Friday, May 06, 2011
FINDING THE THING YOU NEED WHEN YOU NEED IT
A consequence of living in a building that is now a majority Russian, is that my neighbors tend to leave stuff they don't want in the hallways for others to take. Sometimes there's no way in hell I'm touching it (the tupperware container full of red beans, for instance, or the half-empty box of oatmeal packets), and other times I'll pick it up and give it a try.
Thus, I ended up picking up an old book by Elie Wiesel, called Souls On Fire: Portraits and Legends of the Hasidic Masters. Now, I’m no fan of the Hasidic faith—a lot of my objections boil down to the fact that in the year 2010, if your belief system is flexible enough that you can, say, visit she-male prostitutes, or live in the modern world and drive SUVs, badly, while I’m biking through your neighborhood, but you still have to treat women like second-hand citizens because a shepherd told a story to a guy who wrote a portion of the Old Testament, then you don’t really have what I would call a consistent intellectual foundation for your belief system.
That being said, I have a particular love for all kinds of religious faiths, as they inspire their best and brightest to create complex mythology, to write philosophy, to commit to paper timeless pieces of wisdom that are so universal that they apply as much to my life as they did to some rabbi’s hundreds of years ago.
And thus lies the title of this blog post. There’s many pearls to be plucked from the legends of these Hasidic masters, and perhaps my favorite (which was also Wiesel’s) is, “Man is the language of God.” Even someone like myself, who doesn’t believe in a Heavenly Father, can appreciate the deceptive complexity of that statement.
As with this one: “The rich need the poor more than the poor need the rich. Unfortunately, neither is conscious of it.”
But it was this following passage that really spoke to me, especially right now, when I’m at a crossroads in my comedy career, when after fifteen years things are starting to really pay off in every way but financial, and when I find myself struggling more than I ever have, even when things were much worse for me. The following passage genuinely inspires me, and I plan to print it out and put it up in my apartment where I can see it every day. It’s by one of the great Rabbis of the Hasidic movement, Rabbi Dov Baer, known as “The Maggid of Mezeritch,” (a Magid being a preacher/rabbi)…
Below, I quote Souls On Fire:
To Rebbe Zusia, he gave the following advice:
“Listen, I cannot give you the ten cardinal rules governing the conduct of a man wishing to serve his Creator. However, there are three things you can learn from a child and seven you can learn from a thief.
“From an infant learn how to laugh, how to cry and how to keep constantly busy.
“From the thief? First of all: that whatever he does, he does secretly.
Two: that whatever he does not obtain today, he will endeavor to obtain tomorrow.
Three: he is loyal to his accomplices.
Four: he is ready to sacrifice himself for the object of his desires, even though it may have no value to others.
Five: once the desired object is his own he loses all interest.
Six: he is not afraid of hardship.
Seven: nothing on earth could make him change trades, in other words, he does not want to be anyone but himself.”
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Thus, I ended up picking up an old book by Elie Wiesel, called Souls On Fire: Portraits and Legends of the Hasidic Masters. Now, I’m no fan of the Hasidic faith—a lot of my objections boil down to the fact that in the year 2010, if your belief system is flexible enough that you can, say, visit she-male prostitutes, or live in the modern world and drive SUVs, badly, while I’m biking through your neighborhood, but you still have to treat women like second-hand citizens because a shepherd told a story to a guy who wrote a portion of the Old Testament, then you don’t really have what I would call a consistent intellectual foundation for your belief system.
That being said, I have a particular love for all kinds of religious faiths, as they inspire their best and brightest to create complex mythology, to write philosophy, to commit to paper timeless pieces of wisdom that are so universal that they apply as much to my life as they did to some rabbi’s hundreds of years ago.
And thus lies the title of this blog post. There’s many pearls to be plucked from the legends of these Hasidic masters, and perhaps my favorite (which was also Wiesel’s) is, “Man is the language of God.” Even someone like myself, who doesn’t believe in a Heavenly Father, can appreciate the deceptive complexity of that statement.
As with this one: “The rich need the poor more than the poor need the rich. Unfortunately, neither is conscious of it.”
But it was this following passage that really spoke to me, especially right now, when I’m at a crossroads in my comedy career, when after fifteen years things are starting to really pay off in every way but financial, and when I find myself struggling more than I ever have, even when things were much worse for me. The following passage genuinely inspires me, and I plan to print it out and put it up in my apartment where I can see it every day. It’s by one of the great Rabbis of the Hasidic movement, Rabbi Dov Baer, known as “The Maggid of Mezeritch,” (a Magid being a preacher/rabbi)…
Below, I quote Souls On Fire:
To Rebbe Zusia, he gave the following advice:
“Listen, I cannot give you the ten cardinal rules governing the conduct of a man wishing to serve his Creator. However, there are three things you can learn from a child and seven you can learn from a thief.
“From an infant learn how to laugh, how to cry and how to keep constantly busy.
“From the thief? First of all: that whatever he does, he does secretly.
Two: that whatever he does not obtain today, he will endeavor to obtain tomorrow.
Three: he is loyal to his accomplices.
Four: he is ready to sacrifice himself for the object of his desires, even though it may have no value to others.
Five: once the desired object is his own he loses all interest.
Six: he is not afraid of hardship.
Seven: nothing on earth could make him change trades, in other words, he does not want to be anyone but himself.”
