Friday, March 29, 2013

Martial Judaism: A Different Kind Of Passover Preparation

In Tae Kwon Do class today, we spent about fifteen minutes learning some close quarter self-defense techniques that use your legs, and no hands. Well aimed and strategically targeted blows to the feet, legs, and knees of the opponent, and even a few techniques to use if you are on the ground and the opponent is standing. We don’t do a lot of explicit self defense training in my dojang. Mostly we concentrate on poomse (a series of choreographed punches, kicks and blocks) and World Tae Kwon Do Federation sparring. But on occasion, Master Mast teaches some digestible and straightforward techniques that almost anyone can master to give you an advantage, or an opportunity to escape if confronted with disparate force.

After class, I was talking with one of the other Jewish students in the class, and I mentioned that I really want to find an additional day each week to come at train at the dojang. My practice keeps getting better, and I feel that I would benefit greatly from another weekly session. She said that the hour she spends in Tae Kwon Do class is one of the rare moments each week when she feels truly great and free from all the stresses and demands of daily work life. I agreed and added that as a non-profit professional I am usually giving to others. But in Tae Kwon Do I feel like I am the recipient. As a rabbi and an educator, I am usually teaching, but in Tae Kwon Do I am a student. I commented how good it is for my mind to be a student and a receiver of wisdom. She added, and good for the body too.

Her comment raised for me something I have been feeling ever since I began my Tae Kwon Do practice. For all the wonder, intellectual stimulation, learning and prayer of Jewish living, there is really something missing. Our Judaism is, for the most part disembodied. We have no martial tradition that parallels the spiritual, and so much of our Jewish experiences are neck up only. Even Passover with all of its culinary symbolic gestures is mostly about what these foods make us think about. Its all pretty heady really.

More and more, I feel that Judaism sorely needs a set of physical disciplines to complete its wholistic mission. I don’t know exactly what that would look like, and we had a short conversation about how to create authentic Jewish martial practices. We remarked how any new ritual or discipline would potentially be meaningful to us as individuals, but that it would take time, perhaps even generations, for us to evaluate what stuck and what lacked that authentic “Jewishness” that would make it meaningful for us as a community and a people.

By that time, Master Mast and another student had joined the conversation, and I was saying how I wanted to teach some martial arts as part of the prayer curriculum at summer camp this coming June. And I recalled to them the passage that we read each Passover, the Torah’s account of the Israelites preparations for the exodus.

Now, anyone familiar with Passover preparations knows that among the extensive cleaning and preparing, a lot of the prep work mirrors the early Israelites' preparations before leaving Egypt more than 3000 years ago. We make horseradish (homemade is definitely best) because they brought bitter herbs with them. We eat matzah because they prepared only urgent bread as they fled Egypt. I pointed out that among the details the Torah gives for the Israelites preparations is that the they left Egypt armed (Exodus 13:18). You don’t hear this a lot. Not a lot of rabbis preach about it, and I think it makes a lot of modern Jews uncomfortable. Raised on generations of thinking of ourselves as victims and persecuted, we have embraced the victim status and even enjoy being seen as the weak but justified people. American Jews, having grown up in relative security and comfort, we emphasize the spiritual heritage of the desert – the Torah that prepared us to become a new nation and to inhabit the land of our ancestor Abraham.

But the Israelites did not only prepare for spiritual struggles. They prepared for battles of the real kind also, and left Egypt with weapons to defend themselves along the way. In a short hallway homily at the Tae Kwon Do studio, I taught a little Torah. We left Egypt, prepared to encounter God at Sinai, but we also left prepared to encounter Egypt and Amalek. My friend added that perhaps this is how we should leave our homes every day; armed with spiritual guidance to confront the temptations and failures that challenge our spirit, but also prepared with, and ready to use, our martial forces to confront the real and present dangers that threaten our body and our peace.

Master Mast nodded and said that is the Tae Kwon Do way – to be peaceful, but to be prepared. The Children of Israel left Egypt armed, ready for a fight, but not looking for a fight. Knowing how to defend yourself does not make you aggressive, and being armed, contrary to the knee jerk reaction of the TV news, does not make you want to kill someone. Being prepared gives you confidence and peace of body as you find your way through the desert and the dangerous places on your way to receive Torah and wisdom for the mind and heart.

Monday, March 18, 2013

When is the Race Won?


I often like to begin a discussion of tefillah* with a simple question that almost anyone of any age can understand. I stay away from all the specific questions about what a particular poem or prayer means to you, and leave till later questions about God and belief, and instead just ask: “When is the race won? At the beginning? In the middle? Or at the end?

It is a simple question, and it is the kind of simple question whose simplicity masks a more probative quality. Of course there is no right answer to such a question. Instead, it is the kind of question that asks us to engage with each possible response and explore each one to see if and how it might be true.

So, when is the race won?

Well, we could say that it is clearly won at the beginning. Consider that the greatest concentration is focused on the beginning. Runners and swimmers practice their starts over and over and over again, only to shave a few microseconds off this extraordinarily important part of the entire race. Drivers compete hard in qualifying heats, only to grab a sliver of an advantage with the pole position, and recognize that such an advantage can not easily be made up by the other drivers. Racers know that if you have a weak start, it is almost impossible to finish in the lead group. Races are won or lost in the first few milliseconds of the event, and the way we start our efforts often determines nearly everything about our experience.

Speed and power are the principle qualities that are more vital than any others. This is true in so many parts of life that we often fail to even notice it. But it has given rise to expressions like “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Every teacher, mentor, coach, or trainer knows that when a student shows up at the beginning of the lesson with a lousy attitude they are unlikely to turn it around during the practice, and finish differently than they were at the beginning. If you start behind, you end behind.

But….

We do not end the race immediately after the start. If everything hinged only on the beginning, there would be no point in even running the race. If how we leave the starting block determines whether we win or lose, why not simply end our run after the first few strides and declare a winner based on who is ahead after the runners reach their full stride? Of course, this is ridiculous, because we all know that leads change and change again during the middle of the race. While the start is crucial, it is not, in the end, determinative. Though you have a lot more to overcome when you begin poorly, nonetheless, you CAN overcome it. This is why every coach teaches their players to NEVER GIVE UP. In the middle of the race anything can happen. Fortunes change, injuries occur, new depths of perseverance emerge from the body of the effort, the heart of the struggle, and it is not only a good beginning, but the ability to translate that beginning into a lasting lead that really determines the victory.

Even from a raw emotional perspective, the middle of the race requires the greatest effort, and therefore induces that greatest number of failures. Everyone is excited at the beginning of the race. Every competitor steps into the starting line-up with their heart and chemistry pumping excitement and clarity and focus throughout their bodies. Nerves and muscles are on high alert, and there is practically no laziness at all. The same is true in the final push to the victory line when the end is in sight. In contrast, in the middle of the race, the runner must sustain and harness the energy necessary to maintain a winning pace against the relentless forces of inertia and decline. The racer has to withstand distractions, injuries, pains, and a wide range of body chemistry working to slow him down as the initial high of starting fades to the sluggish pull of gravity and fatigue. And there is also the ever present awareness of place. At the beginning, everyone is in the same place, and no one has or challenges the lead. There is no advantage and no need to make up lost ground or keep hold of position. But in the middle of the race, all of these challenges work to winnow the field of competitors, and it is in the full belly of the race that the racer must encounter and defeat these obstacles in order to win the race. In the depth of the conflict and the heart of the struggle the winners and losers are chosen, and perseverance, not only speed and power determine victory.
In our case, victory is not defined by a finish line, or a ribbon or a medal. In most spiritual practices the real "destination" is a life long process and progression. There is no "end" to an evolving practice of discovery. Still, the analogy to a race is an apt one for anyone seeking a creative spiritual practice. When we think of who wins the race, who is able to achieve what they set out to do, we must certainly, at some point think of the end. Though we are all in a process of improving our religious life, we do set goals for ourselves, experiences we wish to have that are the purpose of our prayer life or creative endeavor. Expression like "at the end of the day", or "in the end", or "the bottom line", "when all is said and done" all indicate something any competitive athlete knows deeply - there is only one statistic that matters. Who is ahead at the end of the game or race. Our competition in creative and spiritual matters is not with others. We are not trying to out-worship or out create anyone. Instead it is a race against all of our inner obstacles and assumptions, and monsters.

In order to succeed in developing these kinds of creative abilities, we must run hardest at the end of the race. Precisely when we have fallen into a steady pace, when we have gotten comfortable in our middle of the race assumptions and acumen, when we have gotten routine and lost the start-of-the-race youthful energy; precisely when we are beginning to tire of life's wonder and meaning, we grow by redoubling our inner efforts to strive for and enhance our goals and aspirations.

At the beginning of every journey there is a line. a moment when, whether we are aware of it or not, our energy shifted in favor of the journey and the race was begun. At the end of every race there is a line, a fictional border waiting to be crossed. A new beginning disguised as a destination. The race is really only won for a fleeting moment. Success depends on a strong beginning, middle, and end. As soon as one record is broken, we can continue to strive and reach and cross lines.

Ready, Set . . .





*for those of you who don’t recognize this word, it is Hebrew and is the word used for traditional prayer. In davenology, it does not carry the same sense as the English word prayer, which has a connotation of asking for something. In Hebrew, the word for this is bakashah and it is also one of the basic forms of jewish meditation. But tefillah, is a word that has an interesting linguistic shading to its meaning, and it connotes here the practice of Jewish recitation and meditation, that is the core canvas for my writings. It is also frequently used in the sense of self-discovery. This is because of its Hebrew grammar which is reflexive (to pray=l’hitpallel means to define oneself) and because it is, I believe the purpose of tefillah, namely to deepen our understanding of who we are, and to discover ourselves and our connections to the universe we inhabit.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

What is Your Favorite Passover Food? And Why?



More than any other Jewish holy day, Pesach is deeply intertwined with food. The obvious reason is that the principle mitzvot of Pesach have to do with food. We are prohibited from eating chametz (leaven), and obligated to eat Matzah. These two symbolic gestures, when done with the proper intention, bring us into contact with the story of our ancient ancestors and the formative moment of the Jewish people, our exodus from Egyptian slavery and covenant with God.

I must admit, I don’t really love cleaning the house of chametz. And, if the truth be told I’m not a big fan of matzah. But there are many Passover foods that I look forward to every year.

First, there is the green vegetable. I love veggies, and early spring veggies are both delicious and symbolic. As we celebrate liberation and its season, spring, I always try to have a luxurious selection of karpas at my seders. Not just a little parsley sprig, but scallions, romaine, parsley, celery, endive, and colorful radishes.

Then there is the maror. Yum! I am part of a multi-generational group of men who each year gather just before pesach to make fresh, homemade horseradish. We grind up more than 20 lbs of fresh root and through our teary eyes, we sing Carlebach melodies, dance around the food processor, and imagine the beauty of the seder and the poignancy of its rituals.

And of course, let’s not forget charoset. The sweet and sticky symbol of the labor imposed on the Israelites. There are literally hundreds of delicious recipes. I personally like apples, though many customs use apricots, prunes and dates. I also like a little fresh ginger to add spice and heat to the sweet mortar.

Finally, the wine. While one should certainly be careful not to drink too much, Passover invites us to indulge a little bit and drink joyfully from four full cups of wine. Reminiscent of blood, the wine both gets us tipsy and makes us sober to the realities of our liberation story, and the blood which was spilled in the course of setting the Israelites free – the Passover lamb, the plagues, the first born Egyptians, and all who stayed behind. We diminish the second cup of wine as we recite each plague so that we never forget that our freedom came with an un-payable debt.

Wow. I’m full. It must be time for my personal family favorite – Passover chocolate fudgies, my mother’s recipe for kosher for Pesach brownies. Each family hastheir own food traditions, and I always remember my parents and grandparents and the wonderful seders we had when I was young, and the incredible and love filled food my mother prepared for the festival meal.

Carrot tzimmes? Matzah ball soup? Potato Kugel? These are some of my favorites. What are some of yours?

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Drashah from the Dojang - A shared message of spiritual guidance


In my Tae Kwon Do practice, my current belt level has a corresponding Poomse (form), a choreographed sequence of stances, blocks, kicks and punches - Taeguk 6 Jang. Each form reflects and trains for an imaginary battle, and each form also carries spiritual ideas and characteristics. One of the books I use as a resource for Tae Kwon Do discusses the philosophical and tactical underpinning of this series of movements. In Tae Kwon Do: The Korean Martial Art, Richard Chun says:

“Gam is Water, which is liquid and formless yet never loses its nature, though it may conform to the vessel in which it finds itself. Water always flows downward and, in time, can wear away the hardest granite.

Gam is male. It symbolizes North. Through Gam, we learn that we can overcome every difficulty if we go forward with self-confidence and persistence, easy to bend but not break.

Like water, Taeguk 6 Jang is flowing and gentle yet destructive. It teaches that man, when faced with a challenge, can overcome it by persistence and unwavering belief. To give this form the appearance of continuity, its separate sequences of motion are connected by the Front Kick.”

In Jewish tradition, The Midrash on Song of Songs (Song of Songs is read on the intermediate Shabbat of Passover) also compares the Torah to water.

“Just as rain water comes down in drops and forms rivers, so with the Torah; one studies a bit today and some more tomorrow, until in time becomes like a flowing stream.

Just as water has no taste unless one is thirsty, so too, Torah is best appreciated through great effort and yearning.

Just as water leaves a high place and flows to a low one, so too, Torah leaves one whose spirit is proud and remains with one whose spirit is humble.

Water is a great equalizer, no matter your station or class - all can drink water. So, too - a scholar should not be ashamed to say to a simpler fellow, 'Teach me a chapter, a verse or a letter'.

Just as water is a source of life for the world, as it says, A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters (Song of Songs 4:15), so the Torah is a source of life for the world.

Just as water restores the soul, so does the Torah.

Just as water is cleansing, the words of Torah are purifying.”

The virtues of water, the same ones mentioned by Richard Chun, are symbolically powerful and important to remember as we approach Passover this year in which water plays such a central role. Water is both necessary and inspiring.

Water accommodates any shape, and every person, no matter who we are, and what our spiritual traditions, and ongoing practices. Torah can also “fit” every person, and can be experienced by everyone. Race, religion, gender, politics, age, and ideology do not keep us separated from the sources of faith and religion.

Water erodes even the hardest rock, and Torah, its wisdom, teachings and guidance for living soften hearts, and gives us the compassion and civility necessary to wear away bias, bigotry, prejudice and other hardnesses of the heart.

All water moves toward the same end. What separates us and defines us as different is far smaller than what unites us; the loves, losses and experiences that are shared by all people. Understood this way, Torah no longer stands as an exclusive possession of the Jewish people. Torah becomes the universal ocean of consciousness that we all share, the larger truth that surpasses the local, parochial truths of our individual communities.

I am inspired by the ancient teaching of Tae Kwon Do and the disciplined practice that has grown from them. And I have found the TKD studio to be a place of universal respect and community as we all study together towards mastery. My practice feels both deeply rooted and poignant and useful today.

I am inspired by the ancient teachings of Judaism and the rituals and symbolic gestures that have grown from the Torah. And I pray that the universal messages of wisdom, humility, and holiness will reach far beyond the borders of the Jewish community and unite many people of many faiths in a shared vision of spiritual mastery, at the same time ancient, vibrant and flowing like water.