“All that God has spoken we will do.”My grandmother’s yarzheit was the day before yesterday. She often came to this minyan when she was in town, and some of you met her over the years. I’d like to dedicate this sermon to her memory.
My grandma (like many grandmothers) had many memorable sayings that stick in my mind. When I was younger, she would always tell me: “When you get married, you’re going to have to be neater.”
She was a fastidious housekeeper. One could eat off of the floor in her home. I, however, was something of a slob. When she would get frustrated with me, she would tell me that I would have to improve when I got married. ‘No problem,’ I thought. That day seemed very far away.
Well, I think my grandma may have secretly conspired with God to choose Tal to be my husband because he is very neat. Her prophecy came true. When I got married, I had to become neater.
My transformation began slowly, almost imperceptibly at first. Each day, when Tal got home from work, he would get agitated by the condition of the house, so I started to straighten up a bit before he came home. My only motivation was so that he wouldn’t be upset. Yet soon, without even realizing it, I got into the habit of straightening up, and even when Tal went out of town, and I knew he wasn’t coming home that night, I would still clean up at the end of the day. Even though this new lifestyle involved more work, I came to prefer living in a neat home.
There is a saying in the Talmud for what happened to me: mitoch shelo lishma ba lishma – which means literally “for out of not for its own sake comes for its own sake.” This phrase means that if you begin doing something good for an ulterior motive, you will come to do good for its own sake. In the Talmud (Pesachim 50b),
Rab Judah said in Rab's name: “A person should always engage in Torah and good deeds, though it is not for their own sake, for out of [doing this] not for its own sake comes for its own sake.”
This principle can be applied to many areas of life. When I was a congregational rabbi in Long Beach, a young couple once came to me for counseling. They were engaged to be married; he was Jewish and she was not. He was raised in a family that was involved in the synagogue, and he went to day school as a child. She was raised nominally Christian, but her family was not involved in their religion. She did not feel attached to any particular faith. She’d enrolled in a course to learn more about Judaism but after the first session, she was unsure whether to continue. The instructor had told the students that they needed to be there for themselves, not for their potential spouses or in-laws. She was unsure whether she was there for her fiancé or his parents or herself, and therefore was thinking of dropping the class.
I told the couple the story about how I learned to be neat and the Talmudic principle. I told her that it didn’t matter what her motives were at the beginning of the course but what her motives are at the end of the course. She could start the class for any reason, and then during the course see if she came to find value in Judaism for herself. At the end of the class, she could decide whether or not to convert. Rather than taking the class, the couple ended up studying with me each week for eight months, and she fell in love with Judaism, converted and I married them on a gondola, in the middle of the bay (when I was 8 months pregnant). A year later they had a beautifully baby girl and welcomed her into their Jewish home.
In this week’s Torah
portion, the people enter into covenant with God. God first explains the
covenant to Moses, who then told the elders, and all the people answered at
once: and said “All that God has spoken we will do.”
In next week’s parasha, this line is echoed when Moses repeated to the people all the rules that God explained, and the people affirmed:
“All that the Lord has said will we do, and hear.’” The commentators noted the strange word order here. One would expect the verse to say, “we will listen and we will do.” Yet, the phrase, naaseh v’nishmah, “we will do and we will hear,” shows that often the action comes first and the lessons come only later.
In the Talmud, Eiruvin 13b the rabbis present the following irony:
one who runs after greatness, greatness flees from him, but one who flees from greatness, greatness follows; he who forces time is forced back by time but one who yields to time finds time standing at his side.
I wonder if the same might be said of wisdom or spirituality. If you seek wisdom, it runs away from you but if you stop searching, then wisdom finds you. Often we go to exotic places to look for spirituality, only to find it within ourselves.
This idea is particularly true in parenting. One cannot seek the spiritual lessons of parenting, but they find you. When you least expect it, your child will say something or do something, and you will feel your heart open in a new way. In his past few years, I’ve been writing first a book and now a blog about spirituality and parenting. The blog is called Parent’s Torah (www.parentstorah.com). What I’ve discovered is that I can’t down to research the blogs; they simply come to me while I’m sitting in carpool line or cooking dinner. The spiritual lessons of parenting often don’t come in a synagogue, they come in the kitchen or when playing in the grass. For parents, the sacred is found within the mundane; the nishmah (hearing) is found within the na’aseh (doing).
Becoming a parent has taught me that people are capable of change. Recently, I was doing the dishes one night and my son Jeremy complained to me, “Mom, stop cleaning so much; I want you to play with me.” I could almost hear my grandmother laughing from the grave. The idea that anyone, even for a moment, could think that I was cleaning too much was just hysterical!
My grandmother was right. When I got married, I became neater. When I had children, I had to become more patient, more responsible, more responsive, more present in the moment, more a lot of things.
As a parent, I worked harder than ever before. But to my surprise, I learned more about God in my four years as a mother than in my four years of studying in rabbinical school. Spiritual insights came while wiping dirty faces and tushes, running after and with two little ones, and lots of cuddles, laughs, tears, and kisses. When I stopped running after God, I found God standing at my side.
Like keeping a clean home, becoming involved in a faith community, getting married and having children all involve much more work than not – and also great rewards. The lesson of this parasha can be summed up in the wise words of great prophet, Nike who said: “Just Do It!” Later, you’ll discover all that you have learned along the way.