Shabbat Shalom. For some reason I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. For causes that remain unknown to me I find myself awake at odd hours of the night, stumbling into what used to be our guestroom but has now become our nursery; and occasionally, while changing a diaper in this strange room, I find myself thinking about parenthood.
On the one hand, I think about Ayelet’s birth, just three weeks ago and that miraculous moment when she entered this world. I think about the first time I held her and how strangely natural it felt; accompanied by this sudden, visceral revelation that this beautiful child was indeed ‘our’ baby, and therefore all felt right in the world.
On the other hand, I think about all the new learning experiences of these last three weeks, the ups and the downs. The learning curves associated with nursing, negotiating infant car seats, sifting through Dr. Spock books as well as sorting through a plethora of grandmotherly advice. And it was during one of these late night swaying sessions when a funny thought occurred to me:
Imagine if you will, the example of putting together that crib that I mentioned several months ago. First you gather the power drill and allen wrench from the basement, setting them beside the cardboard box for when the need arises. Then, you open up the box, examining each piece to make sure everything looks kosher, after all, this crib is pretty precious seeing as not only will it hold your child for the next eighteen months or so, but it will also be holding all of your hopes and dreams, at least metaphorically speaking. Finally, after organizing each and every detail of the construction process you notice that one element is missing: the instruction booklet! You search high and low, under the box? Stapled to the plastic baggy holding the screws? Nothing. Is it possible that they forgot to include instructions on how to build a crib! This is an outrage, a shanda, clearly cause for litigation, or at least a phone call to the Swedish company responsible for this glaring error! Right?
But essentially this is what it is like when you have your first child. The most precious of all things enters into this world, carefully packaged to ensure a safe delivery, and after you open up the box, and clean the little one up from all the Styrofoam peanuts, you discover that there are no instructions! No little pamphlet or manual that comes with this gift of new life. No important safety instructions that you must read, or a manufacturer’s tag that you can not remove… there is nothing! You know I have half a mind to call up the maker of this perfect little package and ask for a refund!
But as a Jew, I know that when I am in need of some careful guidance through the thicket of life, I can always turn to the Torah to find some instruction, and so I flipped in my Tanakh to Parashat B’ha’a’lot’cha for some sage advice from our ancient tradition.
In many ways, this morning’s parasha serves as a tipping point in the Biblical narrative. For weeks, months really, we have been busy reading the parshiyot dealing with Revelation on Mt. Sinai, the construction of the Tabernacle in the desert and the Priestly Codes concerning T’hara and Tumah, the pure and the impure. Now we stand on the precipice of the Children of Israel’s journey through the desert and the many compelling stories which accompany this path through the wilderness. In some ways it feels like Parshat B’ha’a’lot’cha is akin to that moment before you leave the house for a big trip. You check to make sure everything is in its right place, you want to be certain that you packed enough food, the right clothes and have your itinerary in hand before setting off on your journey. And it is in these moments before Moses and the Children of Israel set off on their trek through the wilderness that I find an important lesson from God concerning parenthood.
Often the lessons we internalize are learnt by means of repetition. As a general rule parents engage in the time-honored tradition claiming that if you want your child to learn something, you have to repeat it one million times. For example, the mantra of choice repeated by my own parents during the early years of my childhood was “Joel, be aware of the world around you,” (I had a habit of running into things as a kid.) But it sunk in! So when the Torah repeats a word or phrase numerous times the rabbis encourage us to pay close attention!
In this morning’s parasha, in the section describing the journey of B’nei Yisrael the Torah tell us seven times that the Children of Israel set off and encamped only “Al Pi Adonai,” “According to the command of the LORD.” Chapter 9 verse 20 reads:
עַל-פִּי יְהוָֹה יַֽחֲנוּ וְעַל-פִּי יְהוֹה יִסָּֽעוּ:
“They encamped at the command of the LORD, and they broke camp at a command of the LORD.”
All the commentaries agree, the Torah repeats elements of this phrase seven times to make it clear that God, and God alone was responsible for the movements of the People of Israel in the wilderness. God picked them up and God set them down. God was actively, closely and intimately involved in their every movement while they journeyed through the desert.
While reading a Hasidic commentary by the Ba’al Shem Tov’s grandson Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov, in his commentary Degel Machaneh Ephraim, we learn that this glaring repetition of the phrase “Al Pi Adonai” comes to teach us a lesson about parenthood, and indeed God’s love for humanity.
He likens this repetition of phrases to the following mashal, a parable:
He writes:
כשאביו לימד אותו לילך, when a parent teaches a child to walk בתחילה מוליך אותו מעט בידו at first they walk for a while hand in hand ואחר כך מניחו ומרחיק את עצמו מעט ממנו,
Afterward, they must distance themselves from the child
וכוונתו כדי שילך התינוק בעצמו.
Their desire being, that the child should learn to walk on their own.
The Degel Machaneh Ephraim goes on to explain that this mashal, this parable, has a clear nimshal, an exegetical lesson we can learn from the text about God and his love for humankind. He writes: The nimshal relates to our Heavenly Parent who at first revealed to the People Israel the paths towards Avodat Hashem, Serving God’s Holy Name, with explicit detail. God told the people Israel, where they should journey as well as where they should encamp. God told the people Israel where to worship, what was pure and what was impure. God held us hand in hand, as we learned to walk as a people, but ultimately, in both the biblical narrative as well as in our modern lives, God begins to stand at a distance, allowing us to learn to walk on our own.
Over the next several weeks as we read the stories of the Israelite people’s rebellions in the desert as well as the story of the spies who failed to trust in God’s message, we see that already in Biblical times, God was being a good parent, standing at a slight distance allowing the Children of Israel to walk, and even sometimes to stumble on their own path towards the Holy Land.
So too, we can sometimes feel this distance from God in our own lives. We may find ourselves hearkening back to those days of yore when God was so clearly and unmistakably a part of the lives of the Jewish people. We may yearn for the times when God’s miracles were felt as readily as rain, when God’s presence was in the physical form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. At these moments of perceived distance, we might well glance to our left and our right to see if our Heavenly parent remains at our side, we might even burst into tears for fear of their absence.
But maybe, just maybe, this distance is only perceived. In actuality perhaps God is exhibiting good parenting skills as God demonstrates the artful practice of letting go. Allowing us to walk on our own, perhaps even allowing us to stumble and fall, all with the intention of letting us learn to walk.
Finally, I want to ask as a new parent, what can this mashal and nimshal, this parable and its accompanying lesson teach us about God? To answer this question, I ask you a new one: I ask of each of you this morning a simple question: “Is it easy to let go?” Well? Is it easy to distance ourselves ever so slightly sometimes from the people we love in order to allow them the space to grow and succeed on their own? The answer is most decidedly no; it is not easy. In fact, it is one of the hardest things in this life we can do. And I imagine it can sometimes be a struggle for our Heavenly Parent as well. But yet each of us knows, in our heart of hearts, that this is the very definition of parenthood, the very essence of love. To be present for our loved ones at all times, while still perfecting the graceful art of disappearing.
And even without an instruction booklet, without a manufacturer’s label on this, the most precious of gifts, I still know this much.
והכוונה שלי כדי שתלך התינוקת בעצמה
And my intention is that this little one will learn to walk on her own.
Shabbat Shalom.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
Counting "Up" to Something: Emor 5769
Imagine for a moment it is Dec. 31st, New Year’s Eve. You are with friends, gathered around the television watching the chaotic scene taking place in Times Square. There is a giant ball made out of thousands of panes of Waterford crystal that is slowly descending from on high, and a crowd of millions, along with all those who observe the most sacred of timezones, Eastern Standard Time, watching as that little clock in the bottom of the screen begins to countdown. Ten, nine, eight, the bottle of champagne is opened. Seven, six, five, your cell phone receives a text message from a friend far away. Four, three, two, you gather your loved-one close ready for the New Year’s kiss. One, the clock strikes midnight, Auld Lang Syne begins to play and a New Year begins yet again.
Inevitably, this is where I feel the letdown. “That’s it?” I ask. “All that waiting, the gathering of friends, the suspenseful countdown, and that’s it? So much buildup, and then with the arrival of that inevitable zero on the clock, it’s over.” But ultimately this is the unavoidable nature of any kind of countdown…it ends. The countdown itself may be fun for a little while, but it never lasts.
This is not the case however with countups. Now, you may not have heard of this term countup, and that is because it is not actually a word, but rest assured, it is something we are all familiar with. There are all kinds of countups in our lives: birthdays for example are countups (because it would be quite depressing if we were counting down); and anniversaries too. Pregnancies are an interesting case however. On the one hand they are countdowns, like the countdown to the due-date of May 15th; but on the other, more scientific hand, they are actually countups: one week, one trimester, three trimesters, all the way to forty weeks. So how do we explain this discrepancy? Is there really a difference between countdowns versus countups, or is this merely a game of semantics? I would argue that there is indeed a crucial difference between counting up and counting down, and our Jewish tradition has a lot to teach us with regard to this question.
For an answer to this decidedly deep question, lets first look to the most famous Jewish disagreement about counting up to something versus counting down to something: the arguments between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai about the correct way to light the Hannukah candles (An argument my seventh-graders who are present here today are no doubt familiar with.) In Masechet Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud, page 21b, the rabbis record an argument between the most well-known Jewish arguers of all time: Hillel and Shammai. The text reads as follows:
“Our Rabbis taught with regard to the commandment of Hannukah:
The House of Shammai says: On the first night we light eight candles, from there on we subtract one candle each night, ending with one lone candle.
The House of Hillel says however: On the first night we light one candle, from there on we add one candle each night, ending with eight candles.”
Although this Tannaitic teaching, a text dating to the time of the Mishnah, records the argument, it does not record any reasons as to why the House of Shammai did it their way and the House of Hillel did it their own way. Five hundred years later, an Amoraic rabbi, a rabbi of the Talmud named Rav Yosi bar Zavida offered his own interpretation as to their reasoning. He explains, that the House of Shammai decides to countdown, that is to remove one candle with the passing of each subsequent night, because that is the nature of the number of sacrifices listed in the Book of B’Midbar; decreasing with each day of the given festival. However, the House of Hillel bases their decidedly different countup on the rabbinic precept of:
מעלין בקודש ואין מורידין
“In matters of holiness we should always increase, and never descend.”
So who wins in a battle between the great and ever-arguing Houses of Hillel and Shammai? Well you could ask my seventh graders, or you could simply think back to Hanukkah and our own modern practice to determine that the Halacha, the Jewish Law, almost always sides with the House of Hillel.
In a similar light, this mornings Torah reading from Parashat Emor can also give us some needed insight with regard to the holy practice of ‘counting up’ to something. In the 15th verse of the 23rd chapter of Sefer Vayikra the Torah tells us:
וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם֙ מִמָּֽחֳרַת הַשַּׁבָּת מִיּוֹם הֲבִיאֲכֶם אֶת-עֹמֶר הַתְּנוּפָה שֶׁבַע שַׁבָּתוֹת תְּמִימֹת תִּֽהְיֶֽינָה:
“And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering, the day after the Sabbath – you shall count off seven complete weeks.”
This verse of course is the basis for the mitzvah, the commandment of counting the Omer, one of the simplest, yet somehow most difficult mitzvot in the entre Torah. How is it simple? Easy, all you have to do is count each night, starting with the night of the second seder, all the way until we reach the holiday of Shavuot seven weeks later. You don’t have to go to home depot, like on Sukkot, or stock up with matzah from Davis’ before Passover; instead all you have to do is remember to count, each and every day of the Omer.
How is it difficult? It is difficult because you have to remember to count. In fact, the halacha even adds an incentive (or punishment depending on how you see it) to motivate you in your counting: if you miss one complete day, that is if you forget to count one night, and don’t remember until after sundown the next night…that’s it, you’re out of the game. The rabbis tell us that you can continue to count…if you want…but not with the b’racha that accompanies the performance of this mitzvah. Like the NCAA tournament each year, it’s a one and done situation. Forget one day, and you might as well pack up your bags for the next seven weeks.
And why is it so difficult to remember to count each night, one by one until the magic number of 49? Well, one answer is that it is simply not in our nature to take life one day at a time. Think about it, if I were to ask you the question how old are you? Everyone in here would know the answer to that question in terms of years, or for some in the room (Ari? Ava?) in terms of months. But how many of you could tell me the number of days you have been alive? Or, if I asked which anniversary you might be celebrating this year, most of you probably know the answer, and those that don’t will certainly be in some trouble, but what if I asked you to recall how many days you have been in a relationship with your loved one? A little harder to do, no?
But yet, I believe there are two main reasons as to why the Torah’s asks of us to pause and count each and every day out loud for a period of seven weeks. Let us categorize these reasons as the traditional and the spiritual. First, the traditional: the Rabbis of the Midrash tell us that upon the Exodus from Egypt, God informed the Children of Israel that they would receive the Torah on Mt. Sinai exactly 49 days later on the holiday of Shavuot. The People Israel were so excited by this news that they immediately began to count the days until their ultimate reward would come to them, the receiving of the Torah on the 6th of Sivan. To this very day, we engage in this important countup in order to show our gratitude for the sacred and timeless gift of the Torah.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly for me, to the spiritual:
The counting of the Omer is an enforced way of slowing down, of taking the time to notice the blessed passing of each and every day. Too often we rush through life, watching as days blend into one another, until a week passes, a month, a year. We find ourselves exclaiming, ‘Life moves so fast,’ bemoaning the fact that we didn’t stop and slow down to enjoy each day afresh. Unfortunately, the lesson of not taking a day for granted is one we all could learn from those in our community who are ill. Ask a person in the throws of a serious illness how they are doing, and they will invariably answer, “I am taking it one day at a time.” They understand the blessing that can be found in the passing of another day, and perhaps we should all try living by their example.
And so, in conclusion I return to the image of New Year’s Eve. Why is it that I always feel such a letdown at the end of an evening of counting down? I believe the answer can be found in the result. If we are merely counting down to something, than that thing, is by definition finite. It is limited. It disappears as quickly as it arrives. But if we instead count up to something, we desire it to be infinite, to be unlimited, to be everlasting. Personally, Eliana and I might be counting down to a due date, but ultimately, more importantly we are counting up to a new life with new possibilities. For our Bar Mitzvah, Max Binder, this morning, you may have been counting down to this important day for years now, but you must recognize that on this day, you actually begin counting up to your Jewish future. And finally for each of us here today, we celebrate the timelessness of Torah and the importance of each and every day when we commit ourselves to counting the Omer because:
מעלין בקודש ואין מורידין
“In matters of holiness we should always increase, and never descend.”
And so it is with great praise to God, the Holy One who is the source of life, that I proudly say: today is the thirtieth day of the Omer.
Inevitably, this is where I feel the letdown. “That’s it?” I ask. “All that waiting, the gathering of friends, the suspenseful countdown, and that’s it? So much buildup, and then with the arrival of that inevitable zero on the clock, it’s over.” But ultimately this is the unavoidable nature of any kind of countdown…it ends. The countdown itself may be fun for a little while, but it never lasts.
This is not the case however with countups. Now, you may not have heard of this term countup, and that is because it is not actually a word, but rest assured, it is something we are all familiar with. There are all kinds of countups in our lives: birthdays for example are countups (because it would be quite depressing if we were counting down); and anniversaries too. Pregnancies are an interesting case however. On the one hand they are countdowns, like the countdown to the due-date of May 15th; but on the other, more scientific hand, they are actually countups: one week, one trimester, three trimesters, all the way to forty weeks. So how do we explain this discrepancy? Is there really a difference between countdowns versus countups, or is this merely a game of semantics? I would argue that there is indeed a crucial difference between counting up and counting down, and our Jewish tradition has a lot to teach us with regard to this question.
For an answer to this decidedly deep question, lets first look to the most famous Jewish disagreement about counting up to something versus counting down to something: the arguments between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai about the correct way to light the Hannukah candles (An argument my seventh-graders who are present here today are no doubt familiar with.) In Masechet Shabbat of the Babylonian Talmud, page 21b, the rabbis record an argument between the most well-known Jewish arguers of all time: Hillel and Shammai. The text reads as follows:
“Our Rabbis taught with regard to the commandment of Hannukah:
The House of Shammai says: On the first night we light eight candles, from there on we subtract one candle each night, ending with one lone candle.
The House of Hillel says however: On the first night we light one candle, from there on we add one candle each night, ending with eight candles.”
Although this Tannaitic teaching, a text dating to the time of the Mishnah, records the argument, it does not record any reasons as to why the House of Shammai did it their way and the House of Hillel did it their own way. Five hundred years later, an Amoraic rabbi, a rabbi of the Talmud named Rav Yosi bar Zavida offered his own interpretation as to their reasoning. He explains, that the House of Shammai decides to countdown, that is to remove one candle with the passing of each subsequent night, because that is the nature of the number of sacrifices listed in the Book of B’Midbar; decreasing with each day of the given festival. However, the House of Hillel bases their decidedly different countup on the rabbinic precept of:
מעלין בקודש ואין מורידין
“In matters of holiness we should always increase, and never descend.”
So who wins in a battle between the great and ever-arguing Houses of Hillel and Shammai? Well you could ask my seventh graders, or you could simply think back to Hanukkah and our own modern practice to determine that the Halacha, the Jewish Law, almost always sides with the House of Hillel.
In a similar light, this mornings Torah reading from Parashat Emor can also give us some needed insight with regard to the holy practice of ‘counting up’ to something. In the 15th verse of the 23rd chapter of Sefer Vayikra the Torah tells us:
וּסְפַרְתֶּם לָכֶם֙ מִמָּֽחֳרַת הַשַּׁבָּת מִיּוֹם הֲבִיאֲכֶם אֶת-עֹמֶר הַתְּנוּפָה שֶׁבַע שַׁבָּתוֹת תְּמִימֹת תִּֽהְיֶֽינָה:
“And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering, the day after the Sabbath – you shall count off seven complete weeks.”
This verse of course is the basis for the mitzvah, the commandment of counting the Omer, one of the simplest, yet somehow most difficult mitzvot in the entre Torah. How is it simple? Easy, all you have to do is count each night, starting with the night of the second seder, all the way until we reach the holiday of Shavuot seven weeks later. You don’t have to go to home depot, like on Sukkot, or stock up with matzah from Davis’ before Passover; instead all you have to do is remember to count, each and every day of the Omer.
How is it difficult? It is difficult because you have to remember to count. In fact, the halacha even adds an incentive (or punishment depending on how you see it) to motivate you in your counting: if you miss one complete day, that is if you forget to count one night, and don’t remember until after sundown the next night…that’s it, you’re out of the game. The rabbis tell us that you can continue to count…if you want…but not with the b’racha that accompanies the performance of this mitzvah. Like the NCAA tournament each year, it’s a one and done situation. Forget one day, and you might as well pack up your bags for the next seven weeks.
And why is it so difficult to remember to count each night, one by one until the magic number of 49? Well, one answer is that it is simply not in our nature to take life one day at a time. Think about it, if I were to ask you the question how old are you? Everyone in here would know the answer to that question in terms of years, or for some in the room (Ari? Ava?) in terms of months. But how many of you could tell me the number of days you have been alive? Or, if I asked which anniversary you might be celebrating this year, most of you probably know the answer, and those that don’t will certainly be in some trouble, but what if I asked you to recall how many days you have been in a relationship with your loved one? A little harder to do, no?
But yet, I believe there are two main reasons as to why the Torah’s asks of us to pause and count each and every day out loud for a period of seven weeks. Let us categorize these reasons as the traditional and the spiritual. First, the traditional: the Rabbis of the Midrash tell us that upon the Exodus from Egypt, God informed the Children of Israel that they would receive the Torah on Mt. Sinai exactly 49 days later on the holiday of Shavuot. The People Israel were so excited by this news that they immediately began to count the days until their ultimate reward would come to them, the receiving of the Torah on the 6th of Sivan. To this very day, we engage in this important countup in order to show our gratitude for the sacred and timeless gift of the Torah.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly for me, to the spiritual:
The counting of the Omer is an enforced way of slowing down, of taking the time to notice the blessed passing of each and every day. Too often we rush through life, watching as days blend into one another, until a week passes, a month, a year. We find ourselves exclaiming, ‘Life moves so fast,’ bemoaning the fact that we didn’t stop and slow down to enjoy each day afresh. Unfortunately, the lesson of not taking a day for granted is one we all could learn from those in our community who are ill. Ask a person in the throws of a serious illness how they are doing, and they will invariably answer, “I am taking it one day at a time.” They understand the blessing that can be found in the passing of another day, and perhaps we should all try living by their example.
And so, in conclusion I return to the image of New Year’s Eve. Why is it that I always feel such a letdown at the end of an evening of counting down? I believe the answer can be found in the result. If we are merely counting down to something, than that thing, is by definition finite. It is limited. It disappears as quickly as it arrives. But if we instead count up to something, we desire it to be infinite, to be unlimited, to be everlasting. Personally, Eliana and I might be counting down to a due date, but ultimately, more importantly we are counting up to a new life with new possibilities. For our Bar Mitzvah, Max Binder, this morning, you may have been counting down to this important day for years now, but you must recognize that on this day, you actually begin counting up to your Jewish future. And finally for each of us here today, we celebrate the timelessness of Torah and the importance of each and every day when we commit ourselves to counting the Omer because:
מעלין בקודש ואין מורידין
“In matters of holiness we should always increase, and never descend.”
And so it is with great praise to God, the Holy One who is the source of life, that I proudly say: today is the thirtieth day of the Omer.
"Az" A Pregnant Pause and a Question of Theology: 7th Day Pesach 5769
Monday morning when I got into my car and headed to minyan, I noticed that a small warning light was blinking on my dashboard. I had seen that light a few months before during the winter, and recognized it as the “Low Tire Pressure” signal. When I first saw that light go on a few months ago, I quickly put some air into the tires, was pleased at the disappearance of the light, and then puzzled when I discovered that the light went back on a couple of days later. I sensed a pattern developing. The light goes on, I fill the tire with air, the light goes off, and a few days later it goes back on again. So I took it into Benny’s on North Main St. Turns out, I had run over a screw and my tire was slowly leaking air. No worries, a plug and fifteen dollars later, good as new.
That is, until Monday morning. So after I got back from minyan I decided to call the dealership and see if they had some time in the afternoon to take a look at the car, and besides we were in need of an oil change anyway. The appointment was scheduled for 2 p.m., and knowing it can take a while, I brought my book along. Three hours later, I was nearly two-hundred pages deeper into my book, and still no car. Finally, a woman came out to tell me that the tire had to be replaced and I could go home shortly only having lost two hundred dollars and three hours of my life.
I know it might be hard to picture, but your rabbi was not in his best mood of all time. I was boiling with anger and frustration.
I barely had time to get back to Providence before needing to be at shul for Mincha and Ma’ariv. I davened, I had a thought, and my anger disappeared. I haven’t lost a moment of my life to anger or frustration since. What was the thought? Well, I’ll tell you, but first a little Torah.
Just moments ago, we read from the Torah the miraculous account of the Splitting of the Red Sea and the subsequent praiseful poem which follows in the text. This ancient poem, Chapter 15 of the Book of Exodus, is known as Shirat HaYam, the Song at the Sea and is well known to many of us from our yearly Torah reading cycle and our daily morning liturgy. Its famous opening line serves as both an attribution and a title to the famous song. It reads as follows:
אָז יָֽשִׁיר מֹשֶׁה וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לַֽיהֹוָה וַיֹּֽאמְרוּ לֵאמֹר
The New Translation of the Jewish Publication Society translates the beginning of this verse:
“Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. Saying:”
But like with most things that deal with translation, it may not be so simpleas it seems. You see, a lot depends on how you translate that word “Az.” A quick glance at a Biblical dictionary reveals that “Az” can be translated as ‘when, then, at that time, in that case, therefore or thereupon.” In other words, it can either be translated as expressing some logical sequence as in the sentence: “‘x’ happened, so “Az”, ‘y’ occurred.” Or it can be translated strictly temporally, a word denoting the passing of time, as in the sentence ‘So there I was walking down the street and “Az”, a piano fell on my head.” So how can we be certain which meaning is intended here in our Torah: is it a ‘therefore’, or a ‘then’?
So we glance at the Traditional commentators for some help on this matter and we see that Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak of Eleventh Century France, clearly understands the word “Az” as denoting some logical sequence of events, a cause and then an effect. He comments:
“Az, k’sh’ra’ah et ha nes, alah b’libo sh’yashir shira,”
“When he (Moses) saw the great miracle that occurred, it arose in his mind to sing a song to God.”
After all, the verses preceding the poem in the Torah describe in detail how Moses held his arm out over the sea, the Lord turned the sea into dry ground, allowing for the Israelites’ safe passage. If you were there and saw a giant miracle like that in person, and witnessed God’s awesome, supernatural might, you might be moved to sing a song of praise as well! God performs a mighty miracle, “Az Yashir Moshe u’vnei Yisrael,” so therefore Moses and the children of Israel sang.
But the always grammatical Abraham Ibn Ezra, of twelfth century Spain, North Africa, Israel and London (the guy moved around quite a bit) has quite a different take on this little word “Az”. He explains that the “Az” we find here has nothing to do with cause and effect, but rather it is simply the way Biblical Hebrew expresses the present tense. He explains that saying “Az Yashir Moshe” is like saying “And Moses sings a song.” Instead of being a result of something that comes before, it is merely the way to express something that happens extemporaneously, out of the blue. Moses sang a song. “I was walking down the street, and ‘Az’, a piano fell on my head.”
So why does this matter? What could be the possible lesson for us as modern Jews found in the grammatical musings based upon a single word in the Torah of two men long since dead? Well I for one believe that this disagreement has nothing to do with a simple word in the Torah, but rather it has everything to do with our theology and how we look for God in this world. Allow me to explain.
I believe there are two ways you can approach the question of God in our world. You can either be a Rashi or an Ibn Ezra. A Rashi, you see, is one who looks for God in this world through the eyes of cause and effect. This person is seeking those instances where the presence of God in their lives becomes real, immanent and tangible. In those moments of intense spiritual experience, for lack of a better word let’s call them moments of ‘proof’; a Rashi is left with no other choice but to sing a song of praise unto God. God is the maker of moments of meaning in my life and so therefore I am obligated to acknowledge God’s presence during those experiences of God’s immanence.
On the other hand, we have our Ibn Ezras. Ibn Ezras are not concerned with moments of immanence or intimacy; they are not concerned with questions of cause or effect. Rather they are prone to seek out the presence of God regardless of a given event or a particular occurrence. Ibn Ezras seek knowledge of a God who is transcendent. A God who is not felt most acutely in those rare moments of ‘proof’, but rather in the common occurrence of doubt; a God whose presence is not to be found merely in the miraculous, but also in the mundane, the benign. During these quiet moments of questioning, from within the recognition of the regular, the Ibn Ezra feels God’s closeness, and is compelled to cry out in song.
This distinction, between the Rashis of the world and the Ibn Ezras of the world also appears, albeit not by these terms, in the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel speaks both of living a ‘life of wonder’ as well as a ‘life of Radical Amazement’. For years I assumed those two phrases were synonymous, that experiencing wonder meant being radically amazed. That is until a crucial nuance within Heschel’s philosophy was pointed out to me by my very brilliant friend Rabbi Shai Held during a class of his that I had the privilege of attending in the fall. This nuance can be explained by means of a mashal, a parable:
Imagine you are standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon on a bright, sunny day. To experience wonder, is to stand there and think: “This is simply a miracle! That the seemingly uneventful act of a river flowing, cutting through endless miles of rock over millions of years could create such a stunning sight. Surely this is proof of God’s amazing work. Az Yashir Moshe, and they are moved to sing.” However, one who feels the depths of Radical Amazement experiences the very same view in a remarkably different way: standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon on a bright sunny day, the one who is radically amazed remarks with an overwhelming sigh, “This is simply a miracle! I can see!” And in that moment of utter amazement, when they experience what Heschel describes as the “inconceivable surprise of living,” ‘Az Yashir Moshe’, they suddenly begin to sing.
To live your life in wonder is to live according to the perush, the explanation of Rashi, which is to experience God’s presence in this world during overwhelming moments of wonder caused by miraculous events. However, to live your life according to the perush of Ibn Ezra, is to understand God as being present even, and perhaps especially, in the common moments of benignity.
This of course brings me back to the problem of my interminable oil change. There I was, in minyan, ripe with anger and frustration over an afternoon of wasted time, davening the Amidah half-heartedly when a sudden and intensely calming thought occurred to me: I am grateful for the miraculous monotony of life. I am grateful that I could read that book that I was reading. I am grateful for the presence of community, who gathers together each day in our chapel and prays, regardless of our familiarity with the prayers or even our belief in their efficacy. I am grateful for this breath, as well as for the next. And most of all I am grateful for the ever-growing, ever-moving, ever-learning collection of cells, sinews and tissues which tosses and turns inside the belly of my wife. And with this thought, with this intense recognition of the profundity of being, Az Yashir Moshe, I was suddenly moved to sing.
Hag Sameach.
That is, until Monday morning. So after I got back from minyan I decided to call the dealership and see if they had some time in the afternoon to take a look at the car, and besides we were in need of an oil change anyway. The appointment was scheduled for 2 p.m., and knowing it can take a while, I brought my book along. Three hours later, I was nearly two-hundred pages deeper into my book, and still no car. Finally, a woman came out to tell me that the tire had to be replaced and I could go home shortly only having lost two hundred dollars and three hours of my life.
I know it might be hard to picture, but your rabbi was not in his best mood of all time. I was boiling with anger and frustration.
I barely had time to get back to Providence before needing to be at shul for Mincha and Ma’ariv. I davened, I had a thought, and my anger disappeared. I haven’t lost a moment of my life to anger or frustration since. What was the thought? Well, I’ll tell you, but first a little Torah.
Just moments ago, we read from the Torah the miraculous account of the Splitting of the Red Sea and the subsequent praiseful poem which follows in the text. This ancient poem, Chapter 15 of the Book of Exodus, is known as Shirat HaYam, the Song at the Sea and is well known to many of us from our yearly Torah reading cycle and our daily morning liturgy. Its famous opening line serves as both an attribution and a title to the famous song. It reads as follows:
אָז יָֽשִׁיר מֹשֶׁה וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לַֽיהֹוָה וַיֹּֽאמְרוּ לֵאמֹר
The New Translation of the Jewish Publication Society translates the beginning of this verse:
“Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. Saying:”
But like with most things that deal with translation, it may not be so simpleas it seems. You see, a lot depends on how you translate that word “Az.” A quick glance at a Biblical dictionary reveals that “Az” can be translated as ‘when, then, at that time, in that case, therefore or thereupon.” In other words, it can either be translated as expressing some logical sequence as in the sentence: “‘x’ happened, so “Az”, ‘y’ occurred.” Or it can be translated strictly temporally, a word denoting the passing of time, as in the sentence ‘So there I was walking down the street and “Az”, a piano fell on my head.” So how can we be certain which meaning is intended here in our Torah: is it a ‘therefore’, or a ‘then’?
So we glance at the Traditional commentators for some help on this matter and we see that Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak of Eleventh Century France, clearly understands the word “Az” as denoting some logical sequence of events, a cause and then an effect. He comments:
“Az, k’sh’ra’ah et ha nes, alah b’libo sh’yashir shira,”
“When he (Moses) saw the great miracle that occurred, it arose in his mind to sing a song to God.”
After all, the verses preceding the poem in the Torah describe in detail how Moses held his arm out over the sea, the Lord turned the sea into dry ground, allowing for the Israelites’ safe passage. If you were there and saw a giant miracle like that in person, and witnessed God’s awesome, supernatural might, you might be moved to sing a song of praise as well! God performs a mighty miracle, “Az Yashir Moshe u’vnei Yisrael,” so therefore Moses and the children of Israel sang.
But the always grammatical Abraham Ibn Ezra, of twelfth century Spain, North Africa, Israel and London (the guy moved around quite a bit) has quite a different take on this little word “Az”. He explains that the “Az” we find here has nothing to do with cause and effect, but rather it is simply the way Biblical Hebrew expresses the present tense. He explains that saying “Az Yashir Moshe” is like saying “And Moses sings a song.” Instead of being a result of something that comes before, it is merely the way to express something that happens extemporaneously, out of the blue. Moses sang a song. “I was walking down the street, and ‘Az’, a piano fell on my head.”
So why does this matter? What could be the possible lesson for us as modern Jews found in the grammatical musings based upon a single word in the Torah of two men long since dead? Well I for one believe that this disagreement has nothing to do with a simple word in the Torah, but rather it has everything to do with our theology and how we look for God in this world. Allow me to explain.
I believe there are two ways you can approach the question of God in our world. You can either be a Rashi or an Ibn Ezra. A Rashi, you see, is one who looks for God in this world through the eyes of cause and effect. This person is seeking those instances where the presence of God in their lives becomes real, immanent and tangible. In those moments of intense spiritual experience, for lack of a better word let’s call them moments of ‘proof’; a Rashi is left with no other choice but to sing a song of praise unto God. God is the maker of moments of meaning in my life and so therefore I am obligated to acknowledge God’s presence during those experiences of God’s immanence.
On the other hand, we have our Ibn Ezras. Ibn Ezras are not concerned with moments of immanence or intimacy; they are not concerned with questions of cause or effect. Rather they are prone to seek out the presence of God regardless of a given event or a particular occurrence. Ibn Ezras seek knowledge of a God who is transcendent. A God who is not felt most acutely in those rare moments of ‘proof’, but rather in the common occurrence of doubt; a God whose presence is not to be found merely in the miraculous, but also in the mundane, the benign. During these quiet moments of questioning, from within the recognition of the regular, the Ibn Ezra feels God’s closeness, and is compelled to cry out in song.
This distinction, between the Rashis of the world and the Ibn Ezras of the world also appears, albeit not by these terms, in the writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel speaks both of living a ‘life of wonder’ as well as a ‘life of Radical Amazement’. For years I assumed those two phrases were synonymous, that experiencing wonder meant being radically amazed. That is until a crucial nuance within Heschel’s philosophy was pointed out to me by my very brilliant friend Rabbi Shai Held during a class of his that I had the privilege of attending in the fall. This nuance can be explained by means of a mashal, a parable:
Imagine you are standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon on a bright, sunny day. To experience wonder, is to stand there and think: “This is simply a miracle! That the seemingly uneventful act of a river flowing, cutting through endless miles of rock over millions of years could create such a stunning sight. Surely this is proof of God’s amazing work. Az Yashir Moshe, and they are moved to sing.” However, one who feels the depths of Radical Amazement experiences the very same view in a remarkably different way: standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon on a bright sunny day, the one who is radically amazed remarks with an overwhelming sigh, “This is simply a miracle! I can see!” And in that moment of utter amazement, when they experience what Heschel describes as the “inconceivable surprise of living,” ‘Az Yashir Moshe’, they suddenly begin to sing.
To live your life in wonder is to live according to the perush, the explanation of Rashi, which is to experience God’s presence in this world during overwhelming moments of wonder caused by miraculous events. However, to live your life according to the perush of Ibn Ezra, is to understand God as being present even, and perhaps especially, in the common moments of benignity.
This of course brings me back to the problem of my interminable oil change. There I was, in minyan, ripe with anger and frustration over an afternoon of wasted time, davening the Amidah half-heartedly when a sudden and intensely calming thought occurred to me: I am grateful for the miraculous monotony of life. I am grateful that I could read that book that I was reading. I am grateful for the presence of community, who gathers together each day in our chapel and prays, regardless of our familiarity with the prayers or even our belief in their efficacy. I am grateful for this breath, as well as for the next. And most of all I am grateful for the ever-growing, ever-moving, ever-learning collection of cells, sinews and tissues which tosses and turns inside the belly of my wife. And with this thought, with this intense recognition of the profundity of being, Az Yashir Moshe, I was suddenly moved to sing.
Hag Sameach.
Solving a Difficult Rambam: Shabat HaGadol 5769
This may be difficult for many of you out there, but I am about to describe a terrible time in our people’s history. It was a dark time, a time of great sadness, some would even say a time of great madness. I am of course referring to the stunning historical reality that there was a time when rabbis would only speak to their congregations twice a year! I know, I know. Settle down. Don’t get too emotional, but this was actually the case! That’s right rabbis only spoke in shul on two shabbatot, on Shabbat Shuvah, in between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur, and on Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat immediately preceding Pesach. You see back then the rabbi was the posek, the legal decider for a community, and public preaching did not often sit high on the priority list. Well, I don’t know how we survived for so long as a people through those lean years, but somehow we managed to make it through the doldrums and make our way towards a more enlightened time.
So what did those great rabbis of a time gone by choose to speak about? I mean it had to be a really good one right? It had to be worthy of almost seven months of thought and contemplation. If you didn’t hit a home run, your congregation was likely to ask themselves, “just what does he do with all that time?”, and so these rabbis must have turned many a hair gray while they wrote their words of Torah.
But the fact is that for the most part, they all spoke about the same thing: they all chose to solve what is known as a “difficult rambam.” Rambam, of course, is Maimonides, the world-famous Jewish philosopher and legal expert whose influence can still be felt in the world of Halacha. So what, you might ask, is a difficult Rambam? Well you see, one the Rambam’s most famous works is called the Mishneh Torah. The Mishneh Torah, literally means ‘the second teaching of the Torah,’ which should tell you that the Rambam was not one to underestimate his own reach of influence. Throughout fourteen volumes he organized, codified and decided between legal voices scattered throughout the Mishnah and Talmud. Because the Mishneh Torah is comprised of fourteen volumes, it also acquired the nickname “The Yad HaHazaka” The strong hand, since the Hebrew letters that make up the word Yad is the equivalent of the number fourteen in gematria. But I digress. A difficult rambam you see is the rare case where you find, among the thousands of laws that he codified . . . a mistake. That’s right; at first glance it appears that even the greatest genius in our Jewish history sometimes made mistakes. But it is not always easy for us to admit the faults of our great heroes. And so it was the job of the great rabbi of the days of yore, through creative reasoning and by means of extensive Talmudic knowledge to unwrap the riddle of a mysterious Rambam.
Let me tell you a famous story that illustrates what I am talking about. There once was a famous rabbi in Lithuania who was renowned the world over for his skill and solving the most difficult of rambams. Each year on Shabbat Shuvah and Shabbat HaGadol, his congregants would gather with joy and anticipation to hear their great rabbi flex his mighty intellectual skills. He never disappointed. Through a clever reading of this text, or that Mishnah; or through a creative explanation of what the Rambam ‘really’ meant when he said this or that, their rabbi would always succeed in his quest to redeem the Rambam from a potential blot on his rabbinic resume. Finally after a lifetime of doing this, the great rabbi passed away. As soon as he made his way to Olam HaBa, he immediately sought out his hero. It did not take long for him to find the illustrious Rambam, and of course he wanted to try out one of his cleverest solutions on the genius himself. So he started to explain to him: if you read this sugya in the gemara in this way, and if you read this mishnah that way, and if you understand that you, the Rambam were actually saying this when you said that: well then, there is no conflict in your words at all! The Rambam looked puzzled. He smiled as he explained to his new friend, “Very clever, very clever indeed, so I hate to tell you this: but you must have a bad version of my Mishneh Torah. I never said that, it must be a scribal error.” The Rabbi from Lithuania frowned with great disappointment as he looked at his hero and said, “Rambam, that is not how you solve a difficult Rambam.”
And so this morning, it is with great humility that I will attempt to follow in the footsteps my rabbinic ancestors and try and solve a difficult rambam. The difficult rambam in question can be found in the second chapter of Hilchot Hametz and Matzah, a section concerning the Laws of cleaning for Passover. The Rambam first explains that it is a positive commandment from the Torah, a Mitzvat A’say M’D’oraita to remove all Hametz from your house, as it says in Exodus 12 verse 15: “On the very first day you shall remove all leaven from your houses.” But the Torah is reticent with regard to the preferred method of hametz removal. The rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud of course understood the concept of ‘removal’ to be synonymous with three acts: the searching for, the burning and the cancelling of all leaven in our possessions. In other words, first we clean our homes; looking for any last morsel of bread left behind. Then we are to literally burn those scraps which we do find during our Passover cleaning. And finally, we say a verbal formula which renders any hametz that is unknowingly left over in our possession null and void. This is the order, of things, open and shut case, good night.
But this is where we find a seemingly difficult rambam. In Halacha Bet of Chapter Two the Rambam writes: “And what is meant by the phrase “remove all leaven from your homes” that is stated in the Torah? The answer is that you must cancel it out in your heart, and it will be thought of as mere dust, and you must make certain in your heart that there is no hametz in your possession at all – and when you do this, when you cancel it out in your hears, all the hametz that is in your possession is though of as mere dust and ashes.”
Hmmm. A couple of interesting and somewhat startling revelations in this halacha of the Rambam’s. First off, the Rambam seems to make clear that the type of hametz removal that matters the most, is a sort of internal oath that we are to make between our hearts and God. Twice he uses the word “B’libo” ‘In his heart’, as opposed to describing the physical removal of hametz, or even the verbal oath we make today. Secondly, let me get this straight. Is the Rambam saying that we are all going a bit crazy with this pre-pesach cleaning ritual? Is he intimating that all we really have to do is close our eyes, concentrate and with full intention in our hearts cancel out all of the hametz that is in our possession? Is it that easy?
Well you can imagine that the great rabbis of old went to town on this. Many of them jumped to explain that the Rambam clearly meant “b’peh” ‘verbally’ when he said “b’libo,” ‘internally,’ because everyone knows that you have to say the famous formula out loud when you declare your hametz to be null and void. Others quickly jumped in to say that the Rambam meant to point out to us that even if we were to simply cancel out all the hametz in our possession, even without physically removing it from our homes, this indeed would be enough to make us immune from the prohibition of possessing hametz on Pesach. Finally, there are the modern scholars who chose to go the route of the Rambam himself in that humorous story I told you a minute ago. They point out that there is no conflict at all with what the Rambam says here because the Rambam never said it. In fact there is a version of the Mishneh Torah from a manuscript in Rome which reads as follows: “First you should physically remove all of the hametz that you are aware of in you home, and that which you are unaware of you may cancel out in your heart and it will be thought of as mere dust etc. etc. etc.” No problem at all, just a scribal error.
But I want to offer another possibility as radical as it may seem: that the Rambam meant exactly what he said: That for him, the priority of Passover cleaning was not the physical removal of hametz from your home, but rather the spiritual, metaphoric representation of this act. After all we know that it is impossible to remove all the hametz from our possession. There are the crumbs that slip between the cracks in the couch and end up pressed against the sofa bed. There are those tiny remnants of dog treats that your dog brought with him into the basement, and deposited behind the exercise bike. There is that one stale granola bar that is hidden in the unused pockets of your golf bag, or hidden behind the warranty in your glove box. We all know that it is futile. To physically remove every piece of leaven from our lives, and given that futility we are left to conclude, like the Rambam, that the most important thing we can do is to make a mental declaration that for these eight days our lives will be noticeably different.
Finally this morning, I wish to conclude with another perush, another explanation of this difficult Rambam. This one I do not pretend is the p’shat, the literal meaning of what the Rambam intended, but nonetheless I think it is worthy of our contemplation before Pesach begins. According to some Hasidic interpretations, the entire concept of hametz is meant to be a spiritual metaphor for the ‘shmutz’ we have in our lives. We are therefore enjoined each year to carefully search out the tiny imperfections in our spiritual selves, to take note of them and to try and eliminate them from our lives each Passover.
A famous Hasidic Rebbe, Rabbi Alan Flam of Providence, RI, (or as I like to call him, the Browner Rebbe) finds this spiritual metaphor for hametz extremely meaningful. He writes:
Cleaning can become a meditation, during which we are able to address the emotional crumbs of our lives. We can ask, “What is my attachment to this crumb? Can I let it go? Am I freer having this or letting it go?” As we search our homes for chametz, we can imagine some aspect of our lives or ourselves that no longer serves us and dispose of it.
Using this metaphor for hametz, we can use our Passover preperations as a spiritual check up for that soul searching we did here in shul some seven months ago on Yom Kippur.
If I am quick to anger or frustration; clean it up. If I take love for granted; clean it up. If I separate myself from my community: clean it up. If I have been avoiding God; clean it up. Armed with the metaphor of a candle and a feather, let us search our lives for those tiny crumbs of imperfection in order to make a cleaner, more holy life in the year to come. And this, this is the way you solve a difficult Rambam.
So what did those great rabbis of a time gone by choose to speak about? I mean it had to be a really good one right? It had to be worthy of almost seven months of thought and contemplation. If you didn’t hit a home run, your congregation was likely to ask themselves, “just what does he do with all that time?”, and so these rabbis must have turned many a hair gray while they wrote their words of Torah.
But the fact is that for the most part, they all spoke about the same thing: they all chose to solve what is known as a “difficult rambam.” Rambam, of course, is Maimonides, the world-famous Jewish philosopher and legal expert whose influence can still be felt in the world of Halacha. So what, you might ask, is a difficult Rambam? Well you see, one the Rambam’s most famous works is called the Mishneh Torah. The Mishneh Torah, literally means ‘the second teaching of the Torah,’ which should tell you that the Rambam was not one to underestimate his own reach of influence. Throughout fourteen volumes he organized, codified and decided between legal voices scattered throughout the Mishnah and Talmud. Because the Mishneh Torah is comprised of fourteen volumes, it also acquired the nickname “The Yad HaHazaka” The strong hand, since the Hebrew letters that make up the word Yad is the equivalent of the number fourteen in gematria. But I digress. A difficult rambam you see is the rare case where you find, among the thousands of laws that he codified . . . a mistake. That’s right; at first glance it appears that even the greatest genius in our Jewish history sometimes made mistakes. But it is not always easy for us to admit the faults of our great heroes. And so it was the job of the great rabbi of the days of yore, through creative reasoning and by means of extensive Talmudic knowledge to unwrap the riddle of a mysterious Rambam.
Let me tell you a famous story that illustrates what I am talking about. There once was a famous rabbi in Lithuania who was renowned the world over for his skill and solving the most difficult of rambams. Each year on Shabbat Shuvah and Shabbat HaGadol, his congregants would gather with joy and anticipation to hear their great rabbi flex his mighty intellectual skills. He never disappointed. Through a clever reading of this text, or that Mishnah; or through a creative explanation of what the Rambam ‘really’ meant when he said this or that, their rabbi would always succeed in his quest to redeem the Rambam from a potential blot on his rabbinic resume. Finally after a lifetime of doing this, the great rabbi passed away. As soon as he made his way to Olam HaBa, he immediately sought out his hero. It did not take long for him to find the illustrious Rambam, and of course he wanted to try out one of his cleverest solutions on the genius himself. So he started to explain to him: if you read this sugya in the gemara in this way, and if you read this mishnah that way, and if you understand that you, the Rambam were actually saying this when you said that: well then, there is no conflict in your words at all! The Rambam looked puzzled. He smiled as he explained to his new friend, “Very clever, very clever indeed, so I hate to tell you this: but you must have a bad version of my Mishneh Torah. I never said that, it must be a scribal error.” The Rabbi from Lithuania frowned with great disappointment as he looked at his hero and said, “Rambam, that is not how you solve a difficult Rambam.”
And so this morning, it is with great humility that I will attempt to follow in the footsteps my rabbinic ancestors and try and solve a difficult rambam. The difficult rambam in question can be found in the second chapter of Hilchot Hametz and Matzah, a section concerning the Laws of cleaning for Passover. The Rambam first explains that it is a positive commandment from the Torah, a Mitzvat A’say M’D’oraita to remove all Hametz from your house, as it says in Exodus 12 verse 15: “On the very first day you shall remove all leaven from your houses.” But the Torah is reticent with regard to the preferred method of hametz removal. The rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud of course understood the concept of ‘removal’ to be synonymous with three acts: the searching for, the burning and the cancelling of all leaven in our possessions. In other words, first we clean our homes; looking for any last morsel of bread left behind. Then we are to literally burn those scraps which we do find during our Passover cleaning. And finally, we say a verbal formula which renders any hametz that is unknowingly left over in our possession null and void. This is the order, of things, open and shut case, good night.
But this is where we find a seemingly difficult rambam. In Halacha Bet of Chapter Two the Rambam writes: “And what is meant by the phrase “remove all leaven from your homes” that is stated in the Torah? The answer is that you must cancel it out in your heart, and it will be thought of as mere dust, and you must make certain in your heart that there is no hametz in your possession at all – and when you do this, when you cancel it out in your hears, all the hametz that is in your possession is though of as mere dust and ashes.”
Hmmm. A couple of interesting and somewhat startling revelations in this halacha of the Rambam’s. First off, the Rambam seems to make clear that the type of hametz removal that matters the most, is a sort of internal oath that we are to make between our hearts and God. Twice he uses the word “B’libo” ‘In his heart’, as opposed to describing the physical removal of hametz, or even the verbal oath we make today. Secondly, let me get this straight. Is the Rambam saying that we are all going a bit crazy with this pre-pesach cleaning ritual? Is he intimating that all we really have to do is close our eyes, concentrate and with full intention in our hearts cancel out all of the hametz that is in our possession? Is it that easy?
Well you can imagine that the great rabbis of old went to town on this. Many of them jumped to explain that the Rambam clearly meant “b’peh” ‘verbally’ when he said “b’libo,” ‘internally,’ because everyone knows that you have to say the famous formula out loud when you declare your hametz to be null and void. Others quickly jumped in to say that the Rambam meant to point out to us that even if we were to simply cancel out all the hametz in our possession, even without physically removing it from our homes, this indeed would be enough to make us immune from the prohibition of possessing hametz on Pesach. Finally, there are the modern scholars who chose to go the route of the Rambam himself in that humorous story I told you a minute ago. They point out that there is no conflict at all with what the Rambam says here because the Rambam never said it. In fact there is a version of the Mishneh Torah from a manuscript in Rome which reads as follows: “First you should physically remove all of the hametz that you are aware of in you home, and that which you are unaware of you may cancel out in your heart and it will be thought of as mere dust etc. etc. etc.” No problem at all, just a scribal error.
But I want to offer another possibility as radical as it may seem: that the Rambam meant exactly what he said: That for him, the priority of Passover cleaning was not the physical removal of hametz from your home, but rather the spiritual, metaphoric representation of this act. After all we know that it is impossible to remove all the hametz from our possession. There are the crumbs that slip between the cracks in the couch and end up pressed against the sofa bed. There are those tiny remnants of dog treats that your dog brought with him into the basement, and deposited behind the exercise bike. There is that one stale granola bar that is hidden in the unused pockets of your golf bag, or hidden behind the warranty in your glove box. We all know that it is futile. To physically remove every piece of leaven from our lives, and given that futility we are left to conclude, like the Rambam, that the most important thing we can do is to make a mental declaration that for these eight days our lives will be noticeably different.
Finally this morning, I wish to conclude with another perush, another explanation of this difficult Rambam. This one I do not pretend is the p’shat, the literal meaning of what the Rambam intended, but nonetheless I think it is worthy of our contemplation before Pesach begins. According to some Hasidic interpretations, the entire concept of hametz is meant to be a spiritual metaphor for the ‘shmutz’ we have in our lives. We are therefore enjoined each year to carefully search out the tiny imperfections in our spiritual selves, to take note of them and to try and eliminate them from our lives each Passover.
A famous Hasidic Rebbe, Rabbi Alan Flam of Providence, RI, (or as I like to call him, the Browner Rebbe) finds this spiritual metaphor for hametz extremely meaningful. He writes:
Cleaning can become a meditation, during which we are able to address the emotional crumbs of our lives. We can ask, “What is my attachment to this crumb? Can I let it go? Am I freer having this or letting it go?” As we search our homes for chametz, we can imagine some aspect of our lives or ourselves that no longer serves us and dispose of it.
Using this metaphor for hametz, we can use our Passover preperations as a spiritual check up for that soul searching we did here in shul some seven months ago on Yom Kippur.
If I am quick to anger or frustration; clean it up. If I take love for granted; clean it up. If I separate myself from my community: clean it up. If I have been avoiding God; clean it up. Armed with the metaphor of a candle and a feather, let us search our lives for those tiny crumbs of imperfection in order to make a cleaner, more holy life in the year to come. And this, this is the way you solve a difficult Rambam.
A Principled Defense of The Book of Leviticus: VaYikra 5769
When I first arrived here at Temple Emanu-El one of the first tasks I undertook was setting up the bookshelves in my Office. I wanted to make sure that all the books that I could possibly need to make an important rabbinic decision or to consult with to write a sermon were readily available; at least those books which my wife gave me permission to remove from our home.
One set of books she most certainly did not allow me to take to work was the wonderful series of Torah Commentaries by the Jewish Publication Society. This set of five scholarly books, corresponding to the Five Books of Moses, she deemed too valuable to waste away in my office, instead she preferred to keep them close by, resting on the bookshelf in our family room.
So you can imagine how pleased I was to discover that Rabbi Kaunfer had in fact left this very set of books for me on one of his former shelves. (What a mensch!) I was indeed grateful until I discovered that in fact it was missing a volume! Any guesses as to which volume of the five it was missing? Sefer Vayikra, of course! That good ol’ book of Leviticus, the book we began reading in shul this morning. But before I could even fret about the missing volume, a tour of the office closet space provided to me by the wonderful Diana Grimes revealed to me a treasure. Tucked away behind a dusty collection of old bar-mitzvah benshers, were not one, but three volumes of the JPS commentary on Vayikra, still in their plastic covers! After doing a little institutional research, Rabbi Franklin explained to me that years ago during one of his cycles teaching the Men’s Torah Club they were working their way through the 5 books in the JPS Torah Commentary Series, when he found himself the target of a mutiny. No one wanted to study Sefer Vayikra! Hence, this collection of books remains in that closet to this very day.
And who can blame them? It is no wonder why, at first glance, this book remains a mystery to us as modern Jews. Whereas the other four books of Moses contain compelling narrative sections concerning the forefathers and mothers, the Exodus from Egypt, the rebellions in the desert or Moses’ last teaching to the Children of Israel; aside from a few brief exceptions there is nary a narrative to be found in the entire Book of Leviticus! In place of the famous stories found in Genesis, Exodus or Numbers, Leviticus offers us laws; and not only that, but laws mainly concerning the Priests, which means lots of gory details about sacrifices, Kashrut, skin diseases and sexual behavior. In fact, due to its overwhelming focus on the laws concerning the Priests, the Kohanim, and the Levites, the Levi’im, the rabbis chose to nickname Sefer Vayikra as “Torat Kohanim” or the teachings of (or for) the Priests. In light of all this, it is not so surprising that Rabbi Franklin’s Men’s Torah Class would have rebelled and nor is it surprising to find a host of unused volumes of Sefer Vayikra hidden away in our office closet.
But this morning I want to make a principled defense on behalf of the Book of Leviticus. I want to show you the redeeming qualities that it offers us and I want to argue that the reason why it doesn’t speak to us with the same intensity as other books is not because it is flawed as a book, but because WE, as modern Jews are reading it wrong! You see, this book was written for a very specific time and place; and it reflects the ritual practices and the moral values of a people who lived in a drastically different world than we live in today. So the natural trap we fall into is to read this book literally! When instead, since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE the Rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud have instead encouraged us to read the Book of Leviticus figuratively; as a metaphor for our own modern times.
Allow me to show you what I mean. This morning we read from Parshat Vayikra, the first weekly parasha in the Book of Leviticus. As some of you no doubt noticed, this morning’s parasha is ripe with detailed descriptions of the animal sacrifices that were to be maintained in the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle. There are three main types of sacrifices that are described here: the Olah, the burnt offering, consisting of a bull, a lamb or a bird, which was entirely consumed upon the altar. The Torah tells us, that as this sacrifice burned, it gave off a re’ach nicho’ach, a pleasant odor to the Lord. Next is the Minhah offering, the grain offering, appropriate for a variety of occasions though perhaps a less-costly alternative to the sacrifice of a bull or a goat. Finally we learn of the Zevah Sh’lamim, the Sacred Gift of well-being. This sacrifice consisted of some of the same animals used in the Olah, the burnt offering, but this sacrifice was to be consumed by both the priests as well as by donor his or herself. In this way, you make a donation to the Temple, please the Lord, and you get to enjoy a bit of it yourself! Think of this as the first version of a tax deduction for charitable donations.
So, how do we as moderns feel when we read of the details of these animal sacrifices? Grossed out? Maybe a bit embarrassed by our more primitive ancestors? Certainly we feel grateful that we live in a more civilized time and place. But does this mean that we should simply ‘skip’ this parasha each year because it makes us feel ‘icky’? Should we throw the baby out along with the bathwater?
Well, I think we can take a cue from the Rabbis who lived through the destruction of the Temple cult and needed to adapt Judaism to better fit their own social reality. What did they do? They chose to read these chapters figuratively, explaining that God does not actually like the smell of barbeque! Instead the rabbis understood the biblical notion of sacrifices as being a metaphor for living a prayerful life. In place of the sacrificial cult, they instituted daily prayer, even borrowing from the literal nomenclature of animal sacrifice (Minhah and Musaf for example) and metaphorically applied them to the new institution of daily prayer.
Another primary focus of Sefer Vayikra is the designation of those things that are pure, tahor, and those things in our world that are tamei, impure. In the eleventh chapter of the Book of Leviticus we are informed of the famous dietary laws mandated to the Israelites, popularly known as Kashrut, although this term is actually a later, post-biblical invention. We are told that land animals must have cleft hooves and must chew their cud in order to be considered suitable for eating; fish must have fins and scales. Camels, rabbits and the infamous pig are listed as unsuitable for Israelite consumption, rendering them assur, or forbidden for countless generations. Any birds of prey such as an eagle or hawk, or those that are scavengers such as vultures are also forbidden, along with a large variety of creepy-crawlers, though not the grasshopper, that is Kosher, thank God. This dietary menu of do’s and don’ts has been with our people for thousands of years, forever encouraging us to live differently than other religions, as well as consistently inspiring questions such as ‘what’s that whole kosher thing all about?’
And what is it all about? Are we to understand this section of the Book of Leviticus literally? Are there truly animals which are ‘pure’ and therefore fit for human consumption as well as those that are ‘impure’ and therefore not fit to eat? Those that do read this section of text literally have come up with thousands of fascinating perushim, or explanations as to why this type of animal is Kosher while this type is not. These explanations remind me of a scene in the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’ where the two main characters debate the virtues and the shortcomings of the pig. One says to the other, “But bacon tastes good, pork chops taste good.” While the other responds “Well sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie but I’ll never know cause I won’t eat the filthy thing!” (For those that are interested, I edited a bit.)
But instead of understanding the laws of Kashrut literally, if we use them as a metaphor for living a holy way of life, we may find that this message is indeed in sync with our modern world. After all, these days each of us takes great care with regard to regulating what we consume each night on our kitchen tables. We now know that as much as we may want to, we cannot simply eat our way through life. We are told by our doctors (and our spouses, who may or may not be doctors) that we must watch what we eat. Sometimes we do so in order to keep ourselves in good health and sometimes we do so (in the case of vegetarians) in accordance with our principles.
Is this really so different from what Leviticus is encouraging us to do? Isn’t the Torah asking us to elevate our tables to the heights of an altar? To consider the act of eating carefully, meticulously and with the holiness that it deserves? Today, we as Jews are required to keep Kosher not because we believe this list to be the literal definition of pure or impure animals, but rather because we think it means something in our lives. It means something to live according to our long-standing traditions. It means something to turn the act of eating into a religious act. And if we read Leviticus as a metaphor, then perhaps we can more comfortably understand why eating in a most holy manner it is of extreme importance to God.
Finally this morning I want to deal with what is perhaps the most troubling aspect of Sefer Vayikra for many of us and the section of text that has been at the heart of the halachic debates in our movement for a number of years. In Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 Sefer Vayikra details a list of sexual relationships which are forbidden and deemed as inappropriate expressions of our natural sexual desire. Many of the forbidden relationships found in these lists we as moderns would agree are inappropriate. Certainly to this very day we abhor instances of incest or licentious relationships with multiple partners of the same family. But the debate intensifies when we come Leviticus 18:22 which reads
ואת זכר לא תשכב משכבי אשה תועבה היא.
Which the NJPS translates as “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman, it is an abhorrence.”
Again we return to the issue of literalism. Are we to understand this prohibition on homosexual relationships as an eternal decree forbidding any kind of homosexual intimacy? Is it possible that the relationship the Bible is referring to here is somehow different from our own definitions of homosexuality? And even if it isn’t, is it possible that our own society has a different definition of what is or what is not a moral relationship between two consenting adults? For what it’s worth, I certainly think so.
So I return to this book, neatly wrapped in its original plastic. Perhaps the time has come for us to unwrap this book. To remove it from the confines of literalism and open ourselves up to the possibility that it still may have what to say about our modern world. Is it really such a stretch to say that we as a society could stand to worship of the cult of the individual less and instead stress the value of a little sacrifice? Is it really so crazy to think that boundaries which serve to transform our dinner tables into an altar for God as well as vehicle to protect the precious gift of our bodies? Finally could we agree that while morality should always be paramount to any society, it is nonetheless a value which may evolve according to the determinations of that society? If we think the answer to these questions might be yes, and if you listen carefully, you might even hear the gentle crinkle of plastic as an ancient book becomes meaningful once again.
Shabbat Shalom.
One set of books she most certainly did not allow me to take to work was the wonderful series of Torah Commentaries by the Jewish Publication Society. This set of five scholarly books, corresponding to the Five Books of Moses, she deemed too valuable to waste away in my office, instead she preferred to keep them close by, resting on the bookshelf in our family room.
So you can imagine how pleased I was to discover that Rabbi Kaunfer had in fact left this very set of books for me on one of his former shelves. (What a mensch!) I was indeed grateful until I discovered that in fact it was missing a volume! Any guesses as to which volume of the five it was missing? Sefer Vayikra, of course! That good ol’ book of Leviticus, the book we began reading in shul this morning. But before I could even fret about the missing volume, a tour of the office closet space provided to me by the wonderful Diana Grimes revealed to me a treasure. Tucked away behind a dusty collection of old bar-mitzvah benshers, were not one, but three volumes of the JPS commentary on Vayikra, still in their plastic covers! After doing a little institutional research, Rabbi Franklin explained to me that years ago during one of his cycles teaching the Men’s Torah Club they were working their way through the 5 books in the JPS Torah Commentary Series, when he found himself the target of a mutiny. No one wanted to study Sefer Vayikra! Hence, this collection of books remains in that closet to this very day.
And who can blame them? It is no wonder why, at first glance, this book remains a mystery to us as modern Jews. Whereas the other four books of Moses contain compelling narrative sections concerning the forefathers and mothers, the Exodus from Egypt, the rebellions in the desert or Moses’ last teaching to the Children of Israel; aside from a few brief exceptions there is nary a narrative to be found in the entire Book of Leviticus! In place of the famous stories found in Genesis, Exodus or Numbers, Leviticus offers us laws; and not only that, but laws mainly concerning the Priests, which means lots of gory details about sacrifices, Kashrut, skin diseases and sexual behavior. In fact, due to its overwhelming focus on the laws concerning the Priests, the Kohanim, and the Levites, the Levi’im, the rabbis chose to nickname Sefer Vayikra as “Torat Kohanim” or the teachings of (or for) the Priests. In light of all this, it is not so surprising that Rabbi Franklin’s Men’s Torah Class would have rebelled and nor is it surprising to find a host of unused volumes of Sefer Vayikra hidden away in our office closet.
But this morning I want to make a principled defense on behalf of the Book of Leviticus. I want to show you the redeeming qualities that it offers us and I want to argue that the reason why it doesn’t speak to us with the same intensity as other books is not because it is flawed as a book, but because WE, as modern Jews are reading it wrong! You see, this book was written for a very specific time and place; and it reflects the ritual practices and the moral values of a people who lived in a drastically different world than we live in today. So the natural trap we fall into is to read this book literally! When instead, since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE the Rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud have instead encouraged us to read the Book of Leviticus figuratively; as a metaphor for our own modern times.
Allow me to show you what I mean. This morning we read from Parshat Vayikra, the first weekly parasha in the Book of Leviticus. As some of you no doubt noticed, this morning’s parasha is ripe with detailed descriptions of the animal sacrifices that were to be maintained in the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle. There are three main types of sacrifices that are described here: the Olah, the burnt offering, consisting of a bull, a lamb or a bird, which was entirely consumed upon the altar. The Torah tells us, that as this sacrifice burned, it gave off a re’ach nicho’ach, a pleasant odor to the Lord. Next is the Minhah offering, the grain offering, appropriate for a variety of occasions though perhaps a less-costly alternative to the sacrifice of a bull or a goat. Finally we learn of the Zevah Sh’lamim, the Sacred Gift of well-being. This sacrifice consisted of some of the same animals used in the Olah, the burnt offering, but this sacrifice was to be consumed by both the priests as well as by donor his or herself. In this way, you make a donation to the Temple, please the Lord, and you get to enjoy a bit of it yourself! Think of this as the first version of a tax deduction for charitable donations.
So, how do we as moderns feel when we read of the details of these animal sacrifices? Grossed out? Maybe a bit embarrassed by our more primitive ancestors? Certainly we feel grateful that we live in a more civilized time and place. But does this mean that we should simply ‘skip’ this parasha each year because it makes us feel ‘icky’? Should we throw the baby out along with the bathwater?
Well, I think we can take a cue from the Rabbis who lived through the destruction of the Temple cult and needed to adapt Judaism to better fit their own social reality. What did they do? They chose to read these chapters figuratively, explaining that God does not actually like the smell of barbeque! Instead the rabbis understood the biblical notion of sacrifices as being a metaphor for living a prayerful life. In place of the sacrificial cult, they instituted daily prayer, even borrowing from the literal nomenclature of animal sacrifice (Minhah and Musaf for example) and metaphorically applied them to the new institution of daily prayer.
Another primary focus of Sefer Vayikra is the designation of those things that are pure, tahor, and those things in our world that are tamei, impure. In the eleventh chapter of the Book of Leviticus we are informed of the famous dietary laws mandated to the Israelites, popularly known as Kashrut, although this term is actually a later, post-biblical invention. We are told that land animals must have cleft hooves and must chew their cud in order to be considered suitable for eating; fish must have fins and scales. Camels, rabbits and the infamous pig are listed as unsuitable for Israelite consumption, rendering them assur, or forbidden for countless generations. Any birds of prey such as an eagle or hawk, or those that are scavengers such as vultures are also forbidden, along with a large variety of creepy-crawlers, though not the grasshopper, that is Kosher, thank God. This dietary menu of do’s and don’ts has been with our people for thousands of years, forever encouraging us to live differently than other religions, as well as consistently inspiring questions such as ‘what’s that whole kosher thing all about?’
And what is it all about? Are we to understand this section of the Book of Leviticus literally? Are there truly animals which are ‘pure’ and therefore fit for human consumption as well as those that are ‘impure’ and therefore not fit to eat? Those that do read this section of text literally have come up with thousands of fascinating perushim, or explanations as to why this type of animal is Kosher while this type is not. These explanations remind me of a scene in the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’ where the two main characters debate the virtues and the shortcomings of the pig. One says to the other, “But bacon tastes good, pork chops taste good.” While the other responds “Well sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie but I’ll never know cause I won’t eat the filthy thing!” (For those that are interested, I edited a bit.)
But instead of understanding the laws of Kashrut literally, if we use them as a metaphor for living a holy way of life, we may find that this message is indeed in sync with our modern world. After all, these days each of us takes great care with regard to regulating what we consume each night on our kitchen tables. We now know that as much as we may want to, we cannot simply eat our way through life. We are told by our doctors (and our spouses, who may or may not be doctors) that we must watch what we eat. Sometimes we do so in order to keep ourselves in good health and sometimes we do so (in the case of vegetarians) in accordance with our principles.
Is this really so different from what Leviticus is encouraging us to do? Isn’t the Torah asking us to elevate our tables to the heights of an altar? To consider the act of eating carefully, meticulously and with the holiness that it deserves? Today, we as Jews are required to keep Kosher not because we believe this list to be the literal definition of pure or impure animals, but rather because we think it means something in our lives. It means something to live according to our long-standing traditions. It means something to turn the act of eating into a religious act. And if we read Leviticus as a metaphor, then perhaps we can more comfortably understand why eating in a most holy manner it is of extreme importance to God.
Finally this morning I want to deal with what is perhaps the most troubling aspect of Sefer Vayikra for many of us and the section of text that has been at the heart of the halachic debates in our movement for a number of years. In Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 Sefer Vayikra details a list of sexual relationships which are forbidden and deemed as inappropriate expressions of our natural sexual desire. Many of the forbidden relationships found in these lists we as moderns would agree are inappropriate. Certainly to this very day we abhor instances of incest or licentious relationships with multiple partners of the same family. But the debate intensifies when we come Leviticus 18:22 which reads
ואת זכר לא תשכב משכבי אשה תועבה היא.
Which the NJPS translates as “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman, it is an abhorrence.”
Again we return to the issue of literalism. Are we to understand this prohibition on homosexual relationships as an eternal decree forbidding any kind of homosexual intimacy? Is it possible that the relationship the Bible is referring to here is somehow different from our own definitions of homosexuality? And even if it isn’t, is it possible that our own society has a different definition of what is or what is not a moral relationship between two consenting adults? For what it’s worth, I certainly think so.
So I return to this book, neatly wrapped in its original plastic. Perhaps the time has come for us to unwrap this book. To remove it from the confines of literalism and open ourselves up to the possibility that it still may have what to say about our modern world. Is it really such a stretch to say that we as a society could stand to worship of the cult of the individual less and instead stress the value of a little sacrifice? Is it really so crazy to think that boundaries which serve to transform our dinner tables into an altar for God as well as vehicle to protect the precious gift of our bodies? Finally could we agree that while morality should always be paramount to any society, it is nonetheless a value which may evolve according to the determinations of that society? If we think the answer to these questions might be yes, and if you listen carefully, you might even hear the gentle crinkle of plastic as an ancient book becomes meaningful once again.
Shabbat Shalom.
The Theory of Spiritual Evolution: Yitro 5769: On the 200th Birthday of Charles Darwin
One thing about us humans... boy we love dates. Now, I’m not talking about the fruit of course, but rather the very human invention of a calendar and dates by which we keep time in our hectic lives. We appreciate specific dates by means of which we can commemorate meaningful events in our lives. We mark happy occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries each year, bringing joy into our world. We also mark tragic events in our lives by means of specific dates. There are yahrtzeits, anniversaries of the death of a loved one, we observe each year on the same day on the Jewish calendar. Then there are dates like December 7th 1941, or September 11th 2001, dates when our lives as Americans were forever changed. Each of these dates serves a specific function. They remind us that though they are merely days like all the others, somehow they seem different to us.
Which brings me to this morning’s Parasha. This morning, only a few moments ago we stood together as a community as we attempted to relive the seminal moment in our national, religious history: the Revelation on Mount Sinai. I would say that is pretty much the definition of a really big day in Jewish history. A date worth remembering. Which leads me to ask the question: When does the Torah say it happened? On what day? At what time? In what year? For example: when the Torah wanted to tell us when to observe the Passover rituals, it clearly states: On the 15th of the month of Nissan, (The first month of the year according to the Bible) we are to observe Passover by telling the story of the Exodus and eating some matzah! And on the 15th day of the Seventh month we are to dwell in booths for eight days. And on the tenth day of the seventh month we are to observe a Day of Atonement when we are to afflict our souls.
But here in this mornings Parasha, Parshat Yitro, when we read of the events at Mt. Sinai, those pertinent details are noticeably absent. Yes the Torah tell us that the Revelation occurred “BaHodesh Ha’Sh’lishi” in the Third month, the month of Sivan; and yes it also states “BaYom HaZeh” “On that very day,” but it does not specify on what particular day. Later on in the parasha, God tells Moses that he should make the people ready for the third day, that on that day they will receive the Torah. But on the third day after what! From where do we start counting?
All of this led the great rabbis of the Talmud to have a vigorous debate as to the exact date of Matan Torah, of the Revelation at Mt. Sinai; did it occur on the sixth day or the seventh day of Sivan? Ultimately, after much discussion it was decided that the date was the sixth of Sivan, corresponding to our current celebration of the holiday Shavuot. But you get the point: if God wanted us to remember this date in our history, this date when God betrothed us for all time, why doesn’t the Torah tell us exactly when it occurred?
Well there are two traditional answers to the Torah’s stunning omission of this important detail; one of them being a mystical interpretation, the other perhaps being a bit more scientific (as you will see in a minute.) First the mystical: Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin, in his commentary Oznaim L’Torah also notices that the Torah fails to tell us the precise day upon which the Revelation took place. But he chooses to begin his commentary by saying: “What a wondrous thing it is that the date of the acceptance of the Torah is not given in our Bible!” Rabbi Sorotzkin thinks that this is a truly marvelous omission of detail. In this way, he explains, the text teaches us: She’HaTorah Hi L’Malah Min Ha’z’man, “That the Torah is above the constraints of time.” For those of you who are fans of the TV show LOST this may sound a bit familiar. But regardless of your knowledge of TV, the point is clear. The Torah is too great, too important, too limitless to be confined within the restraints of linear time. It can not be put in a box. It was not given merely at one point along the timeline of the Jewish people, but rather it has, and it continues to exist at EVERY moment within our collective past, present and future.
The second answer is perhaps a bit more scientific, and certainly given the events of this past week, more timely (no pun intended.) Basing himself on the phrase:
בַּיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֔ה בָּ֖אוּ מִדְבַּ֥ר סִינָֽי:
“On that very day they entered the wilderness of Sinai,” Rashi comments as follows:
Why does the Torah say “On that very day?” In order that the words of Torah be consistently new to you as though it were the day of Revelation itself. The Orach Hayyim adds that the Bible does not say “The Torah was given 2000 years ago, and only according to the living conditions which existed at that specific time and place.” Rather it ambiguously notes that the Torah was given “BaYom HaZeh”, “on that very day,” as though every day were the day it was given - because the laws of the Torah and its traditions are ever-lasting, and they can be applied to every place, to every time and to every era.”
In other words, the Torah is not some dinosaur fossil discovered in a rockbed, fixed in its specific time and place. It does not exist in ancient times only to become extinct and irrelevant in our own modern world. No, the Torah is meant to adapt, to be adaptable, to evolve to every single time and place.
This past Thursday we celebrated the two hundred year anniversary of a man who’s work forever changed our world. That’s right two hundred years ago (on the very same day and year as President Lincoln) Charles Darwin was born. As we all know, Charles Darwin was the genius author of the scientific work The Origin of Species and the father of the Theory of Evolution. It is the rare human being whose impact upon the world as we know it remains to be felt two hundred years after their death: but this is clearly the case with Darwin.
In his theory of Evolution and Natural Selection, Darwin argues that tiny changes made over thousands, if not millions of years, can have tremendous impact upon the makeup of a species. Those tiny changes, or mutations, which make an organism more likely to survive, more likely to reproduce, become the defining characteristics of a given species of plant or animal as we know it today. The ancestral giraffe with the longest necks were able to reach the food on the higher branches and therefore able to survive. The penguin who could swim the fastest could avoid his predator, and after time it no longer became necessary for him to fly. We all remember our science classes from school, we are all intimately aware of Darwin’s compelling theory of evolution.
But what I encourage each of us to think of, on this the day we read of the Revelation at Mt. Sinai, is how the Torah can also be seen as an evolving organism. Though the text has remained the same (more or less) throughout the generations, every time and place has asked the Torah to adapt to its unique circumstances. Each time a Jew asks their rabbi about issues relating to electricity on Shabbat, driving to shul, tattoo removal, organ donation or perhaps even sabbath observance while orbiting the Earth, we are asking the Torah to adapt to our own unique time and our own unique situation. And remarkably, though not always perfectly, the Torah does adapt. It has the ability to mutate, to change in order to reflect a more ‘perfect’ version of Revelation.
Now, we all know, that some species of Judaism are more inclined to adapt than others, and I like to think of the Conservative movement as the penguin who may not have been the first to remove all hope of ever flying again, but ultimately it did what it had to do to survive. And no doubt, some in our Jewish world would call this evolution mere capitulation. But know this: that this has been the path of every single Jewish generation since the one that stood at Mount Sinai, to receive the ever-adaptable Torah continually, each and everyday.
Finally, I would like to leave you this morning with a final evolutionary thought. There are some who say that God is a figment of the human imagination, an invention of the human mind whose purpose is to give meaning to the joy and the hardship of life. And to them I think Darwin might have said: you may very well be right! But there nonetheless must be some evolutionary benefit to this thing we call ‘belief’ to have caused it to stick around for so long.
So this morning I am arguing that there is an evolutionary benefit to keeping our Holy Torah. The acceptance of the Torah is a mutation in our own spiritual DNA as a people, which gives benefit to each and every generation of Jews. I believe that living our lives by the moral code of our Bible, that by imbuing our lives with moments of ritual that make the mundane - holy, the benign - spiritual, we elevate ourselves and our species. And for this lesson in ‘spiritual evolution’ Mr. Darwin, I sincerely thank you.
Shabbat Shalom
Which brings me to this morning’s Parasha. This morning, only a few moments ago we stood together as a community as we attempted to relive the seminal moment in our national, religious history: the Revelation on Mount Sinai. I would say that is pretty much the definition of a really big day in Jewish history. A date worth remembering. Which leads me to ask the question: When does the Torah say it happened? On what day? At what time? In what year? For example: when the Torah wanted to tell us when to observe the Passover rituals, it clearly states: On the 15th of the month of Nissan, (The first month of the year according to the Bible) we are to observe Passover by telling the story of the Exodus and eating some matzah! And on the 15th day of the Seventh month we are to dwell in booths for eight days. And on the tenth day of the seventh month we are to observe a Day of Atonement when we are to afflict our souls.
But here in this mornings Parasha, Parshat Yitro, when we read of the events at Mt. Sinai, those pertinent details are noticeably absent. Yes the Torah tell us that the Revelation occurred “BaHodesh Ha’Sh’lishi” in the Third month, the month of Sivan; and yes it also states “BaYom HaZeh” “On that very day,” but it does not specify on what particular day. Later on in the parasha, God tells Moses that he should make the people ready for the third day, that on that day they will receive the Torah. But on the third day after what! From where do we start counting?
All of this led the great rabbis of the Talmud to have a vigorous debate as to the exact date of Matan Torah, of the Revelation at Mt. Sinai; did it occur on the sixth day or the seventh day of Sivan? Ultimately, after much discussion it was decided that the date was the sixth of Sivan, corresponding to our current celebration of the holiday Shavuot. But you get the point: if God wanted us to remember this date in our history, this date when God betrothed us for all time, why doesn’t the Torah tell us exactly when it occurred?
Well there are two traditional answers to the Torah’s stunning omission of this important detail; one of them being a mystical interpretation, the other perhaps being a bit more scientific (as you will see in a minute.) First the mystical: Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin, in his commentary Oznaim L’Torah also notices that the Torah fails to tell us the precise day upon which the Revelation took place. But he chooses to begin his commentary by saying: “What a wondrous thing it is that the date of the acceptance of the Torah is not given in our Bible!” Rabbi Sorotzkin thinks that this is a truly marvelous omission of detail. In this way, he explains, the text teaches us: She’HaTorah Hi L’Malah Min Ha’z’man, “That the Torah is above the constraints of time.” For those of you who are fans of the TV show LOST this may sound a bit familiar. But regardless of your knowledge of TV, the point is clear. The Torah is too great, too important, too limitless to be confined within the restraints of linear time. It can not be put in a box. It was not given merely at one point along the timeline of the Jewish people, but rather it has, and it continues to exist at EVERY moment within our collective past, present and future.
The second answer is perhaps a bit more scientific, and certainly given the events of this past week, more timely (no pun intended.) Basing himself on the phrase:
בַּיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֔ה בָּ֖אוּ מִדְבַּ֥ר סִינָֽי:
“On that very day they entered the wilderness of Sinai,” Rashi comments as follows:
Why does the Torah say “On that very day?” In order that the words of Torah be consistently new to you as though it were the day of Revelation itself. The Orach Hayyim adds that the Bible does not say “The Torah was given 2000 years ago, and only according to the living conditions which existed at that specific time and place.” Rather it ambiguously notes that the Torah was given “BaYom HaZeh”, “on that very day,” as though every day were the day it was given - because the laws of the Torah and its traditions are ever-lasting, and they can be applied to every place, to every time and to every era.”
In other words, the Torah is not some dinosaur fossil discovered in a rockbed, fixed in its specific time and place. It does not exist in ancient times only to become extinct and irrelevant in our own modern world. No, the Torah is meant to adapt, to be adaptable, to evolve to every single time and place.
This past Thursday we celebrated the two hundred year anniversary of a man who’s work forever changed our world. That’s right two hundred years ago (on the very same day and year as President Lincoln) Charles Darwin was born. As we all know, Charles Darwin was the genius author of the scientific work The Origin of Species and the father of the Theory of Evolution. It is the rare human being whose impact upon the world as we know it remains to be felt two hundred years after their death: but this is clearly the case with Darwin.
In his theory of Evolution and Natural Selection, Darwin argues that tiny changes made over thousands, if not millions of years, can have tremendous impact upon the makeup of a species. Those tiny changes, or mutations, which make an organism more likely to survive, more likely to reproduce, become the defining characteristics of a given species of plant or animal as we know it today. The ancestral giraffe with the longest necks were able to reach the food on the higher branches and therefore able to survive. The penguin who could swim the fastest could avoid his predator, and after time it no longer became necessary for him to fly. We all remember our science classes from school, we are all intimately aware of Darwin’s compelling theory of evolution.
But what I encourage each of us to think of, on this the day we read of the Revelation at Mt. Sinai, is how the Torah can also be seen as an evolving organism. Though the text has remained the same (more or less) throughout the generations, every time and place has asked the Torah to adapt to its unique circumstances. Each time a Jew asks their rabbi about issues relating to electricity on Shabbat, driving to shul, tattoo removal, organ donation or perhaps even sabbath observance while orbiting the Earth, we are asking the Torah to adapt to our own unique time and our own unique situation. And remarkably, though not always perfectly, the Torah does adapt. It has the ability to mutate, to change in order to reflect a more ‘perfect’ version of Revelation.
Now, we all know, that some species of Judaism are more inclined to adapt than others, and I like to think of the Conservative movement as the penguin who may not have been the first to remove all hope of ever flying again, but ultimately it did what it had to do to survive. And no doubt, some in our Jewish world would call this evolution mere capitulation. But know this: that this has been the path of every single Jewish generation since the one that stood at Mount Sinai, to receive the ever-adaptable Torah continually, each and everyday.
Finally, I would like to leave you this morning with a final evolutionary thought. There are some who say that God is a figment of the human imagination, an invention of the human mind whose purpose is to give meaning to the joy and the hardship of life. And to them I think Darwin might have said: you may very well be right! But there nonetheless must be some evolutionary benefit to this thing we call ‘belief’ to have caused it to stick around for so long.
So this morning I am arguing that there is an evolutionary benefit to keeping our Holy Torah. The acceptance of the Torah is a mutation in our own spiritual DNA as a people, which gives benefit to each and every generation of Jews. I believe that living our lives by the moral code of our Bible, that by imbuing our lives with moments of ritual that make the mundane - holy, the benign - spiritual, we elevate ourselves and our species. And for this lesson in ‘spiritual evolution’ Mr. Darwin, I sincerely thank you.
Shabbat Shalom
A Biblical Stimulus Plan: A Conversation with Timothy Geithner Mishpatim 5769
I find that the majority of the phone calls I receive at the Shul in a given week come in between Monday and Thursday. I probably get two or three phone calls or messages per day, but for some reason on Fridays the number dips dramatically. Maybe it’s because Fridays are a hectic time for any Rhode Island Jew, what with finishing all the work at the office and needing to get a shabbas meal on the table in time. Or maybe it’s because my thoughtful congregants assume that their rabbi is busy at work crafting his latest insightful sermon on the week’s parasha. Whatever the reason, the fact is that my phone is unusually silent during these Friday hours as Shabbat approaches.
So you can imagine my great surprise when my phone rang yesterday morning at 8:30am Eastern Standard Time. But for me the real surprise came when our receptionist told me who was calling. “He’s says it’s Timothy Geithner,” she said. “Like the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner?” I asked astounded. “That’s what he said,” she assured me, “It’s a Washington D.C. area code too,” she added. “Okay, put him through,” I reluctantly responded, “Though I really have to finish this sermon and these distractions are killing me.”
“Hello Rabbi Seltzer, this is Timothy Geithner.”
“Good morning Mr. Geithner, how can I be of assistance to you?”
“Well as you no doubt know Rabbi, I am currently serving at the pleasure of President Barack Obama as the United States Treasury Secretary.”
“Yes, I am aware,” I responded, quickly adding, “But did YOU know that I am serving at the pleasure of the President Nate Beraha as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El?”
“Yes, I had read that on your website, Rabbi.”
“Well at least someone looks at our website,” I said.
“Listen Rabbi, the reason I am calling is I need some rabbinic advice.”
“But Timothy,” I interrupted, “I read on your Wikipedia site that you are a Protestant.”
“Well that is true, but nonetheless I decided to turn to you Rabbi, for some sage advice from your Holy Scripture with regard to the current economic situation.”
“Well Timothy I am flattered, but you should know that I once got a D in Trigonometry, so I imagine that may disqualify me from being an economic expert of any kind.”
“Well yes Rabbi it would,” he responded, “But you do know the Bible don’t you?”
“Yes Timothy, I am familiar with the teachings of our Torah.”
“Then, your nation and your President need your help Rabbi. Allow me to explain. As you know we have inherited the worst economic situation in nearly a century, and we are looking for something, for anything that may work to bring us out of this current crisis, and into a time of prosperity again. Just this week the President signed into law the biggest stimulus package in our nation’s history, and we still are not sure if that will work. So at the President’s behest, I was asked to explore what the world’s most ancient, respected, monotheistic religions might have to say about the best way to spend our way out of this crisis. Which brings me to you Rabbi Seltzer…well actually, your receptionist told me that Rabbi Franklin was out of town, so that technically brings me to you.”
“Hmm.” I thought for a moment. “Well as luck would have it Mr. Secretary, this week’s Parasha, Parshat Mishpatim, as well as our special Maftir portion for Shabbat Shekalim, does have a lot to say about how a just society is to behave economically.”
“Hold on a second, Rabbi Seltzer, let me get a pen.” He said.
“Of course Timothy, I’ll wait.”
“Are you ready? Okay great. This week’s Torah Portion, Mishpatim, marks a departure from the previous sections of the Torah. Whereas up until now, the Torah has been mainly a device used for narrative, telling the stories of our foreparents and of the national exodus from Egypt, beginning with this week, the Torah starts to flex its muscle as a Law code; in fact Mishpatim, means laws or statutes.”
“Interesting,” Mr. Geithner responded.
“Included among these first sections of legal code,” I explained “are some very relevant texts given our current economic situation. “For instance, in Exodus Chapter 22, verse 24, the Torah states:
אִם-כֶּסֶף | תַּלְוֶה אֶת-עַמִּי אֶת-הֶעָנִי עִמָּךְ לֹא-תִהְיֶה לוֹ כְּנֹשֶׁה לֹא-תְשִֹימוּן עָלָיו נֶשֶׁךְ:
“If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, do not act toward them as a creditor: exact no interest from them.”
“Wait a second Rabbi, you lost me there with that whole no interest thing.”
“Well actually Timothy that is a fundamental difference between the ancient Israelite religion and our current economic system. You see the ancient Israelite community was one where many were agrarian farmers, who needed to take out loans from the richer Israelites in order to buy grain, or even food in a year that was damaged by pestilence or famine. In that type of society, the Torah tells us that it is a responsibility, not a choice to lend money to your fellow. And given that this is a Mitzvah, a commandment from God, something to be done no matter what, interest should not be your motivating factor.”
“But Rabbi,” the secretary responded, “I’m no Biblical scholar, but when you read the verse weren’t the words of the Torah clear? “If you lend money,” With a presumed emphasis on the “if.” If you read it that way, how can you say that it is a commandment to lend money to the poor and not a issue of personal choice?”
“Very good Timothy, very good indeed, there is a future for you in the world of Talmud study. Actually you are right, but you are nonetheless wrong. Allow me to explain: As the famous Torah commentator Rashi says, according to the opinion of Rabbi Ishmael of the Midrash, “Every time the Torah uses the word ‘If’, or “and if” it means that given law is optional, except for three cases in the Torah. And this happens to be one of them.”
In fact the commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra adds, that the ‘if’ here should be read as follows: “If, you happen to be so fortunate that God sees fit to give you more money than you need to survive….then you are obligated to lend some of it to the poor with no interest.” Got it Tim?”
“Yes Rabbi, I’ve got it. But what about the rest of the verse: “to my people, the poor among you.”
“Well I’m glad you asked Timothy, (you know you are a real help to this sermon after all.) The Torah, much like the teachings of Confucius, encourages us to think of our world as having concentric circles of need. First, you must reach out to those who are in need in your immediate family, then to those in your greater community who need assistance. Finally, you are to reach out to anyone around the world who needs to be cared for.”
“I understand Rabbi, but what about those people in the House and the Senate, when they asked for tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans a few years back, were they following the Torah’s laws?”
“Actually Timothy, no, no they were not. You see Rashi explains that when given the choice between lending money to a poor person or lending money to a rich person, the poor person must come first in our accounting. Although, he goes on to say that when given a choice between helping the poor in your community versus helping the poor in someone else’s community, you must work to help those who are in need in your own district first. So I guess you could make the argument that special earmarks which send money to a congressperson’s home district are actually justifiable according to the Torah.”
“I see Rabbi, so what was John McCain getting so upset about then?”
“I don’t know Tim, I just don’t know.”
“Rabbi, before I go, I have a meeting with congress in a few minutes, do you have some time to explain to me the Biblical view of taxes? As you may have heard, I am not exactly an expert in that area.”
“Yes Timothy, I did hear that, and I implore you to do some heshbon ha nefesh, some soul searching, as well as some heshbon he’heshbon, some searching of your bank accounts before next Yom Kippur, I mean tax season.”
“Will do Rabbi. Will do.”
“Well Timothy, remember a few months ago during the presidential campaign when Joe Biden got in trouble for saying that thing he did.”
“Rabbi you will have to be more specific than that.”
“Oh, I mean that time he claimed that it actually may be patriotic to pay a higher tax to your government?”
“Yeah, I remember that one.”
“Well, according to the Torah he may have been right. This Shabbat is known as Shabbat Shekalim, one of four special shabbatot that precede the Passover holiday. Timothy, do you know what the shekel is?”
“Yes Rabbi, it is takes about 4.142 of them to make a dollar.”
“That’s a good one Tim, you just better hope it stays there. Anyway, the shekel is a Biblical form of currency, it wasn’t an actual coin, but rather a specific weight of gold or silver, in fact the Hebrew root word of Shekel, is Shakal, to weigh. But I digress. The Bible tells us in Exodus 30:13 that any Israelite who wanted to be entered into the census record, that is to officially enroll in all the benefits of organized civilization had to pay a tax of half a shekel. Everyone who is twenty years or older pays this tax, and according to the Bible, the benefits you receive are really great: you are guaranteed that no plagues will come upon you while you are enrolled in this government program.”
“Sounds great Rabbi, but how do you decide who pays what, is there some sort of tax code I could read online?”
“Actually Timothy, the Bible is pretty clear about this. In verse 15 the Torah explains that:
הֶעָשִׁיר לֹא-יַרְבֶּה וְהַדַּל לֹא יַמְעִיט מִמַּחֲצִית הַשָּׁקֶל לָתֵת אֶת-תְּרוּמַת יְהֹוָה לְכַפֵּר עַל-נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם:
“The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving the LORDS’s offering as expiation for your person.”
“Wait so you mean the Bible is advocating for a Flat Tax? That’s so Huckabean!”
“Well maybe it is, but it may be a bit more nuanced than it seems. Rebbe Yehoshua Isaac Shapira, a nineteenth century rabbi known as “Eizel Harif”, “The sharp one,” points out that when the Torah tells us that the rich and the poor should give no more and no less than a half-shekel, it does so because this particular tax was levied in public. Therefore the rich may have been tempted to pay more, in order that they would receive more honor and adulation from the community as a whole. Likewise, the poor may have been embarrassed if they only paid the minimum amount, and so the Torah leveled the playing field. However, Rav Shapira goes on to say, that Tze’dakah, that means the commandment to give charity Tim, is to be done in private. In other words, true Tze’dakah, truly righteous giving is to be done according to one’s own means. Therefore the rich are encouraged to give generously, but not in such a way that would embarrass those who are less fortunate.”
“Ah, I understand Rabbi. You know, the Jewish tradition is a truly wise one, giving meaning and insight into our world even in our complicated times.”
“You are right Timothy. And if you will permit me, I would like to add one more thing.”
“Of course Rabbi, go ahead.”
“Timothy, I would encourage you and the President to advocate for a Biblical Stimulus Package. A stimulus that helps those who are less fortunate in our society, that gives loans and credit to those who need it most and finally a stimulus that is based upon the precept, and indeed the commandment of philanthropy. “
“But in these difficult times rabbi, do you really think people are inclined to give more charity?”
“Timothy, allow me to tell you a story from our Talmud. There the rabbis paraphrase the Prophet Isaiah as saying that “The one who loans money to the poor in his hour of need, is truly blessed.” (Is. 58:9) And so they ask, but when you are poor, aren’t you by definition in an hour of need all the time? So what is the meaning of the verse? The Rabbis respond saying, read the verse as follows, “The one who loans money to the poor, even though it is in the lender’s hour of need, is truly blessed.”
“Ah, Rabbi, I understand.”
“Timothy, I thank you for listening to me this morning. And I pray that you, your administration and our new president will lead us out of this hour of our need, into a time of prosperity for rich and poor alike.
“Amen rabbi. Amen.”
So you can imagine my great surprise when my phone rang yesterday morning at 8:30am Eastern Standard Time. But for me the real surprise came when our receptionist told me who was calling. “He’s says it’s Timothy Geithner,” she said. “Like the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner?” I asked astounded. “That’s what he said,” she assured me, “It’s a Washington D.C. area code too,” she added. “Okay, put him through,” I reluctantly responded, “Though I really have to finish this sermon and these distractions are killing me.”
“Hello Rabbi Seltzer, this is Timothy Geithner.”
“Good morning Mr. Geithner, how can I be of assistance to you?”
“Well as you no doubt know Rabbi, I am currently serving at the pleasure of President Barack Obama as the United States Treasury Secretary.”
“Yes, I am aware,” I responded, quickly adding, “But did YOU know that I am serving at the pleasure of the President Nate Beraha as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El?”
“Yes, I had read that on your website, Rabbi.”
“Well at least someone looks at our website,” I said.
“Listen Rabbi, the reason I am calling is I need some rabbinic advice.”
“But Timothy,” I interrupted, “I read on your Wikipedia site that you are a Protestant.”
“Well that is true, but nonetheless I decided to turn to you Rabbi, for some sage advice from your Holy Scripture with regard to the current economic situation.”
“Well Timothy I am flattered, but you should know that I once got a D in Trigonometry, so I imagine that may disqualify me from being an economic expert of any kind.”
“Well yes Rabbi it would,” he responded, “But you do know the Bible don’t you?”
“Yes Timothy, I am familiar with the teachings of our Torah.”
“Then, your nation and your President need your help Rabbi. Allow me to explain. As you know we have inherited the worst economic situation in nearly a century, and we are looking for something, for anything that may work to bring us out of this current crisis, and into a time of prosperity again. Just this week the President signed into law the biggest stimulus package in our nation’s history, and we still are not sure if that will work. So at the President’s behest, I was asked to explore what the world’s most ancient, respected, monotheistic religions might have to say about the best way to spend our way out of this crisis. Which brings me to you Rabbi Seltzer…well actually, your receptionist told me that Rabbi Franklin was out of town, so that technically brings me to you.”
“Hmm.” I thought for a moment. “Well as luck would have it Mr. Secretary, this week’s Parasha, Parshat Mishpatim, as well as our special Maftir portion for Shabbat Shekalim, does have a lot to say about how a just society is to behave economically.”
“Hold on a second, Rabbi Seltzer, let me get a pen.” He said.
“Of course Timothy, I’ll wait.”
“Are you ready? Okay great. This week’s Torah Portion, Mishpatim, marks a departure from the previous sections of the Torah. Whereas up until now, the Torah has been mainly a device used for narrative, telling the stories of our foreparents and of the national exodus from Egypt, beginning with this week, the Torah starts to flex its muscle as a Law code; in fact Mishpatim, means laws or statutes.”
“Interesting,” Mr. Geithner responded.
“Included among these first sections of legal code,” I explained “are some very relevant texts given our current economic situation. “For instance, in Exodus Chapter 22, verse 24, the Torah states:
אִם-כֶּסֶף | תַּלְוֶה אֶת-עַמִּי אֶת-הֶעָנִי עִמָּךְ לֹא-תִהְיֶה לוֹ כְּנֹשֶׁה לֹא-תְשִֹימוּן עָלָיו נֶשֶׁךְ:
“If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, do not act toward them as a creditor: exact no interest from them.”
“Wait a second Rabbi, you lost me there with that whole no interest thing.”
“Well actually Timothy that is a fundamental difference between the ancient Israelite religion and our current economic system. You see the ancient Israelite community was one where many were agrarian farmers, who needed to take out loans from the richer Israelites in order to buy grain, or even food in a year that was damaged by pestilence or famine. In that type of society, the Torah tells us that it is a responsibility, not a choice to lend money to your fellow. And given that this is a Mitzvah, a commandment from God, something to be done no matter what, interest should not be your motivating factor.”
“But Rabbi,” the secretary responded, “I’m no Biblical scholar, but when you read the verse weren’t the words of the Torah clear? “If you lend money,” With a presumed emphasis on the “if.” If you read it that way, how can you say that it is a commandment to lend money to the poor and not a issue of personal choice?”
“Very good Timothy, very good indeed, there is a future for you in the world of Talmud study. Actually you are right, but you are nonetheless wrong. Allow me to explain: As the famous Torah commentator Rashi says, according to the opinion of Rabbi Ishmael of the Midrash, “Every time the Torah uses the word ‘If’, or “and if” it means that given law is optional, except for three cases in the Torah. And this happens to be one of them.”
In fact the commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra adds, that the ‘if’ here should be read as follows: “If, you happen to be so fortunate that God sees fit to give you more money than you need to survive….then you are obligated to lend some of it to the poor with no interest.” Got it Tim?”
“Yes Rabbi, I’ve got it. But what about the rest of the verse: “to my people, the poor among you.”
“Well I’m glad you asked Timothy, (you know you are a real help to this sermon after all.) The Torah, much like the teachings of Confucius, encourages us to think of our world as having concentric circles of need. First, you must reach out to those who are in need in your immediate family, then to those in your greater community who need assistance. Finally, you are to reach out to anyone around the world who needs to be cared for.”
“I understand Rabbi, but what about those people in the House and the Senate, when they asked for tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans a few years back, were they following the Torah’s laws?”
“Actually Timothy, no, no they were not. You see Rashi explains that when given the choice between lending money to a poor person or lending money to a rich person, the poor person must come first in our accounting. Although, he goes on to say that when given a choice between helping the poor in your community versus helping the poor in someone else’s community, you must work to help those who are in need in your own district first. So I guess you could make the argument that special earmarks which send money to a congressperson’s home district are actually justifiable according to the Torah.”
“I see Rabbi, so what was John McCain getting so upset about then?”
“I don’t know Tim, I just don’t know.”
“Rabbi, before I go, I have a meeting with congress in a few minutes, do you have some time to explain to me the Biblical view of taxes? As you may have heard, I am not exactly an expert in that area.”
“Yes Timothy, I did hear that, and I implore you to do some heshbon ha nefesh, some soul searching, as well as some heshbon he’heshbon, some searching of your bank accounts before next Yom Kippur, I mean tax season.”
“Will do Rabbi. Will do.”
“Well Timothy, remember a few months ago during the presidential campaign when Joe Biden got in trouble for saying that thing he did.”
“Rabbi you will have to be more specific than that.”
“Oh, I mean that time he claimed that it actually may be patriotic to pay a higher tax to your government?”
“Yeah, I remember that one.”
“Well, according to the Torah he may have been right. This Shabbat is known as Shabbat Shekalim, one of four special shabbatot that precede the Passover holiday. Timothy, do you know what the shekel is?”
“Yes Rabbi, it is takes about 4.142 of them to make a dollar.”
“That’s a good one Tim, you just better hope it stays there. Anyway, the shekel is a Biblical form of currency, it wasn’t an actual coin, but rather a specific weight of gold or silver, in fact the Hebrew root word of Shekel, is Shakal, to weigh. But I digress. The Bible tells us in Exodus 30:13 that any Israelite who wanted to be entered into the census record, that is to officially enroll in all the benefits of organized civilization had to pay a tax of half a shekel. Everyone who is twenty years or older pays this tax, and according to the Bible, the benefits you receive are really great: you are guaranteed that no plagues will come upon you while you are enrolled in this government program.”
“Sounds great Rabbi, but how do you decide who pays what, is there some sort of tax code I could read online?”
“Actually Timothy, the Bible is pretty clear about this. In verse 15 the Torah explains that:
הֶעָשִׁיר לֹא-יַרְבֶּה וְהַדַּל לֹא יַמְעִיט מִמַּחֲצִית הַשָּׁקֶל לָתֵת אֶת-תְּרוּמַת יְהֹוָה לְכַפֵּר עַל-נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם:
“The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving the LORDS’s offering as expiation for your person.”
“Wait so you mean the Bible is advocating for a Flat Tax? That’s so Huckabean!”
“Well maybe it is, but it may be a bit more nuanced than it seems. Rebbe Yehoshua Isaac Shapira, a nineteenth century rabbi known as “Eizel Harif”, “The sharp one,” points out that when the Torah tells us that the rich and the poor should give no more and no less than a half-shekel, it does so because this particular tax was levied in public. Therefore the rich may have been tempted to pay more, in order that they would receive more honor and adulation from the community as a whole. Likewise, the poor may have been embarrassed if they only paid the minimum amount, and so the Torah leveled the playing field. However, Rav Shapira goes on to say, that Tze’dakah, that means the commandment to give charity Tim, is to be done in private. In other words, true Tze’dakah, truly righteous giving is to be done according to one’s own means. Therefore the rich are encouraged to give generously, but not in such a way that would embarrass those who are less fortunate.”
“Ah, I understand Rabbi. You know, the Jewish tradition is a truly wise one, giving meaning and insight into our world even in our complicated times.”
“You are right Timothy. And if you will permit me, I would like to add one more thing.”
“Of course Rabbi, go ahead.”
“Timothy, I would encourage you and the President to advocate for a Biblical Stimulus Package. A stimulus that helps those who are less fortunate in our society, that gives loans and credit to those who need it most and finally a stimulus that is based upon the precept, and indeed the commandment of philanthropy. “
“But in these difficult times rabbi, do you really think people are inclined to give more charity?”
“Timothy, allow me to tell you a story from our Talmud. There the rabbis paraphrase the Prophet Isaiah as saying that “The one who loans money to the poor in his hour of need, is truly blessed.” (Is. 58:9) And so they ask, but when you are poor, aren’t you by definition in an hour of need all the time? So what is the meaning of the verse? The Rabbis respond saying, read the verse as follows, “The one who loans money to the poor, even though it is in the lender’s hour of need, is truly blessed.”
“Ah, Rabbi, I understand.”
“Timothy, I thank you for listening to me this morning. And I pray that you, your administration and our new president will lead us out of this hour of our need, into a time of prosperity for rich and poor alike.
“Amen rabbi. Amen.”
The Audacity of Tikvah: Sh'mot 5769; MLK weekend on the eve of Obama's Innauguration
The Audacity of Tikvah:
Parashat Sh’mot 5769
This past weekend’s edition of the television show “Meet the Press” contained an interview with one of my childhood heroes, Bill Cosby. In a discussion about the impact of the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States of America, the host Dick Gregory asked of Cosby:
“Will you tell me what it was like for you to go in and vote for Barack Obama?”
Mr. Cosby replied thoughtfully: “Well, I took my father's picture, I took my mother's picture and I took my brother James, he died when he was seven, I was eight. And I took the three of them into the voting booth in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and I pulled the curtain and I took their pictures out and I said, "And now we're going to vote." And I--we only, I only voted once. But--and I did that and their pictures were out, and then I put them back into my pocket and I opened the curtain. And it, and it was wonderful.
I want to focus on a very telling moment in that interview: when Bill Cosby slipped on the words “And I--we only, I only voted once.” It is my contention that this was not an inadvertent slip of his tongue; but rather an intentional example of the true gravity of November 4th 2008. For Cosby, this day was not his day alone. It was his father’s, his mother’s and his brother’s day as well.
I imagine that many, if not all, African-Americans could attest to experiencing a similar feeling in the voting booth in November; and indeed, many of us here today can attest to feeling that as well. How many of us had Goosebumps on that day? How many of us paused to recognize the significance of that moment? How many of us stayed up past midnight to watch President-elect Obama utter his now famous words:
“This is our time ……. to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”
I am certain that President Elect Obama is a well-read and learned person, although somehow I doubt if he knew that when he said the words “That while we breathe we hope,” he was actually paraphrasing from B’rachot page 63b of the Jerusalem Talmud. There in our ancient text, Rabbi Yochanan explains that there is one thing in life that we all can rely upon, “She’Kol Z’man She’Adam Chai, Yesh Lo Tikvah” “That every moment that a person is alive, they have hope.” In fact, this direct relationship between hope and life can be seen in our own language, as well as in the Modern Hebrew language. When we hope, we aspire, that is we breathe. And so too in Hebrew, when we have Shoafim (hopes) we are engaged in the very act of Sh’eifa, of breathing.
But sometimes I wonder if it’s really that easy. After all hope, in the face of overwhelming darkness, can sometimes be difficult to find; and the paradigmatic example of the perils of hopelessness can be found in the institution of slavery. Slavery exists only when it succeeds in depriving the human being of hope. Conversely, freedom exists only when hope becomes reality, not merely “a dream deferred,” as Langston Hughes once put it.
This morning we read from Sefer Sh’mot, the beginning of our own national narrative of despair and hope. A new Pharaoh arises in Egypt, one who does not know of Joseph and his work on behalf of the Egyptian people. This Pharaoh immediately sees the Jewish presence in Egypt as a threat to his power and so he enslaves the Israelite people, mandating a long list of difficult and back-breaking work for them. But work alone is not enough to plunge us into the depths of hopelessness. No, in order to rip from a human being their ability to hope, one must take from them their only true possession, the integrity of their family. So Pharaoh decrees that all male-Israelite children are to be put to death, a decree that the righteous hand-maidens Shifrah and Pu’ah defy. It is into this ethos of hopelessness that a young child is born in the tribe of Levi; and in an act of desperation he is set a drift in a basket made of reeds.
In our reading this morning, we find a passage which clearly demonstrates that even Moshe Rabeinu, Moses our Teacher, knows intimately of the perils of hopelessness. Moses flees Egypt after killing an Egyptian taskmaster and he becomes a shepherd of the flocks of his Father-in-Law Yitro in the land of Midian. One day, God visits Moshe in the form of the famous burning bush. God explains that God has heard the cry of the Israelites, and that God will lead the people out of slavery into freedom by the hand of Moshe.
However, Moshe is not so easily convinced. He questions the efficacy of God’s plan several times. First he asks of God, “Mi Anochi?” “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah and free the Israelites from Egypt?” The Commentators explain that Moses is having a crisis of experience. He wonders if God shouldn’t send some one more well-known among the Israelites and the Egyptians to accomplish such a daunting task. Secondly, Moses asks of God, when the Israelites ask me “Ma Shmo?” “What is this God’s name who sent you, what shall I say to them?” This is a crisis of faith, demonstrating Moses’ uneasiness in being the representative of a God who can neither be seen, nor felt, nor heard by the people. And frankly God doesn’t do much to boost Moses’ confidence, explaining that God’s name is the inscrutable “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh,” “I will be which I will be.” Finally, Moshe confronts God with a crisis of personal confidence, reminding God that “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue,” seemingly referring to his having some type of speech impediment. But God will simply not hear it, a slightly irritated God reminds Moshe by means of a rhetorical question, “Who gives man speech at all?” It seems that Moses finally gets the point; that hope is not something we choose to have; it is something that we are born with. That leading a people to freedom is not a task we can deny, but rather a mandate from heaven; that in Shakespeare’s words “Some men have greatness thrust upon them.”
All this is to say, that even the greatest leader in our history suffered from the disease of hopelessness. But he also lived long enough to discover that there is a cure: that the cure for hopelessness is not found through portents or signs, nor through plagues or miracles, but rather through faith in the truth of God and in the goodness of humankind.
Today we find ourselves living in an America where hope is scarce. Hope has become a dirty word, a word devoid of pragmatism or realism. But on this Shabbat of all Shabbatot, we are reminded that Tikvah, that hope, is truly audacious. This weekend we mark a special confluence in history: on the 19th we will commemorate the accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who gave his life in order to preach a message of hope, and on the 20th we will watch as America ushers in the first African-American president in our history.
This will not merely be a moment for one man, for one family. Nor will it only be a moment for those who are African-American. No, this will be a moment for all who are American and for all people around the world to witness that hope is indeed alive. That while we still have much hard work to accomplish in order to reach the ideal, nonetheless there is hope that the famous words of a modern day prophet will at last ring true:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Shabbat Shalom
Parashat Sh’mot 5769
This past weekend’s edition of the television show “Meet the Press” contained an interview with one of my childhood heroes, Bill Cosby. In a discussion about the impact of the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States of America, the host Dick Gregory asked of Cosby:
“Will you tell me what it was like for you to go in and vote for Barack Obama?”
Mr. Cosby replied thoughtfully: “Well, I took my father's picture, I took my mother's picture and I took my brother James, he died when he was seven, I was eight. And I took the three of them into the voting booth in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and I pulled the curtain and I took their pictures out and I said, "And now we're going to vote." And I--we only, I only voted once. But--and I did that and their pictures were out, and then I put them back into my pocket and I opened the curtain. And it, and it was wonderful.
I want to focus on a very telling moment in that interview: when Bill Cosby slipped on the words “And I--we only, I only voted once.” It is my contention that this was not an inadvertent slip of his tongue; but rather an intentional example of the true gravity of November 4th 2008. For Cosby, this day was not his day alone. It was his father’s, his mother’s and his brother’s day as well.
I imagine that many, if not all, African-Americans could attest to experiencing a similar feeling in the voting booth in November; and indeed, many of us here today can attest to feeling that as well. How many of us had Goosebumps on that day? How many of us paused to recognize the significance of that moment? How many of us stayed up past midnight to watch President-elect Obama utter his now famous words:
“This is our time ……. to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”
I am certain that President Elect Obama is a well-read and learned person, although somehow I doubt if he knew that when he said the words “That while we breathe we hope,” he was actually paraphrasing from B’rachot page 63b of the Jerusalem Talmud. There in our ancient text, Rabbi Yochanan explains that there is one thing in life that we all can rely upon, “She’Kol Z’man She’Adam Chai, Yesh Lo Tikvah” “That every moment that a person is alive, they have hope.” In fact, this direct relationship between hope and life can be seen in our own language, as well as in the Modern Hebrew language. When we hope, we aspire, that is we breathe. And so too in Hebrew, when we have Shoafim (hopes) we are engaged in the very act of Sh’eifa, of breathing.
But sometimes I wonder if it’s really that easy. After all hope, in the face of overwhelming darkness, can sometimes be difficult to find; and the paradigmatic example of the perils of hopelessness can be found in the institution of slavery. Slavery exists only when it succeeds in depriving the human being of hope. Conversely, freedom exists only when hope becomes reality, not merely “a dream deferred,” as Langston Hughes once put it.
This morning we read from Sefer Sh’mot, the beginning of our own national narrative of despair and hope. A new Pharaoh arises in Egypt, one who does not know of Joseph and his work on behalf of the Egyptian people. This Pharaoh immediately sees the Jewish presence in Egypt as a threat to his power and so he enslaves the Israelite people, mandating a long list of difficult and back-breaking work for them. But work alone is not enough to plunge us into the depths of hopelessness. No, in order to rip from a human being their ability to hope, one must take from them their only true possession, the integrity of their family. So Pharaoh decrees that all male-Israelite children are to be put to death, a decree that the righteous hand-maidens Shifrah and Pu’ah defy. It is into this ethos of hopelessness that a young child is born in the tribe of Levi; and in an act of desperation he is set a drift in a basket made of reeds.
In our reading this morning, we find a passage which clearly demonstrates that even Moshe Rabeinu, Moses our Teacher, knows intimately of the perils of hopelessness. Moses flees Egypt after killing an Egyptian taskmaster and he becomes a shepherd of the flocks of his Father-in-Law Yitro in the land of Midian. One day, God visits Moshe in the form of the famous burning bush. God explains that God has heard the cry of the Israelites, and that God will lead the people out of slavery into freedom by the hand of Moshe.
However, Moshe is not so easily convinced. He questions the efficacy of God’s plan several times. First he asks of God, “Mi Anochi?” “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah and free the Israelites from Egypt?” The Commentators explain that Moses is having a crisis of experience. He wonders if God shouldn’t send some one more well-known among the Israelites and the Egyptians to accomplish such a daunting task. Secondly, Moses asks of God, when the Israelites ask me “Ma Shmo?” “What is this God’s name who sent you, what shall I say to them?” This is a crisis of faith, demonstrating Moses’ uneasiness in being the representative of a God who can neither be seen, nor felt, nor heard by the people. And frankly God doesn’t do much to boost Moses’ confidence, explaining that God’s name is the inscrutable “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh,” “I will be which I will be.” Finally, Moshe confronts God with a crisis of personal confidence, reminding God that “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue,” seemingly referring to his having some type of speech impediment. But God will simply not hear it, a slightly irritated God reminds Moshe by means of a rhetorical question, “Who gives man speech at all?” It seems that Moses finally gets the point; that hope is not something we choose to have; it is something that we are born with. That leading a people to freedom is not a task we can deny, but rather a mandate from heaven; that in Shakespeare’s words “Some men have greatness thrust upon them.”
All this is to say, that even the greatest leader in our history suffered from the disease of hopelessness. But he also lived long enough to discover that there is a cure: that the cure for hopelessness is not found through portents or signs, nor through plagues or miracles, but rather through faith in the truth of God and in the goodness of humankind.
Today we find ourselves living in an America where hope is scarce. Hope has become a dirty word, a word devoid of pragmatism or realism. But on this Shabbat of all Shabbatot, we are reminded that Tikvah, that hope, is truly audacious. This weekend we mark a special confluence in history: on the 19th we will commemorate the accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who gave his life in order to preach a message of hope, and on the 20th we will watch as America ushers in the first African-American president in our history.
This will not merely be a moment for one man, for one family. Nor will it only be a moment for those who are African-American. No, this will be a moment for all who are American and for all people around the world to witness that hope is indeed alive. That while we still have much hard work to accomplish in order to reach the ideal, nonetheless there is hope that the famous words of a modern day prophet will at last ring true:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Shabbat Shalom
A Glass Half Empty: Reflections of Parashat Bo in the Midst of the Gaza War: 5769
Parashat Bo 5769
A Glass Half-Empty
I want you all to pause for a moment and try to access the distant corners of your early memory. You are sitting at a table, surrounded by family of all types. A hoary-headed grandfather, perhaps from the old country, sits at the head of the table, while his assimilated children, your parents, chuckle under their breath at the absurdity of Jewish ritual. There is an old, faded copy of the Maxwell House Haggadah resting in front of you, speckled with the crusty stains of last year’s brisket. In front of you there is a glass of sweet, red wine reflecting the light of the swaying chandelier overhead. Your grandfather begins to speak:
“And now, as we recite the Ten Plagues, each of us dips a finger into our wine glass, removing a drop for each plague. In this way we diminish our own happiness in order to recall the suffering of our Egyptian enemies.”
Dam, Tzfarde’ah, Kinim, Arov, Dever Sh’chin, Barad, Arbeh, Choshech: Makkat B’Chorot!
Even as a child, perhaps ignorant to the meaning of the Hebrew, you recognize that something is different about that tenth and final plague. Your parents, your uncles and aunts have suddenly stopped their attempts at childhood regression, as they now sit silently, intently as they arrange the drops of wine on their plate.
Do you remember it? Can you picture it?
And what about the moment when you first come to the realization that part and parcel of our national narrative of redemption is the ultimate divine decree; the slaying of every first born in the Land of Egypt.
As a child at our Seder tables we may have been tempted to ask: “Whoa, God did what to the Egyptian kids?”
As an adult, we may be tempted to ask: “This is the kind of God that I am supposed to believe in?”
But soon enough we move on, as the wafting smell of the brisket distracts us from those inconvenient conversations about theology.
But this morning, in conjunction with our Torah Reading in Parashat Bo, I think it is important for us to pause and take note of the tenth plague, of Makat B’Chorot, and recognize that it is fraught with difficulty. It is necessary for us as Jews to not simply run away from those texts which, for lack of a better term, make us feel “icky.” Instead we are asked to confront these texts, and to confront our own mixed emotions about them.
First, let us examine the P’shat, the plainest sense of the Torah’s words which we read this morning.
After the first nine plagues are unsuccessful in convincing Pharaoh to let our people go, and after a series of ‘hardening of Pharaoh’s heart,’ either by his own hand or by God’s, we come to the ‘last resort.’ God tells Moses that toward midnight, God will go forth among the Egyptians “and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh on his throne, to the first-born of the slave girl; and all the first-born of the livestock. And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such has never been, nor will ever be again.”
And so we see that the P’shat is pretty clear. In a last attempt at forcing Pharaoh’s hand God goes nuclear: not only will this plague affect Pharaoh and his household personally, but it will also strike every single strata of Egyptian society, down to the very animals which they used in worship. This is certainly nothing to take lightly, and although all the plagues carried with them disaster for the whole of Egypt; clearly they pale in comparison to the finality of the tenth plague, the killing of the first-born.
So what do we do when we encounter such a violent text? A text that fills us with great doubt as to whether the end always justifies the means. Well, we can start by trying to find elements in the Exodus narrative which may serve to justify the horrific end result of this plague.
Many of our ancient rabbis were quick to point out that perhaps God is simply following the age-old principle of Middah k’Neged Middah; or retribution in kind. Since Pharaoh decreed in the first chapter of the Sefer Sh’mot, The Book of Exodus, that every male Israelite child shall be thrown into the Nile, it can be argued that God’s response was proportionate and justifiable.
Another tack towards justification is the Halacha which concerns the case of the “Rodef,” or someone who is actively trying to kill you. In that case, in a case of clear self-defense, the Rabbis teach us that
הבא להרגך השכם להרגו “If one arises to kill you, you must arise to kill them.”
Therefore, if Pharaoh was indeed interested in murdering innocent Israelites, God’s chosen people, then God was at least in some way, acting in ‘self-defense.’
For some of us perhaps, these arguments are convincing enough to put this issue to rest, after all, there is a brisket in the oven. However, personally I am not relieved of my conflict. I still want to know why God chose to enact such a stunning decree.
Luckily, there are others like me. In fact, just as there were Rabbis who were interested in justifying God’s actions based on logical principles, so too there were ancient rabbis who sought to explore God’s actions from a more emotional perspective.
In Psalm 126, which begins “Hodu Ladonai Ki Tov- Ki L’Olam Hasdo” “Give praise unto God for God is good; with everlasting kindness” we find a litany of wondrous acts that God performed on behalf of the Jewish people. In verse ten we read
לְמַכֵּ֣ה מִ֭צְרַיִם בִּבְכוֹרֵיהֶ֑ם כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ:
“God smote the first-born of Egypt: God’s kindness is everlasting.”
I imagine that the Rabbis of the Midrash must have been uncomfortable with a verse that so easily juxtaposes the killing of the first-born with a description of God’s kindness, and so they added this interesting tale:
At the hour that The Holy One sent the Angel of Death to kill all first-born Egyptians, those first-born came before their respective fathers and they said: All that Moses says will indeed come to pass, if you want us to live, please send out the Hebrews from our midst, for if you do not, we will surely die! Their fathers
responded: “even if every Egyptian has to die, we will not send them out from our midst. So the children went before Pharaoh himself to plead for mercy, but Pharaoh not only ignored their plea, he had them whipped for their hubris.
(adapt. Midrash T’hillim 136:6)
Clearly this Midrash intends to show how completely merciless Egyptian society had become. They were so focused on their hatred of the Israelites, so stubborn in their desires to subdue them, that they were openly willing to sacrifice their own children to that cause. Through the lens of this Midrash we see that the rabbis are attempting to show that perhaps the Tenth Plague could have been avoided, perhaps God’s kindness would have prevailed, had the Egyptians only been willing to listen to their children.
But yet another question remains, the question that we ask ourselves each Passover: “Is this really the God that I am to believe in?” And to this question too the rabbis gave their answer.
In a very famous midrash found in tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud, we get a glimpse into the psyche of God after the death of the Egyptians. At the scene of the Parting of the Red Sea, which we will read next Shabbat, when the wall of water collapses upon the pursuing Egyptians, drowning horse and rider alike, the rabbis ask the following question:
“What does the Holy One feel when witnessing the death of the wicked? Rabbi Natan explains that the Holy One does not rejoice at the death of the wicked; As we learn in the episode at the Red Sea. As the Egyptians drowned the ministering angels sought to sing songs of praise before the Lord, and God said to them:
מעשה ידי טובעין בים ואתם אומרים שירה לפני?
The works of my hands are drowning in the sea, and you are singing songs of praise?” (Sanherdrin 39.b)
Here the rabbis are answering our question of conflicted theology. They are saying to us, ‘No! You should NOT worship the God who enacted the tenth plague, or drowned the pursuing Egyptians in the Red Sea; instead you should worship the God who cries at these moments. The God who mourns the loss of the wicked along with the righteous, those with hardened hearts as well as those whose paths are compassion. This is the God we are to believe in: a God whose kindness is everlasting.
Finally I want to close today by mentioning the obvious, or perhaps not so obvious, correlation between our conflicted feelings about the Tenth Plague and our conflicted minds about the recent conflict in Israel and Gaza. On the one hand, I am certain that some of us feel that Israel was simply acting according to the principle of midah k’neged midah, retribution in kind, responding to rockets with more rockets. Or perhaps Israel was merely doing what every nation has the right and the responsibility to do: to defend its citizens from harm.
But I am equally certain that there are those of us who feel that Israel’s response was disproportionate; that the loss of innocent lives can never be justified, not by means of rationality and certainly not by means of our Jewish tradition.
Finally, this conflict is only made more complicated by the fact that we are painfully aware that the leaders of Hamas are stubbornly fixated on their hatred of Jews and Israelis, even at the expense of their own citizens and their own children. What are we expected to do when we face an enemy whose heart has been so thoroughly hardened?
Perhaps, all we can do is take our cue from the mournful image of God found in our midrash. Perhaps all we can do is to learn from the lesson of our Passover ritual and diminish our own joy on account of the suffering of our enemies. Perhaps all we can do is sit in thought, in conflict and in sorrow, as we quietly arrange the drops of wine on our clean, white plates.
Shabbat Shalom
A Glass Half-Empty
I want you all to pause for a moment and try to access the distant corners of your early memory. You are sitting at a table, surrounded by family of all types. A hoary-headed grandfather, perhaps from the old country, sits at the head of the table, while his assimilated children, your parents, chuckle under their breath at the absurdity of Jewish ritual. There is an old, faded copy of the Maxwell House Haggadah resting in front of you, speckled with the crusty stains of last year’s brisket. In front of you there is a glass of sweet, red wine reflecting the light of the swaying chandelier overhead. Your grandfather begins to speak:
“And now, as we recite the Ten Plagues, each of us dips a finger into our wine glass, removing a drop for each plague. In this way we diminish our own happiness in order to recall the suffering of our Egyptian enemies.”
Dam, Tzfarde’ah, Kinim, Arov, Dever Sh’chin, Barad, Arbeh, Choshech: Makkat B’Chorot!
Even as a child, perhaps ignorant to the meaning of the Hebrew, you recognize that something is different about that tenth and final plague. Your parents, your uncles and aunts have suddenly stopped their attempts at childhood regression, as they now sit silently, intently as they arrange the drops of wine on their plate.
Do you remember it? Can you picture it?
And what about the moment when you first come to the realization that part and parcel of our national narrative of redemption is the ultimate divine decree; the slaying of every first born in the Land of Egypt.
As a child at our Seder tables we may have been tempted to ask: “Whoa, God did what to the Egyptian kids?”
As an adult, we may be tempted to ask: “This is the kind of God that I am supposed to believe in?”
But soon enough we move on, as the wafting smell of the brisket distracts us from those inconvenient conversations about theology.
But this morning, in conjunction with our Torah Reading in Parashat Bo, I think it is important for us to pause and take note of the tenth plague, of Makat B’Chorot, and recognize that it is fraught with difficulty. It is necessary for us as Jews to not simply run away from those texts which, for lack of a better term, make us feel “icky.” Instead we are asked to confront these texts, and to confront our own mixed emotions about them.
First, let us examine the P’shat, the plainest sense of the Torah’s words which we read this morning.
After the first nine plagues are unsuccessful in convincing Pharaoh to let our people go, and after a series of ‘hardening of Pharaoh’s heart,’ either by his own hand or by God’s, we come to the ‘last resort.’ God tells Moses that toward midnight, God will go forth among the Egyptians “and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh on his throne, to the first-born of the slave girl; and all the first-born of the livestock. And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such has never been, nor will ever be again.”
And so we see that the P’shat is pretty clear. In a last attempt at forcing Pharaoh’s hand God goes nuclear: not only will this plague affect Pharaoh and his household personally, but it will also strike every single strata of Egyptian society, down to the very animals which they used in worship. This is certainly nothing to take lightly, and although all the plagues carried with them disaster for the whole of Egypt; clearly they pale in comparison to the finality of the tenth plague, the killing of the first-born.
So what do we do when we encounter such a violent text? A text that fills us with great doubt as to whether the end always justifies the means. Well, we can start by trying to find elements in the Exodus narrative which may serve to justify the horrific end result of this plague.
Many of our ancient rabbis were quick to point out that perhaps God is simply following the age-old principle of Middah k’Neged Middah; or retribution in kind. Since Pharaoh decreed in the first chapter of the Sefer Sh’mot, The Book of Exodus, that every male Israelite child shall be thrown into the Nile, it can be argued that God’s response was proportionate and justifiable.
Another tack towards justification is the Halacha which concerns the case of the “Rodef,” or someone who is actively trying to kill you. In that case, in a case of clear self-defense, the Rabbis teach us that
הבא להרגך השכם להרגו “If one arises to kill you, you must arise to kill them.”
Therefore, if Pharaoh was indeed interested in murdering innocent Israelites, God’s chosen people, then God was at least in some way, acting in ‘self-defense.’
For some of us perhaps, these arguments are convincing enough to put this issue to rest, after all, there is a brisket in the oven. However, personally I am not relieved of my conflict. I still want to know why God chose to enact such a stunning decree.
Luckily, there are others like me. In fact, just as there were Rabbis who were interested in justifying God’s actions based on logical principles, so too there were ancient rabbis who sought to explore God’s actions from a more emotional perspective.
In Psalm 126, which begins “Hodu Ladonai Ki Tov- Ki L’Olam Hasdo” “Give praise unto God for God is good; with everlasting kindness” we find a litany of wondrous acts that God performed on behalf of the Jewish people. In verse ten we read
לְמַכֵּ֣ה מִ֭צְרַיִם בִּבְכוֹרֵיהֶ֑ם כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ:
“God smote the first-born of Egypt: God’s kindness is everlasting.”
I imagine that the Rabbis of the Midrash must have been uncomfortable with a verse that so easily juxtaposes the killing of the first-born with a description of God’s kindness, and so they added this interesting tale:
At the hour that The Holy One sent the Angel of Death to kill all first-born Egyptians, those first-born came before their respective fathers and they said: All that Moses says will indeed come to pass, if you want us to live, please send out the Hebrews from our midst, for if you do not, we will surely die! Their fathers
responded: “even if every Egyptian has to die, we will not send them out from our midst. So the children went before Pharaoh himself to plead for mercy, but Pharaoh not only ignored their plea, he had them whipped for their hubris.
(adapt. Midrash T’hillim 136:6)
Clearly this Midrash intends to show how completely merciless Egyptian society had become. They were so focused on their hatred of the Israelites, so stubborn in their desires to subdue them, that they were openly willing to sacrifice their own children to that cause. Through the lens of this Midrash we see that the rabbis are attempting to show that perhaps the Tenth Plague could have been avoided, perhaps God’s kindness would have prevailed, had the Egyptians only been willing to listen to their children.
But yet another question remains, the question that we ask ourselves each Passover: “Is this really the God that I am to believe in?” And to this question too the rabbis gave their answer.
In a very famous midrash found in tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud, we get a glimpse into the psyche of God after the death of the Egyptians. At the scene of the Parting of the Red Sea, which we will read next Shabbat, when the wall of water collapses upon the pursuing Egyptians, drowning horse and rider alike, the rabbis ask the following question:
“What does the Holy One feel when witnessing the death of the wicked? Rabbi Natan explains that the Holy One does not rejoice at the death of the wicked; As we learn in the episode at the Red Sea. As the Egyptians drowned the ministering angels sought to sing songs of praise before the Lord, and God said to them:
מעשה ידי טובעין בים ואתם אומרים שירה לפני?
The works of my hands are drowning in the sea, and you are singing songs of praise?” (Sanherdrin 39.b)
Here the rabbis are answering our question of conflicted theology. They are saying to us, ‘No! You should NOT worship the God who enacted the tenth plague, or drowned the pursuing Egyptians in the Red Sea; instead you should worship the God who cries at these moments. The God who mourns the loss of the wicked along with the righteous, those with hardened hearts as well as those whose paths are compassion. This is the God we are to believe in: a God whose kindness is everlasting.
Finally I want to close today by mentioning the obvious, or perhaps not so obvious, correlation between our conflicted feelings about the Tenth Plague and our conflicted minds about the recent conflict in Israel and Gaza. On the one hand, I am certain that some of us feel that Israel was simply acting according to the principle of midah k’neged midah, retribution in kind, responding to rockets with more rockets. Or perhaps Israel was merely doing what every nation has the right and the responsibility to do: to defend its citizens from harm.
But I am equally certain that there are those of us who feel that Israel’s response was disproportionate; that the loss of innocent lives can never be justified, not by means of rationality and certainly not by means of our Jewish tradition.
Finally, this conflict is only made more complicated by the fact that we are painfully aware that the leaders of Hamas are stubbornly fixated on their hatred of Jews and Israelis, even at the expense of their own citizens and their own children. What are we expected to do when we face an enemy whose heart has been so thoroughly hardened?
Perhaps, all we can do is take our cue from the mournful image of God found in our midrash. Perhaps all we can do is to learn from the lesson of our Passover ritual and diminish our own joy on account of the suffering of our enemies. Perhaps all we can do is sit in thought, in conflict and in sorrow, as we quietly arrange the drops of wine on our clean, white plates.
Shabbat Shalom
A Letter to George: Shmini Atzeret 5769
A wise Hasidic scholar, Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzin, notices that the Torah gives a clear reason for each of the shalosh regalim, the three pilgrimage festivals, but it is noticeably silent about the reason behind today’s holiday of Sh’mini Atzeret.
About the holiday of Pesach the Torah states it is “Zecher Litziyat Mitzrayim” in remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. With regard to Shavuot the Torah explains that we should gather our first fruits and present them to God “Ki Vati el Ha-Aretz Asher Nishba Adonai La’Avoteinu Latayt Lanu,” “Because I have arrived in the land which the Lord promised to give to our ancestors.” And of course the reasoning for Sukkot is equally as clear: “Ki b’Sukkot Hoshavti et B’nei Yisrael,” “In order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God.”
And so it is with all the other festivals mentioned in the Torah, save one, today’s holiday Sh’mini Atzeret. In fact the Torah seems to mention this holiday only in passing. At the end of the twenty-ninth chapter of Bamidbar, after it has painstakingly listed all of the sacrifices we are required to offer the Lord on each day of the Festival of Sukkot, the Torah “mentions” an additional festival to be held on the eighth day, called “Atzeret.” So what does this holiday mean?
Well one explanation comes in a sensitive understanding of the word “Atzeret,” which literally means “a stopping.” But Rashi and the other traditional commentators understand this word “Atzeret” to connote a separation of some sort. Rashi explains it as a word which demonstrates the God’s love for the people of Israel and he explains using the following parable:
The Torah is taught according to the way of the world: Just as when children are ready to leave their parent’s home, the parents say to them, “your leaving is just too difficult for us, please stay one day longer,”
Or to put it in modern terms, “your college orientation doesn’t start until Tuesday, please stay with us one more weekend at home, we will drive you to school on Monday instead.”
So in other words, according the Midrash, God has some separation anxiety. God has enjoyed our presence throughout the entire festival of sukkot, our songs and prayers have been so meaningful to God that God asks us to stay just a bit longer.
I think we all can relate to God.
Each of us knows the intense feeling of knowing we have to leave something or someone behind, but nonetheless dreading the moment when we have to let go.
Which brings us to Yizkor of course. Yizkor is an exercise of allowing ourselves to feel the anxiety of separation. It is about acknowledging the bitterness of loss, while attempting to remind ourselves of the compassion of memory. It is a moment when we as humans, like God, try and hold our loved ones near for just a moment longer.
Today I would like to tell you a story which illustrates the immense power of memory. I hope that it will demonstrate to all of us that Lizkor, to remember, is to give eternal life.
The story begins a little over a year ago in Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. I had begun my training as a chaplain in a program known as CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education.) It was an intense internship program 400 summertime hours spent in the labyrinthine halls of sprawling modern hospital.
I remember an incident that occurred on one of our first days on the job. We were walking around as a group on our first official tour when our Supervisor, noticed a woman who looked distraught. He asked us to hang tight for a moment while he approached this woman, a complete stranger, to ask her if she was alright. He sat and comforted her for five or ten minutes as we waited in the hall. This was my first lesson of chaplaincy, and indeed my first lesson as to the definition of true humanity: We as humans are obligated to notice the pain of the other, and furthermore we must offer them a forum to express their suffering.
A few weeks later I had such an opportunity. I was leaving one of my floors, the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, when I noticed a woman who was softly crying by one of the elevators. I remembered the teaching moment that my supervisor had demonstrated and I decided to approach her.
I introduced myself and I asked if she was alright. She was not ‘all-right.’ Slowly as we talked she began to share more about her situation. Her name was Yvonne, and she was crying because her husband George, of nearly sixty years, had just had emergency brain surgery. Apparently, he had come through a successful bypass surgery, but Yvonne could tell that he wasn’t himself; his words were slow and slurred and then all of a sudden he couldn’t squeeze his hand. The next thing she knew, the doctors were taking him into surgery to try and contain a hemorrhage that had begun to bleed in his brain, but by the time they got there it was too late. He was stable now they said, but it was unlikely that he would ever regain consciousness.
We talked for about a half-hour there in the hallway. I was amazed at how much she was willing to open up with me; it was my first real lesson in the incredible power contained in the simple words “Are you alright?”
That was the beginning of a conversation that would continue for nearly two weeks. You see Yvonne refused to go home to her apartment in Brooklyn, she wanted to be by George’s side and besides it felt too empty without him there. But seeing as George was in an intensive care floor there was no way she could sleep next to his bed. So she set up camp in the waiting room. Nurses brought her some blankets and pillows and each night she stretched out on a couch and went to sleep.
Each morning she was my first visit.
Early on, our visits centered on George’ health, had anything changed overnight? Did the doctors have anything hopeful to say? She remained positive and we prayed for George’s recovery together in that waiting room. After a week or so had passed, her positivity gave way to pragmatism and she began to discuss the likely but the absolutely intolerable decision she would have to make in the coming days.
She spent nearly every moment of those later visits reliving her favorite memories of her husband George. How they met, how they spent their summers, his relationship with her parents, his demeanor and even his taste in clothes. I felt as if I was growing to know, and indeed to love, George with each passing day.
But eventually the day came when Yvonne made the difficult decision to remove him from life support. The whole family was there: Yvonne, her children, her grandchildren, and me, the fresh-faced Rabbi. I told her that I would stay and wait in the waiting room for her and her family to return, she said to me, “No. You’ve been with me since the beginning and I want you here for the end. I want you to hold my hand.”
And so I did. We watched and we waited after the breathing apparatus had been removed. And I sat and I listened as his family told stories describing George’s essence as his breathing softly slowed. Eventually the moment came and George passed from this world into the next. I asked the family to rise and as we stood around him holding hands, I raised a whispered voice in prayer.
I would like to share with you now, two poems that I wrote about this truly life-changing experience. The first is about the power of memory, and the second is a realization of the awesome power of God. The first is entitled “A Letter to George”
A Letter to George
I never got the chance to meet you
While you could talk, or see, or feel.
But I know about that day of serendipity
When you met your wife on the sweltering Subway car.
And those summers at Brooklyn beach,
When you wore a knitted-blue sun shirt.
And I know how you liked your silence,
Quiet and understated – always deferring to your ‘Darlin’ Queen’.
And how you dressed impeccably,
The cuffs just so, the links just so.
Or those many conversations with your
Mother in-law, about baseball managers and Mozart.
And that time when your wife got sick,
How you cared for her, your smacking kisses still Echo in your home.
And I know about that one day in the hospital,
When you could no longer make a fist –
And you slipped into neither here nor there.
And I know how your wife clung to you, Refusing to leave the hospital for twelve days.
And I know how she held out her last hope,
Until hope became hopeless and folly.
And I was there, George,
Holding her hand as she went in to see you,
How she watched your breaths, how she counted Your rhythms.
She touched you so gently on your battered head,
As she tearfully whispered: ‘It’s ok to let go.’
How your grandchildren stood around you,
As you breathed your last shake and shudder Breath.
And I was there when your soul left your body,
No longer fettered to this halfway world.
And it was there when I asked this one thing of God:
That you should dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
The second is poem entitled “The Moment.”
The Moment
With his very last breath-
The death rattle;
The shiver-shake end
Now I understand this truth:
The Lord Gives,
The Lord takes away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
I read you these poems today to make clear to you two certainties that I have: The first is about the incredible power of memory.
I never met George! Not really anyway, not while he could meet me, and yet I knew him. I knew his likes and his dislikes, I knew the way he talked, the pet-name he called his wife, the way he blew his kisses. And now, after today, all of you know him as well.
This is the power of memory, this is the definition of the phrase we use when we sing the El Maleh prayer, “u’Tzrur b’tzrur ha’hayim et Nishamto,” “May the soul of our loved one be bound up in the bond of life.” We have the incredible power to give life to our loved ones even after death. We do so by the memories we keep and by the stories we tell. If you have a story, I urge you to tell it, and by doing so we have the ability to bind the lives of the departed with the lives of the living, and that is the greatest gift we each can give.
Lastly, I want to leave you with the message that I sought to transmit with the final poem. Yes death is scary, yes death is tragic, and yes death leaves a hole in our lives. But it is also part of God’s world. And when we understand that the lives we lead are precious, and when we understand that those around us are to be cherished, and when we understand that death is a return to God, then we are left with no other possible response other than:
Adonai Natan,
V’Adonai Lakach
Y’hi shem Adonai M’vorach
The Lord gives
And the Lord takes away,
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
p. 188
About the holiday of Pesach the Torah states it is “Zecher Litziyat Mitzrayim” in remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. With regard to Shavuot the Torah explains that we should gather our first fruits and present them to God “Ki Vati el Ha-Aretz Asher Nishba Adonai La’Avoteinu Latayt Lanu,” “Because I have arrived in the land which the Lord promised to give to our ancestors.” And of course the reasoning for Sukkot is equally as clear: “Ki b’Sukkot Hoshavti et B’nei Yisrael,” “In order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I am the Lord your God.”
And so it is with all the other festivals mentioned in the Torah, save one, today’s holiday Sh’mini Atzeret. In fact the Torah seems to mention this holiday only in passing. At the end of the twenty-ninth chapter of Bamidbar, after it has painstakingly listed all of the sacrifices we are required to offer the Lord on each day of the Festival of Sukkot, the Torah “mentions” an additional festival to be held on the eighth day, called “Atzeret.” So what does this holiday mean?
Well one explanation comes in a sensitive understanding of the word “Atzeret,” which literally means “a stopping.” But Rashi and the other traditional commentators understand this word “Atzeret” to connote a separation of some sort. Rashi explains it as a word which demonstrates the God’s love for the people of Israel and he explains using the following parable:
The Torah is taught according to the way of the world: Just as when children are ready to leave their parent’s home, the parents say to them, “your leaving is just too difficult for us, please stay one day longer,”
Or to put it in modern terms, “your college orientation doesn’t start until Tuesday, please stay with us one more weekend at home, we will drive you to school on Monday instead.”
So in other words, according the Midrash, God has some separation anxiety. God has enjoyed our presence throughout the entire festival of sukkot, our songs and prayers have been so meaningful to God that God asks us to stay just a bit longer.
I think we all can relate to God.
Each of us knows the intense feeling of knowing we have to leave something or someone behind, but nonetheless dreading the moment when we have to let go.
Which brings us to Yizkor of course. Yizkor is an exercise of allowing ourselves to feel the anxiety of separation. It is about acknowledging the bitterness of loss, while attempting to remind ourselves of the compassion of memory. It is a moment when we as humans, like God, try and hold our loved ones near for just a moment longer.
Today I would like to tell you a story which illustrates the immense power of memory. I hope that it will demonstrate to all of us that Lizkor, to remember, is to give eternal life.
The story begins a little over a year ago in Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. I had begun my training as a chaplain in a program known as CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education.) It was an intense internship program 400 summertime hours spent in the labyrinthine halls of sprawling modern hospital.
I remember an incident that occurred on one of our first days on the job. We were walking around as a group on our first official tour when our Supervisor, noticed a woman who looked distraught. He asked us to hang tight for a moment while he approached this woman, a complete stranger, to ask her if she was alright. He sat and comforted her for five or ten minutes as we waited in the hall. This was my first lesson of chaplaincy, and indeed my first lesson as to the definition of true humanity: We as humans are obligated to notice the pain of the other, and furthermore we must offer them a forum to express their suffering.
A few weeks later I had such an opportunity. I was leaving one of my floors, the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, when I noticed a woman who was softly crying by one of the elevators. I remembered the teaching moment that my supervisor had demonstrated and I decided to approach her.
I introduced myself and I asked if she was alright. She was not ‘all-right.’ Slowly as we talked she began to share more about her situation. Her name was Yvonne, and she was crying because her husband George, of nearly sixty years, had just had emergency brain surgery. Apparently, he had come through a successful bypass surgery, but Yvonne could tell that he wasn’t himself; his words were slow and slurred and then all of a sudden he couldn’t squeeze his hand. The next thing she knew, the doctors were taking him into surgery to try and contain a hemorrhage that had begun to bleed in his brain, but by the time they got there it was too late. He was stable now they said, but it was unlikely that he would ever regain consciousness.
We talked for about a half-hour there in the hallway. I was amazed at how much she was willing to open up with me; it was my first real lesson in the incredible power contained in the simple words “Are you alright?”
That was the beginning of a conversation that would continue for nearly two weeks. You see Yvonne refused to go home to her apartment in Brooklyn, she wanted to be by George’s side and besides it felt too empty without him there. But seeing as George was in an intensive care floor there was no way she could sleep next to his bed. So she set up camp in the waiting room. Nurses brought her some blankets and pillows and each night she stretched out on a couch and went to sleep.
Each morning she was my first visit.
Early on, our visits centered on George’ health, had anything changed overnight? Did the doctors have anything hopeful to say? She remained positive and we prayed for George’s recovery together in that waiting room. After a week or so had passed, her positivity gave way to pragmatism and she began to discuss the likely but the absolutely intolerable decision she would have to make in the coming days.
She spent nearly every moment of those later visits reliving her favorite memories of her husband George. How they met, how they spent their summers, his relationship with her parents, his demeanor and even his taste in clothes. I felt as if I was growing to know, and indeed to love, George with each passing day.
But eventually the day came when Yvonne made the difficult decision to remove him from life support. The whole family was there: Yvonne, her children, her grandchildren, and me, the fresh-faced Rabbi. I told her that I would stay and wait in the waiting room for her and her family to return, she said to me, “No. You’ve been with me since the beginning and I want you here for the end. I want you to hold my hand.”
And so I did. We watched and we waited after the breathing apparatus had been removed. And I sat and I listened as his family told stories describing George’s essence as his breathing softly slowed. Eventually the moment came and George passed from this world into the next. I asked the family to rise and as we stood around him holding hands, I raised a whispered voice in prayer.
I would like to share with you now, two poems that I wrote about this truly life-changing experience. The first is about the power of memory, and the second is a realization of the awesome power of God. The first is entitled “A Letter to George”
A Letter to George
I never got the chance to meet you
While you could talk, or see, or feel.
But I know about that day of serendipity
When you met your wife on the sweltering Subway car.
And those summers at Brooklyn beach,
When you wore a knitted-blue sun shirt.
And I know how you liked your silence,
Quiet and understated – always deferring to your ‘Darlin’ Queen’.
And how you dressed impeccably,
The cuffs just so, the links just so.
Or those many conversations with your
Mother in-law, about baseball managers and Mozart.
And that time when your wife got sick,
How you cared for her, your smacking kisses still Echo in your home.
And I know about that one day in the hospital,
When you could no longer make a fist –
And you slipped into neither here nor there.
And I know how your wife clung to you, Refusing to leave the hospital for twelve days.
And I know how she held out her last hope,
Until hope became hopeless and folly.
And I was there, George,
Holding her hand as she went in to see you,
How she watched your breaths, how she counted Your rhythms.
She touched you so gently on your battered head,
As she tearfully whispered: ‘It’s ok to let go.’
How your grandchildren stood around you,
As you breathed your last shake and shudder Breath.
And I was there when your soul left your body,
No longer fettered to this halfway world.
And it was there when I asked this one thing of God:
That you should dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
The second is poem entitled “The Moment.”
The Moment
With his very last breath-
The death rattle;
The shiver-shake end
Now I understand this truth:
The Lord Gives,
The Lord takes away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
I read you these poems today to make clear to you two certainties that I have: The first is about the incredible power of memory.
I never met George! Not really anyway, not while he could meet me, and yet I knew him. I knew his likes and his dislikes, I knew the way he talked, the pet-name he called his wife, the way he blew his kisses. And now, after today, all of you know him as well.
This is the power of memory, this is the definition of the phrase we use when we sing the El Maleh prayer, “u’Tzrur b’tzrur ha’hayim et Nishamto,” “May the soul of our loved one be bound up in the bond of life.” We have the incredible power to give life to our loved ones even after death. We do so by the memories we keep and by the stories we tell. If you have a story, I urge you to tell it, and by doing so we have the ability to bind the lives of the departed with the lives of the living, and that is the greatest gift we each can give.
Lastly, I want to leave you with the message that I sought to transmit with the final poem. Yes death is scary, yes death is tragic, and yes death leaves a hole in our lives. But it is also part of God’s world. And when we understand that the lives we lead are precious, and when we understand that those around us are to be cherished, and when we understand that death is a return to God, then we are left with no other possible response other than:
Adonai Natan,
V’Adonai Lakach
Y’hi shem Adonai M’vorach
The Lord gives
And the Lord takes away,
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
p. 188
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