CANTORS NOTES Cantor Stoehr
As we enter the month of May the academic year will come to a close. Echoes of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” reverberates through my mind. With the end of our periods of formal education however, our learning never ceases. There are many ways in which we all grow and mature and learn right from wrong, acceptable and unacceptable ways in which we might comport ourselves in society. Most often we learn more about practical living from our surroundings than text books, friends than teachers.
The essentials of ‘reading, and writing and arithmetic’ are important building blocks. An old commercial for education used the phrase, “reading is fundamental”, and as a young tot I used to question “how much fun is it”? Rabbi Adar adds some meaningful insights in the article below. Rabbi Ruth Adar, the Coffee Shop Rabbi, wrote in #blogExodus, the brainchild of Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, (Am Shalom in Glencoe), the following: (edited)
“Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow! Grow!'” Lovely, no? This quotation, attributed to “The Talmud” appears in various places online. ‘I found it in’ a collection of Midrash called Bereshit Rabbah. The only trouble with it is that it was translated so sweetly that it has lost its meaning. “Ben Sira said: God caused herbs to spring forth from the earth: with them the physician heals the wound and the apothecary compounds his preparations. R. Shimon said: There is not a single herb but has a mazal [constellation] in the heavens which strikes it and says, “Grow!” – Bereshit Rabbah 10.6 (my translation). The literal translation suggests that even plants have a destiny [a horoscope, at a time when rational people put faith in such things,] Rabbi Shimon adds that living up to destiny is not always a pleasant process: this mazal* “strikes” (and yes, that’s the verb, from the same root that gives us “flogging” for punishment) the plant and says to it, “Grow!” Certainly it is more pleasant to think of angels whispering to blades of grass than it is to think of the stars whipping medicinal herbs into shape. Unpleasant or not, this Midrash has something important to teach about growth: it often hurts. Leaving Egypt was a painful process: Pharaoh increased the workload, then God started bringing the plagues, most of which affected Israelites as well as Egyptians, then the scary night of escape, then the scary passage to and through the Reed Sea. Then everything else. We call them “growing pains” for a reason: growth hurts. That is why it behooves us, out of the mitzvah of kindness to suffering creatures, to treat those who are learning with kindness. No angels are bending over them whispering. No, whatever Torah they are called to do in the world is calling to them, striking them, saying, “Grow! Darnit, grow!” Feeling the pain is not necessarily a sign that we’re on the wrong road: sometimes it is a sign that we’re actually feeling the growth. That’s why we need teachers and advisers, why it is often said that “Every Jew needs a rabbi.” We must talk with our guides, reflect with them, when we feel growing pains. They may just be a sign that we’re well on our way to that “mazal,” the destiny which is ours to fulfill. This May I hope we don’t all think of Alice Cooper but rather Pirkei Avot 4:1, and the scholar ben Zoma who says: Who is the wise one? One who learns from everyone they encounter, as it says, “I have acquired understanding from all my teachers” (Psalms 119:99).
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