Every Thursday during the school year, Reb Shmuel our Rosh Yeshiva has a sicha. Sicha means conversation. He starts with some thoughts of his own on some point of relevance to religious life… truthfulness, faith, tefilah, humor, study, it can be anything really. He shares with is his thoughts, looks at his watch, and says “your turn.” And we have a conversation.

This past Thursday was the last day of Yeshiva for the year. Reb Shmuel in his sicha talked about the sichot we have had over the course of the past year. Usually I remember what Reb Shmuel says in his sichot. Reb Shmuel is a very smart and a very wise man. This sicha I actually don’t remember very much of. What I remember is the reactions to it, some of which I found disappointing. Someone asked if Reb Shmuel had a vision for a structured way of implementing the values he attempts to communicate in his sichot into the Yeshiva throughout the year. I found this disappointing because the sorts of values that he talks about in his sichot are largely personal values that one must implement personally, not through a program prescribed by an institution. I felt that this person, along with others who expressed similar sentiments about the lack of structured implementation, missed the entire point of the sichot over the course of the year, and probably largely missed the point of Yeshiva as well.

Someone else asked “Where is God in all of this?”

Reb Shmuel said a bit about how he doesn’t like so much to talk about God in God terms because it often feels as though when people start to talk about God, they are talking about something that doesn’t mean anything, using a language that doesn’t mean anything. He said that nevertheless, bli neder, he would try to come up with a sicha about God perhaps for the coming year, since people seemed to want to talk about it.

I raised my hand.

Reb Shmuel talks about God all the time. All of his sichot are about God. See, I take his sichot very seriously. I listen and I try to assimilate and incorporate the things that he talks about into my daily life, and into my outlook. Some of his sichot are very concrete, very tachlis, like this is how you daven properly, this is how you build a kosher sukkah, this is how you hold a lulav. Some of them are more conceptual, more abstract, like about the nature of truth and truthfulness, or faith and faithfulness. They are all about how we live our lives, and they are all about God.

I remember a few months ago I was having a conversation with someone here at the Yeshiva. It was a conversation about personal conduct, about doing right by other people. And God came up in the conversation. We talked about God, matter of factly, comfortably, unselfconsciously. And I remember, after the fact, realizing that that was the first time I had ever been able to talk about God in that way… to talk about God without making disclaimers, without defining terms, without specifying what kind of God we are talking about here… God was just there in the conversation, perfectly at home.

Another time, I was having a conversation with another Yeshiva friend, one of those deep intense conversations that I tend to have with people, and he asked me the question “Do you ever just… talk to God?” The question seemed a little odd to me, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint why. I thought about it and gave him an answer about the times in my prayers when I explicitly include personal thoughts, supplication, etc. like tachanun and the end of the Amidah, but it didn’t seem like the right answer. I remember thinking about it the next day and trying to write about it… and I realized why the question had seemed so odd… it was because I don’t need to think in terms of “talking to God.” I have come to a point in my life where God is a constant presence.

In Shaiya’s medieval philosophy class we talked a little bit the other day about first order and second order theologies. Basically, second-order theology involves the questions of what we mean when we talk about God, what kind of God we do or don’t, can or cannot believe in, what it does and doesn’t mean to worship, etc. Academic discourse about God belongs in this category. First order theology is the realm of faith, worship and practice. My whole life, since the age of 7 or so, has been about second-order theology. This is where The Conservative Movement especially puts a great deal of emphasis. This year, as I mentioned way back last July, I made a decision to take a step back from second-order analysis of my Judaism and my theology and just work on practice. Now theology and philosophy and halachic theory have all slowly been reasserting themselves into my consciousness over the course of the year, and that is fine. But what I’ve been amazed to discover is that through the living of this life, thorough choosing to open myself to what text and practice has to teach me, I have, somewhere along the way, developed a first-order theology. God is in my life now in a way that I would not have thought possible for an overly-analytical type like myself. God is there when I wake up and thank God for returning my soul to me after sleep. God is there when I pray three times a day. God is there when I study. God is there as I work hard to live according to the standards of ethical personal conduct that our tradition mandates. God is there when, in my imperfection, I do things wrong and seek the rachamim that enables me to pick myself up and try again, to always strive to do better next time. And God is in the community that we create here with communal prayer and study, sharing shabbatot and holidays. God is there in the family that we become.

These are the things that Reb Shmuel’s sichot are about. How we live and think and practice Jewishly. And these are the things that bring God into our lives.

After the sicha ended, after I had expressed these thoughts, Reb Shmuel called me over and told me that he has never felt so appreciated in all of his life. And it made us both smile.

A couple of years ago I made a decision to work on watching my tongue. I decided to take on lashon hara as my project for the year and I became very aware of what I said and I also became very aware of what others said and what conversations I did and did not participate in. Over the course of that year or so I felt like I did a pretty darn good job. Not good enough, because of course it is never “good enough” (which doesn’t have to be a bad thing) but I felt like I made a lot of personal progress.

This year I feel that I have not done so well.

I have noticed this year an unwillingness on my part to say anything about L”H when I hear it, or even to refuse to take part. This is a big problem. It is a problem for me personally and it is a problem in the Jewish world. This is not one of those areas in which one can say “oh that’s just not so-an-so’s strong point.” Shmirat HaLashon is essential in Jewish life and especially essential for our professional body. I’m sincerely disturbed by the lack of care i have observed given to this area.

So I’m laying out a proposal. I am making a deal with myself. I want to be a rabbi. Not so that I can have the job-title “Rabbi” but because I want to achieve a certain level of mastery in Jewish learning so that I may contribute to the Jewish world and the Jewish people by helping others to live fulfilling Jewish lives, have their lives enriched by Jewish learning, and so that I may live properly as a Jew myself. Becoming a rabbi entails more than just learning though. You can get a master’s or a doctorate just learning. Being a rabbi is being a master in our tradition which is not just a learning tradition but a legal and ethical tradition as well. Study is in our tradition is optimistically considered more highly than performing mitzvot for the simple reason that study leads to mitzvot. If you study with no intention of putting into practice what you learn, then you have merited something certainly… and you might gain a title out of it… but how can it be anything but empty until you implement it in your own life?

I’m making Shmirat HaLashon my project again. And not just for a year, but for good. I was reading lessons from the Chafetz Chaim that year, and I think I might do so again… but what I might want to do, rather than reading summaries written up in English flooding my inbox, I might make it a project to read the original. Maybe set a weekly goal. I will make it my business to watch what I listen to, what conversations I participate in, and to try to steer conversations away from lashon hara when I see it rearing its ugly head. I have already incorporated a reminder into my daily tefillah. Now I am making it public.

We’ll see how this goes. Wish me strength and success.