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 for God on the tabernacle. 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. At the end of the portion, Moses’ face shines with divine light.
Ki Tissa is one of the few Torah portions that speaks about relationship: specifically Moses’ intimate relationship with God. While Moses is on Mt. Sinai, with the Eternal, receiving the tablet of the Ten Commandments, the people long for him to return so they can feel connected to their Divine Protector. When Moses does not return on time, they demand an idol, the Golden Calf, thus breaking their promise to God. The prophet Hosea likens the relationship of God to the Jewish people to a marriage, where God is the groom and Israel the bride. “And I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness, and judgment, and in loving kindness and compassion, I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know God. (2:21-2)
Most of Ki Tissa traces the development of Moses’ relationship to God. As in a human relationship, there is testing. God offers to kill the people and create a new nation, beginning with Moses. Moses passes the test, refusing to abandon the people and hence, refusing to abandon God. Then it is Moses’ turn to seek a deeper relationship. He repeatedly seeks out God, speaking to the Divine at the entrance to a special tent outside the camp, which Moses calls tent of meeting. At one of these encounters, Moses says, in Rashi’s translation, “If I have indeed found favor in your eyes, make you ways known to me, so that I may know you, so that I shall find favor in your eyes.” Knowing someone, in the Torah, when applied to humans, means sexual relations. Here, it describes the great longing we have for completion, for perfect union, that we occasionally find in human relationships, usually only for a short while. But we are really seeking something more universal and profound. We are all looking for the Other in which we can find the Self. Only we can’t usually distinguish romantic love from spiritual love. It all feels the same and one gets mixed up with the other. We don’t have the words to describe the feeling of love, no less the difference between the two kinds. Love is one of our highest human functions.
We literally mint the spiritual currency of the universe when we love. The whole universe works on the principle of love, the more we love the more love we experience in return. Moses, like us, wants more of the good stuff – spiritual fulfillment, through love. And he finds it, by going one step further, asking God, “Show me your glory.” God grants him a close spiritual encounter, cautioning him by saying that he must not come too close, “for no human can see me and live,” which reminds us of what we all know: the flame of love, whether romantic or spiritual, can warm or burn us. This is stated in Song of Songs: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a sign upon your arm; for love is strong as death, Its passion as cruel as the grave. Its sparks become a raging fire. Great seas cannot extinguish love. No river can wash it away, If a man offered all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”(Chap 7)
In Moses’ close encounter, God calls out with the attributes of the essence of who God is: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, truthful, and forgiving. Like the song by Lieber and Stoller recorded by Peggy Lee, Is that all there is? We feel let down. To us it sounds good, but not great; not good enough to satisfy us. However we have to put ourselves into Moses’ experience. For him it is communion or even union, for in experiencing this intense love for the other, he has lost himself in God and found himself; not only the self he knows, but his best, highest self, which, really is what love is all about. When we find that completion, those spiritual riches in ourself, we have found peace and contentment, which can then be shared. We have enough, we’re less needy, able to give more than receive. In a paraphrase of the W.B. Yeats’ poem of 1919, the center holds, the journey is more placid, we are at home in our own skin. The love we give can bring about the peace we seek. May we give it to each other, and experience that peace.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Saturday, February 15, 2014
The Essence of Jewish Royalty
The special vestments made for Aaron, the Kohen Gadol, in his role as High Priest, comprise a grand costume, as the Torah says, “You shall make vestments of sanctity for Aaron your brother, for glory and splendor.” (Ex. 28:2) They were made of precious and semi-precious stones, gold chains, fine linen, turquoise, purple, and scarlet wool, and real gold thread. It is interesting that the priests had vestments befitting royalty but Moses had no costume or symbol of kingship. It is also interesting that the High Priest’s vestments were made of mixed fibers: wool and linen, which are specifically prohibited to us in Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:11, the prohibition known as shatnez, combined fibers.
Moses was humble, we are told, the most humble person on earth (Num.12:3). His royalty was inner, not outer. We are asked to emulate Moses, not the High Priest in this matter. Why is Aaron commanded to wear mixed fibers while we are prohibited from doing so? Aaron was commanded to look grand and we, as individuals are asked not to try to look like priests, to look royal. We are urged to cultivate humility as an important value in Judaism, and not to appear to be too wealthy, royal, or grand. When I hear about people who buy ostentatiously lavish lifestyles for themselves, I often feel sorry for them. That’s royalty on the outside. Those who need royalty on the outside may be compensating for a lack of royalty on the inside.
True outer royalty is always collective, not personal. Royalty comes from conferring authority upon someone to represent the nation, the group, or the tribe. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch pointed out that the priests’ vestments were supplied by, made by, and owned by the people (Note to Lev. 28:42-43). When not serving the nation, the Talmud tells us that the priests were not to wear their vestments to go about the town (Yoma 69a). By tradition, Aaron was a regular sort of person when he was not at work. No one can be outwardly royal alone: royalty is always about the group. But inward royalty is another matter. We can and should be royal on the inside, individually. Inner value is true and lasting value. Outer royalty is fleeting at best, and usually elusive. It is comparative and subjective and has no objective reality. It is a costume we put on and take off, because none of us is really royal on the outside. Remember the adage, no one is a hero to his valet? The trappings of wealth and power are even seen, by the rabbis of the Mishnah, as a hindrance to spiritual progress (Avot, 2:10, 4:21, 6:4.
Rather than admiring the outer, the Torah teaches us to focus on the inner: that which provides lasting satisfaction, happiness, harmony, and love. We are all royal on the inside, if only we could see that our divinity comes from the Radiance of God. The full beauty of a human soul is too dazzling for us ever to comprehend. We are already royalty, descendants from the Eternal Holy Presence. We truly need no outer emblems of self-worth. Our task is to convince ourselves of the greatness within, by cultivating nobility in Godly attributes: taking care of others, acts of kindness, and compassion. The less we need to prove our worth and status to the world, the happier we become, letting our inner royalty shine forth. Inner royalty is magnetic. We respond to true inner nobility in another person because we admire and feel a kinship with God’s attributes of mercy, graciousness, kindness, integrity, and generosity. It needs no trappings. May we find within the royalty we seek, needing less and less of the outer symbols our society seems to value. May inner holiness be the royalty we seek, and may we find it, with God’s great blessing.
(Note: This piece was published in The Jewish Week, February, 2014)
Moses was humble, we are told, the most humble person on earth (Num.12:3). His royalty was inner, not outer. We are asked to emulate Moses, not the High Priest in this matter. Why is Aaron commanded to wear mixed fibers while we are prohibited from doing so? Aaron was commanded to look grand and we, as individuals are asked not to try to look like priests, to look royal. We are urged to cultivate humility as an important value in Judaism, and not to appear to be too wealthy, royal, or grand. When I hear about people who buy ostentatiously lavish lifestyles for themselves, I often feel sorry for them. That’s royalty on the outside. Those who need royalty on the outside may be compensating for a lack of royalty on the inside.
True outer royalty is always collective, not personal. Royalty comes from conferring authority upon someone to represent the nation, the group, or the tribe. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch pointed out that the priests’ vestments were supplied by, made by, and owned by the people (Note to Lev. 28:42-43). When not serving the nation, the Talmud tells us that the priests were not to wear their vestments to go about the town (Yoma 69a). By tradition, Aaron was a regular sort of person when he was not at work. No one can be outwardly royal alone: royalty is always about the group. But inward royalty is another matter. We can and should be royal on the inside, individually. Inner value is true and lasting value. Outer royalty is fleeting at best, and usually elusive. It is comparative and subjective and has no objective reality. It is a costume we put on and take off, because none of us is really royal on the outside. Remember the adage, no one is a hero to his valet? The trappings of wealth and power are even seen, by the rabbis of the Mishnah, as a hindrance to spiritual progress (Avot, 2:10, 4:21, 6:4.
Rather than admiring the outer, the Torah teaches us to focus on the inner: that which provides lasting satisfaction, happiness, harmony, and love. We are all royal on the inside, if only we could see that our divinity comes from the Radiance of God. The full beauty of a human soul is too dazzling for us ever to comprehend. We are already royalty, descendants from the Eternal Holy Presence. We truly need no outer emblems of self-worth. Our task is to convince ourselves of the greatness within, by cultivating nobility in Godly attributes: taking care of others, acts of kindness, and compassion. The less we need to prove our worth and status to the world, the happier we become, letting our inner royalty shine forth. Inner royalty is magnetic. We respond to true inner nobility in another person because we admire and feel a kinship with God’s attributes of mercy, graciousness, kindness, integrity, and generosity. It needs no trappings. May we find within the royalty we seek, needing less and less of the outer symbols our society seems to value. May inner holiness be the royalty we seek, and may we find it, with God’s great blessing.
(Note: This piece was published in The Jewish Week, February, 2014)
Friday, February 7, 2014
Refining our Life Energy
This week’s Torah portion is Terumah, which means portion or contribution. It also means lifting up or separation. Terumah contains God’s request for the Israelites to give a freewill offering of materials needed for the construction of the Tabernacle, the portable site of worship and sacrifice that the Israelites carried with them in the wilderness. All the many detailed instructions for building it are also in this portion. Toward the beginning of the portion the text reads: "V’asa li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham." Rashi translates this as: “they shall make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.” (Ex. 25:5) This can also be translated, they shall make for me holiness and I shall dwell within them.
There is a long rabbinic tradition that we are the place of holiness, that we should make a dwelling place in our hearts for God’s Presence to lodge there. There is a line in Deuteronomy that says, “But God has taken you, and brought you out of the iron crucible, out of Egypt, to be for God a people of inheritance, as you are this day.” (4:20) A crucible is used to refine metal. The metal is melted in the crucible and the impurities are poured off, leaving only the pure substance. The Torah is telling us that we were taken out of Egypt to refine, to purify ourselves. A crucible also is the place where what was hard becomes soft. This can be a metaphor for ego, which the Torah describes as being stiff-necked: intractable and resistant to change. We know that the priests had to purify themselves before they could approach the holy areas and holy furniture of the Tabernacle. The people had to purify themselves for three days before they could hear God speak the Ten Commandments to them; and Moses had to purify himself for six days before he could enter the cloud on Mt. Sinai and dwell with God’s Presence for 40 days and nights. So in order for us to experience God’s Presence in our lives, we are being asked to undergo purification too. The Zohar (I: 88b) tells us, “…when a person exerts himself to purify himself and to draw near to God, then the Shekinah rests on him.”
How is purification accomplished? The Tabernacle, as a place for sacrifice, always involved confession and atonement. So this is the first step: recognizing and acknowledging our faults: all the things we could have done better, all the things we did wrong. Rabbi Schneur Zalman, as quoted by Rabbi Shachter Shalomi, (Wrapped in a Holy Flame P. 195) wrote, “in this arousing of mercies following the contrition, evil and the other side are no longer nurtured from the life energy.” But there is a next step. The Chassidic masters spoke about three realms of action: thought, word, and deed. Our actions are probably the easiest of the three to purify. We can set about doing the right thing and try to carry that out. Words are harder: we slip and say things we shouldn’t say. We become annoyed and answer too quickly. We forget to take the time to be gentle with each other. Rabbi Gelberman wrote: “A word is an outer symbol of an inner feeling.” This shows us that the real work of purification should concern our thoughts.
There is an inner fine-ness that we are capable of achieving, stemming from the love and real compassion we can feel for others and for the Divine. Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev wrote, “One should never think evil thoughts for in the mind of each individual is the holy of holies.” (Soul of the Torah, P. 154) This fine-ness is something to be sought, because as we journey toward it, the change in us activates change above, as the Zohar says,( I:77b) “…whoever makes an effort to purify himself receives assistance from above…for the upper world is not stirred to act until an impulse is given from the lower world. ” As we strive for inner purity, inner fineness we will find many levels and opportunities because we are shown the areas inwardly, that we are expected to tackle. The Apter Rebbe, Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apt wrote, God will communicate with the Jewish people in their closed, private, and protected selves, in the deepest depths of their hearts.
This is what spiritual striving is all about: the burning desire for union with the beloved Divine, that which poet Chaviva Pedaya expressed in this way: “One thing have I asked and it I seek: Your dwelling in me…”(Women’s Torah Commentary (P. 472). Our task is to lift ourselves up, by refining our life energy, our thoughts, words, and deeds, to make a dwelling place for God’s Presence. Just because we are human, we are capable of achieving it, not for its own sake, but to heal and help, to be a gift and experience God’s gifts. This is what all kabbalah is about: the thirst for spiritual love, and even ecstasy, that can be experienced when we make for God holiness, that the Divine may dwell within us.
There is a long rabbinic tradition that we are the place of holiness, that we should make a dwelling place in our hearts for God’s Presence to lodge there. There is a line in Deuteronomy that says, “But God has taken you, and brought you out of the iron crucible, out of Egypt, to be for God a people of inheritance, as you are this day.” (4:20) A crucible is used to refine metal. The metal is melted in the crucible and the impurities are poured off, leaving only the pure substance. The Torah is telling us that we were taken out of Egypt to refine, to purify ourselves. A crucible also is the place where what was hard becomes soft. This can be a metaphor for ego, which the Torah describes as being stiff-necked: intractable and resistant to change. We know that the priests had to purify themselves before they could approach the holy areas and holy furniture of the Tabernacle. The people had to purify themselves for three days before they could hear God speak the Ten Commandments to them; and Moses had to purify himself for six days before he could enter the cloud on Mt. Sinai and dwell with God’s Presence for 40 days and nights. So in order for us to experience God’s Presence in our lives, we are being asked to undergo purification too. The Zohar (I: 88b) tells us, “…when a person exerts himself to purify himself and to draw near to God, then the Shekinah rests on him.”
How is purification accomplished? The Tabernacle, as a place for sacrifice, always involved confession and atonement. So this is the first step: recognizing and acknowledging our faults: all the things we could have done better, all the things we did wrong. Rabbi Schneur Zalman, as quoted by Rabbi Shachter Shalomi, (Wrapped in a Holy Flame P. 195) wrote, “in this arousing of mercies following the contrition, evil and the other side are no longer nurtured from the life energy.” But there is a next step. The Chassidic masters spoke about three realms of action: thought, word, and deed. Our actions are probably the easiest of the three to purify. We can set about doing the right thing and try to carry that out. Words are harder: we slip and say things we shouldn’t say. We become annoyed and answer too quickly. We forget to take the time to be gentle with each other. Rabbi Gelberman wrote: “A word is an outer symbol of an inner feeling.” This shows us that the real work of purification should concern our thoughts.
There is an inner fine-ness that we are capable of achieving, stemming from the love and real compassion we can feel for others and for the Divine. Rebbe Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev wrote, “One should never think evil thoughts for in the mind of each individual is the holy of holies.” (Soul of the Torah, P. 154) This fine-ness is something to be sought, because as we journey toward it, the change in us activates change above, as the Zohar says,( I:77b) “…whoever makes an effort to purify himself receives assistance from above…for the upper world is not stirred to act until an impulse is given from the lower world. ” As we strive for inner purity, inner fineness we will find many levels and opportunities because we are shown the areas inwardly, that we are expected to tackle. The Apter Rebbe, Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apt wrote, God will communicate with the Jewish people in their closed, private, and protected selves, in the deepest depths of their hearts.
This is what spiritual striving is all about: the burning desire for union with the beloved Divine, that which poet Chaviva Pedaya expressed in this way: “One thing have I asked and it I seek: Your dwelling in me…”(Women’s Torah Commentary (P. 472). Our task is to lift ourselves up, by refining our life energy, our thoughts, words, and deeds, to make a dwelling place for God’s Presence. Just because we are human, we are capable of achieving it, not for its own sake, but to heal and help, to be a gift and experience God’s gifts. This is what all kabbalah is about: the thirst for spiritual love, and even ecstasy, that can be experienced when we make for God holiness, that the Divine may dwell within us.
Friday, January 31, 2014
From Love and Not from Fear
This week’s Torah portion is Mishpatim, which means, ordinances, or laws. It directly follows the Ten Commandments, and consists of over 50 rules that lay out the workings of a just society. There are laws concerning murder, injury, theft, care of and destruction of property, negligence, and social justice. There are laws about the punishment fitting the crime, integrity of words and actions, and also about helping and not oppressing a strangers, widows, and orphans, those weakest in society. Finally, there are laws about the 3 agricultural pilgrimage holidays and a vision of God, seen by the Moses and over 70 elders.
Tonight I’d like to examine three incomprehensible laws. They are: “One who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. One who kidnaps a man and sells him and he was found in his possession, shall surely be put to death. One who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death” (Ex. 21:15-17). Of course we don’t agree with these laws, and the ancient rabbis didn’t either. They limited them severely to adult children who have the intention of causing death to their parents. But what the laws say and what they mean, I think, are two very different things. In the 10 Commandments, we are told, “Do not take the name of God, your God, in vain,” and also, “Honor your father and your mother.” Both of these commandments concern respect: respect for God and respect for parents. The Torah is informing us that respect is an important value in Judaism: that it’s good for us, good for society, and that developing respect will help us and make us happier.
In Mishpatim, the failure of an adult child to manifest any respect for parents is deemed so dangerous to society that the courts need to be involved. It is the task of the community, the Torah tells us, to make sure that people who are a danger to their parents are dealt with not by the parents alone, but by the entire community. It is interesting that the commandment concerning kidnapping is between the two directives about parents. Rabbi S. R. Hirsch says this is because the kidnapper treated the person he kidnapped and sold as a thing, not as a person (P. 290, Hirsch Chumash). Respect is a value which has changed greatly in our society. People used to respect the king, the Pope, even rabbis. Our grandparents had respect for their teachers, for the doctor, for authority figures in general. This was a patriarchal hierarchy in which there was more of a certain type of respect throughout the society.
We know that things have greatly changed. There is much less respect for individuals, but perhaps more respect for groups. Our great grandparents may have respected the teacher, but what about a person of color? What about women, or those with disabilities, or those whose sexual preferences differed with their own? Respect has shifted, I think, not diminished. Perhaps now, in our psychologically attuned time, there is more self-respect and also more willingness to treat others as people and not objects. Perhaps, as Rabbi Elimelech taught, that is one meaning of the commandment, “Do not show favoritism,” (Deut. 16:19) which distances us from God’s Panim, face. There is a growing recognition that respect must be accorded to everyone equally, not just to parents, teachers, and authority figures: that respect should be not a component of fear, but of love. The French novelist Albert Camus wrote, “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”
Perhaps the Torah stresses respect to parents because it is through our parents that we learn how to respect, and also how to love. If we formed healthy, nourishing attachments to our parents, then we can not only love, accept, and respect others, but we have also developed the capacity to love and respect the Source of life. Respect for God, and as the V’ahavta prayer urges, love for God, helps us to rise spiritually. One can be a moral person out of a conviction that doing the right thing is valuable in itself. It may however, be easier, to tackle the self and make the changes necessary for spiritual advancement, if we have developed the respect for the rightness and goodness of God’s teachings, if we can love our Divine parent.
Respect flows from the purifying force of love in our lives. When we do the inner work to purify ourselves, we can accept, love, and respect others. The Torah and the Midrash ask us to rise in the presence of the aged and also of a sage (Levit. 19: 32; Ex Rabba 31:16). This is respect based on love, and perhaps we are moving from respect based on fear to respect based on love. There is great strength in having respect for each other. Rabbi Elimelech quotes a story told by the Baal Shem Tov that you may have heard: “All the birds fly to warmer countries in the winter. A beautiful multicolored bird appeared atop a very high tree in a certain country. The king commanded his servants to bring him the bird. They climbed on top of each other’s shoulders, forming a tall ladder. After a while the ones below decided they were no longer necessary and left. This caused the man at the top to tumble and fall to the ground. He was injured and failed to capture the bird.” The Baal Shem Tov continued: “We must always be attached and connected with each other with love.” May we have the wisdom to accord our respect not only to those who exhibit the highest human values, but also to respect our Divinity within, that we may recognize and respect that divinity of each person and be guided toward greater respect for God and each other.
Tonight I’d like to examine three incomprehensible laws. They are: “One who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. One who kidnaps a man and sells him and he was found in his possession, shall surely be put to death. One who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death” (Ex. 21:15-17). Of course we don’t agree with these laws, and the ancient rabbis didn’t either. They limited them severely to adult children who have the intention of causing death to their parents. But what the laws say and what they mean, I think, are two very different things. In the 10 Commandments, we are told, “Do not take the name of God, your God, in vain,” and also, “Honor your father and your mother.” Both of these commandments concern respect: respect for God and respect for parents. The Torah is informing us that respect is an important value in Judaism: that it’s good for us, good for society, and that developing respect will help us and make us happier.
In Mishpatim, the failure of an adult child to manifest any respect for parents is deemed so dangerous to society that the courts need to be involved. It is the task of the community, the Torah tells us, to make sure that people who are a danger to their parents are dealt with not by the parents alone, but by the entire community. It is interesting that the commandment concerning kidnapping is between the two directives about parents. Rabbi S. R. Hirsch says this is because the kidnapper treated the person he kidnapped and sold as a thing, not as a person (P. 290, Hirsch Chumash). Respect is a value which has changed greatly in our society. People used to respect the king, the Pope, even rabbis. Our grandparents had respect for their teachers, for the doctor, for authority figures in general. This was a patriarchal hierarchy in which there was more of a certain type of respect throughout the society.
We know that things have greatly changed. There is much less respect for individuals, but perhaps more respect for groups. Our great grandparents may have respected the teacher, but what about a person of color? What about women, or those with disabilities, or those whose sexual preferences differed with their own? Respect has shifted, I think, not diminished. Perhaps now, in our psychologically attuned time, there is more self-respect and also more willingness to treat others as people and not objects. Perhaps, as Rabbi Elimelech taught, that is one meaning of the commandment, “Do not show favoritism,” (Deut. 16:19) which distances us from God’s Panim, face. There is a growing recognition that respect must be accorded to everyone equally, not just to parents, teachers, and authority figures: that respect should be not a component of fear, but of love. The French novelist Albert Camus wrote, “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”
Perhaps the Torah stresses respect to parents because it is through our parents that we learn how to respect, and also how to love. If we formed healthy, nourishing attachments to our parents, then we can not only love, accept, and respect others, but we have also developed the capacity to love and respect the Source of life. Respect for God, and as the V’ahavta prayer urges, love for God, helps us to rise spiritually. One can be a moral person out of a conviction that doing the right thing is valuable in itself. It may however, be easier, to tackle the self and make the changes necessary for spiritual advancement, if we have developed the respect for the rightness and goodness of God’s teachings, if we can love our Divine parent.
Respect flows from the purifying force of love in our lives. When we do the inner work to purify ourselves, we can accept, love, and respect others. The Torah and the Midrash ask us to rise in the presence of the aged and also of a sage (Levit. 19: 32; Ex Rabba 31:16). This is respect based on love, and perhaps we are moving from respect based on fear to respect based on love. There is great strength in having respect for each other. Rabbi Elimelech quotes a story told by the Baal Shem Tov that you may have heard: “All the birds fly to warmer countries in the winter. A beautiful multicolored bird appeared atop a very high tree in a certain country. The king commanded his servants to bring him the bird. They climbed on top of each other’s shoulders, forming a tall ladder. After a while the ones below decided they were no longer necessary and left. This caused the man at the top to tumble and fall to the ground. He was injured and failed to capture the bird.” The Baal Shem Tov continued: “We must always be attached and connected with each other with love.” May we have the wisdom to accord our respect not only to those who exhibit the highest human values, but also to respect our Divinity within, that we may recognize and respect that divinity of each person and be guided toward greater respect for God and each other.
Friday, January 24, 2014
A Teaching for Tu B'Shevat
Tu B'Shevat, the New Year of the Trees is our environmental and spiritual holiday. Here is a teaching for the occasion:
How is a person like a tree? A tree gives shade, beauty, and fruit.
Like a tree’s shade, we can provide protection for each other.
Like a tree’s beauty, we can be a source of love, friendship, wisdom, and inspiration.
Like a tree’s fruit, we are not diminished in the giving; for we participate in the nourishment and life of the greater web of all existence and always have more to give. Thereby are we enriched.
How is a person like a tree? A tree gives shade, beauty, and fruit.
Like a tree’s shade, we can provide protection for each other.
Like a tree’s beauty, we can be a source of love, friendship, wisdom, and inspiration.
Like a tree’s fruit, we are not diminished in the giving; for we participate in the nourishment and life of the greater web of all existence and always have more to give. Thereby are we enriched.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Emerging Into the Light
This week’s Torah portion is Bo, which means, Come. God commands Moses to go to Pharaoh to warn him of the last three plagues. Later in the portion, the Israelites are given instructions about the Pesach offering to God, in preparation for departure; the protection of marking the doors with the blood from the Pesach offering; and also staying inside, away from danger. We are given our own calendar and the commandments concerning Passover, to celebrate it with matzah and bitter herbs as an eternal decree; the first borns are consecrated to God. Then Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt.
After the ninth plague, Pharaoh is ready to let the people go for a three day period to bring offerings to God in the wilderness. But when he hears that the people will take even their herds and flocks, there is an exchange between Moses and Pharaoh that reads like a page from a super-hero comic book. Pharaoh says: “Go from me! Beware! Do not see my face anymore, for on the day you see my face, you will die.” Moses then says, very evenly and with dead seriousness, “You have spoken correctly. I shall never see your face again.” But just then, God gives Moses more instructions for Pharaoh. I imagine that perhaps Moses is halfway down the hall when he has to go back and warn Pharaoh of the last plague, the only one that the Torah calls a plague: the killing of the firstborns. After carrying out this terrible task, telling Pharaoh about all the death that will occur, the Torah says, Moses “left Pharaoh’s presence in burning anger.”
We can only imagine why Moses was so angry. Here are some possibilities: 1) Because he had to go back on his word? 2) Because he was so frustrated with Pharaoh? 3) Because there was to be so much death and it was all avoidable? 4) Because he sensed that he was a pawn in a game he did not understand? 5) Because he had agreed to be God’s voice to improve the lives of people, and here, the longer he speaks for God, the worse everything has become? 6) He is caught in what to him may have been a hopeless situation, in which he is impotent: unable to bring about any positive change. No wonder he was so angry. God then explains to Moses, maybe to calm him down, that “Pharaoh will not heed you, in order to increase my wonders in the land of Egypt.”
Immediately after that, God says to Moses and Aaron: This month shall be for you the beginning of the months, or in Rabbi Hirsch’s translation, “This renewal will be for you the beginning of renewals.” This year, Rosh Chodesh, the new month and the new moon occurred yesterday, on the evening of January 1st. In both the secular and the Jewish calendars, there was a new month, a renewal, and the renewal of the New Year. Rabbi Hirsch has a wonderful teaching about the new moon and for us, the New Year. He says: “In the land of the most stubborn paganism…did God call forth the future leader of God’s people (to) show them the sickle of the moon struggling to emerge from darkness into renewed light….Every time the moon reunites with the sun, and receives new light from it, God wants us to find our way back to Divinity and receive new irradiation from God’s light, no matter where we may be and through what periods of darkness we may have to pass.”
Moses did not know that just one week later, all the people would have left Egypt, the Sea of Reeds would have parted, and the people would be freed from bondage. He didn’t know that a few months after that, God would reveal the Divine Presence to over a million people, giving them the Ten Commandments: a body of Law that has stood for all time. We have no idea what renewals await us, just a few days, weeks, or months away. In the Hebrew calendar, the first month, Nisan, corresponds to the beginning of the spring: April, the time in Israel of the first plant growth: the time of maximum hope and beautiful renewal for us all. This is what we call God’s daily continuing and renewing the work of creation, the words of which we pray in the Shacharit service, the morning service each Shabbat, which itself is meant as a weekly renewal.
We know that in this new year, there will be challenges as well as blessings. May we be patient through any frustrations we may experience, knowing that the difficulties are the prelude to our emergence into the light. May we be hopeful and secure, knowing that what we encounter are part of the process of Divine renewal, allowing us to play a part in the unfolding of goodness and blessing by striving to move out of darkness into renewed light. May each of us have a year of marvelous growth, increased understanding, and great blessings: of good health, prosperity, and happiness. May our renewal, as part of the Divine Plan, bring more Divine light to all.
After the ninth plague, Pharaoh is ready to let the people go for a three day period to bring offerings to God in the wilderness. But when he hears that the people will take even their herds and flocks, there is an exchange between Moses and Pharaoh that reads like a page from a super-hero comic book. Pharaoh says: “Go from me! Beware! Do not see my face anymore, for on the day you see my face, you will die.” Moses then says, very evenly and with dead seriousness, “You have spoken correctly. I shall never see your face again.” But just then, God gives Moses more instructions for Pharaoh. I imagine that perhaps Moses is halfway down the hall when he has to go back and warn Pharaoh of the last plague, the only one that the Torah calls a plague: the killing of the firstborns. After carrying out this terrible task, telling Pharaoh about all the death that will occur, the Torah says, Moses “left Pharaoh’s presence in burning anger.”
We can only imagine why Moses was so angry. Here are some possibilities: 1) Because he had to go back on his word? 2) Because he was so frustrated with Pharaoh? 3) Because there was to be so much death and it was all avoidable? 4) Because he sensed that he was a pawn in a game he did not understand? 5) Because he had agreed to be God’s voice to improve the lives of people, and here, the longer he speaks for God, the worse everything has become? 6) He is caught in what to him may have been a hopeless situation, in which he is impotent: unable to bring about any positive change. No wonder he was so angry. God then explains to Moses, maybe to calm him down, that “Pharaoh will not heed you, in order to increase my wonders in the land of Egypt.”
Immediately after that, God says to Moses and Aaron: This month shall be for you the beginning of the months, or in Rabbi Hirsch’s translation, “This renewal will be for you the beginning of renewals.” This year, Rosh Chodesh, the new month and the new moon occurred yesterday, on the evening of January 1st. In both the secular and the Jewish calendars, there was a new month, a renewal, and the renewal of the New Year. Rabbi Hirsch has a wonderful teaching about the new moon and for us, the New Year. He says: “In the land of the most stubborn paganism…did God call forth the future leader of God’s people (to) show them the sickle of the moon struggling to emerge from darkness into renewed light….Every time the moon reunites with the sun, and receives new light from it, God wants us to find our way back to Divinity and receive new irradiation from God’s light, no matter where we may be and through what periods of darkness we may have to pass.”
Moses did not know that just one week later, all the people would have left Egypt, the Sea of Reeds would have parted, and the people would be freed from bondage. He didn’t know that a few months after that, God would reveal the Divine Presence to over a million people, giving them the Ten Commandments: a body of Law that has stood for all time. We have no idea what renewals await us, just a few days, weeks, or months away. In the Hebrew calendar, the first month, Nisan, corresponds to the beginning of the spring: April, the time in Israel of the first plant growth: the time of maximum hope and beautiful renewal for us all. This is what we call God’s daily continuing and renewing the work of creation, the words of which we pray in the Shacharit service, the morning service each Shabbat, which itself is meant as a weekly renewal.
We know that in this new year, there will be challenges as well as blessings. May we be patient through any frustrations we may experience, knowing that the difficulties are the prelude to our emergence into the light. May we be hopeful and secure, knowing that what we encounter are part of the process of Divine renewal, allowing us to play a part in the unfolding of goodness and blessing by striving to move out of darkness into renewed light. May each of us have a year of marvelous growth, increased understanding, and great blessings: of good health, prosperity, and happiness. May our renewal, as part of the Divine Plan, bring more Divine light to all.
Friday, January 3, 2014
A Personal Experience of the Divine
This week’s Torah portion is the second in the Book of Exodus, Va’eira, which means, “and I appeared.” It begins with God returning to the topic of the Divine name. God makes several promises to the Israelites, and then returns to a second topic, that of hardening Pharaoh’s heart, first mentioned in the previous portion. God instructs Moses to speak to Pharaoh, that he send the people out of Egypt; and the portion goes on to give an account of the first seven plagues.
The portion reads at the beginning: “God spoke to Moses, and said to him, I am yud hei vav hei (Being, Existence). I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai, God Almighty or God the Provider, or God who is Sufficient, but by my name yud hei vav hei I did not make myself known to them.” (Ex. 6:2-3). This introduces the theme of knowing. There is something new that God wants Moses and the Israelites to know.
God also says, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh will not listen to you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and take out my legions, my people the children of Israel, from the land of Egypt with great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am yud hei vav hei, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt, and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” (Ex. 7:3-5) We usually think that the 10 plagues were primarily for Pharaoh’s benefit, so that he would let the people go. But thinking about the changes that would occur, after the people left, the lives of Pharaoh and the lives of the Egyptians were not so very greatly transformed. The two excerpts quoted tell another story, giving us an additional perspective.
All religion is experiential. That’s why no one can prove the existence of God to anyone else, but each person can prove the existence of God to herself or himself. Being slaves, the people were sunk in a very low state: they were demoralized, probably even devoid of hope. Given that God can do anything, it would have been relatively easy to convince Pharaoh to let the people go. This was deliberately delayed again and again so that God could multiply the signs and wonders: what we have called the 10 Plagues.
The two much greater tasks than convincing one person to do one thing were to give each Israelite an experience of God’s Presence and mastery in the world, and also to unify the Israelites to the point that they would have hope and willingly follow Moses out of Egypt, to a place with no water and no food, no cities and no houses, no clothing and no resources. What person in their right mind would do such a thing? My favorite sage, the S’fat Emet quotes Midrash Rabbah, which comments on Proverbs: “God will grant wisdom; from God’s mouth, knowing and understanding. (Prov. II, 6). Wisdom is great, but knowing is still greater…For God gives wisdom; but to one who God loves, out of God’s mouth comes knowing and understanding. R. Isaac & R. Levi…taught, it can be compared to a rich man's child, who, on returning from school, saw a dish of food in front of his father. When the father offered him a helping, the son said: I would rather have some of that which you yourself are now eating. The father complied, on account of his great love for him, giving him from his own mouth. (Ex. Rabbah XLI:3) The S’fat Emet adds that “this is knowing in your very soul.”
It is one thing to have someone tell you that God exists and that God is Existence, and further that God will take you out of slavery. It is something very different and very precious to have a personal experience that forms the basis of an unshakable conviction that this is really true. This is God’s task, not only at the time of the bondage in Egypt. This is an ongoing task between the Divine and every human being. Is there anyone among us who has not had a strange coincidence, or a personal epiphany, or an experience of being led to do something or meet someone who came to be important in life? Is there anyone who has not felt support at a crucial time or received some kind of blessing that was totally surprising at the time?
We might ask, why should God care so very much to contact each person, in his or her very soul? Why did God enslave us in the first place? Why did God care so much to take the Israelites out of Egypt? The aim of taking us out of Egypt was surely not just to make our lives easier. The larger purpose was to improve the world: to improve human beings, human life, and to point the way to the knowledge of a universal spiritual body of law; to facilitate progress, goodness, and kindness; to make known a better way to live.
God’s task will never stop. It is eternal and ongoing, and each of us is a vital part of it. We are each coming out of a personal Egypt; and God cares very, very much that we do. May we know in our very soul that we are being fed from, to put it figuratively, God’s own mouth, and may we realize how very important each of us is to God and to the improvement of the entire world.
The portion reads at the beginning: “God spoke to Moses, and said to him, I am yud hei vav hei (Being, Existence). I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, by the name of El Shaddai, God Almighty or God the Provider, or God who is Sufficient, but by my name yud hei vav hei I did not make myself known to them.” (Ex. 6:2-3). This introduces the theme of knowing. There is something new that God wants Moses and the Israelites to know.
God also says, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh will not listen to you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and take out my legions, my people the children of Israel, from the land of Egypt with great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am yud hei vav hei, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt, and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” (Ex. 7:3-5) We usually think that the 10 plagues were primarily for Pharaoh’s benefit, so that he would let the people go. But thinking about the changes that would occur, after the people left, the lives of Pharaoh and the lives of the Egyptians were not so very greatly transformed. The two excerpts quoted tell another story, giving us an additional perspective.
All religion is experiential. That’s why no one can prove the existence of God to anyone else, but each person can prove the existence of God to herself or himself. Being slaves, the people were sunk in a very low state: they were demoralized, probably even devoid of hope. Given that God can do anything, it would have been relatively easy to convince Pharaoh to let the people go. This was deliberately delayed again and again so that God could multiply the signs and wonders: what we have called the 10 Plagues.
The two much greater tasks than convincing one person to do one thing were to give each Israelite an experience of God’s Presence and mastery in the world, and also to unify the Israelites to the point that they would have hope and willingly follow Moses out of Egypt, to a place with no water and no food, no cities and no houses, no clothing and no resources. What person in their right mind would do such a thing? My favorite sage, the S’fat Emet quotes Midrash Rabbah, which comments on Proverbs: “God will grant wisdom; from God’s mouth, knowing and understanding. (Prov. II, 6). Wisdom is great, but knowing is still greater…For God gives wisdom; but to one who God loves, out of God’s mouth comes knowing and understanding. R. Isaac & R. Levi…taught, it can be compared to a rich man's child, who, on returning from school, saw a dish of food in front of his father. When the father offered him a helping, the son said: I would rather have some of that which you yourself are now eating. The father complied, on account of his great love for him, giving him from his own mouth. (Ex. Rabbah XLI:3) The S’fat Emet adds that “this is knowing in your very soul.”
It is one thing to have someone tell you that God exists and that God is Existence, and further that God will take you out of slavery. It is something very different and very precious to have a personal experience that forms the basis of an unshakable conviction that this is really true. This is God’s task, not only at the time of the bondage in Egypt. This is an ongoing task between the Divine and every human being. Is there anyone among us who has not had a strange coincidence, or a personal epiphany, or an experience of being led to do something or meet someone who came to be important in life? Is there anyone who has not felt support at a crucial time or received some kind of blessing that was totally surprising at the time?
We might ask, why should God care so very much to contact each person, in his or her very soul? Why did God enslave us in the first place? Why did God care so much to take the Israelites out of Egypt? The aim of taking us out of Egypt was surely not just to make our lives easier. The larger purpose was to improve the world: to improve human beings, human life, and to point the way to the knowledge of a universal spiritual body of law; to facilitate progress, goodness, and kindness; to make known a better way to live.
God’s task will never stop. It is eternal and ongoing, and each of us is a vital part of it. We are each coming out of a personal Egypt; and God cares very, very much that we do. May we know in our very soul that we are being fed from, to put it figuratively, God’s own mouth, and may we realize how very important each of us is to God and to the improvement of the entire world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
