Kol ha'Seridim (NOW at rabbischneeweiss.substack.com/): Rumi

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Thursday, August 5, 2021

Musings on Unrecorded Shiurim

Today's Torah content was sponsored by someone who wishes to remain anonymous for someone else whom they wish to remain anonymous for an occasion that I'm told should not be mentioned. I would have found some sneaky way to show honor and gratitude to those involved, but I must respect true tznius when I see it.

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Artwork: Musician, by Drew Tucker

Musings on Unrecorded Shiurim

One of the many changes in my teaching norms this past year (2020-2021) was the fact that I recorded the vast majority of my shiurim and classes. Between September and June I recorded and uploaded 615 shiurim as videos and/or podcasts. By my estimation, somewhere between 100-200 of my other shiurim were not recorded. The decision not to record these was intentional. In some cases, it was because I didn’t want students to feel self-conscious when speaking up (e.g. in Q&A sessions, discussions about doubts or struggles, etc.). In other cases, it was because of the exploratory unscripted nature of that particular shiur.

Recording has become the norm, which is strange, considering that I never recorded any of my shiurim for my eleven years as a high school teacher! It’s gotten to the point where I now feel like it’s a pedagogical transgression to not record a shiur. Occasionally, I’ll give a shiur I choose not to record which turns out to be great, and afterwards I’ll be filled with regret. The most recent time this happened was on Tishah b’Av, when I gave shiur to the members of my family’s shul in Seattle. Judging by the response, it was an enjoyable and eye-opening shiur, but one which nobody will ever be able to hear again.

This morning, however, I read a poem by Rumi which altered my perspective.

Don’t worry about saving these songs!

And if one of our instruments breaks,

it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place

where everything is music.

To my mind, one of the many purposes of a shiur is to produce a thing of beauty; therefore, when a good shiur goes unrecorded, this uniquely beautiful thing has been lost forever. My first thought upon realizing this was to recognize the absurdity of this feeling of loss. None of my shiurim were recorded until this year, and I didn’t feel sad! And before the invention of recording, none of the shiurim given by anyone was ever recorded! If I’m going to feel sad about an unrecorded shiur, my sadness should be for the millions of great shiurim that were lost throughout history. Moreover, in all likelihood, even the shiurim that are recorded will be lost forever at some point. So what is there to be upset about?

But setting these Koheles/Stoic thoughts aside, Rumi’s poem helped me recognize that I’ve begun to relate to my own shiurim in a new way. I’m beginning to realize that it’s not as much about the beauty of the product as it is about the beauty of the process. And the process doesn’t go away when the shiur ends.

I feel this most strongly in my Mishlei shiurim as compared to, say, my Sunday (i.e. community-wide) shiurim. This past Erev Yom ha’Kippurim I gave a Sunday shiur on the Middos ha’Rachamim. It was one of the best shiurim I had given to date, but due to a Zoom settings issue, the video wasn’t recorded. I felt crushed – so much so, that I decided to give the entire shiur over again that very afternoon, on my own, just to get the video. In contrast, if the same thing happened to a Mishlei shiur, I might be mildly annoyed, but I wouldn’t be upset. Why not? Because in Mishlei I’ve “fallen into the place where everything is music.” I am secure enough in my Mishlei teaching to perceive that the music inside of me is always playing.

This gives me hope. The more Torah I learn, the more music I hear. The more music I hear, the less sorrow I will feel when songs are lost and instruments are broken. One day, God willing, everything will be music.

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Tuesday, August 3, 2021

The Madness of Lishmah

Today’s Torah content is sponsored by Avygayl Zucker in honor of the 90th birthday of her grandfather, Yedidyah Halimi, whose dedication to Torah and mitzvos continues to be an inspiration. May Hashem grant him many more years of health and happiness!

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Artwork: Infuriate, by Benjamin Ee

The Madness of Lishmah

From time to time, I am asked whether I have any interest in pursuing a PhD, an Ed. D, or any other professional achievements beyond simply teaching. The earliest conversation of this nature I can remember took place years ago, while I was still learning in yeshiva and hadn’t even started grad school yet. I was speaking with a highly successful professional who also happened to have the credentials of a professional philosopher. He asked me what I was up to, and I said, “I’m learning in yeshiva and earning my bachelor’s degree in psychology.” He asked, “To what end?” I said, “The only reason I’m getting a bachelor’s degree is so that I can apply to grad school.” He asked, “To what end?” I said, “I’m only getting a master’s degree in Jewish Education because I’ve been told it’s necessary to get a good job as a high school teacher. I just want to teach high school.” He asked, “To what end?” I repeated my answer: “I just want to teach high school.” “Nothing more?” “Nothing more.” He then shot me a look of horrified disbelief, which he followed with a rather audacious question. I don’t remember his words, but his sentiment was something like, “And you’re just going to let all of that intelligence go to waste?” Clearly, this man and I differed in our views about learning and teaching.

This weekend I read a poem by Rumi entitled, The Sheikh Who Played With Children, which reminded me of that conversation. The poem opens with a young seeker looking for wisdom: “I need to find a wise person. I have a problem.” A bystander says, “There’s no one with intelligence in our town except that man over there playing with the children, the one riding the stick-horse. He has a keen, fiery insight and vast dignity like the night sky, but he conceals it in the madness of child’s play.” (I was amused by the parallels to Rav Chaim Soloveitchik – a real-life genius who was also known for playing horsey with the local schoolchildren.) The young man approaches the sheikh and presses him for relationship advice, which he reluctantly gives. As the sheikh is about to gallop away, the seeker asks him about the life he has chosen: "What is this playing that you do? Why do you hide your intelligence so?" The sheikh responds:

"The people here want to put me in charge. They want me to be judge, magistrate, and interpreter of all the texts. The knowing I have doesn't want that. It wants to enjoy itself. I am a plantation of sugarcane, and at the same time I'm eating the sweetness."

Knowledge that is acquired is not like this. Those who have it worry if audiences like it or not. It's a bait for popularity. Disputational knowing wants customers. It has no soul. Robust and energetic before a responsive crowd, it slumps when no one is there. The only real customer is God.

Chew quietly your sweet sugarcane God-Love, and stay playfully childish.
Your face will turn rosy with illumination like the redbud flowers.

In his introduction to Perek Chelek the Rambam says about learning lishmah (lit. “for its own sake”): “ein tachlis ha’emes ela l’daas she’hu emes – the only purpose of the truth is to know that it is true.” Rambam mentions that most people will not be able to grasp the concept of lishmah. To them, learning is only a means to other ends. They cannot grasp what it means to seek knowledge for its own sake. They view any pursuit of something as an end in and of itself as foolish. They will never stop asking, “To what end?”

Perhaps this is why Rumi depicted the true sage in this manner. In the eyes of the world, those who learn lishmah appear as mad as a sheikh playing horsey.

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Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Help! I've Fallen Into Sufi Poetry and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing!

This week's Torah content has been sponsored by Sol and Chummie Azose, in honor of the upcoming 81st birthday of the Rosh ha'Yeshiva, Rabbi Yisroel Chait, and the 91st birthday of Sol's father, Hazzan Isaac Azose. If you're interested in sponsoring a day's or a week's worth of Torah content, you can contact me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com.

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a haiku by 12th grade Matt Schneeweiss

Help! I've Fallen Into Sufi Poetry and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing!

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I hated poetry. I hated reading it, I hated discussing it, I hated writing it. I recently stumbled upon a trove of poetry assignments that I was “forced” to write in high school, and this haiku (or “haiku”) perfectly captures my stubbornly resentful attitude at the time:

“I hate poetry,”

he said. “No, you really don’t.”

“Yes, I really do.”

This attitude remained staunchly in place for many years after high school. Then I discovered Thoreau. This was the first time I encountered a thinker writing in poetry in prose. That blew my mind. I was reading ideas, but they weren’t expressed in the way I thought ideas had to be expressed. At first, I thought this was just Thoreau, but after seeing examples of this in Bruce Lee, Emerson, Rav Soloveitchik, and others, I identified the quality I enjoyed: being immersed in the world of ideas as perceived by the mind of a poet.

Fast forward to May 2021, when I started reading Tara Brach’s books, and June 2021 when I started listening to her lectures and meditations – all of which are interwoven with excerpts of poetry. Of the several poets whose works are quoted more frequently than others, one has stood out to me: Rumi.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī (1207 – 1273 C.E.) was a Persian Islamic teacher, scholar, and philosopher-poet. He was also a Sufi mystic. What does that mean? I have very little idea, other than what I’ve gleaned from the internet (against my own better judgment). But as the Rambam said, “accept the truth from whoever says it,” and I have found truths in these poems. There’s a lot of other stuff in these poems as well – non-truths, mystical flights of fancy, lexical paroxysms – but it’s the truths which interest me.

I am fascinated by Rumi’s cryptic style. Take, for example, such stanzas as “Be empty of worrying. Think of Who created thought!” “Why do you stay in prison when the door is wide open?” “Darkness is your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.” “Your old life was a frantic running from silence.” Such lines strike me in an entirely different way than the prose I typically read. They stay with me throughout the day, repeatedly calling back my thoughts. The feeling is akin to what Morpheus said to Neo:

What you know, you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life … You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

What do I hope to get out of my Rumi reading other than truth? Well, for years I’ve learned and taught Tehilim (Psalms), Kinnos (liturgical lamentations), and Selichos (supplicatory penitential prayers). I’ve become more and more in touch with the poetry of these texts, but I often feel like I’m missing something essential. But when I read Rumi’s poetry, I feel like I’m expanding my intellectual imagination. I’m not entirely sure what I mean by that, but that’s what it feels like. My hope is that reading such poetry not in the context of learning will help me unlock the poetry in learning.

I also sense that by exploring these new and unusual forms of thought-in-language, I am familiarizing myself with the boundaries and limitations of language as a medium of thought. Rumi would conclude his poems with statements like: “Let that musician finish this poem.” David ha’Melech ended Tehilim with a chapter about praising Hashem with musical instruments, alluding to the inadequacy of praising Hashem with words. Language is limited, but perhaps by recognizing and striving to transcend these limitations through poetry, we can catch just a fleeting glimpse of the sublime. "Your boundaries are your quest."

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