Keeping It Lit

In Jerusalem there’s a special zoo which contains animals mentioned in the Bible.  There’s a story told about a particular cage in the zoo which illustrates the verse, “and the wolf shall lie down with the lamb.”  (Isaiah 11:6) The purpose of the verse is to illustrates the end of days, when peace will reign even in the animal kingdom.  So the cage featured a wolf and a lamb, getting along splendidly.

A visitor was standing in front of the cage with his small children.  Noticed that the lamb is hanging out, looking content.  And the wolf is hanging out, looking content.  He saw one of the zookeepers and said, “I understand the verse, but we’re not living in the end of days.  How do you get the wolf and the lamb to hang out so peacefully in real life?”  The zookeeper said, “It’s very simple.  Every morning we put in a new lamb.”  

The joke is kind of edgy.  But it connects, in my mind, to a point the Torah makes, much more positively, about vigilance.

The Torah teaches us about how the priests, the Kohanim, needed to light the lamp in the ancient, portable sanctuary, the mishkan.

The Torah uses the word tamid, which means ongoing, continuous.  At first it might seem that the Kohanim lit the light and it just burned continuously by itself.  But the Torah goes on to say that the Kohanim needed to light it me’erev ad erev, every night.  In order for it to be tamid, continuous, they needed to light it every night.

Even in the mishkan, that special place where God’s presence was supposed to be felt most keenly, the light didn’t stay magically lit.  Every night, the priests needed le’halaot, to raise it up, to keep it going.

I want to talk about vigilance.

I want to take us to a few places to illustrate just how important it is that we be vigilant about the things that matter most.  

So a suburb in Cleveland is now the new Columbine.  At a High School in Chardon, Ohio, TJ Lane killed 3 students and wounded several others. The community is shocked, devastated.  

Turns out, Lane’s father has a history of violent behavior and served time in prison.  TJ Lane himself landed in custody at 15 after appearing before juvenile court.

At this point, no one knows for sure what motivated Lane to kill these students.  Apparently one victim was the current boyfriend of Lane’s former girlfriend.

But the deeper issue here, I believe, is that we have to be vigilant when it comes to children at risk of hurting themselves or others.  High Schools are complicated, all kinds of things going on beneath the surface.

We cannot realistically expect the school to catch everything, but the more safeguards in place, the better.  

Was anyone keeping track of this boy who was estranged from his imprisoned father, brought before juvenile court, kept to himself, dressed “Goth” for awhile?   No guarantees, but the more eyes looking out, the better.

The TV series Glee deals with teens at a school in, well – Ohio, actually.  A recent episode featured a boy who tried to kill himself after he was taunted for being gay.  

At the end of the episode, another student tried to help him to see into the future, to imagine himself with an exciting career and a loving partner so that he would have the strength to get through the often ruthless challenges of high school knowing that life would get better.

If the show prevented any teen struggling over sexual orientation from harming or killing himself or herself by helping such teens to imagine a life of laughter and love, then it did a mitzvah.  Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, is a mitzvah.  

Perhaps more common and equally life-saving was the end of the show where a young woman was texting while driving and the show ended with a truck ramming into her car.

If that scene stops any teen from texting while driving, you know – a quick text while you’re slowing down to turn a corner or stopped at a stopsign – it will have done a mitzvah.

While the media can have negative influence, it can also be positive.  It’s part of an arsenal of vigilance that includes a watchful school administration, faculty and peer networks, watchful neighbors, and watchful family.

Not all violence directed at self or others will be prevented but all should not become the enemy of some.   The stronger the vigilant network, the better the outcome for all young men and women as they continue their fragile journeys toward adult life.

Teens especially need appropriate guidance and support.  Their passions and doubts are often accompanied by judgment that is not fully crystallized.

I want to say a word to parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles.  I don’t think we should micro-manage our children and grandchildren, but at the same time, we need to be present.  We need to state our opinions.  We need to be supportive, but also unafraid to express our views.

If you haven’t seen Downton Abbey, you should.  It’s a TV drama about an aristocratic British family, the servants who work for them, and the progression of their lives before, during and after World War I.

 

Anyway – to cut to the chase.  Adults get involved in the lives of their children and grandchildren – they are not shy about expressing their opinions.  If you want to see the consummate involvement – sometimes subtle, sometimes direct, often funny, almost always with good intentions – you need to watch the scenes with the Dowager Countess played by Maggie Smith.  Phenomenal.

Meddling can backfire, of course.  But the right amount, done with subtlety and sincerity, can help immeasurably.

The stakes are too high for us to sit back and simply let nature take its course.   Perhaps I’m growing old-fashioned in my middle age (I hope it’s the middle) but I think we need to be cleverly vigilant.  We need to meddle appropriately.

Who knows, said Mordecai to Esther, perhaps this is the reason why you became queen?  Perhaps, just perhaps, you are here at this moment so that you can step forward and save an entire people, our people.

Mordecai’s vigilance didn’t start there.  The man was ambitious.  He hung out in the king’s palace, he reported two would-be assassins, he encouraged Esther to apply for a vacant position. 

In a recent session I observed, Rabbi David Silber pointed out many parallels between the story of Esther and the story of Joseph.   Like Mordecai and Esther, Joseph is living outside of Israel, engrossed in a different culture, in his case the Egyptian culture, defending against life’s twists and turns. 

He, too, is ambitious.   He, too, is vigilant.

Both stories are Exile stories and that’s not coincidental.  When we are in Exile, we only go so far.  Joseph becomes second in command to Pharaoh, he doesn’t become Pharaoh.  Mordecai becomes second in command to the king; he doesn’t become the king.

I believe the Torah wants us to understand that life is lived in Exile.  It starts with leaving Gan Eden, the garden of Eden.

Once we leave Eden, there are no more guarantees that our needs will be cared for.  We leave Eden and we have to work hard and contend with life’s raw challenges.

Whether we are in Egypt or Persia or Great Neck or even Israel, we need to be vigilant, to help ourselves and the people around us to craft decent, honorable, productive lives.

 

In the post-Eden, pre-Messianic flight pattern that we call life, where we often feel exiled, alientated, frustrated and confused, wolfs eat lambs unless the lambs are protected and we need to be the protectors.

In the pre-Messianic flight pattern we call life, the light burns tamid – continuously - only because we keep rekindling it.  It’s not magic.  It doesn’t happen by itself.

We do it when we protect, as needed, and challenge, as needed.   When children and adults of all shapes and sizes feel their anger and yearning and hope are not being ignored.

If our lives aren’t the Garden of Eden, and whose is?  The best we can do is be vigilant.  We need to learn how to walk through the wilderness with a portable ner tamid, a  light that burns brightly because, and only because, we are vigilant enough to keep it lit.  

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on March 3, 2012