Who Are YOUR Ancestors?

Florida Jewish News, April 28, 2006, pp. 15, 16.

On April 6, the news headline took up half the page because it included a full-color photo of a fossil of a “creature” said to be a “missing link” between fish and land animals. Per Ahlberg, a scientist, gloated over the find, chirping, “This really is what our ancestors looked like when they began to leave the water.”

Now, I understand everything. This explains so much.

For example, it explains talking in shul.

If you are an evolved form of a Tiktaalik—that’s what the evolutionary biologists named the creature—it makes a lot of sense that you would talk in shul. After all, how much could you expect from a Tiktaalik, however much it evolved? Just the fact that the creature could talk at all would be revolutionary, err, evolutionary. Could you expect such a creature to recognize that there’s a God in his life, too? Please! Let’s not ask too much.

Okay, maybe a Tiktaalik, a very, very evolved form of a Tiktaalik, could recognize that there is a Creator of the Universe, I suppose. But it would really be expecting too much to think that such a creature would know that this Creator of the Universe is involved, intimately involved, in the life of that Tiktaalik.

And disrespect? Could a Tiktaalik understand the concept of being rude to the Creator of the Universe? Naaah. That’s really, really asking too much. Because, clearly, if a person talks in shul, he’s spitting in the face of God Himself. That’s clear enough. The Tiktaalik has heard this numerous times, but, of course, he doesn’t—he can’t—comprehend it.

Sixty years after the destruction of the Second Temple, while living in the seclusion of a cave, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a student of Rabbi Akiva, wrote the Zohar, a cabalistic work. Cut off from the world, he became close to God, and from the depths of his heart, he declared: “One who talks in shul shows his contempt for Hakodosh Boruch Hu (The Holy One, Blessed Be He). He drives out Hashem’s Presence from the People of Israel. He is a sinner and induces others to sin. In turn, he causes our exile to be prolonged and prevents our prayers from being heard.”

Of course we’ve heard this before, but how can we expect a Tiktaalik to understand concepts like “being close to God,” “having contempt for Him”, “driving away Hashem’s Presence,” “extending the exile,” or “preventing our prayers from being heard”? Heck, a Tiktaalik wouldn’t even have the concept of “prayer,” I don’t care how evolved he is. How could he understand that those prayers actually mean something? That one is actually talking to God when one is in shul praying? Obviously, he can’t.

The Orach Chaim is one of the sections on daily living in the Shulchan Oruch, considered to be the authoritative codification of Jewish Law. It was written by Rabbi Yosef Karo who was born in 1488, in Toledo, Spain. On page 124, Rabbi Karo wrote: “Conversation is strictly forbidden during the Chazan’s repetition of the Shmoneh Esray. If one speaks at this time, his sin is too great to bear.”

Whoa! Now you’re expecting a Tiktaalik to relate to the concept of sin? So, wait a minute. Are we saying that a Tiktaalik is supposed to not only realize that there’s a God in the Universe; that He created all of us; that we can—and should—have a relationship with Him; that we can do that through prayer; that if we talk during our prayers, we show Him contempt and drive away His Presence; and that if we do all those contemptuous things, we also are sinning?

Yes, actually. How a Tiktaalik is supposed to understand all this, I don’t know. In fact, it gets worse. The Gemara, in Sotah 47a says that if you cause other people to sin, you have lost your portion in the World to Come. So the talker not only is sinning but bringing others to join him in his errors. Oy, oy, oy.

The Orach Chaim has a solution. On page 151, it says, “Stay home if you’re going to talk.” Now that is a solution I am quite sure a Tiktaalik can understand.

But that immediately leads to another problem, maybe even a more serious one. You see, if you’re not a Tiktaalik, evolved or otherwise, and you know that you were created in the image of God, then, when you stay home because you don’t want to be tempted to talk in shul, you’re faced with the problem of how you deal with your family. And this is a great problem because, remember, the whole purpose of being created was to elevate the world we live in. And that begins with how we treat ourselves and our families. Our families are the testing ground for how we treat everyone else. So here we are, staying home because we can’t control our wagging tongues in shul, and what, just what, are we going to say to our spouses and children? How will we treat them? After all, if we affront them, we may as well be at shul spitting in God’s face because that’s what we’re doing anyway. Everyone knows that God can’t, won’t forgive the sins we commit against others until we ask those others for forgiveness.

So this is the dilemma: Go to shul and insult God or stay home and insult our families—thereby insulting God anyway?

Let’s leave this question on hold for a moment while we explore the flip side of the whole question: Suppose, for a moment, a guy was, in some miraculous way, able to control himself from talking in shul and decided to do what he was in shul to do in the first place, which is pray to God. What would be the fallout from that decision?

He would, first of all, be looking inward at all the gifts in his life and thanking God with all his heart for bestowing them on him. A man who prays to God recognizes God as the Source of all good things. For a moment, he would forget whatever has gone wrong and he would feel the joy inside for whatever is going right. Next, he would grab the chance to ask for forgiveness for his numerous wrongdoings. Being human, he has plenty of those, and he feels comfortable admitting to God that he is aware of them and regrets them and wants so much to be a better person. He knows that God knows already, so the only obstacle here would be his being man enough to admit them.

Finally, he would get an opportunity to vent, and he’d make good use of it. He’d pour his heart out to his Creator, asking for the things he wants. If he really was engaged in this conversation, he might question God as to what lessons he was supposed to learn from his hardships; he might even get angry at God and demand an explanation. Either way, he’s taking the process very seriously, as he should.

As the prayer process moves forward, the thanking and the venting and the begging and the questioning get blended along with the melodies and the Torah learning, and somehow, without realizing it, the man who has been deeply engaged in this conversation walks out of shul a new man. A burden has been lifted off his shoulders because he is deeply convinced that he has tossed that ball back in God’s court. He understands that if he is meant to suffer, it must be for a good reason, and he hopes he can learn from it. On the other hand, he knows deeply that he has done all he can to ask God to make things better. He’s done his part. He feels lighter, happier.

Now, I ask you: Isn’t that the best way to go home to his family? To have prayed to Someone who is listening, to have worked on himself, to have unburdened himself? Surely that beats staying home in the first place because he couldn’t resist the temptation for levity and nonsense in shul like a true descendent of a Tiktaalik. And it certainly beats going to shul and insulting God