A second grade teacher faced a problem at the beginning of the school year. One of her students discovered that her wristwatch had been taken from her cubby. The teacher understood that there had been a growing problem with children stealing things that belonged to others. One approach might have been to determine who the culprit was and punish them harshly; to make a public example of them in order to deter future theft.
Our teacher chose a different course of action. After lunch she announced the problem of the stolen watch. She then told the class that she’d put on some soft music and ask every member of the class to put on a blindfold. After 10 minutes she expected the watch to be returned. Sure enough, 10 minutes later, the watch appeared as the students removed their blindfolds. Problem solved.
But that’s not where the story ends. It turns out that the student who had stolen the watch was so grateful that he hadn’t been humiliated or shamed, that his dignity had been preserved by preserving his anonymity, that this moment stayed with him. Indeed it changed him. He went on, years later, to become a teacher himself.
I find this story moving for a couple of reasons. First, of course, because it turned a bad act into a life-changing lesson. And second, because the teacher resisted the approach which would have made a sacrificial example out of the child who had done the wrong.
This kind of punitive approach is a lot more tempting than it used to be. We live in times that are noisy and angry, where blaming and condemning others has become too normative. Some will stop at nothing to defeat and destroy those who stand in their way. The name I’ve recently heard for this phenomenon is Molekh-trap. It’s actually named after the Canaanite god, Molekh, who was so insanely dictatorial as to require devotees to sacrifice their children on its altar.
Molekh traps not only make us crave the destruction of adversaries, they make us talk ourselves into sidelining ethical concerns. Their voice in the business world sounds like this: “I know it’s not ideal, but if I don’t pursue this course of action, then someone else will.” Molekh’s chief drivers are panic and outrage.
And Molekh’s bullying ways now seem to be becoming unavoidable. For example, the most innocuous online statement can be turned into canon-fodor in mere seconds. A woman shares the following tweet on a sleepy Sunday mid-morning. “Just finished a delicious coffee with my husband after taking the dog for a stroll. Topped it off with today’s fun crossword.” Immediately it’s clear why it was a huge mistake to hit send. She’s greeted with an unfriendly response: “Must be nice to take pleasure in a world with so much suffering.” Then a more hostile one: “What’s wrong with you?! Are you really that oblivious to how our civilization is collapsing and the planet is imploding!!” Her tweet is now in the vice-grip of Molekh algorithms that are firing with contempt.
Of course the Torah vehemently rejects Molekh worship. But even more than that, it provides us with a way to limit Molekh’s reach. How? By making God Melekh, by making God’s sovereign in our minds instead of Molek. Rosh Hashanah’s single most important word, appearing on almost every page of your prayerbook, is Melekh. Interestingly, Melekh is made of the same three Hebrew letters as Molekh. But they could not be more different.
This year I want to look anew at the meaning of Melekh. It’s an often-hard-to-grasp word. Doing so can make all the difference in the world. For starters, God as King or Sovereign has nothing to do with some bearded old Monarch who is enthroned on-high to hoard authority. Instead, making God sovereign is all about what’s humming in the stronghold of your mind. You feel it in your temperament and orientation.
Divine sovereignty instills dignity. A dignity that brims with generosity and kinder assumptions, that swells with compassion and courage, and that plenishes promising potential. In short, if Molekh specializes in arrhythmia caused by algorithms, God as Melekh restores our natural, God-given healthy rhythms.
And this can achieve three really important things. First, it can help you feel less afraid of what you can’t control. Second, it can keep Molekh from living too much inside your head. And finally it can clarify how Molekh is no match for Melekh Malchei HaM’lachim, our true and sovereign God.
Let’s begin with how clean it can feel when making God sovereign can rescue us from arrhythmia and restore us to our natural rhythms.
Molekh thrives on chaos. He loves to take a free-for-all and send it into free-fall.
And you don’t need me to describe how this happens. But let’s personalize this, as I want us to personalize God’s Melekh sweet, swelling sovereignty in our lives this year.
There’s so much we can’t control. Arrivals in our inbox. Biopsy results. Unpleasant interactions with others. On an ordinary day, most of what happens to you wasn’t on your daily planner when you left for work. Given all we can’t control, the normal advice we get sounds something like this: factor out what you can’t control and focus instead on what you can. It’s really good advice. Particularly in an emergency. But, given how much we don’t control, what if we could factor in some of those things?
This is what God as sovereign Melekh enables us to do. How? By reminding us of how strong our responses can be to the things we don’t get to decide and can’t ignore. And when we get better at utilizing our responsive abilities, then we can often remake and repurpose what shows up in life.
There is something rhythmic about seeing life through a call-and-response lens. Being responsive to prompts and cues comes naturally. Some people wave, everybody waves back.
I say becoming attuned to this rhythm can come from making God sovereign in our minds because our bodies are built for healthy rhythms. Inside, God made us as vibrating machines. Our heartbeat. Our inhale-exhale rhythm. The way our brains serve as switching stations for systems all over our bodies. The rhythm of call and response happens inside us thousands of times each minute. And when we apply that mode of prompt and response, like a beach ball toss, we get back into our natural, healthy rhythms. In other words, doing our best to get through the day works out a lot better when our rhythm with what’s going on around us is aligned with what’s going on inside us.
Time for a couple of examples. One relates to frustrating interactions. A second to Israel’s current struggle to write Zionism’s next chapter.
Often we’re frustrated when we’re unable to convince somebody of our point of view. But what if we focus less on winning the argument, and more on winning the person? That is, instead of trying to win an argument against somebody, consider first trying to dignify them. Dignify their instincts, their commitments, perhaps even their best claim. Most of all, dignify their feelings. Say something like, “I’m impressed by how strongly you feel about this. Really I am. I wonder if you could say more about it so I can appreciate where you’re coming from.”
Reinstating dignity. This is what our second grade teacher did for the student who’d stolen the watch. And reinstating dignity is what happens to us when we sense God’s serene sovereignty humming in our heads. We tend to favor the people we like. We defend those we feel warmly toward. Focus on the person first, second, third, and last. Then watch what happens to the win-loss record of your arguments.
Molekh can be so alluring. Drive and passion are things that make us feel most alive. Healthy competition is a good thing. It enables worthy opponents to excel. To reach and become all-time greats. But when it’s more focused on vanquishing opponents, when it matters more that you lose than that I may win, then it becomes so head-strong with defeat at all costs, that it eventually ends up emerging as self-defeating.
Divine sovereignty of the Melekh Malchei Hamelachim is at its best when it’s re-channeling potentially harmful drives into healthy, profoundly healing directions. This is what this season’s most prominent activity is all about. Competing with yourself, to become better, to try new things, to keep us from making ourselves smaller. We have a name for this kind of healthy competition: it’s called Teshuva, repentance. Seeking to become better versions of ourselves.
This also works on a larger scale. God’s sovereignty is also masterful at rerouting our competitive drives into healthy passions that serve the greater good. And divine sovereignty welcomes strong emotions. As somebody wise in our community reminded me months ago, “You can choose your words. You can’t choose your emotions.” Well-trimmed words can be good for you. Well-trimmed feelings often aren’t.
Feelings have been fierce in the streets of Israel since January. More than 7 million have marched in a manner that’s been orderly and songful, pledging allegiance and waving Israeli flags.
Violence and vilification are Molekh’s trap. Rallies have been inspiring and aspiring. That’s how Zionism always avoided the trap of victimhood. A trap that is obsessed with vengeance and leads to the edge of a cliff that puts one face-to-face with a truism about battles: you lose the war when you become as bad or worse than your enemy.
We all know what the masses are marching against. What then are people marching for? What are they in favor of?
I believe it’s the methodically-molded ideals sculpted into Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Such as, “the upbuilding of our people and the greater region” and to add their willing hearts and hands to “common efforts to advance freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.” These favorables are well-worth renewing for our beloved nation-state so thirsty for refreshing flavors of Zionism to take her into her next century.
Zionism’ next chapter will not be about bullying. It will be about building. So many may be bruised, but they are not broken. Healthy competition is about becoming better, not bitter. This is what Teshuva is all about. How we compete with ourselves. And it’s what national restoration can feel like too.
Restoring our natural rhythms with God’s sensibly-sovereign help in the coming year need not wait until next Rosh Hashanah. The sages did something brilliant to ensure that we never have to wait long for recovery from Molekh-traps arrhythmia. They took the leading prayer from the Sovereignty – Malkhuyot – portion of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy and made it the prayer we pray most frequently. That’s right, the prayer we pray as much as any other single prayer: the Aleynu.
A word about pustore. Notice how just after we bow our knees, we stand erect before our sovereign Melekh malchei ha-melachim. Standing erect is a posture that indicates healthy rhythm recovery.
Aleynu is our Pledge of Allegiance between us and our Sustainer. It’s prayed at the end of every service, three times each day for a balanced diet of reinstating our God-given rhythms of response-ability to the things we can’t control, channeling our passions to compete toward healthy growth for us and those around us, and for one last thing.
A vital dimension of God’s sovereignty is its subtlety.
If there’s one claim about God that I feel comfortable boldly asserting it is this: God doesn’t like grabbing attention. It’s almost as if God prefers to go less recognized.
Molekh’s algorithmic arrhythmia may reach the whole planet but its megalomaniac modes melt away when challenged by sturdy, history-tested, enduring subtle yet supreme might.
I love a lesson that Zenzele’s mother shares with her, as she’s soon to depart from her native-african land for College in Boston. Her mother first received it from her father. It goes like this:
“You will meet only two men in your life. One will make your hands tremble; the other will make them steady. The first will be your passion of youth, but like the blazing fires of the bush, it will soon die to glowing embers, then cool ashes. The second will enter your life quietly, like a thief in the night. He will be like the mighty trees of the forrest that we do not see before us, but they are there, strong and tall; in rain and sun they dig their roots deep and shade us with their leaves. It is the second one you must marry. He will be a good husband and father to your children.”
This is how I’ve come to think about God’s all-too subtle sovereignty. Its subtlety should never be mistaken for timidity. As your internal body-organs function, for as long as they do, without calling attention to themselves, so is God as Melekh, mighty, steady, unrecognized.
God commonly visits with wisps. Quivers. Winks. These sensations provide breezy get-togethers between your soul and its Source. They’re subtle, almost by design. If they called attention to themselves, we’d probably overanalyze them.
But being subtle does not make them timid. They soften life’s rougher edges. Loosen the grip of Molekh’s knotty fixations. And lift us up and out from its cul-de-sac of despair.
Next time, if you can quietly keep a corner of your faith, sensing solemn sovereignty may pour new life into your kindnesses and fresh firmness into your convictions. And may this remind you, especially when you’re unsure, that you’re actually worthier and capable of more.
God is like that wise second grade teacher. Looking not to shame or humiliate when we stumble or misstep. But to restore, to reinstate our belief in ourselves.
If Molekh’s chief output is panic and pain, our dear God’s sovereign Melekh’s chief output is soothing and reassuring. God as sovereign tells us that beyond the danger rattling around out there, there is also grandeur. That the scorpion’s threats are real. But they’re no match for the monumental calm of a brook that holds the sky.
May this New Year find you becoming like that classroom teacher who reinstated dignity and transformed a regrettable misdeed into a life-changing lesson. And, in so doing, may you awaken the teacher in others in order to help fashion a Shana Tova.
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