A Tsadik in Pelts--
Rosh HaShanah 2020
Rabbi Norbert
Weinberg
How many of you here still can speak or understand mama
loshen, Yiddish?
Bear with me, then ,as I give a lesson on Yiddish language
and fur coats.
Lately, fur coats have had bad publicity. While we all love
to keep warm , and the fur is smooth to the
touch, it does bother us to think
of the tsaar baaley chayim- the pain of living creatures that is
involved in the making of furs.
However,
for my purpose of illustration, I want us to step back in time, over a century
ago, before central heating, and before synthetics were available, to a time
when a fur coat was a truly desirable and necessary garment any where north of
sunny California.
Then,
in those days, it was good to be wrapped up in furs, and Jews wore furs, and
dealt in furs, as well. To be wrapped in a fur was good, except, it turns out,
one type of fur-wearer.
There
was a phrase for one particular fur-coat wearer--a Tsadik in Pelts.
A
righteous man wrapped in pelts, furs. This
was intended as an insult. Now, keep in mind that this was before the time of
PETA and all the to-do about cruelty to animals. So what could be so wrong with
a righteous man who had a fur coats. Yet a Tsadik in pelts--a saint in
furs-is the Yiddish nickname for a hypocrite. It's a play on words. A Tsadik
is not just a righteous man--it is
also another name for the Hebrew letter,
Tzadi. The last letter in the word pelts, fur, is the letter tzadi,
also called tzadik. But if you remember your aleph bet from Hebrew school days,
when the letter tsadi comes at the end of
a word, it written different --it is twisted and stretched out of shape
till you can't recognize it.
The
nickname for this kind of letter at the
end of a word is, in Yiddish, shlechter,
bad or wicked, because the tsadi has been stretched out, distorted,
dragged down at the end, like the tsadik at the end of the word, pelts. The Tsadik
in pelts is therefore , a shlechter tzadik, a wicked letter tsadik.
To follow the metaphor, then, a tsadik in pelts is one who passes himself off
as a righteous man, and yet, is in truth, a fraud, a hypocrite, twisted and
bent out of shape.
The great Hasidic master, Rebbe Menahem Mendel of Kotzk,
was a man whose sole passion in life was to find out the truth. He
had no patience for pretense or falsity of any sort. He gave the following
definition of a saint in furs:
What is the difference between a saint, tsadik,
and a saint all wrapped up in furs, a
tsadik in pelts?
On a cold winters day, when everyone else is freezing in
beis medresh, the chapel and house of study, in walks the tsadik in his fur
coat;he is warm and comfortable, because he is all wrapped up. He can begin to
pray and study. But everyone else is still freezing cold.
On that same cold day, when everyone is freezing, in walks
a real saint. He turns on the furnace, and now, everybody , including himself
is warm, and all can begin to worship and study.
Thus it is with the hypocrite who
publicly wraps himself in his virtues, said the Rebbe. The biggest tallit, the
largest sukkah, the loudest voice at worship---he lets everyone know how good
and righteous he is, and he warms his
own soul, but no one else's.
The true tsadik needs
no trappings. Instead, he does his good deeds, lends a hand, opens his
purse, gives a good word--in short he warms everyone's soul, as well as his
own.
It is at this time of the year,our Yamim Noraim, as we come
before God to make a clean slate, of our
past and to look to a better year as Jews and as decent human beings, that we
wish to see ourselves as tsadikim, as righteous. We come to the synagogue with
our personal baggage of worries and
troubles, we examine ourselves, we pray for ourselves. We are introspective and, by the close of the
day, as the shofar is sounded at Neilah, we have some sense of spiritual
uplift, of having cleaned our souls. We can go out with a warm glow that will
hold us in good stead until the
next Rosh Hashanah rolls around.
But in so doing, we remain, a tsadik in pelts, in we remain
a saint wrapped up in our own self-goodness, and we thereby have done nothing
to fulfill our obligations to those around us. We are far from truly being
righteous.
There is nothing new in this idea. 25 centuries ago, the
prophet Isaiah observed the same problem. We will read of it in the Haftarah
for Yom Kippur morning. His people come to him with the complaint--"We are
such good Jew's, they exclaim--see how
we are fasting, tormenting ourselves, we are dressed in sackcloth as a sign of
our piety.
So why is it, prophet, that God doesn't answer us? Why is
everything so bad for us?
To
this he replies, "Do you think: this is God's idea of a fast? Rather
loosen the bonds of injustice, let the oppressed go free, feed the hungry,
house the homeless, clothe the naked. . . Then
shall your light shine in the darkness and your gloom shall be as the noon-day'
In short,
to paraphrase the prophet's idea-- it is not what we do, each of us
individually, in front of God or our neighbors that counts, but what we do for
each other in front of God that counts.
The
entire Mahzor, the liturgy of this day hammers in the plural. We must be good
to each other and for each other, and we are all mutually responsible for what
happens.
Why
do we recite our confessional tonight in the plural. 'We have sinned, we have
betrayed,"? Said the Ari, the father of Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Isaac
Luria," All Israel is one body and every Jew is a member of that body.
Hence, there is mutual responsibility among all members." In this same sense,
going back to an earlier day, the ancient sages warned us " When the
community is in trouble , do not sit
back and be merry, do not sit back and say, I will eat, drink and "shalom
alay nafshi"-- peace be unto me, myself , alone."
How
do we go about, shed our fur coats, and instead, light the fires for others?
In
a normal year, in normal times, when the economy is functioning, and the
streets are quiet, we tend not to think too much of others’ pressing needs.
Now, however, we recognize that our great national prosperity, while it has
achieved much, still has failed so many.
It
all comes up to the surface, now, that we have a pandemic that has come close
to being pan-demonic; some have real fears, some have imagined fears, and some
pretend to be blind to the fears, so we have, on the one hand, an almost total
shutdown of our economy, and on the other, people partying and then bringing
home the bug to old grandma and grandpa..
We
were just short of the kind of match to trigger a fire when we had the spate killing
of blacks at the hands of police, and with
the very legitimate protest, there are elements of both far left and right that seek to edge us closer to civil strife. So now, we have racial tension
adding to our malaise.
There
are opposing elements in political theory and sociology that set us on course
for more social unrest.
There
is the revolution of rising expectations. It is the trigger for unrest when
those at the bottom have begun to move up but begin to lose patience with the
slow pace of social change, and then find their way suddenly blocked.
In
contrast, there is the fall of the petite bourgeosie, the small business owner,
the middle and lower level managers, the people who had, in their own way, some
measure of comfort and stability in their lives. American capitalism had kept
them afloat ahead of their counterparts in most of the world-but, in times of
social change, and especially economic distress, they feel themselves with the ground
falling form under their feet.
One
social strata expecting to move up, but finding its way blocked, another social
strata suddenly fearing it is on its way down. So race is one aspect, economic
stress, another aspect.
In
tough times, people feel hateful. Frustration leads to aggression, as psychologists
tell us, and it comes out in many ways- in physical violence of neighbor
against neighbor, or domestic violence, or the social aggression of the Twitter
and Instagram world that is the modern refuge of bitter people..
Now, to this volatile mix, we add a general social
malaise that saps the inner strength of our fellows. It comes out of our
national passion to be our own free and socially unfettered spirits, and no one
so embodied it as my generation. So I quote, from Rolling Stone Magazine recently,
this the journal of note of my fellow hippies and yippies (I date myself).
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/
“More than any other
country, the United States in the post-war era lionized the individual . . . mobility and personal freedom came at the
expense of common purpose. . . . the family as an institution lost its grounding.
By the 1960s, 40 percent of marriages were ending in divorce. Only six percent
of American homes had grandparents living beneath the same roof as
grandchildren; elders were abandoned to retirement homes.”
That sounds suspiciously
like the gripes of right-wing Christian ministers, who have been warning about
the dissolution of the family for decades—but this comes from the left, not the
right.
He goes on
to say that we have no meaningful communications with others on a daily basis,
that we consume two-thirds of the world’s antidepressant drugs. With it, we
have “the collapse of the working-class family. . . responsible in part for an
opioid crisis . . . the leading cause of death for Americans under 50.”
This is a
big burden- a much bigger burden than just defunding police.
Can I have
my fur coat again? I think I want to wrap myself up in it and protect myself from
everyone else.
So, how am I going to light the
fires for the rest?
Elections
can only do so much. Marching protests may feel good, but they also fade in
impact, and continued unrest merely feeds the fears of most voters. That’s how
my generation blew it all in 1968 and again in 1972. For those of you whose
memory extends more than a few decades ago, I can only agree with an old
Beatles song:
You say
you want a revolution// Well, you know// We all want to change the world
But when
you talk about destruction//Don't you know that you can count me out ( Beatles
Revolution 1)
So what can we do?
I am going to admit- I don’t have
any magic solutions. I don’t have the power to cause the sun and the moon to
stand still, like Joshua.
So, it is all small steps that
we can take.
We can get
the economy going again. Go to stores, eat out, go shopping, buy American made
goods, if you can find them, so that more people can begin working. I am going to
say, what Rabbis are not expected to say, but “Spend.” Yes, Spend. Get people
back working. Perhaps, spend your money, where possible, in minority communities.
Yes, give,
but seek to find charities that get people up on their feet, like Jewish Free
Loan . I don’t want to disparage endowments to the arts or universities,( we
should all be so wealthy) but your next door neighbor, or downtown neighbor,
could put it to better use.
Give
of your time, if you can safely get out, and volunteer. Find some place where
your hand can make a difference for someone. Many of you here are retirees-
there are many organizations that can use you to act as “ grandparents” to
children. There is no lack of openings for good helpers, especially as life
gets back to normal.
We
are not going to save all of America, but maybe we can save the small corner
around us. If each of us could find a way to make one person’s life just a
little better, then we are no longer the “ shlechter Tzadik, the bad Tadik, the
tsadik in peltz, and instead, we become true tzadikim.
If
frustration leads to aggression, maybe an act of Gemilut Hasadim, a deed of
goodness and kindness, can turn it around
I
want to conclude with words of reassurance by Rabbi Tarfon, who, 1800 years
ago, must have felt the same challenge on himself and on his colleagues.
" Hayom Katzar ve hamelakhah
merubah-- The day is
short, and the labor is long. The laborers are lazy, but the reward is great,
and the boss is insistent!
Lo alekhah hamelakhah ligmor. You do not have to complete the task--
v lo atah ben horin lbatel mimeno--
but you also not free to quit the task."
If
we wish to be truly righteous in the eyes of God, then we have to throw off our
furs, our concern about ourselves, and light many fires to keep all of us warm.
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