Don’t sell yourself short: Everyone can learn

Rabbi James Perman

Can you believe we’re now in the New Year 2021? But alas, we are still struggling with the pandemic. Nothing seems normal — least of all the passage of time and how we experience it. On some days, the hours seem interminable. Yet we have to ask, “What happened to the days, the weeks, the months? How could they fly by like that? And now you say it’s January? A new year? Really?

People are distressed. Some are depressed, some despondent, some tragically lonely, some explosively angry, or any combination of these. We are obsessed with all the things we used to do and can’t do now. And of course, we can’t help but wonder how it will be when the pandemic fades away. It can’t possibly be a return to normal.

There is a remedy, though. It’s called focusing on opportunities. Yes, they are the candles to illumine the darkness. How about looking for what’s possible instead of what you can’t do? Here is a New Year’s resolution we should make right now. It has to do with learning new things. How about making a resolution to learn something new, especially about our comforting Jewish heritage?

Every synagogue, organization and academic institution in America has produced on-line offerings. Yet, when I mention the amazing opportunities for that kind of high-quality learning, someone invariably replies “Oh no, I’m too old for that. I can’t learn anymore.”

Well, that’s an excuse. It’s simply not true. Let me tell you a story, straight out of classical Jewish tradition. It describes the sage Rabbi Akiba in middle-age, long before he ever became Rabbi Akiba — when he was still just Akiba.

We are told that up to the age of 40, he had never studied anything. Once, while drawing water from a well in Lydda (the ancient site of today’s Ben Gurion Airport), he noticed a hollowedout rock. “Who did this to the rock?” he asked. His friend answered, “Akiba, haven’t you read [in scripture] that ‘water can even wear away stone?’” (Job 14:19)

He looked again. It was only water! It was water from the well, dripping upon it constantly, day and night, that made the hollow in this rock.

At that, Akiba asked himself, “Is my mind harder than this stone?” I will go and study at least one section of Torah. He went straight to the schoolhouse, and he and his son began reading from a child’s tablet. Akiba took hold of one end of the tablet, and his son held the other end. The teacher wrote down alef, then bet, and eventually the whole alphabet. The story continues to the point where he masters the alphabet, then the Torah and its commentaries. He ultimately astonishes his teachers.

You get the point, right? A little at a time, plugging away with lots of repetition, and you’ve got it. Didn’t get it right the first time? Then repeat it again. And again. It’ll work. That’s New Year’s resolution No. 1: Do not sell yourself short. Everyone can learn. And it’s good for your brain, your spirit and — these days — even for your sanity.

So, let’s just quietly and sanely and safely welcome the new year, with face masks and proper social distance. We pray that we have an effective vaccine speedily in our days ahead. And we sincerely pray that America — indeed, the whole human race — will get its act together, figure out how to get along with each other, live together peacefully on this planet and possibly … even show some improvement.

Stay well. Stay safe. And Happy New Year 2021!

Rabbi Perman serves at Temple Shalom.

The future we dare to build

As we turn a corner, this is a poignant time of year. I’m not talking about Jan. 1 and “Auld Lang Syne” (thank you, Bobbie Burns), but rather the conclusion of the first Book of the Torah on Jan. 2.

True it is that Exodus, which we begin on Jan. 9, represents a vast and sweeping historical spectacle, as our fabulously ancient people is born through the drama of the midnight exodus from Egypt, and the constitutional convention with God at Mount Sinai 50 days later. But precisely because Genesis is a much smaller-scale narrative, its more intimate scope makes it, in many ways, the more interesting and engaging of the two books.

We resonate to the courage Abraham and Sarah showed in leaving Haran to establish a homestead for their descendants in the Promised Land. We relate to Isaac, the prized and protected child, and admire the resourcefulness with which his beloved bride, Rebekah, takes the initiative to put history on the right track. We sympathize with Jacob,

because we follow his every plodding, patient step on the way to becoming a patriarch and the founder of our People. We feel we know his kids, from the impulsive and unstable eldest Re’uven to the boldly imaginative initiative-taker Judah (for whom we Jews are named) to the self-sufficient and always-competent next-to-youngest Joseph — as well as all their siblings, progenitors of the 12 Tribes of Israel.

Now a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, for the fabulously ancient Jewish People descended from those 12 Tribes. And yet, there is a certain evocative reluctance to put Genesis aside, every year at this time, as we prepare to move on to the big story in Exodus. Before striding boldly forward into whatever comes next, we take one long look back at Genesis with wistful longing and affection, and with gratitude for our long-ago progenitors, whose story it tells.

Perhaps there is, very bluntly, nothing as boring as looking at old family photo albums … unless, of course, it is your own family album, in which case, the exercise acquires a whole new level of meaning. It all feels more immediate and meaningful, since their story is also very much our own.

My eldest daughter at 18, leafing through my late mother-in-law’s photo collection, came across a picture of her grandmother at the same age and

demanded accusingly, “What are you doing, with my face?”

Looking back at the ancient family record enshrined in Genesis, we don’t know whose face they have, or what they are doing with it. But we do recognize our impulses and motivations in theirs; we resonate to the challenges they faced, and to the choices they made in response. And we see in them evocative and surprising intimations of our own innermost selves, far beyond mere matters of physiognomy alone.

So, we anticipate with pleasure and expectation, moving on deeper into the Torah, to meet God once more, as we reenact the birth of the Jewish People through the Exodus experience.

But first, before we move on, we linger for a poignant moment of farewell on the first Shabbat in January (as the last Shabbat in Genesis) to pay tribute to our long-ago forebears.

We are the future they dared not only to dream, but to bring into fruition by their own imaginative acts of moral courage. The future we dare to build, in turn, is an act of continuity with all the generations of Israel past, and a precious legacy to all those still to come.

A very happy and healthy and blessed New Year 2021.

Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross