As an end of the year message, I tried to summarize the key points of the Sefat Emet's teaching that have challenged and changed my ideas about what Judaism is about.
Because of a pleasant but unexpected circumstances, this week's newsletter with the exception of the word of Torah is unchanged (e.g song and additional reading). As it is I am writing this late Sun. night.
Happy Hanukkah--see you next year
michael
michael (mjstrassfeld@gmail.com)
A word of Torah:
As you may have gathered from reading my newsletter, the Hasidic master, the Sefat Emet, has become an increasingly important source for my thinking about Judaism and the religious life. I think he has two important teachings that are powerful messages for our time.
The first is that Judaism is all about helping us become free to live a life that enables each of us to realize our potential. He stresses that Torah’s purpose is to seek hithadshut—renewal. The response to our ongoing daily challenges and to the lifelong psychological issues of our inner lives is to understand that renewal and change are possible. How? He quotes the daily liturgy that says that God renews each day the work of creation. For him, that means God, as it were, put the possibility of renewal into the DNA of the universe. The Sefat Emet states that each day—each of us like the universe is a new creation—a beriah hadasha. I strive to believe that, but even lacking his optimistic faith—it has changed my notion of what Judaism is about.
The second teaching of his is the understanding of the real nature of the Jewish holidays. I am sure that the Sefat Emet believed the plagues of Egypt actually happened historically. He also taught about the mythic truth of the holidays. It is his teachings that the holidays are still happening that I found so striking and challenging. As I said last week, he posits that the light of Hanukkah is still burning. He teaches that each person faces their own mitzrayim/Egypt, but can go out from those narrow straits if they try. On Shavuot, we are not just listening for the Voice of Sinai calling to us, but he tasks us with finding something new/hadash in Torah. Without that renewal of an ongoing revelation, something critical is missing from a life engaged in Torah.
For him time has fallen in on itself. The holidays are spiritual experiences that occur anytime of the year not just on their dates in the calendar. (At the same time, he also teaches that the dates of the holidays are particularly propitious time to engage in the holiday’s theme e.g. focusing on freedom during Passover).
He suggests that what is or what you can touch is not the essential. Rather what is spiritual, untouchable and ultimately not fully knowable that can make all the difference in our lives and in the world. I believe his basic teaching to his Hasidim and to the Jews of Warsaw is “do the best you can.” In the end for each of us, it is to be able to look back on our lives and say like God did every day of creation—ki tov—What I did was not perfect, but it was as good as it could be.
May it be so in 2025.
