An article from Aish.com.
by Sara Yoheved Rigler
God is always communicating with us. Sometimes it takes a miracle for us to get the message.
On Sarah Apel's fifth birthday, her grandfather Jacob presented her with an olivewood-covered siddur (prayer book) which his father had acquired decades before during a pilgrimage from White Russia to Palestine. In the front of the siddur, he wrote: "Always be proud that you are a Jew, and know that you have a holy land."
Sarah put the siddur under her pillow and kept it there for the next seven years. Although she lived in Upland, a small town in central California, her dreams were of a faraway Golden City. In a recurrent dream, repeated hundreds of times, she saw herself walking on a narrow bridge toward the Golden City. Then she heard a voice from heaven saying, "If you look only at the light coming from the Golden City, you will get to the Golden City."
But as she walked, she heard other voices, coming from beneath the bridge. There she saw beautiful people dressed in beautiful clothes, singing beautiful songs. They called to her to come and join them, but when she moved toward them, she would fall off the bridge and be in "Nowhereland forever, like an empty shopping center, with nothing real inside."
One day in her twelfth year, Sarah's father announced that he had bought a bigger house in an adjacent town, and soon they would be moving. Sarah loved her house, especially the big elm tree in the yard, where she would spend hours yearning to come closer to her Creator. "You may be moving," she told her father sadly, "but I'm not."
One night a few weeks later, while Sarah was sleeping soundly, her father lifted her up and put her into the family car. The next morning, she awoke in a different house in a different town. Appalled, Sarah jumped onto her bicycle and cycled for half an hour until she reached her old house. There a horrifying scene greeted her. A moving truck was parked in front of her house, and a strange family with three sons was moving in. She watched them, disconsolate. Finally, wretched, she got back onto her bike and pedaled away.
THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
The dreams of the Golden City vanished. Instead of heeding the heavenly voice to focus on the light emanating from the Golden City, Sarah responded to the siren call of the "beautiful people." By the time she graduated high school, the sixties were in full swing. Beautiful people abounded: hippies with their free-flowing clothes and soulful folksongs, meditators with their religion of universality and love, and native Americans with their exotic culture and bond to nature. The Golden City was forgotten.
In 1965, Sarah was studying art at U.C.L.A. A non-Jewish friend said to her, "I always knew you were a Jew because there is such trust in your eyes. I recently met a young man who also has trust in his eyes. You should meet him." The friend introduced her to Dana Fox, a tall young man who had not known he was Jewish until he was eighteen years old, when someone cracked a derisive Jewish joke in Dana's living room. When Dana laughed, his mother upbraided him, "Don't laugh. You're also a Jew."
Sarah and Dana discovered that they were astonishingly compatible. One day, their conversation drifted to their childhoods. Dana told her that he had grown up in the small town of Upland. Sarah was amazed.
"I grew up there, too, until I was twelve years old. What street did you live on?"
"Sixth Street," Dana replied. "I lived at 554 North Sixth Street."
Sarah turned white. That was her house. Dana was one of the three boys she had seen moving into her house.
THE WEDDING
In 1966, Dana and Sarah decided to get married. Her mother, ecstatic, planned a wedding in their Reform temple for a Sunday afternoon in July.
The Golden City was burning. All its residents were screaming in anguish.
On the morning of her wedding day, Sarah woke up frantic. She had had a horrific dream of the Golden City of her childhood. This time, however, the Golden City was burning. All its residents were screaming in anguish.
Sarah phoned Dana and told him, "We can't get married today. I don't know why, but it's a terrible day to get married." When Dana reached her side, he realized that she was intractable. But why?
They decided that a rabbi might solve the foreboding mystery of her dream. They looked in the Los Angeles yellow pages under "Rabbis, Orthodox," and found a name and nearby address. Quickly they drove to the rabbi's house and knocked on his door. When the rabbi opened the door, Sarah blurted out plaintively, "Why can't we get married today?"
The rabbi gazed at them and replied, "Because it's Tisha B'Av, the calamitous day of the burning of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. It's a day of mourning and fasting for Jews."
Dana, Sarah, and the rabbi all stood there with tears streaming down their cheeks. The rabbi cried because these young Jews had planned to get married on the day so laden with tragedy throughout Jewish history. Dana cried because this rational explanation meant that he would have to postpone his wedding. Sarah cried tears of joy because she had finally discovered the name of her Golden City -- Jerusalem! Suddenly she fathomed the meaning of all her dreams.
Much to their families' chagrin, Sarah and Dana postponed their wedding for two days. On Tuesday, the 11th of Av, the rabbi they had found married them in a traditional ceremony. "Our wedding meal was the first kosher food we ever ate," recalled Sarah years later.
THE BACKYARD MIRACLE
Dana and Sarah moved to the San Francisco Bay area. They rented a modest house on a steep hill, with a lovely backyard surrounded by an eight-foot-high redwood fence. By the summer of 1970, they had two children, and Sarah was nine months pregnant with their third. Dana worked as an elementary school teacher, and Sarah taught art.
One day, Sarah was working in the kitchen. Her two small children were playing in a little plastic swimming pool in the backyard.
Suddenly Sarah heard an urgent voice inside her head, commanding: "Run fast! Bring in the children! Quickly! Now!"
Under the wheels of the truck was the little pool.
Sarah sprinted into the backyard, grabbed one child in each arm, and dashed back into the kitchen. As soon as the screen door slammed behind her, Sarah heard a deafening crash. She turned around to see a huge semi trailer truck filling up her entire backyard. The redwood fence was smashed like so many toothpicks. Under the wheels of the truck was the little pool.
LEAVING THE DESERT
The Foxes' oldest daughter suffered from recurrent earaches. A doctor suggested that they move to the dry climate of Arizona. So, in 1971, the Foxes drove their VW bus to Arizona. There, in a trailer on a hill in the desert near a dramatic cliff drop, they settled, among Mormons, Catholics, and Native Americans.
Two years later, the Yom Kippur War struck Israel. One night Dana had a nightmare. He cried out, "They can't take my land away from me!" When he woke up in the morning, he told Sarah that he wanted to go to the nearest Aliyah office to inquire about moving to Israel.
The Foxes and their three young children piled into their VW bus and drove to the Aliyah office in Phoenix. The aliyah representative there asked them if they had ever been to Israel. They answered, "No."
"Well, do you know anything about Israel?" he queried.
"No," they replied.
"Are you part of a Jewish community?"
"No."
"So why do you want to move to Israel?" he asked them, baffled.
Sarah told him about her olivewood siddur from Palestine, and about her dreams of the Golden City, which on her wedding day she understood to be Jerusalem.
The aliyah representative was visibly moved. In a tone uncharacteristic of Israeli officials, he told them: "My children, my children, come home."
They hesitantly decided to make aliyah. They filled out all the forms, and arranged to leave in exactly one month. Then they drove back to their desert home on the cliff.
Sarah was scared. After all, a war was going on, which at that point Israel was not winning. When she and Dana alighted from the VW bus, with the children still playing inside, she told her husband, "If we go to Israel, our lives and our children's lives could be in danger."
The VW bus was careening down the hill at 100 mph, heading straight for the cliff.
No sooner had the words left her mouth than the VW bus started to roll, with the three children still inside. In seconds it picked up speed, until it was careening down the hill at 100 mph, heading straight for the cliff. Dana, Sarah, and some dozen of their neighbors stood frozen in horror. Nothing could stop the vehicle. In moments, it hurtled over the cliff -- then stopped in mid-air. Its back wheel had caught on a small bush. To everyone's amazement, the bus hung suspended in the air, held only by the bush.
All their neighbors started screaming, "A miracle for the Jews! God has done a miracle for the Jews!"
Everyone ran up to the vehicle and with ropes managed to pull it back onto the cliff. The children were uninjured.
Sarah and Dana, spent with horror and relief, walked with a Mormon friend back to their trailer. When they entered the trailer, they were greeted by a ghastly sight. Dozens of strange black insects were everywhere-on the floor, in the frying pan on the stove, even climbing up one of Dana's boots as they stood there. In two years living in the desert, they had never seen a single insect like these. "What are they?" Sarah asked their friend.
The friend quickly grabbed a towel and flitted the insect off of Dana's boot. Then he motioned them out the door. "They are deadly scorpions," he warned. "I have never in my life seen so many at one time."
Sarah and Dana understood that God was sending them a clear message. Suddenly Israel did not seem so dangerous. On the spot, they both resolved to follow through with their aliyah plans. That very afternoon, they started selling their furniture. As soon as they sold their first piece of furniture, the scorpions disappeared. Every last one of them.
A few months later, the Fox family arrived in Israel. As they descended the stairs from the airplane, Dana -- now Shlomo -- said, "We have come home to become Jews again."
Twenty-eight years later, Shlomo and Sarah Fox-Ahshrei have 8 children and 18 grandchildren, all learning and practicing Torah throughout the Land of Israel. Shlomo translates religious texts from Hebrew to English. Sarah has a unique vocation. A time-honored tradition promises that if one prays for something specific at the Western Wall for 40 consecutive days, the prayer will be answered. Sarah, who spends hours each day praying at the Western Wall, performs the service of "doing 40 days of prayer at the Kotel" for those who live too far away to do it themselves.
WHEN CAN YOU TRUST "A MESSAGE"?
God is always communicating with human beings. While the messages most of us receive may not be as dramatic as the Foxes', most of us at one time or another experience Divine guidance -- through intuition, dreams, or the uncanny unfolding of unlikely circumstances.
How can one know if a "message" is really from God rather than from that notorious ventriloquist, the ego?
The Torah specifically prohibits reading omens. Two white doves circling around the heads of you and your date should not be interpreted as a sign that you should get married. The sudden appearance of scorpions in your home is not an omen. Rather, it presents a clear, rational fact: life-threatening danger. If you were worried about following a certain course because of its prospective dangers, now you must weigh those possible dangers against the reality of your actual, present danger. Omens are open to diverse interpretations. Messages present facts; we may or may not want to draw the obvious conclusions.
From Sarah and Dana's story, we can garner three clues as to when to trust a "message":
If the message bids you to do something inconvenient, difficult, or downright distasteful, it is probably not coming from your ego. Sarah's message to postpone her wedding cost her the ire of her mother, who had spent months planning the event. Dana's dream-message to move to Israel in the middle of a war was a challenge that ran counter to all their preferences. Rebbetzin Hinda Adler used to say: "If it's difficult, that's a sign that it's good."
When in doubt, consult a spiritual guide well versed in Torah. Sarah's dream convinced her that that was not the right day to get married, but she couldn't understand why. They intuited that an Orthodox Rabbi would be able to shed light on her dream-message, which he did. Many spiritual guides are charlatans, who interpret messages according to their own personal profit. Someone who in all matters subserviates his or her will to the will of God as revealed in the Torah is more likely to be an objective interpreter of your message.
If it contradicts the Torah, then it is not a message from God. The Torah is the ultimate Divine message: direct and irrevocable. The Torah specifically warns against false prophets. They are false, even if their prophecies come true or they can work miracles, if they bid you to do anything that contradicts the instructions of the Torah. The same principle applies to all kinds of "Divine messages." There has not been a single day since Sinai that God has not communicated indirectly with human beings. However, there has not been a single Divine communication since Sinai that contradicts the message of Sinai. If a married friend tells you that he knows from a dream or his intuition that it's God's will that he have an affair with his secretary, you can tell him with total certainty that it isn't a message from God.
The more we see God's hand in our lives, the more manifest His hand will be.
Divine messages work like mother's milk. Just as the more the baby nurses, the more milk is produced, so too the more we look to God to direct our lives, the more He will. The more we see God's hand in our lives, the more manifest His hand will be. And the more we obey His directives, however difficult, the more the flow of Divine communication will course through our daily lives. If Sarah had ignored her dream of the burning city, or decided that, in spite of the message, postponing the wedding was too difficult, one wonders whether she would have been able to hear the inner voice that warned her to save her children.
The key to understanding God's messages is honesty. If you scrutinize such messages honestly, intelligently, and without prior agendas, and you seek guidance from someone who is committed to the will of God above his or her own will, and you are willing to follow even directives which are scathingly difficult for you, then you can trust your inner guidance as having a Divine source. What the Prophet Elijah called, "the still, small voice" of Divine inspiration is always speaking to us. The more honestly we listen, the more clearly we'll hear.
In the comment section below, share with readers a miracle that has happened to you, and the message you have learned from it.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Bad Things Don't Happen
An article on viewing pain in light of the Bible, from Aish.com.
The book of Job is surely the most shocking book of the Bible.
Job is a righteous man -- there is "no one like him on earth; pure, straight, God-fearing, and does no evil" (Job 1:8). He is wealthy, accomplished, respected, and the father of ten children.
God decides to test Job. And it's not a stubbing-one's-toe type of test. In one fell swoop, his children die and his wealth is completely obliterated.
"Naked I left my mother's womb and naked shall I return. God gave and God took back. May the name of God be blessed" (Job 1:21). This is Job's answer. If ever there was a noble and dignified response to suffering, this is surely it. It seems as though Job's faith is unshakable.
Now God ups the stakes and covers Job's entire body with horribly painful blisters. Once again, his response is incredible. His wife asks why he is still blessing God when God has put him through all this, and he says to her, "We have accepted the good from God, shall we not also accept the bad from Him?" (Job 2:10)
His three friends come to visit him and are stunned by what they see has happened. They are left speechless. They sit with Job for seven days without a single word passing between them.
At the end of the seven days, for no apparent reason, Job snaps. A more drastic turnaround could not be imagined. He rants and he raves. He complains and he curses. He says, "Why did I not die in my mother's womb?" and "Never did I feel secure, never quiet, never at peace and now torment?" (ibid. 3:10 and 3:25). Later on, he says, "Even if I were to call and He [God] were to answer me, I don't believe He would listen to my voice. For He has shattered me in a tempest for no good reason" (ibid., 9:16-17). "I am disgusted with my life" (ibid. 9:21). "My days are so few -- leave me alone, distance Yourself from me so that I can find some respite. Before I depart, never to return, to a land of gloom and of death's shadow, a land darkened by the darkness of death's shadow and chaos - its brightest spots grim darkness" (ibid. 10:20-22). "His anger slashed me -- He hates me" (ibid. 16:9)
I could go on; Job certainly does. Within moments, he has turned from a righteous and holy man, accepting of God's challenges, to an embittered existentialist philosopher.
His friends try to comfort him. And these are no ordinary friends. All are prophets, men of spiritual greatness. Each tries to tell him of God's goodness and ultimate justice. And to each, Job's arguments back are scathing, sarcastic, and bitter. It's hard to believe that we are listening to the same man.
The oral tradition itself seems to struggle with the book of Job. On the question of when he lived, there are no less than 15 different opinions -- more than on any other topic in the Talmud. I once asked my teacher, Rabbi Noah Weinberg, how he understands the message of the book. He said that in his opinion, Job is certainly a good man. He is a righteous man, a man who trusts in God. But the bottom line is that suffering is not easy. It's not easy to lose all your property and not be bothered, to lose all your children and keep smiling. It's not easy to go through terrible pain and continue to bless God. Facing pain is not easy for even the greatest of human beings. Anyone can crack under pressure -- as did Job.
We may respond with frustration, bitterness, and even anger and resentment towards God. And that's okay.
To me, this is an incredibly encouraging message. Only God is perfect. We are mere human beings. And when we go through pain -- as we all do -- it can be overwhelming. We may respond with frustration, bitterness, and even anger and resentment towards God.
And that's okay.
God understands. As much as He does get frustrated, so to speak, with Job (and after 35 chapters of ranting and raving, we are all pretty frustrated with Job), at the same time, God still comes to him in the end and His soliloquies are the longest in the Bible, spoken by God directly. God takes the time to comfort Job's troubled heart and in the end turns him around. Job rants and raves, and God takes it from him and then comforts him.
I don't know how to emphasize this point enough. I'm going to write a lot about how to deal with pain, how to have a healthy attitude towards suffering. But throughout it all, this will be my underlying message. We're human. We can hear the most wonderful and uplifting ideas about what pain means and how to grow from it, but pain will still be pain, and sometimes we feel overwhelmed by it. If a man such as Job is allowed to lose it for a little while, then so is any one of us.
I'm not suggesting that we do! It's certainly better to remain strong and steadfast in the face of challenge. However, I'm saying that we're God's children and if suffering makes us angry at Him, He understands that it's not easy...
WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?
The question is one that Elana and I struggled with over the difficult years of her illness. Eventually, we found an answer that satisfied us both. And its simplicity always amazed me. It needs no drum rolls or introduction. The answer is simply this:
Bad things do not happen to good people.
And bad things don't happen to bad people either. Bad things simply don't "happen." I'm not playing with words. I'm merely using, as I'll explain, the most meaningful definitions available.
The question of why bad things happen is not a new one -- it's as old as Judaism itself and is raised in many, many places.
"It is not in our hands -- neither the suffering of the righteous nor the comfort of the wicked," says Rabbi Yannai in Ethics of the Fathers, 4:15.
How can we possibly understand, in the context of a loving Father in Heaven, people dying young, parents losing children, disease, starvation, wars, gas chambers, and crematoria? It just doesn't seem to work.
But as difficult as it is emotionally, as I have said, I believe it to be quite simple intellectually. And I believe this is exactly what Rabbi Yannai meant when he said, "It is not in our hands." It's like a hot coal. You can see a hot coal from afar; you can understand what it is and why it is; but that does not mean you can pick it up. You can never hope to hold it in your bare hands and feel comfortable with it, only to observe it from a distance.
The same is true when it comes to suffering. If we are able to distance our emotions from the issue, we will be able to deal with it and understand it relatively easily. Like the hot coal, from afar, it can be observed and understood.
But we can never touch.
Answers will always seem callous in the face of human pain.
We feel suffering deeply -- be it our own or that of others. We cannot merely stand back and give answers. As much as we might understand it intellectually, we will nevertheless never feel happy with any answer that we give ourselves. Answers will always seem callous in the face of human pain. We cannot merely "explain" to someone why their child died. The pain is tangible and the explanation is theoretical. The person is suffering, experiencing real pain, and we are merely parroting words. Answers don't solve the problem. They don't take away the horror. They don't soothe; they irritate. We can understand them, but never find complete comfort in them.
However, just because we might not feel comfortable with answers does not mean that they are wrong. When Elana found the lump, it was cancer. We did not like the fact that it was cancer, but that did not change the reality.
The answer to suffering is the same. It is not a pleasant answer, but a person who wants truth above pleasantries will see that it is correct.
I ask you, the reader, to put aside emotion as best you can and to try to listen with your head and not your heart. To the extent to which you are able to do so is the extent to which you will find meaningful answers in the following chapters.
WHY?
As a start to this -- and most questions in life -- we need first to define our terms. And, most significantly, in dealing with why bad happens in this world, we need to begin with a definition of "bad."
I believe that much of our difficulty in dealing with bad things happening comes from a definition of bad that is entirely inconsistent with Judaism.
I would imagine that for most people, the working definition of "bad" is "pain." Bad and pain are basically synonymous. Be it the pain someone goes through while dying from a horrible disease, the pain of someone like Elana, knowing she will never dance at her children's weddings, or the pain of children starving in Africa or the Warsaw Ghetto. It's the pain involved in these situations that makes them "bad." If no one in the Holocaust went through any pain -- if they were gently put to sleep without any knowledge of what was happening -- it would still be a horrible thing, but it would not bother us in the way that it does. Take a few moments to consider this, because it's important to understand exactly what it is that bothers us before moving on.
If pain is to be in any way linked with our definition of bad -- be it emotional, physical, or spiritual pain -- then the question of why bad things happen to people is fairly well unanswerable. Because pain happens to every human being, righteous or evil, throughout most of their lives. And if pain in and of itself is bad, then God has clearly made a world that is just filled with "bad."
Let's re-examine our assumptions for a moment. Is all pain necessarily bad? Defining pain as "bad" is actually a modern phenomenon. Let me give a few very obvious illustrations as to why we cannot view all pain as automatically being bad...
A BROKEN LEG
Let's imagine that someone is walking down the street, minding his own business -- maybe even on the way to do a good deed! -- and a car, driven by someone who is drunk, mounts the curb and runs him over. His leg is broken in four places and he requires an immediate operation, with six weeks recovery in the hospital afterwards.
Good or bad?
Obviously it's bad, you say. And why did such a "bad" thing happen to a person who was on his way to do a good deed?
Yet, if we jump so quickly to this conclusion, we are again making the mistake of oversimplification.
Let's say the operation goes well and our patient is recuperating in a hospital ward. The next day, he meets a young lady in the same ward. She is also going to be in the hospital for a few weeks. They start talking. They don't get on so well at first, but as time goes by they begin to like each other. After all, if you talk to someone for hours each day, you will eventually find something you like about them. Their attraction grows over time. They find that they have many shared interests. They are from similar backgrounds and have the same life goals. Once out of the hospital, they start going out. After a short while, they become engaged. Eventually, they marry and live happily ever after.
Now, let's ask this man, 50 years later, as he sits with his great-grandchildren on his lap at his golden wedding anniversary, whether it was a good or bad thing that the car ran him over on that fateful day. Looking back, he would in no way consider it a bad thing. Painful, yes, but it was pain that brought an incredible amount of goodness in its wake. If you were to offer him the opportunity to go back in time and not be hit by that car, he would not dream of taking it.
This is an example of short term pain that brings long term results. The pain of his broken leg disappeared after a few weeks. The goodness of his marriage to the woman he met in the hospital was eternal.
Pain is not always "bad."
And when I talk about pain, I don't just mean physical pain. I'm just using it as the simplest illustration. The exact same points could be made and similar examples brought for emotional pain such as fear, terror, sadness, loss, and abuse.
In my situation, as a very simple example, the pain I went through - the loss, the sadness, the fear, the loneliness -- in losing Elana has made me infinitely more capable of reaching out and comforting others who experience loss.
DEFINING "BAD"
I hope that by now it's obvious that "pain" is not useful as a definition for "bad." Perhaps some pain really is bad (though we as yet have no examples of that type of pain), but certainly not all pain is bad. And so we are going to have to refine our definition.
At this point, we might be tempted to redefine bad as "pain that brings no positive results." But then it would be impossible for us to ever decide whether something was good or bad. For who is to say what good might come in ten years or twenty, or perhaps not even in this world, but in the next one? Such a definition of "bad" would be of no use to us whatsoever. Until we were fully aware of the ramifications of any event - in both this world and the next -we could not make a judgment that it was "bad" (or "good" for that matter). To define "bad" in this way would be tantamount to having no definition of "bad" whatsoever.
Because of this, the best we can say is: Pain, in and of itself, is fairly neutral. It's not pleasant, it's not comfortable, it's not nice, but it's also neither bad nor good.
Why God might make something painful or create the entire concept of pain in the first place are issues that I will deal with at a later stage, but pain has no meaningful role in trying to define "bad."
THE JEWISH DEFINITION
We Jews have a very different definition of bad -- and based on this definition, nothing bad ever really "happens" in this world.
"Good" is something that enables you to become more Godly. And conversely, "bad" is something that makes you a less Godly person. Torah is good. Mitzvot are good. God Himself is good. Moving away from God -- the source and root of all goodness - is bad.
Put a different way, good is that which leads us towards self-perfection, that which enables us to become the great human beings we are capable of becoming, that which helps us to find the closeness to God that is available to us. Bad is that which takes us away from God, that which hinders us from achieving our potential.
These are the Jewish definitions and the ones I will generally use for the rest of this book. It's worth taking just a few minutes to consider the implications of these definitions before reading any further.
Let's take a look at pain in the context of these definitions.
As a rule, does pain and difficulty in life make it easier or harder to rise spiritually? If we are honest, we would have to say that challenge helps us towards greatness. Greatness is not usually found among those who spend their days lying on beaches and sailing around the world in million-dollar yachts. Greatness is much more often found among those who face adversity head on and overcome it. Those who achieve their true potential are those who struggle through difficult situations and build their character in the process. The Talmud tells us, "Be careful of the children of the poor, for from them Torah comes" (Nedarim 81a).
Far from being a hindrance, hardship is actually something that assists us in this world. If "good" is something that can help us come closer to God, then hardship is certainly "good."
Let's revisit the man with the broken leg -- even without knowing that he ended up meeting his future wife due to it. Let's look at it as a plain and simple broken leg; seemingly nothing more gained other than pain and temporary disability. Is that good or bad?
The Jewish answer is still, of course, neither. But now there is something to add.
It could be good, or it could be bad. It all depends on what this man does with it. A broken leg can make him angry and upset and take him away from God. Or it can push him to evaluate where he can mend his ways and bring himself closer to God.
The choice is entirely his.
We didn't have a choice as to whether or not she would have cancer. But we did have a choice as to how we would respond to that cancer.
The broken leg is certainly a challenge -- but if our friend rises to the challenge and overcomes it, he will lift himself to a more Godly realm. It is not good or bad. It is, however, a significant opportunity for good -- should he choose for it to be so. And if he does, then he will look back 50 years later and say that yes, it was wonderful that he met his wife through his broken leg, but even more wonderfully, the broken leg enabled him to employ his free will to lift himself to new levels of personal greatness.
There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- that happens to us in this world that is good or bad. It is all completely neutral. But everything that happens does have the potential to lift us to a greater level of goodness - or drag us further away from God. Everything has the potential to be good and everything has the potential to be bad. "Bad" things don't happen to good people. But neither do "good" things. Things happen that are either more or less painful. But they are not inherently good or bad. We human beings are the sole arbiters as to whether that which occurs in our lives will ultimately be good or bad. The choice is entirely within our hands.
Elana and I made a decision when she first became ill. We didn't have a choice as to whether or not she would have cancer. But we did have a choice as to how we would respond to that cancer. We knew that we could allow ourselves to despair, that we could hide ourselves away from the world and accept our "fate." Or we could decide to be happy with the goodness that we had. We could make sure we enjoyed our time with each other and our children and enjoyed our lives in general. We knew that we could grow closer to God at this time or we could move further away -- and that choice was entirely within our hands.
The Mishnah tells us that Abraham was tested with ten tests -- to show how much God loved him (Ethics of the Fathers, 5:3). At first glance this seems strange. Here's how you show you love someone? Firstly, you have him thrown into a furnace. Then, you tell him to pack his bags and move to a foreign country. When he obeys, you bring a famine to this country. And then, when he travels to find food, you have the ruler of the next place abduct his wife. He gets her back and returns to his ordained place of residence, only to find that his nephew has been kidnapped by four powerful kings. He manages to release him and is then commanded to kill his only son. Upon his return, having overcome the greatest challenge of his life, he finds that his wife has died and he is forced to pay an exorbitant sum for an inferior burial plot in a land that God has supposedly promised him as an inheritance. And all of this shows God's love for Abraham?!
Yes! This is precisely God's love. Because through these challenges, Abraham was able to come closer to God. He fulfilled his potential and became the great human being we know of, founder of the nation that has taught monotheism to most of the world. The pain was short-lived. The results were eternal. Abraham sits in his place in eternity, not in spite of his pain, but because of it. His pain is gone. His greatness remains forever.
What are you in this world for? To be comfortable? To live out 70 or 80 years of life with the least challenge possible?
And so, I ask you to ask yourself, and to be brutally honest -- what are you in this world for? To be comfortable? To avoid pain? To live out 70 or 80 years of life with the least challenge possible? If this is your aim, then many "bad" things will happen along the way -- because this is a world of pain and pain is antithetical to all that you are living for. If, however, you believe, as I do, that we are here to lift ourselves into Godliness, to grow and to ultimately attain self-perfection, then all that happens to us is a golden opportunity - and the more challenging it is, the greater that opportunity. The Mishnah tells us that "according to the pain is the reward" (Ethics of the Fathers, 5:23). It doesn't say "effort," it says "pain." The level of pain defines the level of potential for Godliness. Of course, we don't go looking for pain, but when it comes, we embrace it as an opportunity to strive towards perfection...
At the height of Elana's illness, and at the times of my deepest pain afterwards, this is what I kept reminding myself. I put signs up all around my house saying, "We are in this world to use our free will to get closer to God -- nothing else." We all have different scenarios in which we are placed - some more painful, some less. But it is all directed towards the same end. Specific circumstances merely give us a context in which to use our free will to lift ourselves towards Godliness. Borrowing from Shakespeare, I would think of every human being as acting in a giant play -- a play that lasts 70 or so years -- and a play in which there will be great drama and tragedy. Each has a different script, a different challenge. The acts and scenes may be different, but the underlying plot is the same for all six billion of us. We are charged with the mission of using our free will and lifting ourselves closer to God. Circumstances may be fluid, but challenge is a constant -- the purpose behind all events in life.
My friends, take it from me, pain passes. All pain passes. If not in this world, then certainly in the next. A cut finger might take a few minutes, a headache an hour, a stomachache a day, a sprained ankle a week, a broken leg a month, and a broken heart may even take a lifetime. But no pain will carry through to the World of Truth. It is the decisions we make, the way we choose to face that challenge and overcome that pain, which will remain with us for eternity. These decisions, and these decisions alone, are the purpose of our years in this world.
This article is an excerpt from Shaul Rosenblatt's new book, Finding Light in the Darkness.
The book of Job is surely the most shocking book of the Bible.
Job is a righteous man -- there is "no one like him on earth; pure, straight, God-fearing, and does no evil" (Job 1:8). He is wealthy, accomplished, respected, and the father of ten children.
God decides to test Job. And it's not a stubbing-one's-toe type of test. In one fell swoop, his children die and his wealth is completely obliterated.
"Naked I left my mother's womb and naked shall I return. God gave and God took back. May the name of God be blessed" (Job 1:21). This is Job's answer. If ever there was a noble and dignified response to suffering, this is surely it. It seems as though Job's faith is unshakable.
Now God ups the stakes and covers Job's entire body with horribly painful blisters. Once again, his response is incredible. His wife asks why he is still blessing God when God has put him through all this, and he says to her, "We have accepted the good from God, shall we not also accept the bad from Him?" (Job 2:10)
His three friends come to visit him and are stunned by what they see has happened. They are left speechless. They sit with Job for seven days without a single word passing between them.
At the end of the seven days, for no apparent reason, Job snaps. A more drastic turnaround could not be imagined. He rants and he raves. He complains and he curses. He says, "Why did I not die in my mother's womb?" and "Never did I feel secure, never quiet, never at peace and now torment?" (ibid. 3:10 and 3:25). Later on, he says, "Even if I were to call and He [God] were to answer me, I don't believe He would listen to my voice. For He has shattered me in a tempest for no good reason" (ibid., 9:16-17). "I am disgusted with my life" (ibid. 9:21). "My days are so few -- leave me alone, distance Yourself from me so that I can find some respite. Before I depart, never to return, to a land of gloom and of death's shadow, a land darkened by the darkness of death's shadow and chaos - its brightest spots grim darkness" (ibid. 10:20-22). "His anger slashed me -- He hates me" (ibid. 16:9)
I could go on; Job certainly does. Within moments, he has turned from a righteous and holy man, accepting of God's challenges, to an embittered existentialist philosopher.
His friends try to comfort him. And these are no ordinary friends. All are prophets, men of spiritual greatness. Each tries to tell him of God's goodness and ultimate justice. And to each, Job's arguments back are scathing, sarcastic, and bitter. It's hard to believe that we are listening to the same man.
The oral tradition itself seems to struggle with the book of Job. On the question of when he lived, there are no less than 15 different opinions -- more than on any other topic in the Talmud. I once asked my teacher, Rabbi Noah Weinberg, how he understands the message of the book. He said that in his opinion, Job is certainly a good man. He is a righteous man, a man who trusts in God. But the bottom line is that suffering is not easy. It's not easy to lose all your property and not be bothered, to lose all your children and keep smiling. It's not easy to go through terrible pain and continue to bless God. Facing pain is not easy for even the greatest of human beings. Anyone can crack under pressure -- as did Job.
We may respond with frustration, bitterness, and even anger and resentment towards God. And that's okay.
To me, this is an incredibly encouraging message. Only God is perfect. We are mere human beings. And when we go through pain -- as we all do -- it can be overwhelming. We may respond with frustration, bitterness, and even anger and resentment towards God.
And that's okay.
God understands. As much as He does get frustrated, so to speak, with Job (and after 35 chapters of ranting and raving, we are all pretty frustrated with Job), at the same time, God still comes to him in the end and His soliloquies are the longest in the Bible, spoken by God directly. God takes the time to comfort Job's troubled heart and in the end turns him around. Job rants and raves, and God takes it from him and then comforts him.
I don't know how to emphasize this point enough. I'm going to write a lot about how to deal with pain, how to have a healthy attitude towards suffering. But throughout it all, this will be my underlying message. We're human. We can hear the most wonderful and uplifting ideas about what pain means and how to grow from it, but pain will still be pain, and sometimes we feel overwhelmed by it. If a man such as Job is allowed to lose it for a little while, then so is any one of us.
I'm not suggesting that we do! It's certainly better to remain strong and steadfast in the face of challenge. However, I'm saying that we're God's children and if suffering makes us angry at Him, He understands that it's not easy...
WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?
The question is one that Elana and I struggled with over the difficult years of her illness. Eventually, we found an answer that satisfied us both. And its simplicity always amazed me. It needs no drum rolls or introduction. The answer is simply this:
Bad things do not happen to good people.
And bad things don't happen to bad people either. Bad things simply don't "happen." I'm not playing with words. I'm merely using, as I'll explain, the most meaningful definitions available.
The question of why bad things happen is not a new one -- it's as old as Judaism itself and is raised in many, many places.
"It is not in our hands -- neither the suffering of the righteous nor the comfort of the wicked," says Rabbi Yannai in Ethics of the Fathers, 4:15.
How can we possibly understand, in the context of a loving Father in Heaven, people dying young, parents losing children, disease, starvation, wars, gas chambers, and crematoria? It just doesn't seem to work.
But as difficult as it is emotionally, as I have said, I believe it to be quite simple intellectually. And I believe this is exactly what Rabbi Yannai meant when he said, "It is not in our hands." It's like a hot coal. You can see a hot coal from afar; you can understand what it is and why it is; but that does not mean you can pick it up. You can never hope to hold it in your bare hands and feel comfortable with it, only to observe it from a distance.
The same is true when it comes to suffering. If we are able to distance our emotions from the issue, we will be able to deal with it and understand it relatively easily. Like the hot coal, from afar, it can be observed and understood.
But we can never touch.
Answers will always seem callous in the face of human pain.
We feel suffering deeply -- be it our own or that of others. We cannot merely stand back and give answers. As much as we might understand it intellectually, we will nevertheless never feel happy with any answer that we give ourselves. Answers will always seem callous in the face of human pain. We cannot merely "explain" to someone why their child died. The pain is tangible and the explanation is theoretical. The person is suffering, experiencing real pain, and we are merely parroting words. Answers don't solve the problem. They don't take away the horror. They don't soothe; they irritate. We can understand them, but never find complete comfort in them.
However, just because we might not feel comfortable with answers does not mean that they are wrong. When Elana found the lump, it was cancer. We did not like the fact that it was cancer, but that did not change the reality.
The answer to suffering is the same. It is not a pleasant answer, but a person who wants truth above pleasantries will see that it is correct.
I ask you, the reader, to put aside emotion as best you can and to try to listen with your head and not your heart. To the extent to which you are able to do so is the extent to which you will find meaningful answers in the following chapters.
WHY?
As a start to this -- and most questions in life -- we need first to define our terms. And, most significantly, in dealing with why bad happens in this world, we need to begin with a definition of "bad."
I believe that much of our difficulty in dealing with bad things happening comes from a definition of bad that is entirely inconsistent with Judaism.
I would imagine that for most people, the working definition of "bad" is "pain." Bad and pain are basically synonymous. Be it the pain someone goes through while dying from a horrible disease, the pain of someone like Elana, knowing she will never dance at her children's weddings, or the pain of children starving in Africa or the Warsaw Ghetto. It's the pain involved in these situations that makes them "bad." If no one in the Holocaust went through any pain -- if they were gently put to sleep without any knowledge of what was happening -- it would still be a horrible thing, but it would not bother us in the way that it does. Take a few moments to consider this, because it's important to understand exactly what it is that bothers us before moving on.
If pain is to be in any way linked with our definition of bad -- be it emotional, physical, or spiritual pain -- then the question of why bad things happen to people is fairly well unanswerable. Because pain happens to every human being, righteous or evil, throughout most of their lives. And if pain in and of itself is bad, then God has clearly made a world that is just filled with "bad."
Let's re-examine our assumptions for a moment. Is all pain necessarily bad? Defining pain as "bad" is actually a modern phenomenon. Let me give a few very obvious illustrations as to why we cannot view all pain as automatically being bad...
A BROKEN LEG
Let's imagine that someone is walking down the street, minding his own business -- maybe even on the way to do a good deed! -- and a car, driven by someone who is drunk, mounts the curb and runs him over. His leg is broken in four places and he requires an immediate operation, with six weeks recovery in the hospital afterwards.
Good or bad?
Obviously it's bad, you say. And why did such a "bad" thing happen to a person who was on his way to do a good deed?
Yet, if we jump so quickly to this conclusion, we are again making the mistake of oversimplification.
Let's say the operation goes well and our patient is recuperating in a hospital ward. The next day, he meets a young lady in the same ward. She is also going to be in the hospital for a few weeks. They start talking. They don't get on so well at first, but as time goes by they begin to like each other. After all, if you talk to someone for hours each day, you will eventually find something you like about them. Their attraction grows over time. They find that they have many shared interests. They are from similar backgrounds and have the same life goals. Once out of the hospital, they start going out. After a short while, they become engaged. Eventually, they marry and live happily ever after.
Now, let's ask this man, 50 years later, as he sits with his great-grandchildren on his lap at his golden wedding anniversary, whether it was a good or bad thing that the car ran him over on that fateful day. Looking back, he would in no way consider it a bad thing. Painful, yes, but it was pain that brought an incredible amount of goodness in its wake. If you were to offer him the opportunity to go back in time and not be hit by that car, he would not dream of taking it.
This is an example of short term pain that brings long term results. The pain of his broken leg disappeared after a few weeks. The goodness of his marriage to the woman he met in the hospital was eternal.
Pain is not always "bad."
And when I talk about pain, I don't just mean physical pain. I'm just using it as the simplest illustration. The exact same points could be made and similar examples brought for emotional pain such as fear, terror, sadness, loss, and abuse.
In my situation, as a very simple example, the pain I went through - the loss, the sadness, the fear, the loneliness -- in losing Elana has made me infinitely more capable of reaching out and comforting others who experience loss.
DEFINING "BAD"
I hope that by now it's obvious that "pain" is not useful as a definition for "bad." Perhaps some pain really is bad (though we as yet have no examples of that type of pain), but certainly not all pain is bad. And so we are going to have to refine our definition.
At this point, we might be tempted to redefine bad as "pain that brings no positive results." But then it would be impossible for us to ever decide whether something was good or bad. For who is to say what good might come in ten years or twenty, or perhaps not even in this world, but in the next one? Such a definition of "bad" would be of no use to us whatsoever. Until we were fully aware of the ramifications of any event - in both this world and the next -we could not make a judgment that it was "bad" (or "good" for that matter). To define "bad" in this way would be tantamount to having no definition of "bad" whatsoever.
Because of this, the best we can say is: Pain, in and of itself, is fairly neutral. It's not pleasant, it's not comfortable, it's not nice, but it's also neither bad nor good.
Why God might make something painful or create the entire concept of pain in the first place are issues that I will deal with at a later stage, but pain has no meaningful role in trying to define "bad."
THE JEWISH DEFINITION
We Jews have a very different definition of bad -- and based on this definition, nothing bad ever really "happens" in this world.
"Good" is something that enables you to become more Godly. And conversely, "bad" is something that makes you a less Godly person. Torah is good. Mitzvot are good. God Himself is good. Moving away from God -- the source and root of all goodness - is bad.
Put a different way, good is that which leads us towards self-perfection, that which enables us to become the great human beings we are capable of becoming, that which helps us to find the closeness to God that is available to us. Bad is that which takes us away from God, that which hinders us from achieving our potential.
These are the Jewish definitions and the ones I will generally use for the rest of this book. It's worth taking just a few minutes to consider the implications of these definitions before reading any further.
Let's take a look at pain in the context of these definitions.
As a rule, does pain and difficulty in life make it easier or harder to rise spiritually? If we are honest, we would have to say that challenge helps us towards greatness. Greatness is not usually found among those who spend their days lying on beaches and sailing around the world in million-dollar yachts. Greatness is much more often found among those who face adversity head on and overcome it. Those who achieve their true potential are those who struggle through difficult situations and build their character in the process. The Talmud tells us, "Be careful of the children of the poor, for from them Torah comes" (Nedarim 81a).
Far from being a hindrance, hardship is actually something that assists us in this world. If "good" is something that can help us come closer to God, then hardship is certainly "good."
Let's revisit the man with the broken leg -- even without knowing that he ended up meeting his future wife due to it. Let's look at it as a plain and simple broken leg; seemingly nothing more gained other than pain and temporary disability. Is that good or bad?
The Jewish answer is still, of course, neither. But now there is something to add.
It could be good, or it could be bad. It all depends on what this man does with it. A broken leg can make him angry and upset and take him away from God. Or it can push him to evaluate where he can mend his ways and bring himself closer to God.
The choice is entirely his.
We didn't have a choice as to whether or not she would have cancer. But we did have a choice as to how we would respond to that cancer.
The broken leg is certainly a challenge -- but if our friend rises to the challenge and overcomes it, he will lift himself to a more Godly realm. It is not good or bad. It is, however, a significant opportunity for good -- should he choose for it to be so. And if he does, then he will look back 50 years later and say that yes, it was wonderful that he met his wife through his broken leg, but even more wonderfully, the broken leg enabled him to employ his free will to lift himself to new levels of personal greatness.
There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- that happens to us in this world that is good or bad. It is all completely neutral. But everything that happens does have the potential to lift us to a greater level of goodness - or drag us further away from God. Everything has the potential to be good and everything has the potential to be bad. "Bad" things don't happen to good people. But neither do "good" things. Things happen that are either more or less painful. But they are not inherently good or bad. We human beings are the sole arbiters as to whether that which occurs in our lives will ultimately be good or bad. The choice is entirely within our hands.
Elana and I made a decision when she first became ill. We didn't have a choice as to whether or not she would have cancer. But we did have a choice as to how we would respond to that cancer. We knew that we could allow ourselves to despair, that we could hide ourselves away from the world and accept our "fate." Or we could decide to be happy with the goodness that we had. We could make sure we enjoyed our time with each other and our children and enjoyed our lives in general. We knew that we could grow closer to God at this time or we could move further away -- and that choice was entirely within our hands.
The Mishnah tells us that Abraham was tested with ten tests -- to show how much God loved him (Ethics of the Fathers, 5:3). At first glance this seems strange. Here's how you show you love someone? Firstly, you have him thrown into a furnace. Then, you tell him to pack his bags and move to a foreign country. When he obeys, you bring a famine to this country. And then, when he travels to find food, you have the ruler of the next place abduct his wife. He gets her back and returns to his ordained place of residence, only to find that his nephew has been kidnapped by four powerful kings. He manages to release him and is then commanded to kill his only son. Upon his return, having overcome the greatest challenge of his life, he finds that his wife has died and he is forced to pay an exorbitant sum for an inferior burial plot in a land that God has supposedly promised him as an inheritance. And all of this shows God's love for Abraham?!
Yes! This is precisely God's love. Because through these challenges, Abraham was able to come closer to God. He fulfilled his potential and became the great human being we know of, founder of the nation that has taught monotheism to most of the world. The pain was short-lived. The results were eternal. Abraham sits in his place in eternity, not in spite of his pain, but because of it. His pain is gone. His greatness remains forever.
What are you in this world for? To be comfortable? To live out 70 or 80 years of life with the least challenge possible?
And so, I ask you to ask yourself, and to be brutally honest -- what are you in this world for? To be comfortable? To avoid pain? To live out 70 or 80 years of life with the least challenge possible? If this is your aim, then many "bad" things will happen along the way -- because this is a world of pain and pain is antithetical to all that you are living for. If, however, you believe, as I do, that we are here to lift ourselves into Godliness, to grow and to ultimately attain self-perfection, then all that happens to us is a golden opportunity - and the more challenging it is, the greater that opportunity. The Mishnah tells us that "according to the pain is the reward" (Ethics of the Fathers, 5:23). It doesn't say "effort," it says "pain." The level of pain defines the level of potential for Godliness. Of course, we don't go looking for pain, but when it comes, we embrace it as an opportunity to strive towards perfection...
At the height of Elana's illness, and at the times of my deepest pain afterwards, this is what I kept reminding myself. I put signs up all around my house saying, "We are in this world to use our free will to get closer to God -- nothing else." We all have different scenarios in which we are placed - some more painful, some less. But it is all directed towards the same end. Specific circumstances merely give us a context in which to use our free will to lift ourselves towards Godliness. Borrowing from Shakespeare, I would think of every human being as acting in a giant play -- a play that lasts 70 or so years -- and a play in which there will be great drama and tragedy. Each has a different script, a different challenge. The acts and scenes may be different, but the underlying plot is the same for all six billion of us. We are charged with the mission of using our free will and lifting ourselves closer to God. Circumstances may be fluid, but challenge is a constant -- the purpose behind all events in life.
My friends, take it from me, pain passes. All pain passes. If not in this world, then certainly in the next. A cut finger might take a few minutes, a headache an hour, a stomachache a day, a sprained ankle a week, a broken leg a month, and a broken heart may even take a lifetime. But no pain will carry through to the World of Truth. It is the decisions we make, the way we choose to face that challenge and overcome that pain, which will remain with us for eternity. These decisions, and these decisions alone, are the purpose of our years in this world.
This article is an excerpt from Shaul Rosenblatt's new book, Finding Light in the Darkness.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Clemency by Aish.com
Q. I made some poor judgments in my business. My own life is now a wreck, and I have also harmed others who are left with unpaid debts. How can I move on?
A. In a previous column we discussed Judaism's approach to forgiving others. There we explained that Judaism doesn't require or even encourage a person to forgive someone who harmed him freely and unconditionally. It's completely legitimate to demand fair recompense or an appropriate apology. This approach benefits both parties. The injured party obtains recompense and acknowledgement, and the wrongdoer has the ability to put his transgression behind him knowing that he has made amends.
But the demands made of the wrongdoer should be reasonable, and their object should be to move forward to a new, repaired relationship. We find in the Shulchan Arukh (authoritative Code of Jewish law): "One asked to forgive should not be cruel and withhold forgiveness, unless he intends for the benefit of the one requesting forgiveness". (1) The commentators explain that delaying forgiveness can sometimes benefit the wrongdoer by making him internalize the gravity of his acts and truly regret them.
The ideal is an attitude of "constructive clemency". We need a forgiving attitude, but not at the expense of fixing what's been broken.
The same approach guides our attitudes towards our own sins. Certainly a person needs to do what is in his ability to rectify what he has wronged, and to commit himself to avoid making the same transgression in the future. As Maimonides explains, Jewish law recognizes three stages in this process: regret for the past, acknowledgement of the sin through confession before God, and commitment for the future. (2)
Should a person then "forgive and forget" himself? That depends. On the one hand, there is an advantage to always keeping our past misdeeds in mind. A person who made a mistake in the past needs particular vigilance from falling into his past ways. The book of Psalms (51:4-5) states: "Thoroughly cleanse me of my transgression, and purify me from my sin. For I well know my crime, and my sin is before me always". Based on this, the Talmud teaches that even if one has already made a frank confession of one's sins before God, it is praiseworthy to repeat the confession once a year on subsequent Days of Repentance. (3) This corresponds to the person who intentionally delays forgiveness for the benefit of the wrongdoer.
On the other hand, excessive attention to past misdeeds can be an obstacle to putting them behind us. A competing opinion in the Talmud claims that someone who repeats confession on a past misdeed is likened to "As a dog who returns to his own vomit, so is a fool who persists in his folly" (Proverbs 26:11).
Some Hasidic works draw particular attention to this problem. While the Talmud tells us that each person is warned to always be like a wicked person in his own eyes (4), Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, one of the earliest Hasidic masters, writes: "This needs to be understood properly, for the Mishna (5) tells us, 'Don't be wicked before yourself', and furthermore if a person sees himself as wicked he will become saddened and unable to serve God with joy." (6) Rav Zvi Elimelech of Dinov, a slightly later leader, wrote that when one dwells on past misdeeds it can have the effect of making the expression of regret routine and thus insincere. (7) The Hasidic movement, with its emphasis on joy in serving God, was particularly emphatic that a person should not dwell too much on past misdeeds.
The conclusion is as follows: A person who finds that recalling past missteps is necessary for him to keep from backsliding should avoid "forgive and forget"; for him, the watchword is "forgive and remember". This is why Alcoholics Anonymous members open their discussions by acknowledging, "I'm an alcoholic".
But a person who finds that keeping the past in mind prevents him from enjoying life and serving God with joy, should indeed "fix, forgive, forget".
Law and custom provide various ways for debtors who are in over their heads to make livable arrangements with creditors and to move forward in life. Do your best to live up to the arrangements you negotiate in the wake of your business failure, to put the whole situation behind you, and to make a new start with joy and hope, and without dwelling on past mistakes.
SOURCES: (1) Shulchan Arukh Orach Chaim 606:1 in Rema (2) Maimonides' Code, Laws of Repentance 1:1 (3) Babylonian Talmud Yoma 86b (4) Babylonian Talmud Nidda 30b (5) Mishnah Avot 2:18 (6) Book of Tanyia chapter 1 (7) Benei Yissachar Tishrei 7:9
Send your queries about ethics in the workplace to jewishethicist@aish.com
To sponsor a column of the Jewish Ethicist, please click here.
The Jewish Ethicist presents some general principles of Jewish law. For specific questions and direct application, please consult a qualified Rabbi.
The Jewish Ethicist is a joint project of Aish.com and the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem. To find out more about business ethics and Jewish values for the workplace, visit the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem at www.besr.org.
A. In a previous column we discussed Judaism's approach to forgiving others. There we explained that Judaism doesn't require or even encourage a person to forgive someone who harmed him freely and unconditionally. It's completely legitimate to demand fair recompense or an appropriate apology. This approach benefits both parties. The injured party obtains recompense and acknowledgement, and the wrongdoer has the ability to put his transgression behind him knowing that he has made amends.
But the demands made of the wrongdoer should be reasonable, and their object should be to move forward to a new, repaired relationship. We find in the Shulchan Arukh (authoritative Code of Jewish law): "One asked to forgive should not be cruel and withhold forgiveness, unless he intends for the benefit of the one requesting forgiveness". (1) The commentators explain that delaying forgiveness can sometimes benefit the wrongdoer by making him internalize the gravity of his acts and truly regret them.
The ideal is an attitude of "constructive clemency". We need a forgiving attitude, but not at the expense of fixing what's been broken.
The same approach guides our attitudes towards our own sins. Certainly a person needs to do what is in his ability to rectify what he has wronged, and to commit himself to avoid making the same transgression in the future. As Maimonides explains, Jewish law recognizes three stages in this process: regret for the past, acknowledgement of the sin through confession before God, and commitment for the future. (2)
Should a person then "forgive and forget" himself? That depends. On the one hand, there is an advantage to always keeping our past misdeeds in mind. A person who made a mistake in the past needs particular vigilance from falling into his past ways. The book of Psalms (51:4-5) states: "Thoroughly cleanse me of my transgression, and purify me from my sin. For I well know my crime, and my sin is before me always". Based on this, the Talmud teaches that even if one has already made a frank confession of one's sins before God, it is praiseworthy to repeat the confession once a year on subsequent Days of Repentance. (3) This corresponds to the person who intentionally delays forgiveness for the benefit of the wrongdoer.
On the other hand, excessive attention to past misdeeds can be an obstacle to putting them behind us. A competing opinion in the Talmud claims that someone who repeats confession on a past misdeed is likened to "As a dog who returns to his own vomit, so is a fool who persists in his folly" (Proverbs 26:11).
Some Hasidic works draw particular attention to this problem. While the Talmud tells us that each person is warned to always be like a wicked person in his own eyes (4), Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, one of the earliest Hasidic masters, writes: "This needs to be understood properly, for the Mishna (5) tells us, 'Don't be wicked before yourself', and furthermore if a person sees himself as wicked he will become saddened and unable to serve God with joy." (6) Rav Zvi Elimelech of Dinov, a slightly later leader, wrote that when one dwells on past misdeeds it can have the effect of making the expression of regret routine and thus insincere. (7) The Hasidic movement, with its emphasis on joy in serving God, was particularly emphatic that a person should not dwell too much on past misdeeds.
The conclusion is as follows: A person who finds that recalling past missteps is necessary for him to keep from backsliding should avoid "forgive and forget"; for him, the watchword is "forgive and remember". This is why Alcoholics Anonymous members open their discussions by acknowledging, "I'm an alcoholic".
But a person who finds that keeping the past in mind prevents him from enjoying life and serving God with joy, should indeed "fix, forgive, forget".
Law and custom provide various ways for debtors who are in over their heads to make livable arrangements with creditors and to move forward in life. Do your best to live up to the arrangements you negotiate in the wake of your business failure, to put the whole situation behind you, and to make a new start with joy and hope, and without dwelling on past mistakes.
SOURCES: (1) Shulchan Arukh Orach Chaim 606:1 in Rema (2) Maimonides' Code, Laws of Repentance 1:1 (3) Babylonian Talmud Yoma 86b (4) Babylonian Talmud Nidda 30b (5) Mishnah Avot 2:18 (6) Book of Tanyia chapter 1 (7) Benei Yissachar Tishrei 7:9
Send your queries about ethics in the workplace to jewishethicist@aish.com
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The Jewish Ethicist presents some general principles of Jewish law. For specific questions and direct application, please consult a qualified Rabbi.
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Sunday, December 31, 2006
Trust in God
This week's Aish.com has this article:
by Dr. Alan Morinis
Once you recognize that the world is not meant to be comfortable, certain, or easy, but rather an ideal training ground for the soul, trust in God can begin to take root.
The soul wants to live in an atmosphere of trust since the alternative is anxiety and worry. But people find it difficult to trust, for so many good and valid reasons. This world is so unreliable. Hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires and other natural disasters can strike at any moment. Your life can suddenly be overturned by illness or accident. And most of all, there is the unaccountable cruelty, incompetence and stupidity of people. A level-headed view of life seems to offer us every reason not to trust.
How and where could we possibly put our trust?
The Hebrew term for the soul-trait of trust is bitachon. To the Mussar teachers the only place to put our trust is in God, therefore bitachon means "trust in God." Including God in the definition may offer you some help, or it may bring on an additional challenge, depending on the role faith plays in your life. Growing in bitachon is a very different proposition for a person who already has a strong relationship to the divine as opposed to someone who has no active sense of Who/What he or she is being asked to trust.
A person who tries to practice trust in God while leaving himself a backup plan is like a person who tries to learn how to swim but insists on keeping one foot on the ground. - Rabbi Yosef Yozel Hurwitz
But who could possibly trust a God who allows a million children to be killed in the Holocaust, who permits AIDS and smallpox and ALS, who rains fire on the innocent and allows the guilty to die in their comfortable beds? If this is the best that omniscient, omnipotent divinity is capable of, then it seems you'd have to be crazy to trust that God.
The fact that this is a difficult world is no accident or sign of bad design. The Source of all has made our world just as it is so we will not become complacent and lethargic, but instead be surprised and challenged. The stretching and pulling -- by love as well as by blows -- is what brings us to the threshold of growth that we would likely never otherwise approach.
With your free will, you have it in your power to turn away from the opportunity to grow, and instead to build thicker walls of anger, hatred and despair around your heart. Or you can offer up your heart for its initiation. The Kotzker Rebbe said, "There is nothing so whole as the broken heart." Once you recognize that the world is not meant to be nice, or comfortable, or certain, or easy, but that it is set up to be the ideal training ground for the heart, you can trust in God because the world is working just as it should be.
The suffering or difficulty in our lives almost never makes sense in the moment, and only reveals its logic in time. Have you ever looked back over a section of your life, or your whole life itself, and only been able to see the storyline in retrospect? How many people have you heard say something like "losing that job turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me" though at the time it seemed like a blow to the solar plexus? Maybe you've already had an experience like that yourself.
At the beginning of World War II, the Mussar teacher Rabbi Yehudah Leib Nekritz, along with his wife and children, were exiled from Poland to Siberia. The Russians had invaded the part of Poland where the Nekritz family lived, and because Rabbi Nekritz had been born in Russia, he was judged suspicious and was sent to labor in the harsh north country. Of course everyone in the town was distraught for the poor Nekritz family, since all the others were allowed to remain at home while this one family was singled out for the punishment of exile. "Terrible, terrible," they moaned, and it was indeed terrible, except for the fact that remaining in the town ultimately turned out to be an even worse fate -- the Nazis rolled into that part of Poland and consigned all the Jews who lived there to the death camps.
At the end of the war, the Nekritz family was released and made their way to the United States. The exile to Siberia had been their ticket to survival.
Who in the moment could have seen the big picture? No one in the middle of a story is able to see how everything will work out in the end. So our reactions to what unfolds in life are either pure speculation or they reflect our clinging to a story we ourselves generate from our unconscious.
This is true for personal events and for history as well. The Mussar teaching is to call up trust to counteract our reactivity. When you recognize the truth that you do not write the full script of your life nor do you direct all the action, then it sinks in that there is really nothing to worry about. Trust.
I am not saying that evil and suffering are not real. But it is available to us to see everything that confronts us in life as a challenge to our own soul-traits. We are meant to be good and loving, generous and kind, but we can't make any of those qualities take firm root in our inner soil unless we face the challenge of rejecting their opposites. Only if these challenges are entirely real will can we use them to help our hearts to grow in positive ways. When Rabbi Nekritz would be asked by the peasants in Siberia, "Why have you been sent here?" he would always answer, "To teach you bitachon, trust in God."
Do we draw from all this that having strong bitachon means being fatalistic? In its extreme form, the answer is actually yes. There is a Hassidic story about a rebbe who saw a frantically busy man, and he asked the man where he was running in such a frenzied rush. "I'm chasing my destiny," the man answered. To which the rebbe replied, "How do you know it isn't also chasing you? Maybe all you have to do is to stand still for a moment to give it a chance to catch up."
While our destiny is surely in the hands of God, we are still obliged to make our own efforts.
But we can also find more measured voices telling us that while our destiny is surely in the hands of God, we are still obliged to make our own efforts. To rely exclusively on God implies that we have absolutely nothing in hand to bring about change, when that is seldom if ever the case. Everyone has some powers that are gifted to them, like the ability to think, to speak, to write, to lift objects, to move about, to care -- and even if you are lacking one or more of these capacities, you should put what capabilities you do have to work to bring about the outcomes you see to be the best, rather than rely totally on God. God is the source of these capacities, so wouldn't it dishonor those gifts and especially their Giver not to put them to use?
When wise bitachon has taken root in you, you recognize how important it is to act on your own behalf. Making genuine effort to improve yourself, your relationships, and other circumstances in the world is a sign that you understand and accept your real responsibility for yourself and the world. It also reflects your acknowledgement of the gifts God has already put into your hands. Yet with bitachon, you also recognize that the outcome of your actions is always beyond your control.
In short, Mussar's guidance is that you should try to make things work out the way you think is best, and then be fully prepared to accept whatever occurs.
It's easy to see that practicing trust in this way will inevitably give rise to peace of mind. Effort combined with trust yields calmness -- because when you willingly accept whatever results come out of your actions, what could there possibly be to worry about? Jewish sources stress that through trust -- casting your burden on God -- you free yourself from worldly cares, bringing on the calmness and tranquility so many of us long for and that we often try to find in less-than-Godly ways.
Strong trust also makes you brave. Once you have developed the attitude that you will be just fine with whatever comes out of your actions, you will feel freer to speak out and take steps that reflect your deepest convictions, without concern for consequences. In this way bitachon helps strengthen soul-traits that are susceptible to fear. For example, people (like me, though thankfully more so in the past than today) often slip into saying things that are not true out of fear of consequences, which means that a person with strong trust is likely to find fewer challenges to being honest. And so on for any other traits that might be knocked off their proper measure by the force of fear.
When fear or worry strikes you, recognize the experience as a signal calling on you to fan the inner sparks of your bitachon. Your task is to become aware of feelings such as fear, anxiety, and clinging right as they are occurring within you, and to respond to them inwardly by identifying them as signs of not trusting. That naming should not be confused with self-recrimination. By being sensitive to feelings that imply a lack of trust, you call yourself to be conscious of what is happening within you. From that foundation of self-awareness, you can remind yourself of the other option that lies before you in this situation -- to trust.
Bitachon is not a mere philosophical principle; it is an act that requires practice. How do we practice trust? Let me prepare you with a story adapted from the Chofetz Chaim.
There was once a man who was visiting a small town in Europe. It was Shabbat morning, and he went to the local synagogue. Everything was just as you might expect, until unusual things started happening. There were well-dressed, obviously prosperous people seated near the front, but all the honors for the Torah-reading were given to scruffy men who stood clustered at the back of the room. When it came time for the rabbi to say a few words of wisdom, all he spoke about was the weather. After the prayers were finished, lovely food was spread on the table and nobody ate.
The man was flummoxed by all these incomprehensible goings-on. What kind of place was this? Was everyone here crazy? Finally, he pulled aside one of the locals and asked, "What's going on here? The men who got the Torah honors, the rabbi's talk, the uneaten food... nothing makes any sense!"
The man explained, "Those scruffy looking men had been unjustly imprisoned and the community worked long and hard to ransom them to freedom. Isn't it wonderful that they are now free to come to bless the Torah? The rabbi spoke only about the weather because there has been an unusual drought this season and the farmers have nothing on their minds but their crops, and the rabbi knew and cared for their concerns. Why didn't anyone eat? One Shabbat every month the community prepares its usual lunch but instead of eating it, the food is donated to the local home for the elderly."
"I can see how it might have looked to you," the local man told the guest, "but when you can only see part of a picture, it's easy to put together a faulty impression of what is going on."
This story offers a useful parable for our own lives. When you can only see part of the situation -- and in the present moment, all any of us can ever see is part of the picture -- then you can't possibly know what is really going on. That will only be revealed in the fullness of time.
But I introduced the story by saying that trust in God needs to be practiced, and I had in mind suggesting a way in which you can do that by making use of this story. Just by recognizing the truth in this parable, and keeping it in mind, it is there to serve you whenever you are shaken awake by something happening that doesn't fit your expected story line. Maybe the disaster will turn out to be a strangely packaged gift. Maybe in time it will be revealed that what appeared to be a glorious boon was actually the doorway to disaster. This happens, of course. Because at any moment you can only see part of the picture, and because this world and its Maker are ultimately trustworthy, you can trust.
© Alan Morinis
Published: Sunday, December 07, 2003
by Dr. Alan Morinis
Once you recognize that the world is not meant to be comfortable, certain, or easy, but rather an ideal training ground for the soul, trust in God can begin to take root.
The soul wants to live in an atmosphere of trust since the alternative is anxiety and worry. But people find it difficult to trust, for so many good and valid reasons. This world is so unreliable. Hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires and other natural disasters can strike at any moment. Your life can suddenly be overturned by illness or accident. And most of all, there is the unaccountable cruelty, incompetence and stupidity of people. A level-headed view of life seems to offer us every reason not to trust.
How and where could we possibly put our trust?
The Hebrew term for the soul-trait of trust is bitachon. To the Mussar teachers the only place to put our trust is in God, therefore bitachon means "trust in God." Including God in the definition may offer you some help, or it may bring on an additional challenge, depending on the role faith plays in your life. Growing in bitachon is a very different proposition for a person who already has a strong relationship to the divine as opposed to someone who has no active sense of Who/What he or she is being asked to trust.
A person who tries to practice trust in God while leaving himself a backup plan is like a person who tries to learn how to swim but insists on keeping one foot on the ground. - Rabbi Yosef Yozel Hurwitz
But who could possibly trust a God who allows a million children to be killed in the Holocaust, who permits AIDS and smallpox and ALS, who rains fire on the innocent and allows the guilty to die in their comfortable beds? If this is the best that omniscient, omnipotent divinity is capable of, then it seems you'd have to be crazy to trust that God.
The fact that this is a difficult world is no accident or sign of bad design. The Source of all has made our world just as it is so we will not become complacent and lethargic, but instead be surprised and challenged. The stretching and pulling -- by love as well as by blows -- is what brings us to the threshold of growth that we would likely never otherwise approach.
With your free will, you have it in your power to turn away from the opportunity to grow, and instead to build thicker walls of anger, hatred and despair around your heart. Or you can offer up your heart for its initiation. The Kotzker Rebbe said, "There is nothing so whole as the broken heart." Once you recognize that the world is not meant to be nice, or comfortable, or certain, or easy, but that it is set up to be the ideal training ground for the heart, you can trust in God because the world is working just as it should be.
The suffering or difficulty in our lives almost never makes sense in the moment, and only reveals its logic in time. Have you ever looked back over a section of your life, or your whole life itself, and only been able to see the storyline in retrospect? How many people have you heard say something like "losing that job turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me" though at the time it seemed like a blow to the solar plexus? Maybe you've already had an experience like that yourself.
At the beginning of World War II, the Mussar teacher Rabbi Yehudah Leib Nekritz, along with his wife and children, were exiled from Poland to Siberia. The Russians had invaded the part of Poland where the Nekritz family lived, and because Rabbi Nekritz had been born in Russia, he was judged suspicious and was sent to labor in the harsh north country. Of course everyone in the town was distraught for the poor Nekritz family, since all the others were allowed to remain at home while this one family was singled out for the punishment of exile. "Terrible, terrible," they moaned, and it was indeed terrible, except for the fact that remaining in the town ultimately turned out to be an even worse fate -- the Nazis rolled into that part of Poland and consigned all the Jews who lived there to the death camps.
At the end of the war, the Nekritz family was released and made their way to the United States. The exile to Siberia had been their ticket to survival.
Who in the moment could have seen the big picture? No one in the middle of a story is able to see how everything will work out in the end. So our reactions to what unfolds in life are either pure speculation or they reflect our clinging to a story we ourselves generate from our unconscious.
This is true for personal events and for history as well. The Mussar teaching is to call up trust to counteract our reactivity. When you recognize the truth that you do not write the full script of your life nor do you direct all the action, then it sinks in that there is really nothing to worry about. Trust.
I am not saying that evil and suffering are not real. But it is available to us to see everything that confronts us in life as a challenge to our own soul-traits. We are meant to be good and loving, generous and kind, but we can't make any of those qualities take firm root in our inner soil unless we face the challenge of rejecting their opposites. Only if these challenges are entirely real will can we use them to help our hearts to grow in positive ways. When Rabbi Nekritz would be asked by the peasants in Siberia, "Why have you been sent here?" he would always answer, "To teach you bitachon, trust in God."
Do we draw from all this that having strong bitachon means being fatalistic? In its extreme form, the answer is actually yes. There is a Hassidic story about a rebbe who saw a frantically busy man, and he asked the man where he was running in such a frenzied rush. "I'm chasing my destiny," the man answered. To which the rebbe replied, "How do you know it isn't also chasing you? Maybe all you have to do is to stand still for a moment to give it a chance to catch up."
While our destiny is surely in the hands of God, we are still obliged to make our own efforts.
But we can also find more measured voices telling us that while our destiny is surely in the hands of God, we are still obliged to make our own efforts. To rely exclusively on God implies that we have absolutely nothing in hand to bring about change, when that is seldom if ever the case. Everyone has some powers that are gifted to them, like the ability to think, to speak, to write, to lift objects, to move about, to care -- and even if you are lacking one or more of these capacities, you should put what capabilities you do have to work to bring about the outcomes you see to be the best, rather than rely totally on God. God is the source of these capacities, so wouldn't it dishonor those gifts and especially their Giver not to put them to use?
When wise bitachon has taken root in you, you recognize how important it is to act on your own behalf. Making genuine effort to improve yourself, your relationships, and other circumstances in the world is a sign that you understand and accept your real responsibility for yourself and the world. It also reflects your acknowledgement of the gifts God has already put into your hands. Yet with bitachon, you also recognize that the outcome of your actions is always beyond your control.
In short, Mussar's guidance is that you should try to make things work out the way you think is best, and then be fully prepared to accept whatever occurs.
It's easy to see that practicing trust in this way will inevitably give rise to peace of mind. Effort combined with trust yields calmness -- because when you willingly accept whatever results come out of your actions, what could there possibly be to worry about? Jewish sources stress that through trust -- casting your burden on God -- you free yourself from worldly cares, bringing on the calmness and tranquility so many of us long for and that we often try to find in less-than-Godly ways.
Strong trust also makes you brave. Once you have developed the attitude that you will be just fine with whatever comes out of your actions, you will feel freer to speak out and take steps that reflect your deepest convictions, without concern for consequences. In this way bitachon helps strengthen soul-traits that are susceptible to fear. For example, people (like me, though thankfully more so in the past than today) often slip into saying things that are not true out of fear of consequences, which means that a person with strong trust is likely to find fewer challenges to being honest. And so on for any other traits that might be knocked off their proper measure by the force of fear.
When fear or worry strikes you, recognize the experience as a signal calling on you to fan the inner sparks of your bitachon. Your task is to become aware of feelings such as fear, anxiety, and clinging right as they are occurring within you, and to respond to them inwardly by identifying them as signs of not trusting. That naming should not be confused with self-recrimination. By being sensitive to feelings that imply a lack of trust, you call yourself to be conscious of what is happening within you. From that foundation of self-awareness, you can remind yourself of the other option that lies before you in this situation -- to trust.
Bitachon is not a mere philosophical principle; it is an act that requires practice. How do we practice trust? Let me prepare you with a story adapted from the Chofetz Chaim.
There was once a man who was visiting a small town in Europe. It was Shabbat morning, and he went to the local synagogue. Everything was just as you might expect, until unusual things started happening. There were well-dressed, obviously prosperous people seated near the front, but all the honors for the Torah-reading were given to scruffy men who stood clustered at the back of the room. When it came time for the rabbi to say a few words of wisdom, all he spoke about was the weather. After the prayers were finished, lovely food was spread on the table and nobody ate.
The man was flummoxed by all these incomprehensible goings-on. What kind of place was this? Was everyone here crazy? Finally, he pulled aside one of the locals and asked, "What's going on here? The men who got the Torah honors, the rabbi's talk, the uneaten food... nothing makes any sense!"
The man explained, "Those scruffy looking men had been unjustly imprisoned and the community worked long and hard to ransom them to freedom. Isn't it wonderful that they are now free to come to bless the Torah? The rabbi spoke only about the weather because there has been an unusual drought this season and the farmers have nothing on their minds but their crops, and the rabbi knew and cared for their concerns. Why didn't anyone eat? One Shabbat every month the community prepares its usual lunch but instead of eating it, the food is donated to the local home for the elderly."
"I can see how it might have looked to you," the local man told the guest, "but when you can only see part of a picture, it's easy to put together a faulty impression of what is going on."
This story offers a useful parable for our own lives. When you can only see part of the situation -- and in the present moment, all any of us can ever see is part of the picture -- then you can't possibly know what is really going on. That will only be revealed in the fullness of time.
But I introduced the story by saying that trust in God needs to be practiced, and I had in mind suggesting a way in which you can do that by making use of this story. Just by recognizing the truth in this parable, and keeping it in mind, it is there to serve you whenever you are shaken awake by something happening that doesn't fit your expected story line. Maybe the disaster will turn out to be a strangely packaged gift. Maybe in time it will be revealed that what appeared to be a glorious boon was actually the doorway to disaster. This happens, of course. Because at any moment you can only see part of the picture, and because this world and its Maker are ultimately trustworthy, you can trust.
© Alan Morinis
Published: Sunday, December 07, 2003
Thursday, December 07, 2006
To the Third and Fourth Generation
I also posted this on my family website, leggettfamily.org, as it is relevant to genealogy, also.
You Are What Your Grandmother Ate
You may have read already about the research showing that the diet of a mother can have an influence on a specific gene for at least two generations.
This study on mice looks at "epigenetic" changes made to DNA, involving genes that can be silenced or activated based on exposure to chemicals.
Half of the mice in the study were fed a nutrient-enriched diet, while the control group ate a standard diet. Exposure to those high amounts of nutrients in the womb changed the coats of the mice offspring from golden to dark brown fur, while the offspring of the control group remained unchanged.Not only that, but the children of the darker-coated mice were similarly affected; they also had dark brown fur.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences November 14, 2006; 103(46): 17308-17312
Dr. Mercola's Comment:
When I was actively seeing patients it was very clear what my primary responsibility was -- to teach my patients to eat the way their ancestors ate. If I could facilitate that change alone and have them avoid processed foods, trans fats and the ridiculous excess of omega-6 fats nearly all consume, the vast majority of them would have radically improved health.
However, this information should not cause you to worry about the diets of ancestors. First of all, it is likely that they were eating far healthier than you, but even if they weren't your body has incredible, dynamic healing capacities that have the potential to reverse much of the damage.
Mirto from Carnation, Alabama commented in Vital Votes:
"There is way too much emphasis placed on such things as blaming our condition on the fact it runs in the family (genes). What runs in the family is an eating pattern that has been passed down from generation to generation.
"I saw it in my family and was heading down a road that was the consequence of this. I drastically changed my diet, including taking supplements, and no longer have to take any drugs, including aspirins.
"When you see a number of members of a family being overweight, check what kind of food they eat, it's appalling. The cook or cooks of the house usually picked up the style from their mother, who picked it up from her mother and so on. First of all that's a problem right there. You would be much healthier eating at least 75% of your food raw, which I usually do ... "
As far as genes go, I firmly believe that conventional wisdom imputes to them a far more exaggerated influence on your health than they really have. Fact is, genes are little more than information storage facilities that don't do much to influence your health. Rather, it's the expression of your genes, influenced by how you live your life, that weighs far more heavily on your health than anything else.
Dr. Gene Weber from Yakima, Washington also pointed out regarding that issue:
"When we go to the doctor a lot of the time, genetics are used against us to force the issue for prescribing what I feel are unneeded drugs, many for long term.
"There was a study done by Dr. Pottenger more than 60 years ago known as Pottenger's Cats that basically helps explain how we are what we eat, and how we can change our 'genetic' outcome by improving our lifestyle. This of course involves diet, exercise, and our emotional state to name a few. We need to know these things so we can make better choices when it comes to health care
You Are What Your Grandmother Ate
You may have read already about the research showing that the diet of a mother can have an influence on a specific gene for at least two generations.
This study on mice looks at "epigenetic" changes made to DNA, involving genes that can be silenced or activated based on exposure to chemicals.
Half of the mice in the study were fed a nutrient-enriched diet, while the control group ate a standard diet. Exposure to those high amounts of nutrients in the womb changed the coats of the mice offspring from golden to dark brown fur, while the offspring of the control group remained unchanged.Not only that, but the children of the darker-coated mice were similarly affected; they also had dark brown fur.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences November 14, 2006; 103(46): 17308-17312
Dr. Mercola's Comment:
When I was actively seeing patients it was very clear what my primary responsibility was -- to teach my patients to eat the way their ancestors ate. If I could facilitate that change alone and have them avoid processed foods, trans fats and the ridiculous excess of omega-6 fats nearly all consume, the vast majority of them would have radically improved health.
However, this information should not cause you to worry about the diets of ancestors. First of all, it is likely that they were eating far healthier than you, but even if they weren't your body has incredible, dynamic healing capacities that have the potential to reverse much of the damage.
Mirto from Carnation, Alabama commented in Vital Votes:
"There is way too much emphasis placed on such things as blaming our condition on the fact it runs in the family (genes). What runs in the family is an eating pattern that has been passed down from generation to generation.
"I saw it in my family and was heading down a road that was the consequence of this. I drastically changed my diet, including taking supplements, and no longer have to take any drugs, including aspirins.
"When you see a number of members of a family being overweight, check what kind of food they eat, it's appalling. The cook or cooks of the house usually picked up the style from their mother, who picked it up from her mother and so on. First of all that's a problem right there. You would be much healthier eating at least 75% of your food raw, which I usually do ... "
As far as genes go, I firmly believe that conventional wisdom imputes to them a far more exaggerated influence on your health than they really have. Fact is, genes are little more than information storage facilities that don't do much to influence your health. Rather, it's the expression of your genes, influenced by how you live your life, that weighs far more heavily on your health than anything else.
Dr. Gene Weber from Yakima, Washington also pointed out regarding that issue:
"When we go to the doctor a lot of the time, genetics are used against us to force the issue for prescribing what I feel are unneeded drugs, many for long term.
"There was a study done by Dr. Pottenger more than 60 years ago known as Pottenger's Cats that basically helps explain how we are what we eat, and how we can change our 'genetic' outcome by improving our lifestyle. This of course involves diet, exercise, and our emotional state to name a few. We need to know these things so we can make better choices when it comes to health care
Sunday, November 26, 2006
America's Health Dilema
Here's a quote from Dr. Mercoa's website:Cheat Disease by Changing Your EnvironmentIt has become clear to many that efforts to halt the growing epidemics of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and cancer are failing. Many experts believe a primary reason is easy access to unhealthful foods and busy lives that squeeze out exercise. As a result, many new preventative health initiatives in states, cities and communities are being inaugurated across the United States. On September 28, the American Cancer Society (ACS) concluded that only by creating a "social environment that promotes healthy food choices and physical activity" can the United States reduce cancer deaths linked to obesity and lack of exercise. In response, on October 6 the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation announced an agreement with several food companies to adopt the ACS' nutritional guidelines for snacks sold in schools. Other initiatives, sponsored by government agencies, universities, or private businesses, are growing in number.Current U.S. health spending is $2.2 trillion a year, and it could reach $4 trillion by 2015. Taking care of the sick accounts for roughly 96 percent of these costs, with only about 4 percent going toward prevention.USA Today October 18, 2006--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dr. Mercola's Comment:USA Today ran a week-long series on what to do about America's out-of-control health care costs, and they featured experts suggesting more natural solutions. The problem is growing, and the facts are so compelling that even the CDC's director of prevention and health promotion can't ignore them, saying that: "Two-thirds of the deaths and 80 percent of the cost of health in this country are associated with chronic disease. This country is dramatically moving in the wrong direction."Why is this important to know?Well, let me tell you. Our current system is really good at ACUTE care but, as you can see from the conservative estimates of the CDC, that is not what people are dying from. So when you apply the ER drug/surgical model to chronic disease you have an unmitigated disaster that dramatically exacerbates the problem.And it's getting worse.In 2001, fully half of all bankruptcies were the result of medical problems and most of those (more than three-quarters) who went bankrupt were covered by health insurance at the start of the illness. That's 700,000 U.S. households devastated by medically related bankruptcies, with more than 2 million people affected. But some are taking steps to turn this around, using the only method that will work -- preventing people from getting ill in the first place. In urban Philadelphia, researchers from America and the UK have joined in a social experiment with a huge medical upside: Offer easy access to healthful foods to an urban neighborhood where little to no options currently exist, except for processed, fast and trans-fatty foods.This experiment has nothing to do higher insurance premiums or newer, even more expensive and dangerous drugs, and everything to do with the real heart of the health care conundrum. It's all about trading a dangerous cure-based mentality fueled by unnecessary toxic drugs and procedures that may kill you for one focused on treating the true causes of disease safely and naturally.
Posted by Jill at 7:21 AM
Labels: cancer, diet, Dr. Mercola, health, nutrition
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