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Being a more ETHICAL person.

It is my absolute conviction that there are "Jewish lessons" everywhere around us. We just have to look carefully. From baseball to popular music to political speeches, the lessons are there, we just have to uncover them. 

When I first heard the news of the death of Johnny Carson, it struck me as it did so many: it was the end of an era. I thought back to the days when I celebrated my status as a high school student by staying up until after the monologue and the first comedy shtick. It wasn’t much of an adolescent rebellion but it still brings back fond memories. I thought of all of the famous highlights from Ed Ames to Jack Webb and all of the characters from Art Fern to Carnac the Magnificent. 

That’s when it hit me. There must be some Jewish lessons from all that material. And, they weren’t difficult to find. I’m sure you can think of your own favorites but here are five to consider. 

First, from Carnac the Magnificent, the "seer from the East" who divined the answer and only then read the question, we not only learned that "sis boom bah" is the sound of a sheep exploding (one of the great lines in the history of American literature) but we also learned that often the question is the ultimate goal. 

The greatest Torah commentators are the ones who know how to find the right questions to ask, not necessarily how to answer them. Questions are the goal in our faith and while that can be very frustrating, in the truest tradition of our people seeking an understanding of the questions as much as of the answers. Often the question is the ultimate goal. 

Secondly, ours is a tradition that recognizes the infinite value of each and every human being but we are warned not to focus too much on our own personal infinite value. We all need to learn the humbling lesson that we are only a human being and Johnny Carson taught us that animals, and sometimes kids, can teach us the value of humility and the reality of our place in the universe. Thus, the midrash urges us to always remember that even the most miserable fly was created before we were. Sometimes we could all use a not-so-well-housebroken marmoset, a talking bird, or a smart-aleck kid to remind us of our limitations and put us in our place. 

Thirdly, we can learn a lesson from the much-celebrated couch, where people sat next to Johnny Carson for thirty years. In those seats sat the great entertainers, politicians, religious leaders, and high-society people as well as the woman who collected odd-looking potato chips or the man who played music by squeezing his hands together. There sat struggling comedians trying to make it big and veteran entertainers in the twilight of their lives and careers. And they each had a place. Our Jewish communities need to make sure that the seats of honor in our community go to people who run the gamut in terms of age and social standing and ability and accomplishments. That is the sign of healthy community. 

Next, I refer you to one of my favorite bits that they used to do on the Tonight Show: Stump the Band. Audience members would try to win a prize by mentioning the name of a song and challenging the band to play it. Of course, the songs were so obscure the band never could play them. But, inevitably, the band members used the opportunity to show off their own musical abilities by making up a song of their own. 

How often it is that we do the same. When someone mentions his or her song, we respond with a song of our own. Each person has his or her songs and too often we try to outsing them instead of listening. Each of us has a song and the world would be a more musical place if we tried to listen more carefully to the songs of others. And finally, there was my favorite Carson moment. When his jokes were bombing, there would be an awkward silence until the band would suddenly start to play a jazzed up version of Tea for Two and Johnny would start to do a little soft-shoe tap-dance routine. The audience would roar with approval. 

As a people, we have always done the same. When things we have depended upon weren’t working, we switched gears and tried to recapture the meaning of our lives by finding new things to believe in. Whether leaving the desert for the land of Canaan, compensating for exile by remembering Zion, going back to rebuild instead of staying in Babylonia, anticipating and surviving the destruction of the second temple by developing a system of personal Jewish law, surviving persecution by turning to study and by tightening our communities, creating a state to answer our persecutors, adapting new laws to conform to new realities, we have always shown ourselves ready to dance the steps of change. 

And so it should be for all of us as individuals, able to see the opportunities to find new ways to relate to the world when the old ways just aren’t working. 

I don’t want to make more of this man than he was. He just made me laugh. But, the lessons are there: celebrate the questions, remember you’re only a human being, build a community that makes honored space for everyone, let others sing their songs and learn to tap dance when the jokes aren’t working. 

They are lessons which are important enough to learn wherever and from whomever we can learn them and to live by today and, of course, tonight. 

Robert Dobrusin is Rabbi of Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He and his wife Ellen are the parents of two children, Avi and Michal. You can reach Rabbi Dobrusin via email at rdobrusin@bethisrael-aa.org.