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From the Desk of Rabbi Thomas A. Louchheim ... Personally Speaking by Rabbi Tom Louchheim Jan./Feb. 2012 Understanding Boundaries     “A person who has knowledge has everything...Once a person acquires knowledge, what does he lack? If a person does not acquire knowledge, what does he possess?” (Talmud, tractate Nedarim 41a)     As I look back on twenty-five years as a congregational rabbi, I believe (and I hope) that I have grown both as a rabbi and a person. When people walk into my office, they often comment on how impressive my books appear to them. “Have you read them all?” I am asked. “No,” is my response, “but I do use them from time to time as resources for what I do.” My response never satisfied me. Three years ago, I decided I want to improve as a rabbi and as a person. I hired a life coach and began reading books cover to cover. Often, when someone would suggest a book for me to read, I would buy it and read it. I have found lately that my thinking has changed and matured.     Let me share with you something that I have learned which has begun to have a profound impact on my rabbinate. Wallace Stevens, the objectivist poet, once wrote, “We live in the description of a place and not in the place itself.” By this he meant that one person’s reality or perception of reality is individual. Someone else’s perception of the same event or reality may be different. That “reality” becomes not only the label by which that person affixes events and people but also their boundary. A boundary or border limits how you define a place, a person or an event. What is contained within those borders is the “reality.” What I have learned recently is those who define their world in this way allow no growth, no improvement, and no new information in to inform a different perception of that reality. The proposed fence on our southern border is to keep people out. Our Keynsian vs. Hayakian economic philosophy allows for no compromise.     Our view of Palestinians and their view of us and Israelis often do not allow for a sharing of honest grievances on both sides.     Judaism is an interpretive religion. How your parents or grandparents defined a proper Jewish practice is not how you define it today. Where rabbis and synagogues feel it is important to have boundaries on what a gentile may not do in your synagogue, such a boundary – as boundaries do – keep the entire family far away from any Jewish practice. Our tradition understands that different people must approach Judaism from their perspective. There is a Chassidic tradition that if someone falls into a pit, you don’t yell down and tell them how to get out. You don’t scold them that had they done it correctly they would not have ended up down there in the first place. You don’t send a rope down; rather you get down in the mud yourself and help the person out. I have gained the knowledge that labels and boundaries are imposed by those who do not want to deal with people who might be different or think differently than themselves. I have gained the knowledge that there are those who want to belong to our family, who want to contribute, who have something important to teach us. I want them part of my family, I want their contribution and I want to hear their story.     Seek greater knowledge and nothing shall you lack.    Rabbi Thomas A. Louchheim Printer friendly copy of this page (Text only)

Member of the Union for Reform Judaism (formerly, Union of American Hebrew Congregations)