This week marked the death of the record producer,
Or I'm sorry,
He likes to go by recording engineer Steve Albini.
Quite a prickly soul for a long part of his life,
Was very sure of himself in the ways he thought music should be recorded and sure of his mission to the point that he could be quite often in the punk community very,
Very acerbic of others,
Even bands he had worked with,
And seems to have mellowed out over the course of his 60 some years.
What I liked,
I noticed in the obituaries I read that he was very comfortable,
He would take in anyone in the Chicago area to record them.
He didn't charge a lot if you didn't have a lot of money,
He would let you.
The person who had recorded famous albums from Nirvana and the Pixies and I believe Sonic Youth would just take these local bands and let them into his studio in Chicago,
Which I think speaks very highly of him.
But he could be pretty brutal in his assessment of others,
And sometimes that's understandable.
The Torah this week says that you should have honest weights and measures.
It goes on to describe in several ways how to be clear and effective and continually exact in your measurements.
So there is a necessity in life to have a discerning eye,
To know what's appropriate,
What's legal,
What's right.
And sometimes as arts makers and arts appreciators,
We can take that too far.
So I want to talk about the boundary of where that's too far,
Where it goes from I love this band and I'm not fond of this band or that painting really moves me,
But this sculpture does not,
To being a jerk.
Let's just call it what it is.
Steve Albini apparently could be quite a jerk early in his career.
It seems surprising to me that he would slash at Nirvana after he made albums with them,
But it seems to be his habit.
So what does it mean,
The Torah reading asks,
To be holy?
This is called kiddushim this week,
Holiness,
And is often called even in English,
The holiness code,
Because God says,
Be holy for I am holy.
And I've spoken about this at the meditation we did earlier this week.
Holiness is one of those words that's slippery.
It may have meant something set apart,
Set aside,
Different,
Discerning,
Unique.
And Moshe Alsheikh,
One of our medieval commentators notes that to some cultures,
This probably meant an asceticism,
A monk-like asceticism to go into the desert and live alone,
Like a Fremen in Dune,
To live in the wastes.
But that's not been for the large majority of Jewish tradition,
The system.
Because Alsheikh points out in the medieval period,
The easiest thing would be to hide from the world and its follies,
To seclude yourself in a room and be a holy hermit.
But what the Torah asks of you is that a person should be part and parcel of the congregation to be holy.
So that's the tension with probably a lot of recording engineers,
Honestly,
Not just Albini.
They spend a lot of time underground or in a dark room,
Listening and relistening to mixes,
Getting microphones set up,
Making sure the cables aren't twisted,
Twiddling dials,
Adjusting compression.
Albini mentions that he hates compression.
But that's not the whole work,
Even for a recording engineer and a producer and anyone behind the scenes in the arts or even in front of the camera or in front of the painting.
It's a work of engagement with the world.
And to do that,
You have to have a certain generosity of spirit and a certain ability,
Not just to listen clearly and intensely and discern,
But to dive in and appreciate and show grace and gratitude and generosity with other works.
Bachia,
One of our sages in Spain about the 13th century says that you should ensure that your judgments are righteous.
There's a lot in the Torah reading about judgment.
Ensure that your judgments are righteous,
Which is to say,
Judgments that are not punitive,
That are not cruel and unusual.
If you judge in the spirit of righteousness,
You uplift God's throne.
And if you twist justice,
Either with injustice or with excessive mercy or with cruelty,
You're putting a dent in God's throne,
Says Bachia.
That's the hard part.
When we look at art,
When we compare ourselves to – there's a wonderful Mother's Day article called The Better Mother today in the New York Times.
It's sort of a humorous op-ed,
How everyone seems to be a better musician,
Better parent than we are,
But everyone's got their own struggles.
And we have to be kind and gracious and generous in our judgments.
There's a concept in the Talmud called,
Da'an et chavercha l'chaf tzurut,
Which is to give your friend the benefit of the doubt would be the way you'd understand it in English.
But literally,
It means to judge your friend according to the balance of innocence.
Innocent until proven guilty is also connected to it.
But literally,
It's the plates of a balance are being described.
So I think in contradiction or in tension with the idea of honest weights and measures and honest judgments,
The idea that maybe we should judge a little generously,
Maybe we should be gentle with people,
Maybe we should give them more than they order.
If you order a pound of grapes,
You should get a little more,
You should get overflowing amounts of grapes.
So you judge your friend with generosity and don't hold grudges.
But in the most important line of the Torah,
According to one sage and recapitulated in Jesus' teaching,
To love your neighbor,
To love others as yourself.
There's even a movement for neighboring afoot,
Literally to get to know your literal neighbors.
So I happen to listen to the – I'm trying to think whether I should say the name.
There's a bit by Patton Oswalt called Money and – and the next word is a genitalia word.
So he says that when he was young,
He would have really criticized bands like Nickelback.
They're just in it for the money and the sex.
He doesn't speak – he speaks more crassly than that.
But as he's aged,
He may not like things,
But he doesn't criticize them.
He doesn't tell you how bad they are.
He doesn't tell you how dumb they are.
The bit goes on to say,
You know,
If they wanted money and sexual prowess – and again,
I'm cleaning up the language – people do horrible things for that,
You know.
The tagline of the bit is,
At least they weren't pole pot.
It just made music I don't like.
So I think in my own maturity,
I don't say,
Oh,
I hate that band.
They suck.
I just say,
You know,
This isn't for me.
I'm not into bluegrass music usually.
I love post-rock and I don't love bluegrass in general.
And that's just idiosyncratic in my own taste.
So what do we do when we collaborate with people,
When we work with people,
When we are in the same band – co-writers,
Critics,
You know,
Not to be critical,
But critics in a newspaper,
Or Anthony Fantano for music,
Or someone writing for the Rolling Stone,
Or the New Yorker?
What's reasonable criticism?
What's reasonable decision and discernment?
This week in chapter 9 of Leviticus,
It says that you shouldn't put a stumbling block before the blind.
And our sages expand that dramatically to include things like,
Don't put alcohol before an alcoholic.
Someone who has an eating disorder,
Don't feed them foods that would provoke their eating disorder.
Someone who's a gambler,
Don't place a gambling opportunity in front of her.
So they expanded,
And Isaac Zev of Brisk,
Probably about 200 years ago,
Quotes another rabbi saying,
You also can't give people advice that they can't follow,
Advice that would be inappropriate to them.
Even Sun Tzu says something like that.
You can't give an army commands that it can't follow.
He calls it,
I think,
Hobbling the army.
So that's in my own experience of giving sermons,
And doing writing,
And organizing,
Community organizing.
That fits my experience.
I was always frustrated when people give me criticisms based on what they think I was trying to do without asking,
What was your goal?
And when I work with artists,
I do try to understand what they're getting at,
And what they're trying to do.
And my critique is usually only based on their self-stated goals,
Or the goals that they aren't stating,
And that they might even be lying to themselves about.
But what I think their goal could be,
And who they are trying to be.
Again,
Steve Albini said,
Not trying to make everyone sound like the Beatles.
And there's an underlying issue that I would address,
Which is,
Sometimes when we criticize others,
And I think this is why it gets better as we age,
Or we get less critical as we age,
We are also being critical of ourselves.
I know a child who's very critical of another child's weight,
But I assume the first child has issues about his own weight.
It's unfortunate,
But most of our critique has started inside of ourselves.
So another sage,
Probably in the 17th century later,
When he rebuked the craftspersons and the artisans of his town,
There's some sort of like marketplace fight,
Marketplace,
They would loathe each other.
The rabbi said,
You should love each other even though they're like you,
For God is providing for you all.
We tend to dislike in our children,
In our other artists,
In our friends,
That which we most fear and mistrust about ourselves.
And so there's a lot of internal work to understanding the critic.
The critic isn't just about the album.
It isn't just about the book or the poem.
It's often about us,
What we aren't achieving,
What we wish we were,
What we don't like about ourselves,
What we struggle with,
What our issues in family of origin might have been.
To be less critical implies being less self-loathing.
And again,
The Bible tells us that we have to rebuke our fellow.
We shouldn't not challenge injustice.
We shouldn't not challenge misdeeds.
But the way we do it matters.
And I would suggest you have to do it from a place of compassion and empathy.
So Levi Yitzchak,
One of the Hasidic revival leaders of the 17th,
18th century,
18th and 19th century rather,
Tells a story about two drunks.
And he learned the meaning of love from two drunks in a conversation he overheard.
And I'm not going to do a voice.
The first drunk says to the other,
I love you.
The second drunk says,
No,
You don't.
The first says,
Yeah,
Of course I do.
I love you with all my heart.
And the second says,
You don't.
If you loved me,
Why don't you know what hurts me?
Implying in other tellings of the stories that alcohol is doing us both in.
Love does come with critique,
But critique starts from a place of understanding and compassion for the other and discernment and attention to the other's needs.
Understanding not just what the person wants,
But what they need,
What is best for them,
Not just what feels good to them.
And that kind of loving challenge can be very,
Very powerful.
So I invite you this week to try to see the other side,
But also to challenge a person to be their best selves.
There's a saying in Christian self-help literature that origin is hard to find,
But God loves you just the way you are,
But God loves you too much for you to stay that way.
