They Nurture Their Nature
D'var
Torah: Emor
May 8, 2009
I have told the story before of the man who goes to his Rabbi and offers a generous donation to the synagogue if the Rabbi will pronounce him as being a Koheyn. “I’ve always wanted to be a Koheyn, Rabbi, and I’m willing to give $100,000.00 to the shul if you’ll say I’m a Koheyn." Any Rabbi would love such a gift but that’s not the way it works. “I just can’t call you a Koheyn though I appreciate your generosity” the Rabbi explained, The man left the Rabbi’s study upset and even despondent that his dream might not come true. He thought it over and came back the following week with the same request, this time doubling the donation to $250,000.00. It was harder for the Rabbi to say no, but he did, and refused once again the following week when the offer was half a million. The congregant returned the following week. Entering the Rabbi’s study he said with renewed determination “Rabbi, this is my final offer. I will donate to the shul in one full payment $1,000,000.00. This was too much for the Rabbi to turn down and so he said “O.K, you’re a Koheyn, but tell me why it's so important for you to be a Koheyn.” The happy and satisfied man responded “Rabbi, I want to be a Koheyn because my father is a Koheyn and my grandfather was a Koheyn and I’ve always wanted to be a Koheyn.”
Well, evidently, no one ever said you had to be the brightest bulb to be a Koheyn. In fact, you don’t have to pass any test or demonstrate any qualifications. You’re either born a Koheyn or you’ll never be one, not even for a million dollars. Our Parsha deals with many laws of being a Koheyn. There are things a Koheyn does and things he must not do because he is a Koheyn but he doesn’t have to do anything to become a Koheyn.
When we were in school and still today people debate nature vs. nurture. Are we the way we are because it our nature to be or are we the way we are because we have learned to be the way we are. Is it our genes or our environment From what I have observed I would say those who say it is nature are right and those who say nurture are correct.
In watching young people's connection to Judaism, I am sometimes struck how it seems that the impetus is to be found somewhere deep in the soul. It seems to be their nature. They may have gotten little encouragement at home and yet they feel a deep affinity for the spiritual dimension of life. There is an argument to be made for nature and an equally and perhaps more formidable argument to be made for nurture. This involves not only how we are nurtured, but how we nurture ourselves.
A couple of years ag,o I read Steve Martin’s autobiography, Born Standing Up: a comic's life. On the cover is a picture of Steve Martin in his white suit and matching white rabbit ears. I am a fan of Steve Martin because he is both very funny and very smart. He is a thoughtful and witty writer/playwright, as well as a wild and crazy guy. In his book, I was most struck by his description of how much he practiced and practiced and practiced to be as funny as he is. He nurtured himself. He began his career as a magician. He writes that after each performance "I kept scrupulous records of how each gag played after my local shows for the Cub Scouts or Kiwanis Club...then I would summarize so I could make the show better next time." The son of a distant and abusive father, Steve Martin nurtured his own rise to stardom. Remember Steve Martin’s crazy antics on Saturday Night Live as one of the Wild and Crazy Guys with Dan Aykroyd and his happy feet. While the humor was in his being wildly free, he had practiced these movements hundreds of times. If anything was nature, it was his drive to excel. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!
The best hitters spend hours in the batting cage. The best pitchers spend untold hours on their breaking ball or slider. You have to have the natural talent, but unpracticed, you remain an unknown.
This past Sunday, I was taken by an op-ed piece in the New York Times written by David Brooks entitled “Genius:The Modern View.” He begins “some people.....believe that genius is the product of some divine spark.” He rejects this and counters “We, of course, live in a scientific age and modern research pierces hocus-pocus. In the view that is now dominant, even Mozart’s early abilities were not the product of some innate spiritual gift. .......What Mozart had, we now believe was the same thing Tiger Woods had- the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills.” Mr. Brooks explains that the latest research maintains that “what separates a genius from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark... Instead it is deliberate practice.”
I believe there is a divine spark that plays a role but that divine spark is democratic, we all have it and this divine spark is manifest in a myriad of ways. Mozart had no monopoly on the spark. The truly accomplished have worked hard to fan that spark into a brightly burning flame. They nurture their nature.
I find this approach to be very Jewish. Yes, the Koheyn is all nature and no nurture, but with all do respect to our priestly class, Judaism has grown far past the Koheyn. Our religious leaders are no longer the Kohanim, but Rabbis. Becoming a Rabbi is not inherited, but the result of years of dedicated work and study.
This past week, an upcoming Bar Mitzvah told me what a minority he is in his public school class. It was not a comfortable feeling for him. I told him, for that reason, the synagogue, Hebrew School and Hebrew High School play such an important role. Here we are no minority. I also explained to him that though we are a minority in local schools, an even smaller minority in the United States and smaller still in the world, our accomplishments and gifts to the world are incredibly large. The number of Jewish Nobel Prize recipients is incredible. Israel leads the world in patents for medical devices, on a per capita basis, according to data presented at the inaugural session of ILSI, Israel Life Science Industry. One might want to say this demonstrates the exemplary nature of the Jewish people. I would say it is the result of how we have nurtured our nature. Generations and centuries of tough Talmudic learning prepared us well when the gates of secular study opened to us and we still remain at the forefront today.
American students have fallen behind students in many other countries in the industrialized world. Our young people are developing attention spans long enough to read and send a text message. Success is not handed us on a silver platter of nature. Those who achieve in life work hard at it. We would all do well to teach our children and lead by example how to nurture our nature and have the divine spark within each of us shine as brightly as it possibly can.
Shabbat Shalom,
