Active Repair

This week’s Torah portion is Vayishlach, which means and he sent. Jacob, with his wives and children is very relieved to have left his father-in-Law Laban, and is on his way back to Canaan, only to have to confront his twin brother Esau. Jacob sent malachim, angels or messengers, ahead of him to try to gauge what kind of reception he might encounter from the brother who wanted to kill him 20 years before. Jacob finds out that Esau is on his way to meet him with 400 men. It does not sound good. This is one of my very favorite Torah portions, containing so many vital teachings. Tonight I’d like to focus on the beginning of this portion, which reads, “Then Jacob sent angels ahead of him to Esau his brother.” After finding out about the 400 men, Jacob takes several further actions. He divided his family and possessions into two camps, for safety. He prayed to God, reminding God of the promise that Jacob would be protected. He prepared a large gift of tribute from his flock and herds and sent it to Esau, perhaps in admission of guilt over his actions of so many years before. He instructed his servants to be very polite and gracious to Esau, and he also, when the opportunity was given to him, engaged himself, wrestling, perhaps with an angel, or also with his own integrity, his fears, and his past actions. This is what I’d like to call active repair. The Apter Rebbe, Abraham Joshua Heschl of Apt, wrote, “His actions, he knew, would leave an impression on the physical world.”
When I see someone who is otherwise healthy, but has hurt their arm and it’s in a sling, or broken their foot and it’s in a soft cast, I say to myself, being very careful not to judge anyone, “just because we are human.” The Torah portion, Noah, teaches us that our sins have to be expiated and mopped up, so to speak, in the course of our lives; or the world would get worse and worse, not better and better. Just because we are human, we make mistakes. We do the wrong thing. Or we are unkind, doing the right thing but not with enough love and patience. We let opportunities slip past us. Sometimes we are tired or hungry, and we are just not up to the task. So our sins, omissions, and mistakes pile up for a time. But then the slate has to be wiped clean and we have to pay for our mistakes and be cleansed. So perhaps we have a small accident or other tiny, we hope, misfortune. But Jacob shows us another possibility: Active Repair. It’s not as good as not making mistakes in the first place, but it helps. Rabbi Elimelech wrote that “Our prayers and holy words ascend upward and these are called Angels.” Martin Buber has also written about the Chassidic tradition, which teaches that our actions produce energies or angels. As Rabbi Nachman of Breslov also taught, If we can damage, we can also repair. We can atone for an offense and try to do as much good as we can, to make it better. And it does, as the Apter Rebbe teaches, make a difference in the physical world. We can apologize. We can find a way to give. And since we are all connected to each other and God, and all existence is One, giving to anyone helps. We can give love, we can help another person, we can make a donation; we can be there for someone. We can also pray: admit to God that we know we did something wrong, and then make a decision to do better next time. We can face ourselves and wrestle down our less than worthy impulses; and by falling down emerge better than we were before the mistakes. As the Chassidic masters and our teacher Rabbi Gelberman taught, we are God’s partners. We are meant to be co-creators of a peaceful world and God wants us to continue to improve creation. This goes as well for our own lives. By our free will we are given the ability to fix what we have broken. We don’t have to passively wait for the next difficulty to arise, for the next small disaster. We can make changes in the Universe, just like the Tzaddikim, the holy, righteous teachers of old. We ourselves have great power to create wonderful angels: angels of beauty and goodness, energies of healing and repair for ourselves and those who we touch. Not only can we fall down, but we can rise up, and take a small part of the world with us.

Peace Not Only in Heaven

This week’s Torah portion is Shelach Lecha, which means, send forth for yourself. It tells the famous story of the scouts or spies, sent to have a first glimpse of the Promised Land. God gave permission for 12 leaders, one from each tribe, to be sent by Moses to bring back a report on the land, the people in it, and its produce. The scouts return, bringing with them the fruit of the land and they give a public report in which they affirm that the land is good, “But,” and this is a fatal but; 10 out of 12 of them said, in effect, we will never be able to conquer it. We are far too weak. The land is fully settled, fortified, and the people are too strong. The scouts demoralized the Israelites, who became afraid and wanted to return to Egypt. Because of the people’s fear and lack of faith, in spite of God leading them around with a pillar of cloud and feeding them manna each day, God concluded that only their children who had not been enslaved, would inherit the land and that they must wander for 38 more years. The ten scouts died in a plague.
Many Torah sages have asked, what was the scouts’ great sin? They were sent to reconnoiter the territory and come back and give their opinion, which they did. They were telling the truth as they saw it. So why, if this was their honest opinion, did they suffer for what they said? We know that we all make mistakes: we make them frequently. Mistakes are part of being human and seem to be the way we learn. But there is a higher standard when a leader causes others to go astray than when that leader does something wrong that only affects him or her personally. Making a public declaration instead of reporting privately to Moses was the beginning of the scouts’ wrongdoing. And it has to do with self aggrandizement, or an excess of ego. Perhaps they wanted to feel important, and seem important to the others. Perhaps they enjoyed their moment in the spotlight and their momentary opportunity for leadership. But this was not their only transgression. Perhaps their major sin was that the spies sowed divisiveness. It doesn’t sound like such a terrible sin. But seen in the larger context of the nature of reality, it takes on much wider proportions.
The people had been wandering for two years and were all ready to conquer the land, until the spies’ report. The spies divided the people from Moses and Aaron, and also from Joshua and Caleb. Tragically, the spies also divided the people from God. The portion says, “The entire assembly raised up and issued its voice; the people wept that night.” Not only was there division: there was fear and grief: unhappiness and suffering. This is what division causes. Division: separating ourselves from each other and the Divine Oneness of the Universe, causes unhappiness and suffering. I also think separating causes illness, as it says, “ …the people who spread the evil report about the land died in a plague before God (14:37).”
The Chassidic sage, Abraham Joshua Heschl of Apt, quotes a midrash: “It is written, The one who makes peace in the heaven, should make peace among us. The sages ask, what sort of peace needs to be made in the heavens? It is because the angel Mi’chael is the prince of water and the angel Gavriel is the prince of fire. And although water extinguishes fire, still there is peace among them And even more so, there are angels who are half water and half fire and even in them there is peace.”
The nature of God and the Universe is harmony and oneness. And this includes us. Any time we separate, by separating ourselves, or by trying to separate others, by our speech or actions, we create a disharmony that goes against the harmony and oneness of God and life. It creates little bits of death, as Moses said in Deuteronomy (30:19), “I have placed before you life and death, blessing and curse; and you shall choose life, so that you will live, you and your offspring, to love God your God, to listen to God’s voice, and to cleave to God, for The Eternal is your life and the length of your days.” Moses was trying to tell us that cleaving to the Divine; that is, not creating the little separations that we all create, will promote life in our lives. It promotes happiness. It allows us to move through life in sync with the true structure of God and the Universe. God’s very nature is peace. When we sow discord, we go against God, and life, and our own happiness. Why did the Israelites have to wander for another 38 years? To reestablish their connection with God and each other. Call it team building. Or call it the development of a more fearless attachment to the Divine Presence. When we find the harmony of living with each other in peace, we will have found the true nature of life, God, and ourselves. May we realize that creating divisions is not only counter-productive but counter to ultimate reality. May we choose to let unity, harmony, and peace flow through us, that we may extend life for ourselves and those around us.