Finding Our Inner Nobility

This week’s Torah portion is Tetzaveh, which means, Command. It contains the instructions for the Eternal light, the Ner Tamid, to be continually kindled in the menorah at night. God describes the design for the Priests’ Vestments, for glory and splendor. The specifications for an incense altar are given, as is the commandment not to offer any alien incense.

The costume of the High Priest contained red, blue, and purple wool, fine white linen, and real gold thread. On the priest’s woven breastplate were 12 precious stones, one for each of the 12 Tribes of Israel. The priest also wore a turban and a golden plate on his forehead which said, Holy to God. Moses was to inaugurate the priests during a seven day consecration ceremony. First they had to immerse themselves in water. Our custom of the Mikveh comes from this. We know that washing or bathing: water purification ceremonies, must be as old as humanity itself. It is almost certain that Baptism, the Christian ritual comes originally from this commandment in Tetzaveh. Of course, all the people who originally engaged in baptism were Jews, and any river is known to be a kosher mikveh. Then the priests would be dressed in their vestments. Only the High priest had the golden and jeweled garments. The other priests were dressed more simply. The priests confessed their sins and offered three sacrifices for each of seven days: a sin offering sacrifice, an elevation offering sacrifice, to draw closer to God, and a fulfillment or perfection sacrifice, the last one of which was eaten.

If we think of Aaron, Moses’ brother: he was a slave like anyone else. The Israelites were an assemblage of slaves: a sea of nobodies who had been beaten: beaten down, degraded, and forced to suffer. How was even one of them to be transformed into a glorious priest, a leader of the people? The holy garments can be understood as serving to convince Aaron, as well as convincing the other priests, and ultimately convincing the people of their own innate holiness. Rabbi Elimelech wrote, “When God said, Let there be light, a new light was brought into existence…from there the light was drawn down here below, but that light still remains rooted up above. This is the case with all things. Each thing was created by God so that its root remains above and so everything that happens here below is a result of our actions, which shake the roots above, so that those things can be drawn down here below.” This quotation is an attempt to explain the mechanism by which we are attached to our Root: attached to God. Since we are of God, of God’s light, and of God’s holiness, theoretically we can attain amazingly great things. The Psalmist said, “You are Gods, all of you, children of the most High (Ps 82:6).” Our reality is so different from this.

Our inner nobility is not what we often experience. As slaves in the wilderness, the priests were even farther away from nobility than we are. The S’fat Emet wrote, “Moses was called a man of God. All of Israel were supposed to attain that state.” The only thing that stood in the way of Aaron and the priests becoming holy were their own thoughts and opinions about themselves. How did they become holy? Water purification, dressing in a fine costume that elevated them and made them feel special; also following a set of instructions, given by God, and confessing their sins, which helped them to try to do better. Probably meditating on their actions was part of the 7 day inauguration ceremony, since they were prohibited from leaving the sacred area for that whole period of time. These are the same things that can help us to feel holy: being elevated through our dress; confessing sins, performing deeds of generosity and kindness, deepening our relationship to our own divinity through prayer and meditation.

Perhaps then, there is very little that stands between us and holiness: our lack of self esteem and lack of belief in ourselves being the most important one. Like Dorothy and her companions in Baum’s Wizard of Oz, who learned that they possessed all they needed to achieve what they desired, we too have within us all of the perfection of our higher selves. May we be drawn to express our inner holiness in every human interaction we have, through knowing that nobility, goodness, and a loving, giving nature is who we really are.

From the Physical to the Spiritual

This week’s Torah portion is Terumah, which means a portion, gift, or contribution. God spoke to Moses and asked the Israelites to make a freewill offering of all the materials that would be needed to build a portable place of worship in the wilderness, as the text says, “so that I may dwell among them. (Ex. 25:8)” God then gives precise instructions for the design of the Tabernacle and its furniture, including a golden ark to house the tablets of the Ten Commandments, a golden menorah as tall as a person, a gold clad table that looked like a baker’s rack, to hold 12 special loaves of bread; and a copper altar for sacrifice, and many other items. We had been slaves in Egypt, possibly as long as 400 years.

We had built cities for the Pharaoh; but now, as pointed out by Rabbi Denise Eger in the Women’s Torah Commentary, we were being asked to embark on a different kind of building. As we constructed the Mishkan, the dwelling or the Sanctuary, we would be using the freewill gifts, ordinary building materials, and transmuting them into something holy. As Rabbi “Tarphon points out in the Talmud (Avot de Rabbi Natan 11, The Torah Revealed by AY Finkel), “You can see how highly regarded labor is, for God did not cause the Shechinah to rest upon Israel before they did work. Of course, we were building community as we were building the Tabernacle. We were building the traditions of Judaism itself, and we were taking the mundane that with our pure intentions and labor we were able to sanctify it. The Lubavitcher Rabbi, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shneerson, wrote that, ”Man’s task is to incorporate material existence into God’s dwelling”. Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk wrote about the difference between God’s creative process our ours. He explained that God created something from nothing, which he expressed by the Kabbalistic terms Yesh, something, from Ayin, nothing. Our work is the reverse of God’s: we take yesh, the material and turn it into the spiritual. How is this done?

There is a famous commentary on Terumah by the sage Malbin, Rabbi Meir Lev ben Yeshiel Michael, from 19th Century Russia. Malbin wrote, “It says Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among or in them. Each person is to build God a Tabernacle in their own heart, for God to dwell in.” We are meant to create holiness from both of these directions, from the material to the spiritual and also the spiritual to the material. Finding what some have called the God within is discovering our moral compass, our inner holiness, and a reverence for what we can create. Taking that inner guidance and applying it to the physical world completes the work. Rabbi Arthur Green has written, “God’s presence in this world depends upon the depth and sincerity of human desire.”

It is up to us to bring God’s Presence into our world. Only we can create the conditions for God to be manifested in the material world, in human life. We can work from within: from the inner to the outer, and from without: from the outer to the inner. Ideally we should work from both directions: realizing God’s Divinity within ourselves and making all our work, our words, and deeds, into a tabernacle of peace, justice and goodness. As we sang at the Song of the Sea, “This is my God and I will enshrine the Eternal. (Ex. 15:2)” When there is a Tabernacle in our hearts and in our outer lives, God can truly dwell among us.

Speaking of Holiness

This week’s Torah portion is Mishpatim, which means, ordinances, or laws, or judgments. It immediately follows the Ten Commandments but is very different in content, laying out laws for a just civil society. There are laws about slavery, negligence, the giving of charity, just compensation, and dispensing justice. Over 50 laws are given in this portion. Mishpatim ends with commandments to celebrate the holidays and a transporting vision given to Moses and the elders. Tonight I’d like to focus on the topic of speech. As you might expect, there are a number of commandments here that include prohibitions against saying things that are untrue. The Torah also prohibits agreeing with an untrue statement made by another person. One verse in the Artscroll translation reads, “Do not accept a false report.” The Etyz Chaim translation says, You must not carry false rumors. And continuing in the previous translation, the Torah says, Do not extend your hand with the wicked to be a venal witness. Do not be a follower of the majority for evil. Distance yourself from a false word. We can look at these laws in light of our speech.

Judaism has guidelines for speech that can help us to know what is expected of us. The lowest level required is not to say anything false. Of course there are times when we are permitted to say something we know is not true. We can say something untrue to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, and to avoid gossiping. The next highest level of speech is about Lashon Hara, literally, bad speech. The Talmud says: “What constitutes evil speech? … Whatsoever is said in the presence of the person concerned is not considered evil speech. …… He answered: I hold with R. Jose, for R. Jose said: I have never said a word and looked behind my back (Arachin 15b).” At this level we are asked not to say anything negative about a person even if it is true, to someone who has no need to know. Maimonides said, “Even if the statements are true, they bring about the destruction of the world (Mishneh Torah).” Our Sages said: "There are three sins for which retribution is exacted from a person in this world and, [for which] he is denied a portion in the world to come: idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and murder. Lashon horah is equivalent to all of them." In addition, they said: "Lashon horah kills three [people], the one who speaks it, the one who listens to it, and the one about whom it is spoken. The one who listens to it [suffers] more than the one who speaks it.”

There is yet one more level of speech, the highest level. This is harder. We are asked not to say anything positive or negative about anyone to someone who has no need to know. This guideline is meant to circumscribe our conversations. It asks us to think before we speak about another: to say less than we may be used to saying, so that we do not get ourselves into trouble. This level of speech precludes most recreational speech. The Talmud also says, “What shall be one’s remedy so that he may not come to [utter] evil speech? If the person be a scholar, let him engage in the Torah, and if the person be ignorant, let him humble himself, as it is said: ‘But perverseness is a wound to the spirit.’” We are being led here into another commandment found in Mishpatim: “You shall not wrong a stranger and you shall not oppress him, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt. You shall not persecute an orphan or widow.” These commandments seem to be not only about harming a person with less power in the society, but also about denigrating another. If we take these commandments symbolically, we can say that we are all strangers to each other. We all have a tendency to need to bolster our self esteem, but that we should not do it at the expense of others because in reality, we are part of them and they are part of us. And just because we may think, everyone is doing it, it’s an area in which most of us can find spiritual growth.

In this portion it says, “People of holiness shall you be to me.” And perhaps this is a fourth level of speech: that we use our words to create holiness. We can do so much good with our speech: bringing smiles to others, sharing our love, comforting each other, understanding one another’s needs, helping, and bringing kindness by sharing the gift of ourselves. Rabbi Gelberman wrote: “If we speak inwardly to ourselves of the joy of living of the oneness of people of our individual security and our emotional maturity our words will come forth with wisdom.” Our words reveal so much about the kind of people we are: about the quality of our intentions and our inner dialogue. If we are striving to keep our hearts open, our words will bring healing to the world. May speak truthfully and lovingly to others, speaking a little less perhaps than we have been accustomed to, but speaking with the knowledge that satisfying, rewarding relationships and also the world’s healing depends upon us.