A few weeks ago, one of my fellow graduates
from my high school posted online this year’s promotional video for our school
district. I attended Center High School
in Kansas City, and the theme of the short presentation, featuring faculty
members and students, was “Find your Center.”
At first, I thought it was just a clever
pun.
Upon further reflection, I realized that it
was much more.
Any high school can be a place where
students learn essential life skills, gain new and useful knowledge, and
develop friendships that have the potential to last for decades. And those years, which inevitably feature
their ups and downs, can establish the foundation of who we will become as we
move along the path of our lives.
Once we complete our education and choose
a job or career, we discover that, outside of work, we may need something more
for personal and spiritual fulfillment.
So we find a community that can become our center, a locus of gathering
where we can join together with other people to express shared values and
goals.
In a Jewish community, we try to make our
center, the location or building where we come together, into a place where
other people can feel welcome when they visit or when they join us for a
special program or event.
And when we are participating as members of
a community in a Beit Knesset, a house of assembly or “synagogue,” like Temple
Beth-El, what happens here can enable us to find our personal center, our
essence as human beings.
During our study on Shavuot evening of
Rabbi Evan Moffic’s book, THE HAPPINESS PRAYER, we discussed Rabbi Moffic’s
interpretation of the EILU D’VARIM
reading that is recited daily in Jewish worship. The goal of our conversation
was to discover how doing the acts listed in that paragraph could enable us to
be happy, as Rabbi Moffic suggested. Please turn with me to page 115 so that we
can read this prayer aloud and together:
Some
mitzvot sustain us not only in this world, but also in the world-to-come. They are: honoring our parents; acting with
kindness and loyalty; eagerly pursuing Jewish learning at all times; welcoming
guests; visiting the sick; rejoicing with couples under the chuppah, caring for
the dead and mourners; delving deeply into prayer; making peace among human
beings. And the study of Torah - this is
the cornerstone.
In his book THE HAPPINESS PRAYER, Rabbi
Moffic contended that the EILU D’VARIM prayer is not merely a list of good
deeds we should perform.
“The
prayer,” he said, “begins with a statement of its purpose. It uses a financial
metaphor. Our actions represent an investment of our time. The interest on this
investment is our happiness. Like financial interest, it compounds. In other
words, the longer we follow these lessons, the more our happiness grows. Here
is my paraphrase of the Hebrew original of the prayer.
How will you
find happiness in this world and peace in the world to come?
By learning
these wisdom practices from your ancestors:
·
Honor those
who gave you life
·
Be kind
·
Keep
learning
·
Invite
others into your life
·
Be there
when others need you
·
Celebrate
good times
·
Support
yourself and others during times of loss
·
Pray with
intention
·
Forgive
·
Look inside
and commit.”
Rabbi Moffic explained, “Happiness is a
by-product of living by our commitments to our faith. We do not often think of
faith, though, in this way. We tend to think [that] committing to faith gets us
a ticket into heaven. We tend to think of it as being about making God happy.
But these commitments aren’t only about making God happy. They ultimately make
us happy. They reveal the path to true meaning and satisfaction in life.”
I have been serving on the Las Cruces
Health Policy Review Committee for most of the last year. I was asked by City Council member Jack
Eakman to offer a presentation on spiritual health at the May meeting. I shared with the committee members Rabbi
Moffic’s paraphrase of what he identified as Judaism’s prescription for
happiness.
I also cited the “seven habits of happy
people” featured on the website www.pursuit-of-happiness.org. Those seven habits are:
1. Express
your heart (cultivate relationships).
2. Perform
acts of kindness (volunteer and care for others).
3. Keep
moving and eat well (maintain physical and mental well-being).
4. Find your
flow (engage in an activity in your skill set that gives you enjoyment).
5. Discover
meaning (some identify faith and spirituality as finding meaning and purpose in
life).
6. Discover
and use your strengths (identify pursuits in which you excel).
7. Treasure
gratitude, mindfulness, and hope.
The overlap between that list and Rabbi
Moffic’s rendering of the wisdom practices of our heritage was astounding.
Finally, I offered insights in my presentation from
Dr. Jeff Levin, who has written extensively about the effects of spirituality
and religious living on our personal health.
He has noted that nearly 8 in 10 studies show a positive effect of
religious participation for happiness and life satisfaction across religions
and across categories of age, gender, race, ethnicity, social class, and
nationality.
It seems that a pathway to happiness has
been sitting right under our noses for a long, long time.
We may not always make the connections
between the good deeds that we perform and the values embodied in Jewish
prayers and teachings. Nevertheless, those
associations have always been there. It
is up to us to recognize how our heritage is expressed in what we do every day.
Our
actions may mirror the themes of our worship.
Tonight’s service directed us to appreciate creation, to engage in
lifelong learning, to connect with the Oneness that holds all existence
together, to pass on our values to a new generation, to foster hope and
comfort, to acknowledge from whence we came, to find the holiness all around
us, to show gratitude for the gifts we enjoy, and to work for peace.
When I ask someone what “mitzvah” means, and
he or she says “good deed” rather than the literal translation, “commandment,”
it is probably a good thing. Judaism is
a religion based on deed. Peace and
contentment can be ultimate goals for our actions. Happiness is the byproduct
that we enjoy through that feeling of internal satisfaction that we get from
the good we have done, and the sense of being part of something greater that we
gain through the connections we form and the relationships we nurture through
our good work.
Some of you know that I traveled to Kansas
City for the funeral of my cousin Barbara during the first weekend of
August. When I thought afterwards about
what I did on my whirlwind three-day trip, I realized that it was an EILU D’VARIM
experience. I took part in Jewish
worship by attending the Shabbat evening service at my home Temple and the Shabbat
morning service, along with other relatives, at the Conservative synagogue
where my cousin belonged. I was involved in Jewish learning as I listened
to sermons delivered at both services I attended. I comforted my cousin Barbara’s children and
grandchildren before, during and after the graveside funeral. My brother and I paid tribute to our parents
by visiting their gravesite. I
congratulated Barbara’s daughter Leslie on her recent wedding. I felt a sense
of peace and completeness while reconnecting with my relatives and being
present for the family of my late cousin, who was always good to and supportive
of my parents.
We fulfill the teachings of EILU D’VARIM,
the happiness prayer, throughout the course of every year. Those words direct us to be good and do
good. They provide a yardstick for
measuring human action. Sometimes we witness behavior in our community
that brings those values to life. At
other times, we see people in our world who are violating those standards to
such an extent that we may not know what to do to set things right. Judaism teaches us, in those moments, to
stop, to look into our souls, to reconnect with the best part of ourselves, to find
our center, to continue along our own pathway to happiness, and, finally, to
share our message with others who might benefit from hearing what our tradition
teaches about how to be good and do good.
On
August 12, at the orientation for Board members and Temple leaders in the evening,
and at the Religious School parent meeting in the morning, each group engaged
in brief study on a reading from the Shabbat morning service in MISHKAN
T’FILAH. You have been provided a copy
of this reading. It echoes EILU D’VARIM
in some ways, but it adds to the traditional prayer some new thoughts and
insights. Please join me in this reading
on your handout:
WE SEEKERS
of God, how do we find You?
In good deeds and in the study of Torah.
And Your
search for us?
You find us
in the bending of the knee,
in the rigor of study,
in the
honesty of commerce,
through a
good heart, through decency,
in respect, true fellowship, companionship and
love,
through
truth and peace,
in the No
that is really No, and
the Yes that
is really Yes.
Blessed are
You, Eternal One, who teaches Torah to Your people Israel.”
According to this prayer, we can, if we
choose, be seekers of God by performing good deeds and by learning about how we
can further infuse kindness and decency into the world.
But this prayer based on an ancient Jewish
text is not just a prescription of personal practices that can add to our
happiness. It suggests something
more. It claims that God is looking for
us. It asserts that God finds us when we
are menschlikh, good hearted, respectful, loving, honest and peaceful. It declares that God searches for us when we
face ethical decisions. The Eternal One
looks for us in our struggle to arrive at a No or a Yes that expresses the full
extent of our character and that demonstrates that we have been deeply
influenced by what we have learned from
our best role models, from our most valuable teachers, from our closest life
partners in our family and among friends, and from the wisdom and guidance in
our heritage, that offer us ways to move closer to a place of happiness and
peace.
How will we apply all that we have learned
until now and put into practice the entire extent of wisdom we have gained so
far in our life’s experiences? Our Book
of Life in 5779 has not been written yet; but let us inscribe ourselves on its
pages with acts of kindness that reflect our pursuit of happiness, and with a
commitment to help each other find our center, so that God’s search for us will
not be in vain. 
