Ben Zoma's Pilgrims: Part Two--The Gate of Wisdom

For three nights, the Professor, the Billionaire, the General, and the Actress journeyed together.  As the Beggar had instructed them, they walked by night and slept by day under groves of fragrant almond trees.  They shared their stories, as trekkers do, and although they would have been unlikely friends back home, they enjoyed the companionship that binds pilgrims along the road—except for the General and the Billionaire, who seemed to loathe one another.

At the end of the third night, the trail arrived at the mouth of a cave, with impassable cliffs rising up on either side.  The only way forward was through the cave. And so, despite their doubts and fears, they camped there and when the fourth night fell, they left the darkness of the surface for the immeasurably blacker womb-like darkness below.[i]

Just before entering the cave, they roped themselves together, lest they lose one another in the dark.  “I will go first,” announced the Professor.  “The Beggar told us that this leg of the journey is a test of wisdom.  I have spent my whole life preparing for that test.  In Plato’s cave, the prisoners glimpse only shadows but the Philosopher sees things as they truly are.[ii]  I am ready to lead the way.”

This annoyed the General, who was much better at giving orders than taking them.  But he reluctantly bowed to the Professor’s authority and experience on the task at hand and settled for being second in command as he roped himself to her.  The Billionaire immediately roped up behind the General, leaving the Actress to bring up the rear.

Bound together like this, they descended.  The darkness, so oppressively thick you could almost touch it, spawned a sense of dread.   They heard the hiss of water moving constantly behind the rocky walls and repeatedly tried to move toward it, but it never drew closer.[iii]  Otherwise, the sensory deprivation was soul- crushing.  Minutes became hours became days—in the absence of dawn and dusk, their instructions to travel by night became moot and they lost all sense of time. 

Eventually, the General, the Billionaire and the Actress began to suspect they were getting nowhere.  They questioned the Professor, but she would not listen to a word they said.  “We are not lost,” she insisted.  “Wisdom demands patience.  I trust my life’s learning, and you must trust me.  This is a trial of wisdom; I will find the way.”

But she didn’t.  She talked about it incessantly, quoting philosophers from Aristotle to Zeno as she prodded the travelers onward.  Yet her accrued knowledge offered no illumination, no direction, no comfort. 

Finally the General rebelled: “Enough of your empty words!  Your academic prattle is leading us nowhere.  You want wisdom?  Then heed the lessons I have learned in the real world, in the crucible of war: wisdom means taking strong, decisive action. Perhaps that is why the Beggar gave me a hammer.”  He pulled the tool out of his pack and started to pound away at the cold, confining stone walls.

The others panicked.  “What are you doing?” demanded the Billionaire.  “You are going to bury us alive!”

“That’s a real risk,” admitted the General, “but at least we stand a chance if we try to blast ourselves out of here.  Better to take that risk than to rot away in this infernal darkness while she blathers on.  Sometimes wisdom lies in choosing the lesser evil.[iv]

“Ah,” said the Professor, with resentful sarcasm, “It takes a wise man to philosophize with a hammer.”[v]

“Let him try,” said the Actress.

Everyone re-roped, putting the General in the lead, followed by the Professor, who stewed as he repeatedly leveled his blows.

More time passed—maybe hours, maybe days.  Thankfully, the General’s hammering did not collapse the cave—but neither did it open an escape route.   As he smashed away to no avail, the other travelers grew ever more desperate.  At last the Billionaire stepped forward to confront him:

“It’s true that wisdom demands decisive action.  But it also requires discrimination and timing.  That’s how I made my fortune: knowing when to buy and when to sell, when to tear down and when to build up.[vi]  It’s not just how to act, but also when and where.”

“You think I don’t know that?” barked the General.

“Give him a chance,” said the Actress.

“All right,” said the Billionaire.  “Hold off on the hammering.  We need to figure out the time and place to strike.  Maybe that’s the reason I was given the gold nugget.”

He took the nugget from his pack and began to tap it, though the darkness, against the cave walls. 

“What’s the point of that?” asked the General.

“I’m sounding things out,” the Billionaire replied.  “Listen carefully to the tone of gold on stone.  When the nugget strikes a hollow place behind the rock, it will ring out, and we will have found our passage.”

“So. . . we follow the gold,” the Professor mocked.  “The wisdom of Ayn Rand.”

“Let’s try it,” said the Actress.

So they roped up once more, this time placing the Billionaire in the lead.  He tapped away on the walls for what seemed like an eternity, but the plinking tone never varied and the travelers found nothing.  At last, even the Billionaire abandoned all hope.

“This is futile,” he said.  “We’re going to die down here.”

“Maybe not,” replied the Actress.  “I have an idea.”

“What do you know about wisdom?” lamented the General.

“Not much,” admitted the Actress.  “I know that I don’t know much.  And that’s a start.”

“Go on,” said the Billionaire.

“Sometimes,” the Actress continued, “I’m cast in a role that I have no idea how to play.  I just can’t inhabit the character, can’t find the right voice.  The harder I try to act my way into the part, the more frustrated I become. My ego gets in the way.   That’s when I have to just let go, admit I don’t know, and open myself to whatever comes.  Because only an empty vessel can be filled with something new.  And only a blank slate—or scroll—leaves room for a fresh story.

So far, we’ve been constantly doing—walking, pounding, tapping, talking.  Raging against the darkness.  And it has gotten us nowhere.  So let’s take a different tack and just sit here, quietly, together.  Instead of frantically pursuing wisdom, let’s give it a chance to find us.”

She sat down, unfurled her scroll in the blackness, and set it on her lap.

The others followed. 

A deep silence settled over them.  They could not see one another, but they felt the stillness that bound them, now, more surely than their ropes.

They sat like this for a very long time.

Finally, the Professor broke the silence—but she did so gently, speaking in a humble, halting whisper, most unlike her earlier lecturing.

“I am remembering a story—a Sufi tale—that a student shared with me many years ago:

A disciple asked Mulla Nasrudin, “Great sage, tell me—what is the secret to attaining wisdom?”

Nasrudin thought for a while, then responded, ‘The secret of wisdom is good judgment.’

‘Ah,’ said the disciple, ‘But how do we attain good judgment?’

‘From experience,’ answered Nasrudin.

‘Yes,’ said the disciple.  ‘But how do we attain experience?’

‘Bad judgment.’[vii]

“I owe you all an apology,” said the Professor. “If wisdom demands that we learn from our mistakes, I have been the worst of fools, unable to admit when I’m wrong, unwilling to listen to anyone.  My former partner told me this when she left me, but I was so embittered I didn’t hear.”

“You are listening now,” said the Actress.

“I am trying,” said the Professor, “and only now, humbled by loss, mortality and fear, do I realize how much wisdom each of you has shared.  I have a proposal—but it isn’t mine.  Unwittingly, I have learned it from all of you.”

“What is it?” asked the Actress.

“The hammer, the gold nugget, and the empty scroll—as each of you suggested, these are our way out.  But none is sufficient on its own, we must use them all, together.

General—you have taught us the wisdom of decisive action.  Ready your hammer.”

As he did so, the Professor tenderly tugged the rope binding her to the Billionaire:

“You have taught us the wisdom of discrimination and timing.  Bring forth your nugget of gold.”

Then she reached through the darkness and took the Actress’s hand: “And you have taught us most of all, the wisdom of not-knowing, of waiting and listening and learning from others.  Hold out your scroll.  Perhaps it is not so empty as it appears.”

Following the Professor’s guidance, the General took his hammer and struck the gold nugget, which the Billionaire had set at his feet.  Upon impact, both hammer and nugget exploded into tiny pieces, releasing a shower of brilliant golden sparks.  Raining down onto the open scroll, these sparks transformed into fiery Hebrew letters, illuminating the entire cave.

Slowly, the stunned travelers’ eyes adjusted to the light.

“What is this?” exclaimed the Actress.

“The prophet Jeremiah’s vision,” whispered the Professor, “—and yours: words like fire. . . like a hammer shattering stone.”[viii]

Now the letters were moving again, pouring off the scroll, pooling on the cave floor, until they formed a miraculous river of light.  When that river’s flow splashed against the walls, they burst open and the stream of light gushed forth into the upper world.[ix]

Joyously, the travelers followed the river until it passed under a large stone archway, where it split off into four streams

The Beggar stepped out from behind the arch. 

“Greetings, my friends.  You have proven yourselves wise.  Welcome to the second gate.”

---

[i] Many of the adventures of the Companions of the Zohar happen in caves.  As Nathan Wolski notes: Caves occupy an important place in zoharic narratives, their mysterious ambience providing a wondrous backdrop for the Companions’ expositions.  Their cavernous or womb-like quality also recalls Malkhut, the divine female, and in entering the cave, the Companions, as it were, enter Malkhut whom they now array and illuminate with their Torah innovations. 

I have borrowed numerous details here from the zoharic narrative that Wolski calls “The Magical Book in the Cave of Souls”, Zohar 3:303a Tosafot, translated with commentary in Wolski, pages 69-88

[ii] Plato’s Republic

[iii] Cave-explorer Bill Stone offers a powerful description of life underground in the TED Radio Hour episode, “The Edge”.

[iv] Machiavelli, The Prince

[v] One of Friedrich Nietzsche’s final writings was Twilight of the Idols, or How One Philosophizes with a Hammer (1888)

[vi] Ecclesiastes 3: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.

[vii] Story of Nasrudin as told by Joel Ben Izzy in The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness

[viii] See Jeremiah 23:29 and Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88b and Sanhedrin 34a

[ix] See, again, the Zohar passage, “The Magical Book in the Cave of Souls” in Wolski, pages 84 and 85.  The river of fire—nahar dinur—is also the traditional Jewish name of the Milky Way.

Ben Zoma's Pilgrims: Part One--Like a Dream

It all began with the arrival of Av, the blazing month of mid-summer, when the Professor, the Billionaire, the General and the Actress each dreamed the same curious dream for nine nights in a row.  Since they did not yet know one another, each of the eventual Companions was unaware that they shared their nightly vision of the majestic mountain, flanked by a pristine river, glorious orchard, and ancient white-domed burial cave. 

They were unaware, too, that everyone’s dream ended with the same encounter, with a wizened Sage from ancient Israel who introduced himself as Shimon Ben Zoma—yet each dreamer heard Ben Zoma’s voice as his or her own—as if he was speaking out of the dreamer’s own mouth, imploring, “Come home to me!”[i]  So each of the dreamers, thinking themselves alone with this uncanny nightly vision, dismissed it at first, then tried, with mounting difficulty, to ignore it.

But a few weeks later, on the first of Elul, the last month of the Jewish year, as summer turned almost imperceptibly toward fall, each of them arrived indepdently, as it were, at Kennedy Airport and boarded El Al flight 1836 for Tel Aviv.

Why did they follow this strange call?  None of them could really answer that question; each still thought the idea more than a little crazy.  But the dream’s strange power tugged at them; they were drawn onward like deer to a flowing brook.[ii]

And for each of them, the time was right.  They were all highly accomplished, at the pinnacles of their chosen fields.  And yet, just beneath the bright, shining surface of their success, each was struggling mightily.

The Philosopher was a renowned professor, the long-time chair of her department in Charlottesville, Virginia and author of both academic essays on epistemology and pop-philosophical self-help books.  Known for her celebrated wit, she was an omnipresent guest on the media circuit. Once, when Terry Gross asked her, “Is there anything you don’t know?” she half-joked: “Yes—how to say, ‘I don’t know.’”[iii]   And yet, of late, she felt completely clueless.  The day after the Supreme Court recognized gay marriage, she proposed to her longtime partner.  The partner said nothing—then left, that very night, for another woman with whom she had apparently been carrying on a three-year affair.  Now, as the Professor’s personal life imploded, she found herself alone, without a single friend to whom she could turn for support.

The Billionaire had made his vast fortune in software development before his thirtieth birthday, then retired to a mansion on Puget Sound, where he wrote a semi-regular op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal.  He owned 17 cars, 2 yachts, and vacation estates on four different continents.   Rising politicians and rock stars vied for his friendship and he dated a steady stream of swimsuit models.  In other words, he had everything he had ever dreamed of attaining.  And it all amounted

 to. . . well, nothing.[iv]  Which is to say, he was desperately bored.

From his command position in the Pentagon, the General had instant access to the Secretary of Defense and even the ear of the President.  He was a decorated veteran of the first Gulf War, and the nation’s leading authority on 21^st century counter-insurgency tactics.  But back on the home front, he was mired in defeat.  Twelve years earlier, on his daughter’s eighteenth birthday, he and his wife had sat up long past her curfew, waiting for her to return from a celebration with her friends.  At two am, his wife could no longer keep her eyes open.  She went to bed, cautioning him: “I know you are angry.  I’m angry, too.  But you are her father.  Think before you act.  Talk to her.”  Alas, when his daughter finally came through the door at 3:45, reeking of alcohol, he didn’t think or talk with her.   “You betrayed my trust!” he bellowed.  Then he slapped her, hard, breaking her nose.[v]  Since that awful night over a decade ago, his daughter had barely spoken with him.  Now she was about to give birth to his first grandchild—and had forbidden him from visiting.  He feared that he would never see the next generation of his family.

The Actress lamented, “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride” for she had now been a runner up for the Oscar three years running.  She garnered critical praise and box office bounty—but just couldn’t beat out Meryl Streep or even Jennifer Lawrence.  Every time she fell short of the prize, she sank deeper into despair.   In search of consolation, she started a sad affair with the married director of her latest film, knowing that it would end badly and leave her feeling even worse about herself.   Which, of course, it did.  So when she called her agent and told him that she would be taking an unplanned vacation in Israel, he told her to take as long as she needed, since he didn’t see any new projects on her horizon.

El Al 1836 was a red-eye, departing New York just before midnight and arriving in Tel Aviv at 4:30 pm.  The Professor, the Billionaire, the General and the Actress all slept most of the trip and were still drowsy as they made their way through customs, then exited the airport, each searching for their own pre-arranged limousine waiting just outside. But as they headed toward the curb, they discovered that there was only one limo in all of Ben Gurion airport.  Eyeing them, the driver stepped out and opened the rear door.  The Billionaire immediately climbed in. 

“What are you doing?” snapped the General, “this is my car!”

“Excuse me, both of you,” interrupted the Professor, “but I booked this service from back home.” 

“As did I,” insisted the Actress.

“Well, then,” said the driver, “we seem to be at an impasse.  Perhaps I can help.  I have instructions to pick up the passenger who is traveling to the tomb of Shimon Ben Zoma.  Which of you would that be?”

“Me,” they answered in unison. 

“Isn’t that interesting,” noted the driver.  “Come in, all of you.”  They took their seats and, roused from their travelers’ torpor by this most unlikely coincidence, began to take notice of one another for the first time.

“Just one thing,” the driver added: “I cannot take you as far as Ben Zoma’s grave.  No one can, for in the end, the road there becomes impassable for all but those who go on foot.  I can get you to the gateway.  From there, you’re on your own.”

For the next two hours, the passengers sat in stunned silence as the driver headed north, following the superhighway along the coastal plain, then traversing a series of narrowing back roads up into the Galilean hill country. 

Just as the sun sank out of sight, the car slowed to a stop at the base of a large stone archway.  The air was very still.

“Where are we?” asked the Professor.

“You are here,” said the driver, and without further ado, he ushered them out and started to unload their bags. 

“Hold on!” barked the General.  “You can’t just leave us here in this God forsaken place!  I’m ordering you—wait here while I check out the situation!”

The driver looked at the General, gunned the engine, and drove away.

The Billionaire glared at the General accusingly: “Now look what you’ve done!  You and your orders have left me stranded here!”

“Left us stranded here,” cried the Actress.  What do we do now?

No one answered.  Then a strange voice called out from the long shadow stretching behind the stone gate: “Who are you and why are you here?”

Out stepped an ancient beggar, his limbs wrapped with ragged bandages but his eyes afire.[vi] 

“Speak up, all of you!  Answer me: who are you and why have you come?”

Silence. 

Finally, the Actress stepped forward: 

“I am here on account of a dream.  One month ago, I dreamed the same dream, nine nights in a row.  There was a mountain, a river, an orchard, a tomb.  Then Shimon Ben Zoma beckoned, “Come home to me!”  I know: it’s crazier than the craziest role I’ve ever played—and I’ve had some doozies.  Yet here I am.”

“Do you know what’s even crazier?” said the Billionaire, “I had the exact same dream!”

“Me, too,” muttered the General.

“Extraordinary, “ said the Professor.  “I, too, dreamed this dream.  How unlikely could this be: a pack of dreamers in search of a Talmudic sage dead for 2,000 years.  It makes no sense whatsoever.  Yet here we all are.”

“Unlikely, yes,”— replied the Beggar, “but you have done well. This vision invites great blessing, though it will not be easy to realize.  In dreams begin responsibilities.[vii]

An arduous pilgrimage awaits you.  To reach Ben Zoma’s tomb, you must pass through four gates, each of which will test whether your worthiness.  I am the gatekeeper and this is the first, the gate of wisdom.  As you journey from here, know that only the truly wise will arrive at the second gate.”

“How will we know the way?” asked the Billionaire.  “Is there a map?”

“Not the sort that you expect,” replied the Beggar.  “For where you are going, there is no roadmap—but if you seek with diligence and sincerity you will find the path.  For the true way is very close to you, in your hearts and on your lips.  Follow it.”[viii]

“What the hell does that mean?” roared the General.

“This is for you to discover.  For now, heed my advice: you must make this journey by night.  Take to the road after sundown, and make your camp at dawn.  On the path that you have chosen, daylight is blind.  Sleep while the sun shines.  Your vision will come with the darkness.[ix]

Now give me your bags.  The items you have packed will not help you here. I will provide you with all that you need.”

With astonishing strength, the Beggar heaved away their baggage, thereby relieving them of, among other things, the Professor’s classic works of Western philosophy, a key to the Billionaire’s Swiss bank account, the General’s .40 Glock pistol, the Actress’s I-pad, and four high-powered flashlights.  In return, he handed each of the travelers a well-worn backpack, water bottle, coil of rope, white cloak, and generous supply of honey wafers.[x]

“You’re out of your mind!” said the General.  “What kind of rations are these?  And at the very least, give us back our flashlights.  How can we travel by night with no light?”

“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light,” said the Beggar.  “To know the dark, you must go dark.”[xi]    He pointed them toward the faint path on the other side of the gate.  “Your time is here.”  Then he turned, once more, to the Billionaire, the General and the Actress: “For each of you, I have an additional gift, given in accordance with who you are and what you will need along the way.” He gave the General a hammer, the Billionaire a large gold nugget, and the Actress a most unusual scroll—primeval looking, yet entirely blank.

“Don’t I get a gift?” asked the Professor.

“You already have yours,” the Beggar replied.  “Your challenge will be to find it.

Now go.  Darkness has fallen.  If you prove wise travelers, I will meet you again at the second gate.”

---

[i] Talmud, Brachot 57b teaches that whoever sees Ben Zoma in a dream will gain wisdom.  The idea of each person hearing a sacred call in his or her own voice comes from the classic teaching that at Mt. Sinai, each of the Israelites heard God in a uniquely personal manner.

[ii] See Psalm 42: “As the deer yearns for streams of water, so my soul yearns for You, O God.”  This is also a reference to the ayelet ha-shachar,  the “gazelle of the dawn” which figures prominently in the Zohar (and below).

[iii] Talmud, Brachot 4a: “Teach your tongue to say, ‘I do not know.’”

[iv] Ecclesiastes 2.  The author—by Jewish tradition, King Solomon—acquires enormous wealth, only to conclude, “all was vanity, a striving after wind.”

[v] See Numbers 20, where, overcome by anger, Moses disobeys God and strikes the rock instead of speaking to it—and is punished as God denies him entry into the Promised Land.

[vi] In a well-known Talmudic story, the prophet Elijah tells Rabbi Yehoshua that the Messiah can be found outside the gates of Rome: “He sits among the lepers whom you will find unwinding all of their bandages at the same time and then covering their sores with clean bandages. The Messiah is the only one who unwinds and rewinds his bandages one at a time, thinking, ‘I want to be ready at a moment’s notice if I am called’.”  Sanhedrin 98a

[vii] From a poem by W.B. Yeats, later the title of a short story by Delmore Schwartz

[viii] Deuteronomy 30:11-14:  Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach.  It is not in the heavens, that you should say, "Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?"  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?"  No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.

[ix] Much of my story is inspired by my reading on the kabbalistic masterpiece, the Zohar, particularly as discussed in Nathan Wolski’s fine book, A Journey into the Zohar. 

Wolski notes that the Zohar is, in many ways, a pilgrimage story: “According to the Zohar, the world is best experienced from the perspective of a wanderer.  Only a traveler has the fresh eyes from which the deepest dimensions of Torah and reality can be fathomed."  Also of note: throughout the Zohar, the protagonists, a band of mystical Companions, do their sacred work at night.  As Wolski writes on pages 143 and 144: “The nocturnal delight—the nightly study vigil from midnight till dawn—is, alongside the zoharic praxis of ‘walking on the way’ the most important mystical ritual found in the Zohar. . . Throughout the night, the Companions’ words of Torah below emit an aphrodisiacal quality, arousing the male and female grades of divinity, who, after a night of playful courtship, finally unite in the intermingling of the day and night immediately preceding the dawn.”

[x] See Exodus 16:31 and its description of manna

[xi] Wendell Berry, “To Know the Dark”

Lessons from Losing

As a diehard Boise State football fan, I was very unhappy with Saturday night’s opening game debacle.  But as a rabbi and a Jew, I must admit that our ugly loss and the reams of deeply disappointed post-game analysis filling the blogosphere have helped me to prepare spiritually for the approaching High Holy Days (which begin with Rosh Hashanah on Wednesday night) far better than a typical win might have.

We BSU boosters are unaccustomed to losing, having done so—barely—in only four tightly-contested games over the last four years.  In other words, we are spoiled.  So in the wake of Saturday night’s beat down, many fans are talking as if this were the end of the football world as we know it.

They are wrong.  In big time college football, no one wins all the time.  Programs wax and wane as players graduate and new ones take their places.  Even the perennial powerhouses—Texas, Nebraska, Alabama—go through dry spells and get blown out on occasion.  What makes the great programs great is that, over time, they bounce back from bad games and losing seasons to win again.

Football, of course, is just a game.  But all the more so is failure part of real life, where the stakes are so much higher.  During the High Holy Days, we remember just how often we lose our way.  Despite our best intentions, we miss the mark, make foolish mistakes, throw away opportunities—again and again and again.  Al chayt.

One of my teachers, Rabbi Chanan Brichto, z”l, always reminded his students that the Hebrew Bible is overwhelmingly a story of failure, struggle, and loss.  The world’s first child murders his brother.  God has to re-create the world a second time after Noah.  The patriarchal families are torn apart by jealousy and deceit.  Even our greatest prophet, Moses, does not make it to the Promised Land.

But the central message of this sacred season is that despite all of this—lamrot ha-kol—we can and must grow.  Our challenge is to acknowledge our many failures and learn from them, so we can improve in the coming year.  There will always be losses, but in our tradition, resolve and hope carry the day.  Or as Coach Pete said in his post-game interview Saturday night, “I know we’ve got to do a lot better, and we will.”

Meanwhile,  Bronco fans take note: since our Jewish new year, 5774, starts Wednesday night with Rosh Hashanah, in just three days, we’ll be able to say that we’re undefeated on the year!

L’shanah tovah,

Rabbi Dan