Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Q: How can you be married to the same person for forty years? A: But I haven’t been.    Paolo Cuelho
 
My wife is a very private person, which creates something of a challenge for this column. I hope I don’t betray her trust.
 
It is not quite fifty years since we met. The week I send this out we will celebrate our 47th anniversary. That is all but a tiny fraction of our adult lives, Occasionally, one or the other of us has been traveling for a week or two, but other than that, it is an unusual month when we are not together virtually every day. You would think she would be sick of me by now.
 
I never grow tired of being in her presence. She is simply so interesting, perhaps because she is so interested in just about everything, except maybe my taste for old sitcoms. But when I stumbled across this q-and-a from Brazilian literary giant Paolo Coelho, it made clear exactly what has made our life the adventure it is.
 
We often remind each other how fortunate we are to be married still. It’s not because we haven’t worked at it as much as we have loved at it. Rather, we got married when we were pretty young. Neither of us had finished growing up to the point where we could say with anything other than a loving guess that we knew what we were doing.
 
For many of our early years together, she mostly put my interests and aspirations ahead of her own. I’d like to think I consulted her (I certainly said the words), but the fact is she never put the brakes on anything I suggested for us. She did not set her aspirations completely aside – she managed to complete an MBA while she was pregnant and a new mom, including driving across the entire State of Connecticut twice a week – with a sprained ankle in a boot – to take the classes she needed. She ran a successful business from our house, and though she made the decision to be at home with our eventual three kids, she also managed to build, from scratch, a highly successful career as a freelance communications expert. While many of her friends were trying to write the great American novel or chase the popular magazine bylines, she immersed herself in the field she studied and, to this day, is both fully employed and the captain of her own work ship. I know better than to write about her clients, but our favorite game when we are driving is to see trucks and billboards and hear her say, “They paid me.”
 
Since I retired, I admit to falling back on my original practice of suggesting the direction of our life together. I love being retired, to be honest. It has to do a lot with how naturally lazy I am and even more to do with a romantic memory of the first days of summer vacation when I was a kid. And without the consideration of being responsible to set an example for members of a synagogue or supporters of an organization, it has dawned on me how directive I must have been for most of those fifty years we have been together. Mostly, I spoke. Rarely, I asked.
 
Not so long ago, I proposed the notion that it was time for her to retire, as I did, because it was so much fun, and it would be more fun together. Maybe – just maybe – I said it lot. Finally, without rancor, she asked me to stop pitching retirement. She loves what she does. It still immerses her in interesting things (like mining in Africa and mass transportation in South America) and draws on her natural and acquired insights. Employers compete for her time. Really important people (I am not making that up) rely on her skill to craft their messages.
 
And, God, she loves me so much. I am constantly astonished, as I learn more and more about my less-than-perfect self, just how much she loves me.
 
I wish this for everyone. Here’s the lesson that can make it happen: that person you decided to build a life with yesterday is not the same person today. They’re better. And with any luck, because of them, so are you. 

 
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
It is possible to hold more than one big emotion in your heart at the same time.  Ann Moline
 
Just the other day, we received a 16-second video clip of our 10-month-old granddaughter cracking up into hysterical laughter as her father squirted a tiny amount of food from a tube onto a cracker for her. The sound is so joyous you can’t help but laugh along with her, even if the precipitating cause is as mundane as you can imagine.
 
Around the same time, we were discussing the upcoming first birthday of our grandson which he will never celebrate. That day carries with it a reminder of the most devastating personal tragedy our family has ever known.
 
This past year has been a continuous lesson in the wisdom of Ann Moline’s observation. Three babies were born last summer; two of them survived past their fourth month. The loss was unexpected and statistically near impossible. And it occurred in immediate proximity to the beginning of the catastrophe in Israel. Meanwhile, two other babies grew and thrived and filled the lives of those around them. As one of them sprouted flaming red hair and the other managed to climb out of his crib before anyone knew he could pull himself up, we delighted in new teeth, new sounds, new pictures. Each milestone was both celebration and reminder.  
 
I will acknowledge that I worried about how to open my heart completely to both sets of emotions simultaneously. It’s not like our family had separate gathering times for some of us who were happy and some of us who were sad. Its not like we could predict when a wave of grief would wash ashore or when a little one would dissolve into unbridled cackling. It’s not like we could choose among our children in these moments any more than in the decades past.
 
But during one of the many hours that Ann and I sat alone together, absorbed in the challenge of navigating the unfamiliar landscape, she shared this profound truth she had discovered, however tentatively at first. The heart – not the physical muscle, of course, but the space we designate to warm and break and soar and ache – will make room for all of it. A heart awash in joy will not exclude grief. A heart in pieces is yet expansive enough for exhilaration. It is not a contest for real estate, even when the intensity of one seems all-consuming.
 
It was counterintuitive at the time, of course. Every smile felt like a betrayal of mourning, every tear felt like a repudiation of joy. When we surrendered to delight, were we forgetting the tragedy? When we were awash with tears, were we dismissing the laughter? I do not refer here to being appropriately behaved in any given moment. This challenge is, to use a pretentious word, existential. Without this insight, we would have been resigned to a life of guilt.
 
Inadvertently, I came across what some of my clergy friends call Scriptural support for this lesson. The memorial service conducted in synagogue on designated holidays often begins with a verse from Psalm 8: God, what is a human being that you take heed, a mere mortal yet you take note? (Apologies for an awkward translation – it is VERY gender bound in Hebrew.)  It is a peculiar choice, given its context. Psalm 8 is a celebration of life; this verse is preceded by the power of a baby’s voice to attest to creation and followed by a Disney-like fluttering and scampering of woodland creatures. Anyone who encounters this verse in its Biblical context finds it celebratory. Anyone who encounters it in its liturgical context finds it miserable. Yet, there it is, like the heart, holding more than one big emotion at the same time.
 
My illustration of this bit of wisdom is, I expect, sympathetic. Not every big emotion is worth embracing. But I hope it is clear that when one of those other emotions leads to despair, depression, or God forbid, hatred, the heart is big enough to make room for plenty of love.

 
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Grief is shared; the journey is personal.    Ann Moline
 
The people I love have had more than their share of grief this year. Looking at the concentric circles of family, friends, and acquaintances, I am stunned by just how crowded the road of bereavement has become. I have shared before that our sweet baby grandson Oliver succumbed to complications of necessary surgery just hours before the murderous atrocities that befell Israelis at home and on holiday, which in turn preceded the deaths of other civilians cynically used as human shields to protect the terrorist perpetrators.
 
(Please don’t argue my terminology. Frame it as you choose or choose to stop reading.)
 
Of course, death and other kinds of loss are part and parcel of living, so each of us must find a way to travel that road from devastation to recovery. The circumstances of any death resonate differently for each survivor. For some it is profound sadness, for others, white-hot anger. The “stages of grief” include denial and bargaining and guilt and even some level of acceptance and rationalization. All of them flow from a common point: any death reminds us that we are not in control of our world. And, wow, do we want to be.
 
It has been ten years since I retired from the day-to-day responsibilities of serving a synagogue as the rabbi, and during the thirty-five years preceding I walked the path of bereavement with hundreds, maybe thousands of individuals. The very first funeral for which I was individually responsible was for a twenty-one-year-old son of strangers who became immediate confidants. I was clueless about guiding them, filled with book-learning and a ritual checklist. They had lost their golden child. I wasn’t much older myself, yet they relied on me to show them how to continue on the path their child would never again travel. They were not people of faith when their son got sick, and though they fervently prayed for his recovery, they had little belief that they could cajole God into a miracle. The parts of their souls that were bound up with his were filled with the magnitude of their loss; they joined my synagogue (the first to which they ever belonged) because they felt I represented the continuation of their son’s legacy. When my career took me to another city, they retreated to the loneliness of his empty bedroom.
 
Many years later, I shepherded another stranger through the decline and death of her beloved father who had lived in my community for his entire adult life, more than sixty years. By then, I was more familiar with the nuance of individual grief. But I was unprepared when she informed me the day before the funeral that the burial would be in a different city, and I was unable to officiate. Her fury was uncontained; she had been abandoned twice in two days. My attentions and sympathies were irrelevant. I never heard from her again – though the leadership of the synagogue did, at volume.
 
I have navigated my own losses along with others’ whom I have accompanied. The more times I have done so, the fewer pieces of advice I offer, even when asked. For all the fellow travelers on the journey through grief, it is only the grief we share. I have tried not to make the mistake of persuading myself – let alone them – that I know how they feel.
 
This past fall that road was more crowded than I ever recall. Other tragedies have produced multiple casualties and other casualties have been just as close to me. But somehow the personal nature of the grief for those around me has generated an intensity that has demanded amplification rather than empathy. We are all grieving, but the grief is not enough this time. We are looking for validation for our reactions, as if the sadness is not sad enough or the anger is not angry enough without the tears and shouts of those around us. And sometimes, God help us, we want others to suffer as we are, as if it will bring some measure of comfort and satisfaction.
 
Here’s the truth: grief is shared, but the journey is personal. And by personal, I mean lonely. We gain nothing by pretending otherwise, and when we do, we squander the opportunity for comfort, however small, that sharing our grief provides. 

               
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Hope is an act of will.  Sen. Tina Smith
 
Emily Dickenson was the one who wrote that hope is a thing with feathers. She compared hope to a bird, perched on the soul of the human being, ready to flutter even at the darkest moment. Prof. Alan Mittleman of the Jewish Theological Seminary made the case that hope is a virtue – something morally admirable, commendable, excellent. And Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota suggests that hope is an act of will.
 
They all have something in common. For all three, hope is something very different than an emotion. We use some of the same language to describe the experience of hope as we do the experience of love, anger, happiness, and distress, that is, the language of feeling. But while emotions are most often the result of a combination of inclinations and hormones, hope, accurately described, is a decision.
 
Maybe half-way into my career as a rabbi, I realized that I needed to stop delivering sermons I thought the people in front of me ought to hear and concentrate instead on the messages I needed to hear. I enjoyed writing and delivering those messages much more, and I had my favorites. One of them was about hope. Hope was defined as the expectation that things would get better. That’s not the same as faith, which is more certain, nor is it the same as knowledge, which is more demonstrable. Faith is much closer to emotion, and knowledge requires nothing more than acknowledgment. But having hope is a choice, and Prof. Mittleman argues that a virtuous life includes a commitment to choose hope.
 
Because I have faith in God (a certainty without proof), I attribute virtue to a divine source. And because I am committed to knowledge (proof independent of certainty), I am skeptical of that which is not empirical – that is, I have doubt. Were I to face a demand that I choose between the two, I could not. And that is where that thing with feathers hops out of slumber and flutters around my soul. It is possible to have doubt and at the same time hold to the expectation that something better is ahead, because that is what faith demands.
 
The choice to hope is a hard one and, too often, is a choice against likelihood. Just before the elections of 2016, I tried to reassure a frantic friend that if the candidate she feared won, “the Republic will still stand.” I can’t say I was sanguine about it, but I hoped (expected that things would get better) that grown-ups in the room and the weight of responsibility would more than balance what she most dreaded. Then, my hope was bolstered by faith. Today, my hope is an act of will.
 
It is both comfort and challenge to me that the national anthem of the State of Israel is entitled “The Hope.” Its most powerful and poignant verse exclaims, in refutation of Ezekiel’s description of the dried bones in the valley, “our hope is not lost.” And though the national sovereignty is what that hope is about (which is pretty typical for a national anthem, I should think), the hope is not about power as much as it is about freedom. And as I expect everyone who is not in denial knows, unless everyone is free, no one is really free.
 
I am not hearing such hope resonate in the slogans of Israel’s opponents – neither their enemy combatants nor those who sympathize with the civilian victims of this conflict. The expectation that things will get better, whether the result of a divine mandate or of an appreciation of facts in evidence, is not the domain only of one side in a disagreement, no matter how profound. Abandoning hope results in tacit permission to excuse atrocity because, if things will not get better, it is inevitable.
 
The notion that hope is a choice is most certainly easier to accept by those in a position of privilege than by those surrounded by suffering. But virtuousness is not a matter of privilege; to the contrary, there is no trick to virtue when life is easy. The soul that is distressed by others’ fear and suffering when life is good is the one in touch with that thing with feathers that awaits within.
 
Hope is an act of will. May it be your will.

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
But that would be one thought too many.  Bernard Williams
 
I always hate finding out something I should have known a long time ago but didn’t. My life would be much easier if I knew then what I know now. And I am not dismissing the value of experience, just my general laziness or forgetfulness resulting in unnecessary ignorance.
 
So, this quotation requires some background. As you probably know, Bernard Williams was a highly influential English philosopher of the last century. He was a contrarian when it came to some of the popular moral philosophical systems of the time, arguing that people do not make moral decisions in categories. Rather, they make them based in their lived experiences and values. He believed that moral philosophy (especially Kantian and utilitarian – look ‘em up) was boring. He dreamed of “a philosophy that would be thoroughly truthful and honestly helpful.”
 
Famously (well, not famously enough for me), he described a man standing on the shore seeing two women drowning. He can only save one. One is his wife, and the other is not. The moral philosophers of his day would have categories of consideration about which woman to save. Williams correctly insists that the guy is going to save his wife. The man could give some thought as to the moral categories that might govern his choice, “but that would be one thought too many.”
 
And, says Williams, that is the morally correct choice.
 
Williams was certainly not the precursor of the permissive culture that promoted slogans like “if it feels good, do it,” but he did validate the notion that lived experience and cultural conditioning would reliably lead to morally right decisions. Now, please don’t try to engage me on how awful culture and bad experience could lead to reprehensible behavior – save it for Nietzsche. Williams instead voted for the wisdom of considering that people who want to do the right thing should be encouraged to include their gut feeling in considering their actions (especially in an emergent moment like the example above) and not some categorical imperative.
 
I am looking around at a world that seems to be filled with bad choices and worse choices. You can fill in your own examples – political contests, armed conflicts, AI technology, crypto, Major League Baseball’s intention to expand again. Name your poison. Not everybody wants to do the right thing (or we wouldn’t have all these bad choices), but most people do. Applying Kantian or utilitarian approaches to decision-making, even if it were possible for the average schmo like me, would not necessarily solve anything and would, in any event, externalize the process in a way that would be grossly unsatisfying (not necessarily a bad thing) and, except for Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, not validate personal moral agency and the responsibility to exercise it.
 
Sometimes – maybe a lot of the time – we find ourselves standing on the shore looking out at two or more people in distress. A right decision about whom to save seems obvious, even if it is not the same decision that seems right to the person standing next to us. We could argue about the principles and hierarchies and categories about the correct course of action, but a discourse that results in universal catastrophe in the name of intellectual integrity is the only unquestionably wrong course of action.
 
I can say without equivocation that if I were on the shore or, all the more so, hoping to be saved by someone who loves me, I know there might be plenty of philosophical reasons to have second thoughts. But that would be one thought too many.
 

 
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
“Silence is so accurate.”   Mark Rothko
 
I recognize that absurdity of writing a lot of words about this quotation. Perhaps as a compromise, if you ordinarily read my columns aloud, you will only move your lips this time.
 
Mark Rothko was, of course, the abstract painter with the signature style. As he transitioned from more “traditional” representations in his art into the use of juxtaposed color, he transitioned away from titling his paintings. By the 1950s and until his death in 1970, his paintings had only numbers. When asked why he stopped giving his works titles, he responded with the words above: Silence is so accurate.
 
You might find that observation profound or you might find it a cheat for someone who just got lazy. But I aggressively take it out of context.
 
We live in a society that demands words. At the same time, we treat words the way that Lewis Carroll satirized them, suggesting that each one means exactly what we intend it to mean. The fungibility of that meaning can render words insignificant – ironically, the exact opposite of what we set out to do with them. Or, in a universe of discourse that assigns authority to every listener and not only to the speaker, words wind up creating confusion rather than clarity.
 
For example, I have an acquaintance who refuses to utter the words “I’m sorry.” This person will readily admit to having made mistakes, often with a much more profane phrase, and if challenged on the actions in question will acknowledge that they were wrong. Yet, faced with the challenge actually to apologize, the individual will insist that “it’s covered” by the acknowledgment of culpability.
 
For another example, not so long ago, I challenged a college student on the use of the word “genocide.” (You can guess the context.) I said, “That word has a specific meaning, and to use it inaccurately belittles the crime and diminishes the actual victims.” The student responded, “The meanings of words change.”
 
And for a third example, one that is very different, is the challenge of consoling someone who is bereaved. Afraid to say nothing, we sometimes insist there is nothing to say. Well, there is indeed always something (appropriate) that could be said, but if there is indeed nothing to say, then silence is so accurate.
 
Here is what is true: when an artist titles a work, they create it twice – once, the work itself (painting, poem, or composition) and the second time, the title they choose. Words wind up being an obstacle to experience if the work is to speak for itself. A confident artist like Mark Rothko will allow the original piece to speak for itself. That is not to disparage the artist who titles a work as a means of communicating inspiration or intention. Rather, Rothko’s silence communicates his intention that his title is accurate, and very much in the eye of the beholder.
 
Does all of this make sense? Maybe, maybe not. But after some five hundred words, I think I will take my own advice and stop making words. After all, silence is so accurate.

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn’t.   Variously attributed.
 
I dedicate these words to the estimable Rabbi Reuven Taff (aka Bobby) whom I subjected to continual disdain for his virtuosity on the squeezebox.  I meant no harm, except maybe to the accordion. (Also, I exempt Randy Stein who limits himself to the English Concertina, which I find more tolerable.)
 
Lots of people have said some version of this quotation. Mark Twain allegedly said it about the banjo. Oscar Wilde may have said it about the cornet. The piano, saxophone, and bagpipes have also been so derided. But Steve Martin, Ralph Kramden, and others have at least momentarily redeemed previously reviled instruments. Yet, as Robert Klein once said, the only excuse for an accordion is in a prisoner of war camp.
 
Please allow me a very important distinction here. Some very fine people play the accordion. In addition to Rabbi Taff, I know other rabbis, educators, childhood friends, Weird Al Yankovic, and Myron Floren to be people of stellar reputations, compassion, and delightful company. But for whatever reason, they were drawn to the accordion, on which every song ever played sounds like “Variations on Lady of Spain.”
 
The polka, a joyous cultural icon, relies on the accordion for its recognizable rhythm and bounce, which I find tolerable only when almost drowned out by the woodwinds and vocals that enhance it. Folk dancing at summer camp, a favorite of those who attend (actually, more usually the hard-core staff), might not exist if it weren’t for the portable music box that was necessary before the availability of battery-powered playback devices.
 
Why is the accordion the source of such disdain? Perhaps it is the way it makes its sounds – air squeezed through a sort of bellows, like its thoroughly intolerable cousin, the bagpipes (which makes every song sound like “Variations on Loch Lomond”).  Maybe it is because the person straps one of these beauties on their chest suddenly looks like the guy you call the bomb squad about. Maybe because when the air is let out it goes flaccid with a discordant sigh of disappointment (make of that what you will).  I don’t know.
 
Victor Borge similarly dismissed the viola, claiming its only advantage is that its size made it burn longer than a violin. But you can chalk up viola jokes to snooty violinists who nonetheless rely on the viola to enhance their own performances – maybe a little jealousy there. No pianist, however, envies the accordion, except perhaps for its portability. Still, they mostly would rather just do without.
 
So this pithy observation, rooted in the decidedly antiquated notion of what it means to be a gentleman, will reinforce the bias of those who agree with it (like me) and insult those who do not, especially if they play what Walter Kuerth called “the happiest instrument in the world.” There will almost certainly be some reader who will take such umbrage that I will receive a nastygram far more vituperative than when I have blasphemed or deconstructed a cultural icon.  Maybe it will outdo even some of the response I got years ago when quoting John F. Kennedy’s claim about our nation’s capital ("Somebody once said that Washington was a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency,").
 
But, in the end, I myself will continue to admire the consideration of the person who knows how to play the accordion but doesn’t.

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
I’d rather have a memory than a dream.    Leonard Feather and Bob Russell
 
Sarah Vaughn sang the ballad with this name (and first lyric). It was written by two Jewish guys who went on to have better careers than this modest song might have predicted. (Feather was a renown jazz critic and Russell eventually wrote “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” for the Hollies.) I never would have heard of the song were it not for baseball legend Buck O’Neill, but that’s a story for another column.
 
The song is about love, as you might expect. I’d rather have a memory than a dream; I’d rather have your kisses than your smiles. And so forth. As romantic as the sentiments are, they stand in contrast to other aspirations that are familiar to me.
 
A dream, after all, looks forward. A memory is, by definition, in the past. Anyone who has nurtured a dream knows how idealized it can become, especially if the dreamer holds it, unrealized, for a long time. As a Zionist (BTW, if you object to that word, get over it), I know that the dream of thousands of years for Jews to be a free people in their own land found its most pithy expression in the words attributed to the man credited with founding modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl.  In the 19th century, he called on activists to believe, im tirtzu ein zo aggadah. The highly interpretive translation into English is commonly “if you will it, it is no dream.”
 
And so dream they did. The socialists dreamed of a socialist state. The militarists dreamed of a power state. The religious folk (who allowed themselves to dream) dreamed of a spiritual heaven on earth. And so forth and so on. As long as there was only the dream, the homeland for the long-dispossessed Jewish people was perfect.
 
But we all know that even at Disneyworld, even after wishing upon a star, dreams never exactly come true. The State of Israel has as imperfect a reality as any other nation, past or present or likely future. There are aspects of the variegated society that are beyond the fulfillment of wildest dreams. There are aspects that are closer to nightmares. And then there is the complicated question of ensuring the fulfillment of the dreams of the Palestinian people (BTW, if you object to that notion, get over it) who lay claim to the same land and human rights.
 
The person who claims “I’d rather have a memory than a dream” lives in a moment after awakening and before fulfillment. They live in that moment between the smile and the kiss, when everything is possible, and nothing has yet happened. In other words, they live in the present, romanticizing the aspiration of Feather and Russell. (In fact, when I get around to my Buck O’Neill quotation, you will see that even he messed with Mr. In-between.)
 
It's the sad person who gives up the dream once they have the memory. There is only heartbreak in demanding the perfect in an imperfect world. The word translated as “dream” in Herzl’s formulation really means “story,” a Talmudic kind of story that is true even if it is not accurate. It is meant to teach a lesson, to inspire, to illustrate something more important that plain reportage. Herzl, long before “Man of La Mancha,” was encouraging us to dream the possible dream.
 
I will take one moment to contradict myself before signing off. I recently had the privilege to experience the total eclipse of the sun from a rooftop in Cleveland, Ohio. Since I can remember, I have dreamed of seeing the moment of totality, the corona blazing around the darkened moon, the weather changing suddenly, the animals in momentary confusion. At 71, I figured this was one item on my bucket list that I would leave behind. But I found a flight and a place to stay, the skies were clear (enough), and my dream of more than sixty years came true. It was better than I could have imagined. I guess in this case, I’d rather have a memory than a dream.

Wisdom Wherever You Find It   
 
Don’t doubt the grace.        Anonymous Catholic priest
 
I am not a Roman Catholic, so I don’t even remember who shared this pithy admonition with me. The context (which I had the good sense to jot down) was not anything I experienced: a penitent confessed a second time to a sin for which they had already sought forgiveness. The priest shared these four words and sent the person on their way.
 
I love the notion that once a person genuinely repents, the forgiveness they receive is irrevocable. In the case of the Catholic confessional, the priest serves as the conduit of promised forgiveness from God. You can accept that theology and ritual or not, but the point is not the authority of the interaction to absolve. Every religion has its ritual of repentance and forgiveness, and every culture as well. If the offending party and offended party are both sincere, what matters is that sincerity.
 
But grace. Grace is a quality I only came to appreciate as I got older, not because I never heard the word, but because I didn’t understand its power. For the human heart, grace is not a quality of elegance, nor is it a prayer over food. Grace is the unforced and unearned gift of compassionate love. Grace is an act of generosity so powerful and unexpected that it provokes tears of gratitude.
 
Grace is not always about forgiveness, but I think it is most magnificent when it is. We were each graced with life. Most everyone has been graced by love, certainly by parents and with some serendipity by a life partner. The injury we do to ourselves when we act wrongly, however, requires something more than restitution to make it go away. That’s when grace is so profoundly important; it can be bestowed only by someone who need not do so. No wonder people of faith (like me) turn to God as the source of grace.
 
There is an addition to weekday worship in Jewish liturgy that is all about grace. It is called “tachanun,” which has buried in its grammatical construct the word “chen” (with a phlegmatic “ch”). It begins with all sorts of confessions of personal inadequacy, including bone-shaking trepidation (see Psalm 6), and pleads for collective and personal reassurance. I guess it is an irony that grace cannot be solicited, really – somehow the freewill nature of it is what makes it grace and not a favor or wish fulfillment. Tachanun is regularly omitted, sometimes by occasions on the calendar (like celebrations) and sometimes by people’s impatience with the length of worship (like me). I think that officially and personally, we do not take the priest’s advice (yeah, I recognize the absurdity of that assertion), and we doubt the grace.
 
But also, I think that grace strikes us as counterintuitive, especially in a society like ours that places so much emphasis on transactions. How can you receive anything of value if you offer nothing in return? The further along we travel on the road of life, the farther away we get from the act of grace that placed us here, and the more we seek to assert control over the blessings and misfortunes that are the signposts on that road. Our approach is reactive, even in our pleas for grace. And grace is anything but.
 
I often hear Christians talk about living in a state of grace because of their acceptance of the basic tenet of their faith. I cannot recall every hearing such a claim by a Jew, except maybe in the archaic Hebrew of the liturgy. It seems to me that the importance of grace, however, is not so much receiving it as it is opening our eyes and our hearts to the capacity to provide it. To my mind, it is only God who can provide an unending stream of grace. We mortals are endowed with such complicated hearts that a few doses of hatred, envy, and grudge-holding, to name a few, are inevitable.
 
Yet even acknowledging that we can act with grace toward each other liberates us from the presumption of inevitability of our own sometime lack of lovableness. Watching for an opportunity to act with grace – not elegance, not performative thanksgiving, but rather the unforced and unearned gift of compassionate love – can bring real-world salvation to a wretch like me or you. And if you can offer it, then you can accept it.
 
And you never need doubt it.