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So I wisely walked away from my office (without even pitching my fancy new mouse through the window) and picked up a holy book. I finished the last couple of pages of On the Road with Rabbi Steinsaltz, by the lovely Arthur Kurzweil, which I've been enjoying immensely this week.
Until I got to the end, that is. Hopefully you are acquainted with the great contemporary rabbi, Adin Steinsaltz -- indefatigable teacher and writer who has done as much as anyone, perhaps, to make deep, traditional Judaism available to our generation. You may have seen the Steinsaltz Talmud, a tour de force in which Rabbi Steinsaltz is translating and annotating the Talmud, such that a non-Hebrew-speaking student, with limited text background, can actually penetrate the pages (not without working pretty hard at it, as Mina, Binah Polay and I can attest.) Or you may have read The Thirteen Petaled Rose, his great work of theology and mysticism. Arthur Kurzweil says he has read this book over 100 times and considers it the most important book he has ever read.
Kurzweil read an interview with Rabbi Steinsaltz many years ago now in a magazine and was immediately moved. So he called up the rabbi's office and said he would volunteer to do anything Rabbi Steinsaltz needed. "Like what?" asked the person at the other end. "I would even go to the airport at 5 AM to pick him up." "Really? How about tomorrow morning?" So Kurzweil became the Rabbi's state-side driver, and he has written a wonderful book about their conversations over the last quarter-century.
I like the book so much. I admire their relationship. I am in awe of Rabbi Steinsaltz's wisdom, clarity and personal presence. And I have a great sweet spot for Arthur Kurzweil from a couple of times I've had the pleasure of learning from him at a CAJE conference. I love many details of their interactions.
Then today I got to the end, where Kurzweil tells a story of his own, a story that an elderly cousin of his, a survivor of Auschwitz, told him on a street in Jerusalem. It's meant to be a climax of a sort, I think -- it's a story I've heard before in various forms. In part of it, Rabbi Eliezer asks to follow Elijah the Prophet around on his rounds. They go to the home of a poor but generous couple, whose only possession is their cow. The couple hosts them with all that they can provide, and in the morning Elijah kills the cow. Then on to the rich guy's house and so on. Finally Rabbi Eliezer can't contain himself and says, "How could you do that to that nice couple's only cow???" And Elijah explains that it was actually the woman of the house who was scheduled to die that day. But Elijah was able to work out some kind of cosmic exchange, and the cow died instead.
This is an example of "gam zu l'tovah," "this too is for the good" -- "the perspective," says Kurzweil, "that traditional Jewish wisdom urges us to cultivate: despite appearances, despite all of life's tragedies, nothing happens in the world that God does not allow to happen. Thus in some inexplicable way everything is ultimately for the best."
Now wait a second, I think... Why kill the cow? Why not just arrange to have death take the day off for once? And really, why is evading death such a great thing anyhow? How do we know that the poor woman won't have a harder, worse death later on? And what about the cow's own self? What would the cow have to say about this quid pro quo?
Rabbi Steinsaltz himself tells a story that I like better. There was a Rabbi Meilish in Warsaw, a rich merchant as well as a rabbi. One day his boats filled with timber sank in the river. The news reached his disciples before it reached Rabbi Meilish. So one of his students set about to let him know the bad news:
"The student picked a passage in the Talmud and came to the Rabbi with his question: 'It says that one has to thank God with blessings for the evil that befalls one as well as for the good. How can this be done?'
Rabbi Meilish explained how this could be understood theologically, and then the student said, "If you, Rabbi, learned that all your boats with timber had sunk, would you be happy?" The rabbi said, "Yes, of course."
"' Well,' said the student, 'all your boats are gone!'
"When he heard this, the rabbi fainted. When he came to, he said, 'Now I must confess I no longer understand this Talmud passage.'"
I guess I can sort of relate to Rabbi Meilish's response here. Rabbi Steinsaltz goes on to explicate his own complex and beautiful theology about "gam zu l'tovah," which of course makes me want to know about the boats which have sunk in his own life to help him understand the passage.
Which leads me around to the much smaller conclusion that it is very hard to explain why Elijah the Prophet actually does what he does. But we may have some small degree of capacity to see life's difficulties in one light or another. And even these bits of understanding can get confounded when our cows die and our boats sink -- so that there is a constant conversation in our lives between what we think is true when the sailing is smooth and what we think when we are sinking.
I want very much to have a good spirit about difficult things that happen. I don't know that I believe that "despite appearances, despite all of life's tragedies, nothing happens in the world that God does not allow to happen." I'm pretty sure that boats can sink and cows die without any divine intervention. I'm sort of naturalistic on that front.
But, without intending in any way to make light of anyone's sorrows, even those of Rabbi Meilish or the poor couple with their cow, I decided to try taking a very small piece of adversity -- my cannibalistic computer -- as, not a sign, really, but an invitation to take another path, to let things flow in a different direction than the one I had planned. And mostly I've kind of been laughing about it all this morning, having fun, thinking about all of you, carrying you with me down my little river. Dare I even say that it was up to me, not God -- or, better, God in me -- to decide whether this little misfortune was going to be adverse or "l'tovah," for the good? I hope that you are well, that your cows and your boats are well too, and that, whatever comes your way, it will all be for the good.
© 2008 Rabbi Margaret Holub
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Updated 06/23/2008 (rge)