The Observant Jew

Perhaps at some point you were a kid reading a magazine and you found a fun page. There were riddles and jokes, maybe a word find puzzle, and sometimes they had a picture with a special challenge. “What’s wrong with this picture?” they would ask, and you’d have to find five or ten things that were unusual or out of the ordinary.

It could be that the table in the picture had only three legs and a rubber chicken. Maybe the orchestra conductor was wearing a tuxedo and swim flippers, or the woman with the dog on a leash was walking an actual hot dog in a bun!

Your eye was trained to find what was out of the ordinary and shouldn’t be there. The more you played the game, the more attuned you became to details and the faster you could ferret out the mistakes. And that’s a shame. Not because you wouldn’t enjoy the game as much, but precisely because you built up a love of finding something wrong.

Perfection is a fallacy. No person is perfect, and no situation is “perfect” at least insofar as the way we’d like things to work out. The Ribono Shel Olam is the only one capable of creating perfection and the way He does often leaves us scratching our heads at how many things seem to have gone wrong. 
When we look at a picture and expect everything to be just right, if it is that way, then it’s not a picture of the real world. 

The real world has challenges and jagged edges. It has square pegs and round holes. It has dead ends and staircases to nowhere. But that’s OK. 

Our mission in life is not to find out what’s wrong around us. On the contrary, it is quite easy to find what we think is “wrong.” The hard part is noticing the things that are so right, even when they might seem out of place or unexpected. 

Imagine you were stationed at a college campus where there were some Jewish kids who had no idea what a Shabbos was. They’d never seen Tefillen or a lulav. You got them to come to you for some cholent and one of them came to you the next day and said, “I’d like to try on those black boxes once. It would be an experience.” You’d be overjoyed because a fellow Jew would be doing a mitzvah. 

It might be only one time, but it will add a spot of holiness to a life otherwise unconnected to HaShem or our heritage. It would be a bright spot in your career and you’d feel immense pleasure in it and love for this holy neshama who took this small step. 

And yet, if we see a Jew who puts on Tefillen every day, and keeps Shabbos and eats kosher, but he doesn’t look or practice just like we do, we are often quick to write him off. Why is that?

The answer is that we’re asking, “What’s wrong with this picture?” Since so much looks the way we think it should, what stands out are the differences. We see what the other person is not doing the way we think it should be because we’re trying to get a perfect picture. 

When it comes to the person who does nothing Jewish, the perfection of their non-observance is what we question and we’re able to find the exceptions. In truth, as Jews this is part of our culture. For example, though it may be sunset, as long as there’s any light, it’s still Shabbos. We hold onto the holiness of the day so long as there’s a glimmer of the day remaining. In the morning, we can begin our avodas HaShem before sunrise as long as the first hints of light are visible. 

We’re not looking for what’s wrong, but for what’s right. 

I recall the true story of a fishing boat in the Caribbean that capsized. The ship’s cook was below deck and was trapped as the boat sank. When the salvage teams went to the boat a few days later, they found the cook alive!

The ship sank so fast that a small pocket of air was trapped in the room where the cook was sleeping. He was in water up to his ears but he managed to breathe and stay alive as long as that air lasted. It was enough to save his life. Most of us would look at the room and think survival was impossible. The ship was full of water and at the bottom of the sea! But the little bit of space that wasn’t flooded was enough.

As a last example, how often have we looked at our spouses or children and noted all the things they weren’t?

They aren’t neat; they aren’t sweet; they don’t have hair, or they don’t care.

Maybe our child rebels a bit, and we’re at the end of our ropes. They don’t live up to our dreams, they don’t fulfill our hopes.

But is there nothing at all of which we are proud? Nothing that sets them apart from the crowd?

Perhaps they have something, perhaps could it be? That there’s something that makes you want to say, “He belongs to me!”?

When you look at a picture and all you see is what’s wrong, remember the cook in the sinking ship and focus on what you have instead of what you don’t. Your life, or the life of someone else, may very well depend on it.

As the deadline for my next article loomed closer, I drew a blank.  I had no idea what to write about.  Images of lonely writers with mental block assailed me.  Typewriters sitting in garbage cans (for those of you who don’t know what I mean, you must be too young.  Imagine the guy throwing his monitor out the window instead,) crumpled sheets of paper, depressing tales of writers who never made it.

“Please HaShem,” I thought, “Give me a sign.”  Wait a minute, signs!  Perfect, that’s what I’ll write about!  You see, this issue will be out just before Rosh HaShana and this is the perfect time to talk about signs, omens, and symbolism.

Most every Jew knows that we dip apple in honey so that we should have a sweet new year; even the non-Jews know it, thanks to Sue Bee and her friends at the honey factory.  But those of us who are more familiar with Jewish traditions know that this is just the tip of the iceberg [which, by the way, is a siman done by eating just the very smallest edge of your lettuce leaf, but I digress…]

On Rosh HaShana, we make all kinds of symbolic acts, usually involving food.  That more than anything probably proves the authentic Jewish origin of this custom.  The common symbols we eat are listed in the machzor and include the head of a lamb or fish so we should be, “the head and not the tail,” pomegranates, so we should be “as full of mitzvos as a pomegranate,” and carrots.  Why carrots?  Because in Yiddish the word for carrots is “merren” which can also mean “more.”  We appreciate what we have, but we want “more” zechusim, “more” chesed, “more” of everything.

People have taken this to new levels.  One prominent Rov was known to eat peas on Rosh HaShana to have “peace on earth.”  You could eat lettuce, half a raisin and celery so HaShem might “Lettuce half a raisin celery” (Let us have a raise in salary) or put a cabbage in your briefcase to get “a head at the office.”

What we see is that even though these foods have no special significance other than their chance homophonic similarities to something, they are respected as “siman” food.  Doesn’t seem too magical, does it?  So how does it work?

The thing to understand is that “simanim,” the signs we assemble on Rosh HaShana don’t work by magic.  One origin of this custom is the Gemara in Horayos 12a which says that one should be accustomed to view various items at the beginning of the year.  That’s good news for those squeamish among us who can’t quite stomach the idea of eating something like a lamb’s head that can watch us as we do.  We don’t need to eat it, just look at it.  OK, we know where it comes from, but do we know how it works?

The gemara just before it says that if a person wants to see if he will live out the year he should light a candle in a wind-proof room during the Aseres Yemei Teshuva.  If it does not go out, he knows he will live out the year.  But what if it goes out?  The Gemara doesn’t say.  The Maharsha says, “If it goes out, it doesn’t mean anything.”

You see, simanim and signs can only be for good.  If a person sees what he considers a “bad omen” and then something bad happens, it’s because in his fear and trepidation about the bad sign, he has somehow negatively affected his “mazel” and that’s what caused the trouble.

This knowledge is of great use!  That means that if you see something as a good sign, your happiness improves your mazel, leading to good things too.  I’m reminded of the story about a multi-millionaire who used to stop and pick up pennies on the street.  Someone asked him why he needed the penny.  Showing him the letters on the small coin, the rich man said, “You see what it says here?  It says ‘In G-d We Trust.’ I know it isn’t me who made all this money, it was G-d’s benevolent hand.  Whenever I see a penny, I just know He put it there to send me a message and remind me that He’s watching out for me.  Isn’t that worth picking up?”

By taking even the smallest occurrence as a good sign, we can ensure that good things happen.  And if we think something is a bad sign?  Remember, “it doesn’t mean anything!”

So, now that I’ve created an article that’s “written well,” let me “seal” it by wishing all my loyal readers (and even those folks who wish I’d hang up my keyboard) a kesiva v’chasima tova  and a sweet new year.

My grandfather used to be a bookkeeper and he used to always tell my mother to do math in her head, not using a calculator, which is something that she used to say to me.  I hated it but followed her lead, and now I do math in my head, and it comes in handy all the time.   I tell it to my kids also, and they roll their eyes, but when they can figure out the change in the supermarket faster than the cashier who’s using the register, even they have to admit it’s pretty cool.

I know, some people say, “Aha! Another day gone and I didn’t use Algebra,” but I think some types of math are really important.  When my mom wanted to buy something but thought it was too expensive, my father would put it in perspective.  Let’s say it was a $900 refrigerator.  My dad would say, “If it lasts ten years, that’s ninety dollars a year, less than two dollars a week, it’s like a quarter a day.  That’s not a lot of money to have fresh food.”

I used a similar rationale when I did the cost-benefit analysis for putting a back-up generator in my home.  If my freezer defrosts and I lose a couple hundred dollars of food, that’s money saved right there by preventing a meltdown.  And, of course, there are other types of meltdowns possible.  I won’t cast aspersions at my wonderful wife and children but let’s just say that the stress of being without power can be pretty difficult.  With an extended power outage, the necessary follow-up therapy alone would cost more than the generator!  Doing the math helped make the decision easier.

There are other ways we can do the math.  If you need gas and one place is close but is more expensive than the farther station, figure out how many gallons you need now, and the price difference.  See if it is worth your time.  If you’re getting ten gallons at twenty cents more than you might have paid, decide if your time and inconvenience (not to mention extra mileage) is worth more than two dollars.

If you can do a favor for someone, figure out how much it will cost you (an extra five minutes?  Two minutes?) and weigh that against how much it will help them or make them feel good.  If you make someone’s day, to quote my wife’s grandfather, “Could you buy that for money?”

Of course, as I’m required by contract to mention shopping carts at regular intervals, figure out how long it will take you to push the wagon the extra fifteen feet before you get into your car and compare that to how long it will take someone else who wants to park in that spot to get out of their car, move it, and get back into their car before they can do so.  It’s at least four to five times longer for the next person, so who but a creep would put them through that?

You can take that to all different scenarios as long as you remember that everyone has a common denominator: time stops for no man.  If I can transform my time into a mitzvah because I’m saving someone else time, I’ve put it to a better use than I probably will if I’m callous towards others.  And there’s more.

A friend of mine suggested that I upload my weekly Parsha sheet to a certain website in Israel that hosts hundreds of Diveri Torah sheets.  I actually had a fellow who lives near me ask to be on my mailing list (as can any of my readers, e-mail me at info@JewishSpeechWriter.com and put Subscribe in the subject) because he saw it there.  That man sends out Divrei Torah, so who know how many more people are reading it now.  But distributors aside, according to the site, since my friend recommended it a year ago, I’ve gotten over 2500 downloads.  With an average of 1,000 words per sheet, that’s over TWO AND A HALF MILLION words of Torah, (each word being greater than all the other mitzvos) which my friend gets credit for simply from giving someone an idea.  If you do the math, you’ll see how quickly things add up!

[Since this was originally published, the downloads have risen to 12,964 or nearly THIRTEEN MILLION words of Torah and still going.]

In life, we are supposed to make a cheshbon hanefesh, a reckoning of our souls.  We’re supposed to weigh the benefit of a sin against how much we will lose by committing it, and the relatively cheap cost of a mitzvah against the incalculable reward we will get for it.  Who knew that such a cheshbon could include actual arithmetic?  I sure didn’t, but it works, because when you put the facts on the table, the answers are simple and clear.

You can put the calculator on the shelf because these calculations must be done in your head and heart, and I guess that about sums it up.