People are the Truth

Our sages of blessed memory tell us a legend about the origin of winter holidays. After Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden in the early fall (just after Rosh Hashanah), they noticed that the days were growing shorter and the nights longer and colder. As the darkest days of winter approached, Adam, having never experienced seasons before, began to worry: “Is God still angry at me? Will God let the light of the sun fade and disappear forever, undoing all of creation because of my mistake?!” In response, Adam decided to spend eight days in fasting and prayer. When the winter solstice passed, he saw that the days were beginning to grow longer again and realized it was simply the natural cycle of the world. With this newfound understanding, Adam instituted an eight-day celebration. According to our sages, this became the origin of festivals like the Hellenistic Saturnalia and serves as at least part of the reason for the celebration of Hannukah in the winter. The sages thought deeply ...

    And Then I always thought the words, and then , were a prelude to something wonderful.   Like seeing a ship come in or finding a note in your letterbox, when you weren’t expecting one.   That swift, surprising transition from nothing to everything.          And then. Two little words that hold a world of promise.          And then the light pierced though the dark, forbidding sky, and the rain stopped falling.          And then I met you.   -          Lang Leav   “Then” is a much maligned word in the world of fiction writing, often making lists of “Top Ten Words to Avoid”.   “I sat down and I read the parasha ,” reads perfectly well without the word “then”. Moreover, a description of events that uses the word “then” or “and then” repeatedly can sound unwieldy, even im...

On Being Right When I was young, I was confident that I was right. I lacked confidence in most other things, but I had to be right. Some of the smartest people I knew were always right—and they knew it too. They were certain of it. They told me they were right time and time again, and some even proved it, and their arguments were always convincing, always right . I thought of myself as smart too, so I knew then that I, too, should only ever be right. Of course, people can’t always be right, but as long as they were only wrong about the right things, that was okay. They could never, ever be wrong about the wrong things. At some point, that changed. Not only did I grow older and wiser, I learned to feel what I can only call God’s presence when I look into another human being’s eyes and realize, “Holy #$%! They’re right!” There’s a famous Jewish joke that goes like this: One day, two respected members of the community came to the rabbi’s house to discuss a dispute. The ra...