Fear Blinds Us

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This week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, the last Torah portion the book of Bereshit, Genesis, tells the story of Jacob’s death. Jacob, our ancestor, knows that the end is near, and so he calls his 12 sons together for one last time.

Jacob has had a terribly hard life. He had to run away from the home he loved, in fear for his life*. He had to bury his dear wife, Rachel. He spent many years believing he had lost his beloved son, Joseph. Now, he’s sick (and, according to tradition, he was the first man to ever become sick before dying, so I match that he must have been confused and fearful, and undoubtedly in pain). And, even worse, he’s finishing his life in the land of Egypt. He and his family were saved from starvation in Canaan, true, but he is living his last days in a kind of exile from his home, and from our holy land.

 * The fact that his flight was of his own doing didn’t make it any easier for him.

As his sons gather around him, he begins addressing them by saying, “Come together, that I may tell you what is to befall you in the days to come.” (Genesis 49:1). According to a midrash (an ancient rabbinic story), as those words imply, Jacob was intending to tell his sons their future. But, the Shechina, God’s closest presence, departed from him in that moment, and he was no longer able to prophesy.

Why? Why did he lose access to God, and to prophecy? Many sages give the simple, obvious answer that God just didn’t want him telling anyone the future. Because, the future is always meant to be unknown. But, Rabbi Noah Farkas reads it differently. He proposes that it was something inside of Jacob himself which pushed away the Shechina, and which took away his ability to see the future. It was his fear, and his brokenness.

His fear, and his brokenness, kept him away from God, and took away his ability to see the future clearly. That’s the truth. Our fear, and our brokenness, can keep us away from God, and can take away our ability to see the future clearly.

There is so much to fear, right now. In general, the world seems to be on fire, and on the brink of something much worse. You just have to open the news to know what I’m talking about. That’s true for everyone, but is particularly, acutely true for those of us in the Jewish community. The rise of anti-Semitism, and the recent rash of terrible, horrific attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions, have all of us worried, most of us afraid, and some of us panicked.

The danger is real. The physical danger, to be sure, is real. We’d be foolish and naïve to not be worried. But, arguably, the real danger is different. It may not be as scary, but it’s more present. More likely. We’re in danger of losing our ability to dream, our ability to be brave. We’re in danger of losing our ability to see a future that’s worthy of us, and of our heritage.

The truth is that, in all likelihood, we are safe. Physically, at least. I’m not suggesting that we do so, but if we were to drop all of our security measures, odds are we’d make it through this Shabbat, and every foreseeable Shabbat, with no problem. We know that the 24 hour national, worldwide, new cycle makes the world seem more dangerous than it really is — every time anything happens, anywhere, we hear about it, endlessly, for days and weeks, and so it starts to feel and seem as if that horror is happening everywhere, all the time. It’s not. I’m not minimizing the horror of the attacks which have happened when I say that, on whole, the world is still a very safe place, especially for those of us sitting in synagogues tonight. Most of us are not in any real physical danger, thank God.

But, if we start acting as if we are, if we start acting too strongly out of fear, if we start pulling back, if we start leading with defense, and putting up walls around our community, and barring our doors, if we huddle and shelter rather than reaching outward, then we’re hurting ourselves. We’re damaging our ability to create holiness in our lives, and in this world.

Of course, actual, physical harm would be unthinkably horrific. Please don’t hear me saying otherwise. But I firmly, deeply believe, that that kind of harm is incredibly unlikely. It probably just won’t happen to us. But, what will happen if we stop trusting other people? What will happen if we stop trusting each other? What will happen if we let ourselves be cowed into living our lives through the lens of fear? Especially since a lens of fear always becomes, sooner, rather than later, a lens of suspicion, and of hatred. What kind of world can we build, when we believe we’re living in a world like that?

We have to ask ourselves not just how do we survive, but why do we survive? What are we here to do?

I think that our job is to bring holiness into this world. I’m not always exactly sure what that means, and am really sure how, precisely, we can do it. And, I know that people will have wildly different answers to that, and myriad different ways of bringing holiness to life. Many won’t even use those words, although I’d argue that they may still be engaged in holy work.

At the end of each day, we have to ask ourselves not just what we do to survive, but what we did because we survived. Not just whether we are still in the world, but how the world is better for my having been in it.

May we never have cause to fear for our lives. May we never have cause to fear, at all. But, when we do fear, may we have the strength to live in holy defiance of that fear. May God’s closest presence never depart from us, and may we always live with our eyes open, looking ahead to a future, to a world redeemed.

This is a version of a sermon given on Shabbat, January 10, 2020

Marriage, Justice and Mercy

“You shall place judges and guards in all of your gates which Adonai your God has given you to dwell in. You shall judge the people with righteousness. (Deuteronomy 16:18)”

In trying to understand this passage the Chatam Sofer connects it to a passage from Hosea (Chapter 2) in which the prophet links righteousness and judgment with kindness and mercy. He (the Chatam Sofer) sees that later passage as a kind of quid pro quo between us and God. God gives us kindness and mercy, while we are expected to give the world righteousness and judgment (judgment, probably in the sense of fairness, in this context). In fact, it’s a bit more than an ordinary deal that God made with us — it was, essentially, our “bride price.” It was the exchange by which our marriage to God (the Rabbi’s favorite metaphor for our covenant with God) was created. God said, “I promise to give you kindness and mercy; you promise to judge fairly and with righteousness, and by this exchange, we will be linked forever.”

That’s why we have to put “judges and guards” at our gates to make sure that we judge with righteousness: if we don’t have those protections, and our righteousness falters, we’re in violation of our marriage contract. We have to hold up our end of this bargain, or we’ll have no right to expect God to do so in return.

Our entire relationship with God is contingent on our being willing to continually act with righteousness and justice in the world.

As always, I don’t take this literally. I don’t believe that, were we to stop caring about justice, the earth would rebel and start treating us with viciousness. I don’t think that the rains will stop or disease will descend on us if we stop pursuing justice. But, I very much believe that our relationship with God is based in our willingness to pursue justice, and that there’s no way to ignore justice without violating that relationship. I believe that our ability to connect with the Most High only exists when we are concerned with fairness “down here.”

I’m pretty sure that religion which is unconcerned with justice isn’t actually religion, at all. It’s sacrilege.

The One Who Sets Me Free

A bit of a long, somewhat rambly exploration of God’s nature, and the reason to be religious. What else is there to do on a Friday afternoon…?

Nehama Leibowitz was a 20th century Torah scholar — one of the greats of her generation. Her commentaries on the weekly Torah portion were some of the most interesting, challenging pieces we read in rabbinical school, and are remarkable (among other reasons) for their combination of traditional text-learning and modern, thoughtful approach. She’s worth checking out if you want a bit of a challenge.

Early in my career as a rabbi, I often used her teachings — sometimes for sermons, more often for adult education. Over the years, I’ve turned to her less and less, partially because I realized that her dense, esoteric teachings tend to appeal more to rabbinical types than to laypeople, and partly because I tend to overuse my favorite sources (as I’m sure that any of our regulars will attest to), and then, after a while, try to find other sources to keep things fresh. Anyway, I was studying with a new friend/colleague today, and we decided to look at some of her teachings.

She always finishes with “Questions for Further Study,” and one of those questions for this week’s Torah portion, Vaera, concerns a tiny linguistic variation, which might hint at a larger, philosophical idea. In Exodus 6:6, God says:

I am Adonai, Who is bringing you out from under the burdens of Egypt.

And then, in the very next verse, God says:

I am Adonai your God, the One who brings you out from under the burdens of Egypt.

There are two differences here. First of all, the second verse adds “your God” to God’s name. And, there’s a subtle shift in the Hebrew which I tried to (hopefully accurately) capture as the difference between “Who is bringing you out” and “the One who brings you out.” Why the difference?

The first version, “Who is bringing you out,” is using the phrase to talk about something which God is doing, at this very moment. But, it’s only at this moment. The second phrase has a bit more of a sense of God’s identity. “Bringing you out” isn’t just something which God does at some given moment. “Brings you out” is something which God does, regularly. Or, more to the point, it’s part of who God is. It’s like the difference between “I’m going to play baseball” and “I’m a baseball player.” The first describes an activity of the moment; the second says something about identity.

God is “bringing you out from Egypt” at this moment. But, more importantly, God is the God who, regularly and reliably, “brings you out from Egypt.” The first speaks only of the current moment; the second also hints at a future promise.

And, that might explain the other difference — the inclusion of “your God” in the second verse. Because, it’s only when we recognize God as the One who will, in some ongoing way, take us out of Egypt, that God becomes “our God.” We don’t follow God because God freed us once. We follow God because God frees us. Always.

I’m putting a (possibly too) fine point on this because it speaks to something fundamental about how I see Judaism, and (I guess) all religion.

Some people promote religion based on what it has done — you should be religious because of what God did for us. You should be religious because of what religion meant to your parents, or to theirs. You should be religious because of something which happened when you were young. And so on. I’m not going to argue the logic or morality of this. Instead, I’m going to argue the effectiveness of it. Or, to be more precise, the lack of effectiveness.

Look, I can give you all sorts of history-based reasons to be religious. I might even believe some of them (although, many would be hollow arguments coming from me, to be honest). But, I won’t bother, because I don’t expect that many of them would be particularly effective. People just don’t get involved in religion because of abstract arguments and “should’s,” which are just thinly masked guilt trips. People get involved in religion if religion brings something to their lives. Arguably it’s always been this way, but especially in our modern (postmodern, to be precise) world, this is the reality. People are not going to get deeply involved in and connected to their religion simply because someone tells them it’s a good idea, or because they have some historical, or genetic, or vestigial obligation to do so. People are going to get deeply involved in and connected to their religion if, and only if, it has a profound impact* on them. Only if they believe, even if it’s metaphorically, that God sets them free.

* EK—if you’re reading this, I changed that from “profoundly impacts them” for you…
Is this selfish? Is this just a religious version of “what have you done for me lately?” Maybe. Probably. Yet, I guess that it is. But, I think it’s fair, and it’s honest. The various versions of “you should” that people use to try to get other people involved religion just don’t work, at least not for most people I encounter (and, from the bit I read about it, not for those who are my age or younger, generally speaking). Either religion speaks to me in my situation in a deep and meaningful way, or it’s just not going to be compelling enough to me to spend my time and money on it.

Maybe I’m comfortable admitting all this because I do believe that religion, and God, have had an enormous, positive impact on me. And, that they can for many others, too. That, although I highly doubt that God literally set our people free from Egypt, I know that God has, metaphorically, but nonetheless transformatively, set me free in many ways.

My God is a God who sets me free. Yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Freedom To Be

In his Torah commentary Covenant and Conversation, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks presents an interesting interpretation of what it might mean when the Torah describes human beings as being created betzelem Elohim, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). A major, implicit principle in the creation story is that God is independent of and beyond the natural world. God transcends nature. So, maybe in saying that we were created in God's image, the Torah is telling us that we do, too?

That isn't to say that we're supernatural, obviously. Physically, we are just as bound by nature's laws as any other creature. But, in the sense of our own, internal natures, we seem to have a level of freedom which isn't shared with anything else in the world.

A dog, for example, will always be, more or less, what it was born to be. I have a (mostly) terrier at home, and he will always want to chase squirrels. Better owners might have convinced him to stay when told to do so, and age will eventually take away his ability to actually go after them. But, he will never stop, contemplate his existence, and think to himself, "Maybe there is a better way to spend my time than chasing that squirrel."* At his core, he will always be a terrier.

* And, yes, I'm aware that technically I can't prove this. We don't know what's going on in animals brains, etc. I'm pretty comfortable making this claim...

Human beings are very different from that. We have the ability to interrogate our deepest selves, and to try to make changes in what we find there. Those changes will almost always be incredibly difficult to make; we'll probably fail a lot more than we'll succeed. But, regardless, the possibility remains.

I was born with certain personality traits — I have a certain amount of materialism, a certain amount of bigotry and hate, a certain amount (a surfeit, really) of laziness, and so on. These will always be in there, I suspect, but I don't have to give in to them, and I don't have to be satisfied with them. I can choose to transcend them and, with enough time and effort, I may be able to change them. Maybe not completely, but somewhat. Significantly, even.

It's a lovely idea. What makes us most different from the other animals, and what makes us most like the Divine, is our freedom to be not who we were born to be, but rather who we choose to be.

Freedom is Caring

During my sabbatical, I've been spending some time with Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's Torah commentary. For those who don't know, Soloveitchik was one of the giants of the 20th century, and he more or less created what we now know as Modern Orthodoxy. He never actually wrote a Torah commentary, but one of his students gathered various teachings of his which related to various parts of the Torah, and assembled them into a single work. It's a pretty fantastic bit of Torah.

In this week's Torah portion, Parashat Bo, we get the Passover story, including the commandment of the Paschal sacrifice. It is, according to at least some sages, the only sacrifice which is closely tied to the idea of chavurah, community. One sage even asserts that this one particular sacrifice can only be offered by a group, never an individual. This one offering, so closely tied to freedom, can never be an individual act.

But, a chavurah, a community, is more than a group. It must be bound by something. And, that something is chesed. What's chesed? It's usually translated as "kindness," but it also has a sense of communal obligation about it. Loving responsibility. That, Soloveitchik teaches, is what freedom is really about. The ability to display chesed.

The ceremony of the Passover meal, centered around the paschal lamb, aims at the emergence of the new chesed community--for chesed is the characteristic mark of the free man...the birth of the chesed community--of a nation within which people unite, give things away, care for each other, share what they possess--is symbolized by the paschal sacrifice...[God] simply wanted the people--slaves who had just come out of the house of bondage--to emerge from their isolation and insane self-centeredness into the chesed community, where the little that man has is too much for himself.

To emerge from our insane self-centeredness. What a phrase. And, what a great definition of freedom. The ability to emerge from our insane self-centeredness.

As you may know, during my sabbatical, I've also been focussing a bit on Social Justice, and on trying to find ways, and partners, to work towards a world which cares more for the oppressed and the marginalized. And, although I don't know that Soloveitchik would have liked this application (he was speaking about the Jewish community here, not the world community), I still found his words resonant with the world of Justice. And, quite dissonant with much of the hatred and anger, and with the treatment of "the other," that I see in the news.

What is freedom? Freedom is defined, and symbolized, by our ability, and our willingness, to emerge from our insane self-centeredness, and to instead live within a nation built on caring for each other.

Cain Yehi Ratzon--May that be God's will.

Shabbat Shalom.

Use Your Desires

A nice teaching from Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev on this week's Torah portion (Vayishlach)*.

* To my text-loving friends, the playing around he does with Jacob/Esau is really cool, but too convoluted for me to go into right here. But, it's in translation in Green's Speaking Torah if you can't read the original Hebrew. 

He teaches that, when we are trying to do the right thing, our evil urge (or, our baser desires, if you prefer) will get in the way--we'll be tempted to do something else. Go ahead and tell that part of ourself, "Don't worry--we'll get earthly reward for this, too." Basically, bribe our less righteous parts with presents and promises, so that they don't subvert us.

What kinds of rewards? Oh, I guess that depends on what/how we each believe. If you want to believe that doing this or that righteous act will give you good fortune in the lottery--go ahead*! If you want to believe that people will like you more if you are (or just act like) a mensch--go ahead! Anything you can tell yourself, true or not, that gets you to do the right thing--go ahead!

 * Spoiler Alert: it won't.

But, aren't we supposed to do the right things for the right reasons? Isn't it bad to have personal gain and ulterior motives in mind? Well, yes and no. It's not ideal for sure. But, isn't doing the right thing for the wrong reason better than not doing it at all? And, if we do this enough, we might find ourselves finally defeating those lower urges, and then being able to do the right thing for the right reasons!

Many doctors go into medicine, at least in part, to make a lot of money and buy a nice car. You know what--some of them still save lives, no matter why they started doing so. Sometimes I visit a sick person (or lead a service, or teach a class...) not because I want to, but because I have to, and I'll get in trouble if I don't. We can all think of examples--sometimes we just can't do the right thing for the right reasons. But, that doesn't mean that we can't find a way to do it, anyway.

That's the wrestling that we're all doing--pitting our higher selves against the parts of our selves which we're not so proud of. Sometimes, we can trick ourselves into letting those good parts win. And, then we'll find that we don't need to wrestle so hard, after all.

Name It

This week's Torah portion contains the famous episode of Jacob wrestling with--well, it's not clear what, exactly, he was wrestling with. An angel? A man? Something. Anyway, when the fight is more or less over, Jacob asks for the other's name, and the reply is "Why are you asking for my name?" And, Jacob never gets his answer.

But, Rabbi Y.L. Hasman* says that, actually, Jacob did get an answer. That, the angel's name is, in fact, "Why are you asking for my name?"

* This is in Itturei Torah, vol II page. 306 for anyone who wants to see the original

You see, according to many traditions, this man/angel/other was actually the yetzer ra, the inclination to do evil, or the sitra achra, the "other (dark) side" of human nature. Or, Satan*. Basically, this was evil incarnate. And, what he's telling Jacob is that the true name of evil is, "Why are you asking for my name?"

* Yes, Rabbinic tradition includes Satan, but he's nothing like the Satan of Christian tradition.

How does evil thrive? It thrives by people not being willing to deal with it. To look at it, understand it, and name it. By getting people to pay attention to something else, and deny that the evil is real, or important. What evil wants, more than anything, is to be anonymous and unrecognized. That's how it wins.

The first step in fighting any evil is to acknowledge that it's real, and that it needs fighting. When we see injustice, or oppression, or tragedy, we absolutely have to stand up and name it. We have to say that we don't accept it, and that it has no place in our world.

And, that we will fight it until the break of dawn, just like Jacob did, if we have to.

How To Read Your Bible

It happens a lot, but it happens especially at times when we're debating some serious, divisive issue - an issue about which religion has something to say. So, to take the obvious example, it happens when we're discussing Same-Sex Marriage, as we are lately, with Prop 8 and DOMA going before the Supreme Court. 

It happens, unfortunately, very often in the comments section of some website*. Someone brings up how the Bible says something, usually in opposition to some liberal standpoint. You know the kind of thing I'm talking about - I say that I support Same-Sex Marriage, and then someone points out that, in case you haven't read it, Leviticus seems to oppose my position**.

* I say "unfortunately" because, in my opinion, there are few places better than the comments section of many websites to get really frustrated, and to wonder if we're making any progress as a society, or as a species. That isn't a statement so much about the content of many of these comments, but the tone and intelligence. But, that's another rant, I guess.

** I say "seems" because, if you actually study the Hebrew, Leviticus isn't quite as unambiguously anti-gay as it seems. But, that's another rant, I guess.

Now, the back-and-forth begins. Maybe I point out other areas of the Bible which we don't all follow. Maybe I point out the human origins of the Bible. Maybe I describe some overarching principle which I use to find my way through the Bible - maybe I even quote some great figure who said that "Love Your Neighbor as yourself" is the greatest principle of all.

Then it happens. 

Someone says, "You can't pick and choose. You can't treat the Bible like a Chinese menu, picking one law from column A, and two teachings from column B. It's all God's word, and it's sinful and idolatrous to think that you can use your own judgment over God's."

From there, it gets fairly predictable. Someone will (re-)state that overarching principle, claiming that that's God's will, or some higher truth (which, religiously speaking, are the same things). Someone will (again?) point out that we all pick and choose. And, we go 'round and 'round.

But, I feel like one part of this always gets missed. For lack of a better word, the philosophy which underlies the whole liberal approach to text and religion.

You say that it's wrong, sinfully wrong, to use my own judgment to decide between what's right and wrong in the Bible.

I ask you what better idea you've got?

I don't mean to imply that I'm better than God. That my judgment is perfect. That I am the ultimate, final arbiter of all that is Right or Wrong. That I trust myself to make these judgments, and to never make a mistake.

I just mean to state that I don't know a better alternative.

The Bible is not perfect. It isn't. Some people reading this will have a different opinion about that, and we probably can't have a meaningful, productive conversation, because our starting assumptions, our paradigms of belief, if you will, are fundamentally different. If you believe that the Torah, or your scripture, comes down, perfectly, directly from God, despite all of the countervailing evidence, then you're going to believe that, and my pointing out that the Torah claims that the rabbit chews its cud* probably won't convince you. 

* it doesn't. 

But, if like me, you come from a tradition which accepts, and even embraces, the human origins of our most sacred texts, then you are left with a pretty clear choice. You can either pretend that the Torah, and/or the rest of the Bible, is perfect, and try your best to follow it devotedly. 

Or, you can openly admit that it's not perfect, and try to find a different way to follow it.

This different way - and there are many - is going to be flawed. It's going to be ambiguous and vague. It's often going to be inconsistent and (horror of horrors!) even hypocritical. 

But, it's going to be honest.

Pretending that the Bible is perfect - is divine - even if we know it's not? That, my friends, is idolatrous.

Admitting that the Bible is often a source of great, holy inspiration, but is often also the source of misguided, and/or outdated views? That's troubling, and confusing, and fraught. But, it's true. It's honest. Personally speaking, I am (literally) religiously devoted to choosing honest complexity over simplistic consistency. 

Of course being the arbiter of what I do and don't believe, of which parts of the Bible I do and don't follow is tricky. Of course I'm going to contradict myself - I'm going to claim to believe something which seems to, or actually does, go against something I claimed to believe yesterday. Of course I'm going to apply my principles inconsistently - how else am I going to figure out how to apply them at all? I'm learning as I go. I'm thinking, and reading, and talking, and listening. I'm making judgments, and checking them against my other judgments, and against other people's ideas, and against the reality which is being created as I watch. I'm finding my way through a complex, ambiguous, ever-changing world. It seems only logical, only honest, that my way will also be complex, ambiguous and ever-changing.

If someone tells you they have simple answers to complex questions, be very, very suspicious.

Absolute certainty may seem strong and faithful and appealing.

But, I'll take ambiguous complexity. It may not be perfect. But, it's the closest thing we've got.