{"id":3084,"date":"2018-10-02T00:40:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T00:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=3084"},"modified":"2018-10-02T00:43:15","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T00:43:15","slug":"drash-for-yom-kippur-5779","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/?page_id=3084","title":{"rendered":"Yom Kippur (5779)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drash for Yom Kippur 5779: The Theology of Buffering<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Marc Mangel<\/p>\n

I have been thinking a lot this past year about why bad things happen to good people and what, if anything, we can do about it.<\/p>\n

At the start of his book by the same title, Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of congregants whose only \u00a0child \u2013 a daughter in her freshman year of college \u2013 died of a brain aneurism. When Kushner went to console them, the parents said \u201cYou know, Rabbi, we did not fast on Yom Kippur\u201d. Kushner said \u201cno this is not the reason that your daughter died\u201d, and I too say no.<\/p>\n

To understand why, we need to turn to the Kabbalah.<\/p>\n

The Kabbalistic understanding of creation is that God contracted and concealed– the Tzimtzum \u2013 in order to make space for the created world. \u00a0This is not physical space \u2013 God is everywhere \u2013 but contraction of cosmic presence.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Chaim Miller writes: \u201cThink of the Shechinah as music that\u2019s so loud that it would burst your eardrums but if you would just turn down the volume a bit, then you would be able to heart it\u2026The Shechinah\u2019s energy is sufficiently diminished [by God\u2019s concealment] to be a starting point for our universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan and I were in Honolulu once and in the park across from our hotel we heard a Jimmy Buffet concert.\u00a0 Of course, we also heard street traffic, people talking, children laughing, airplanes flying overhead, birds cawing and many other sounds.<\/p>\n

Imagine an outdoor concert with an amazingly powerful sound system. It is so powerful, in fact, that you cannot get near it without blowing out your ears. This is the analogy of Godly energy before the contraction.\u00a0 The impresario erects sound buffers between the source of the sound and the lawn where you are sitting. With those buffers in place you can clearly hear the concert.<\/p>\n

But there is space between you and the buffer.\u00a0 If people are talking, kids are playing, buses are running, you may still hear them in addition to \u2013 or possibly louder than — the concert.<\/p>\n

Imagine now that you have noise reducing headphones connecting directly to the mixer \u2013 the essence of the concert \u2013 before amplification.\u00a0 The sound is amazing!\u00a0\u00a0 And many of the external distractions have disappeared.<\/p>\n

But not all — the very existence of space between the buffer and you means that there are random sounds that may interfere with hearing the concert.<\/p>\n

For example, suppose that an aircraft carrier is in town and a pilot decides to buzz Honolulu, creating a sonic boom.\u00a0 You will hear that sonic boom no matter how good the headphones are.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Similarly for us \u2013 the tzimtzum is the buffer between us and Godly energy; the space means that sometimes random bad things will happen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Simply put, although we can do much (eating wisely, exercising, not smoking,\u00a0 or drinking and driving) to avoid some bad things happening\u00a0 we cannot change the reality that sometimes bad things will happen to good people \u2013 it is the cost we pay for existence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But we can do something about it as individuals and as a community: When bad things do happen, we must marshal resolve and activate the forces of goodness to a higher level. In his book 60 Days, <\/em>Rabbi Shimon Jacobson writes that Yom Kippur is \u201cthe birthday of the single most important ingredient in life \u2013 hope\u2026that we can rebuild what was broken and make it stronger than before\u201d. \u00a0\u00a0Our resolve and activated goodness create hope. The Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote regarding sickness that one must strengthen confidence in God and<\/u> find a good doctor and<\/u> follow the doctor\u2019s instructions.<\/p>\n

In addition, although the gap between the created world and God must always be present, we have tools \u2013 prayer, meditation, study, and Tzedaka \u2013 that allow us to close it somewhat.<\/p>\n

The Rebbe also wrote<\/p>\n

\u201cThe natural tendency is to treat matters of the spirits as luxury items \u2013 sort of an appendage to life.<\/p>\n

\u201cEating, sleeping, making money \u2013 these things are given priority and time dedicated to them is sacrosanct.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut prayer, meditation and study fit in only when you feel like it, and are pushed aside on the slightest whim.<\/p>\n

\u201cSet a schedule for spiritually enriching activities. Be as tough with that schedule as a workaholic would be with business\u201d.<\/p>\n

This for our internal self.\u00a0 But how do we escape the confines of our own self?<\/p>\n

In his English version of Psalm 112, Zalman Schachter uses the word \u2018sharing\u2019 as a translation for Tzedaka (rather than charity or righteousness).\u00a0 Sharing with others allows us to escape the confines of our own self.<\/p>\n

To alive means to live in a world in which bad things happen to good people.\u00a0 But imagine what kind of world we\u2019d have \u2013 even with random bad things happening to good people — if everyone were to pay attention to the wonder of the world, to adhere to their own schedule of spiritually enriching activities, and shared the goodness that comes to them.<\/p>\n

Imagine it, and then let us make it so.<\/p>\n

Have an easy fast and G\u2019mar Chatima Tova.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drash for Yom Kippur 5779: The Theology of Buffering by Marc Mangel I have been thinking a lot this past year about why bad things happen to good people and what, if anything, we can do about it. At the start of his book by the same title, Rabbi Harold Kushner tells the story of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":53,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3084","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3084"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3086,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3084\/revisions\/3086"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcmangel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}