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.
Friday, March 27, 2015
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.
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