This Shabbas I want to ask a seemingly simply question: What is the most important quality we should be looking for in a Supreme Court Justice? If you ask the question to a pundit on FOX news the answer will undoubtedly be, we should be looking for someone who is a conservative, a strict constructionist not some liberal, activist judge who will legislate from the bench. Ask Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and she would be quick to point out that conservatives can be activist judges too! Therefore we should be looking for a justice with a penchant for progressivism, an understanding that the constitution is a living, breathing document, one that must constantly change with the times. Ask president Obama, as they did on the campaign trail, and you will get another response: The President said “we need somebody who's got…the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young, teenaged mom; the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges.” So which is it? Strict conservative constructionism, pious progressivism, or an empathetic heart and mind? What quality is most important in choosing our next Supreme Court justice?
Well, I have a different answer. Mine is simple. I believe that the most significant criterion for choosing our next justice is that this justice should be the first Supreme Cour Justice to have had a Bat Mitzvah in an Orthodox synagogue. And yes, I recognize that this criterion excludes the 49% of the population who are male, and the 97.8% of Americans who are not Jewish; but please allow me to explain why I feel it is so important that our next Justice be a Bat Mitzvah.
Some years ago as I sat in Rabbi Joel Roth’s course entitled Senior Codes, we spent countless hours poring over some of the most important Sh’elot u’T’shuvot, Rabbinic Legal Responsa ever written. In each class we read and analyzed a Rabbinic response aimed at determining the course of action which was seen as correct in the eyes of Halacha, Jewish Law, God’s desired path for humankind in this world. As Rabbi Roth adeptly explained, when you look at these T’shuvot carefully, you see how the great rabbinic judges rendered their decisions:
-Firstly, we see that the Torah is paramount to any posek, any judge of Halacha, and it must be considered with supreme respect.
-Secondly, since the Torah is not always clear about a given subject, nor can the Torah conceive of every possible scenario under the Sun, the Oral Torah, the laws of the Mishnah and the Talmud must also be consulted with extreme reverence.
-Finally, we must always look at the power of precedent. Whether it is the concept of Minhag Avoteinu B’Yadeinu, the notion that a tradition which was strictly adhered to by our ancestors becomes like a law for us today (hence this kippah that I am wearing), or simply the decision of any posek of past centuries, these cases of precedent must inform our modern responses to a question of Jewish Law.
And from all of this Rabbi Roth explained, two patterns emerge which can justify a wholesale change in the chain of Halachic precedent:
1. If the only expressed reason for the promulgation of a norm no longer obtains, the norm may be abrogated or modified. In other words, if the reason we used to do something is truly no longer relevant, then that something can indeed be changed to match current times.
Secondly, a change can be made if it is proven that:
2. The consequences of maintaining the norm are more detrimental than the consequences of modifying the law. This is of course the justification for the famous ‘Driving T’shuvah’ which argued that the consequence of maintaining the norm, namely people sitting in their suburban homes all alone on a Shabbat morning was indeed WORSE, than changing the law and permitting some to drive to synagogue.
So what does all this have to do with a Bat Mitzvah?
This brings me to a little known hamlet, tucked away in a small corner of America known as Manhattan, birthplace of our Solicitor General, and now Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.
As the New York Times reported on Thursday, Ms. Kagan and her family were members of the famous modern-Orthodox shul called Lincoln Square Synagogue. She was a star student in her Hebrew school and when she turned 12 she knew that she wanted to mark her coming of age in the eyes of a Jewish people in the same way as her male coreligionists did, with a ceremony known as the Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Her Rabbi at the time was the famous Shlomo Riskin, who remembers her passion at the time with regard to adapting the precedent of tradition to more closely match the tenor of the times. The only problem was, Rabbi Riskin had never even seen a Bat Mitzvah before, what would it look like?
After much deliberation it was determined that Ms. Kagan would become a Bat Mitzvah on Friday night, May 18th 1973, where she would read from the Book of Ruth, (appropriate for the season of Shavuot) and deliver a speech analyzing the meaning of this special megillah.
And so it was.
Yet I am sure you noticed that her Bat Mitzvah was on a Friday night and not on a Shabbat morning as Bar Mitzvahs tend to be; and I am sure you took note of the fact that she was not permitted to read from the Torah, but rather from the Book of Ruth, whose reading is simply a minhag, not a law in the truest sense of the word. But I believe you have to give Rabbi Riskin some credit for trying, even though sometimes trying is not enough: Rabbi Riskin later said of that night “We crafted a lovely service, but I don’t think it satisfied her completely.”
So what is the big Halachic deal with a Bat Mitzvah anyway, surely the Torah makes no mention of the institution of a Bar Mitzvah, let alone a Bat Mitzvah, so why wouldn’t it be allowed in the first place?
Well, once we exhaust the Torah on a given subject we turn to the Rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud, and indeed there, in a Tannaitic source found in Masechet Megillah 23a it reads:
הכל עולין למנין שבעה, ואפילו קטן ואפילו אשה. אבל אמרו חכמים: אשה לא תקרא בתורה, מפני כבוד צבור.
“All are allowed to be called up to read from the seven aliyot of the Torah readings, even a minor and even a woman. Although, the wise sages said: A woman is not permitted to read from the Torah because of K’vod Tzibbur, the Dignity of the Community.”
Hmmm. Interesting right? There are actually a lot of layers to this brief text.
Firstly, the Reisha, the first part clearly indicates that although you might not think a woman could be called up to read from the Torah, afilu isha, actually, she is!
Though no sooner is this said then a contradictory statement arises limiting the original. No, said the sages, a woman is indeed not allowed to read from the Torah.
Finally, the reason for this prohibition is given as “Mip’neyh K’vod Tzibbur,” for the sake of the dignity of the community.”
So now, I turn to our Supreme Court Nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and ask, Ms. Kagan, how would you decide? And I think, given her own life experience with this matter I can venture a guess as to her reply.
She would say: I would like to apply the first pattern of appropriate Halachic change to this situation and say that when the only expressed reason for the promulgation of a norm no longer obtains, the norm may be abrogated or modified. In this case the sages justified their prohibition invoking Mip’neyh K’vod Tzibbur, for the sake of the dignity of the community; and just as it is up to the Supreme Court to determine that ‘Separate but Equal’ was no longer a morally tenable justification for Southern segregation, so too our definitions of “The Dignity of our Community,” have no doubt changed. In fact, I believe it would impinge upon our Kavod, our honor, were we not to have changed this law.
Which brings us to Ms. Kagan’s second (assumed) answer, which would be to enact the second pattern of change claiming that change is necessary when “the consequences of maintaining the norm are more detrimental than the consequences of modifying the law.”
In other words, maintaining the ancient status quo would in fact be far more detrimental to our modern congregations than allowing for change. Imagine our own community without the women who attend and daven in our daily minyan, without the women who read our Torah and lead our prayers in this sanctuary, without the hundreds of young women who come before us to become Daughters of the Commandments….without this necessary change our community would be poorer indeed.
And so I return to my original claim that more important that strict constructionism, more crucial that a commitment to progressivism, more significant than an ability to empathize is the criterion that our next justice be a Bat Mitzvah. I pray that should she be confirmed, Ms. Kagan would learn from our great and wise tradition and understand that the Constitution is indeed sacred and lacking at the same time; that she would believe that the judges who preceded her and their wise precedent must be respected as well as scrutinized for modern relevance; and that she believe that while change should not be made without justification, when ample justification is found change must be made.
And finally, perhaps the most important reason why our next Supreme Court Justice should be a Bat Mitzvah, is so that an entirely new generation of young Jewish women can look up to her and say, I too can be Jewish and I too can become anything I wish to be.
Shabbat Shalom.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
A Case of Cosmic Strangefire: Parshat Sh'mini 5770
How much can you say in just three verses? If I told you to tell me a story of mystery and intrigue, replete with two tragic deaths and a silent parental response, in just three sentences, could you do it? Well that is exactly what this morning’s parasha, Sh’mini does for us.
Verse One:
וַיִּקְחוּ בְנֵֽי-אַֽהֲרֹן, נָדָב וַֽאֲבִיהוּא אִישׁ מַחְתָּתוֹ, וַיִּתְּנוּ בָהֵן אֵשׁ, וַיָּשִׂימוּ עָלֶיהָ קְטֹרֶת וַיַּקְרִיבוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹה אֵשׁ זָרָה, אֲשֶׁר לֹא צִוָּה אֹתָֽם:
“Now Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the Lord strange fire, which God had not commanded them to bring.”
Verse Two:
וַתֵּצֵא אֵשׁ מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָֹה, וַתֹּאכַל אוֹתָם, וַיָּמֻתוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹֽה:
“And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the Lord.”
And Verse Three:
וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶֽל-אַֽהֲרֹן, הוּא אֲשֶׁר- דִּבֶּר יְהוָֹה ׀ לֵאמֹר, בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל-פְּנֵי כָל-הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד, וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן:
“Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me, I show Myself as holy, and gain glory before all the people.”
And Aaron was silent.”
That’s it. Three verses. Blink and you might miss it; but the result is plain to see: Nadav and Avihu somehow offended God, and they paid the ultimate price for their transgression. Moses brings an inscrutable explanation of the event to Aaron; and Aaron offers no verbal response.
The Rabbinic authors of the classical midrash as well as the medieval commentators are both puzzled by the terse nature of the text. What was it that offended the Lord so? Why were Nadav and Avihu, two of the kohanim, people who were enjoined with the task of making offerings before the Lord, punished so severely? And finally, why in the face of this tragedy was their father, Aaron, the Kohen Gadol, silent.
Our sages offer several possibilities as to the question of the sin of Aaron’s sons. The most popular response comes from Rabi Eliezer in the Talmud (Masechet Eruvin 63a) who explains, that the true sin of Nadav and Avihu was not in the act of sacrificing itself, it was a crime of assumption. They took it upon themselves to teach a bit of practical halacha, and in front of their teacher Moses no less! They assumed that Eish Zara, an alien-fire that came from outside the Tent of Meeting would be suitable to the Lord; and they were, unfortunately very wrong. The Midrash, I believe is presenting two value statements: 1) Don’t assume. After all, you know what they say about assuming. 2) Don’t interpret your own laws while there is a Judge standing in the room, the result is never pretty.
Ok, so they assumed what they shouldn’t have, and they embarrassed their teacher Moshe; bad moves no doubt, but deserving of a fiery death? I hardly think so.
Apparently, others of the great rabbinic sages, agreed that there must have been a more egregious crime lurking behind these three verses. Rabi Yishmael says in Vayikra Rabbah, that Nadav and Avihu were drunk when they entered the Mishkan! How does he come to this conclusion? Simple. He reads ahead in the text to verse nine when it says:
יַיִן וְשֵׁכָר אַל-תֵּשְׁתְּ ׀ אַתָּה ׀ וּבָנֶיךָ אִתָּךְ בְּבֹֽאֲכֶם אֶל-אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וְלֹא תָמֻתוּ
“Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die!”
A pretty convincing argument actually: a good rule of thumb in the historical analysis of a society’s laws is that if there is a law against it – it means that people were breaking that law!
So perhaps this is it, Nadav and Avihu were drunk and therefore not fit to offer a serious gift before the Lord; and they died for their transgression. Though it still seems kind of harsh, no?
Moses’ explanation of God’s justification of their deaths is equally vague:
“This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me, I show Myself as holy, and gain glory before all the people.”
Barcuh Levine, in his commentary to Leviticus explains that the Hebrew word בִּקְרֹבַי
“Those who are near to me,” is to be understood as an expression of vocation, not as a literal nearness. He points out that in the Book of Esther for example, the word kerovim is used to denote those who were permitted to come before the king, members of his official inner circle. Therefore, Levine understands this justification as saying, those who serve me dutifully will be rewarded in kind, but those who flout my will, shall be punished.
Finally, a few thoughts on the surprising phrase which ends this incredible three-verse story:
וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן “And Aaron was silent.” As we know from our own lives, sometimes silence speaks louder than words. So what is meant by Aaron’s silent reaction to this tragic news? One thought which comes from the Rashbam, is that Aaron was speechless because of the depths of his aveilut, his mourning. Something today we might refer to as shock. There was no verbal response because Aaron was incapable of making a sound due to the unspeakable horror of this tragedy.
Another explanation, the one favored by Rashi, is that Aaron silently and wholeheartedly accepted God’s judgment upon his sons, and thus did not utter a single cry or complaint to the Lord.
Or perhaps Aaron’s response is not one of mourning, nor of superhuman acceptance; but rather one which recognizes the ineffable mystery that is God. Why does God do what God does? Our silence is sometimes the only answer to the unanswerable question of God.
Three verses! This is the Torah at its best. It has the ability to move us, to make us think, to open doors for midrash and commentary in each and every generation. And somehow, it always manages to be timely as well.
I am not sure whether you took notice or not, but during Pesach our world of science embarked upon a fascinating journey towards discovering the seemingly invisible parts of our universe. This journey, the result of 16 years of work and nearly 10 billion dollars, officially began on the Second Night of Passover when the Large Hadron Particle Collider was turned on under the meadows of Switzerland.
“After two false starts due to electrical failures, protons that were whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light … raced around a 17-mile underground magnetic track outside Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building-size detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe.”
What might all this proton smashing do? Well, by accelerating these protons to speeds which stretch towards the speed of light and smashing them together scientists are looking to discover the answers to some long held questions.
For instance, one of the things scientists hope to discover is how it is possible that the power of gravity can be so strong in some instances: for example we all know that gravity is so powerful it is what keeps the Earth, and all the other planets endlessly rotating around the sun, instead of flying off to the ends of the universe. On the other hand, if gravity is such an incredibly strong force, how is it possible that your tiny refrigerator magnet has the ability to overcome its cosmic will?
But most importantly, scientists are after discovering the long-sought existence of dark matter, “which, astronomers tell us, produces the gravity that holds galaxies and other cosmic structures together.” As well as the unveiling of the “missing link of physics, the Higgs Boson particle, also called ‘The God Particle” which is believed to be the particle that imbues our world with mass. In other words, the particle that produces that incredibly important phenomenon we call ‘existence.’
Perhaps I can chalk it up to being somewhat of a closeted ‘science geek,’ or perhaps it is my way of making amends for a life spent within the confines of the liberal arts, but I am into this stuff. Not so much for what it can tell me about a world of science that I can barely understand, but more for what it can tell me about God!
My God is the God of the Big Bang, the Ein Sof Creator, without-end, who set this ever-expanding universe into motion so very long ago. So you better believe I am curious to see what happened in the infinitesimal moments after the singularity of the Big Bang.
But you must also believe that I am worried. Not because, as some detractors have claimed, that the Particle Colider might actually create a black hole, which of course would be the end of all life on Earth. No, my worries are of a theological nature.
I wonder if the sin of Nadav and Avihu was that they committed the simple mistake of underestimating the mystery of God. They thought they knew the answers, they moved without sufficient forethought, they assumed they understood what God wanted from them. In other words, they sought to answer the unanswerable, to uncover all mystery and to explain the inexplicable.
Don’t get me wrong, I am an unabashed fan of science, and I hope that this new experiment will yield an even-deeper understanding of God’s and our universe. I hope we name new particles, begin to truly comprehend the myriad of microscopic forces around us, leading us on the path towards knowledge of the universe and our roles in it. But I am also interested in maintaining a modicum of mystery –
I want us as human beings to recognize that there remain worlds of knowledge yet to be discovered, questions that have yet to be asked, mysteries that may never be solved. For if indeed we are living in an age when all questions are to be answered, then I ask you my friends, “whatever will be left for God?”
Dennis Overbye: “European Collider Begins its Subatomic Exploration” New York Times, March 30, 2010
Ibid.
Daniel Harris Ain: “Faith, Technology and the Afterlife: The Death of Death in the 21st Century”. Conservative Judaism
Verse One:
וַיִּקְחוּ בְנֵֽי-אַֽהֲרֹן, נָדָב וַֽאֲבִיהוּא אִישׁ מַחְתָּתוֹ, וַיִּתְּנוּ בָהֵן אֵשׁ, וַיָּשִׂימוּ עָלֶיהָ קְטֹרֶת וַיַּקְרִיבוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹה אֵשׁ זָרָה, אֲשֶׁר לֹא צִוָּה אֹתָֽם:
“Now Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before the Lord strange fire, which God had not commanded them to bring.”
Verse Two:
וַתֵּצֵא אֵשׁ מִלִּפְנֵי יְהוָֹה, וַתֹּאכַל אוֹתָם, וַיָּמֻתוּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָֹֽה:
“And fire came forth from the Lord and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the Lord.”
And Verse Three:
וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶֽל-אַֽהֲרֹן, הוּא אֲשֶׁר- דִּבֶּר יְהוָֹה ׀ לֵאמֹר, בִּקְרֹבַי אֶקָּדֵשׁ וְעַל-פְּנֵי כָל-הָעָם אֶכָּבֵד, וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן:
“Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me, I show Myself as holy, and gain glory before all the people.”
And Aaron was silent.”
That’s it. Three verses. Blink and you might miss it; but the result is plain to see: Nadav and Avihu somehow offended God, and they paid the ultimate price for their transgression. Moses brings an inscrutable explanation of the event to Aaron; and Aaron offers no verbal response.
The Rabbinic authors of the classical midrash as well as the medieval commentators are both puzzled by the terse nature of the text. What was it that offended the Lord so? Why were Nadav and Avihu, two of the kohanim, people who were enjoined with the task of making offerings before the Lord, punished so severely? And finally, why in the face of this tragedy was their father, Aaron, the Kohen Gadol, silent.
Our sages offer several possibilities as to the question of the sin of Aaron’s sons. The most popular response comes from Rabi Eliezer in the Talmud (Masechet Eruvin 63a) who explains, that the true sin of Nadav and Avihu was not in the act of sacrificing itself, it was a crime of assumption. They took it upon themselves to teach a bit of practical halacha, and in front of their teacher Moses no less! They assumed that Eish Zara, an alien-fire that came from outside the Tent of Meeting would be suitable to the Lord; and they were, unfortunately very wrong. The Midrash, I believe is presenting two value statements: 1) Don’t assume. After all, you know what they say about assuming. 2) Don’t interpret your own laws while there is a Judge standing in the room, the result is never pretty.
Ok, so they assumed what they shouldn’t have, and they embarrassed their teacher Moshe; bad moves no doubt, but deserving of a fiery death? I hardly think so.
Apparently, others of the great rabbinic sages, agreed that there must have been a more egregious crime lurking behind these three verses. Rabi Yishmael says in Vayikra Rabbah, that Nadav and Avihu were drunk when they entered the Mishkan! How does he come to this conclusion? Simple. He reads ahead in the text to verse nine when it says:
יַיִן וְשֵׁכָר אַל-תֵּשְׁתְּ ׀ אַתָּה ׀ וּבָנֶיךָ אִתָּךְ בְּבֹֽאֲכֶם אֶל-אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וְלֹא תָמֻתוּ
“Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die!”
A pretty convincing argument actually: a good rule of thumb in the historical analysis of a society’s laws is that if there is a law against it – it means that people were breaking that law!
So perhaps this is it, Nadav and Avihu were drunk and therefore not fit to offer a serious gift before the Lord; and they died for their transgression. Though it still seems kind of harsh, no?
Moses’ explanation of God’s justification of their deaths is equally vague:
“This is what the Lord meant when He said: Through those near to Me, I show Myself as holy, and gain glory before all the people.”
Barcuh Levine, in his commentary to Leviticus explains that the Hebrew word בִּקְרֹבַי
“Those who are near to me,” is to be understood as an expression of vocation, not as a literal nearness. He points out that in the Book of Esther for example, the word kerovim is used to denote those who were permitted to come before the king, members of his official inner circle. Therefore, Levine understands this justification as saying, those who serve me dutifully will be rewarded in kind, but those who flout my will, shall be punished.
Finally, a few thoughts on the surprising phrase which ends this incredible three-verse story:
וַיִּדֹּם אַֽהֲרֹֽן “And Aaron was silent.” As we know from our own lives, sometimes silence speaks louder than words. So what is meant by Aaron’s silent reaction to this tragic news? One thought which comes from the Rashbam, is that Aaron was speechless because of the depths of his aveilut, his mourning. Something today we might refer to as shock. There was no verbal response because Aaron was incapable of making a sound due to the unspeakable horror of this tragedy.
Another explanation, the one favored by Rashi, is that Aaron silently and wholeheartedly accepted God’s judgment upon his sons, and thus did not utter a single cry or complaint to the Lord.
Or perhaps Aaron’s response is not one of mourning, nor of superhuman acceptance; but rather one which recognizes the ineffable mystery that is God. Why does God do what God does? Our silence is sometimes the only answer to the unanswerable question of God.
Three verses! This is the Torah at its best. It has the ability to move us, to make us think, to open doors for midrash and commentary in each and every generation. And somehow, it always manages to be timely as well.
I am not sure whether you took notice or not, but during Pesach our world of science embarked upon a fascinating journey towards discovering the seemingly invisible parts of our universe. This journey, the result of 16 years of work and nearly 10 billion dollars, officially began on the Second Night of Passover when the Large Hadron Particle Collider was turned on under the meadows of Switzerland.
“After two false starts due to electrical failures, protons that were whipped to more than 99 percent of the speed of light … raced around a 17-mile underground magnetic track outside Geneva a little after 1 p.m. local time. They crashed together inside apartment-building-size detectors designed to capture every evanescent flash and fragment from microscopic fireballs thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe.”
What might all this proton smashing do? Well, by accelerating these protons to speeds which stretch towards the speed of light and smashing them together scientists are looking to discover the answers to some long held questions.
For instance, one of the things scientists hope to discover is how it is possible that the power of gravity can be so strong in some instances: for example we all know that gravity is so powerful it is what keeps the Earth, and all the other planets endlessly rotating around the sun, instead of flying off to the ends of the universe. On the other hand, if gravity is such an incredibly strong force, how is it possible that your tiny refrigerator magnet has the ability to overcome its cosmic will?
But most importantly, scientists are after discovering the long-sought existence of dark matter, “which, astronomers tell us, produces the gravity that holds galaxies and other cosmic structures together.” As well as the unveiling of the “missing link of physics, the Higgs Boson particle, also called ‘The God Particle” which is believed to be the particle that imbues our world with mass. In other words, the particle that produces that incredibly important phenomenon we call ‘existence.’
Perhaps I can chalk it up to being somewhat of a closeted ‘science geek,’ or perhaps it is my way of making amends for a life spent within the confines of the liberal arts, but I am into this stuff. Not so much for what it can tell me about a world of science that I can barely understand, but more for what it can tell me about God!
My God is the God of the Big Bang, the Ein Sof Creator, without-end, who set this ever-expanding universe into motion so very long ago. So you better believe I am curious to see what happened in the infinitesimal moments after the singularity of the Big Bang.
But you must also believe that I am worried. Not because, as some detractors have claimed, that the Particle Colider might actually create a black hole, which of course would be the end of all life on Earth. No, my worries are of a theological nature.
I wonder if the sin of Nadav and Avihu was that they committed the simple mistake of underestimating the mystery of God. They thought they knew the answers, they moved without sufficient forethought, they assumed they understood what God wanted from them. In other words, they sought to answer the unanswerable, to uncover all mystery and to explain the inexplicable.
Don’t get me wrong, I am an unabashed fan of science, and I hope that this new experiment will yield an even-deeper understanding of God’s and our universe. I hope we name new particles, begin to truly comprehend the myriad of microscopic forces around us, leading us on the path towards knowledge of the universe and our roles in it. But I am also interested in maintaining a modicum of mystery –
I want us as human beings to recognize that there remain worlds of knowledge yet to be discovered, questions that have yet to be asked, mysteries that may never be solved. For if indeed we are living in an age when all questions are to be answered, then I ask you my friends, “whatever will be left for God?”
Dennis Overbye: “European Collider Begins its Subatomic Exploration” New York Times, March 30, 2010
Ibid.
Daniel Harris Ain: “Faith, Technology and the Afterlife: The Death of Death in the 21st Century”. Conservative Judaism
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Building a Mishkan: Paradigms for God Relationships from Sefer Shmot: Vayakhel-P’kudei
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.
-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.
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.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Art of Remembering: Parshat Bo 5770
We human beings are a forgetful folk.
No matter how hard we try, we are constantly forgetting things. Often they are relatively small things, an email we needed to respond to, an errand we needed to run or a phone call to a friend we meant to make. But sometimes, they are important things, like your mother’s birthday, or that it was your turn to pick the kids up from school, or even your anniversary. No matter what we try, inevitably we end up forgetting something along the way.
Throughout the years, there have been many different attempts at solving the human predilection for forgetting. For example, there is the common tradition of tying a string around your finger as a reminder of something important; but lately this has become impractical. After all, how many of us always have a little piece of string at the ready to tie around our finger at a moment’s notice? Furthermore, even though a string may serve as a good reminder to do something, what it doesn’t do is remind us what exactly we needed to do. This could lead to a series of strings tied to a series of fingers each reminding us what the previous string was supposed to indicate!
I once heard of another clever approach to prevent this ancient practice of forgetting; this one suggests that whenever we have a moment of remembering and need to ensure that we will not forget, we should place a shoe on the toilet seat. This way, the next morning, when we see this shoe oddly out of place, it will jog our memory and we will no doubt succeed in remembering the task at hand. But this approach is also fatally flawed. First off, there is rarely an easy-to-find shoe in my bathroom, and even if there was, due to my absent-mindedness I could easily imagine a situation when I would spend fifteen minutes the next morning searching for my missing shoe!
Finally, there are now technological innovations which can help us to remember when our human frailties urge us to forget. I am constantly scheduling reminders in my phone, which will then beep or vibrate, revealing a detailed message of the task that is at hand. The trouble is that sometimes the phone is in the other room, and occasionally I will say to myself: “yeah, well that one can wait a bit,” and there is no procrastination feature which automatically sets a new reminder.
Nowadays there are even popular email services which will send you a friendly reminder message in your inbox, telling you that today is mom’s birthday; though it won’t make the phone call for you!
There must be literally thousands of ways we have invented to try and remind ourselves of things, but no matter what we do, sometimes we still end up forgetting. I guess it must be built into our DNA; we human beings have become professional forgetters.
But don’t feel bad! Sometimes it is nice to remind ourselves that we are not alone, people have always been this way. How do we know? Simple, because it is in today’s Torah portion.
In this morning’s Torah portion, Parshat Bo, we learn of the origin of one of the world’s most ancient anti-forgetting device, otherwise known as t’fillin.
As the Children of Israel make their hurried way out of Egypt, they are told in no uncertain terms that when they arrive at their fated destination in the Holy Land, they must do everything in their power to remember that God took them out with a strong arm and an outstretched hand. The Torah informs them, and through them, it informs us, that in each and every generation we are to commemorate the Exodus with a festival for God. And in each and every age we are told that we must teach this to our children, and say to them “It is because of what the Lord did for me, when I came out of Egypt!”
But then, in what seems to be somewhat of a non-sequitur we are told:
וְהָיָה לְךָ לְאוֹת עַל-יָֽדְךָ וּלְזִכָּרוֹן בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ לְמַעַן תִּֽהְיֶה תּוֹרַת יְהוָֹה בְּפִיךָ כִּי בְּיָד חֲזָקָה הוֹצִֽאֲךָ יְהוָֹה מִמִּצְרָֽיִם:
“And it shall be for you as a sign upon your hand, and as a reminder between your eyes, in order that the teachings of the LORD shall always be in your mouth, for it was with a strong hand that the LORD took you out of Egypt.”
What is clear from this verse is the sense that the experience of leaving Egypt is so paramount to our people that we must do everything in out power to ensure that we do not forget; that despite our distance in both time and space from this event, we nonetheless must try to see ourselves as though we were the ones who left Egypt. But what is unclear is whether or not the Torah is being literal or metaphorical. Are we literally supposed to wear a sign upon our arms and between our eyes at all times in order that we not forget, or perhaps, the Torah using a linguistic tool which really means: keep this story close to you, wear it on your hearts, and keep its message before your eyes always.
It should not surprise us to learn that the rabbis and the commentators spent a lot of their time discussing this very issue! The famous medieval commentator Rashi explains that this verse is specifically telling us to write down these verses on tiny pieces of parchment in order that we should bind them to our head and upon our arm. For Rashi, this is the source of the rabbinic ritual of t’fillin, two boxes, one to be worn on the head, one to be worn on the arm, each containing a series of parshiyot, sections, from our Torah which refer to this concept of literally wearing a reminder of God’s majesty upon our bodies.
However, the Rashbam, Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, Rashi’s grandson clearly disagrees with the interpretation of his grandfather on the true intent of this verse. (Clearly, even Rashi is not immune to the complications of family conflict.) For the Rashbam, the p’shat, or the plain meaning of the text is clear! He writes:
‘According to the true intent of the verse, it teaches us that we should constantly try to remember the Exodus, k’ilu, as though it were always written upon our hand. And when it says, we should wear it between our eyes, what it really means is that God’s special relationship with us should be like a piece of jewelry we wear on our foreheads, making us beautiful.’
So which is it? Is the verse trying to tell us that we should literally wear these verses on our person at all times, or is it meant as a spiritual metaphor encouraging us to never forget what God did for our people in Egypt?
Well, in what no doubt is a strange coincidence of history, generations before our medieval commentators, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud clearly decided to go the route of the string tied around the finger. In so doing, they created t’fillin: the ritual of encapsulating small pieces of parchment into two leather boxes and then wearing these boxes between our eyes, and upon our arm, closest to our hearts.
For us as modern Jews however, this ancient ritual of t’fillin can sometimes be difficult for us to connect with. For some it is a clear example of the comically-literal nature of the rabbis, and therefore something that no longer holds meaning in our more refined world. For others it is just plain strange; a ritual which awakens in us that most uncomfortable feeling of ‘otherness’, making us feel strangely foreign in our beloved, melting-pot society.
In fact a timely example of this sense of ‘otherness’ that t’fillin can cause in our modern world came across the newswire on Thursday, when it was reported that a plane on its way from New York to Kentucky was diverted to Philadelphia due to a terrorist scare. What was the suspicious incident which caused this diversion: A seventeen year old boy was putting on his t’fillin to pray the morning prayers. No wonder some of us may be hesitant to lay t’fillin, it is seen by others as so foreign and so unusual to warrant suspicion, or worse, even arrest!
But for others, myself included, there are incredible spiritual benefits for fulfilling this ancient mitzvah. There is a special moment for me each morning when I say the Sh’ma while wearing my t’fillin. It is a moment of consciousness. It is the sense of being in the moment; the feeling of perfect precision, when we find ourselves engaged in the very ritual our liturgy is describing. For others of us the meaning of the mitzvah of T’fillin comes from the sense of enwrapping ourselves in the text, in our community, in God’s sheltering presence. For many of us, we can’t help but pause and feel that stunning sense of nostalgia each time we wear the very same pair of t’fillin that our fathers and our grandfather’s wore…(and in another generation of time) that our mother’s wore.
And so finally, I want to conclude by returning to the perpetual problem of forgetting. It’s true; we human beings are a forgetful folk. Despite our best intentions we try and we fail to remember things; big and small. But one of the functions of religion in general, and of the Jewish commandments in particular is to be a string tied around the finger of our spiritual selves. T’fillin are meant to be a daily email sent to your inbox reminding you to remember to live a holy life, to try and emulate God’s ways, to not forget what is truly important. Although they may seem a bit strange, and these days could even be the cause of an emergency landing, they are meant to wake us up from our spiritual slumber, to enlighten us to the possibility of living a life with purpose. In a world filled with professional forgetters, wouldn’t you want to be counted among those who practice the ancient art of remembering?
Shabbat Shalom.
No matter how hard we try, we are constantly forgetting things. Often they are relatively small things, an email we needed to respond to, an errand we needed to run or a phone call to a friend we meant to make. But sometimes, they are important things, like your mother’s birthday, or that it was your turn to pick the kids up from school, or even your anniversary. No matter what we try, inevitably we end up forgetting something along the way.
Throughout the years, there have been many different attempts at solving the human predilection for forgetting. For example, there is the common tradition of tying a string around your finger as a reminder of something important; but lately this has become impractical. After all, how many of us always have a little piece of string at the ready to tie around our finger at a moment’s notice? Furthermore, even though a string may serve as a good reminder to do something, what it doesn’t do is remind us what exactly we needed to do. This could lead to a series of strings tied to a series of fingers each reminding us what the previous string was supposed to indicate!
I once heard of another clever approach to prevent this ancient practice of forgetting; this one suggests that whenever we have a moment of remembering and need to ensure that we will not forget, we should place a shoe on the toilet seat. This way, the next morning, when we see this shoe oddly out of place, it will jog our memory and we will no doubt succeed in remembering the task at hand. But this approach is also fatally flawed. First off, there is rarely an easy-to-find shoe in my bathroom, and even if there was, due to my absent-mindedness I could easily imagine a situation when I would spend fifteen minutes the next morning searching for my missing shoe!
Finally, there are now technological innovations which can help us to remember when our human frailties urge us to forget. I am constantly scheduling reminders in my phone, which will then beep or vibrate, revealing a detailed message of the task that is at hand. The trouble is that sometimes the phone is in the other room, and occasionally I will say to myself: “yeah, well that one can wait a bit,” and there is no procrastination feature which automatically sets a new reminder.
Nowadays there are even popular email services which will send you a friendly reminder message in your inbox, telling you that today is mom’s birthday; though it won’t make the phone call for you!
There must be literally thousands of ways we have invented to try and remind ourselves of things, but no matter what we do, sometimes we still end up forgetting. I guess it must be built into our DNA; we human beings have become professional forgetters.
But don’t feel bad! Sometimes it is nice to remind ourselves that we are not alone, people have always been this way. How do we know? Simple, because it is in today’s Torah portion.
In this morning’s Torah portion, Parshat Bo, we learn of the origin of one of the world’s most ancient anti-forgetting device, otherwise known as t’fillin.
As the Children of Israel make their hurried way out of Egypt, they are told in no uncertain terms that when they arrive at their fated destination in the Holy Land, they must do everything in their power to remember that God took them out with a strong arm and an outstretched hand. The Torah informs them, and through them, it informs us, that in each and every generation we are to commemorate the Exodus with a festival for God. And in each and every age we are told that we must teach this to our children, and say to them “It is because of what the Lord did for me, when I came out of Egypt!”
But then, in what seems to be somewhat of a non-sequitur we are told:
וְהָיָה לְךָ לְאוֹת עַל-יָֽדְךָ וּלְזִכָּרוֹן בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ לְמַעַן תִּֽהְיֶה תּוֹרַת יְהוָֹה בְּפִיךָ כִּי בְּיָד חֲזָקָה הוֹצִֽאֲךָ יְהוָֹה מִמִּצְרָֽיִם:
“And it shall be for you as a sign upon your hand, and as a reminder between your eyes, in order that the teachings of the LORD shall always be in your mouth, for it was with a strong hand that the LORD took you out of Egypt.”
What is clear from this verse is the sense that the experience of leaving Egypt is so paramount to our people that we must do everything in out power to ensure that we do not forget; that despite our distance in both time and space from this event, we nonetheless must try to see ourselves as though we were the ones who left Egypt. But what is unclear is whether or not the Torah is being literal or metaphorical. Are we literally supposed to wear a sign upon our arms and between our eyes at all times in order that we not forget, or perhaps, the Torah using a linguistic tool which really means: keep this story close to you, wear it on your hearts, and keep its message before your eyes always.
It should not surprise us to learn that the rabbis and the commentators spent a lot of their time discussing this very issue! The famous medieval commentator Rashi explains that this verse is specifically telling us to write down these verses on tiny pieces of parchment in order that we should bind them to our head and upon our arm. For Rashi, this is the source of the rabbinic ritual of t’fillin, two boxes, one to be worn on the head, one to be worn on the arm, each containing a series of parshiyot, sections, from our Torah which refer to this concept of literally wearing a reminder of God’s majesty upon our bodies.
However, the Rashbam, Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, Rashi’s grandson clearly disagrees with the interpretation of his grandfather on the true intent of this verse. (Clearly, even Rashi is not immune to the complications of family conflict.) For the Rashbam, the p’shat, or the plain meaning of the text is clear! He writes:
‘According to the true intent of the verse, it teaches us that we should constantly try to remember the Exodus, k’ilu, as though it were always written upon our hand. And when it says, we should wear it between our eyes, what it really means is that God’s special relationship with us should be like a piece of jewelry we wear on our foreheads, making us beautiful.’
So which is it? Is the verse trying to tell us that we should literally wear these verses on our person at all times, or is it meant as a spiritual metaphor encouraging us to never forget what God did for our people in Egypt?
Well, in what no doubt is a strange coincidence of history, generations before our medieval commentators, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud clearly decided to go the route of the string tied around the finger. In so doing, they created t’fillin: the ritual of encapsulating small pieces of parchment into two leather boxes and then wearing these boxes between our eyes, and upon our arm, closest to our hearts.
For us as modern Jews however, this ancient ritual of t’fillin can sometimes be difficult for us to connect with. For some it is a clear example of the comically-literal nature of the rabbis, and therefore something that no longer holds meaning in our more refined world. For others it is just plain strange; a ritual which awakens in us that most uncomfortable feeling of ‘otherness’, making us feel strangely foreign in our beloved, melting-pot society.
In fact a timely example of this sense of ‘otherness’ that t’fillin can cause in our modern world came across the newswire on Thursday, when it was reported that a plane on its way from New York to Kentucky was diverted to Philadelphia due to a terrorist scare. What was the suspicious incident which caused this diversion: A seventeen year old boy was putting on his t’fillin to pray the morning prayers. No wonder some of us may be hesitant to lay t’fillin, it is seen by others as so foreign and so unusual to warrant suspicion, or worse, even arrest!
But for others, myself included, there are incredible spiritual benefits for fulfilling this ancient mitzvah. There is a special moment for me each morning when I say the Sh’ma while wearing my t’fillin. It is a moment of consciousness. It is the sense of being in the moment; the feeling of perfect precision, when we find ourselves engaged in the very ritual our liturgy is describing. For others of us the meaning of the mitzvah of T’fillin comes from the sense of enwrapping ourselves in the text, in our community, in God’s sheltering presence. For many of us, we can’t help but pause and feel that stunning sense of nostalgia each time we wear the very same pair of t’fillin that our fathers and our grandfather’s wore…(and in another generation of time) that our mother’s wore.
And so finally, I want to conclude by returning to the perpetual problem of forgetting. It’s true; we human beings are a forgetful folk. Despite our best intentions we try and we fail to remember things; big and small. But one of the functions of religion in general, and of the Jewish commandments in particular is to be a string tied around the finger of our spiritual selves. T’fillin are meant to be a daily email sent to your inbox reminding you to remember to live a holy life, to try and emulate God’s ways, to not forget what is truly important. Although they may seem a bit strange, and these days could even be the cause of an emergency landing, they are meant to wake us up from our spiritual slumber, to enlighten us to the possibility of living a life with purpose. In a world filled with professional forgetters, wouldn’t you want to be counted among those who practice the ancient art of remembering?
Shabbat Shalom.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Looking for a Little Rebellion: Vayeitze 5770
Sometimes the best history is made through courageous acts of religious rebellion.
This thought occurred to me on Thursday evening, as my stomach worked overtime digesting a festive meal of turkey, stuffing and cranberries. I said to myself, ‘Gee, you know, none of this would of happened if certain people wouldn’t have been willing to risk it all for the sake of religious rebellion. That’s right, those blessed Puritans, those loveable religious fundamentalists who left blasphemous England in search of new shores, a land where they would be free to persecute anyone who did not think or worship like them.
Then, of course came the great Roger Williams, founder of our great state. Who broke off from those original rebels to create a religious rebellion of his own: one called tolerance; a gift from which we continue to benefit in this fair state and in this wonderful country.
Yes that’s right, a little religious rebellion can really go a long way. Whether it was Martin Luther hammering home his edict on the Church door in Worms, or Baruch Spinoza who decided that excommunication was preferable to religious inauthenticity; the truth is plain: sometimes the best history can be made by behaving badly.
This morning’s Torah Portion VaYeitze contains a brief moment of religious rebellion, but one that certainly resonates today, especially given the events of the past week.
As Ya’akov Aveinu, Jacob our forefather, begins to prepare his flight from the house of Lavan, he hurries to gather his family and possessions before leaving under the cover of night. As Jacob, Leah and Rachel gather their things; Rachel decides to commit one small act of religious rebellion by stealing her father’s idols.
Now I know that this may not seem like a big deal to us now, but let us pause to appreciate what a great act of religious rebellion that Rachel was committing. Our foremother Rachel believed so strongly in the sinful nature of idol worship that she was willing to steal from her own father in order to rid his home of this impiety. By doing so, she anachronistically transgresses two of the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Commandments: that of Kibbud Av V’Em, Honor your Mother and Father; and Lo Tignov, Thou shall not steal. But for Rachel, this test of competing Jewish values: the value of worshipping the one true God, versus the value of honoring her father and his possessions was a Biblical no-brainer. I’ll chose monotheism, thank you very much. You see, Rachel knew this lesson even then: when you believe in something so strongly, when you are certain that what you are fighting for is right, moral and desired in the eyes of Heaven, then you must be willing to commit small acts of rebellion in the name of your convictions.
Unfortunately, this past week contained a story representative of a small act of religious rebellion which I fear represents a great breaking-point among the Jewish people. On November 18th, at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a woman named Nofrat Frenkel was arrested for violating the Law of a Jewish Holy Place. Her crime was wearing a Tallit.
She describes the events that transpired as follows:
“Every morning, since I was 15, I have worn a tallit for morning prayers in my home. During my army service, I was forced to swallow many negative comments by other soldiers who prayed in the army synagogues… After leaving the army, I began to visit the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh. The atmosphere at the Kotel, the feeling that all those women praying around me were also turning to God and pouring out their hearts, inspires me with the joy of Jewish peoplehood. Here is one place in which, shoulder to shoulder, all hearts are calling to God.
The response of the “righteous women of the Kotel” to my donning a tallit never delayed in coming: Curses in Hebrew and Yiddish, venomous treatment toward me and my tallit, and speculation regarding my gender and religion: “A man in the women’s section!” “He’s not even Jewish!” “Perhaps she’s dressed up for Purim?”
One Rosh Hodesh, when I had finished my prayers and was making my way out from the prayer area, I suddenly saw a group of tallit-wearing women standing and praying together. It was my first meeting with the Women of the Wall: ¬ Conservative, Reform and Orthodox women who have been meeting to pray together every Rosh Hodesh over the past 21 years. I immediately felt that my place was with them.
The morning of Rosh Hodesh Kislev, November 18, [2009] was a cold Jerusalem morning. We stood, 42 Women of the Wall, and prayed in the women’s section. Our tallitot were hidden under our coats; the sefer Torah was in its regular bag. There was no booing, no pushing, no shouting. We were surprised that our service passed off without any disturbance, and we thought that, perhaps, they had already become accustomed to our presence and that we could even read from the Torah, opposite the stones of the Kotel. Then, just moments after we had removed the sefer Torah from its bag, two men entered the women’s section and began abusing us. All we wanted was to conclude our prayers in peace, so we decided to forgo the Torah reading there and go, as on every other Rosh Hodesh, to read the Torah at the alternative site [at the Southern Wall]. As we were exiting with the Torah, a policeman met us and began forcefully pushing me toward the nearby police station. I was transferred for questioning to the station at David’s Citadel. All I had on me was my tallit, my siddur and a sefer Torah.
In my interrogation, I was asked why I was praying with a tallit when I knew that this was against the Law of the Holy Places. [but I could not] allow my basic right to freedom of religious worship to be trampled because of a court ruling given years ago.
The Kotel belongs to all the people of Israel. The Kotel is not a Haredi synagogue, and the Women of the Wall will not allow it to become such.
Jerusalem is the city of holiness and justice for all humankind. From Zion, the voice calling for equality should be heard, for boundless love, for better understanding between people. Jerusalem has already been destroyed, due to Sinat Hinam, unfounded hatred. Let us hope it will not happen again.”
Powerful words for us to contemplate together this morning. So how exactly should we classify Nofrat Frenkel’s act of wearing a tallit at the Western Wall? Should we applaud her for her courage to stand up for her religious convictions, or should we label her as a provocateur, aiming to outrage the religious right with her behavior. Furthermore, couldn’t she and the rest of the Women of the Wall simply make it a point to only daven at the Southern Wall complex, a place that was specifically set aside for progressive Judaism to have a home for egalitarian prayer services. Since we already have a space set aside for us, does it really further our aim to risk public harassment from the Orthdodox and arrest from the police simply to make our point?
My own personal answer to this question is yes, and I will tell you why. I worry that the Kotel, the Western Wall, the last remaining remnant of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem no longer belongs to the Jewish people as a whole. Instead, this wall, the Jewish people’s holiest site, belongs solely to the Ultra-Orthodox, or to those who are willing to play by their rules. This is why in recent months there was a scandal when some of the meaningful tekesim, Army ceremonies, which have taken place at the Kotel for generations, have now been relocated, after the Kotel’s chief rabbi proclaimed that the men and women who gathered there to celebrate their children becoming soldiers, would have to agree to sit separately from one another. Yes, the sad case is, that the Kotel, the place that felt so comfortable to me when I first reached out to touch hose stones as a child, has now become a synagogue for the ultra-Orthodox, instead of a home for the entire Jewish people.
There is a Hebrew phrase which I think reflects a very powerful Jewish concept. The phrase is Klal Yisrael, Collective Judaism, and this term denotes that we share a single Jewish destiny, regardless of our differences. I hear this phrase very often, usually in the context of a Judaism that is growing tired of denominationalism, fragmentation and ideological boundaries which separate Jew from Jew. But I want to sound a call of warning here this morning: the concept of Klal Yisrael will die a regrettable death if it does not come to mean a type of tolerance that works in both directions, to the right and to the left. If Klal Yisrael means that we as progressive Jews have a home in Jerusalem only at the Southern Wall, then our children will not know what it means to feel the incredible exhilaration that comes with a sense of united peoplehood.
A final thought: When Eliana and I first visited this wonderful shul nearly two years ago, we paid close attention on Shabbat morning to something important to us. We were counting the number of women who choose to wear tallitot. For both of us, but for Eliana in particular this was a telling indicator, it gave her a sense of the Jewish community she was entering as a woman, and needless to say, we were very pleased with what we found. Now that we have a daughter, it is not difficult to imagine the emotion of the day when she first wears her tallit, taking her place along the continuum of the Jewish people. I can only pray, that the first time she visits Israel as a Bat Mitzvah, she will know the incredible joy of wearing her tallit, wrapping herself in her history, and reaching out to touch those ancient stones which have absorbed the hopes, the prayers and the tears of the Jewish people for millennia. This prayer is a prayer for Klal Yisrael, for the entirety of the Jewish people.
And let us say: Amen.
This thought occurred to me on Thursday evening, as my stomach worked overtime digesting a festive meal of turkey, stuffing and cranberries. I said to myself, ‘Gee, you know, none of this would of happened if certain people wouldn’t have been willing to risk it all for the sake of religious rebellion. That’s right, those blessed Puritans, those loveable religious fundamentalists who left blasphemous England in search of new shores, a land where they would be free to persecute anyone who did not think or worship like them.
Then, of course came the great Roger Williams, founder of our great state. Who broke off from those original rebels to create a religious rebellion of his own: one called tolerance; a gift from which we continue to benefit in this fair state and in this wonderful country.
Yes that’s right, a little religious rebellion can really go a long way. Whether it was Martin Luther hammering home his edict on the Church door in Worms, or Baruch Spinoza who decided that excommunication was preferable to religious inauthenticity; the truth is plain: sometimes the best history can be made by behaving badly.
This morning’s Torah Portion VaYeitze contains a brief moment of religious rebellion, but one that certainly resonates today, especially given the events of the past week.
As Ya’akov Aveinu, Jacob our forefather, begins to prepare his flight from the house of Lavan, he hurries to gather his family and possessions before leaving under the cover of night. As Jacob, Leah and Rachel gather their things; Rachel decides to commit one small act of religious rebellion by stealing her father’s idols.
Now I know that this may not seem like a big deal to us now, but let us pause to appreciate what a great act of religious rebellion that Rachel was committing. Our foremother Rachel believed so strongly in the sinful nature of idol worship that she was willing to steal from her own father in order to rid his home of this impiety. By doing so, she anachronistically transgresses two of the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Commandments: that of Kibbud Av V’Em, Honor your Mother and Father; and Lo Tignov, Thou shall not steal. But for Rachel, this test of competing Jewish values: the value of worshipping the one true God, versus the value of honoring her father and his possessions was a Biblical no-brainer. I’ll chose monotheism, thank you very much. You see, Rachel knew this lesson even then: when you believe in something so strongly, when you are certain that what you are fighting for is right, moral and desired in the eyes of Heaven, then you must be willing to commit small acts of rebellion in the name of your convictions.
Unfortunately, this past week contained a story representative of a small act of religious rebellion which I fear represents a great breaking-point among the Jewish people. On November 18th, at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a woman named Nofrat Frenkel was arrested for violating the Law of a Jewish Holy Place. Her crime was wearing a Tallit.
She describes the events that transpired as follows:
“Every morning, since I was 15, I have worn a tallit for morning prayers in my home. During my army service, I was forced to swallow many negative comments by other soldiers who prayed in the army synagogues… After leaving the army, I began to visit the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh. The atmosphere at the Kotel, the feeling that all those women praying around me were also turning to God and pouring out their hearts, inspires me with the joy of Jewish peoplehood. Here is one place in which, shoulder to shoulder, all hearts are calling to God.
The response of the “righteous women of the Kotel” to my donning a tallit never delayed in coming: Curses in Hebrew and Yiddish, venomous treatment toward me and my tallit, and speculation regarding my gender and religion: “A man in the women’s section!” “He’s not even Jewish!” “Perhaps she’s dressed up for Purim?”
One Rosh Hodesh, when I had finished my prayers and was making my way out from the prayer area, I suddenly saw a group of tallit-wearing women standing and praying together. It was my first meeting with the Women of the Wall: ¬ Conservative, Reform and Orthodox women who have been meeting to pray together every Rosh Hodesh over the past 21 years. I immediately felt that my place was with them.
The morning of Rosh Hodesh Kislev, November 18, [2009] was a cold Jerusalem morning. We stood, 42 Women of the Wall, and prayed in the women’s section. Our tallitot were hidden under our coats; the sefer Torah was in its regular bag. There was no booing, no pushing, no shouting. We were surprised that our service passed off without any disturbance, and we thought that, perhaps, they had already become accustomed to our presence and that we could even read from the Torah, opposite the stones of the Kotel. Then, just moments after we had removed the sefer Torah from its bag, two men entered the women’s section and began abusing us. All we wanted was to conclude our prayers in peace, so we decided to forgo the Torah reading there and go, as on every other Rosh Hodesh, to read the Torah at the alternative site [at the Southern Wall]. As we were exiting with the Torah, a policeman met us and began forcefully pushing me toward the nearby police station. I was transferred for questioning to the station at David’s Citadel. All I had on me was my tallit, my siddur and a sefer Torah.
In my interrogation, I was asked why I was praying with a tallit when I knew that this was against the Law of the Holy Places. [but I could not] allow my basic right to freedom of religious worship to be trampled because of a court ruling given years ago.
The Kotel belongs to all the people of Israel. The Kotel is not a Haredi synagogue, and the Women of the Wall will not allow it to become such.
Jerusalem is the city of holiness and justice for all humankind. From Zion, the voice calling for equality should be heard, for boundless love, for better understanding between people. Jerusalem has already been destroyed, due to Sinat Hinam, unfounded hatred. Let us hope it will not happen again.”
Powerful words for us to contemplate together this morning. So how exactly should we classify Nofrat Frenkel’s act of wearing a tallit at the Western Wall? Should we applaud her for her courage to stand up for her religious convictions, or should we label her as a provocateur, aiming to outrage the religious right with her behavior. Furthermore, couldn’t she and the rest of the Women of the Wall simply make it a point to only daven at the Southern Wall complex, a place that was specifically set aside for progressive Judaism to have a home for egalitarian prayer services. Since we already have a space set aside for us, does it really further our aim to risk public harassment from the Orthdodox and arrest from the police simply to make our point?
My own personal answer to this question is yes, and I will tell you why. I worry that the Kotel, the Western Wall, the last remaining remnant of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem no longer belongs to the Jewish people as a whole. Instead, this wall, the Jewish people’s holiest site, belongs solely to the Ultra-Orthodox, or to those who are willing to play by their rules. This is why in recent months there was a scandal when some of the meaningful tekesim, Army ceremonies, which have taken place at the Kotel for generations, have now been relocated, after the Kotel’s chief rabbi proclaimed that the men and women who gathered there to celebrate their children becoming soldiers, would have to agree to sit separately from one another. Yes, the sad case is, that the Kotel, the place that felt so comfortable to me when I first reached out to touch hose stones as a child, has now become a synagogue for the ultra-Orthodox, instead of a home for the entire Jewish people.
There is a Hebrew phrase which I think reflects a very powerful Jewish concept. The phrase is Klal Yisrael, Collective Judaism, and this term denotes that we share a single Jewish destiny, regardless of our differences. I hear this phrase very often, usually in the context of a Judaism that is growing tired of denominationalism, fragmentation and ideological boundaries which separate Jew from Jew. But I want to sound a call of warning here this morning: the concept of Klal Yisrael will die a regrettable death if it does not come to mean a type of tolerance that works in both directions, to the right and to the left. If Klal Yisrael means that we as progressive Jews have a home in Jerusalem only at the Southern Wall, then our children will not know what it means to feel the incredible exhilaration that comes with a sense of united peoplehood.
A final thought: When Eliana and I first visited this wonderful shul nearly two years ago, we paid close attention on Shabbat morning to something important to us. We were counting the number of women who choose to wear tallitot. For both of us, but for Eliana in particular this was a telling indicator, it gave her a sense of the Jewish community she was entering as a woman, and needless to say, we were very pleased with what we found. Now that we have a daughter, it is not difficult to imagine the emotion of the day when she first wears her tallit, taking her place along the continuum of the Jewish people. I can only pray, that the first time she visits Israel as a Bat Mitzvah, she will know the incredible joy of wearing her tallit, wrapping herself in her history, and reaching out to touch those ancient stones which have absorbed the hopes, the prayers and the tears of the Jewish people for millennia. This prayer is a prayer for Klal Yisrael, for the entirety of the Jewish people.
And let us say: Amen.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Listening to the Corn Grow: Parashat Hayyei Sarah 5770
A friend of mine who is an avid hiker once told me the following story. He was out hiking the famous Appalachian Trail, keeping a brisk pace through the flat cornfields of central Pennsylvania, when he happened upon an unusual sight.
He saw a young man, a fellow hiker, sitting in silence on the side of the trail, staring at the corn. My friend took caution while approaching this man: was he asleep, was he eating, was he hurt, was he crazy? As he grew closer to this corn-gazer, he got a better look at what the young man was doing. He was sitting there in complete silence, eyes closed, facing this field of corn.
My friend made certain to make some noise while approaching, so that he would not startle this man, so with a few well-timed coughs, the silent young man paused and looked up to notice his fellow traveler.
“Everything ok?” my friend asked.
“Absolutely.” said the stranger.
“Do you mind,” my friend hesitated, “if I ask you what
you’re doing sitting on the side of the trail all alone.”
“Not at all friend,” said the stranger, “and I am most certainly
not alone. You see I was just walking along the trail until I
realized that I wasn’t paying attention to the world around
me. So, I decided to stop my hike for a while, find a
comfortable spot and simply listen to the corn grow.”
“Listen to the corn grow?” asked my friend, “And….so….do
you hear it?”
“Oh yes,” said the stranger, “The corn has so much to teach
us.”
Ok, let’s try to unpack this story. I would be willing to make a wager that many here among us, perhaps most here among us would feel confident in saying that this young man was crazy, missing a screw, off his rocker; and maybe you would be right! After all, you do meet some interesting types out on the trail, people we would rush to classify as ‘crunchy, granola, hippie types,’ slightly detached from reality.
But others among us might also be willing to admit a certain level of jealousy when hearing this story. Jealous of his connection to the world around him, his willingness to try and see past convention and dig deeper into life, his desire to keep himself open to the possibility of being “Radically Amazed,” as the philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel calls it; the feeling of being utterly overwhelmed by the “inconceivable surprise of living.”
In fact, if this young man had been Jewish, and if he had been living in 18th century Eastern Europe, we would likely have a very different label to place upon him: we would probably call him a Hasid. Hasidut was a brand of radical Judaism which developed from the teachings of one rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, also known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. The Ba’al Shem Tov had a reputation as a tzaddik, a pure and righteous man, a faith healer, a story-teller and one who could commune with the Divine through moments of intense prayer. One of the spiritual practices of Hasidut is known as Hitbod’dut, which can best be translated as the powerful potential of being alone, which encourages Hasidim to find some time to be alone; alone with your thoughts, alone with nature and alone with the Holy One. In the light of Hasidic Judaism, all of a sudden this young man who was listening to the corn grow, may not seem so strange after all.
The Ba’al Shem Tov’s closest disciple was a man called Dov Bear, who was better known as the Maggid of Mezerich. A story is told that when the Maggid of Mezrich died, his students discussed one of his more confusing practices: each morning the Rebbe would awake in order to walk alone down by the edge of the lake. Why did he do this his students wondered? Why was he not davening in the minyan with his students each morning, why did the power of his prayer increase with solitude and not with community? The story concludes with a simple answer: The Maggid of Mezrich walked down by the lake each morning because he was trying to learn the song of the frog. He believed that in the simple song of the frog, pure prayer could be found. Instead of looking in the Psalms of David or in the words of our siddur, the Maggid was looking for the simplest, purest expression of prayer in this world; and he found it in a single word: ribbit.
In this morning’s parasha, Hayyei Sarah, we learn of the betrothal of Abraham’s son Isaac, to Rebecca the daughter of B’tuel. Abraham’s servant returns from his long journey to Aram and back and brings with him the successful result of his mission: the woman Rebecca, who is to become the bride of his young master Isaac. As their caravan approached the home of Abraham the Torah tells us that:
וַיֵּצֵא יִצְחָק לָשׂוּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶה לִפְנוֹת עָרֶב, וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה גְמַלִּים בָּאִֽים:
Which our NJPS translation renders as:
“And Isaac went out walking in the field toward evening and, looking up, he saw camels approaching.”
The problematic word here for the translators is לָשׂוּחַ which can have a number of viable meanings including: to talk, to muse, to meditate, or to wander about aimlessly. So which is it? Was our forefather Isaac simply out for an evening stroll, or was he having a quiet moment of meditation, perhaps contemplating the events of the Akedah, or grieving over the passing of his mother Sarah.
As you might imagine, the commentators go to town on this ambiguous verb. Rashi quotes the Rabbinic Midrash which explains that this verb Lasuach, can only mean the language of T’fillah, of prayer; as it says in the opening line of Psalm 102:
וְלִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה יִשְׁפֹּךְ שִׂיחֽוֹ:
“He pours out his plea before the LORD.”
The Talmud takes this midrash even further, claiming that not only was Yitzhak praying while he was out in the field, but in fact he was davening the world’s first Minchah, the Afternoon Prayer Service! Why Minchah you ask? Easy, the rabbis explain, because the verse says that Isaac went out into the field “towards evening,” meaning at dusk, so of course he must have been davening the Minchah service.
The commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra, always the realist, maintains that this simply means he went out walking in the field, among the sichim, the shrubs and bushes.
Finally, the Italian medieval commentator S’forno attempts to blend these two approaches saying that Isaac left the beaten path and went walking amongst the bushes of the field in order to clear his mind from distraction, and so that no one would disturb him as poured out his prayers to God.
But as always, there is at least one more meaningful possibility to explore, this one comes through the lens of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nahman of Breslov. Rebbe Nachman comments as follows:
When the text teaches us that Isaac went out “Lasuach BaSadeh,” this verb Lasuach clearly means to pray, as it says in Psalm 102. However, the prayer of Isaac did not merely take place out in the field, instead he was praying along with each and every shrub and plant in the field, this is what is meant by Lasuach BaSadeh: not that he prayed out in the field, but that he prayed WITH the field. Rebbe Nahman concludes by explaining that at this moment of deep and personal prayer, from within the warm embrace of nature, each and every plant growing in the ground lent their voice and their strength to his prayer. In other words, the corn was praying with him.
Yes, the great Rebbe Nahman was a corn-listener. In fact, he wrote the following poem, to be recited daily by the hasid who is intent on communing with the entirety of God’s world:
Master of the universe, grant me the ability to be alone;
may it be my custom to go outdoors each day,
among the trees and grasses, among all growing things,
there to be alone and enter into prayer.
……
And may all grasses, trees, and plants awake at my coming.
Send the power of their life into my prayer,
making whole my heart and my speech
through the life and spirit of growing things,
made whole by their transcendent Source.
O that they would enter into my prayer!
Then would I fully open my heart in prayer, supplication, and holy speech;
then, O God, would I pour out the words of my heart before Your presence.
In conclusion, I wish to return for a moment to the idea of that young man who was listening to the corn grow. If we had been the ones to happen upon him on the trail, how would we have judged him? Would we have called him strange? Detached from reality? Crazy? Maybe so, and maybe we would be right. But I also want to leave open the possibility that we can learn, and grow, and evolve spiritually by having the courage to be a little bit crazy now and again: To admit to our desire for spirituality, to confess to our loneliness and our need to commune with the world around us. So I implore you to be a little crazy, to go off the beaten path of prayer and to admit to the possibility, strange as it may seem, that if we listen hard enough, we may yet hear the silent sound of corn growing in a field.
He saw a young man, a fellow hiker, sitting in silence on the side of the trail, staring at the corn. My friend took caution while approaching this man: was he asleep, was he eating, was he hurt, was he crazy? As he grew closer to this corn-gazer, he got a better look at what the young man was doing. He was sitting there in complete silence, eyes closed, facing this field of corn.
My friend made certain to make some noise while approaching, so that he would not startle this man, so with a few well-timed coughs, the silent young man paused and looked up to notice his fellow traveler.
“Everything ok?” my friend asked.
“Absolutely.” said the stranger.
“Do you mind,” my friend hesitated, “if I ask you what
you’re doing sitting on the side of the trail all alone.”
“Not at all friend,” said the stranger, “and I am most certainly
not alone. You see I was just walking along the trail until I
realized that I wasn’t paying attention to the world around
me. So, I decided to stop my hike for a while, find a
comfortable spot and simply listen to the corn grow.”
“Listen to the corn grow?” asked my friend, “And….so….do
you hear it?”
“Oh yes,” said the stranger, “The corn has so much to teach
us.”
Ok, let’s try to unpack this story. I would be willing to make a wager that many here among us, perhaps most here among us would feel confident in saying that this young man was crazy, missing a screw, off his rocker; and maybe you would be right! After all, you do meet some interesting types out on the trail, people we would rush to classify as ‘crunchy, granola, hippie types,’ slightly detached from reality.
But others among us might also be willing to admit a certain level of jealousy when hearing this story. Jealous of his connection to the world around him, his willingness to try and see past convention and dig deeper into life, his desire to keep himself open to the possibility of being “Radically Amazed,” as the philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel calls it; the feeling of being utterly overwhelmed by the “inconceivable surprise of living.”
In fact, if this young man had been Jewish, and if he had been living in 18th century Eastern Europe, we would likely have a very different label to place upon him: we would probably call him a Hasid. Hasidut was a brand of radical Judaism which developed from the teachings of one rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, also known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. The Ba’al Shem Tov had a reputation as a tzaddik, a pure and righteous man, a faith healer, a story-teller and one who could commune with the Divine through moments of intense prayer. One of the spiritual practices of Hasidut is known as Hitbod’dut, which can best be translated as the powerful potential of being alone, which encourages Hasidim to find some time to be alone; alone with your thoughts, alone with nature and alone with the Holy One. In the light of Hasidic Judaism, all of a sudden this young man who was listening to the corn grow, may not seem so strange after all.
The Ba’al Shem Tov’s closest disciple was a man called Dov Bear, who was better known as the Maggid of Mezerich. A story is told that when the Maggid of Mezrich died, his students discussed one of his more confusing practices: each morning the Rebbe would awake in order to walk alone down by the edge of the lake. Why did he do this his students wondered? Why was he not davening in the minyan with his students each morning, why did the power of his prayer increase with solitude and not with community? The story concludes with a simple answer: The Maggid of Mezrich walked down by the lake each morning because he was trying to learn the song of the frog. He believed that in the simple song of the frog, pure prayer could be found. Instead of looking in the Psalms of David or in the words of our siddur, the Maggid was looking for the simplest, purest expression of prayer in this world; and he found it in a single word: ribbit.
In this morning’s parasha, Hayyei Sarah, we learn of the betrothal of Abraham’s son Isaac, to Rebecca the daughter of B’tuel. Abraham’s servant returns from his long journey to Aram and back and brings with him the successful result of his mission: the woman Rebecca, who is to become the bride of his young master Isaac. As their caravan approached the home of Abraham the Torah tells us that:
וַיֵּצֵא יִצְחָק לָשׂוּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶה לִפְנוֹת עָרֶב, וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה גְמַלִּים בָּאִֽים:
Which our NJPS translation renders as:
“And Isaac went out walking in the field toward evening and, looking up, he saw camels approaching.”
The problematic word here for the translators is לָשׂוּחַ which can have a number of viable meanings including: to talk, to muse, to meditate, or to wander about aimlessly. So which is it? Was our forefather Isaac simply out for an evening stroll, or was he having a quiet moment of meditation, perhaps contemplating the events of the Akedah, or grieving over the passing of his mother Sarah.
As you might imagine, the commentators go to town on this ambiguous verb. Rashi quotes the Rabbinic Midrash which explains that this verb Lasuach, can only mean the language of T’fillah, of prayer; as it says in the opening line of Psalm 102:
וְלִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה יִשְׁפֹּךְ שִׂיחֽוֹ:
“He pours out his plea before the LORD.”
The Talmud takes this midrash even further, claiming that not only was Yitzhak praying while he was out in the field, but in fact he was davening the world’s first Minchah, the Afternoon Prayer Service! Why Minchah you ask? Easy, the rabbis explain, because the verse says that Isaac went out into the field “towards evening,” meaning at dusk, so of course he must have been davening the Minchah service.
The commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra, always the realist, maintains that this simply means he went out walking in the field, among the sichim, the shrubs and bushes.
Finally, the Italian medieval commentator S’forno attempts to blend these two approaches saying that Isaac left the beaten path and went walking amongst the bushes of the field in order to clear his mind from distraction, and so that no one would disturb him as poured out his prayers to God.
But as always, there is at least one more meaningful possibility to explore, this one comes through the lens of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nahman of Breslov. Rebbe Nachman comments as follows:
When the text teaches us that Isaac went out “Lasuach BaSadeh,” this verb Lasuach clearly means to pray, as it says in Psalm 102. However, the prayer of Isaac did not merely take place out in the field, instead he was praying along with each and every shrub and plant in the field, this is what is meant by Lasuach BaSadeh: not that he prayed out in the field, but that he prayed WITH the field. Rebbe Nahman concludes by explaining that at this moment of deep and personal prayer, from within the warm embrace of nature, each and every plant growing in the ground lent their voice and their strength to his prayer. In other words, the corn was praying with him.
Yes, the great Rebbe Nahman was a corn-listener. In fact, he wrote the following poem, to be recited daily by the hasid who is intent on communing with the entirety of God’s world:
Master of the universe, grant me the ability to be alone;
may it be my custom to go outdoors each day,
among the trees and grasses, among all growing things,
there to be alone and enter into prayer.
……
And may all grasses, trees, and plants awake at my coming.
Send the power of their life into my prayer,
making whole my heart and my speech
through the life and spirit of growing things,
made whole by their transcendent Source.
O that they would enter into my prayer!
Then would I fully open my heart in prayer, supplication, and holy speech;
then, O God, would I pour out the words of my heart before Your presence.
In conclusion, I wish to return for a moment to the idea of that young man who was listening to the corn grow. If we had been the ones to happen upon him on the trail, how would we have judged him? Would we have called him strange? Detached from reality? Crazy? Maybe so, and maybe we would be right. But I also want to leave open the possibility that we can learn, and grow, and evolve spiritually by having the courage to be a little bit crazy now and again: To admit to our desire for spirituality, to confess to our loneliness and our need to commune with the world around us. So I implore you to be a little crazy, to go off the beaten path of prayer and to admit to the possibility, strange as it may seem, that if we listen hard enough, we may yet hear the silent sound of corn growing in a field.
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