Good Shabbos everyone and welcome to all of our guests. It is my great pleasure to see you partaking in our service at Kneseth Israel today.
How many of you watched Happy Feet Two? I see, not too many. What about Happy Feet One? Oh, almost everyone. I have news for you. Happy Feet Two has nothing to do with Happy Feet One in my opinion. I think Happy Feet Two is a brilliant animation that carries an important message of the value of community and the value of individuality. Well, my three year old granddaughter, Hodaya, watching with 3D glasses, loved it. To me, the musical part was a bit too much. The lesson of the movie narrative, however, of the krill leaving the community and feeling very lonely is personification of human interaction. Another vital message is when the penguin father helped the sea elephant come out of crisis, but the sea elephant did not reciprocate. The only way this sycophant sea elephant changed his mind of helping the penguins with their struggle for survival was after the little penguin Eric sang Tosca from Puccini and consequently and all the other sea elephants followed the penguins. The leader, thus, had no choice but to follow. Did he need to give up his individuality to be a member of the community?
My dear friends, we just read the Biblical chapter with the dynamic relations between Jacob, Isaac and his father Easu. That interfamily relationship led Jacob to leave his family, escape from his parents’ home for twenty-two years. Jacob faced a great dilemma, like Hamlet, “To be or not to be.” He wanted to follow his mother Rebecca’s direction and honor her request to wear Esau’s clothing. But after that devastating and acrimonious discussion took place, he left. Jacob was aloof, like the krill in Happy Feet Two and felt lost, realizing how much he missed his home.
In the Haftarah of today, Machar Chodesh, Jonathan, the son of King Saul, faced a serious quandary. His father ostensibly was planning to kill his best friend David, and now Jonathan was in a predicament. He needed to make a decisive decision; he could not vacillate and risk his best friend David’s life. Against honoring his father, he helped rescue David from death by telling him of father, King Saul’s murderous plan. This biblical sequence of events juxtaposed the notion of the Torah portion with the Haftarah, and also created a correlation between Happy Feet Two, Jacob and Jonathan with much interrelationship of families and so much expression of individuality.
Well, friends, did you ever heard the word Shinto. Oh, I see two hands, nice. Shinto is the Japanese philosophy from about 500 BCE. It is its credence that the divinity within man is expressed only after the process of purifying, which in some ways is similar to the ancient Chinese philosophy Dao of 549 BCE. Dao deals with the suitable method of being in the fundamentals of the natural world, i.e. water. Just as water does not make a distinction, yielding and calming yet powerful, it keeps the universe balanced and ordered. Both deal with the dynamics of duality between two opposite personalities. So too, human nature and righteousness in the way of the Confucius interpretation of the Dao and in Shintoism is expressed by the duality of humankind.
A manifestation of those beliefs we can also find in the writings of the late Rabbi and Professor Soloveitchik called Halakhic Man. He describes this concept of duality, mainly a cognitive person and by the same token homo religiosus. This can be combined with the person who yearns all his life to express himself as an exceptional individual with special talents and traits while that person by the same token is also homo religiosus. He or she cannot exonerate him or herself from the responsibility of being an integral part of a community, of family. This means one cannot be uprooted, but can co-exist with individuality.
In addition, Carl Jung, the renowned modern psychologist, described man facing himself in the mirror and man as part of society expresses existentialism in the same motif of duality. In addition, fascinatingly, this concept of duality is also found in Jewish philosophy of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, as well as Arthur Cohen. Hence, a person should feel he or she is a link in family lineage, part of a community, but also reserves the ability to express individuality, being both cognitive and homo religiosus. The krill in Happy Feet Two was unhappy; he searched but then came home. The supercilious sea elephant showed that he can be part of the family and express himself at the same time.
One may disagree with these viewpoints, but the movie with its animation can be a good lesson for all of us, especially for children as it relates to this concept of duality, namely the validity of pursuing a discerning life in the modern world.
Shabbat Shalom
How many of you watched Happy Feet Two? I see, not too many. What about Happy Feet One? Oh, almost everyone. I have news for you. Happy Feet Two has nothing to do with Happy Feet One in my opinion. I think Happy Feet Two is a brilliant animation that carries an important message of the value of community and the value of individuality. Well, my three year old granddaughter, Hodaya, watching with 3D glasses, loved it. To me, the musical part was a bit too much. The lesson of the movie narrative, however, of the krill leaving the community and feeling very lonely is personification of human interaction. Another vital message is when the penguin father helped the sea elephant come out of crisis, but the sea elephant did not reciprocate. The only way this sycophant sea elephant changed his mind of helping the penguins with their struggle for survival was after the little penguin Eric sang Tosca from Puccini and consequently and all the other sea elephants followed the penguins. The leader, thus, had no choice but to follow. Did he need to give up his individuality to be a member of the community?
My dear friends, we just read the Biblical chapter with the dynamic relations between Jacob, Isaac and his father Easu. That interfamily relationship led Jacob to leave his family, escape from his parents’ home for twenty-two years. Jacob faced a great dilemma, like Hamlet, “To be or not to be.” He wanted to follow his mother Rebecca’s direction and honor her request to wear Esau’s clothing. But after that devastating and acrimonious discussion took place, he left. Jacob was aloof, like the krill in Happy Feet Two and felt lost, realizing how much he missed his home.
In the Haftarah of today, Machar Chodesh, Jonathan, the son of King Saul, faced a serious quandary. His father ostensibly was planning to kill his best friend David, and now Jonathan was in a predicament. He needed to make a decisive decision; he could not vacillate and risk his best friend David’s life. Against honoring his father, he helped rescue David from death by telling him of father, King Saul’s murderous plan. This biblical sequence of events juxtaposed the notion of the Torah portion with the Haftarah, and also created a correlation between Happy Feet Two, Jacob and Jonathan with much interrelationship of families and so much expression of individuality.
Well, friends, did you ever heard the word Shinto. Oh, I see two hands, nice. Shinto is the Japanese philosophy from about 500 BCE. It is its credence that the divinity within man is expressed only after the process of purifying, which in some ways is similar to the ancient Chinese philosophy Dao of 549 BCE. Dao deals with the suitable method of being in the fundamentals of the natural world, i.e. water. Just as water does not make a distinction, yielding and calming yet powerful, it keeps the universe balanced and ordered. Both deal with the dynamics of duality between two opposite personalities. So too, human nature and righteousness in the way of the Confucius interpretation of the Dao and in Shintoism is expressed by the duality of humankind.
A manifestation of those beliefs we can also find in the writings of the late Rabbi and Professor Soloveitchik called Halakhic Man. He describes this concept of duality, mainly a cognitive person and by the same token homo religiosus. This can be combined with the person who yearns all his life to express himself as an exceptional individual with special talents and traits while that person by the same token is also homo religiosus. He or she cannot exonerate him or herself from the responsibility of being an integral part of a community, of family. This means one cannot be uprooted, but can co-exist with individuality.
In addition, Carl Jung, the renowned modern psychologist, described man facing himself in the mirror and man as part of society expresses existentialism in the same motif of duality. In addition, fascinatingly, this concept of duality is also found in Jewish philosophy of Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, as well as Arthur Cohen. Hence, a person should feel he or she is a link in family lineage, part of a community, but also reserves the ability to express individuality, being both cognitive and homo religiosus. The krill in Happy Feet Two was unhappy; he searched but then came home. The supercilious sea elephant showed that he can be part of the family and express himself at the same time.
One may disagree with these viewpoints, but the movie with its animation can be a good lesson for all of us, especially for children as it relates to this concept of duality, namely the validity of pursuing a discerning life in the modern world.
Shabbat Shalom
RSS Feed
