Thinking For Ourselves

This week’s Torah portion is Shemini, which means, eighth. On the eighth day after Moses set up the Tabernacle, the sacrificial service was to begin. The priests – Aaron and his four sons - had been sanctifying themselves for seven days. It was the first time the people had gathered to see sacrifice performed on their behalf. Moses had told them that God’s Presence would appear to them and it was a joyous and solemn holiday, full of expectation and devotion. Every sacrifice was offered as commanded and God sent heavenly fire to consume the offerings, manifesting the Divine Presence. But just at that time of celebration, two of Aaron’s sons brought an incense offering that was not commanded and they died tragically, in the sight of everyone. Moses tells Aaron not to leave or to show signs of obvious mourning, lest another tragedy occur. Then there is a controversy about whether Aaron and his remaining sons should eat the sin offering. Moses becomes angry that the commandment to eat it was not followed, but Aaron said, “Now that such things befell me, were I to eat this day’s sin offering, would God approve?” The Torah continues, “Moses heard and he approved.” At the end of this section the dietary laws are given.
Shemini is perhaps the most contradictory portion in the Torah. It teaches a number of important things, so it is interesting to try to untangle its contradictions and draw some conclusions. The first message we get is that when we follow the commandments exactly, God is pleased. This idea is reinforced by the deaths of Aaron’s two sons. They brought “an alien fire that God had not commanded.” But just after that comes the two middle words of the Torah, “darosh darosh: Moses insistently inquired about the sin offering.” Our sages say that the Torah revolves around insistent in inquiry. This teaching is in turn reinforced by Aaron’s exchange with Moses. Aaron feels that he must have sinned, or his sons must have sinned, for his son’s lives to be taken, publicly, by God. He feels that he is not worthy to eat the people’s sin offering and he disobeys God’s direct commandment. When Moses hears Aaron’s reasoning, Moses agrees with him. This teaches the importance of motivation. It shows us that our intention is more important than obeying the letter of the Law. In effect, we are being told by this portion to think and not to think. In Buddhism, a koan is a statement that makes no logical sense, but is given to a student to meditate on, sometimes for years, until the inner meaning is revealed. This portion is a kind of Jewish koan: use your intelligence and emotions to make your own decisions while obeying the commandments exactly. What are we to do? A Catholic priest I know, Henry Fehrenbacher, who is a scholar and intellectual once said, “God gave us brains and God is insulted if we don’t use them.” In agreement with this, the Stone Chumash quotes Rabbi Tzaddok HaKohen who said, “This is the first place in the Torah of the exercise of Oral law, in which reasoning is used to define the parameters of the law.” I would go even further. Our sages taught that there were two categories of Torah: written and oral. But I have begun to teach a third category: Newly Created Torah that arises in our hearts and minds, moment by moment, through which God sends us suggestions, feelings, and convictions about what we should do. One Actors’ Temple congregant calls it “God Guts.” Now this can be dangerous, if we do whatever we want to do. The commandment to wear fringes tries to guard against that and reminds us to do what God asks us to do. We are very good at rationalizing our behavior to convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing when we are not. So perhaps we need some guidelines for the decision making process. Rabbi Gelberman used to ask: “Is it good today and will it be good tomorrow?” And I think we all would ask, “Would it hurt anyone?” I would also add: does it exclude anyone, which certainly comes up in the way we keep or don’t keep the dietary laws. Another guideline might be, “Is this in the spirit of what God asks of me? Shemini teaches that it is as detrimental to follow the commandments blindly and unthinkingly as it is not to follow them. Rabbi Eleazar said in the Talmud, A person should always be pliable as the reed and never unyielding or rigid as the cedar. For this reason the reed merited that of it should be made a pen for the writing of the Law (Taanit 20a). Judaism can only live, the Torah can only live when we make decisions using our intelligence and our ability to make fine distinctions and fuse these abilities with giving, loving, unselfish hearts. Maimonides said that all of the commandments only exist to lead us to holiness. They are a means to an end and not an end in themselves. I personally find life to be a moral quagmire, which is constantly presenting me with difficult and challenging decisions; and I am always trying to keep my mind and my heart open when I make them. Shemini clearly teaches that the written commandments do not cover all circumstances. It is up to us to decide how and when to apply them. It is also incumbent upon us to be totally honest and truthful with ourselves about our motivations, which may often be mixed.
May we use our intelligence, love of others, our compassion, and our sense of justice to decide the way we should go. May our desire to elevate ourselves, to join with and help others guide our decisions, and may we cleave to Goodness, using our intelligence, doing what is right, doing what is asked of us, with love and caring.

God is Arranging It

This week’s Torah portion is Ki Tissa, which means.” when you take.” It begins with the taking of a census, goes on to appoint two people to oversee the work of the Tabernacle and holy vestments, and reiterates that Shabbat observance supersedes work on the tabernacle for God. Later in the portion, while Moses is gone, the people make and worship a golden calf. Moses wins forgiveness for them and has an intimate encounter with God, in which he hears a description of God’s attributes: that God is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, forgiving, and great in kindness and truth.
Tonight I’d like to address a recurring theme in the Torah. While the people are worshipping the golden calf, it says, “God said to Moses, I have seen this people and behold it is a stiff-necked people, and now desist from me. Let my anger flare up against them and I shall annihilate them and I shall make you a great nation.” This is very similar to a section in the book of Numbers, in which the people have heard the report of the scouts, whose opinion it is that the land cannot be conquered. The people become demoralized and decide to return to Egypt. At that time, the Torah says, “God said to Moses, how long will this people provoke me and how long will they not have faith in me, despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst. I will smite them with the plague and annihilate them and I shall make you a greater and more powerful nation than they.” What are we supposed to think about these two passages? Is God vengeful and punitive or is there something else going on below the surface of the text? My understanding stems from a comment about another incomprehensible passage, the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. In reference to Abraham the sages say that no one is given a test that they cannot pass. These two episodes about Moses are truly just that: they are about Moses and not about the people. In both instances, Moses is given a choice: to continue as the leader of the Jewish people, with all the problems, frustrations, and difficulties that may arise, or to have the problems taken off his hands. In both cases, Moses argues with God and convinces God to save the people. But there is another way to look at this interaction. We say that God is omniscient: all knowing. We also say in Judaism that the past, present, and future are all One, as God and existence are One. So God already knows the outcome of Moses’ choice. God knows what Moses will choose. But – and this is a very important point – God allows Moses free choice. Our free will is never taken away. And by allowing Moses to choose freely, God arranges it so that Moses has to take responsibility for his choice and for signing onto the next leg of the trip, when the going will definitely get tough. Had Moses chosen to kill the Israelites, he would have had to live with the knowledge that he caused all their deaths. So the decision was somewhat of a foregone conclusion. By choosing to intercede for them, it became a win-win situation: Moses passed the tests and he also got to take credit for saving his people. And this helped him to become an even greater leader than he was before, but also helped him spiritually: to grow as a person. What God also caused was that Moses, having agreed to the next leg of the journey, could not complain about how hard the task was, or walk away from it. Taking responsibility means you can’t whine or complain about your choice. This theme of taking responsibility in the Torah, is actually stated for the first time, in B’reisheet, with the story of Adam and Eve. God arranges it so that the fruit was prominently displayed and told the humans not to eat it. But God also planted the suggestion in Eve’s mind, via the serpent, that eating the fruit would be a positive thing, and that it would not cause her death. Eve freely chose to eat the fruit, which made her a conscious human being, knowing right from wrong; but she did not have this knowledge of right and wrong before she ate it, before she chose. God so arranged it that she would grow spiritually and that she would take responsibility for her choice. After the humans became conscious, having exchanged the animal state for the conscious state, they have to work for a living; and fear, the knowledge of the possible future, comes into the world. Having chosen consciousness, they cannot complain or whine about their choice. This is how the world works. We get to choose and then take responsibility for our choices by not complaining about them or blaming anyone for what we have chosen. But we should also be aware of what this portion teaches us: that God is, through suggestion and circumstance, arranging for our spiritual growth. God is not a punitive or angry God. God is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger, forgiving, and great in kindness and truth. God is the One who leads us to tests, in which we can test ourselves against our own sense of rightness and goodness, and morality, which come from our Godly souls and God-given natures. God’s guidance and wisdom arranges win-win situations for us: a path for us along which our blessings lie. Our growth and our blessings are dependent on our willingness to partner with God in the planned forward motion. May we realize that our circumstances are helping us to grow, and choose with faith the positive direction that is being arranged for us.

Are we leading or being led?

This week’s Torah portion is Beshallach, which means, when he sent. When Pharaoh sends the Israelites out of Egypt, God leads them, with a pillar of cloud, away from the coast of the Mediterranean: not North but South. Hemmed in by the Sea of reeds ahead of them and the pursuing Egyptians behind them, the people despair that their lives are over. They cry out of God, who urges them to go forward. And you know the rest. God splits the water. They travel through the sea in safety, but the pursing Egyptian chariots and horsemen drown: the Divine retribution for throwing all male Israelite babies into the Nile. Then the people sing a song of gratitude to God. The beginning verse of this portion reads: “God did not lead them by way of the Philistines, though it was near, for God said, perhaps they will be led, when they see war, to return to Egypt.” And later it says, “God went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to have them led along the way.” And in the song of the Sea, the people sing, “With your kindness you have led this people that you redeemed. You led with your might to your Holy abode.” We can see that being led: God leading us, is prominently featured in this portion. It also says that God took the people around toward the Sea of Reeds. The word around, ya-save, connotes a circle, and in fact, we originated in Canaan and eventually returned to Canaan. The question is, how does all this leading fit in with our conception of Free Will? Are we really choosing or are we being led? We know that we do have free will. We can choose what to say and what to do. We change our reality every day by our choices. The Torah, even at the very beginning of Genesis, takes a stand for the beginning of history and linear progress over the passive acceptance of the ancient idea of the wheel of life: that nothing ever changes and we are merely repeating lives that have been and will ever be the same. There is a story in Midrash about “a king who had a son to whom he wished to bequeath an inheritance, but he argued: ' If I give it to him now that he is small, he will not know how to take care of it; I will therefore wait until my son learns how to write and can understand the value, then I will bequeath it unto him.’ This is what God said: … I had better give them the Torah first and then bring them into the Land.” Midrash Rabbah - Exodus XX:15 This passage speaks about learning and future choice. The Talmud (Er 53b) talks about this too. It says, “I was once on a journey when I noticed a child sitting at a cross-road. By what road, I asked the child, can we go to the town? This one, he replied, is a short way that is long and that one is a long way that is short. I proceeded along the short but long road. When I approached the town I discovered that it was hedged in by gardens and orchards. Turning back I said to him, ‘My child, did you not tell me that this road was short?’ — ‘And’, he replied: ‘did I not also tell you: that it was also long?’ The statement “there is a long way that is short and a short way that is long.” leads us to believe that the destination is the same, but that there are two ways to get there; and choice is at the heart of the difference. The seemingly easy way out of a situation may, at first look more promising than a scrupulously moral, ethical decision. And yet, though we may think it’s the easy way, we are really being led, like pharaoh, to our doom; or like the Israelites who could have gone North, to an insurmountable barrier. In a Biblical sense, we could ask, are we choosing life or choosing death? Perhaps what we are being taught is that certain of our choices are pro-life and lead to progress, while other choices will send us circling back on ourselves so that we end up stuck: unable to make that freeing forward movement that feels good and right. I’ve been speaking about choice seen through a personal lens, but it can also be seen through a collective lens. Martin Luther King said, “On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but we must do it because Conscience tells us it is right.” Heschl spoke about choice in two essays quoted in the collection Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. He says, “the tragedy of man is that he is so great and that he fails to recognize his greatness. Jean-Paul Sartre has said ‘Man is condemned to be free.’ God has given us choice, the greatest obligation of freedom. God is waiting for us to exercise that choice. (P 218) …This is the decision we have to make: whether our life is to be a pursuit of pleasure or an engagement for service. The world cannot remain a vacuum. Unless we make it an altar to God, it is invaded by demons. This is no time for neutrality (P. 75).”
What is true of the aggregate is also true of the individual. How are we to decide which choices will propel us forward and not back? When the Israelites were paralyzed with fear of the past, represented by Pharaoh’s pursuing army, and also of the future, represented by the Sea of Reeds, they cried out to God, the correct response in this situation. God’s answer was, “let them journey forth.” Choose the future, not the past: not old patterns or going backward. Choose with courage! The Rimanover Rebbe said, “Belief and trust are linked. One who firmly believes also trusts.” We are being led, but how soon we get there and in what way is up to us. Free will determines how our life feels. Does it feel free with the freedom of forward movement, or does it feel like the slavery of being stuck in old patterns and the hopelessness of the repeating wheel of life? The Torah tells us that we are being led toward movement and progress, out of our metaphoric Egypt. The details, the scenery, and the comfort of the journey are in our hands. We are on the way. How long will it take us to get there?