Who here knows how to get to Carnegie Hall?
Some of us probably remember the old response to the kid carrying a violin in its case who walks up to an adult in Manhattan at the corner of 57th and 7th and asks: “How do I get to Carneige Hall?” And the response is: “Practice.” To achieve something consequential requires effort (as my father put it, sometimes, “forty years of experience”). Many years ago I came up with a theorem and some corrollaries: You can’t sit down at the piano for the first time in your life and expect to play Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata. You can’t sit down at a graphing calculator for the first time in your life and expect to solve a quadratic equation. Using a language, whether spoken, musical or mathematical requires practice. And so it is with the language of Jewish living.And so it is with the language of Jewish living. You have to be familiar with the language of Jewish life in order to reap the full benefits of what it has to offer. You don’t have to master all aspects of it. You do not need to be a “J
