Walking with God: B'reishit 5770

You know that feeling you get when you think about your favorite book? It is the sensation of comfort, of feeling at home. It is the touch of the worn binding, the smell of the soft pages that can magically transport you through the time and space of your life. It doesn’t matter how many times you pick it up, it is always worth a read; and were you destined to live out your days on a deserted desert Island, you would most certainly bring this book along.

Well the Jewish people certainly know this feeling, and amazingly we each call this book by a single name: The Torah. Well here we go again. No sooner had we put this great book down, exhausted the final inch of our sacred scroll, we find ourselves so moved to go back to the beginning and start all over again. But the truly amazing thing, what is simply remarkable is that we always manage to find something new.

This year’s reading of the Torah is especially exciting seeing as we are now reading the final shlish, the last third of our triennial cycle of readings. This means that with each passing week, we complete the portion we began reading three years ago. Although the merits and the drawbacks to the triennial cycle are up for debate, I must say that as a rabbi, I enjoy the discipline it takes to create divrei torah, words of Torah, from only one third of the parsha. Even though you might initially be drawn to that big story, that well-known verse that famous rabbinic midrashic interpretation; you must exert some will power and find that nugget of wisdom from within the confines of particular chapters and verses.

Which brings me to this morning’s words of Torah for Parashat B’reishit; which will not be based on the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis, nor upon the account of God’s creation of the first human beings, nor even on the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, no, instead I wanted to drash on the juiciest topic of all: The list of genealogies found in Chapter Five.

You know the kind of genealogy I am talking about, a list of generational familial relationships beginning with the life of Adam and his third son, Seth. Seth lived 912 years and he begot Enosh, who lived to 905 years and he begot Keynan, who lived to 910 years when he begot…well, you get the point. This list continues for ten generations, marking the passing of time between Adam and Noah, and generally, people don’t have much else to say about it.

But I, and many others are fascinated by one of these little-known characters in this sea of generations, one whose name will sound familiar to many of us, even though we may not know why. That’s right, sandwiched between a guy named Jared and a kid named Methusaleh is the persona of Enoch, or Chanoch as he is known in Hebrew. So what is it about this guy Enoch that stands out? Well there are a few things actually. First off, Enoch only lives to a young age of 365 years, far less than anyone else on this list, a mere one-third the length of his son Methusaleh’s lifespan. Secondly, the Torah twice uses a very interesting phrase when describing Enoch’s life, it reads:
וַיִּתְהַלֵּךְ חֲנוֹךְ אֶת-הָֽאֱלֹהִים אַֽחֲרֵי הֽוֹלִידוֹ אֶת-מְתוּשֶׁלַח שְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה
“After the birth of Methusaleh, Enoch walked with God for 300 years.”

Then just a few verses later it reads:
וַיִּתְהַלֵּךְ חֲנוֹךְ אֶת-הָֽאֱלֹהִים וְאֵינֶנּוּ כִּֽי-לָקַח אֹתוֹ אֱלֹהִֽים

“Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, for God took him.”

All right! Now this is getting exciting! What happened to Enoch? Why was his lifespan so much shorter (relatively) than anyone else’s in the genealogy? And what does it mean that he walked with God for three hundred years and that instead of dying like the others, Enoch “was no more, for God took him.”? Friends, what this means is that we have a door that was left wide-open for rabbinic interpretation, and I would like to walk you straight through that door.

First of all, let’s explore what it might mean for Enoch to have walked with God. This question was first answered by the ancient apocryphal text, The Book of Enoch, which is a collection of apocalyptic legends that were composed between the fourth century B.C.E. and the arrival of the Common Era. The beginning of this extra-biblical work is essentially a midrash, a commentary, explaining what it means for Enoch to have walked with God for 300 years.

This Book imagines that the character of Enoch was given a personal tour of the heavens by God. While on this walking tour of Heaven, Enoch sees incredible sights, such as the storehouses where rain, wind and snow are kept, the place where lost souls wander, as well as receiving visions of the End of Days. Given its science-fiction feel, it is not surprising then to note, that the Book of Enoch is not part of the Biblical Cannon in most Judeo-Christian circles, but you do have to admit it does do a pretty good job explaining what Enoch was doing while he was walking with God for 300 years.

Now let us explore for a moment the question of Enoch’s abbreviated lifespan. Rashi, the most famous medieval commentator certainly picks up on the brevity of Chanoch’s lifespan. Quoting a midrsah, Rashi explains that:
“Tzaddik Haya! Chanoch was a saint, a pious man who nonetheless was easily convinced to sin, therefore God chose to take him and remove him from the earth before his time, and this,” as Rashi explains, “is why the text says ‘v’einenu,’ that Chanoch ‘was no more,’ because he was no longer on the Earth to complete the fullness of his years.”

As always, Rashi adds to the fullness of our picture. The reason for Chanoch’s brief lifespan was not because he was in some way less righteous than his brethren on this list, adarabah, quite the opposite; it was because he was more righteous than the others. He was the Tzaddik, the pious one, and being so pious, he did not deserve to be subjected to our imperfect and sinful world. For a man like Chanoch, trying to do good in an evil world, it would have been torture for him to fulfill the length of his days, so instead, God took him from the earth, as a reward for his righteous ways.

But I do not want this to be our final word on the important subject of Enoch. Now, in my opinion that honor should go to the 19th century European Torah scholar the Hatam Sofer, Rabbi Moses Schrieber. In a beautiful and insightful comment the Hatam Sofer writes:
“Chanoch may indeed have walked in the path of the good,” as Rashi says, “but unfortunately he did not concern himself with the fellow children of his generation!” “He was not like Abraham, whose life’s desire was to bring others under the wings of the Shechinah, the presence of God!”
“Therefore” the Hatam Sofer explains, “The Torah says ‘v’einenu,’ ‘and Chanoch was no more’; meaning that when he was taken and removed from the world – he was no more – meaning he was forgotten since he had no one who could walk in his footsteps. Whereas with Abraham, since he was concerned with his fellow human beings, Abraham memory will live on forever!”

Alas, isn’t this often the case in our world? Isn’t it unfortunate that righteousness, or more correctly put, self-righteousness, breeds contempt and not compassion for the outside world. Religious communities, Jewish and otherwise, build high walls and tinted windows in order to keep the imperfect world at bay. They maintain a false monopoly on piety by denigrating their fellow human beings and by rejecting others as dangerous.

But this is the model of Enoch, not of Abraham. Abraham’s tent was open to one and all. Abraham and Sara greeted visitors with kindness regardless of their background. When confronted with the unenviable task of bringing God’s prophecy of destruction to the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham does not wash his hands of the people. Adarabah! Quite the opposite, Abraham is ready to get his hands dirty, to care about them, to try and win them back to God. This is true righteousness; and this is why we ask God to bless us bizchut Avraham Avinu, by the merit of Abraham and not according to the piety of Enoch.

Let this be our lesson here this morning. We should strive to be like Abraham and not like Enoch. Because Abraham understood that the true definition of righteousness is to be engaged with our fellow human beings and the world around us. He knew that the true meaning of longevity is to teach, to mentor, and to guide others along the just and holy path, this is what guarantees us a long life, a rich life, a full life. Through the example of Abraham, and not through that of Enoch, we can learn what it means to ‘hitalech et haElohim,’ ‘to walk with God’; Simply put, to walk with God, means that we should never, never walk alone.