Rabbinic Insights
Jewish Answers

By Rabbi Wayne Dosick

The parents of the late comedian-storyteller, Sam Levenson, were immigrants to America, who had little formal education and spoke almost no English. 
    
They were passionate about their young son getting a good education, so that he could “make it in America.”
    
Everyday, when Sam came home from the local public school, his mother would quiz him about his school-day - about the classes, the teachers, the other children, the activities, the assignments.     
    
But, she never asked the one thing that most mothers usually ask, “What did you learn today?”
    
Instead, she always inquired of young Sam, “What good question did you ask today?”
    
There are many generic, simple questions that we all ask, and that we are all asked each day.  

There are the obvious answers to each question.  And, then, there are the Jewish answers.
    
“How are you?”
    
One time, I walked into a tallis store in the Meah Shearim section of Jerusalem.  I had been buying at that store since I first went to Israel in 1965.  The store-owner never remembered my name, but he remembered my face and my locale.  So, for years when I came into the store, he said, “Shalom, Chicago.”  For the last 30 years, he has said, “Shalom, California.” 
    
Then,  on this visit, he said, “Mah nishmah,” a simple phrase meaning, “How are you?  What's happening?”  I replied “B'seder gamor- Everything is in order, everything is fine.”    He said, “Get out of my store.”  I said, “What do you mean?  I've been shopping here for almost 40 years.”  He said, “Get out of my store.”  I asked, “Why?”  He said, “when I ask you how you are, you do not give me a secular answer, 'Everything is in order.'  When I say you how you are, you say, 'Baruch HaShem, Thank God.'” 
    
Although he lost a sale of many hundreds of dollars, he was probably fine with that, because he was right.  There is a Jewish answer to the simple question, “How are you?”  The Jewish answer is “Thank God.”  
    
“Where do you live?”  
    
The usual reply is, “I live in California,” or “I live in San Diego,” or I live in La Costa.” 
    
But, there is a Jewish answer.  “I am a child of the Lord, my God.”   “I live in God's house - all the days of my life.”   “I love the habitation of God's house.”  “I am sheltered beneath God's wings.” 
    
And there is another Jewish answer to that question.  The Jewish poet of the early-Middle Ages, Yehuda HaLevi, said, “I live in the West, but my heart is in the East.”   
    
Elie Wiesel, the conscience of our generation, was once asked, “You were born in Sighet;  you spent part of your youth in Auschwitz; you lived in Paris, and in Israel.  Now you live in New York,  and teach in Boston.  Where is your home?”Without hesitation, Wiesel replied, “Jerusalem.   Especially when I am not there.”
    
The second - and equally correct and powerful - Jewish answer to the question, “Where do you live?” is:  Jerusalem.  It is our homeland; it is our heart; it is our home.
    
 “What do you do?”
    
Most people answer this casual  question with a job title or job description:  “I'm a teacher; I'm a stockbroker; I'm a doctor.”  Some say, “I write books.  I do catering.  I own a sporting goods store.”  I once heard a man who manages a pest exterminating company - you know, ants, roaches, mice, gophers - answer this question by saying, “I'm a mass murderer.” 
    
The poet and social activist, Danny Siegel, teaches us that the Jewish answer to this question is:  “I do mitzvot.”  “I help feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and educate the illiterate.  I help dower the bride, and comfort the mourners.   I work for social justice, for decency and dignity for every human being.  I work for peace.  I give tzedakah - not because I need a tax deduction - because I feel the sense of obligation of one human being to another.  And I do daily acts of chesed, because there are people in need, because the work of my hands is as important as the numbers on my checks.” 
    
“How's the family?” 
    
My spouse,  my children,  my grandchildren, my parents,  my brothers, my sisters, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, are, thank God, fine.  But, you know, things are not so easy for my brothers and sisters in Judea and Samaria; things are tough for my cousins in the Golan, and in the northern cities, where rockets tore apart their lives this past summer.  And, it is not so easy for my relatives in Western Europe and South America where anti-Semitism is growing.  But, things are looking up for my kin in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, because there is a resurgence of Jewish life.  It's still difficult,  and the numbers are still small, but synagogues and Jewish centers and kosher butcher shops are being built up, and there is a new spirit where before there were only broken lives.
    
The Jewish answer to the question of family is not just about my immediate relatives, but about every Jew in every place on the Earth. Their joy is my joy; their sorrow, my sorrow; their worries and fears, my worries and fears.  When a Jew-hater  fills their walls with graffiti, and desecrates their synagogues, it is my wall, my shul. When a suicide bomber blows up a bomb in their markets, on their streets, in their faces, the bomb is in my face.   And, when, “once again the voice of the bride and the voice of the bridegroom,  the sounds of joy and gladness fill the streets of Jerusalem,” it is my bride and groom, my streets, my joy.”  “All Israel is responsible, one  for the other.”     
    
“Want to get something to eat?”
    
Sure.  Where do you want to go?  Italian?  Greek?  Thai?  Chinese?  Burgers?  Pizza?  Steaks?  Wings? 
    
The Jewish answer to this question is,  Sure.  Milchig or fleshig?  Glatt or regular?    Is there a kosher restaurant anyone around here? Do you eat dairy in a non-kosher restaurant?  The Jewish answer is that our daily lives, including the foods we put in our mouths, are regulated by a code of holiness, a set of guidelines that raise us  up from the animals,  that raise us up from the mundane and the ordinary, to make our lives sacred, to makes our lives God-worthy.
    
There are many more Jewish answers to life's seemingly simple questions.  And, yet, there is one question that may challenge:  “Aren't these Jewish answers too Jewish?  What about pluralism; what about universalism?”
    
The Jewish answer that responds to the challenge to Jewish answers is, “We are all children of God.  We are all children of the universe.  We are all partners with God in the ongoing  creation and re-creation of the world.   “My House shall be a House for all peoples.” 
    
We are all together in this great experiment called “life.”    We all succeed together, or we all fail together.   So, to life's questions - simple and grand - from all the answers we could give,  we offer  Jewish answers, because Jewish answers lift us up,  enrich us, and elevate the human spirit.  In Jewish answers are goodness and righteousness,  faith and love.  
    
First, we hope that every Jew will answer life's questions with Jewish answers.
    
And, then, we offer Jewish answers to all the world, with the hope that they will be embraced and lived.    “Answer us on this day that we call.”