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“Your encyclopedias are so outdated, we’ll just look it up on the internet!”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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment