I’m a stereotype. Like many people (and especially some men), I have an aversion to following written instructions. I tend to believe that I can figure things out and build things all on my own instinct and intuition. Ikea furniture assembly instructions were for other people.

On my better days, my spiritual self knew how wrong I was.

Among Jewish tradition’s many wisdom teachings is that sometimes we need instructions. Instructions don’t suggest that any of us individually lack intelligence or creativity. Rather, instructions are important because individual intelligence and creativity aren’t enough for a diverse collective to build and maintain a thriving community.

This week’s Torah portion (Eikev) records Moses telling all of Israel on God’s behalf: “You must faithfully observe all the instruction that I command you today, so that you will thrive…” (Deut. 8:1). This teaching is directed both to the individual and the community. When we follow these Divine instructions individually, the collective prospers. This is a crucial concept of Judaism. Our individual actions should reflect our responsibility to uplift other members of the community.

Maybe this communitarian approach wasn’t obvious to our spiritual ancestors. Accordingly, Torah offered both carrots and sticks as incentive to follow God’s instructions – “blessings” of peace and prosperity if we followed those instructions, “curses” of strife and want if we didn’t.

On the “blessings” side, probably none of us can claim enough individual intelligence and creativity to promote a good life of prosperity, justice and security for all. Torah and spiritual wisdom traditions offer the time-tested expertise that our collective needs to build the most fair, safe and just world possible. On the “curses” side, we needn’t lay society’s ills at the proverbial feet of a retributive God: if only we’d followed instructions for building a fair, safe, just world!

Torah does require observance of some rules that are beyond our comprehension. Jews merit Torah because of our willingness to naaseh v’nishmah, to do and then listen. This reflects our faith that the objective of Torah is to construct a fair, safe and just world.

There are times when Ikea instructions reminded me of Egyptian hieroglyphics and with, at best, an implied promise of only a slightly wobbly bedroom set. Ikea instructions didn’t explicitly lay out “blessings” of compliance and “curses” so I proceeded by building on my own intuition rather than following directions. Even so, I should have followed those instructions as best I could: it would have saved me hours of frustration.

Moses knew that we might prefer to follow our own designs rather than following instructions. He knew that we might get comfortable in our homes and lives, prideful in our capacity to pursue wealth and power on our own. In Torah’s words, we’d forget God and God’s instructions (Deut. 8:15-17).

Remember mom’s advice to hold onto the instruction manuals for kitchen appliances and home furnishings? Mom was right, and so is Torah. When things break, instruction manuals can help. When the world feels broken, the instruction manual we call Torah can help guide repairs: feed orphans, care for widows, befriend strangers, protect the land, nourish justice. Teach children these instructions so their wisdom may endure for all.

One more thing: instructions are important, but it’s about the building. We can’t sleep on an Ikea bed assembly instruction manual: we actually have to build the bed. Same with Torah. The world can’t thrive on study and spiritual aphorisms alone: we actually have to build the world that Torah’s instruction manual envisions.

Instructions don’t guarantee perfection: bad things happen to good people, and even the most dogged and diligent build-it-yourselfer might end up with a rickety bookcase. And instructions don’t ask us to ignore our intelligence and creativity: society needs more out-of-the-box thinkers and courageous people marching to the beat of their own drummers. But Torah’s tried and true spiritual designs have proved their worth over time – if only we’d follow the instructions.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

I’ve completed four decades of adulthood. Those four decades are like four books of Torah: my growth, my exodus, my immersion in law, and my journeys through difficult times. I’ve got my very own personal sized torah to share.

These are the books of Evan. Genesis is a tale of growing up and expanding family. In my torah, I begin with the sacrifices of ancestors who fled pogroms to the safety of America. I recall the stories of poverty and pain adjusting to this new world. I appreciate the hard work of my parents who enabled me to have a career and comfortable life.

Exodus is traveling a new path. I had my departure from home, which then felt like a tight squeeze. I left for Washington, DC where I found independence and responsibility. I settled into a city of promise, a place for justice, and a home of freedom. Capitol Hill was my mountain for revelation.

Leviticus is a deep dive into law. Washington is where I learned the law. I developed a law practice. I advocated for better laws. And when I could, I learned Jewish law. I enhanced my Jewish practices. I advocated for a better Judaism.

Numbers is an experiment challenged. Expectations for a good life weren’t always realized. Sometimes blessings seemed to fall from the sky and other times challenges plagued me. My process of maturing continues to be managing disappointments and accepting limitations.

After four books of Torah are completed, Deuteronomy is offered. Deuteronomy comes from the Greek meaning a second telling. In Hebrew Deuteronomy is known as devarim translated as “words.” Devarim is Moses’ end of life review rife with acrimony and disappointment. Moses tells us what “really” happened, even if the facts shift as readily as desert sand.

The book of Deuteronomy opens with “these are the words that were spoken on the other side of the Jordan.” When we get farther from the time that events occurred and memory is tainted by emotions, the words spoken are like those reported from the other side of the Jordan. This is a metaphor for the way in which time and perception morphs truth into truthiness. The other side of the Jordan is where faith faltered amid setbacks and mistakes. The retelling is a cautionary tale and not a history book.

After forty years of adulthood, I too will speak words from the other side of the Jordan. Will I recall the details exactly as they occurred? Probably not. Will I let emotion color the narrative, with pique and disappointment just in the way Moses did? Probably so.

As I get older, the details are fading and the emotions are flooding. I am mindful of Moses’ example in Deuteronomy. Narrative is a powerful tool for teaching, even when memory is imperfect. Facts may be servants to the master story. Emotions compel us to cherry-pick the truths that best serve the account we wish to share.

Even as my memory is dulled, I will transcribe my history. The records of my life have previously been started in crayon or pen or typewriter. Now I report more methodically on a keyboard with shift and edit functions; sometimes aching to hit the delete key and often struggling to find the button for reveal codes.

In between the scurrying and schlepping, the over scheduled days, the emails unanswered and meetings unending, I am recording my thoughts and sharing them with you. I am writing the personal sized torah of me.

I’m on the other side of the Jordan and I’ve got a fifth book to finish writing. I shall try to write with skill using a program called Word, having abandoned Word Perfect.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

I was watching the Great British Baking Show late one night. I learned some baking techniques for building a multi-layered French cake: the key skill was pressing down on the layers to build up the dessert.

Turns out that this baking skill also can build leadership in communities.

Here’s what caught my attention. The baker was pushing layers of biscuit down into pastry cream. It required a deft hand and carefully balanced ingredients. With too much pressure or too much cream, confection would ooze out and layers would collapse. With too little pressure, the cake wouldn’t adhere. With too much crust or not enough cream, the cake would be dry.

In Jewish terms, the cake’s solidity is gevurah (strength, limits, boundaries). The sweet cream is chesed (love, kindness). A good cake needs both and must balance both. So does a good leader, and so does a good community leadership system.

Parshat Pinchas confirms these ideas. “God answered Moses: take Joshua son of Nun, a man that has spirit in him, and lay your hands on him” (Numbers 27:18). With these few words, Torah offers tools of successful leadership development. 

Before priest and community, Moses invested some of his authority in Joshua – building up a leader by literally pressing down, just like the baker. The laying of hands was an important first step in raising up a leader.

Pressing down symbolized the weightiness of role. Pressure and responsibility weigh on any leader: a leader who doesn’t feel it isn’t really leading. In that spirit, I imagine Moses looking Joshua in the eye, the palms of Moses’ hands digging into Joshua’s shoulders. Moses might have whispered to Joshua, “This is a tough job, kid! Stand tall and stay strong!  Don’t lose your cool when they kvetch. Be their advocate even when they act poorly. Love them with chesed, and be strong with gevurah.”

The moment also represented an exquisite act of right-timed planning. In the language of modern organizational theory, Moses (or maybe God) showed keen succession planning skills by choosing that moment to press down on Joshua to build him up. Well before Moses breathed his last, a successor was selected and invested. Power and responsibility then began to flow – in front of the entire community – both to groom the successor and to prepare the community for a future without Moses.

Not to exhaust the metaphor, but a good baker also must be a good planner –   accurately measuring, carefully placing utensils, keenly sensing when each step must occur and in what sequence. Maybe Moses would have been a great baker if only he had more than manna and water in the desert!

And also like good baking, effective leadership depends on pace. Some acts must happen quickly and at fixed times; others must wait for their time. A wise leader knows when to push forward, when to speed up, when to wait and when to stop. As with laying hands, wise use of time calibrates the pressure of pushing down just enough to build up in real time.

It’s much the same for the substance of leadership. Just as a good cake must balance “dry” and “wet” ingredients, effective leadership must balance the seemingly “dry” ingredients of structure (e.g. legal matters, budgets, agendas, goals, boundaries, accountability reviews, ethics systems) with the “wet” ingredients of emotion (e.g. inspiration, empathy, compassion, love). Too much of the first is like a dry and crumbly biscuit. Too much of the second is a gooey mush and the structure can’t hold.

Notice the repeated theme of balance: pushing down to lift up, both structure and filling, both individual and community, not too fast and not too slow. Wise building – whether a cake, a leader or a community – requires this balance at every level. Without this balance, the result is dry or gooey, or topples over.

In every age, problems press down on the shoulders of leaders. In turn, leaders must stand both solid and soft, and so must the communities they lead. That’s the path of balance, wisdom, sweetness and good cakes.

By Rabbi Evan J. Krame. Sketchnote by Steve Silbert.

There is a theory that there was once more than five books of Moses. The supposition is based upon a phrase in the book of Numbers. In the middle of wandering and kvetching, we find this curious phrase “Therefore the Book of Wars speaks of . . .” A total non sequitur! There is no trace of the aforementioned Book of Wars. Yet, history has recorded additional chapters about the conflicts that beleaguered the Jewish people.

Writing this from Hungary, and having just toured the Czech Republic and Slovakia, I am acutely aware of what a modern book of wars might recount. A common refrain in Central and Eastern Europe is what the Nazis didn’t destroy, the Russians took. The worst was reserved for Europe’s Jews. In our travels we viewed synagogues that are now museums and cemeteries that are the last traces of Jewish communities.

What books should one read on such a trip? I brought Deborah Lipstadt’s book Antisemitism Here and Now, and the Holocaust novel, We Were the Lucky Ones. My intent was not to obsess on the past but to be sufficiently informed to move forward. As Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi taught, we do not discard our past but we cannot live the future of Judaism by looking only through the rear view mirror.

I am conflicted. I yearn to share Judaism that is joyful in its effect and progressive in its content. All the while, I’m carrying recent chapters of the Book of Wars in my backpack and my brain. How do we acknowledge the tortuous Jewish past while creating a better Jewish future? This question arose for me recently.

With a crisis on the U.S. Mexican border, many Jewish leaders, particularly those who identify as progressive, used Holocaust imagery in their rhetoric. I am disturbed by what I see as a betrayal of the memory of the six million Jews killed. The Shoah was not a universal phenomenon but a unique result of two millennia of anti-Jewish insolences. Concentration camps were built specifically to eradicate the Jewish people. We can and must decry the horror of detention centers. We should do so without invoking the language of the Shoah.

Why this concern with language? Because I fear that the last chapter of the Book of Wars has not yet been written for the Jewish people. With Survivors’ numbers dwindling and anti-semitism rising, the world still needs a reminder of how Jews were irrationally singled out for destruction.

Here in Hungary, President Viktor Orban uses anti-semitic imagery to establish himself as a populist. Jewish philanthropist George Soros, whose funding sent Orban to college, is accused of leading an international conspiracy. Sound familiar? All the while, these European nations struggle with the Shoah narrative, some exculpating their own people and pointing fingers at Nazis and Communists. The problem is that the complicity and silence of the citizenry are excused in biased historical representations. Thus, we imperil our future if the Holocaust becomes generic for all acts of oppression. The Shoah was specific to Jewish history and its lessons are sidestepped by on going anti-semitism.

For our own sake, I believe we should jealously and vigorously guard not just the memory but also the exceptionality of the Holocaust. The English language is more than adequate to otherwise describe the horrific conditions of detention and internment.

While the Book of Wars is lost, accounts of violence against Jews continues. Our obligation is to bring forward that legacy in a way that no such books need ever be written.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame