Rosh Hashanah 5770 Day 1

Once again we have read one of the more frustrating episodes in the Torah. Yitzchok our Partiarch is born. His older brother Yishmael harrasses him. Sara demands that Hagar and her son Yishmael be banished and G-d tells Abraham to listen to Sara. No thats not the frustrating part but when my wife quotes it it does seem somewhat ... but you've got your own isses to deal with. Back to Yishmael. The boy is sick. Nonetheless, Abraham loads the boy and a few provisions on Hagars shoulders and banishes them. They wander into the wilderness where she abandones the dying child and goes off to grieve. G-d comes to her and says 'don't worry G-d has heard your cry'. Then G-d saves Yishmael. How could he do that? Look at all the pain and suffering from this mad man. Jihadi suicide fanatics that bring turmoil to every country they set foot in. Why did G-d do it. The Torah says Hashem judged Yishmael baasher hu sham. At the moment. At the moment he wasn't evil. He had evil in his future but Hashem deals in the here and now.

For many years I have been bothered by the issue of relating to Hashem when I am not following the Torah. Some months ago I heard a shuir a Torah lecture from Rabbi Reuvain Leuchter which helped me deal with this problem. Although Rabbi Leuchter didn't adress his remaks to Yishmael I applyed his words to Yishmael. I believe that Hashems conduct toward Yishmael holds the key for a most powerful insight into our relationship with G-d and Torah.
In our journey through life we take a Mapquest approach. What is Torah? A set of guidelines and practices for leading the life that G-d wants us to lead. To the extent you get it right you have succeeded or failed. Keep trying. What happens when Mapquest tells me to take a slight turn and I turn more sharply. I find myself off the page. Now what do I do? Get back. How do I do that? You are on your own. Mapquest cannpt help you unless you follow the directions. That is how most people relate to the Torah.
The problem with this view is that the Torah doesn't address where I am now.
Where is the dynamic interaction? The Torah is there , I am here. This approach would mean that most people spend most of their lives with not interaction with Hashem and His Torah.
Some say the dynamic interaction is in the tension of trying to live up to the Torah. "How well did I do"?
That can be very discouraging because I will probably never get it 'right', just a little better. Then hopefully a little better but I am never there. The Torah is still out there and I am over here. I don't think this makes for happy Jews. We want to feel we are with G-d not out there somewhere. So people look around and they see someone else that looks tlike he is following the instructions. Then we become embarrassed because if they can follow the instructions why can't I. Or we become resentful and justify ourselves by saying that that other guy isn't really as close as he looks he is just a phoney. The problem with that approach is that we don't really know for sure and besides who wants to live a life having to put down the other guy just to feel good.


The reason we utilize a Mapquest view of Torah is because that is our general world view. It is called goal setting. We decide or are told where we should be (a goal) and then make a plan to get there. I want to lose 20 lbs. and be able to run three miles. So I have to buy a book on losing weight. Then I have to buy running shoes. of course i have to read up on all of the different types of running shoes. then I have to buy a dog to run along side of me when i am running so that I look good.
The problem with pursuing goals is that I never have succeeded until I reach my goal. Rabbi Leuchter whose lecture I listened to while I was out trying to lose 20 lbs and run three miles point out that we don't find goals in nature. A tree doesn't say I want to reach 60 ft and I'm going to do by adding 4 ft a year. A tree just grows.
What is we could live a life where we felt that every minute Hashem was addresing me not as I should be but as I am right now.
I would like to introduce an entirely different way of looking at the Torah and perhaps at life in general. As of this moment this congregation is abandoning the Mapquest system. We are swithchng to GPS.
When you journey with GPS and you amke a wrong turn he GPS says 'recalculate'. Where are you now ? This is what you need to do next.
Let me make a bold statement.

In the Torah there is no one right way to do anything. Gasp he's gone Conservative on us. What are you talking about that's reform. No it's really Orthodox. Let me explain.
There is no right way for everyone all the time. There is however a right way for you right now where you are. This is not the right way for me or for anyone else in the world. Only for you right now. With all of your complexities and past. With all of your strenghts and weaknesses. The Torah is a dynamic companion that enables each and every person to relate to G-d at all times. How do we do it?
We apply our lives to the Torah to see what we should do next. How do we do that?Firstly we must pay attention to our lives. I used to be a father of children who live with me and a son in law of in laws who lived far away. Now my children live far away and my in laws live with me. I used to be younger, the shul used to be smaller, the economy used to be better. I have to stop and take stock of my reality. Every day. Every minute. For many years I did not rely on the eruv. Not that i did not think it was kosher I am the one who makes it kosher for the community. However due to my studies I prefered if possible to follow an interpetation of the Talmud that would not endorse our eruv. Now my in laws live here and they can only get to shul in a wheel chair. Now it is appropriate for me to utilize the Eruv to carrty on shabbos.
Of course the fear is that when we focus on our reality we become complacent. When I dwell on all of my constraints I start to think I'm doing pretty well. That attitude is still rooted in the old way of thinking that there is an ideal that I have to match up against but I am allowed leniency for extenuating circumstances. I go to court and plead my case. I am found guilty. Really the sentence is 20 yrs in prison but due to extenuating circumstances the judge reduces it to 5 yrs. No the Torah has no general standard. The Torah wants me to input my circumstances and then find out what I need to do next to grow. Not what do you need to do or what are my neighbors doing but what do i need to do. Not I really don't need to do anything right now because G-d understands my situation. You have to do something. Just imagine that you are lost. Would the GPS say 'just stay right here'?
When making my assesment I must include my past and it's challenges. Once there was a giant who terroized Israel. His name was Goliath. For fourty days he stood in front of the Israelite army and blasphemed G-d and no one did a thing about it. They were terrified. Then young David arrived to bring provisions to his brothers in the army. He heard Goliath and said "I am going to get him". David was brought before King Saul. Saul said you are but a lad you can't fight him. David responded "I am a shepherd. Once a lion came and took a sheep. I chased after him and grabbed the sheep out of his mouth. He turned on me to attack me and I killed him. I did the same with a bear." What was David saying? Why didn't he say 'G-d is with me and nothing will stand before me'. What David was saying is 'my past experiences have prepared me for this moment. This is clearly what I am supposed to do right now. This is not what you are supposed to do right now or what i was suopposed to do last year but this is my service right now. We all know how the story ends.
I once visited a women who was very ill in the hospital. She had gone through a painful divorce some time earlier. Now she had a long struggle ahead of her with a debilitating illness. She said I can deal with this. My divorce taught me how to struggle through. I didn't understand it when it was happening but now I do.

It is shabbos afternoon and someone has severe chest pains. The way to observe shabbos for one person is to get in the car and drive to the hospital. For another person it means sitting with the distressed wife and children and calming them. For another it means rushing to shul and reciting psalms and yet for another it means going home and singing shabbos songs at the table with your children. Each one doing what they need to be with G-d on that Shabbos.

The Torah is full of details. Halcha is a myriad of gradations and situations. Lechatchila before the fact, bdiavad after the fact, hefsed merubah substantial financial loss hefsed muat, minimal loss, machmir, stringent , meikel lenient , baal nefesh a person with a strong constitution am haarets an ingnoramus. All of these are factors that the posek halachic decisor takes into account. People ask me all the time what does the halacha say about x? What do you mean? What does it say to me? What does it say to you? Your grandmother in whichita? Another line I hear is "Why can't we do x, Rabbi Chaimyankel says that Rabbi Feinstein said it's OK? OK for who, when, where?
Right and wrong are not the same in Dunwoody as they are in Jerusalem and they are not the same in Dunwoody this year as they were last year. Some Rabbis are viewed as stringent other are lenient. I hope they are neither because both are wrong. Rabbis should never be stringent or lenient they have to be appropriate for the person at the time.
When I was considering becoming involved with Cong. Ariel I had another option available to me which was attractive because it would have not required me to relocate the family. Also it paid which at the time Cong. Ariel did not. I traveled to Baltimore to talk the situation over with two Rabbis whom I greatly revered. One Rabbi told me I could fulfill my goals by pursuing the other option. The other Rabbi said right now you need Ariel. I felt that he was talking to me as I was at the moment. The other Rabbi was talking to a goal. I was deeply touched by by someone who spoke to me where I was at that moment. I still feel his love as I stand before you right now. That is the beauty of GPS Torah. We feel the love of a G-d who speaks to us at the moment.
The rule is I want to grow in all situations but I can only grow if i am shown the appropriate next step for me.
What do I want of you? I want of you what you want of you. You want to feel the gratification that you are serving G-d and that his Torah and only his Torah is enabling that. No standards, no goals. 400 individuals being judged as they are now. Our common denominator is we want to grow and that we turn to the Torah to find out how to do that. Other places that expend much energy making you feel OK where you are or great because of anything you have done. We would like to enable you to find out what you need to do. The greatest joy in life is experiencing the Torah speaking to you. The great big Torah. G-d with so many things on his mind. Iran, the economy, the future of the yellow crested warbler and yet He talks to me. He put that in the Torah just for me. And it's spot on. That's exactly where I am right now. If I fulfill it I am written down in the book of life with the tzaddikim.

A learning impaired boy prepared for his Bar Mitzva. He struggled and mastrered his Haftara. The week before the Bar Mitzva the family found out that the wrong Haftarah had been prepared. What were they to do. The family went to see the venerable sage Rabbi Shlomo Zalmen Auerbach who lived in the Shaarei Chesed section near the center of Jerusalem. Rav Auerbach was a world reknouned posek who passed away some ten years ago. Rav Shlomo Zalmen listened to the situation and paskened that the rules of Haftarah are such that the boy should read the Haftarah that he had prepared. Obviously Rabbi Auerbach took the particular circumstances into consideration. The Torah speaks to the particular situation. That shabbos during the Torah reading there was a stir in the shul. Everyone was amazed to see that the elderly Rabbi Auerbach had walked across town to attend the Bar Mitzva. The father thanked him profusely for coming. Rabbi Auerbach explained his presence. He feared that when the boy got up to read his Haftorah, there would invariably be someone who would protest that he was reading the wrong haftarah. When they would see that Rabbi Auerbach himself is satisfied everyone else would be satisfied also. Rabbi Auerbach listened to the circumstances of the Bar Mitzva boy and told him what the Torah expected of him. Then Rabbi Auerbach listened to the Torah and heard what it expected of him. At that time and place.
As we now turn to the musaf service let us pray that this year we are able to hear the voice of Hashem regardless of what we do, no matter how many times we have to recalculate, He will be there through His Torah to tell us what should be our next move.