|
|
|
Jewish World Review Oct. 4, 2000 /5 Elul, 5761
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
WHEN MY dear father, may he live and be well, showed me his new "shofar
shoes," I was reminded of how uniquely Jews steeped in Jewish tradition look
at the world.
It was just about a year ago, several hours before the arrival of Yom
Kippur. My family and I had the wonderful privilege of spending the High
Holidays in Baltimore with my father and his wife (my wonderful "second
mother," as I refer to her; I lost my own beloved mother a decade ago).
Father is the rabbi of a small congregation and serves as the recording
secretary of Baltimore's widely respected Orthodox rabbinic court.
Before he showed me the shoes, he recounted how his old cloth "Yom Kippur
shoes" -- leather footwear is forbidden on the Jewish Day of Atonement -- had
grown uncomfortable. These new "shofar shoes," however, he explained, were
much better.
He is someone, without question, who can appreciate a good shoe. As a child
in a Polish shtetl, the only shoes he ever had were those first worn and
outgrown by older siblings. To this day he attributes his size 6EEE feet to
the confining, ill-fitting footwear of his youth. And during the years of
World War II, when he and his yeshiva-colleagues found themselves unwilling
guests of Josef Stalin in a Siberian labor camp, the frigid temperatures
made foot-covering a matter not of comfort but of life or death. He recalls
how he and his friends would wrap long pieces of cloth in layers around
their feet for insulation. When he says the morning blessing "Who has
provided me all my needs," which Jewish tradition teaches refers to shoes,
he surely relates to it better than most of us.
My father richly appreciates so many other things too. He takes powerful
pride in his children and grandchildren. None of them is particularly
"successful" in the world's gauge of the word, in the acquisition of wealth
or property. No dot-com millionaires among his progeny to date. But they
are all, to a person, observant Jews, immersed in the life, texts and
traditions of the Jewish religious heritage. And my father knows that the
great-grandchildren with which he has been blessed -- and, with G-d's help,
those yet to come -- will grow up in dedicatedly Jewish homes. That, he
insists -- not what the world thinks -- is true success, Jewish success.
So many things, I pondered, are so different when regarded through deeply
Jewish eyes. Even what a New Year's day means. To the wider world, January
1 is a day of partying and revelry, an opportunity to get drunk and have a
good time. Rosh Hashana, by contrast, is a time of judgment --- a time of
happiness, to be sure, but of trepidation as well, of regret, of apologies,
of repentance.
My father blows the shofar at his shul on Rosh Hashana. The blasts of the
ram's horn call all who hear them, in Maimonides' words, to "awaken,
sleepers, from your slumber," to reject the "silly distractions of the
temporal world" we occupy; to focus on what alone is real: serving our
Creator and being good to one another. To see the world, in other words,
through Jewish eyes. No wonder my father was so happy to discover that the
comfortable Yom Kippur shoes he had found were "shofar shoes."
I didn't understand at first what a "shofar shoe" was, though, and told him.
He smiled and responded patiently, "Why, each one has a shofar on it."
When I expressed skepticism, he went to his bedroom and emerged triumphantly
with the footwear.
And when he held them up for me to see, his Jewish eyes taught mine a
lesson.
I don't think I'll ever look at the Nike "swoosh" quite the same way
again.
The shofar shoes
By Rabbi Avi Shafran
Rabbi Avi Shafran is American Director of Am Echad, an international organization promoting Jewish unity. He may be reached by clicking here.
08/10/00: A Tisha B'Av memory
06/08/00: Question and Answer
04/18/00: The man on the bimah
04/04/00: DEFINING MORALITY DOWN
01/12/00: Friendly words from a surprising place
12/03/99: The original spin on Chanukah
11/09/99: Heart and soul
10/26/99: Recidivist parents
07/17/99: Wake Up Call?
06/14/99: A Remarkable Reform Manifesto
03/26/99: Message In A Bottle
03/09/99: The Times and The Timeless
01/20/99: Black Hats, Bad Guys
12/10/98:
Bringing Wall Street
Wisdom To the Quest for
'Jewish-Continuity'
7/06/98: Jaded
7/01/98: Full disclosure