As I sit down to write my article for the bulletin, I am realizing that this will be the last time I write to you as your rabbi. As I take my leave, I’d like to do one more teaching if I may. The rabbis tell us that whenever two people take their leave of each other, they should impart to the other a piece of torah. One of my favorite stories in the Talmud encapsulates what I see as the role religion and spirituality should play in our lives. It’s a story of two rabbis traveling on the road by donkey, one the teacher, and the other a student. The student wishes to illustrate what he’s learned from his teacher, so they stop their donkeys, and the teacher sits down on a rock to listen.
We do not know what exactly the student says to the teacher, we are not given the text of his recital. All we are left with is the reaction from what he has just expressed. The Gemara illustrates the response, “and fire descended from heaven and encircled all the trees in the field, and all the trees began reciting song.” Nature and heaven come together to celebrate that which the student has just expressed, his words creating a harmonious miracle. His teacher, staggered from what he heard, rises up and kissed his student on his head, and said, “Blessed be God, Lord of Israel, who gave our father Abraham a son like you… There are some who expound the Torah’s verses well but do not fulfill its imperatives well, and there are some who fulfill its imperatives well but do not expound its verses well, whereas you expound its verses well and fulfill its imperatives well.”
This is the highest praise a teacher can give a student. That not only have they come to understand and absorb the material they’ve learned, but that they integrate that knowledge and wisdom into who they are, to make themselves better people. This is the goal of all religion, to not only bring us to a higher level of understanding, but to be able to use that understanding to make us better people at our core.
I love this story because of what I think it says to us today. It is not enough to pursue religion or spirituality for our own sake. It is our moral imperative as people who identify with “organized religion” to take what we’ve learned and use it to open ourselves up. If religion doesn’t open both our minds and hearts, then we’re not doing it right.
In another part of the Talmud, the rabbis speak of a blessing they would give to one another as they left the study hall. Having finished their time learning together, the rabbis would send each other off with a blessing until they would be reunited. This blessing has become arguably my favorite blessing, I’ve given it to each of my children on the occasion of their baby naming/bris on the eighth day of their lives, and I’ve come back to it many times for happy occasions. I’d like to leave you with those words.
May you live to see your world fulfilled,
May your destiny be for worlds still to come,
May you trust in generations past and those yet to be.
May your heart be filled with intuition
and your words be filled with insight.
May songs of praise ever be upon your tongue
and your vision be on a straight path before you.
May your eyes be illuminated with the light of Torah and may your face reflect with the brightness of the heavens.
May your lips speak knowledge and inner self find joy in righteousness.
May the soles of your feet run to hear the words of the Ancient of days.
L’hitraot,
Rabbi Goldstein