The Wisdom of a Rabbi

I love rabbis!  (How’s that for a Christmas message?)

I have learned many great truths and received extraordinary insights from rabbis on several occasions during my life.  I think everyone needs a rabbi sometimes.  God uses the language of symbolism, and the rabbis have been pondering over the meanings of these symbols for millennia.  I don’t agree with everything that the rabbis teach—they don’t even agree with each other a lot of the time—but I am always enriched by looking at symbols the way they do.

Years ago, while living in the Spokane, WA area, I had the great honor of playing “Tevye” in a production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”  Our director contacted the rabbi at Temple Beth Shalom and asked if he would be willing to meet with us and help us to more accurately portray the characters in the play.  He graciously consented.  He taught us many things, and over the course of the production, continued to help us.  We were loaned prayer shawls and even a decommissioned but still beautiful Torah scroll to use in the play.  But the rabbi’s greatest contribution was the gift of knowledge and wisdom.

I learned how a Jew prays, for example.  He never prays on his knees, except on high holy days.  He prays while standing up, because God is his Father.  You don’t kneel to your Father.  You stand and talk to Him.  A Jew knows the nature of his relationship to his Father.

Today, while listening to a rabbi on the radio—I love that way that rolls off the tongue: “rabbi on the radio”—I learned another bit of Jewish wisdom.  I learned their understanding of circumcision, or at least one aspect of it that I had not considered before.  I learned that circumcision not only represents the covenant that Jehovah made with Abraham, but that the Jews believe that circumcision is “man’s contribution to creation.”  Man comes into this world “unfinished,” and circumcision symbolically completes that process—or at least starts man on his journey toward perfection.

Consider the implication: man is unfinished, imperfect, and God requires that he be perfected or finished.  And isn’t that the purpose of life?  To become completed, perfected?  The Savior said, “Be ye therefore perfect.”

When I heard the rabbi say that today, it resonated in my soul with a profound, Liberty-Bell-sized ring of truth.  I thought, “That’s really cool.”  (I know that sounds trite, but that’s what went through my mind at the time.)

Then I was shaken to my very core as I realized the full import of that symbolism, the unspoken truth.

Man comes into this world imperfect, and must be perfected.  However, woman requires no such perfection!  She comes into life already perfect.  She is whole.  She is God’s greatest and most perfect creation.

Christ was born of a virgin.  Mary was untouched by imperfect man.  Consider for a moment the symbolism in that.

I do not have words to adequately express my gratitude for the women in my life, but I am profoundly grateful.

Men, cherish the women in your lives.  Protect them.  Honor them.  Revere them.  They are queens and princesses.

In short, they are daughters of God.