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June 22, 2007
Rabbi focuses on key values
Telushkin gives his Winnipeg audience wise words of guidance.
REBECA KUROPATWA
A rabbi once named as one of the best 50 speakers in the United
States spoke at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg June 3.
More than 600 people from across the United States and Canada came
to hear Rabbi Joseph Telushkin present the Adam Anhang Memorial
Lecture.
Telushkin was ordained at New York's Yeshivah University and is
spiritual leader of the Synagogue for the Performing Arts in Los
Angeles. Known for such books as Jewish Literacy: The Most Important
Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History,
he spoke on Making the World a Better Place: A Jewish Vision, One
Day at a Time.
"What I want to speak about this evening is something I call
'moral imagination' – using the full extent of your intellect
to come up with morally imaginative solutions," he told the
audience.
Telushkin cited a mishnah that reads, "Who is wise? One who
learns from everyone."
"If you realize that every encounter you have, you can learn
from, you are wise," said Telushkin. "Then [the sages]
ask, 'Who is rich?' and answer, 'One who is happy with what he has.'
If someone can be happy with what he has, he is wealthy because
he doesn't have to be consumed with worrying about money. The mishnah
asks, 'Who is a hero?' and answers, 'One who can overcome his evil
inclinations.' The greatest struggle with which everyone has to
engage is with his own nature – coming to understand yourself,
work on yourself, and recognize what your weaknesses are and guard
against giving in to them."
A problem today is that, in Jewish modernity, the word "religious"
has come to mean ritual observance, said Telushkin. "This can
form the impression that, in Judaism, ethics are an extra-curricular
activity. [But] without rituals, you don't have holiness."
All parents tell their children that they love them, said Telushkin.
"Yet, many children end up in therapists' offices complaining
that their parents don't love them. With rituals, there are more
ways to tell your children you love them and it is a tangible way
to transmit Judaism from generation to generation. If rituals can
be altered every time they become inconvenient, what you are really
teaching is that they have no significance."
Telushkin said it is not enough in life to have good intentions
– you have to have a system. "Without a system to probe
you, you will forget about your intentions."
Expressing gratitude is something people should always be doing,
he said, "even if it is for something you do not see. Did you
ever notice that people always tip a porter but not a chambermaid
at a hotel? We have to look the porter in the eye when he brings
up your bags, but not the chambermaid when she cleans your room."
Telushkin pointed out that the Torah teaches us to love our neighbor
as we love ourselves. He said he learned from his friend Rabbi Zalman
Shachter that instead of getting annoyed every time he heard a siren,
he should say a five-word prayer that Moses used to say for his
sister, Miriam, when she was ill ("Oh God, please heal her"),
for the person needing the ambulance, fire truck or police car.
"We are also taught to especially follow this rule for your
spouse," said Telushkin, "thousands of years before the
corrective measures of women's lib."
When a person cultivates gratitude, they cultivate love, said Telushkin.
"Consistently ungrateful people are unhappy people, because
they see the world as loveless. Life is not lived in the extraordinary,
but in the ordinary – enjoy it all."
We get into patterns of condemning and judging, like prosecutors
looking for evidence of something we already believe, said Telushkin.
"We can improve more from praise for something we've done well
than from criticism for something we haven't. When parents don't
apologize to children when they are wrong, it sends a terrible message.
You will never say anything that will cause irrevocable hurt or
a break in a relationship if you restrict your anger to the incident
that provoked it. Moodiness is not a victimless crime. Dredging
up every little thing a person has ever done wrong, using words
like 'always' and 'never,' never works well. We have to learn to
use our words carefully, like when we used to send telegraphs. We
had to pay for every word, so we would think about each one carefully."
Telushkin left his audience with a final thought to ponder. "Rabbi
Nachman, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, once said, 'If you are
not going to be better tomorrow than you were today, what need do
you have for tomorrow?' I wish all of you a very good today, and
an even better tomorrow."
Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.
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