There is an old Jewish story in the Midrash in which the question is asked, what has God been doing since creation was completed? The answer given is: God has been busy making marriages. Only marriages? someone asks, and the reply is given: Is there anything more difficult? (Numb. Rabbah 3:6) Yes, I think there is something much more difficult, requiring much more of God’s time and attention: it is bringing the world, bringing us, forward from where we are to where we need to be. We human beings are God’s big project.
The very first commandment in the Torah is: Be fruitful and multiply: p’ru u’r’vu. We can understand being fruitful in our lives as doing much more than having children. Rabbi S. R. Hirsch says that carrying out this first commandment allows us to be able to discharge all the other commandments. This makes sense, and I think there is an additional reason for this commandment. Some of you have heard me speak about the evolution of human consciousness. I explain this to myself with the image of a beach. I am standing on a beach at the water’s edge looking at the horizon. Those born after me: the 12 year old Bar & Bat Mitzvah kids I teach who were born after me, are standing well into the water. They can see a farther horizon than the horizon I can see. Those born before me are standing up the beach. They can’t see as far as the horizon I can see. This image is also useful in that it helps me not to make others who hold different opinions wrong, as the reality they see is different from my reality. So one reason we are to be fruitful and multiply is to bring human consciousness forward.
Each one of us is born with talents and challenges in our personalities. There are things we are good at, things that we are not good at, things we like about ourselves and other things we dislike. There are things we are born knowing. Some people refer to children who seem to know things at an early age, as old souls. There are other things that may take us many years to learn. During my lifetime I may, through learning and my experiences, take a step or two into the water and see just a little farther than I did when I was born. If I am lucky and blessed I may be able to take an extra step or two. There are things I’ll never be able to see, that people 300 years from now will know just by being born at that time.
For example, in the 18th century, the great founder of chassidism called Baal Shem Tov thought he could hasten the coming of the Messiah by bringing all Jews into a state of goodness and purity. 300 years later, not only sages but all of us know that the time of peace and harmony can’t come about until all people on the earth, not just Jewish people, participate in this tremendous change.
The Torah reading for this morning begins by mentioning the death of Aaron’s two sons. God asks Moses to tell his brother Aaron, the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest: Aaron “shall not come at all times into the sanctuary within the curtain in front of the ark cover so that he should not die.” Why is Aaron being cautioned? Perhaps it’s because his job was dangerous. In addition, I think it was so that Aaron could have the time to accomplish the soul work he was given to do in his personality. Aaron allowed the Israelites to build the Golden Calf, and God subsequently put Aaron in a highly structured and ritualized job to give him the opportunity to see that certain things are not acceptable – keeping the peace at any cost after having agreed, in the 10 Commandments, to abandon idol worship is not acceptable. He was to learn a certain kind of moral scrupulousness, a refinement of his integrity which was hard for him, just because he was such a people person with a need to be liked. Similarly, as in the Cain and Abel story, God did not destroy Cain for having killed Abel. God sent Cain off to learn, to give him the time to refine away the selfishness and hatred in his personality.
The Chassidic Masters taught there is nothing but God, which is expressed by the Apter Rebbe, Abraham Joshua Heschl of Apt, who said, “there is only the ever present of God knowing and understanding God’s self.” Earlier than that, a poet in 12th century France took similar ideas from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah and wrote the piyut, the sacred poem I sang last night at the Kol Nidre service: Ki Hineh vachomer: Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are we in your hand.” In a sense, we are on a trip we didn’t plan with people we may not have selected, and with inner baggage we didn’t pack. No wonder we are often bewildered by life.
In today’s Torah reading the 19th Century sage Malbim called attention to the man described as a designated person, the one who was assigned the task of conducting the scapegoat to the wilderness. We too are designated people -- with a task – to accomplish the soul learning we were meant to do. And we experience two contradictory tugs at us: we yearn for union with the Divine, for a deep happiness and contentment: an improvement in our lives and in ourselves-- and -- we are often unwilling to change. Again we can visit Cain and Abel. God told Cain, “surely if you improve yourself you will be forgiven, but if you don’t, sin rests at the door, its desire is toward you yet you can conquer it.” The entire Torah exists to help us accomplish our soul tasks and to show and urge us how to treat each other better; to care more, to find happiness in service and kindness. Yom Kippur actually encourages us in this endeavor in two ways: by helping us to focus on the communal and also in the letting go of the ego-self, what the Chassidic sage S’fat Emet calls negating ourselves before God.
What would negating ourselves and caring more look like? We might have to strive to give up a certain kind of self-centeredness that comes from the way we appear to each other, as if we are all separate and discontinuous beings. We might have to give up that world view for the way the Torah tells us it really is, that there is a deeper connectedness to God and each other than can be seen or apprehended with our five senses. The world can only change for the better if WE go forward. It all depends on us. This puts life and death in a different light. The Torah intimates an afterlife in at least three separate places: where Abraham is buried in one place and it says “he was gathered to his people,” who were buried a thousand miles away, so that being gathered to his people has to mean his soul was gathered to his people. Also, when Rachel died the Torah says “her soul departed,” and in Deuteronomy it says, baruch atah b’voecha u’ varuch atah b’zetcha, blessed are you in our coming and blessed are you in your going out.
If there is an evolution of human consciousness, that can be observed, (which I spoke about from a spiritual perspective in my Rosh Hashanah sermon of September of 2011), and which the Harvard professor Steven Pinker wrote about from a scholarly perspective in his 2011 book, published just after my sermon, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, proving that we are becoming kinder and gentler, then our soul learning is being passed on in some way to the next generations. This means that death can be seen as our giving back to the universe. Death is our gift to life. During our lifetime we are bringing the world forward. Then, in death, we release that soul learning to the Universe.
May we know that by being here on Yom Kippur and participating in this process of atonement, we are helping to accomplish our soul tasks. We are clay, and we are the hands of God, going forward, so the world can go forward toward the Oneness and harmony that existed before creation. May each of us know how vitally important we are in accomplishing the tasks we have been given and may each of us be greatly blessed for a healthy and good life of forward motion in this New Year!
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Flowing in the Zone - Rosh Hashanah 2015
In the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Claremont University Graduate School psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote about a phenomenon many athletes describe as being "in the Zone." This has been written about for more than 30 years. He described this “flow” as a state in which people “are completely absorbed in an activity, especially one which involves creativity. During this peak time they feel “strong, alert, in effortless control, un-selfconscious, and at the height of their abilities.” They often “lose track of time and external concerns or stimuli, feel connected to something greater than themselves, and report having their ability and attention challenged but not overwhelmed in the completion of a task.” He studied flow because he was curious about what makes people happy, and his research suggests that being in the Zone applies across cultures and activities. You may be thinking, what has this to do with Judaism?
The Torah begins, B’reisheet bara Elohim, which is translated, in the beginning of God’s creating. In these first 3 words of Torah there is motion. The undifferentiated God essence is already creating, even before we come into the story, before we have contact with or knowledge of the Divine. God whose name is the verb, 'being or existence' may not only be a thing, but may be understood as process, and even more, as a creating process. Rabbi Zalman Shacter Selomi, who passed away this year, said in his book Paradigm Shift, “God is a verb. He went on to say: “Our current understanding of process requires that we create an interactive, not passive or active form of verb. The flag does not wave in the wind the wind does not wave the flag. The flag and wind are inter-waving.” One of his protegees, Rabbi David Cooper, wrote a book with the title, God is a Verb.
The movement of creation is very familiar to us. We live it. We know there is motion all around us: the earth turns, the wind blows, the air vibrates, our hearts beat, and we breathe. We never stop moving and creating, thinking and feeling. God and the Universe are all about motion and flow. This may seem obvious, however the constant creative movement of God and all life has something important to teach us. My favorite sage, the 19th Century S’fat Emet taught that we have to prepare ourselves to be a vessel in which God’s essence, which he speaks of as Torah light, can be contained” This wonderful teaching from about 100 years ago still instructs and delights; yet it feels a little static 100 years later. If God is process and not thing, then surely we have to be a different kind of vessel, a vessel for flow, allowing God Goodness to be expressed through us; a prism allowing God’s light energy to shine through us.
The Talmud speaks about this motion, saying “Mercy is a wheel that turns” (Betza 16a). On Shabbat, in the Lecha Dodi prayer from the 16th Century, we sing “ki hi makor ha-b’racha,” that Shabbat is a flowing spring of blessings; and a famous Chassidic kabbalist of the mid 18th Century Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk, wrote about pipelines of blessings, or Shefa, which is flow. He said, “when we fall from our spiritual level lacking trust in our Creator, who is the true provider…we cause a blemish in the higher worlds…this disrupts the shefa. God then has to re-command or reconnect the flow of blessings anew, so that it can flow again" (Noam Elimelech, P. 201). This teaching is a slightly more modern approach, but perhaps we can go farther still.
Here is another understanding. Someone once said, people have been making money for thousands of years. Where did it all go? This quip tells us that having things and holding on to things is not the ideal state. Of course we need a place to live, we need food each day, loving friends and other relationships, a plan to provide for our elder years. However beyond the basic necessities, all else, such as: kindness, love, compassion, even money and possessions, are supposed to pass through us. Holding on to too much can stop the flow that is the natural order of things: life as it was meant to be. Looked at from a slightly different perspective, flow can also be about our ability to change and grow. It is easy for us to get stuck in who we think we are. The God-state of flow tells us that movement, becoming – is where we should always be. If we stop the flow of God’s goodness as it is expressed through our becoming, we prevent that goodness from being expressed in the world. Making a stoppage actually creates a lack of some kind. Anger and hatred, selfishness, hoarding, revenge, grudges, all the negative things mentioned in Kedoshim, the Holiness Code, Leviticus, Chapter 19, are a stopping of the flow, the God-ing to use a word that Rabbi Shacter Sheomi said. We are supposed to be agents of flow, allowing and helping all things to come through us as we ourselves are going forward in the flow. In this way we can be of help to each other and the whole world.
In the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, which will be read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, what is often missed is the amount of reassurance and help God gave to Abraham going into his test. God promised him numerous times that he would have many descendants, God told him twice that these descendants would come through Isaac. When Abraham asked if Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed if there were 10 righteous people there, God reassured him that God cares about and protects the righteous. And God kept every promise of prosperity, protection and offspring to Abraham. Going into the test, Abraham held the paradox, Isaac will have many descendants, on the one hand, and Kill Isaac on the other hand. They could not both be true. By giving Abraham this paradox, the Torah teaches us that God helps us with every choice, arranging the circumstances and guiding us so we can choose correctly, so that we keep moving forward, and keep growing in goodness.
How does one get to the zone? Of course it takes preparation. Athletes train for years to experience it occasionally. And it can be experienced spiritually too, but that also takes effort and much preparation, and patience. In a sense, living in the zone, sometimes, is our birthright. It is an unfathomable gift from the Divine. On the second day of creation God separated the physical universe from the spiritual universe. This is also what Maimonides taught. The Zone is not ordinarily accessible all the time, but by dint of our own energy and commitment, if one longs for a better way, we can live in the flow by being part of the flow, by living in consonance with its structure, by expressing it. Just like love, the spiritual currency of the universe, when we begin the flow of love, we have the possibility of experiencing its gifts. In this New Year, may we be agents of flow, clear prisms allowing God light to shine through us and helping us to move forward. May we be giving of ourselves, which is ultimately to ourselves. May we use our Energy not to withhold, but to keep it flowing, that goodness will flow to all those we touch and also out into the world.
The Torah begins, B’reisheet bara Elohim, which is translated, in the beginning of God’s creating. In these first 3 words of Torah there is motion. The undifferentiated God essence is already creating, even before we come into the story, before we have contact with or knowledge of the Divine. God whose name is the verb, 'being or existence' may not only be a thing, but may be understood as process, and even more, as a creating process. Rabbi Zalman Shacter Selomi, who passed away this year, said in his book Paradigm Shift, “God is a verb. He went on to say: “Our current understanding of process requires that we create an interactive, not passive or active form of verb. The flag does not wave in the wind the wind does not wave the flag. The flag and wind are inter-waving.” One of his protegees, Rabbi David Cooper, wrote a book with the title, God is a Verb.
The movement of creation is very familiar to us. We live it. We know there is motion all around us: the earth turns, the wind blows, the air vibrates, our hearts beat, and we breathe. We never stop moving and creating, thinking and feeling. God and the Universe are all about motion and flow. This may seem obvious, however the constant creative movement of God and all life has something important to teach us. My favorite sage, the 19th Century S’fat Emet taught that we have to prepare ourselves to be a vessel in which God’s essence, which he speaks of as Torah light, can be contained” This wonderful teaching from about 100 years ago still instructs and delights; yet it feels a little static 100 years later. If God is process and not thing, then surely we have to be a different kind of vessel, a vessel for flow, allowing God Goodness to be expressed through us; a prism allowing God’s light energy to shine through us.
The Talmud speaks about this motion, saying “Mercy is a wheel that turns” (Betza 16a). On Shabbat, in the Lecha Dodi prayer from the 16th Century, we sing “ki hi makor ha-b’racha,” that Shabbat is a flowing spring of blessings; and a famous Chassidic kabbalist of the mid 18th Century Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk, wrote about pipelines of blessings, or Shefa, which is flow. He said, “when we fall from our spiritual level lacking trust in our Creator, who is the true provider…we cause a blemish in the higher worlds…this disrupts the shefa. God then has to re-command or reconnect the flow of blessings anew, so that it can flow again" (Noam Elimelech, P. 201). This teaching is a slightly more modern approach, but perhaps we can go farther still.
Here is another understanding. Someone once said, people have been making money for thousands of years. Where did it all go? This quip tells us that having things and holding on to things is not the ideal state. Of course we need a place to live, we need food each day, loving friends and other relationships, a plan to provide for our elder years. However beyond the basic necessities, all else, such as: kindness, love, compassion, even money and possessions, are supposed to pass through us. Holding on to too much can stop the flow that is the natural order of things: life as it was meant to be. Looked at from a slightly different perspective, flow can also be about our ability to change and grow. It is easy for us to get stuck in who we think we are. The God-state of flow tells us that movement, becoming – is where we should always be. If we stop the flow of God’s goodness as it is expressed through our becoming, we prevent that goodness from being expressed in the world. Making a stoppage actually creates a lack of some kind. Anger and hatred, selfishness, hoarding, revenge, grudges, all the negative things mentioned in Kedoshim, the Holiness Code, Leviticus, Chapter 19, are a stopping of the flow, the God-ing to use a word that Rabbi Shacter Sheomi said. We are supposed to be agents of flow, allowing and helping all things to come through us as we ourselves are going forward in the flow. In this way we can be of help to each other and the whole world.
In the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, which will be read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, what is often missed is the amount of reassurance and help God gave to Abraham going into his test. God promised him numerous times that he would have many descendants, God told him twice that these descendants would come through Isaac. When Abraham asked if Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed if there were 10 righteous people there, God reassured him that God cares about and protects the righteous. And God kept every promise of prosperity, protection and offspring to Abraham. Going into the test, Abraham held the paradox, Isaac will have many descendants, on the one hand, and Kill Isaac on the other hand. They could not both be true. By giving Abraham this paradox, the Torah teaches us that God helps us with every choice, arranging the circumstances and guiding us so we can choose correctly, so that we keep moving forward, and keep growing in goodness.
How does one get to the zone? Of course it takes preparation. Athletes train for years to experience it occasionally. And it can be experienced spiritually too, but that also takes effort and much preparation, and patience. In a sense, living in the zone, sometimes, is our birthright. It is an unfathomable gift from the Divine. On the second day of creation God separated the physical universe from the spiritual universe. This is also what Maimonides taught. The Zone is not ordinarily accessible all the time, but by dint of our own energy and commitment, if one longs for a better way, we can live in the flow by being part of the flow, by living in consonance with its structure, by expressing it. Just like love, the spiritual currency of the universe, when we begin the flow of love, we have the possibility of experiencing its gifts. In this New Year, may we be agents of flow, clear prisms allowing God light to shine through us and helping us to move forward. May we be giving of ourselves, which is ultimately to ourselves. May we use our Energy not to withhold, but to keep it flowing, that goodness will flow to all those we touch and also out into the world.
Friday, July 10, 2015
The Paradigm of a Perfect World
Originally published by T'Ruah, Rabbis for Human Rights
Chukat, from the Book of Numbers, describes Moses and the Israelites’ journey as they were nearing the Promised Land, and provides two starkly different visions. Moses sent emissaries, first to the King of Edom, then to the Canaanite King of Arad, and to Sihon, King of the Amorites. Moses made them this offer: “Let us pass, I pray you, through your country; we will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, nor will we drink well water; we will go by the kings highway, we will not turn to the right nor to the left, until we have passed your borders… The people of Israel said to him, We will go by the highway; and if I and my cattle drink of your water, then I will pay for it; I will do you no injury, only pass through on foot.” (Num. 20:17, 19) Midrash Rabbah emphasizes the generosity of Israel’s offer: “Moses said to Edom: We have a well with us and we eat manna, yet, do not suppose that we shall give you only trouble. You will make a profit for yourself!’…God spoke to Moses in the same way: You shall purchase food of them for money ([Deut. II, 6] Numbers Rabbah XIX:15).
We are told that the Edomites, descendants of Esau, the Canaanites, the Amorites and also the people of King Og of Bashan attacked the Israelites, not permitting them to pass through their land. It is notable that the Torah begins this section by emphasizing the connection between Israel and Edom, saying that Israel was Edom’s “brother.” Right away we can place ourselves in this metaphor – we are all connected to each other, every person is our brother, our sister. But the King of Edom was either ruled by fear or resistant to change, or he couldn’t be bothered to help his figurative brother. He is all supposed self-interest, even when his people stand to benefit by making money selling food and water to the Israelites.
Had the Israelites been permitted to pass through these lands, everyone would have benefitted: the people of those nations would have made a profit. Both sides would have gained an ally and the Israelites would have reached their destination sooner, with fewer problems, and much more ease. Instead there was war. People died and crops were destroyed. The nations made the Israelites their enemies. Their cities were captured and because of these battles, there was destruction and privation.
These starkly contrasting possibilities provide a teaching: the Source of Life structured the world so that when we cooperate and help each other, there is enough for everyone. No one need experience any lack. This is the paradigm of a harmonious and perfect world. It is the world as it was designed to operate, a world of one-ness where we know of our connection to each other and to God. The Apter Rebbe, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschl of Apt wrote: “When we purify our thoughts and only allow spiritual thoughts of the Divine in our mind we connect…to the highest level of spiritual knowledge and we purify the breath that comes from the heart and connects it to the heavenly breath, the Divine understanding, which emanates holiness to all the spiritual worlds. And as we purify our voice we connect to the Divine Voice….And finally when we connect our speech, we complete God.” (The Heschl Tradition by Moshe A. Braun) When we are selfish - attacking and victimizing each other, trying to keep all the resources for ourselves, we create privation. The world is designed to work like an enormous and intricate machine with many different moving parts, each part working with the others in a finely balanced whole. When we cooperate, everyone benefits. The gears mesh and the world operates well. When we are each other’s adversaries, we all lose.
Coincidentally, just this week in the New York Times, this was illustrated by an article written by Jodi Rudoren. She reported that the Rand Corporation concluded that the Israeli and Palestinian economies would gain $183 Billion if there were a two peaceful states. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/world/middleeast/profit-as-an-incentive-for-israeli-palestinian-peace.html?_r=0
The more we figure out how to work with each other rather than against each other, the more we allow God’s blessings to flow to us. We can create scarcity or prosperity, and it is a conscious choice. May we respect and help each other, going with the way reality is structured and not against it; working together to create more blessings and prosperity for us all.
Jill Hausman is the Rabbi and also serves as Cantor of the historic Actors’ Temple in Manhattan. She has previously served as Cantor/Assistant Rabbi in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and has been a marine biologist, a singer, and actress. Her commentaries on the weekly Torah portion have been published by The Jewish Week in New York City.
Chukat, from the Book of Numbers, describes Moses and the Israelites’ journey as they were nearing the Promised Land, and provides two starkly different visions. Moses sent emissaries, first to the King of Edom, then to the Canaanite King of Arad, and to Sihon, King of the Amorites. Moses made them this offer: “Let us pass, I pray you, through your country; we will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, nor will we drink well water; we will go by the kings highway, we will not turn to the right nor to the left, until we have passed your borders… The people of Israel said to him, We will go by the highway; and if I and my cattle drink of your water, then I will pay for it; I will do you no injury, only pass through on foot.” (Num. 20:17, 19) Midrash Rabbah emphasizes the generosity of Israel’s offer: “Moses said to Edom: We have a well with us and we eat manna, yet, do not suppose that we shall give you only trouble. You will make a profit for yourself!’…God spoke to Moses in the same way: You shall purchase food of them for money ([Deut. II, 6] Numbers Rabbah XIX:15).
We are told that the Edomites, descendants of Esau, the Canaanites, the Amorites and also the people of King Og of Bashan attacked the Israelites, not permitting them to pass through their land. It is notable that the Torah begins this section by emphasizing the connection between Israel and Edom, saying that Israel was Edom’s “brother.” Right away we can place ourselves in this metaphor – we are all connected to each other, every person is our brother, our sister. But the King of Edom was either ruled by fear or resistant to change, or he couldn’t be bothered to help his figurative brother. He is all supposed self-interest, even when his people stand to benefit by making money selling food and water to the Israelites.
Had the Israelites been permitted to pass through these lands, everyone would have benefitted: the people of those nations would have made a profit. Both sides would have gained an ally and the Israelites would have reached their destination sooner, with fewer problems, and much more ease. Instead there was war. People died and crops were destroyed. The nations made the Israelites their enemies. Their cities were captured and because of these battles, there was destruction and privation.
These starkly contrasting possibilities provide a teaching: the Source of Life structured the world so that when we cooperate and help each other, there is enough for everyone. No one need experience any lack. This is the paradigm of a harmonious and perfect world. It is the world as it was designed to operate, a world of one-ness where we know of our connection to each other and to God. The Apter Rebbe, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschl of Apt wrote: “When we purify our thoughts and only allow spiritual thoughts of the Divine in our mind we connect…to the highest level of spiritual knowledge and we purify the breath that comes from the heart and connects it to the heavenly breath, the Divine understanding, which emanates holiness to all the spiritual worlds. And as we purify our voice we connect to the Divine Voice….And finally when we connect our speech, we complete God.” (The Heschl Tradition by Moshe A. Braun) When we are selfish - attacking and victimizing each other, trying to keep all the resources for ourselves, we create privation. The world is designed to work like an enormous and intricate machine with many different moving parts, each part working with the others in a finely balanced whole. When we cooperate, everyone benefits. The gears mesh and the world operates well. When we are each other’s adversaries, we all lose.
Coincidentally, just this week in the New York Times, this was illustrated by an article written by Jodi Rudoren. She reported that the Rand Corporation concluded that the Israeli and Palestinian economies would gain $183 Billion if there were a two peaceful states. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/world/middleeast/profit-as-an-incentive-for-israeli-palestinian-peace.html?_r=0
The more we figure out how to work with each other rather than against each other, the more we allow God’s blessings to flow to us. We can create scarcity or prosperity, and it is a conscious choice. May we respect and help each other, going with the way reality is structured and not against it; working together to create more blessings and prosperity for us all.
Jill Hausman is the Rabbi and also serves as Cantor of the historic Actors’ Temple in Manhattan. She has previously served as Cantor/Assistant Rabbi in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and has been a marine biologist, a singer, and actress. Her commentaries on the weekly Torah portion have been published by The Jewish Week in New York City.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Freedom to Serve
This week’s Torah portion is Va’eira, which means and He appeared. It begins with a repetition of God’s name, yud, hei, vav, hei. God then makes five magnificent promises to Moses, that we will be taken out of Egypt and given our own land. Moses doubts that he will be able to influence Pharaoh but God sends him with Aaron to begin the cycle of the ten plagues. Seven plagues occur in this portion. There is a well-known phrase that appears six times in the Torah, “Send out my people that they may serve me.” Sometimes it is translated, “Let my people go, that they may bring offerings.” (Ex. 7:16, 26; 8:16; 9:1, 13; 10:3) It’s important to realize that we were not just being let go. We were being freed for something: for service.
The Etz Chayim commentary also stresses this. The power struggle between Pharaoh and God was about who we would serve. It is said in the text that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart, but in the first few interactions, the Torah reports that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. How did he do this? By not being willing to cede any of his power. We know that God met power with power: Pharaoh’s use of his power came back at him like a boomerang, to mix cultural references. Moses knew that he himself had no power, and he became God’s servant. This is what God intended for the Israelites: to become God’s servants rather than Pharaoh’s, but Pharaoh believed we should serve him. By beginning the portion with God’s name, which means Being, Existence, God introduces to Moses only, and through him to us, the idea of universal moral law. God tells Moses to say, “Send out the people that they may serve me”; but perhaps we should read this, “Send out the people that they may serve me,” and not you. God wants Pharaoh, Moses, the Egyptians, and the Israelites all to realize that God is not only a higher and more powerful power, but that God is natural law and moral law. God is gravity, in the physical realm, and also goodness and freedom in the moral realm.
Pharaoh does not seem to grasp the principle of moral cause and effect, which the Torah teaches us near the end of Leviticus, where it says, “the same shall be done to you.” (Levit. 26:16) The Israelites’ God was such a threat to Egypt because God’s presence meant the end of the Absolute Monarchy and also a threat to immoral authority. We know that there are no chiefs in Judaism, only the rank and file. There are no rulers in Judaism, only servants. Had Pharaoh ceded his power to God, he would have become just another servant, a king no more.
An interesting detail is that Pharaoh asks Moses to speak to God for him. Pharaoh can’t have an honest relationship with God because Pharaoh is playing chess with power, manipulating and twisting the truth. He doesn’t understand the power he is trying to wield. God doesn’t want us freed in order to win. God wants our service to change the world.
Moses asks Pharaoh to let us go that we may bring offerings, only that doesn’t happen. We are the offerings; it is ourselves that God desires, for what Abraham Joshua Heschl called, moral grandeur and spiritual audacity. When Heschl walked with Martin Luther King and stood by him, they, and so many others, stood for God’s higher authority. In ancient Egypt it was a very special time in history, when God made plans to introduce the understanding of natural law and moral truth: that human power has limits because it must serve that which is greater than itself. If it benefits only a few, it is false, If it benefits the whole, it comes from the Divine.
When we exploit people and try to keep them down, taking away rights and opportunities, we use power dishonestly, twisting the truth. When we promote each other’s welfare, freedom, and prosperity, taking their plight as our own, we do God's work. May we serve the greater good as did Dr. King and those who he inspired to go with him. May we keep in mind that we are here for service: for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity, to make this world a better place. Each of us has a role to play in the unfolding of goodness, in ourselves and in the world. May those who have served before us be our examples and may we work with God’s power in the universe, and not against it.
The Etz Chayim commentary also stresses this. The power struggle between Pharaoh and God was about who we would serve. It is said in the text that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart, but in the first few interactions, the Torah reports that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. How did he do this? By not being willing to cede any of his power. We know that God met power with power: Pharaoh’s use of his power came back at him like a boomerang, to mix cultural references. Moses knew that he himself had no power, and he became God’s servant. This is what God intended for the Israelites: to become God’s servants rather than Pharaoh’s, but Pharaoh believed we should serve him. By beginning the portion with God’s name, which means Being, Existence, God introduces to Moses only, and through him to us, the idea of universal moral law. God tells Moses to say, “Send out the people that they may serve me”; but perhaps we should read this, “Send out the people that they may serve me,” and not you. God wants Pharaoh, Moses, the Egyptians, and the Israelites all to realize that God is not only a higher and more powerful power, but that God is natural law and moral law. God is gravity, in the physical realm, and also goodness and freedom in the moral realm.
Pharaoh does not seem to grasp the principle of moral cause and effect, which the Torah teaches us near the end of Leviticus, where it says, “the same shall be done to you.” (Levit. 26:16) The Israelites’ God was such a threat to Egypt because God’s presence meant the end of the Absolute Monarchy and also a threat to immoral authority. We know that there are no chiefs in Judaism, only the rank and file. There are no rulers in Judaism, only servants. Had Pharaoh ceded his power to God, he would have become just another servant, a king no more.
An interesting detail is that Pharaoh asks Moses to speak to God for him. Pharaoh can’t have an honest relationship with God because Pharaoh is playing chess with power, manipulating and twisting the truth. He doesn’t understand the power he is trying to wield. God doesn’t want us freed in order to win. God wants our service to change the world.
Moses asks Pharaoh to let us go that we may bring offerings, only that doesn’t happen. We are the offerings; it is ourselves that God desires, for what Abraham Joshua Heschl called, moral grandeur and spiritual audacity. When Heschl walked with Martin Luther King and stood by him, they, and so many others, stood for God’s higher authority. In ancient Egypt it was a very special time in history, when God made plans to introduce the understanding of natural law and moral truth: that human power has limits because it must serve that which is greater than itself. If it benefits only a few, it is false, If it benefits the whole, it comes from the Divine.
When we exploit people and try to keep them down, taking away rights and opportunities, we use power dishonestly, twisting the truth. When we promote each other’s welfare, freedom, and prosperity, taking their plight as our own, we do God's work. May we serve the greater good as did Dr. King and those who he inspired to go with him. May we keep in mind that we are here for service: for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity, to make this world a better place. Each of us has a role to play in the unfolding of goodness, in ourselves and in the world. May those who have served before us be our examples and may we work with God’s power in the universe, and not against it.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Becoming Fully Human
This week’s Torah portion is the beginning of the Book of Exodus, called Shemot, which means, names. It tells of the first instance of Anti-Semitism, of our persecution and enslavement in Egypt, of the birth of Moses, God’s call to Moses to take the Israelites out of Egypt, and Moses’ first encounters with Pharaoh. This week we also heard about the terrorist attack in France, in which 12 people were killed, not as an act of violence to avenge a murder, but for an insult: the ridiculing of Islam and the prophet Mohammed. A sentence in this week’s Torah portion comes to mind: Why do you strike your fellow?
Moses asked this in a famous incident the Torah describes this way: “…Moses grew up and went out to his brethren and saw their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, of his brethren. He turned this way and that and saw that there was no man, so he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out the next day and behold, two Hebrew men were striving. He said to the wicked one, why do you strike your fellow? He replied who made you a man, a ruler, and a judge over us…” (Gen. 2:11-14) Moses, out of compassion for a fellow Israelite, kills an Egyptian taskmaster, who is beating a Hebrew man. The next day, Moses tries to break up a fight between two Israelite men. The question he asks, Why do you strike your fellow? is actually a cosmic question for us. Why do we kill each other? Why are we killing our fellows, our neighbors, the ones who are of ourselves and part of ourselves? The ones who are us?
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments on, “Who put you as a man, a ruler and a judge over us.” He says “These words reveal even at this early stage of our history, a trait that characterizes us to this day, one that lies at the root of all our flaws and our virtues as a nation. 600,000 men, or perhaps I should say, 6 million people, cannot muster the courage to defend their children against the minions of one non-Jewish tyrant; but not one of them will accept the authority of a fellow Jew…Of what intractable stuff must we have been then, before we entered the training course.” God, in the Torah, calls us stiff-necked five times. But is this just a Jewish trait, or is this the way we humans are?
Our personal egos are fragile and because of that, we puff them up and also make them rather rigid, disguising our soft, vulnerable inner core, making a shield to protect us from the world. This protection works against us, cutting us off from others. It disguises our negative qualities and lets us pretend to be better than we are.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk in a commentary on Shemot, said, “Man’s essential function is to uproot our negative character traits: hate jealously, vanity, lust, envy, and greed. These flaws must be rectified in order that we can rise to great spiritual heights with devekut, cleaving to God, may God be blessed.” (P. 117) We are presented with acts of terrorism which we think are something new: Radical Islam, but is it truly new? Isn’t it hate, jealousy, vanity, lust, envy, greed, and puffed up & rigid ego disguising our inadequacies? The list of flaws was written in the 19th Century, and words like them have been written thousands of years ago.
When we are stiff-necked we are fooling ourselves into believing that we are better than we really are, that we are living up to our professed values and ideals. An examination of our ability to project onto others reveals that we criticize in others what we can’t live within ourselves. Attacking the other then, is a judgment against ourselves. This portion begins by naming Jacob, the person who grew the most of anyone in the Torah, becoming Israel, the one who struggles with God, but also with himself, with his negative qualities. The problems of our society are within us. We can be truth tellers to ourselves, as well as in the greater human community. We can expose, as I like to say, the wolf in grandma’s new dress. We can acknowledge how thin is the veneer of civilization and how far we have to go to be the people we ourselves can look up to.
How far do we have to go to be able to respect ourselves? Moses’ question, why do your strike your fellow? can be answered by the statement: because we are ignorant of our oneness; because we still can’t be the people we want to be; because we still exhibit far too much hatred, jealousy, vanity, lust envy, greed and way too much ego; because we are not yet fully human. Moses asked his question in an attempt to draw out compassion from two people who had forgotten it. That is Moses’ name: drawing out. We can see ourselves in the two Israelites who Moses addressed, but also in Moses. The retort of the Israelite, “Who made you a man, a judge over us,” is another cosmic question. We are made human by the Divine; we are connected, and we are vulnerable and deeply afraid of showing it. But with compassion for others, acceptance of ourselves, and a little more truth, we can move away from needing such great defenses that we will even kill each other to feel better. We can become fully human, a man, a person who stands for truth, compassion, and justice.
Moses asked this in a famous incident the Torah describes this way: “…Moses grew up and went out to his brethren and saw their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, of his brethren. He turned this way and that and saw that there was no man, so he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. He went out the next day and behold, two Hebrew men were striving. He said to the wicked one, why do you strike your fellow? He replied who made you a man, a ruler, and a judge over us…” (Gen. 2:11-14) Moses, out of compassion for a fellow Israelite, kills an Egyptian taskmaster, who is beating a Hebrew man. The next day, Moses tries to break up a fight between two Israelite men. The question he asks, Why do you strike your fellow? is actually a cosmic question for us. Why do we kill each other? Why are we killing our fellows, our neighbors, the ones who are of ourselves and part of ourselves? The ones who are us?
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments on, “Who put you as a man, a ruler and a judge over us.” He says “These words reveal even at this early stage of our history, a trait that characterizes us to this day, one that lies at the root of all our flaws and our virtues as a nation. 600,000 men, or perhaps I should say, 6 million people, cannot muster the courage to defend their children against the minions of one non-Jewish tyrant; but not one of them will accept the authority of a fellow Jew…Of what intractable stuff must we have been then, before we entered the training course.” God, in the Torah, calls us stiff-necked five times. But is this just a Jewish trait, or is this the way we humans are?
Our personal egos are fragile and because of that, we puff them up and also make them rather rigid, disguising our soft, vulnerable inner core, making a shield to protect us from the world. This protection works against us, cutting us off from others. It disguises our negative qualities and lets us pretend to be better than we are.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk in a commentary on Shemot, said, “Man’s essential function is to uproot our negative character traits: hate jealously, vanity, lust, envy, and greed. These flaws must be rectified in order that we can rise to great spiritual heights with devekut, cleaving to God, may God be blessed.” (P. 117) We are presented with acts of terrorism which we think are something new: Radical Islam, but is it truly new? Isn’t it hate, jealousy, vanity, lust, envy, greed, and puffed up & rigid ego disguising our inadequacies? The list of flaws was written in the 19th Century, and words like them have been written thousands of years ago.
When we are stiff-necked we are fooling ourselves into believing that we are better than we really are, that we are living up to our professed values and ideals. An examination of our ability to project onto others reveals that we criticize in others what we can’t live within ourselves. Attacking the other then, is a judgment against ourselves. This portion begins by naming Jacob, the person who grew the most of anyone in the Torah, becoming Israel, the one who struggles with God, but also with himself, with his negative qualities. The problems of our society are within us. We can be truth tellers to ourselves, as well as in the greater human community. We can expose, as I like to say, the wolf in grandma’s new dress. We can acknowledge how thin is the veneer of civilization and how far we have to go to be the people we ourselves can look up to.
How far do we have to go to be able to respect ourselves? Moses’ question, why do your strike your fellow? can be answered by the statement: because we are ignorant of our oneness; because we still can’t be the people we want to be; because we still exhibit far too much hatred, jealousy, vanity, lust envy, greed and way too much ego; because we are not yet fully human. Moses asked his question in an attempt to draw out compassion from two people who had forgotten it. That is Moses’ name: drawing out. We can see ourselves in the two Israelites who Moses addressed, but also in Moses. The retort of the Israelite, “Who made you a man, a judge over us,” is another cosmic question. We are made human by the Divine; we are connected, and we are vulnerable and deeply afraid of showing it. But with compassion for others, acceptance of ourselves, and a little more truth, we can move away from needing such great defenses that we will even kill each other to feel better. We can become fully human, a man, a person who stands for truth, compassion, and justice.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Unifying All the Parts of Ourselves
This week’s Torah portion is Vayechi, which means, and he lived. Jacob and his family are living in Egypt. He is nearly blind and near death. He calls his son Joseph to ask him to bury him in Canaan, in Eretz Israel. He then adopts Joseph’s sons, Menashe and Ephraim, adding them to the tribes of Israel, and blesses them. Later, on his deathbed, he assembles his family and chooses a leader, and then dies. At the end of the portion, Joseph, having assured his brothers of his complete forgiveness, also dies.
The Torah tells us that something strange occurred when Jacob blessed his grandsons. It says, “Joseph took the two of them, Ephraim with his right hand to Israel’s left and Menashe with his left hand to Israel’s right and he drew close to him But Israel extended his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head, though he was the younger and his left hand on Menashe’s head. He moved his hands with intelligence for Menashe was the firstborn. ” (Gen. 48:13-14) Joseph objects but Jacob makes a prediction that Ephraim will become greater than Menashe. Then he blesses the boys, “by you shall Israel bless, saying, May God make you like Ephraim and like Menashe.” (48:20)
There is a long tradition in Judaism that the right hand symbolizes the yetzer hatov, the good impulse, and the left hand symbolizes the yetzer hara.{And we found out a few years ago when we took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum, that this episode of Jacob blessing his grandsons was portrayed in a renaissance tapestry as a symbol of the cross!} In the Talmud the “rabbis taught, always let the left hand thrust away and the right hand draw near.”(Sotah 47a) We can see that there was a deep chasm between the right and left, the good and evil impulses, at the time of the Talmud. However in the Torah, in Deuteronomy, there is another tradition: “Serve God with all your hearts.” The Chassidic masters aligned themselves with the principle of unifying the two parts of ourselves.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk wrote, “Ideally, we must serve God with both inclinations.”(P140) My teacher, Rabbi Gelberman, who came out of the Chasidic Satmar lineage taught that if you cut off the evil inclination, “you end up with a one-armed man.”(Personal communication) Rabbi Gelberman had a PhD in psychology. He was a therapist as well as a rabbi. Surely he had read the teachings of Carl Jung, who dreamed about a figure he called the Shadow, describing the Shadow as, “the dark side of his being.” (P. 235, Memories, Dreams and Reflections) Jung came to believe in the necessity of the unification of the conscious and unconscious, as well as the good self and the shadow self; that there is energy in the shadow which is creative and also necessary for our growth; and that the solution to the conflict between these opposites “is felt as grace.” How does this relate to Menashe and Ephraim?
Jung’s teaching about grace is echoed by Rabbi Gunther Plaut, who wrote that, “Every blessing bestowed by a person is at the core a prayer, since it asks God to help accomplish what the person by oneself cannot. (P. 305). This acknowledges God’s presence in every human interaction. Jung felt the goodness and rightness of that harmony which is representative of God’s Oneness. This relates in another way as well. The Rebbe of Zolitz (Soul of the Torah, P. 78) said that “Jacob noticed that although he promised the younger one greatness, Ephraim did not become arrogant and Menashe did not become jealous.” There is a long tradition that Menashe and Ephraim were the first Jewish brothers who got along well, which explains why they so deserved the blessing that all children become like them.
This also teaches us a more modern approach, a more psychological approach to working with ourselves to move forward in this New Year. First, we can look for and seek out parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of and don’t really approve of; parts we may have locked away, not wanting to deal with them; parts that we hope won’t pop out unexpectedly. We can work toward accepting those parts of us that are less than charming, and even love them. Then we can use the energy and creativity in those shadow parts of ourselves, harmonizing our acceptable and less acceptable selves to make inner peace, as it is said in the Song of Songs, let his left hand be under my head and his right hand embrace me. (SOS 2:6 & 8:3)
If we think about it, this inner conflict is also a metaphor for the parts of the human family we don’t find acceptable, and who we have to accept and love before the Messianic age of peace can arrive. Unless we become whole and at peace with ourselves, inwardly and outwardly, there is no grace, no blessing. Another detail: when Jacob stretched his right hand over to Ephraim and his left to Menashe, the left hand was on top! When we can be as happy and proud of all our energies, then we will be complete, whole, and capable of great goodness, even holiness. In this New Year, may we come to gently harmonize and accept our total selves: loving each part of us, integrating all parts into a contented whole, so that we may serve life: humanity and God, with all our energies, all our hearts.
The Torah tells us that something strange occurred when Jacob blessed his grandsons. It says, “Joseph took the two of them, Ephraim with his right hand to Israel’s left and Menashe with his left hand to Israel’s right and he drew close to him But Israel extended his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head, though he was the younger and his left hand on Menashe’s head. He moved his hands with intelligence for Menashe was the firstborn. ” (Gen. 48:13-14) Joseph objects but Jacob makes a prediction that Ephraim will become greater than Menashe. Then he blesses the boys, “by you shall Israel bless, saying, May God make you like Ephraim and like Menashe.” (48:20)
There is a long tradition in Judaism that the right hand symbolizes the yetzer hatov, the good impulse, and the left hand symbolizes the yetzer hara.{And we found out a few years ago when we took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum, that this episode of Jacob blessing his grandsons was portrayed in a renaissance tapestry as a symbol of the cross!} In the Talmud the “rabbis taught, always let the left hand thrust away and the right hand draw near.”(Sotah 47a) We can see that there was a deep chasm between the right and left, the good and evil impulses, at the time of the Talmud. However in the Torah, in Deuteronomy, there is another tradition: “Serve God with all your hearts.” The Chassidic masters aligned themselves with the principle of unifying the two parts of ourselves.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk wrote, “Ideally, we must serve God with both inclinations.”(P140) My teacher, Rabbi Gelberman, who came out of the Chasidic Satmar lineage taught that if you cut off the evil inclination, “you end up with a one-armed man.”(Personal communication) Rabbi Gelberman had a PhD in psychology. He was a therapist as well as a rabbi. Surely he had read the teachings of Carl Jung, who dreamed about a figure he called the Shadow, describing the Shadow as, “the dark side of his being.” (P. 235, Memories, Dreams and Reflections) Jung came to believe in the necessity of the unification of the conscious and unconscious, as well as the good self and the shadow self; that there is energy in the shadow which is creative and also necessary for our growth; and that the solution to the conflict between these opposites “is felt as grace.” How does this relate to Menashe and Ephraim?
Jung’s teaching about grace is echoed by Rabbi Gunther Plaut, who wrote that, “Every blessing bestowed by a person is at the core a prayer, since it asks God to help accomplish what the person by oneself cannot. (P. 305). This acknowledges God’s presence in every human interaction. Jung felt the goodness and rightness of that harmony which is representative of God’s Oneness. This relates in another way as well. The Rebbe of Zolitz (Soul of the Torah, P. 78) said that “Jacob noticed that although he promised the younger one greatness, Ephraim did not become arrogant and Menashe did not become jealous.” There is a long tradition that Menashe and Ephraim were the first Jewish brothers who got along well, which explains why they so deserved the blessing that all children become like them.
This also teaches us a more modern approach, a more psychological approach to working with ourselves to move forward in this New Year. First, we can look for and seek out parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of and don’t really approve of; parts we may have locked away, not wanting to deal with them; parts that we hope won’t pop out unexpectedly. We can work toward accepting those parts of us that are less than charming, and even love them. Then we can use the energy and creativity in those shadow parts of ourselves, harmonizing our acceptable and less acceptable selves to make inner peace, as it is said in the Song of Songs, let his left hand be under my head and his right hand embrace me. (SOS 2:6 & 8:3)
If we think about it, this inner conflict is also a metaphor for the parts of the human family we don’t find acceptable, and who we have to accept and love before the Messianic age of peace can arrive. Unless we become whole and at peace with ourselves, inwardly and outwardly, there is no grace, no blessing. Another detail: when Jacob stretched his right hand over to Ephraim and his left to Menashe, the left hand was on top! When we can be as happy and proud of all our energies, then we will be complete, whole, and capable of great goodness, even holiness. In this New Year, may we come to gently harmonize and accept our total selves: loving each part of us, integrating all parts into a contented whole, so that we may serve life: humanity and God, with all our energies, all our hearts.
Friday, February 27, 2015
No One Is Alone
This week’s Torah portion is Vayigash, which means, and he approached. Judah, Jacob’s fourth son, approaches Joseph, Viceroy of Egypt, who is really his brother, to plead for their youngest brother, Benjamin; and to ask to be enslaved in place of Benjamin. Benjamin has been wrongly accused of stealing Joseph’s silver cup. When Joseph learns that his brothers love and support Benjamin, Joseph reveals his identity to them and forgives them. He then arranges to bring his father and his brothers’ families to Egypt so that they will be sustained during the continuing famine.
The first three words of this portion are: “Vayigash eilav Yehudah, and Judah approached him.” Later in the portion there are the words: “For it was for life that Elohim, or God, sent me ahead of you.” It is a curious attribute of Hebrew that the word eilav, has an unpronounced yud before the last letter. It is also a curiosity that one of the words we use for God, Elohim, is plural. In Hebrew, the yud toward the end of a word tells us that it is plural. Very few people speak or write about this. And in fact, the plural of Elohim, which literally means Gods, is a bit of an embarrassment in Judaism.
We don’t know why the Torah uses a plural term for God. Perhaps the Torah is making a very important point with these plural words. If God includes everything, then reminding us of God’s plurality: of the many, many of us people existing within God, is very important. So, too, with the word eilav, him or, of him, or to him. This plural quality of the word means that no person is alone. No person is even a singular. God is always present: in every interaction, in every person; and one person represents us all, and is part of us all. And perhaps this is why the speech of Judah to Joseph is considered one of the most beautiful in the Torah: Judah is making a human connection to Joseph which expresses the great truth that we are part of each other. This is also why Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers feels so right: because it expresses that same truth, that we are one, and one within God.
The Berdichever Rebbe commented on another verse, “If your youngest brother does not come down with you, you will not see my face again.” He said, “if you are not concerned with your brother, who is not on your level or status,” meaning those who are poor, “then you will not see my face again. This means that when we forget that we are connected to others and to God, by treating others as if they don’t matter, as if they are not as important as ourselves, we distance ourselves from the Divine Presence; but when we make human connections, it feels so right, because it is true, and we mint love and goodness in the world.
The S’fat Emet wrote about the meaning of this Oneness. He said, “The meaning of One is that there is nothing except God…God is the All…Even though we are incapable of understanding this properly, we still need to have faith in it. This faith will lead us to Truth.” Later, he says, commenting on Rabbi Isaac Luria’s teaching that God is within us, “You should have faith that you have within yourself the soul of the Living God…When you negate yourself before this Divine Life-point, wanting to know the Truth, it will be revealed to you.”
If the reasoning seems circular, perhaps it is. Knowledge leads to faith. Faith in our knowledge leads to Truth, which in turn, leads back to Faith and to knowledge; and it all leads to a deep natural knowing that the human connections we forge reveal our own God-nature and God’s goodness.
Joseph and Judah were remarkable people: Judah for his amazing growth as a person, his willingness to sacrifice himself to be enslaved instead of Benjamin, and his faith in himself to forge a vital human connection to this Vice Pharaoh of Egypt. Joseph, too, for his growth as a person, his forgiveness, and his ability to be touched by Judah and form a human connection to him. They expressed the deep truth of our connection to each other. May we realize the God nature within us, and form those vital human connections which lead right back to Divinity.
The first three words of this portion are: “Vayigash eilav Yehudah, and Judah approached him.” Later in the portion there are the words: “For it was for life that Elohim, or God, sent me ahead of you.” It is a curious attribute of Hebrew that the word eilav, has an unpronounced yud before the last letter. It is also a curiosity that one of the words we use for God, Elohim, is plural. In Hebrew, the yud toward the end of a word tells us that it is plural. Very few people speak or write about this. And in fact, the plural of Elohim, which literally means Gods, is a bit of an embarrassment in Judaism.
We don’t know why the Torah uses a plural term for God. Perhaps the Torah is making a very important point with these plural words. If God includes everything, then reminding us of God’s plurality: of the many, many of us people existing within God, is very important. So, too, with the word eilav, him or, of him, or to him. This plural quality of the word means that no person is alone. No person is even a singular. God is always present: in every interaction, in every person; and one person represents us all, and is part of us all. And perhaps this is why the speech of Judah to Joseph is considered one of the most beautiful in the Torah: Judah is making a human connection to Joseph which expresses the great truth that we are part of each other. This is also why Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers feels so right: because it expresses that same truth, that we are one, and one within God.
The Berdichever Rebbe commented on another verse, “If your youngest brother does not come down with you, you will not see my face again.” He said, “if you are not concerned with your brother, who is not on your level or status,” meaning those who are poor, “then you will not see my face again. This means that when we forget that we are connected to others and to God, by treating others as if they don’t matter, as if they are not as important as ourselves, we distance ourselves from the Divine Presence; but when we make human connections, it feels so right, because it is true, and we mint love and goodness in the world.
The S’fat Emet wrote about the meaning of this Oneness. He said, “The meaning of One is that there is nothing except God…God is the All…Even though we are incapable of understanding this properly, we still need to have faith in it. This faith will lead us to Truth.” Later, he says, commenting on Rabbi Isaac Luria’s teaching that God is within us, “You should have faith that you have within yourself the soul of the Living God…When you negate yourself before this Divine Life-point, wanting to know the Truth, it will be revealed to you.”
If the reasoning seems circular, perhaps it is. Knowledge leads to faith. Faith in our knowledge leads to Truth, which in turn, leads back to Faith and to knowledge; and it all leads to a deep natural knowing that the human connections we forge reveal our own God-nature and God’s goodness.
Joseph and Judah were remarkable people: Judah for his amazing growth as a person, his willingness to sacrifice himself to be enslaved instead of Benjamin, and his faith in himself to forge a vital human connection to this Vice Pharaoh of Egypt. Joseph, too, for his growth as a person, his forgiveness, and his ability to be touched by Judah and form a human connection to him. They expressed the deep truth of our connection to each other. May we realize the God nature within us, and form those vital human connections which lead right back to Divinity.
Friday, February 20, 2015
The Education of a Son
This week’s Torah portion is Vayetze, which means, and he went. Jacob, who had tricked his Father and stolen Esau’s blessing is travelling to Haran, sent away by his parents to avoid Esau’s rage and to find a wife with his Uncle Laban. He dreams of a ladder reaching to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. God promises to be with him and return him to the land of Canaan, informing him that it will be given it to him and his descendants. He arrives at Haran, sees Rachel, and fall in love with her immediately. He is welcomed with open arms by her Father, Laban, who says to him, “Nevertheless, you are my bone and flesh.” (Gen. 29:14)
It seems like a puzzling statement, as if Laban is not happy to see him, until we consider the last visit of Jacob’s family to Haran. When Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, he sent camels, servants, gold jewelry, and presents for Laban’s family and the new bride. Jacob arrives with only his own two feet; and Laban puts him right to work. Jacob asks to marry Rachel and agrees to work for seven years as the bride price, which was customary in those days. This turn of events is very interesting if we consider Jacob’s Father Isaac’s words to him in the previous portion.
Isaac has just been tricked by Jacob and his own wife, Rebecca, into giving the blessing of the firstborn to Jacob, when it was intended for Isaac. Isaac seems to forgive Jacob, sending him off with a blessing, instructing him to go to Laban and find a wife there. Isaac says, “May El Shaddai bless you, make you fruitful, and make you numerous, and may you be a congregation of peoples. May God grant you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you, that you may possess the land of your sojourns which God gave to Abraham. (Gen. 28:3-4) Apparently, Isaac has forgiven Jacob, but the old man has yet some tricks up his sleeve.
He seemingly goes with the flow, accepting what has been done to him with grace and no bitterness, not bearing a grudge and not taking revenge, which is a teaching for us. Allowing and accepting what is happening is great wisdom. And in addition, Isaac possesses even a deeper wisdom, sending Jacob off to learn the hard lessons of real life, similarly to what God did for Cain, after Cain killed Abel; sending him off to learn and grow. Isaac, who had his very difficult and life changing experience when Abraham nearly sacrificed him, in which he came face to face with God’s Presence, is preparing his son without anger, hatred, or resentment added. And this is where another teaching lies. We are all in Life University, God’s sacred University, undergoing trials and triumphs to teach us and to elevate us. We have some elective courses in this University, but also, some difficult courses are required. Our task is to allow and accept what happens, doing our best to find a way to learn and elevate ourselves as we study, as we live life.
Many people underestimate Isaac. Here, he knows just what Jacob needs in life. He sees Jacob for who he is: someone who is not above lying and scheming, yet he loves him and wants the very best for him. Acceptance plus love are two powerful allies. The first makes our lives so much less stressful. It is a product of faith and trust. The second, love, enriches us and all life immeasurably. May these allies: acceptance and love, guide us, that we, like Isaac, may attain what Moses called, a heart of wisdom.
It seems like a puzzling statement, as if Laban is not happy to see him, until we consider the last visit of Jacob’s family to Haran. When Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, he sent camels, servants, gold jewelry, and presents for Laban’s family and the new bride. Jacob arrives with only his own two feet; and Laban puts him right to work. Jacob asks to marry Rachel and agrees to work for seven years as the bride price, which was customary in those days. This turn of events is very interesting if we consider Jacob’s Father Isaac’s words to him in the previous portion.
Isaac has just been tricked by Jacob and his own wife, Rebecca, into giving the blessing of the firstborn to Jacob, when it was intended for Isaac. Isaac seems to forgive Jacob, sending him off with a blessing, instructing him to go to Laban and find a wife there. Isaac says, “May El Shaddai bless you, make you fruitful, and make you numerous, and may you be a congregation of peoples. May God grant you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you, that you may possess the land of your sojourns which God gave to Abraham. (Gen. 28:3-4) Apparently, Isaac has forgiven Jacob, but the old man has yet some tricks up his sleeve.
He seemingly goes with the flow, accepting what has been done to him with grace and no bitterness, not bearing a grudge and not taking revenge, which is a teaching for us. Allowing and accepting what is happening is great wisdom. And in addition, Isaac possesses even a deeper wisdom, sending Jacob off to learn the hard lessons of real life, similarly to what God did for Cain, after Cain killed Abel; sending him off to learn and grow. Isaac, who had his very difficult and life changing experience when Abraham nearly sacrificed him, in which he came face to face with God’s Presence, is preparing his son without anger, hatred, or resentment added. And this is where another teaching lies. We are all in Life University, God’s sacred University, undergoing trials and triumphs to teach us and to elevate us. We have some elective courses in this University, but also, some difficult courses are required. Our task is to allow and accept what happens, doing our best to find a way to learn and elevate ourselves as we study, as we live life.
Many people underestimate Isaac. Here, he knows just what Jacob needs in life. He sees Jacob for who he is: someone who is not above lying and scheming, yet he loves him and wants the very best for him. Acceptance plus love are two powerful allies. The first makes our lives so much less stressful. It is a product of faith and trust. The second, love, enriches us and all life immeasurably. May these allies: acceptance and love, guide us, that we, like Isaac, may attain what Moses called, a heart of wisdom.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Scarcity and Blessings
This week’s Torah portion is Toldot, which means generations. It tells of the birth of the twins, Esau and Jacob to their parents, Rebecca and Isaac. Jacob persuades Esau to sell him his birthright, the right of inheritance of the firstborn. There is also a section about Isaac’s servants re-digging the wells of his father, Abraham, and of making peace with the local chieftain; and then there is the well-known story of how Rebecca and Jacob trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing of the firstborn, after which Jacob has to leave home to escape his brother’s anger.
It is interesting that there is so much conflict in this portion, and that it seems to revolve around food; and interesting coincidence that we read this portion before Thanksgiving. To obtain food when he is hungry and exhausted, Esau sells his birthright of the firstborn. Later, Isaac asks Esau to make him a meal of the game he will catch, after which Isaac will give Esau a blessing. Love and food seem to get all mixed up in this portion. In some families, like Jacob and Esau’s family, there is seemingly not enough love to go around. Esau’s heart rending cry, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?...Is there only one blessing? Bless me too, Father!” (Gen. 27:36, 38) touches us deeply.
The orientation of scarcity in life is something that, spiritually speaking, is really not true. The more we love, the more we mint the spiritual currency of the world, and the more love there is. This is true for most physical things as well. Even money flows according to our deeds and to Divine law. A scarcity of love, of blessing in Isaac & Rebecca’s family, comes because of favoritism, judging and controlling, which we also engage in concerning family members. The family is where we are known at our best and at our worst, and where we think we know each other. But are we really good judges of each other; and are we here to judge?
Our task on earth is really not to judge or control, but to accept and help each other. This is the essence of what a family is all about. When we can accept each other with all our faults and strengths, and actually love each other, scarcity disappears. Lovers happily share even a small bed. And the Torah teaches us in the book of Numbers, at the end of Chukat, that when we cooperate, there is more for everyone.
In the Middle East, the center of religion, sadly, none of the leaders seems to have read this in the Holy Books. At the end of this portion, both Jacob and Esau receive a blessing. The Chassidic master, the Vorker Rebbe taught, “No matter what one’s station, one can obtain a blessing.” (Soul of the Torah, P. 43) At this holiday time, may we accept, help, and not judge each other. May we express our love and thereby, receive many, many blessings.
It is interesting that there is so much conflict in this portion, and that it seems to revolve around food; and interesting coincidence that we read this portion before Thanksgiving. To obtain food when he is hungry and exhausted, Esau sells his birthright of the firstborn. Later, Isaac asks Esau to make him a meal of the game he will catch, after which Isaac will give Esau a blessing. Love and food seem to get all mixed up in this portion. In some families, like Jacob and Esau’s family, there is seemingly not enough love to go around. Esau’s heart rending cry, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?...Is there only one blessing? Bless me too, Father!” (Gen. 27:36, 38) touches us deeply.
The orientation of scarcity in life is something that, spiritually speaking, is really not true. The more we love, the more we mint the spiritual currency of the world, and the more love there is. This is true for most physical things as well. Even money flows according to our deeds and to Divine law. A scarcity of love, of blessing in Isaac & Rebecca’s family, comes because of favoritism, judging and controlling, which we also engage in concerning family members. The family is where we are known at our best and at our worst, and where we think we know each other. But are we really good judges of each other; and are we here to judge?
Our task on earth is really not to judge or control, but to accept and help each other. This is the essence of what a family is all about. When we can accept each other with all our faults and strengths, and actually love each other, scarcity disappears. Lovers happily share even a small bed. And the Torah teaches us in the book of Numbers, at the end of Chukat, that when we cooperate, there is more for everyone.
In the Middle East, the center of religion, sadly, none of the leaders seems to have read this in the Holy Books. At the end of this portion, both Jacob and Esau receive a blessing. The Chassidic master, the Vorker Rebbe taught, “No matter what one’s station, one can obtain a blessing.” (Soul of the Torah, P. 43) At this holiday time, may we accept, help, and not judge each other. May we express our love and thereby, receive many, many blessings.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Are Neanderthals in the Torah?
Re: NY Times Article:
Skull Fossil Offers New Clues On Human Journey From Africa 1/29/15
As a former biologist and current rabbi, I had been teaching my bar and bat mitzvah students the possibility of interbreeding among humans and Neanderthals for a number of years, based on Genesis: 6: 1-4, when the research confirming the percentage of Neanderthal DNA in human populations became public a few years ago. This latest find, in addition to prior articles, shows that the early sections of Genesis contain fascinating clues about scientific truths, if we are curious and know how to interpret them. My students were amazed that what I had been teaching them as a possibility was actually true.
Skull Fossil Offers New Clues On Human Journey From Africa 1/29/15
As a former biologist and current rabbi, I had been teaching my bar and bat mitzvah students the possibility of interbreeding among humans and Neanderthals for a number of years, based on Genesis: 6: 1-4, when the research confirming the percentage of Neanderthal DNA in human populations became public a few years ago. This latest find, in addition to prior articles, shows that the early sections of Genesis contain fascinating clues about scientific truths, if we are curious and know how to interpret them. My students were amazed that what I had been teaching them as a possibility was actually true.
Friday, January 16, 2015
Encountering God in the Everyday
This week’s Torah portion is Chaye Sarah, which means the life of Sarah. Sarah has died at 127 years of age; and Abraham purchases a plot of land for her burial, large enough to be a burial estate for his family. It is a deed of sale embedded in the Torah. He then prepares to send his servant, Eliezer, to his family in Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac.
The servant asks if Isaac may come along on the journey, but Abraham will not permit it. Abraham says that God of Heaven and Earth will send an angel to make his errand successful. As he approaches his destination, the servant prays, “God, God of my master Abraham, may you so arrange it for me this day that you do kindness and Truth with my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water and the daughters of the townsmen come out to draw water. Let it be that the maiden to whom I shall say, Tip over your jug so I may drink and who replies drink and I will even water your camels, her will you have designated for your servant, for Isaac, and may I know through her that you have done kindness with my master. (Gen 24:13-14)”
The Torah reports that he had not yet finished his prayer, when Rebecca came out and offered to give him water, and to water the camels too. The text says, “The man was astonished at her. (24:21)” Eliezer finds out that she is Abraham’s relative and when he asks about lodging, she extends her family’s hospitality to him. Why should he be astonished? Perhaps it is because of the speed with which these events occurred. Also, perhaps it is because we are not used to having our prayers answered. The Talmud speaks about one reason the prayer was answered: because Eliezer was not praying on his own behalf.
There are several instances of this in the Torah. We read, “And Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maidservants” (Gen. 20:17), and immediately after it says: “And God remembered Sarah as God had said,” [i.e.] The Talmud remarks: “as Abraham had [prayed and] said regarding Abimelech.”(Baba Kama 92a); another instance is the prayer of Moses about Miriam, when he cries out to God, “Please God heal her now!” (Num. 12:13), and she was healed at that moment. For Eliezer, when his prayer was immediately answered, it must have been a kind of spontaneous conversion. It’s not often that we have a shattering, peak spiritual experience in our everyday lives; an experience which is such a meaningful coincidence that it convinces us that the Divine Presence reached across the divide which separates Heaven and Earth, into our very lives. We don’t expect to encounter God in the everyday. Perhaps this is what Abraham meant by, “God of Heaven and God of Earth” (Gen. 24:3): that the Divine Presence encounters us at unexpected moments.
We don’t often believe our own experiences. If we did, we would not have had to wander 40 years in the wilderness after having seen the 10 Plagues, the parting of the sea, the giving of the 10 Commandments, the manna, and the pillar of cloud leading us each day. We would have trusted in God’s care and protection. We often attribute God in the mundane to mere coincidence. When the Torah says that Eliezer prayed that God do kindness and truth with his master, this is to say that when things go our way, we experience kindness. When we recognize Divine help, this is truth. It’s real. Another person may not recognize it from the outside, but we know it inwardly.
Does God answer prayer? Sometimes, and not always in the form we have asked for. Does God hear prayer? I’m convinced that the answer is yes, always. We should remember that is up to us to make the contact, through prayer, intentionally keeping the awareness of the Divine Essence in our consciousness, and through developing our relationship to the Divine. Out of our closeness can come the reaching from the Divine realm into the mundane, into our human affairs. As King David witnessed and wrote, God is there to all who call, to all who call upon God in truth” (Psalm 145:18). May our prayers, our calling out to God, allow us to experience the reaching out from shamayim, from the heavenly realm, into our lives for goodness and for blessing.
The servant asks if Isaac may come along on the journey, but Abraham will not permit it. Abraham says that God of Heaven and Earth will send an angel to make his errand successful. As he approaches his destination, the servant prays, “God, God of my master Abraham, may you so arrange it for me this day that you do kindness and Truth with my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water and the daughters of the townsmen come out to draw water. Let it be that the maiden to whom I shall say, Tip over your jug so I may drink and who replies drink and I will even water your camels, her will you have designated for your servant, for Isaac, and may I know through her that you have done kindness with my master. (Gen 24:13-14)”
The Torah reports that he had not yet finished his prayer, when Rebecca came out and offered to give him water, and to water the camels too. The text says, “The man was astonished at her. (24:21)” Eliezer finds out that she is Abraham’s relative and when he asks about lodging, she extends her family’s hospitality to him. Why should he be astonished? Perhaps it is because of the speed with which these events occurred. Also, perhaps it is because we are not used to having our prayers answered. The Talmud speaks about one reason the prayer was answered: because Eliezer was not praying on his own behalf.
There are several instances of this in the Torah. We read, “And Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maidservants” (Gen. 20:17), and immediately after it says: “And God remembered Sarah as God had said,” [i.e.] The Talmud remarks: “as Abraham had [prayed and] said regarding Abimelech.”(Baba Kama 92a); another instance is the prayer of Moses about Miriam, when he cries out to God, “Please God heal her now!” (Num. 12:13), and she was healed at that moment. For Eliezer, when his prayer was immediately answered, it must have been a kind of spontaneous conversion. It’s not often that we have a shattering, peak spiritual experience in our everyday lives; an experience which is such a meaningful coincidence that it convinces us that the Divine Presence reached across the divide which separates Heaven and Earth, into our very lives. We don’t expect to encounter God in the everyday. Perhaps this is what Abraham meant by, “God of Heaven and God of Earth” (Gen. 24:3): that the Divine Presence encounters us at unexpected moments.
We don’t often believe our own experiences. If we did, we would not have had to wander 40 years in the wilderness after having seen the 10 Plagues, the parting of the sea, the giving of the 10 Commandments, the manna, and the pillar of cloud leading us each day. We would have trusted in God’s care and protection. We often attribute God in the mundane to mere coincidence. When the Torah says that Eliezer prayed that God do kindness and truth with his master, this is to say that when things go our way, we experience kindness. When we recognize Divine help, this is truth. It’s real. Another person may not recognize it from the outside, but we know it inwardly.
Does God answer prayer? Sometimes, and not always in the form we have asked for. Does God hear prayer? I’m convinced that the answer is yes, always. We should remember that is up to us to make the contact, through prayer, intentionally keeping the awareness of the Divine Essence in our consciousness, and through developing our relationship to the Divine. Out of our closeness can come the reaching from the Divine realm into the mundane, into our human affairs. As King David witnessed and wrote, God is there to all who call, to all who call upon God in truth” (Psalm 145:18). May our prayers, our calling out to God, allow us to experience the reaching out from shamayim, from the heavenly realm, into our lives for goodness and for blessing.
Friday, January 9, 2015
The Mystery of God's Support
This week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha, or, go for yourself, in which Abraham, whose name is still Abram, receives the call from God to leave his family and go forth from his native land to a land God promises to show him. He is told he will be greatly blessed with land, fame, and descendants, and that God will bless his friends and curse his enemies. This portion shows, in a series of incidents, how God teaches Abraham. There is a midrash that the sages like to quote, “Abraham knew the Torah before it was given.” I’ve seen this in more than 3 sources. I think Abraham must have been a very good and moral person to begin with; however we see Abraham being educated slowly, as well, in this portion.
First there is a famine. Abraham asks Sarah to say she is his sister, so that he will not be killed. As the custom was to seize the beautiful wife and kill the husband, she agrees, but Sarah is taken into Pharaoh’s harem, a terrible turn of events. If Abraham had trusted that God would curse his enemies and protect him, would he have needed to lie? Would he have put Sarah in danger? We don’t’ know. God sends an illness to Pharaoh’s household so that no one feels well enough to have sexual relations, and Abraham leaves with Sarah unscathed and great wealth, the payment in a sense, given to Abraham by Pharaoh when he seized Sarah. God has taught Abraham that God will keep the promises of blessing and protection.
Then comes another test: there is a war of 4 chieftains fighting 5 chieftains. Lot, Abraham’s nephew is captured; so Abraham enters the war to get him back. Abraham is successful, and after the war is over, the victorious kings assemble to divide the spoils of war. What happens is strange; and we know that the sages taught that there are no coincidences. God arranges for a man named Malchizedek, whose name means righteous king, to be present. Malchizedek is described as a priest of God the most high,” who lives in Jerusalem. As they are about to divide the spoils, Malchizedek brings out bread and wine, which has become our Jewish custom, perhaps an ancient pagan custom, but also perhaps something Abraham picked up from this non-Jewish priest. He then blesses Abraham.
It is strange because we are not told that Malchizedek blessed the other chieftains. He is fixated on Abraham; and then he says, Blessed is Abraham of God the Most High, the owner of heaven and earth, and blessed is God the Most High, who has delivered you foes into your hand. (Gen. 14:18).” It is almost as if Malchizedek is a plant, put there by God just for Abraham. What is Malchizedek teaching Abraham here? He reminds Abraham by stressing that God owns everything, that all the wealth belongs to God: in other words, the spoils of war don’t really belong to you or to the others. Malchizedek then reminds Abraham that God has given them the victory, not their own strength or military prowess. The Sages in Pirkei Avot famously said, “Who is wise, the one who learns from every person.”
The support that Malchizedek gives Abraham is just what Abraham needs at this very moment, to be able to do the right thing. Abraham gives a 10 % donation to this priest, another monotheist, and then he gives up all the spoils, the wealth he might have taken, and by the customs of the time, that he was entitled to, as war at that time was a money making proposition; kind of like investing in junk bonds: you may win big or you may lose big. Abraham then explains that it will be God who makes him rich.
This portion shows us that God teaches us through tests, and also by making sure that we are supported when we have to make an important decision, so that we will do the right thing. Abraham repeats what Malchizedek said, that God owns everything, and repeats the word for tithe, from the root, 10, esser, becoming fixated on the teaching that our money and also our time and our life’s energy really belong to God. If Malchizedek had not been there and said what he said, might Abraham have been tempted to take some of the wealth? Would he have invoked God’s name and Presence at that time? We don’t know.
What is clear is that God supported Abraham with Malchizedek’s presence and words, helping him to become an even greater blessing. May we realize that we are being tested and also supported in our lives and tests; that our time and energy and also our money really belong to God, and may we eagerly embrace God’s support and precious teachings, so that, like Abraham, we will be a very great blessing.
First there is a famine. Abraham asks Sarah to say she is his sister, so that he will not be killed. As the custom was to seize the beautiful wife and kill the husband, she agrees, but Sarah is taken into Pharaoh’s harem, a terrible turn of events. If Abraham had trusted that God would curse his enemies and protect him, would he have needed to lie? Would he have put Sarah in danger? We don’t’ know. God sends an illness to Pharaoh’s household so that no one feels well enough to have sexual relations, and Abraham leaves with Sarah unscathed and great wealth, the payment in a sense, given to Abraham by Pharaoh when he seized Sarah. God has taught Abraham that God will keep the promises of blessing and protection.
Then comes another test: there is a war of 4 chieftains fighting 5 chieftains. Lot, Abraham’s nephew is captured; so Abraham enters the war to get him back. Abraham is successful, and after the war is over, the victorious kings assemble to divide the spoils of war. What happens is strange; and we know that the sages taught that there are no coincidences. God arranges for a man named Malchizedek, whose name means righteous king, to be present. Malchizedek is described as a priest of God the most high,” who lives in Jerusalem. As they are about to divide the spoils, Malchizedek brings out bread and wine, which has become our Jewish custom, perhaps an ancient pagan custom, but also perhaps something Abraham picked up from this non-Jewish priest. He then blesses Abraham.
It is strange because we are not told that Malchizedek blessed the other chieftains. He is fixated on Abraham; and then he says, Blessed is Abraham of God the Most High, the owner of heaven and earth, and blessed is God the Most High, who has delivered you foes into your hand. (Gen. 14:18).” It is almost as if Malchizedek is a plant, put there by God just for Abraham. What is Malchizedek teaching Abraham here? He reminds Abraham by stressing that God owns everything, that all the wealth belongs to God: in other words, the spoils of war don’t really belong to you or to the others. Malchizedek then reminds Abraham that God has given them the victory, not their own strength or military prowess. The Sages in Pirkei Avot famously said, “Who is wise, the one who learns from every person.”
The support that Malchizedek gives Abraham is just what Abraham needs at this very moment, to be able to do the right thing. Abraham gives a 10 % donation to this priest, another monotheist, and then he gives up all the spoils, the wealth he might have taken, and by the customs of the time, that he was entitled to, as war at that time was a money making proposition; kind of like investing in junk bonds: you may win big or you may lose big. Abraham then explains that it will be God who makes him rich.
This portion shows us that God teaches us through tests, and also by making sure that we are supported when we have to make an important decision, so that we will do the right thing. Abraham repeats what Malchizedek said, that God owns everything, and repeats the word for tithe, from the root, 10, esser, becoming fixated on the teaching that our money and also our time and our life’s energy really belong to God. If Malchizedek had not been there and said what he said, might Abraham have been tempted to take some of the wealth? Would he have invoked God’s name and Presence at that time? We don’t know.
What is clear is that God supported Abraham with Malchizedek’s presence and words, helping him to become an even greater blessing. May we realize that we are being tested and also supported in our lives and tests; that our time and energy and also our money really belong to God, and may we eagerly embrace God’s support and precious teachings, so that, like Abraham, we will be a very great blessing.
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