Rabbi Ben meditating as he looks out over the Pacific Ocean

Meditation is a major part of most of the world’s religions.  Hindus and Buddhists believe their meditations can change the spiritual  vibrations of the world.  But in Judaism, we almost never hear meditation mentioned.  Why not? Does Jewish meditation exist? And if so, what is Jewish meditation?

To answer this question, you must first determine what meditation is.  There are many types of meditation.  Some meditation is simply quiet contemplation and some mediation is an attempt to reach spiritual realms.  These are totally different activities and are viewed differently by Judaism.

One of the most well-known types of meditation is transcendental meditation.  This is when people try to use meditation to reach a higher spiritual plane.  The Lubavitcher Rebbe spoke out strongly against this practice.  In Judaism we do believe in high spiritual worlds, but transcendental meditation is not the appropriate way to access them.  Transcendental meditation is used for avodah zarah (idol worship) and does not take G-d into account in the way that prayer does.  In Judaism, rather than engage in transcendental meditation, Jews should instead work on their prayer and study of Torah. In this way anybody is able to reach a higher spiritual level and those who work on themselves enough to become tzaddikim may even be able to access the higher spiritual worlds in a kosher manner.

But transcendental meditation is not the only kind of meditation.  Just because Jews should not engage in transcendental meditation does not mean they should not engage in any kind of meditation at all.  In fact, prayer can be a form of meditation.  Many of the traditional forms of meditation involve chanting a mantra or reciting a text.  There is nothing wrong with choosing a Jewish text to recite as part of a meditation or mantra. For example, reciting the Shema or saying over and over again “gam zu le tova” (everything is for the good) could be positive and fulfilling mantras and would aid in appropriate meditation.  In fact, someone who is very spiritually connected should view each of the daily prayers as an opportunity to connect to G-d directly and the text of the prayers should be like a meditation. As with a meditation, they should help clear the person’s mind and raise them to a higher level of spirituality and spiritual awareness.

There is another type of meditation we use in Judaism, which is called by the Breslov Hasidim “hibodedut.”  Rebbe Nachman of Breslov explains that this is a personal prayer in which you can say anything you want to G-d.  He advocates going alone to the fields and forests to pray like this for an hour every day.  If this is not a type of meditation, I don’t know what is! This is your chance to talk directly to G-d using whatever words and spiritual energy you have.

Furthermore, simply sitting quietly and clearing one’s mind is a type of meditation.  This is certainly not a problem in Judaism, although perhaps prayer is preferable.

But one must remember not to get too caught up in meditation, or even in prayer. Judaism is a religion of action.  Even someone who is praying the shmona esrei (the most holy prayer) must stop what he is doing and run to help in certain situations.  And there are many situations where it is preferable to stop one’s prayers to go do an active mitzvah helping another person.  In Judaism, of the 10 commandments, 5 are between G-d and man, and 5 are between man and man.  This indicates that we should find a balance between these two relationships in our lives.  Meditation is good because it can connect us to G-d, if done in the right way. But our relationship with G-d is only half of what we must accomplish as Jews. We must be sure to also work on our relationships with our fellow men, too.

Hopefully, this has given you all something to… well… meditate on!

Parshas Behar: G-d is in Your Backpack

As observant Jews, we have a lot of items to carry around with us when we travel.  We carry pots to cook kosher food. We carry a siddur to pray. We carry tallis and tefillin and shabbat candles.  We have a lot of things in our backpacks that add to our weight and our bulk.

But no matter where we travel or how, there is one thing that never takes up space and never weighs us down: G-d.

In this week’s parsha, we are commanded, “Do not make gods for yourselves, and do not set up an image or a memorial stone or put up a marker anywhere in your land to cast yourselves down upon it.”  G-d is telling us that we don’t need reminders of Him. We don’t need huge monuments, sculptures, or little idols on our car dashboards.  We don’t need paintings or pictures to remember Him.

Instead, G-d has given us a precious gift: his Sabbath.  By keeping Shabbat and the commandments, by doing what is right and good, we remember Him.  We remember Him through something much more potent and meaningful than simply looking at a picture.

In fact, a picture or a sculpture is easy to overlook.  Look around the room you are in right now.  Are there photographs or artwork on the walls or on your desk? How often do you really notice them. How often do you sit and really look at them? Most of the time, we look through them or past them. We know they are there; our brains do not need to register their presence.  The same thing happens with paintings, drawings, pictures, sculptures, or monuments of idols.

But if we remember G-d through our actions then we truly cannot forget Him. We can’t look around or through our actions.  Even if some things, like negelvasser in the morning, become habit, the majority of our actions are conscious decisions we make.  We decide to do an act of chessed for someone else.  We spend hours upon hours of our time preparing to make the Sabbath beautiful… and if we are spending so much time doing it each week, it cannot be out of habit.  By keeping the Sabbath, by doing the mitzvot Hashem has given us, we remember Him and know He is with us and watching over us.

So when we travel, we may have to worry about packing a few extra things, but there is one thing we will never need to worry we’ve forgotten: G-d.  Because no matter where we are in the world, He is with us.  Even if we travel with no bags at all, even if we travel with nothing, G-d is still with us, as long as we keep Shabbat and do His mitzvot to the best of our ability.

Incidentally, Rabbi Ben has a book called “G-d is in My Backpack” coming out very soon.  Watch this space for it!  In it you will be able to read many amazing incidents that show just how true it is that no matter where you go, G-d is always with you.

Shabbat shalom!

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Parshas Emor: Getting Angry at G-d

Have you ever gotten angry at G-d?  Maybe everything in your life was just going wrong.  You lost a loved one or you were seriously injured… or maybe it was just a lot of little things piling up. Maybe you were just discontent with the way life was going.

I remember once I got really angry at Hashem.  I remember raising up my hands and shouting at Him, “Hashem why are you doing this to me?! Why are you treating me this way?”  I just could not believe that He, who supposedly loves me so much, could be so mean.

I think most people have felt anger at G-d in their lives. If it wasn’t over something that happened to them, then it was over something that happened to someone else.  I have met many people in my travels who have told me they are angry with G-d about the Shoah (Holocaust).  What happened just makes them so sick that they are angry at G-d – and sometimes cannot find a way to forgive Him.

In this week’s parsha, we encounter a man who gets so angry he actually curses G-d.  As a result, he is taken out and stoned to death.  But if almost all of us get angry at G-d sometimes, why such a harsh punishment? Are we not allowed to be angry with Him?  After all, He is the one who failed to give us the understanding and insight into His plans. He is the one who limited us. And He is the one who is bringing suffering onto us. So why shouldn’t we be angry with Him sometimes?

The answer when it comes to getting angry is the same no matter who or what has upset you. I have addressed the topic of anger before (in posts on Parshas Chukas and Parshas Toldos).  The Torah does not expect you to never get angry, but it does expect you to control how you express that anger.

Cursing G-d just is not an acceptable way to handle our anger with Him.  If we are angry at G-d, we need to recognize that this is a call from Him to dig deeper into ourselves.  It shows we do not have sufficient emunah (faith) and bitachon (trust) in Him to know that everything He does is for our own good.  It also shows that we must work to control our anger (see links above).  But not only does it show that our emunah and bitachon are lacking, the individual circumstance of our situation should teach us something else about ourselves. Perhaps we are so arrogant that we expect to understand G-d’s ways and are upset when we cannot. Perhaps we need to give more charity or do more chesed (acts of lovingkindness) for others.

It is okay to feel angry or upset with Hashem sometimes, as long as we recognize that the defects are actually within ourselves.  If that is how we handle the situation, then we show that we are bigger than our anger.  We can choose to overcome our emotions.  We are in control, not the animal inside us.

But if we stoop to cursing G-d we lower ourselves.  We have not only totally missed the point and failed to get the message G-d was sending us, but we are also committing another sin.  G-d spoke the world into existence. He blew life into us with His divine breath.  And yet we are using our breath to speak evil words at Him.  We would not even exist if not for His great mercy and instead of gratitude, we curse Him using the same mechanism by which He gave us this great gift.  It’s not really just one additional sin, it’s many.

In this coming week, let us all work on controlling our anger, both with G-d and with anyone and anything else.  Even if we feel angry, let us look inside ourselves and figure out why G-d is letting this incident happen to us, or allowing this person to treat us in this undesirable way. In this way, we can spiritually elevate ourselves.

Shabbat shalom!

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Parshas Achrei Mot-Kedoshim & Yom Hatzmaut: Celebrating Israel

An Israeli flag flies on top of Masada, with the Dead Sea in the background

This week we’d like to wish a happy 65^th birthday to someone near and dear to all our hearts: Israel. Yom Hatzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, fell this week, and although we could not be in Israel to celebrate it with her, we have all celebrated in our hearts.

The land of Israel is special and important to all of us as Jews. It is the land G-d told our forefather Abraham He would give to him and his descendants, us. And indeed He did, after our escape from Egypt and our wanderings in the desert. But unfortunately, Israel did not remain in Jewish hands for long. We were exiled from our homeland and scattered across the world.

Today, we have returned to the land of Israel. This tiny sliver of a country – just the size of New Jersey in the United States – is the place we have to call home. No matter what may happen to us in other parts of the world, Israel will always welcome us with open arms into her motherly hug.

We Jews have a special relationship with the land. We turn to face it when we pray and every time we pray, we remember how we long to return there. And indeed, Jews began returning to the land of Israel since just a century after the destruction of the Second Temple. Now, with the establishment of the State of Israel, it has become safer to return than ever before, and Jews have been flocking there by the hundreds of thousands.

In this week’s parsha, G-d prepares the Jewish people to enter the land of Israel. He admonishes the Jews not to behave like the Egyptians (who raised them) or like the Canaanites (who then inhabited the land of Israel). Instead, G-d expects the Jewish people to behave and act differently, better. He provides a guide for proper social interaction in the form of His Torah. By juxtaposing this commandment with commandments against things like bestiality, improper relationships, and idol worship, G-d is highlighting the differences between the Jews and the outside world.

In today’s society, unfortunately, not much has changed from the Egyptian and Canaanite societies of old. Instead of idols we worship money, and improper relationships are flaunted or even encouraged. It is our job as Jews to stand out and behave differently. Each and every one of us can be a light unto the world.

Shabbat shalom!

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Parshas Tazria Metzora: Tzaraas: Sometimes a Bad Thing Can Be a Good Thing

This week’s Torah portion speaks about various physical blemishes and conditions which can afflict a person.  The tzaraas, which is commonly translated as “leprosy” is not really a physical malady at all, but rather a spiritual one.  From the sages we learn that it comes about as the result of evil speech, or lashon hara, and afflicts not just his body, but his clothing and his house as well.

The Talmud, in the tractate Negaim, which deals with these types of blemishes and conditions, notes that “a person sees all kinds of blemishes except for their own.”  Although being afflicted with tzaraas was undeniably something we would want to avoid, it is not necessarily a good thing that we do not experience it today.  Tzaraas was G-d’s way of showing people the error of their ways and giving them the opportunity to correct and improve themselves.

The Midrash relates that Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel asked his servant, Tavi, to buy him something good from the market. The servant returned with some tongue. Rabbi Shimon then asked his servant to buy something bad from the market. The servant returned with more tongue. “How can this be? I asked you to buy something good, you bought tongue; I asked you to buy something bad, you also bought tongue?” Replied Tavi, “It has good and bad. When it is good, it has a lot of goodness. When it is bad, it is very bad.”

Thus we see that our tongues and our mouths have incredible power.  We can use them to do incredible good, but all too often we use them for bad, too.  We speak badly of others or eagerly spread juicy gossip.  In essence, it is best to stick to the mandate, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

Indeed, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel taught, ”I grew up my entire life amongst scholars, and I did not find anything as beneficial to the body as silence; action is the main thing, not talk, and whoever speaks too much will bring sin [upon himself].” In the words of King Solomon, “Even a fool is considered a wise man if he remains silent.”  The more we speak, the more likely it is that we will stumble and accidentally begin to speak badly.

This week, let us all work on reducing the amount of lashon hara we speak.  This requires intense concentration on what we are saying. We must carefully watch our words.  It is a good start to pick one hour during the day and to work on not speaking badly during that one hour.  Then we can expand that hour to include two or three, until we become accustomed to being fully conscious of and in control of our speech. In this way, perhaps, we will earn the right not to need tzaraas anymore.

Shabbat shalom!

Parshas Vayikra: Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse

One of the trickiest things about travel is that every new place has its own laws.  Often, laws in different countries vary wildly.  In Australia, not only must you keep your child in a car seat until the age of seven, but the car seat must be “properly installed” – meaning, they want you to hire a professional to put it in your car!  But in other countries, like Thailand or India, car seats are virtually unheard of.  Not only do you not need a car seat for your child, but you can take your child – of any age, even new-born – on a motorcycle with you… without a helmet!

Of course, it’s up to the traveller to apprise themselves of the laws of the new place they’ll be visiting.  Are you allowed to make a right turn on a red light in the state you’re driving through when you’re on your American road trip? Are you allowed to use a radar detector? What about talking on your mobile phone – are you even allowed to touch it?  And those are just basic laws pertaining to cars.  Yet, the law touches every aspect of our lives and we are obligated to know about it and follow it, even if we are just visitors.

The same is true in Judaism.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse.  We are held accountable for our sins even if we commit them purely because we did not know it was a sin.  Perhaps we never heard that we are not allowed to cook on the Sabbath, or we did not know that what we were doing qualified as cooking. Or we simply did not know that it was the Sabbath in the first place.  Of course, had we known, we would not have done the sin.  But in not knowing, we are held responsible – it was up to us to learn the laws of keeping the Sabbath, and it was up to us to keep track of the days of the week.

In this week’s parsha there is a whole series of offerings described for unintentional sins.  Intentional sins are those we mean to do and involuntary sins are those we are forced to do.  Unintentional sins fall right in the middle, the gap between the two extremes.  For intentional sins sacrifice as atonement is generally not an option and for involuntary sins it is unnecessary, but for unintentional sins an offering will bring atonement.

You see, even unintentional sins cause a blemish upon the soul.  According to Nachmanides (Ramban), just as unintentionally brushing past a spot of grease leaves a stain on a shirt, so too does our inadvertent brush with sin stain us spiritually.  The sacrifice atones for the spiritual stain.

Not only that, but a sacrifice, which generally caused hardship to offer, reminds the person not to sin again in the future, cautions Abarbanel.  We must learn to be more careful, to look before we leap.  Furthermore, making a sacrifice gives one pause for introspection.  According the Ba’al Shem Tov, anything we see is meant to teach us a lesson.  How much more so are we to learn a lesson from our mistake, especially if the punishment for it is so severe!

Finally, notes Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, G-d would not even have allowed us to commit such a sin accidentally if it did not reflect a bigger failing on our part spiritually.  G-d does not allow even the animals of the righteous to sin, and protects the righteous man himself from sinning, even accidentally.  If we do not merit this protection, it means we need to improve and work on ourselves.

This year, when you learn about the animal sacrifices, look beyond the apparent brutality of it, or the sense that such activities have become obsolete.  Look deeper into the meaning and you will see that even today we still have much to learn from them.

Shabbat shalom.

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