Looking for Something

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you for joining me. I'm Rabbi David Lyon from
Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. There's a story that's told
about a boy who had been given money to buy
things at the grocery store. On the way he lost
the money. Someone saw him looking for the money. Did
you lose it here? The man asked, No, said the boy.

(00:22):
Then why are you looking here? Ah, said the boy.
Where I lost the money? It is dark, but here
it is light. Now. I know you're confused. You thought
you'd understand the ending of the brief story. But this
is a story from a collection called The Wise Men
of Relm. It's an oxymoron because it's a collection of

(00:44):
Jewish folk stories about the generally dim witted people of Helm,
a fictitious village of the men of Helm, but whose
dim wittedness ironically sheds light on life's peculiar times. The
story appeared in a recent article that I read that
I lifted the story not the article to share with you,
because it prompted other thoughts that very often Helm stories

(01:08):
do produce. In this particular story, the boy is wise
enough to know that he can't find anything in the dark,
so he seeks out light to start his search. Now,
everyone else knows that he won't find his lost money
where he didn't lose it. But everyone also knows that
searching in the dark for something that's lost is foolish too. Oddly,

(01:29):
this Helm story is already beginning to make some sense.
It's possible that from time to time we're all guilty
of being like the people of Helm. Despite being smarter
than the average person in Helm, we've also looked in
vain in the dark for something we've lost. For example,
some time ago, I remember a college student who visited

(01:51):
with me. His parents urged him to share his feelings
about being lost and unfocused. He told me that after college,
his fraternity brothers were finding their own way on their
career paths. Some already had good jobs, a couple of
them were married, and he spoke about old times in
the fraternity. When I asked him what he felt was
missing from his own life, he came right to it.

(02:14):
He was clinging to the past. When everyone else moved
on from college days, in his heart and mind, he
remained behind. It was time for him to move on too,
and it wasn't too late. In the light of self awareness,
he found what he couldn't find in the darkness of
the past. In the light, he began to talk about
his passions and interest. He could even revisit his friends,

(02:37):
even if the old times were gone. Some time later,
his mother called to tell me that therapists couldn't do
what we accomplished in about an hour. I deserve no
credit except to acknowledge the unwitting wisdom of the Helmites,
who knew that even if you can't find what you
lost in the dark, whatever you needed to find would
only be available in the light. Another example. All year long,

(03:02):
the Jewish community has been lost in the horror of
October seventh, and so have many others, and the agonizing
rise and anti Semitism that has particularly plagued the Jewish world.
It's been one of the darkest places for sure. Some
people continue to remain in the dark, literally and figuratively.
Their routlook is of bleak and their resources are meager.

(03:25):
For them. Every day is an agonizing reminder of what
the world did to the Jews in World War Two
and the Holocaust. And a few years ago, an elderly
man in hospice care told me that he believed that
he lived and would die at the perfect time. He
survived the Holocaust, made a home, a career in a
family by moving around the world to places that would

(03:47):
welcome Jews, and he would die before he felt the
rise and effects of anti Semitism again, now in his
own adopted country in America. In his dying days, he
lived the pall of darkness over him. To him, his
light would come in a natural death, but not in life.

(04:08):
For others, figurative darkness can be escaped in the troubled
world in which we find ourselves. Sometimes there are resources
and allies to help us make a difference. Unlike the past,
when many established organizations and allies didn't exist. For us,
the Jewish people, they are here now. We won't find
what we need in a dark past and no longer exists,

(04:30):
and no one that can serve us. Only in a
new light will we find what we need, but more so,
will find who we need to be. Writing in his
book Impossible Takes Longer, Daniel Gordis, writing before October seven,
got it right when he described Jewish Israelis in particular
as the new jew What did he mean by this?

(04:54):
The future and strength of Jewish life, he wrote, would
not be found in the past. In Europe, in ghettos,
or in in the passive ways, the Jews were portrayed
by others, and they saw themselves and a new light
and evidence in the land of Israel that grew out
of swamps and desert sands. The new jew is militarily strong, proactive, insistent,
and fearless. On October eighth, the light dimmed. They even

(05:19):
went out for a little while, but not forever. Finally,
in the world in which we live at home, in
the community, and in America, there are days of darkness
and light for us too. When we feel that we
lost our grip on what we value and what we had,

(05:40):
we begin to stumble in the dark to find it
and to defend it. If we're lucky, we find it
in the last place we look right, But more often
we have to step out of the darkness and into
the light to begin to finding our way again. It
might not be the same way, but it can be
for the same reason. Like the boy in the helms,
to his dim wittedness led him to look for his

(06:02):
lost coins in the light, where even he knew they
would be. But he was wise enough to know that
few things are found in the dark. So if we
learn anything from the Helm story, and it isn't always possible,
by the way, then it's to embrace what we value,
to cherish what we had, and to pursue it still
despite everything, because it is enduring and sacred to us.

(06:27):
But we won't find it again in a past that
has gone. The college graduate knew it. It won't be
found in lamenting about a world that has changed. The
Holocaust survivor's life ended in darkness, and it can't be
protected if we're passive. The new Jew in Israel stands
stronger than ever before. Judaism honors such a search that

(06:49):
begins in light. Proverbs chapter six, verse twenty three says,
a mitzvah is a candle and the Torah a light.
Let me define those two words for you to be
sure that we're understanding each other well. First, a mitzvah,
a word I've used before, is a commandment. Many times

(07:10):
we translate it to mean a good deed, because a
mitzvah is it's always a good deed, But it is
a commandment given by a commander, namely God. As we
understand it in the Torah, where we find six hundred
and thirteen. Such mits vote or commandments. Some are positive
commandments to do something, or even a negative commandment, as

(07:32):
we call it because it said tells us not to
do something. All in all, every mitzvah leads us to
some happiness, some joy, some light. If a mitzvah is
a candle, where does the candle get its light from?
And the proverb says that Torah is a light. Now
there are two definitions of Torah. One is called by

(07:54):
Milton Steinberg in his book Basic Judaism, a restricted definition
that is the the five Books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Levitigust, Numbers,
and Deuteronomy. But the more general definition, as he calls it,
is anything that is a teaching. Because Torah itself is
a Hebrew word that does not mean law, Torah means teaching.

(08:16):
Anything that teaches Torah an interpretation, a rabbitting story like
a realm story, anything that might thread a needle to
help us understand a detail, a minute issue of Torah,
a story, an allegory, a metaphor that brings us back

(08:38):
to a core teaching of Torah is by definition than
tora too. So Torah is a light written in the
largest ways that we can possibly imagine it, as long
as it's all threaded back and anchored in Torah ursus.
A mitzvah is just a simple candle, a simple light,

(08:58):
and Torah is the source of that light. And Torah,
containing six one hundred and thirteen such mids vote or candles,
is pure light because its source is Torah. When we
do a mitzvah, when we do a good deed, feeling
commanded by God or inspired by the meaning of such

(09:18):
enduring values and sacred teachings, it's a candle that we carry,
and that light prevents us from stumbling. It studies our
feet on a new path when we need to go
in a new direction, and it spreads light before us.
These are the ways that we begin to understand how
to make our next best steps in a world that

(09:40):
constantly changes around us, and as the world continues to
be broken, complex and in a rage in many places
around the world. Sometimes we listen to the news or
look around at each other, even in our family circles,
and wonder how things used to be. But if we
only lament at the past or look on those days

(10:03):
as helcyon days, how can we get back to nineteen
fifty or nineteen sixty, or any other time that we
favor more than our own. Then we're only looking into
a past that suddenly is dark. The light the spotlight
on it has moved to illuminate our own day and
our obligation as human beings, as people of faith, perhaps

(10:26):
needs to help us find our source of light in
our sacred text, so that those enduring values, which have
endured much longer than any political administration or social system
or other civilization, have helped us find our way from
generation to generation, from millennia to millennia, to appreciate that

(10:51):
those values, although they are interpreted to meet our times
and relevant interests, endure to help us find in a
new light all that we can do and all that
we can be. I was once asked the question, what
makes the Torah, for example, so sacred? Well, some might believe,
if they're an Orthodox Jew, that God spoke the words

(11:15):
to Moses, and Moses inscribe them unsigini. If you were
a Reformed Jew like I am, we might say that
God inspired those words, and they were written by man
over time and then redacted and canonized in what we
call the Torah. The five Books of Moses. Even so,
those Torah words have endured for a long time, more

(11:37):
than two thousand years, and those two thousand years have
helped us to appreciate that in all the times of
our life, the best and the worst, and we can
describe the best of times, golden ages in Jewish history,
and also the worst of times, including the Holocaust, but
not only the Holocaust. The enduring teachings of Torah helped
us find in times of darkness light that we needed

(12:01):
to find our way again. But it wasn't to find
always what we had lost long ago. Like the boy
from Helm, he was looking in the light because it
was the right place to look, but he knew he
wouldn't find his coins there. That's not where he lost them.
But he taught us that we have to find in light,
maybe something new to replace the coins, to replace what

(12:24):
we had, but not the values. Always to be seeking
what we need in light. I hope that in your
own faith tradition, you have such enduring values, even one
or two, or even at best three that guide you
every single day through thick and thin, through darken light

(12:44):
for all that you know is true and enduring for
you and your family and loved ones around you. I'm
Rabbi David Lyon from Congregation Beth Israel in Houston. To
listen again or to share this message, you can find
it at my podcast called Heart to Heart with Rabbi
David Lyon at Sunny ninety nine dot com on the

(13:05):
iHeartRadio app. As the week continues, as we appreciate the
change of seasons, I know in Houston we have three
inches of snow, which is incredibly rare and uncommon. And
in Los Angeles, where fires burn and we pray and
hope that they find their footing again too, And in
other parts of country where weather can be so severe

(13:28):
this time of year, we pray that the darkness of
the season gives way to greater light. And in that
light we might not find what we lost in terrible
storms or fires, but we will find our way. We'll
find our way with those who support us and love us.
We'll find our way with enduring faith that assures us

(13:48):
that we're not lost, we're not falling backwards. But the
hope and optimism that we have is somewhere in the future,
spotlighted and illuminated by sacred texts that we dear the
fundamental lessons that we have always relied on remain with us.
Let's carry that in our back back. Let's put that

(14:09):
in our pocket and be sure that we expose it
to the light to help us find our way in
the days and weeks to come. I hope that as
you encounter family or friends who are struggling in their
period of darkness for whatever reason, you might help them
focus on stepping into light with you or with others,

(14:30):
to be sure that what they feel they have lost
may not ever be found exactly the way they left it,
but something new is emerging. We often say this too
shall pass. Cherish what you have. It may be gone
in the future, but what you remember and what you
can continue to be will always be a blessing. May
you go from strength to strength and from darkness to

(14:53):
greater light. Thank you for joining me today. I look
forward to being with you again next time.