How to Succeed at Resolutions Without Really Trying (or at Least Taking It Slowly)

A few year’s ago on an episode of Prairie Home Companion that fell on the weekend around Rosh Hashanah, Garrison Keillor wished his Jewish listeners a happy new year and then told everyone else that they’d just have to make do with the year they still had for a few more months. In last year’s January/February Temple Israel Hakol, I wrote about the Jewish significance of tonight’s New Year’s Eve, in light of the one we celebrated a few months ago. I won’t go into those details here, but I will acknowledge, like I did then, that New Year’s Day still has significance for us as people who operate not only under the Jewish calendar, but also the Gregorian calendar.

I try to make my New Year’s resolutions leading up to the 1st of Tishrei, not the 1st of January, but I can’t help but be reflective at this time of year, as well. The changes I make this time of year are sometimes more mundane than the ones I tried to initiate a few months ago, eating better, exercising more, the usual. At the same time, I’m keenly aware that New Year’s resolutions don’t stick.

In a study done by a British psychologist about the effectiveness of New Year’s resolutions, it was revealed that only about 1 in 5 people actually keep their resolutions. What he discovered was that most of the people who failed to keep their resolutions went about it all wrong. They focused on the negative, the downside of not achieving their goals. They pasted pictures of skinny people on their refrigerators or relied on willpower alone. Of those that succeeded, the common thread was that they had broken their goal into smaller steps and rewarded themselves along the way. Rather than focusing on the bad stuff, they focused on the benefits of success.

At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Va’era, God hears the moaning of the Israelites, who are being held in bondage by Egypt. Moses is told that God remembers the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and promises to bring the Israelites into the Promised Land. God tells Moses to let the Israelites know that God will free the Israelites and deliver them from bondage, redeeming them and taking them as God’s people. But when Moses relays this message to the Israelites, the text tells us that they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.

Within just a few short verses, we witness the Israelites’ crying out for help and then, when help comes, deciding that they can’t do it; they are overwhelmed. Sounds a little like how we handle our resolutions! And when we make resolutions and break them, we find ourselves feeling dispirited and despondent, like the Israelites.

So, why do the Israelites all of a sudden withdraw their bemoaning. And why can’t we follow through on our resolutions? What might the two of these have in common? It might be all about willpower. Apparently, our prefrontal cortex is responsible for willpower, but it’s not the only thing that part of our brain handles. It also keeps us focused, handles short-term memory, and solves abstract problems. In an experiment at Stanford University, scientists discovered that people given seven-digit numbers to memorize were twice as likely to choose a slice of chocolate cake over a bowl of fruit salad, compared to people who were given two-digit numbers to memorize. Those extra digits overloaded the cognitive part of the brain making it harder to resist a decadent dessert! Our willpower is so weak that it can be overcome by an overload in our experiences. No wonder that extra cookie, another slice of pizza, or an extra helping of mashed potatoes are so tempting after a hard day at work.

Well, the Israelites’ experience was similar. According to Nahmanides, it’s not that the Israelites didn’t believe Moses when he came to tell them about God’s plan to save them. Instead, it’s that they were incapable of listening because of how crushed their spirits were because of their labor. They hardly wanted to live any longer, even though they knew that relief would come. Ibn Ezra agrees, saying that the Israelites were powerless to listen because of how dispirited they had become because of their exile and bondage.

So, how do they get past this moment? How do we see our resolutions come to fruition? It’s in our ability to distract ourselves from what’s attempting to set us off course. In an another experiment – you may have seen one like this – where four-year-olds were placed in front of a marshmallow and told if they could wait 20 minutes to eat it, they’d get another one, the children that could distract themselves from the marshmallow were the ones who succeeded. Some sang songs, others played with their shoelaces, some pretended the marshmallow was a cloud. They knew their willpower was weak, so instead of focusing on the marshmallow, they shifted the spotlight.

Ultimately, God helps the Israelites do the same thing. Moses and Aaron appear before Pharaoh demanding the Israelites’ freedom. But before they appear, God tells Moses that God will harden Pharaoh’s heart and make Pharaoh not want to let them go. This has always been a difficult moment in the text for me. Why would God make it harder for the Israelites to go? Well, if they tried to take it on all at once – like how we sometimes try to take on our resolutions with an all-or-nothing attitude – perhaps they would have quit before they’d reached the Sea of Reeds. Instead, God gets them out in small steps, one plague at a time, slowly motivating them and propelling them towards freedom with incremental progress. God teaches them, as we can learn about the resolutions we might put into place tomorrow morning, that when we are tempted to change course, hunkering down and convincing ourselves we can do it all at once isn’t the way to go. Instead, we have to shift our focus, reward the small victories, and keep our eye on the prize.

Chinese Food on Christmas, an Age-Old Tradition

Do you know what you get if you subtract the Chinese year, 4708, from the Jewish year, 5771?

No, not 1063. You get the number of years Jews had to go without Chinese food.

This year will be the first Christmas in many, many years that I will not be having a traditional Jewish Christmas dinner: Chinese food. I even tried to have Chinese food for lunch today, but the place I'd chosen had gone out of business.

So, where'd all this Chinese food on Christmas come from? In reading Galit Breen's Minnesota Mamaleh: So What DO Jews Do On Christmas?, I found a link to Hanna Raskin's So, Why Do Jews Eat Chinese Food at Christmas? Hanna Raskin wrote her Master's thesis on the relationship between Jews and Chinese food. I was surprised to learn that Jews' eating Chinese food (not only on Christmas, but in general), was not an experience of our affinity for Asian cuisine, but rather because of our proximity to the Chinese community. Not in Biblical times, but in New York. Thinking about it, I realized Raskin was totally right. The Lower East Side, the quintessential Jewish neighborhood of the last two centuries in New York, the place where so many of us can trace our Jewish roots, borders Chinatown. While I don't agree with Raskin's point that Chinese food is kosher-ish, because the meat is so finely chopped that it's hardly recognizable at treif, I do agree with the rest of her points.

She points out that chop suey was a sophisticated dish in its heyday. Eating it meant you were part of American culture. Also, in Chinese restaurants, Jews look like white people; so, while there was persecution of Jewish communities elsewhere, in a Chinese restaurant, Jews got to be just like everyone else. As New York Jewish culture spread throughout the rest of the country, so did the custom of eating Chinese food, especially on Christmas, even for those Jews who didn't have ancestors who'd lived on the Lower East Side.

So, whether or not you choose to celebrate Jewish Christmas with a traditional meal of Chinese food, have a Shabbat Shalom/Merry Christmas and remember, pork isn't kosher, unless it's in Chinese food.

Is God a Bully?

I am on my way to NFTY CANOe's Winter Kallah, where this year's theme is bullying. The regional boards, teens from Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin, have decided in response to the heightened awareness of bullying in our society, to provide their peers with appropriate Jewish responses to bullying and ways to be more inclusive. As I've been thinking about the theme, I began wondering, "Is God a bully?"

According to Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus, bullying is the repeated behavior of intentionally inflicting "injury or discomfort upon another person, through physical contact, through words or in other ways." This definitely sounds like God's reaction to the Israelites' and others' behavior throughout Torah: following the incident with the golden calf, when the Israelites complain about having left Egypt, and God's reaction to Sodom and Gomorrah, to name a few. In each of these three moments, humankind has to intercede to stop God's behavior. Moses steps in at the first two and Abraham in the third.

In the narrative of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham begs God not to destroy the cities if there are even 50 righteous people present. God agrees, but the cities lack even 50 righteous people. Abraham bargains God down to 45, to 40, 30, 20, and even to 10. Still, God destroys the cities. Why does Abraham stop before getting to 1 and why is God still willing to destroy the cities?

According to a midrash in Tractate Sanhedrin 109b, the people of Sodom had a bed on which the would make visitors lie down. Anyone too tall for the bed would have his limbs cut off to fit the bed. Anyone who was too short for the bed would be stretched, breaking his limbs to make him fit. The people of Sodom refused to tolerate anyone who was different from them. God, we see, is not the bully, but instead stands up to bullies to defend the victims, those who are bullied for not being just like everyone else.

In this week's Torah portion, Vayechi, Joseph's brothers become fearful following their father Jacob's death. They are afraid that now Joseph will seek revenge on them for all the wrong they did to him and their father won't be there to protect them. In the end, Joseph tells them that though they meant him harm, God was looking out for Joseph and made sure things turned out well. We might wish God would have interceded and stopped Joseph's brothers, but we can find comfort in Joseph's confidence in God's presence on his behalf.

So, is God a bully? In short, no. Sometimes God steps in to actively protect the bullied. Sometimes the bullied can sense God's presence in the midst of tragedy. We have the power - and the sacred obligation - to bridge the gap.

A Time for Trust and Belonging

While listening to MPR the other day, I heard the newscaster share the notion that we sing the same songs at various times of the year - holidays, birthdays, celebrations, even funerals - and that this repetition, year after year, of the same melodies, gives us a sense of trust and belonging. The comment was part of an introduction to a story on Christmas carols. I was feeling lucky to have been arriving at my destination at that moment so that I wouldn't have to listen to the Christmas carols in the segment. I immediately began thinking, though, why it is that I find Christmas carols, of all the Christmas-related onslaught, to be the most irritating. Then, I thought about the newscaster's comment. Christmas carols provide a sense of trust and belonging - that is, if you belong. That was it. The carols, the garland, the sparkling trees in the center of every shopping mall across America, the commercials, all evoke a sense of belonging if you belong to the tradition they represent. But I don't. I am grateful, as I blogged last year, that during the days of Chanukah, XM radio provides us with Radio Hanukkah as an escape from Christmas carols.

But worse than being surrounded by Christmas carols was the article that my friend Rory shared with me. In his piece for SmartMoney, Kelli Grant suggests that, "Even if you’re not celebrating Hannukah, there’s a good reason to wrap up your holiday shopping before the last light on the menorah goes out." Her thesis is that because the American population that celebrates Chanukah (She claims it's 5%, though most statistics argue that the Jewish population in the United States is a mere 2%.) will boost stores' November sales by 3% to 4%, "retail analysts say an early Hanukkah could spell trouble for Christmas shoppers: Thanks to consumers’ extra holiday spending in late November, retailers may cut back on big discounts in December."

You read that correctly: Because of the Jewish population in America (you decide if it's 5% or 2%), Christmas shoppers will suffer. The Jewish population will cause the Christmas shoppers' sales to be cut short, costing non-Jews more money. At least, that's what Grant argues.

Both Chanukah and Christmas are holidays connected to the winter solstice, a time when the days are at their shortest, light is diminished, and we need greater hope and greater light. Perhaps we can accomplish this best by seeing how our celebrations help one another, creating trust and belonging, not by cutting one another down.

Chag urim samei'ach! Happy Chanukah!

"The Seat" and Other Solutions to Sibling Rivalry

My brother and I always got along growing up, to the best of my recollection. Maybe he would disagree. But I don't think so. I can't remember a time when we really fought about anything. We had peaceful solutions to any conflict, some perhaps a little abnormal, but we always found a way to resolve our differences. I think one of the best gimmicks we devised was "the seat." When our parents got new sectional sofas, they placed the six pieces in pairs. Two were at the back of the arrangement, facing the fireplace. The other two pairs faced inward - with all six around a coffee table - with their backs on the side walls of the family room. On one side, one of the pieces sat about 4 feet away from the television. This was the seat. It came with the privilege both of being able to be closest to the television and also was situated right next to one of the vents, providing the perfect supply of air conditioning or heating.

I imagine that most siblings would have fought over 'the seat.' There would have been mad dashes to get there first, brothers shoved out of the way, and sisters thrown to the floor. But not at our house. Adam and I devised a system, a set of rules that governed who got 'the seat.' (My brother tells me that I was like a third parent for him growing up; I may have devised the rules and forced them upon him, but you'd have to check with him to be certain.) There were two simple rules:

1) Each day, we would alternate who got 'the seat.'

2) If your birthday fell on a day on which you wouldn't have gotten 'the seat,' the alternation would switch so you would have 'the seat' on your birthday.

I don't think the system ever failed. This, however, wasn't the case with Jacob and Esau. If you remember two weeks ago, in Parashat Tol'dot, Jacob steals the birthright from his brother, Esau, and then steals their father's blessing, too. But this week, the brothers have worked through (some of) their differences and reunite after a long estrangement.

In Genesis 33, the brothers reunite. Jacob arrives with his wives, his maidservants, and all of his children. Esau arrives with four hundred men, ready to engage in battle. When Esau sees Jacob with his family, he runs to greet his brother and, weeping, kisses him. (Last year, I discussed the rabbis' concern about Esau's sincerity and intention in the moment of his embrace with Jacob. This year, I'd like to assume he was well intentioned. There's nothing in the text that really indicates he wasn't.) When Esau asks Jacob why he's brought the whole family along, Jacob tells him he wants to please his brother. Jacob offers Esau gifts, which Esau refuses. "I have enough, my brother; let what you have remain yours," Esau tells Jacob.

The two argue back and forth for a while, but ultimately, Esau tells Jacob he doesn't have to offer gifts to make up for their difficult past, but Jacob insists. When the time comes to move along, Esau, in a moment that I think demonstrates his sincerity, offers to travel at Jacob's pace. Jacob has his family, including small children, and his livestock, all of whom cannot travel as quickly as Esau's army. In this moment of compassion, Esau affirms his intention to walk alongside Jacob, something they might not have ever done before. When Jacob insists that Esau go ahead, that his family would slow down Esau, Esau offers some of his men to protect Jacob and his family. Later in the parashah, Esau and Jacob are present when their father dies and, together, they bury him.

In spite of their lifelong estrangement, in spite of the ways they treated each other in the past, Jacob and Esau find a way to walk side by side and to recreate their bond to one another. No one's relationship with his or her sibling is perfect. There will be conflict, there will be times when our differences overpower us. Still, Jacob and Esau teach us that there are always opportunities to stand (or sit) side by side, if we just take advantage of those opportunities.

Ufaratzta - Spread Peace in Every Direction

In the midst of Jacob's dream, after he sees angels ascending and descending a ladder that reaches heaven, God tells him that his descendants will be like the dust of the earth, spreading out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south, ופרצת ימה וקדמה וצפנה ונגבה (Genesis 28:14). These words make up a song, Ufaratzta, that I learned as a participant at the Reform movement's youth leadership summer camp, Kutz Camp, from Cantor Ellen Dreskin. The song, apparently, was written by Avi Maslo. I always knew how the words translated, but never really thought about what they meant in my understanding of Judaism. Let's unpack the meaning of the words:

ימה, yamah: towards the Mediterranean sea, to the west;

קדמה, keidmah: towards the early part of the day, to the east;

צפנה, tzafonah: towards the hidden, to the north;

נגבה, negbah: towards the Negev desert, to the south.

These aren't just words that tell us that Jacob's descendants will spread out in all directions, but specifically that they will fill what we come to understand as the Land of Israel, as the Hebrew Bible sees it. It's all well and good if we believe, today, that the people Israel should inhabit all of the land from east to west, from north to south, but I am one who believes that if the State of Israel is to remain democratic and Jewish, we need to find a peaceful, two-state solution with the Palestinians.

So, then, what do we make of God's words spoken to Jacob? Are they meant to be understood literally? Do they have a different message for us today, with our awareness of the reality in Israel and with her neighbors? I hadn't really given much thought to the meaning behind the words of Ufaratzta until yesterday morning when I was reminded of another version of Ufaratzta, one by Noam Katz, that re-interprets the words in a modern context. You can hear the song here:




In his version, Noam Katz uses the Hebrew as the chorus, but re-interprets the meaning of the words in the way he translates them in the verses of the song:

May you... may you always try to inspire.
May you... may you always try to reach higher and higher.
May you bring your goodness and may you bring peace.
May you spread it from the west to the east.
May you spread it from the north to the south.

May you... may you be a light that shines the way.
May you... may you be a blessing each and every day.
May you let the laughter and love increase.
May you spread it from the west to the east.
May you spread it from the north to the south.

Instead of a vision of manifest destiny, Noam Katz teaches us that it isn't spreading ourselves east and west, north and south, that God intends. Instead, God expects us to inspire others and elevate ourselves to a place where we bring laughter and love, goodness and peace into a world in much need of those blessings and more.

When You Cut One Finger, the Whole Hand Hurts

My great-grandmother was a mother of eight children. Her three oldest children were daughters born to my great-grandfather's first wife, who died when her daughters were 1, 3, and 5 years old. My great-grandmother raised Jeanette, Francis, and Ruth as though they were her own daughters, along with her five children, including my grandmother. Whenever asked which of her children she loved the most - a potentially explosive question given her blended family - my great-grandmother would always reply with a comment along the lines of, "When you cut one finger, the whole hand hurts." (I hope my family will forgive me if I didn't get the quotation quite right.) What I think she meant was that if she loved any of her children less than the others, they would all have suffered.

I am fortunate that my great-grandmother was one of my ancestors. Isaac and Rebekah, however, could have used her wisdom. This week's Torah portion, Tol'dot, tells us of the birth of Isaac and Rebekah's twins, Jacob and Esau. Jacob was the gentle one, loved more by their mother, Rachel. He spent his time with her at home. Esau, the rugged one, loved more their father Isaac, hunted game and spent his time in the great outdoors. When it comes time for Isaac, on his deathbed, to bestow a blessing on his older son, Rebekah steps in to help her beloved son steal Esau's blessing. She dresses him in a goat skin and passes him off as his hairier brother. Jacob tricks his blinding father and steals his brother's blessing.

We often forget about what happens next (Gen. 27:30-40). Esau returns from the field with the game that Isaac has requested, ready to nourish his dying father. When he sets the food before his father and asks to receive his blessing, Isaac lets him know that Jacob has stolen his blessing. It is then that my heart goes out to Esau, that I wish that my great-grandmother had been there. "Bless me! Me too, father!" he exclaims, but Isaac explains that there is no blessing left for him. Esau cannot believe it. "Did you not reserve a blessing for me?" he asks, becoming overwhelmed. Isaac can only reply by saying it's out of his control. And then, Esau begs a third time - and my heart breaks a little with his - "Do you have only one blessing, father?" Isaac musters up a blessing that at best tells Esau to move away and then maybe things will be okay.

What Isaac and Rebekah didn't understand, what my great-grandmother did, is that love cannot be divided. It is like fire. If it isn't cared for and nurtured, it will either grow wild and out of control or it will fade to embers and ash. But if love is nourished, like fire it will increase with warmth and light as it separates from its source.