Speaking of Holiness

This week’s Torah portion is Mishpatim, which means, ordinances, or laws, or judgments. It immediately follows the Ten Commandments but is very different in content, laying out laws for a just civil society. There are laws about slavery, negligence, the giving of charity, just compensation, and dispensing justice. Over 50 laws are given in this portion. Mishpatim ends with commandments to celebrate the holidays and a transporting vision given to Moses and the elders. Tonight I’d like to focus on the topic of speech. As you might expect, there are a number of commandments here that include prohibitions against saying things that are untrue. The Torah also prohibits agreeing with an untrue statement made by another person. One verse in the Artscroll translation reads, “Do not accept a false report.” The Etyz Chaim translation says, You must not carry false rumors. And continuing in the previous translation, the Torah says, Do not extend your hand with the wicked to be a venal witness. Do not be a follower of the majority for evil. Distance yourself from a false word. We can look at these laws in light of our speech.

Judaism has guidelines for speech that can help us to know what is expected of us. The lowest level required is not to say anything false. Of course there are times when we are permitted to say something we know is not true. We can say something untrue to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, and to avoid gossiping. The next highest level of speech is about Lashon Hara, literally, bad speech. The Talmud says: “What constitutes evil speech? … Whatsoever is said in the presence of the person concerned is not considered evil speech. …… He answered: I hold with R. Jose, for R. Jose said: I have never said a word and looked behind my back (Arachin 15b).” At this level we are asked not to say anything negative about a person even if it is true, to someone who has no need to know. Maimonides said, “Even if the statements are true, they bring about the destruction of the world (Mishneh Torah).” Our Sages said: "There are three sins for which retribution is exacted from a person in this world and, [for which] he is denied a portion in the world to come: idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and murder. Lashon horah is equivalent to all of them." In addition, they said: "Lashon horah kills three [people], the one who speaks it, the one who listens to it, and the one about whom it is spoken. The one who listens to it [suffers] more than the one who speaks it.”

There is yet one more level of speech, the highest level. This is harder. We are asked not to say anything positive or negative about anyone to someone who has no need to know. This guideline is meant to circumscribe our conversations. It asks us to think before we speak about another: to say less than we may be used to saying, so that we do not get ourselves into trouble. This level of speech precludes most recreational speech. The Talmud also says, “What shall be one’s remedy so that he may not come to [utter] evil speech? If the person be a scholar, let him engage in the Torah, and if the person be ignorant, let him humble himself, as it is said: ‘But perverseness is a wound to the spirit.’” We are being led here into another commandment found in Mishpatim: “You shall not wrong a stranger and you shall not oppress him, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt. You shall not persecute an orphan or widow.” These commandments seem to be not only about harming a person with less power in the society, but also about denigrating another. If we take these commandments symbolically, we can say that we are all strangers to each other. We all have a tendency to need to bolster our self esteem, but that we should not do it at the expense of others because in reality, we are part of them and they are part of us. And just because we may think, everyone is doing it, it’s an area in which most of us can find spiritual growth.

In this portion it says, “People of holiness shall you be to me.” And perhaps this is a fourth level of speech: that we use our words to create holiness. We can do so much good with our speech: bringing smiles to others, sharing our love, comforting each other, understanding one another’s needs, helping, and bringing kindness by sharing the gift of ourselves. Rabbi Gelberman wrote: “If we speak inwardly to ourselves of the joy of living of the oneness of people of our individual security and our emotional maturity our words will come forth with wisdom.” Our words reveal so much about the kind of people we are: about the quality of our intentions and our inner dialogue. If we are striving to keep our hearts open, our words will bring healing to the world. May speak truthfully and lovingly to others, speaking a little less perhaps than we have been accustomed to, but speaking with the knowledge that satisfying, rewarding relationships and also the world’s healing depends upon us.

How To Be A Priest

This week’s Torah portion is Bemidbar, the very first portion in the book of Numbers. Bemidbar means, “in the wilderness.” It’s always read just at the time of Shavuot, when we commemorate the receiving of the Ten Commandments and celebrate the great gift of Torah. This portion begins with a charge to take a census, hence the name of the Book, Numbers. The plan of how the tribes will encamp around the Tabernacle is laid out, with banners and insignias for each tribe. The Levites replace the first born and are appointed to dismantle, carry, and re-erect the tabernacle on their journeys.

All the drama the Israelites have witnessed: the plagues, the parting of the Sea of Reeds, the giving of the Ten Commandments; all the building of the tabernacle, the crises of not enough food and water have stopped. We are all alone in the desert – but not alone. We are with God. Now we have to begin to just live. How do we do that?
The Torah has very practical advice for the Levites, that for us, can take on deeper meaning. But before we can take this advice into ourselves, we must go back to something God said to us right before the giving of the Ten Commandments. God said, “ V’atah t’hiyu li, ma-m’lechet Cohanim v’goi kadosh. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”(Ex. 19:6) Of course, this is both an offer and a prophecy: a commandment and the beginning of a brand new religious system. In idol worship, the priest spoke through the idol to the God, who spoke back to the priest, who then reported to the people. Judaism was to begin the democratization of religion. Each of us was to be our own priest. We, then, are the Levites: the priests. We are to interact directly with God and to become holy individually, so that we can be a holy nation.

Here is God’s advice. “…you shall appoint the Levites over the Tabernacle of the Testimony, over everything that belongs to it. They shall carry the tabernacle and all its utensils and they shall tend, (guard, and watch) over it; and they shall encamp around the Tabernacle. When the tabernacle journeys, the Levites shall take it down and when the tabernacle encamps, the Levites shall erect it….and the Levites shall protect the guarding of the tabernacle of the testimony.”

We have to remember what was in the center of the Tabernacle: words. We also have to imagine how weird that must have seemed: no idol, rather laws that were available to all. The sages interpreted the commandment to safeguard the charge of the Tabernacle literally. In ancient times, Levites were stationed around the Tabernacle, and later the Temple at 21 different stations, according to Nachmanides, as an Honor Guard. Our task is to go deeper into the symbolic meaning of the text. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach said a beautiful thing: “Imagine if I knew the Torah was given only to me, all its holiness was made just for me – how I would throw myself at every word! How I would cry over every word to understand it! When I receive a letter from someone I love I can’t stop reading. This is how we have to learn Torah, as a love-letter from God to us.”

Rabbi Carlebach captures the spirit of the verses from Bemibar. We are to carry the Torah: to carry it with us, because it truly is within us, as it says in Deuteronomy (30:14), “in your heart and in your mouth.” It is part of us and we are part of it. We are to tend, guard, and watch over it, by developing within ourselves that sense of awe and gratitude which we must have once felt, when we received it, and by putting it into practice in our lives so that we can become Torah; not just know it, but live it and be it. We can encamp around it by making it central to the way we live our lives; not something that is part of our cultural and religious heritage only, but by taking it seriously enough to believe that its wisdom is greater than our own. We can take it down when we have searched our hearts in total honesty, and know with all our being that there is something in the text which we, as a society, cannot agree with any longer: such as the practice of slavery or the exclusion of people on the basis of sexual preference. And we can erect it when we look to it for guidance, when we have a difficult choice and don’t know which way to go. Finally, we can protect it by nurturing its truth within our hearts and by refusing to abandon its teachings; by proudly standing up as Jews, and refusing to abandon our unique destiny as guardians of this precious teaching. By protecting Torah, it protects us. By loving it, it will send loving blessings to us.

In the Zohar it says, “How beloved… is the Torah before the Holy One, blessed be God, …. wherever words of the Torah are heard the Holy One, blessed be God, listens together with all the hosts. Indeed, the Divine Presence comes to lodge with the one that gives utterance to those words, (III:118a)... In all one’s deeds it behooves a person to imitate the celestial model, and to realize that according to the nature of a deed below there is a responsive stirring on high ….When one … turns one’s eyes to the heavenly light, that person will be illumined by the light that God will cause to shine upon him. (III: 118b-119a). At this time of Shavuot, when we ready ourselves to receive the Torah once again, may we all be bathed in the heavenly light of understanding, that we may honor and love the Torah. May we carry it with us, tend it within us, strive to understand the spirit of what it is saying to us, and live by its light.