appointed angels pass,
Doing Thy bidding to make it grow
And not by my feeble efforts to sow.

Though my head turns white with years,
Though life is filled with many tears,
Yet, may my faith in winter be,
As 'twas in spring, when I first met thee

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