On this Yom Kippur, literally a day of wiping: a day of wiping away our sins, we confess communally for every human sin that anyone may commit. And shortly we will read that Aaron, the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, had an obligation each Yom Kippur to atone for himself, his household, and for all the Israelite nation. In the ancient sacrificial service, which was the way our ancestors drew near to God, each time a person brought any offering – even of grain or wine or oil, they placed their hands on or above the offering and confessed. This was the most important part of the offering, the confession. Our sage Maimonides taught us about atonement, which truly means at-ONE-ment. Maimonides said in his work, Mishneh Torah, that the first stage of repentance is acknowledging something we’ve done and discontinuing it. The second stage is confessing it with an attitude of regret, and evaluating its negative impact on you and others. And finally, resolving not to do it anymore. This afternoon we will read the Holiness code from Leviticus, which tells us not to take revenge or bear a grudge. We are, then, asked to forgive each other. Friedrich Nietsche said, “it is much more agreeable to offend and later ask forgiveness than to be offended and grant forgiveness.” And yet, this is what God asks us to do – to forgive each other, as Moses told us repeatedly – for our own benefit.
Rabbi Zalman Schacter Shalomi of blessed memory, tells a wonderful story. When he would do a wedding, he would ask the family to assemble and then he performed a forgiveness ritual, because in every family it’s nearly impossible that there be no hurts, resentments, disappointments, or grudges from the past. So too, on this day, we have an opportunity to enter the New Year without the baggage and weight of past slights and injuries. At one of Rabbi Zalman’s weddings, there was a little girl who wanted to know how to do forgiveness. He said to her: “can you imagine that you have a beautiful shiny white dress on and here comes this big clump of mud and dirties it? You would want to clean it off, wouldn‘t you? Oh, yes!” She said. “Could you imagine then, instead of the mud being on the outside on your dress, the mud is on your heart? I sure want to get rid of that,” she said. He suggested that she close her eyes and draw down some golden light and let it flow over the mud on her heart until it was all washed away. This sounds so easy, and we all know it is not. Even those we have forgiven intellectually, we may not have totally forgiven emotionally – that when we think of that person, there is still some negativity there, in thinking about them. And to be honest, sometimes it feels good to be the injured party – to feel that we are right, and know the other person was wrong. It helps us to maintain our good opinion of ourselves.
Did you know that there is a new science of forgiveness? It’s what a psychologist friend of mine used to call Grandma research – research proving something your grandmother could have told you. Doctors and researchers are now studying forgiveness. And here is what they have found. Charlotte van Oyen Wilvliet found that not forgiving resulted in higher blood pressure and heart rate; the subjects sweated more and experienced more stress. Another researcher found more cortisol in subjects’ saliva. McCullogh and Rachal found negative indicators for physical, mental and spiritual health. Toussaint found higher instances of hostility and type A behavior, while Worthington & Scherer, in a review of the scientific literature, found that not forgiving compromised the immune system at many levels, disrupting the production of important hormones, interfering with the way cells fight of infections, bacteria, and even periodontal disease. Dr. Karen Swartz at Johns Hopkins University Hospital urged people to forgive. She said, “do it for yourself.”
Because God is One and we are part of that Universal Oneness, we can’t do anything truly good or bad that does not affect ourselves, others, the world: the whole. Think, if you will, of all the figurative mud that we, all the people on this earth, are carrying around from year to year; how much of a burden for ourselves and the world that we manufacture and maintain unnecessarily. Caroline Myss, a spiritual teacher, has spoken about the experience of a hurt an insult, or a slight. She said that someone taught her that in the moment of the hurt, in the person who was hurt, the insult brought up that same ugliness in the recipient. In other words, we experience in ourselves the capability of inflicting the same damage or even more damage to someone else, and we hate that in ourselves. Therefore, one reason to forgive, among many, is to do it out of a desire never to want to do that very thing to anyone else and never to hate, as we will hear this afternoon, (Levit. 19) “Do not hate your brother in your heart.”
Another interesting fact concerning forgiveness research is that Worthington and Wade found that forgiveness takes time. The amount of time a person spent trying to forgive was highly related to the degree of forgiveness that person experienced. So it’s something we have to work at. In one sense, it is learned behavior and there are many levels of forgiveness. We may forgive someone and find that there is residual hatred or pain or anger there. We can look back to Moses Rabbenu, our teacher, and of course to God, who told us that forgiveness is good for us. Indeed, it is holy work. It allows us to live more in the present, that sacred spiritual moment of Now; to live a happier life; and if the researchers are correct, a healthier life, body, mind, and soul. In the 13 attributes of God, which the Divine Presence spoke to Moses as a gift, during their most intimate encounter in Exodus, God said, I am gracious, and compassionate, slow to anger, forgiving and cleansing. We were given these attributes that we might imitate them and become just a little more like God, who forgives us continually. Let us, for the sake of life itself, dedicate ourselves to forgiving, being in this way, most like God, and bringing goodness to ourselves and others.
Given on Yom Kippur 2016
Thursday, December 15, 2016
The Virtual World and the Spiritual World, it's Mirror Image
We have come here today on Rosh Hashanah, the spiritual New Year for something – or perhaps for a few different reasons. In the Torah, Rosh Hashanah’s only instructions are that we gather and listen to the sound of the shofar. We listen that it might speak to us and arouse in us a desire. Perhaps we might call it a desire for spiritual renewal or spiritual nurturing. The S’fat Emet taught that there is a spiritual point in each of us which we yearn to expand, placed there by the Divine Presence. The word spiritual means that which is related to the spirit – the non-physical world. We have come here with a hunger in our souls for some kind of connection or renewal-to that non-physical world that we intuit but seemingly have limited access to. The Torah speaks about this when we are barred from re-entering the Garden of Eden.
In ancient times, this renewal was framed in a moral sense. Our machzor, our prayerbook for the Holy Days quotes Maimonides, who lived in the 12th Century. He said, “Awake from your slumber and rouse yourselves from your lethargy. Scrutinize your deeds and return in repentance…mend your ways and your actions; forsake the evil path and unworthy purposes.” Our moral choices have much more to do with spiritual renewal than we might think. They either form barriers or enhanced access to the spiritual universe, or, in other words to the Divine Presence. We have moved beyond that idea of crime and punishment in our modern sensibilities. Who wants to be part of religion that threatens us?
We look at the Torah today in an entirely new light, interpreting it with more love, kindness, soul, and understanding than our ancestors did, to mine its deep wisdom and benefit from its assistance. 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. We know we are physical beings, living in the physical world. And this too is shifting. In the late 1960’s Woodstock’s Love-In, the idea of the Age of Aquarius from the show Hair represented the movement that began at that time, in which we began to accept and include all people: people of color, different ethnicities, genders, religions, sexual orientations, and physical and mental challenges.
This progress has continued through the advent of cell phones and the internet, allowing us to see people across the earth and form connections with them. Our current reality is that we now spend much of our time in the non-physical world. Stores are disappearing. We talk to each other via cell phone, skype, and other platforms, across the city and sometimes across the world. We are coming together and in a sense, we are no longer as bound to the physical world as we once were. A brief comment about transgender publicity in the media: I have a cousin in Israel who made a comment about all the transgender emphasis in this country. I told her that it’s the physical representation of what is happening within people: Mothers are working, Fathers are nurturing; gender roles are changing and becoming more fluid, more malleable. Most of the young people who come to me for me to marry them tell me they are spiritual but not religious. The recent Pew Survey of Religion in the country has identified the fastest growing segment of our population, the “Nones.” Between 70 and 80% of young people who do not have a high level of religious commitment are identified as “nones- having no religion.”
Religion is losing its grip on people. This was foretold by one of the Chassidic masters, Rabbi Zakok HaKohen of Lublin, as quoted by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Rabbi Zalman Shachter Shalomi: “Some say the world is becoming less and less religious, but I say, on the contrary, the souls of people are becoming more and more refined. Perhaps on the outside it looks as if they are breaking away from God, but on the inside they are getting closer and closer.” Now we do yoga and tai chi for our bodies and also for our souls; for the hunger within us: a hunger for the sacred. We know we have physical needs AND we also have spiritual needs – perhaps more spiritual needs than we are aware of. We know we need love and friendship. We also need to experience beauty and art. We need time for quiet, a sense of community, beliefs that give meaning to our lives and inspire us with hope, giving us comfort. We need integrity, truth, and justice. In fact, we yearn for these three even though we are not always aware of it. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said in the Mishna, during Roman times, “By virtue of 3 things does the world endure: Truth, justice, and Peace.” We need to feel safe, to have ethical values, to contribute to others, to pray alone and sometimes together. One teacher from Islam said we need recognition and appreciation; AND we need a connection to the Divine. The Medical Community worldwide has begun to articulate and teach physicians, nurses, and other professionals about our spiritual needs. From the University of Maryland Medical Center to the US Army, to groups in Liverpool, Japan, Germany, to the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces – in all of these organizations and locations people are speaking about and teaching about our spiritual needs.
Judaism is changing in this area too. There is an expansion occurring for us clergy so that we can live in the same interfaith, accepting world where non-clergy live, not only partly in the virtual world, but partly in the spiritual world. When we gather each year to look inside ourselves, we have an opportunity to be renewed by creating sacredness here together. The Judaism you find today, not only in this synagogue, but also in the greater Jewish Community is expending, even in Orthodoxy, where a few women Talmud scholars have been ordained as rabbis. Each of our spiritual needs is a gateway into our souls. Finding a way to express and explore those needs is an entry point into the spiritual world, which is a companion to the virtual world and its mirror image. What is the benefit of all of this? It directly affects our contentment, happiness, and well-being – all that we want for ourselves but are unsure just how to achieve.
And where is God in all of this? One perspective is that God is the Divine, creative force which has brought us to this time and place and is continuing to lead us forward from here. We know how little of our spiritual potential we currently use. How much of our spiritual potential can we realize by seeking the Divine within? In the future, we will be more aware of our intuitive nature and in tune to its wisdom. The Torah teaches us that the physical and spiritual universes are a unity. To change our physical reality, we have to change our minds, opening them to the possibilities within us. By enlarging our perspective to encompass not only the virtual world where we spend so much of our time, but also the spiritual world, its mirror image, we can vaguely see where we humans are going, and how we will live in several more generations.
The pathways into this dimension of our lives is contained in the Ancient teachings of Judaism. The Divine Presence gave us these pathways as a gift, to be opened when we were ready. Ancient mystics like Moses, Rabbi Akiva and Shimon bar Yohai, who lived in Roman times, Moses de Leon, the author of the Zohar, who lived in the 12th Century, Moshe Chaim Luzatto in the 17th Cent., and the Baal Shem Tov in the 18th Century, through their understanding and wisdom were able to unwrap these gifts. I know one very spiritually gifted person who was able to receive one of these gifts. He told me that he goes into this state as easily as you or I would go onto the internet. The pathways have been waiting for us in our generation, to be discovered by us, not only by the great souls and teachers of the past. We are now ready as ordinary people to begin to understand them. We have a hunger for this knowledge, wholeness, and connection in our souls. We stand at a doorway we can now choose to walk through by growing in goodness, caring, kindness, integrity, charity, and forgiveness. The doors are now waiting for us. Judaism holds some of the keys. It is a marvelous journey that we humans are programmed to take. As the rabbis of the Talmud so often said, “Come and Learn.”
Given on Rosh Hashanah, 2016
In ancient times, this renewal was framed in a moral sense. Our machzor, our prayerbook for the Holy Days quotes Maimonides, who lived in the 12th Century. He said, “Awake from your slumber and rouse yourselves from your lethargy. Scrutinize your deeds and return in repentance…mend your ways and your actions; forsake the evil path and unworthy purposes.” Our moral choices have much more to do with spiritual renewal than we might think. They either form barriers or enhanced access to the spiritual universe, or, in other words to the Divine Presence. We have moved beyond that idea of crime and punishment in our modern sensibilities. Who wants to be part of religion that threatens us?
We look at the Torah today in an entirely new light, interpreting it with more love, kindness, soul, and understanding than our ancestors did, to mine its deep wisdom and benefit from its assistance. 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. We know we are physical beings, living in the physical world. And this too is shifting. In the late 1960’s Woodstock’s Love-In, the idea of the Age of Aquarius from the show Hair represented the movement that began at that time, in which we began to accept and include all people: people of color, different ethnicities, genders, religions, sexual orientations, and physical and mental challenges.
This progress has continued through the advent of cell phones and the internet, allowing us to see people across the earth and form connections with them. Our current reality is that we now spend much of our time in the non-physical world. Stores are disappearing. We talk to each other via cell phone, skype, and other platforms, across the city and sometimes across the world. We are coming together and in a sense, we are no longer as bound to the physical world as we once were. A brief comment about transgender publicity in the media: I have a cousin in Israel who made a comment about all the transgender emphasis in this country. I told her that it’s the physical representation of what is happening within people: Mothers are working, Fathers are nurturing; gender roles are changing and becoming more fluid, more malleable. Most of the young people who come to me for me to marry them tell me they are spiritual but not religious. The recent Pew Survey of Religion in the country has identified the fastest growing segment of our population, the “Nones.” Between 70 and 80% of young people who do not have a high level of religious commitment are identified as “nones- having no religion.”
Religion is losing its grip on people. This was foretold by one of the Chassidic masters, Rabbi Zakok HaKohen of Lublin, as quoted by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Rabbi Zalman Shachter Shalomi: “Some say the world is becoming less and less religious, but I say, on the contrary, the souls of people are becoming more and more refined. Perhaps on the outside it looks as if they are breaking away from God, but on the inside they are getting closer and closer.” Now we do yoga and tai chi for our bodies and also for our souls; for the hunger within us: a hunger for the sacred. We know we have physical needs AND we also have spiritual needs – perhaps more spiritual needs than we are aware of. We know we need love and friendship. We also need to experience beauty and art. We need time for quiet, a sense of community, beliefs that give meaning to our lives and inspire us with hope, giving us comfort. We need integrity, truth, and justice. In fact, we yearn for these three even though we are not always aware of it. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel said in the Mishna, during Roman times, “By virtue of 3 things does the world endure: Truth, justice, and Peace.” We need to feel safe, to have ethical values, to contribute to others, to pray alone and sometimes together. One teacher from Islam said we need recognition and appreciation; AND we need a connection to the Divine. The Medical Community worldwide has begun to articulate and teach physicians, nurses, and other professionals about our spiritual needs. From the University of Maryland Medical Center to the US Army, to groups in Liverpool, Japan, Germany, to the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces – in all of these organizations and locations people are speaking about and teaching about our spiritual needs.
Judaism is changing in this area too. There is an expansion occurring for us clergy so that we can live in the same interfaith, accepting world where non-clergy live, not only partly in the virtual world, but partly in the spiritual world. When we gather each year to look inside ourselves, we have an opportunity to be renewed by creating sacredness here together. The Judaism you find today, not only in this synagogue, but also in the greater Jewish Community is expending, even in Orthodoxy, where a few women Talmud scholars have been ordained as rabbis. Each of our spiritual needs is a gateway into our souls. Finding a way to express and explore those needs is an entry point into the spiritual world, which is a companion to the virtual world and its mirror image. What is the benefit of all of this? It directly affects our contentment, happiness, and well-being – all that we want for ourselves but are unsure just how to achieve.
And where is God in all of this? One perspective is that God is the Divine, creative force which has brought us to this time and place and is continuing to lead us forward from here. We know how little of our spiritual potential we currently use. How much of our spiritual potential can we realize by seeking the Divine within? In the future, we will be more aware of our intuitive nature and in tune to its wisdom. The Torah teaches us that the physical and spiritual universes are a unity. To change our physical reality, we have to change our minds, opening them to the possibilities within us. By enlarging our perspective to encompass not only the virtual world where we spend so much of our time, but also the spiritual world, its mirror image, we can vaguely see where we humans are going, and how we will live in several more generations.
The pathways into this dimension of our lives is contained in the Ancient teachings of Judaism. The Divine Presence gave us these pathways as a gift, to be opened when we were ready. Ancient mystics like Moses, Rabbi Akiva and Shimon bar Yohai, who lived in Roman times, Moses de Leon, the author of the Zohar, who lived in the 12th Century, Moshe Chaim Luzatto in the 17th Cent., and the Baal Shem Tov in the 18th Century, through their understanding and wisdom were able to unwrap these gifts. I know one very spiritually gifted person who was able to receive one of these gifts. He told me that he goes into this state as easily as you or I would go onto the internet. The pathways have been waiting for us in our generation, to be discovered by us, not only by the great souls and teachers of the past. We are now ready as ordinary people to begin to understand them. We have a hunger for this knowledge, wholeness, and connection in our souls. We stand at a doorway we can now choose to walk through by growing in goodness, caring, kindness, integrity, charity, and forgiveness. The doors are now waiting for us. Judaism holds some of the keys. It is a marvelous journey that we humans are programmed to take. As the rabbis of the Talmud so often said, “Come and Learn.”
Given on Rosh Hashanah, 2016
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Speech at The UN for Interfaith Harmony Week on Building Bridges
There is something important that the spiritual needs to say to the political, and it begins with a story from the Book of Numbers. When the Israelites were very close to entering the Promised Land, the prophet Moses sent messengers to the surrounding nations to ask permission for the Israelites to pass through their lands. He promised that the Israelites would stay on the main road, that they would not eat their food or drink their water, and that if they did, that they would pay for them. Not one nation agreed, and a few of them attacked or threatened to attack. This story, seen through the lens of our understanding, actually provides the paradigm of a perfect world. If all the nations had cooperated, everyone would have benefited. They would have become allies and friends; there would have been trade and commerce, prosperity and enough resources for all. Instead there was death, destruction of crops and property, illness, privation, war, and loss of land.
This story gives us a glimpse of how the world is really supposed to work. When we cooperate and help each other, with kindness, compassion, generosity, and caring, there is more for everyone. It shows that there is not a finite amount of resources, but that through cooperation and friendship, there is enough for all. There is a miraculous component to all of this, and it’s been said that there is no religion at all without miracles. We know we share one earth. On a spiritual basis we share one life and one soul. This is our deeper reality. However, we humans also share a common problem: that we look separate from one another. Our 5 senses tell us where I end and where you begin. But there is a deeper reality: that we are all connected to each other and to the great Oneness of existence that some call God. As such, we are part of each other, all brothers and sisters for each other. If we could shake hands and exchange our protoplasm, our cell matter, in a spiritual handshake, we would understand this. There is truly no Us and no Them: only Us.
Since we are all One, the energies of giving to each other create more goodness and plenty in the system, activating the spiritual forces which allow all of us to be in the great cycle of giving and receiving. Similarly, should I harm you, it is like putting a knife into my own heart. The Chassidic masters in Judaism taught that blessings will flow to us as long as we don’t prevent those blessings from reaching us, by a failure to live out of the deeper reality that we are all One. We are already a part of each other. Our task is to shift our consciousness, our inner dialogue, away from purely linear and logical thinking, so that we can include the spiritual in our deliberations, and begin to live out of the truth that we are One. The bible says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I always wish that it had added, because your neighbor IS yourself. The bridges between us already exist. It is up to us to realize this truth and to take concrete action to make these bridges real.
This story gives us a glimpse of how the world is really supposed to work. When we cooperate and help each other, with kindness, compassion, generosity, and caring, there is more for everyone. It shows that there is not a finite amount of resources, but that through cooperation and friendship, there is enough for all. There is a miraculous component to all of this, and it’s been said that there is no religion at all without miracles. We know we share one earth. On a spiritual basis we share one life and one soul. This is our deeper reality. However, we humans also share a common problem: that we look separate from one another. Our 5 senses tell us where I end and where you begin. But there is a deeper reality: that we are all connected to each other and to the great Oneness of existence that some call God. As such, we are part of each other, all brothers and sisters for each other. If we could shake hands and exchange our protoplasm, our cell matter, in a spiritual handshake, we would understand this. There is truly no Us and no Them: only Us.
Since we are all One, the energies of giving to each other create more goodness and plenty in the system, activating the spiritual forces which allow all of us to be in the great cycle of giving and receiving. Similarly, should I harm you, it is like putting a knife into my own heart. The Chassidic masters in Judaism taught that blessings will flow to us as long as we don’t prevent those blessings from reaching us, by a failure to live out of the deeper reality that we are all One. We are already a part of each other. Our task is to shift our consciousness, our inner dialogue, away from purely linear and logical thinking, so that we can include the spiritual in our deliberations, and begin to live out of the truth that we are One. The bible says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I always wish that it had added, because your neighbor IS yourself. The bridges between us already exist. It is up to us to realize this truth and to take concrete action to make these bridges real.
Friday, January 8, 2016
A Higher Purpose
This week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha, Go for yourself. The portion relates God’s call to Abram, his going forth out of Mesopotamia to Canaan. It contains God’s promises that the land will be given to Abraham’s descendants, the birth of Ishmael, and the prophecy of the birth of Isaac, the covenant between God and Abram in which Abram and Sarai receive their new names, Abraham and Sarah, culminating in their promise to worship only God, and the rite of circumcision.
There is a wonderful account here (Gen. 15) of a prior covenant between God and Abram, before he becomes Abraham, called the covenant between the pieces. In a vision, God tells Abram that his reward will be very great. Abram responds that he has no children to inherit anything he receives and God reassures him that he will have offspring. The Eternal promises Abram the land of Canaan for the 3rd time, and Abram asks God how he will know that he’ll inherit it. God very tenderly proposes that they make a treaty just as if God were a real human person.
If we think of all the promises that God made to Abraham, from the beginning of this chapter, they include many material rewards: children and many descendants, prosperity, land, security in that God will bless those who bless Abram and curse those who curse him, and also fame. In verse 7 (15:7) God says, I am God who brought you out of Ur Kasdim to give you this land to inherit it.” All by itself, it is an unremarkable verse, but seen against the backdrop of the rest of the Torah, in which God says, I am God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, over 30 times, the verse speaks to us differently from it’s plain meaning.
It recalls a story I once read from a book I don’t have anymore. It went something like this: one day the lord of the manor summoned one of his workers to ask him to fetch water in a very large bucket and bring him the water. The worker took the bucket and tried to fill it, but the bucket had many small leaks and it was impossible to fulfill his master’s request. He filled it again and again, but in vain, the water would not remain in the bucket. The man brought the bucket back to his master in deep frustration and said, I tried and tried but could not bring you water in this bucket. The lord smiled kindly at him and said gently, I really didn’t want the water. What I wanted was to have the bucket cleaned.
This story gives us a peek into the relationship between God and Abram. God seems to offer Abram many material blessings, but really, God has other rewards in mind. God wants to take Abram out – out of his family, out of his native land, and out of himself, to discover a higher, more spiritual, holier self. We are all being taken out of one place and being led to another. Wherever we are now, God is leading us out of that place en route to our better selves, not always to a physical place, but sometimes that does occur: a place where new experiences, possibilities of change, and opportunities to be a blessing will be found. As it is said in the midrash: “I am the Guide, the Sovereign of the Universe. So shall the king desire your beauty (ib. 12), to make you glorious in the world. (Gen. 39:1,3)… this refers to Abraham, who united the whole world for us, like a person who sews a tear together.”
The midrash teaches us that this elevation is not done just for our enjoyment or to bless us alone. Our relationship with God is for a higher purpose, to unify the world and elevate all our relationships thereby. May we know that all that comes to us must serve that higher purpose, and that in addition, the Eternal Holy One is constantly trying to send us personal blessings along the way.
There is a wonderful account here (Gen. 15) of a prior covenant between God and Abram, before he becomes Abraham, called the covenant between the pieces. In a vision, God tells Abram that his reward will be very great. Abram responds that he has no children to inherit anything he receives and God reassures him that he will have offspring. The Eternal promises Abram the land of Canaan for the 3rd time, and Abram asks God how he will know that he’ll inherit it. God very tenderly proposes that they make a treaty just as if God were a real human person.
If we think of all the promises that God made to Abraham, from the beginning of this chapter, they include many material rewards: children and many descendants, prosperity, land, security in that God will bless those who bless Abram and curse those who curse him, and also fame. In verse 7 (15:7) God says, I am God who brought you out of Ur Kasdim to give you this land to inherit it.” All by itself, it is an unremarkable verse, but seen against the backdrop of the rest of the Torah, in which God says, I am God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, over 30 times, the verse speaks to us differently from it’s plain meaning.
It recalls a story I once read from a book I don’t have anymore. It went something like this: one day the lord of the manor summoned one of his workers to ask him to fetch water in a very large bucket and bring him the water. The worker took the bucket and tried to fill it, but the bucket had many small leaks and it was impossible to fulfill his master’s request. He filled it again and again, but in vain, the water would not remain in the bucket. The man brought the bucket back to his master in deep frustration and said, I tried and tried but could not bring you water in this bucket. The lord smiled kindly at him and said gently, I really didn’t want the water. What I wanted was to have the bucket cleaned.
This story gives us a peek into the relationship between God and Abram. God seems to offer Abram many material blessings, but really, God has other rewards in mind. God wants to take Abram out – out of his family, out of his native land, and out of himself, to discover a higher, more spiritual, holier self. We are all being taken out of one place and being led to another. Wherever we are now, God is leading us out of that place en route to our better selves, not always to a physical place, but sometimes that does occur: a place where new experiences, possibilities of change, and opportunities to be a blessing will be found. As it is said in the midrash: “I am the Guide, the Sovereign of the Universe. So shall the king desire your beauty (ib. 12), to make you glorious in the world. (Gen. 39:1,3)… this refers to Abraham, who united the whole world for us, like a person who sews a tear together.”
The midrash teaches us that this elevation is not done just for our enjoyment or to bless us alone. Our relationship with God is for a higher purpose, to unify the world and elevate all our relationships thereby. May we know that all that comes to us must serve that higher purpose, and that in addition, the Eternal Holy One is constantly trying to send us personal blessings along the way.
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