“Image a new volume of Hasidic aphorisms akin to those of Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz or those of a Sufi pir. A volume of epigrams about directly relating to God and creating a deep religion of the heart. Reminders not to treat religion or ones denomination as just another sports team to root for. Rather, a person with faith looks directly to the self and to the Zohar, Rav Nachman and Rabbi Mordecahi Yosef Leiner of Izbitz. The new book by Rabbi Menachem Froman, who unfortunately died three years ago, is called by a title with a double meaning My Followers (Hasidim) Will Laugh from This (Privately Published as Hai Shalom Publishing, 2015, 160 pages). The book is a collection of 180 gems of spiritual wisdom culled by his son from Rabbi Froman’s writings…
Rabbi Menachem Froman (1945 –2013) was an Orthodox rabbi and a peacemaker. He was a man of apparent contradictions. Froman was the chief rabbi of Tekoa, a settlement deep in the West Bank, as well as a tireless advocate for peace, religious dialogue and coexistence with his Palestinian neighbors. He was a founding member of the settler movement Gush Emunim, and dedicated to the right of the Jewish people to live in the Land of Israel, but also acknowledged, that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is “evil” and “derives from the power of man’s fear.”
But for Froman, these ideas were not contradictions. Rav Menachem loved the Land of Israel, while recognizing that it did not only belong to one people. In an interview, he stated: “What I want for myself I must also want others to have. I want a Jewish state, I must want there to be an Arab state. I love Jerusalem, I have to want them to have Jerusalem, too.” Rabbi Froman believed that religion and love of the land could be unifying forces between Israelis and Palestinians instead of dividing ones. And he taught that love and peace could be the only responses to hate and violence…
I knew Rabbi Froman from interfaith events, where he taught Rav Nachman and Zohar to Muslim leaders, the politicians did not take him seriously but the pious did. He danced and sang with Muslim, Sikh, Christian and Buddhist leaders. Froman was friendly with many secular artists and novelists whom he felt were more open to life than many a self-proclaimed religious person.
Froman loved to pray and speak about praying to God. He also thanked God constantly. One of his favorite gestures was to clap his hands rhythmically, while chanting the word “Todah” (Grateful ). Rav Menachem believed deeply in the power of thanks. He thanked his students, his friends, and strangers.
Rabbi Froman’s aphorisms are about embracing the space of uncertainty, learning to cultivate trust and prayer in place of fixed answers. He was one of those people “whose religious revelation was not expressed in ready-made ideas about what’s forbidden and what’s permitted, and regular forms of prayer, but existed in the body, the soul, in action.”
The goal of his teaching is to reopen the heart to experience God. Froman wants to touch and see God, yet knows that we will not attain his goal. We are left with our limits and acceptance of inevitable death. Froman thinks our most human response should be humor, to be able to laugh at ourselves…
131) Rav Shagar criticized the religious community for the fact that their faith was not realistic, rather it is an illusion. In my eyes, the problem of the faith of the religious is that in place of faith in God they changed into a faith in themselves, in the righteousness of their path and their worldview and who they are. Consequently, it turned into a closure of the heart to the sense of God (Inyan elokhi).
179) All of theology, all religions, and all words spoken in the world about God – spring forth only from the need to explain the simple instinctual human activity called prayer. A person prays but he needs to explain to himself to Whom does he pray and what he is doing. Therefore, he calls this by the name of God and builds a complete religious worldview around this. The core of everything is prayer.
180) The world is divided into two types of people. The first type of person repeats himself again and again, each time saying the same thing. The second type are those who don’t have anything to say, To be religious is to be deep and what is deep is religious. The novelist Amos Oz told me many years ago “To you Menachem I can tell that my works are religious literature.” The question is open if this is true about his works but this is exactly the issue- depth is the essence of the divine. For that reason, I taste in Kafka more of a taste of divinity than from many of the book of rabbis…
26) I am a friend of a former commander and Palestinian defense minister. He is a lover of Israel, therefore he retired when Hamas took control of Gaza. He is a truly religious person. Once he asked me to bring him [Maimonides’] Guide of the Perplexed in Arabic… If only that our [Israeli] defense minister would study the Guide of the Perplexed.
56) According to the Rebbe of Izbitzer: What is the test of the sacrifice [of Isaac]? That the command of the sacrifice of Isaac was through a glass darkly (aspaklaria sheano meiriah)- an unclear message with ambiguity. This is the self-sacrifice of Abraham that despite that he did not know and was uncertain, he followed it. Abraham was not a completely religion person knowing what God wants and then fulfilling the command. Rather, he acted as if he was in the secular world, which does not have a system of absolute decrees and one does not have 100% certainty. Therefore it was a great test.
57) What makes me religious? I am not religious because I am an agent of God, rather I am religious in that I rely on God, that I cling to God, I am completely dependent on God. I depend on God for what I do and I know that I depend on God. There are two type of religion: The first says: There is a God- this is the religion of soccer fans and yeshivot- every place where you cry out “There is a God” or “Here O Israel”. There is another religion that says God knows or in a certain sense God is vast.
73) Fear of [God] is to accept reality, not to fool oneself but to live with the questions. In the end we die, this is difficult but this is fear [of God]- to accept reality.
80) The entire dynamic and tension of the religious life is built on our continuous attempt to see what is impossible to see. The Torah says “No one shall see me and live”. The piyyutim, for example Yigdal (I will glorify the living God), explain and emphasize that it is impossible to see God- but we do not stop our desire. In Rav Nachman’s story The Humble King, he explains how the hero went out to seek a portrait of the king of whom no one has his portrait, he has the desire to reach the impossible. One who understands this and makes peace that He is impossible to reach and to see – loses the religious faculty (inyan elokhi). The religious life starts with this want –despite that it is probably impossible. Yet, in the Torah it is written that Moses saw God face to face therefore it is possible to see Him . This is certain- that without sight or contact there cannot be a connection. On the other hand, seeing Him also destroys something. In the moment that you see the girl of your dreams you also lose her in a certain way. Then what do we do? See? Don’t see? I have a friend who told me that he returned to observance (hozer be teshuvah) after he went with his father to the Louvre in Paris and saw the Mona Lisa. Perhaps this is the answer.
81) I have said that I have two proofs for God. The first is that media fills the void of the world with so much nonsense and despite this a person keeps a little reason – this is a sign that there is a God. Second:] is that the religious community appears the way it does and speaks about God the way it does. Despite this there remains people in the world who believe [in God] – this is a sign that in truth there is a God.
100) The purpose of the Zohar is to reveal the answer to “know… to where you are heading” (Avot3:1) then you wont fear death, on the contrary you are strengthened from it.
115) In truth, the world is filled with tragedy; existence is laden with many inner contradictions. The difference between me and Rav Kook is that Rav Kook triumphed over them with a harmonistic approach an I triumph over them with humor.
137) The Zohar is not the Torah of the righteous but for the masters of return. Why? Because someone who has not fallen – who has not “glanced and been stricken”, one who has not “cut down some of the shoots”, one who has not tasted the taste of heresy – does not learn Zohar. Only someone who visits the abyss can reach the secret (sod).
151) Who is permitted to enter the empty void? One who does not wait for answers, one who does not wait for decisions of halakhah that decide what he is to do. Only one whose religiosity is built on silence. One whose emotions of cleaving to God are at times such that he does not know what is incumbent upon him to do. A person like this becomes a stronger believer from the times that he calls out the question of “where is the place of His glory?” One whose faith is built on emotions of grace in which he only experiences that “there is a God” – that his cleaving to God comes from an answer to questions, then it is forbidden for him to enter the empty void, his religious world would collapse there.
164) The uniqueness of the Zohar as opposed to other works of kabbalah is that the Zohar deals entirely with the left, the side of the other side (sitra ahara). It does not remain in the sublime mercy of the right side. Rather it seeks embodiment by partnership with the forces of evil, only in this way can something be whole. This is exactly the opposite of Maimonides. The entire purpose of Maimonides was to negate corporeality, while the Zohar is the book of corporeality and partnership with evil. Therefore, the Zohar really loves sacrifices. Today in synagogue we do all sorts of spiritual activities such as praying and intention – but where is the meat? Where is the corporeality? The Zohar says that a sacrifice is peace and there is not peace without the left [side]. We make peace with enemies otherwise it is one sided as when there is only the right side. The [right side] is the essential part but without the accompanying [left] part there is no wholeness. So too with a sacrifice- there is confession, which is perhaps the essential part of sacrifice but without the meat and blood it is not a sacrifice. The Zohar is the opposite of Maimonides.
169) It is customary to say that it is forbidden to study the Zohar before one marries, but how is it possible to get married without learning Zohar?
30) When I learned in Merkaz Harav, we continuously returned to the divine grasp of Nahmanides who said that to live in the land of Eertz Yisrael (land of Israel) was a mitzvah, in contrast to Maimonides who did not count this as a mitzvah. The entire settlement movement is based on this position of Nahmanides. But perhaps, Maimonides is correct. Anyone who reads “And it shall come to pass that if you keep the mitzvot” (“Vehaya im shamoa tishmeu mitzvosai asher…”) sees that living in the land is a gift of God, the land is a reward for keeping other mitzvot. There is no other command placed on people.
33) Brokenness can create a revelation of the shekhinah that fills the thankful heart.
35) The principle power of a person is to acknowledge his weaknesses and to turn to God. This is the great power of a person.
47) The Rambam [probably Maharal or Ramhal] said that the truth is grasped by ontradictions because I live a life of everything and its opposite. I am wide but also narrow. I am required to be focused and grounded but to have a rich world, scattered but to have fear of God. It is impossible to know consequences: Does wealth brings fear of God or the opposite? Every mitzvah and every action need two wings of love and fear. Between these two poles is formed the electric tension of life. I once told the story of how a yeshivah student became a disciple of Rav Shagar, who was then R”M at Yeshivat Hakotel. Once in the middle of Yom Kippur he took the student for a walk, they ambled and wandered around until they arrived at David’s tomb. Instead of all the focus on the Yom Kippur service they hiked around and wandered. This gave the student the light of worshiping God.”
~ © Alan Brill 2016
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