Ok, let’s play a quick game of word association. I’ll give you a list of words, and you tell me how they are all related. Ready? Let’s begin:
-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.
Maybe one more time, huh?
-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.
Any ideas? That’s right; when you put these words together you get Sefer Sh’mot, the Book of Exodus. Follow me: Sh’mot starts with the despair of slavery, followed by the experience of divine redemption at the hands of miracles such as the Ten Plagues and the Splitting of the Sea. Then we transition into the experience of Revelation, which while spectacular, nonetheless unveils the unfortunate fact that the Israelites (like all of us) are frail, and our frailty leads us to sin; namely Heyt HaEigel, the Sin of the Golden Calf. Finally, as a remedy for this human frailty the Israelites are given a new prescription: namely they are asked to contribute together to the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, which leads to the culminating event in Sefer Sh’mot, Communion with God, which we read aloud from the Torah this morning:
: וַיְכַס הֶעָנָן אֶת-אהֶל מוֹעֵד וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה מָלֵא אֶת-הַמִּשְׁכָּן
And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the LORD’s glorious presence filled the Tabernacle.
-Despair, Miracles, Redemption, Revelation, Human Frailty, Sin, Contribution, Construction, Communion.
Sefer Sh’mot in a nutshell.
But what I want to talk about this morning is not the structure of the sefer, nor the architecture of the tabernacle; but rather how we can use these different themes found in the Book of Exodus as paradigms for our personal relationship with God. It is my belief that this ancient Book somehow manages to perfectly capture the many nuanced ways we as moderns experience God in our world.
As we will read in the Haggadah in a few weeks: Matchilin b’g’nut u’m’sayimim b’shevech; when we tell our stories we begin with degradation and we conclude with praise. So let us begin at the beginning, the depressing degradation of slavery.
When Sefer Sh’mot begins, the Israelites are embitterly enslaved in Egypt. In fact, it seems as though they have absolutely no conception of the God of their ancestors; the oppressive darkness of slavery has removed all awareness of God from them; that is until, from the depths, they issue a collective cry.
וַיֵּאָנְחוּ בְנֵי-יִשְרָאֵל מִן-הָעֲבדָה וַיִּזְעָקוּ וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל-הָאֱלהִים מִן-הָעֲבדָה:
“The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God. God heard their crying, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”
This is our first paradigm for our modern relationships with God. It is a natural human impulse to cry out to God from the depths. Psalm 130 begins: מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ יְהוָה: out of the depths I cry out to you Adonai. For many, this is the first impulse towards a relationship with God. It comes from a cry, a confrontation with terror, a brush with tragedy; when all we can do is cry out to God from within the darkness of our degradation.
And sometimes, though certainly not always, we feel like that cry is answered. Sometimes we receive strength from within these moments of crisis, we feel supported, listened to, noticed by our God. For some, there have been moments of miracles which have brought us closer to God; likely not in the sense of the supernatural, but rather in the context of serendipity. What if I hadn’t slept in, what if I had been on that plane? What if I hadn’t had the courage to ask that girl what her name was? For some of us, these moments of modern miracles lead us to the conclusion that indeed God has noticed us; and this feeling is nothing short of what our ancestors experienced: Redemption.
Next comes Revelation, the revealing of God’s will to humanity, which in many ways has been the dominant conversation of the Mitzvah initiative. Chancellor Arnie Eisen argues that the experience of Mt. Sinai exists every day, in the tiny moments of choice; those experiences of obligation in our lives. These are the moments when we choose right from within a sea of wrong, when we choose morality from within the dominance of the immoral. This is Sinai for Chancellor Eisen, and I think many of us can agree. We can sometimes find God from within our choices. When we do the right thing, when we make choices which bring God into the world, or perhaps when we allow ourselves to experience moments of disquieting thought; such as: am I being the person that God wants me to be, am I living up to my obligations to my religious tradition and to humankind? This is revelation.
But, and this is a big but, I think the Book of Exodus teaches us that while we can sometimes find God in the depths of degradation, or in the redemptive power of the miraculous, or in the wisdom of our moral choices, the fact is that sometimes this is still not enough. We human beings crave the material, we long for the tangible, and so an invisible God who only appears in fleeting moments of experience is unfortunately unsatisfying. For as Chancellor Eisen writes in his book Taking Hold of Torah, these moments of connection with God can all too often be “snuffed out by counter-experiences of meaninglessness or by rational analysis that explains them away.” This is our human frailty, our inability to hold on to our God experiences indefinitely.
This is the sin of the Golden Calf, a sin we commit in our modern lives as well. Despite the miracles they witnessed, despite their experience of redemption, despite the intimacy of Revelation, the Children of Israel couldn’t help but sin in the creation of the Golden Calf. They wanted; they needed something tangible, something material, something lasting. And so do we.
And in what is one of the most inspiring examples of God’s ability to adapt to human beings and our spiritual needs, God decides to meet us, and our frailties, halfway. The Israelites are asked to contribute of their talents and of their means towards the construction of the Mishkan, the tabernacle, a tangible and permanent home for communion with God. God says:
וְעָשוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:
“Build me a sanctuary that I may dwell among you.”
In our parasha this morning, God keeps this promise.
I want to argue that this is perhaps the most compelling paradigm of our modern relationships with God that Sefer Sh’mot has to offer us. Here there is a seemingly simple formula that we can employ to feel God’s presence in our lives. The first step requires us to act: we are implored to contribute.
כָּל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ
“Every person whose heart so moves them should contribute,”
In other words, the path towards experiencing God in our lives is not built by scattered experiences of the divine, but rather by action on our part towards contributing to a more Godly world. We are asked to give of our time, our energy, and our talents towards the construction of institutions, buildings and communities which hold God at their center. We moderns are no different than our ancient Israelite ancestors in our human frailties. We too long for God experiences which are based in something tangible, something we can touch and feel, something which will last against the unstoppable tide of cynicism. But unlike the Israelites we must not let our frailties win. We must not build Golden Calves, lest we find ourselves worshiping the false gods of materialism.
No, instead I am arguing that we should follow the path of the Mishkan: That through the power of collective contribution toward the construction of God-centered institutions, synagogues, schools and philanthropies; we have been given the path towards communion with God in the modern world. In our world meaningful experiences of Adonai, lasting communion with God in our lives can best be found from within the power of God-centered communities. In a world where increasingly, we do not even know our neighbors, we must work tirelessly to ensure the incredible opportunity of community.
More powerful that scattered miraculous moments, more lasting than fleeting experiences of revelation, is the enduring power of creating a community which can serve as a home for God in our lives:
: וַיְכַס הֶעָנָן אֶת-אהֶל מוֹעֵד וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה מָלֵא אֶת-הַמִּשְׁכָּן
And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the LORD’s glorious presence filled the Tabernacle.
Hazak, Hazak v’Nithazek
Strength, Strength and let us strengthen one another.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Coercion vs. Personal Conviction: A Modern Midrash for Parshat Mishpatim 5770
I want to begin with a modern-day Mashal, a parable:
There once was a man named Norman, and he was a traveling salesman. He traveled from town to town, from door to door selling his wares. It was not an easy job, in fact it was downright lonely, not to mention the fact that he was selling the heaviest, most-cumbersome item ever created: A complete, thirty-six volume set of The Encyclopedia Britannica.
One time, he arrived at a small desert town and he set his sights on unloading this heavy burden of his. He figured he would split the town into three parts spread over three days, so he didn’t have to lug his entire heavy inventory around with him. On the first day, He stopped at every house on the street, and yet, at each stop – there was an excuse to refuse his enticing offer!
“Your encyclopedias are so outdated, we’ll just look it up on the internet!” shouted the computer savvy family.
“Why do I need an Encyclopedia for, I’m not into books, I’m into video games.” said the impetuous child.
“Why would I want a thirty-six volume encyclopedia set, you think I have room inside my house for something like that?” asked the angry man.
At each house was a rejection, until at the very last house on his journey a little old woman finally bought one, lonely set of encyclopedias; twelve hours of walking and heavy lifting, and all he had to show for it was one, pitiful sale.
Dejected, Norman returned home to his lonely hotel room that evening and he decided he would wake up and try it all over again, but this time he would take a different tack.
The next day, when the customer opened the door, Norman greeted them with a smile, a shiny copy of the first volume of the encyclopedia and a glimmering, silver gun.
“Hello there,” he said “My name is Norman and I would like to sell you this set of Encyclopedias, are you interested?” Well, the shocked and terrified customer took one look at that gun, and without hesitation they handed him the money, accepted the bulky set of books and as soon as they were able they shut the door and closed the blinds, never to be seen again. Well Norman did this at each and every house he went to, and wouldn’t you know it? He sold every last copy of the encyclopedia he brought with him that day. He returned to his hotel, happy, content and fulfilled.
The next morning he awoke, ready to take on the final set of homes, and of course, he brought his gun along. But this time on the way to the latest set of homes, as he passed by the houses he had visited the day before, he noticed something terrible. Each customer who had accepted the encyclopedias at gunpoint the day before had now placed their brand-new box of books out on the curb, waiting for the garbage truck to come by!
Norman quickly realized what had happened. His new, heavy-handed strategy had been extremely effective when it came to his sales, but it failed miserably when it came to creating appreciation among his customers for all the knowledge and beauty to be found in his wonderful encyclopedias.
He put the gun away, and went back to his old ways; knocking on each door, smiling and asking if they would like to buy a new set of encyclopedias.
He did not sell a single encyclopedia that day, but at least he felt good about himself on the way home. And as he walked back to his hotel one last time, he heard someone shouting behind him. He turned around and recognized that it was a customer who had bought a set of encyclopedias at gunpoint the day before. Norman looked around for the police, but instead this young woman was approaching him with a smile. “I just wanted to thank you,” the young woman said. “At first I only bought the encyclopedias because of the gun, I was afraid you would shoot me if I didn’t buy them, but for the past day I have been reading them cover to cover, and you know what, they are really great!”
Norman smiled at the young woman, and he replied, “You are very welcome.”
And now the Nimshal, the message behind the mashal, the parable I just told you.
This whole concept of Revelation, that is, God’s revealing of the Law at Mt. Sinai for the Jewish people is a complicated one to say the least, and to say the most it is fraught with theological concerns. It is one thing to believe in the Creator of the Universe, but it is another leap of belief entirely to claim that this Creator revealed its Divine Will before the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai. What did this revelation look like? What did it feel like for those present? And how and why did the Jewish people choose to accept this revelation as their path?
The story of Norman the encyclopedia salesman is an example of a modern version of some ancient midrashim.
The first midrash explains, that despite our particularistic inclinations, as a people, we were not the only nation God offered the Torah to; in fact we were the last in a long line of refusals. In a medieval collection of Midrashim known as Pesikta Rabati, we have a midrash which tells us that God went to the nations of Edom, Amnon, Moab, and Ishmael, and each of these nations refused God’s Torah on ideological grounds…that is, they knew they could never keep specific moral precepts found in the teachings. In fact, the midrash goes on explaining:
“That there was not a single nation among the nations to whom God did not go, speak and as it were [I promise this is in the text] knock on the door, asking whether it would be willing to accept the Torah.”
[Until] “At long last he God came to Israel, and they said “Na’aseh v’Nishmah!” “We will do what we have heard!” (A phrase we read aloud this morning from Parshat Mishpatim.)
According to this midrash, the people of Israel are the last, lonely woman in the first part of our parable; after a long day of searching, and after a series of heart-breaking rejections, Norman, God, finally sold his first set of encyclopedias.
So what about day two of our Mashal?
Another midrash, this time from the Talmud [B. Shabbat 88a] explains that at the moment of Revelation, the text of the Torah states that the children of Israel were standing “בְּתַחְתִּית הָהָֽר”, which could be literally, though perhaps not correctly, translated as “underneath the mountain.” This, the rabbis explain, means that God uprooted Mt. Sinai from the earth, turned it upside-down like an inverted barrel and said to the Children of Israel “If you accept the Torah, all is good; if not, you are standing on your graves.”
In other words [with gun pointing] “Would you like to buy a set of encyclopedias.”
This opens the door to a serious theological question: If we were to learn that the acceptance of the Torah at Mt. Sinai was due to the impressive impulse of coercion rather than that of personal or national conviction, does it somehow cheapen the act of acceptance? Some of us would no doubt jump in and say “no!” We are coerced into doing a lot of things by our societal structure but this does not preclude the possibility of finding personal meaning within the act itself. For example, if I don’t pay my taxes, or send my kids to school I know that my society will punish me; however I still believe it is patriotic to support my country financially and it is the duty of a responsible parent to ensure the education of their child!
Others of us would certainly disagree. We would say that coercion as a means to an end is at best ineffectual and at worst counter-productive. Remember the mashal? Sure Norman sold a lot of encyclopedias that day, but the next day they were all in the garbage! Perhaps it is a similar with Torah: many Jews of the past generations who had their Judaism force-fed to them, or who experienced negative Jewish experiences are now disillusioned with their faith and estranged from their traditions. On the other hand, many who were allowed to come into their Judaism in their own way, at their own pace and due to their own personal convictions find themselves to be spiritually content, and deeply-connected to their practice of Jewish traditions. We could argue about this all day, and in our Mitzvah Initiative, we have argued about it!
However, one piece of the mashal remains: the image of the young woman, who although she was coerced into buying the encyclopedia at gun point, nonetheless took the time to open the volumes, thumb the pages and find massive meaning in her purchase. Despite Norman’s mistake of means, the end was a successful one. This young woman surprisingly found herself to be thrilled with the set of encyclopedias and she sought out Norman the next day to tell him so.
This too is a midrash from the Talmud. After the rabbis discuss the possibility that Bnei Yisrael’s acceptance of the Torah was a mere result of coercion, they immediately suggest that this coercion was only temporary. In fact, over time the people of Israel grew to learn, and yes, to love the law of the Torah. Despite their original hesitation in the desert, they eventually stood up as a people and proclaimed acceptance of their own free will and from their own sense of personal conviction. According the Rabbis, when did this true moment of national acceptance occur?
In far away Persia, during the reign of one Ahashverosh, when Queen Esther and her guardian Mordechai engineered a moment of national redemption from impending doom.
In that moment the Megillah tells us that the entire nation of Jews stated:
קִיְּמוּ וְקִבְּלוּ
“They undertook and they obligated themselves,” meaning that the original moment of coercion had finally given way to commandedness through personal conviction. This self-motivated proclamation of Kimu v’Kib’lu, the rabbis explain, immediately replaced the possible coerced statement of Na’ase v’Nishmah from this morning’s parasha.
Or to put it another way, the Jewish people, running after their God, shouted out….
“You know what, thank you for this Torah, thank you for its laws, thank you for its teachings, they are really great!” And God, turning around, smiles and says “You are very welcome.”
Shabbat Shalom.
There once was a man named Norman, and he was a traveling salesman. He traveled from town to town, from door to door selling his wares. It was not an easy job, in fact it was downright lonely, not to mention the fact that he was selling the heaviest, most-cumbersome item ever created: A complete, thirty-six volume set of The Encyclopedia Britannica.
One time, he arrived at a small desert town and he set his sights on unloading this heavy burden of his. He figured he would split the town into three parts spread over three days, so he didn’t have to lug his entire heavy inventory around with him. On the first day, He stopped at every house on the street, and yet, at each stop – there was an excuse to refuse his enticing offer!
“Your encyclopedias are so outdated, we’ll just look it up on the internet!” shouted the computer savvy family.
“Why do I need an Encyclopedia for, I’m not into books, I’m into video games.” said the impetuous child.
“Why would I want a thirty-six volume encyclopedia set, you think I have room inside my house for something like that?” asked the angry man.
At each house was a rejection, until at the very last house on his journey a little old woman finally bought one, lonely set of encyclopedias; twelve hours of walking and heavy lifting, and all he had to show for it was one, pitiful sale.
Dejected, Norman returned home to his lonely hotel room that evening and he decided he would wake up and try it all over again, but this time he would take a different tack.
The next day, when the customer opened the door, Norman greeted them with a smile, a shiny copy of the first volume of the encyclopedia and a glimmering, silver gun.
“Hello there,” he said “My name is Norman and I would like to sell you this set of Encyclopedias, are you interested?” Well, the shocked and terrified customer took one look at that gun, and without hesitation they handed him the money, accepted the bulky set of books and as soon as they were able they shut the door and closed the blinds, never to be seen again. Well Norman did this at each and every house he went to, and wouldn’t you know it? He sold every last copy of the encyclopedia he brought with him that day. He returned to his hotel, happy, content and fulfilled.
The next morning he awoke, ready to take on the final set of homes, and of course, he brought his gun along. But this time on the way to the latest set of homes, as he passed by the houses he had visited the day before, he noticed something terrible. Each customer who had accepted the encyclopedias at gunpoint the day before had now placed their brand-new box of books out on the curb, waiting for the garbage truck to come by!
Norman quickly realized what had happened. His new, heavy-handed strategy had been extremely effective when it came to his sales, but it failed miserably when it came to creating appreciation among his customers for all the knowledge and beauty to be found in his wonderful encyclopedias.
He put the gun away, and went back to his old ways; knocking on each door, smiling and asking if they would like to buy a new set of encyclopedias.
He did not sell a single encyclopedia that day, but at least he felt good about himself on the way home. And as he walked back to his hotel one last time, he heard someone shouting behind him. He turned around and recognized that it was a customer who had bought a set of encyclopedias at gunpoint the day before. Norman looked around for the police, but instead this young woman was approaching him with a smile. “I just wanted to thank you,” the young woman said. “At first I only bought the encyclopedias because of the gun, I was afraid you would shoot me if I didn’t buy them, but for the past day I have been reading them cover to cover, and you know what, they are really great!”
Norman smiled at the young woman, and he replied, “You are very welcome.”
And now the Nimshal, the message behind the mashal, the parable I just told you.
This whole concept of Revelation, that is, God’s revealing of the Law at Mt. Sinai for the Jewish people is a complicated one to say the least, and to say the most it is fraught with theological concerns. It is one thing to believe in the Creator of the Universe, but it is another leap of belief entirely to claim that this Creator revealed its Divine Will before the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai. What did this revelation look like? What did it feel like for those present? And how and why did the Jewish people choose to accept this revelation as their path?
The story of Norman the encyclopedia salesman is an example of a modern version of some ancient midrashim.
The first midrash explains, that despite our particularistic inclinations, as a people, we were not the only nation God offered the Torah to; in fact we were the last in a long line of refusals. In a medieval collection of Midrashim known as Pesikta Rabati, we have a midrash which tells us that God went to the nations of Edom, Amnon, Moab, and Ishmael, and each of these nations refused God’s Torah on ideological grounds…that is, they knew they could never keep specific moral precepts found in the teachings. In fact, the midrash goes on explaining:
“That there was not a single nation among the nations to whom God did not go, speak and as it were [I promise this is in the text] knock on the door, asking whether it would be willing to accept the Torah.”
[Until] “At long last he God came to Israel, and they said “Na’aseh v’Nishmah!” “We will do what we have heard!” (A phrase we read aloud this morning from Parshat Mishpatim.)
According to this midrash, the people of Israel are the last, lonely woman in the first part of our parable; after a long day of searching, and after a series of heart-breaking rejections, Norman, God, finally sold his first set of encyclopedias.
So what about day two of our Mashal?
Another midrash, this time from the Talmud [B. Shabbat 88a] explains that at the moment of Revelation, the text of the Torah states that the children of Israel were standing “בְּתַחְתִּית הָהָֽר”, which could be literally, though perhaps not correctly, translated as “underneath the mountain.” This, the rabbis explain, means that God uprooted Mt. Sinai from the earth, turned it upside-down like an inverted barrel and said to the Children of Israel “If you accept the Torah, all is good; if not, you are standing on your graves.”
In other words [with gun pointing] “Would you like to buy a set of encyclopedias.”
This opens the door to a serious theological question: If we were to learn that the acceptance of the Torah at Mt. Sinai was due to the impressive impulse of coercion rather than that of personal or national conviction, does it somehow cheapen the act of acceptance? Some of us would no doubt jump in and say “no!” We are coerced into doing a lot of things by our societal structure but this does not preclude the possibility of finding personal meaning within the act itself. For example, if I don’t pay my taxes, or send my kids to school I know that my society will punish me; however I still believe it is patriotic to support my country financially and it is the duty of a responsible parent to ensure the education of their child!
Others of us would certainly disagree. We would say that coercion as a means to an end is at best ineffectual and at worst counter-productive. Remember the mashal? Sure Norman sold a lot of encyclopedias that day, but the next day they were all in the garbage! Perhaps it is a similar with Torah: many Jews of the past generations who had their Judaism force-fed to them, or who experienced negative Jewish experiences are now disillusioned with their faith and estranged from their traditions. On the other hand, many who were allowed to come into their Judaism in their own way, at their own pace and due to their own personal convictions find themselves to be spiritually content, and deeply-connected to their practice of Jewish traditions. We could argue about this all day, and in our Mitzvah Initiative, we have argued about it!
However, one piece of the mashal remains: the image of the young woman, who although she was coerced into buying the encyclopedia at gun point, nonetheless took the time to open the volumes, thumb the pages and find massive meaning in her purchase. Despite Norman’s mistake of means, the end was a successful one. This young woman surprisingly found herself to be thrilled with the set of encyclopedias and she sought out Norman the next day to tell him so.
This too is a midrash from the Talmud. After the rabbis discuss the possibility that Bnei Yisrael’s acceptance of the Torah was a mere result of coercion, they immediately suggest that this coercion was only temporary. In fact, over time the people of Israel grew to learn, and yes, to love the law of the Torah. Despite their original hesitation in the desert, they eventually stood up as a people and proclaimed acceptance of their own free will and from their own sense of personal conviction. According the Rabbis, when did this true moment of national acceptance occur?
In far away Persia, during the reign of one Ahashverosh, when Queen Esther and her guardian Mordechai engineered a moment of national redemption from impending doom.
In that moment the Megillah tells us that the entire nation of Jews stated:
קִיְּמוּ וְקִבְּלוּ
“They undertook and they obligated themselves,” meaning that the original moment of coercion had finally given way to commandedness through personal conviction. This self-motivated proclamation of Kimu v’Kib’lu, the rabbis explain, immediately replaced the possible coerced statement of Na’ase v’Nishmah from this morning’s parasha.
Or to put it another way, the Jewish people, running after their God, shouted out….
“You know what, thank you for this Torah, thank you for its laws, thank you for its teachings, they are really great!” And God, turning around, smiles and says “You are very welcome.”
Shabbat Shalom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
