A Healthy Helping Of Happiness
D'var
Torah: Teriumah
February 27, 2009
My Bible teacher saw the world through a lens that bore the inscription “Is it good for the Jews?” Many of us find ourselves asking that question often, if not always. Something happens, someone says something and we ask “Is it good for the Jews?” There was one line in the President’s address to Congress Tuesday evening that was especially “good for the Jews” in a roundabout sort of way. I’ll explain.
Two weeks ago, in my Confirmation Class, comprised of terrific tenth graders, I presented a case study of Mark. Mark grew up in a Conservative Jewish home. His family was somewhat involved in Jewish life though not overly so. His grandparents were survivors and his mother had served a term as Sisterhood President. Mark visited Israel during his high school years. In his sophomore year at college, Mark started dating a young lady by the name of Christine. Correct, Christine was not Jewish. Throughout that year, Mark and Christine became closer and by his junior year, Mark began contemplating getting engaged.
Very wisely, he first wanted to discuss this major life decision with some important people in his life including his grandfather, his parents, his best friend David, who is Jewish, and a good friend from home Bill, who is not Jewish. He also wanted to discuss this with his Rabbi. After we read the case study, I assigned these various roles to members of the class who role played what they believed the responses of these different figures would be. It was an interesting and, at times, fun class though dealing with a serious issue, and I was especially impressed by the young lady who was ordained that evening as the Rabbi. Towards the end of the session, I asked the members of the class to write what their own personal advice would be to Mark and turn their work in to me.
I read these pieces with much interest and was impressed by the level of maturity and sophistication by many of the pieces. One young man, in whom I see the makings of a great Rabbi one day, wrote that he would counsel Mark that while romantic love will last a finite time, it is shared values that is the basis for a long term love and marriage. Wow! How many tenth graders are so wise? A number told Mark to talk to Christine about conversion. This was a good segway to our next topic conversion beginning with the Book of Ruth. A few of the pieces included advice to Mark that it was important that Mark be happy, and he should make the decision that would make him most happy.
In discussing this issue with tenth graders for some years now, I have long learned that doing what makes you happy is an important part of young people’s values. I come to this issue from a different vantage, and I repeatedly have found my own values standing in contrast to the pursuit of personal happiness motif. My own approach has been somewhat out of touch with the values that young people have grown up with in America for the past couple of generations.
Actually if we are to ascribe responsibility, it may well be that my own generation bears it. Wasn't it my own generation that grew up in the sixties that glorified the idea of personal happiness, doing what feels good? Wasn’t it my generation that introduced the idea of if it feels good it must be right. If we did, we did ourselves and other young people a great disservice. While we’re at it, could this baby boomer ethic be a cause of the financial mess we’re in too?
In the part of his speech I refer to, the President was addressing high school students though a very different population from the young people in my confirmation class. He was discussing the high school drop out rate in America which he said is amongst the highest in the industrialized world. He said to young people who might think of dropping out of high school that if they do, they are not only failing themselves, they are failing their country. His actual words were “And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country -- and this country needs and values the talents of every American.”
What an old fashioned value the President introduced anew. We live not only for ourselves, but for something greater than ourselves. He spoke about this in his inauguration address, and I wrote about it that week. High school students have a responsibility not only to themselves but to their country as well. This value for America today is “very good for the Jews.” If the American ethos is that we live not only for what we consider our personal happiness but for our country, something greater than ourselves, then I have a basis to dress this ethic in Jewish garb.
Quitting on yourself is quitting on your country can resonate in Jewish contexts as well. For some reason, during my own high school years, I felt more and more that I had a responsibility not only for myself but for the Jewish people. I read Elie Wiesel’s first book on the Holocaust Night, and I felt that I had a responsibility to keep this tortured people alive. I read his book Jews of Silence, the story of Soviet Jewry, and I remember demonstrating on a cold winter night on the steps of the Academy of Music when the Bolshoi Ballet came to America. Soviet Jewry was at the top of the list of what mattered most to me and led to my first visit to the Soviet Union to visit Refusenicks in February 1985. You have no idea what cold is unless you’ve been to Moscow in February. In that deep freeze, I was warmed by the knowledge that I was doing something for a cause greater than myself, the Jewish people for whom I felt a great responsibility. Others followed the advice of the song set to the warm Caribbean beat “Don’t worry be happy.”
The biggest problem about the idea of pursuing the track that will make me happy is that it doesn’t work. It doesn’t lead to happiness. Happiness is not something to pursue, it is the byproduct of a life well lived. This wisdom is found in the opening verses of our Parsha. G-d tells Moses to speak to the Israelites and tell them to “take” a gift towards the building of the first portable sanctuary in the desert. The language is remarkable here. Moses doesn’t tell the people to give a gift but to take a gift. Why say take when Moses meant give? A great Hasidic interpretation explains that one takes much in the act of giving to something greater than ourselves. It is in the giving that there is a taking. It is in giving that we derive a measure of happiness.
When my own happiness is the driving force of my personal aims and ambitions, I come up empty when it dawns on me that I am not the absolute center of the universe. When I think that how I live is important to my country, to my people, to my religious community and I am willing to give, I can take much in return and part of what I take is a healthy helping of happiness.
The last thing I would say to a college junior and Mark, in particular, is do whatever makes you happy. I wouldn’t say it to someone twice Mark’s age. I don’t say it to myself. It’s not a value to live by. Talking the language of do what fulfills a responsibility to that which is greater than ourselves has been like talking a foreign language. Maybe the President has translated it into English for us and said it in a way we can understand. Hopefully, if we understand it, we can embrace. Yes, that part of the speech is good for the Jews. I hope Mark was listening. There are a couple of relatively obscure verses in our Parsha that, oddly enough, speak to an event in the headlines this past week. Which event? There were a number of events of note, the tragic plane crash in Buffalo, the passage of the stimulus bill, the presidential prescription for dealing with home foreclosures and the runaway mortgage industry, and the event of the chimpanzee, Travis, that went on a rampage and viciously mauled a woman by the name of Chandra Nash. These verses happen to deal with the chimp.
Shabbat Shalom
