Parashah Ponderings

Seacrest, Joseph and Tamar. Who Would Have Guessed?

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Parashat Vayeshev / פרשת וישב
Torah Portion: Genesis 37:1 – 40:23

A recent New York Times article profiling 40-year old media mogul Ryan Seacrest depicts an ordinary, nice guy with no obvious talent who, nonetheless, has become one of the most ubiquitous media personalities in America and has amassed millions through his production company and myriad other business ventures. As a chubby, insecure, bespeckled 10-year-old, Seacrest was a longshot for “most likely to succeed,” but succeed he has thanks to his vision and extraordinary drive. It just goes to show people are full of surprises and it is folly to write anyone off too early.

Of course, Seacrest’s story is hardly unique. History is full of unlikely success stories. Take, for example, Joseph and Tamar, two of biblical heroes who star in this week’s reading. Joseph is well-known to most people familiar with the bible and/or the Broadway musical his story inspired. From his position as the loathed, obnoxious, spoiled little brother, he arose to become the second most powerful figure in Egypt. Like Seacrest, Joseph was blessed with vision, though his rise appears more as a matter of chance than tenacity.

Joseph had this dream thing going on. He didn’t have the maturity as a teenager to refrain from flaunting that gift, but as he grew, he was able to invoke it at opportune moments. Without his impeccable timing, perhaps he never would have made it out of Pharaoh’s prison. It just goes to show people are full of surprises and it is folly to write anyone off too early.

Then there’s this character Tamar, who is less known than Joseph but who plays an outsized role in Jewish history. She is the mother of Perez, from whose line King David and the future messiah would be born. Tamar was a hapless young woman who suffered the death of two husbands. The much younger brother of her husbands was promised to her by her father-in-law, Judah, but when the boy grew up, Judah failed to deliver. So that she could perpetuate her husband’s family names and retain rights to their property, Tamar needed to give birth to a male child, but circumstances kept getting in her way. A shrewd woman with a mission, Tamar ends up disguising herself as a harlot, seduces the unwitting Judah, and through him becomes the mother of the future king of Israel and the savior of humankind! Read all about it in Genesis, chapter 38. You’ll be reminded that people are full of surprises and it is folly to write anyone off too early.

Today’s news is full of stories of hero wannabes, from presidential candidates, to pop stars, to terrorists. Some of them will achieve the status they seek, for better or for worse, while some of them will fade away, and others will go down in disgrace and notoriety. But what’s for certain is that the future awaits great people who have yet to distinguish themselves in heroic fashion. Any one of us or the people we take for granted could become one of those success stories. Maybe it’ll take the lucky breaks of a Joseph. Or the smarts and perseverance of a Tamar. Or the vision and tenacity of a Ryan Seacrest. Who knows?

One thing’s for sure. People are full of surprises and it is folly to write anyone off too early.

Parashah Ponderings

To Find God, Stop Trying So Hard. Once You’ve Found God, Try Harder.

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Parashat Vayetzei / פרשת ויצא
Torah Portion: Genesis 28:10 – 32:3

Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it!” Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and this is the gateway to heaven.” (Gen. 28:16-17)

As we live our lives distracted by the concerns of the workaday world, we tend to confine our moments of religiosity to sacred occasions in houses of worship. We go to synagogue to experience God. Sometimes it feels like a spiritual experience. Sometimes it doesn’t. Because we seek out such moments of transcendence only when we’re in synagogue, we harbor expectations and struggle to feel something spiritual, something like an encounter with God. We don’t struggle to encounter God while we’re at the gym, at work, or while shopping. Rather, we save our strength for that struggle for when we’re at our house of worship.

Given this reality for many, Vayeitze has two things to tell us: First, to experience God’s presence, stop trying so hard; second, to appreciate when you are in God’s presence, try harder. Indeed, the parashah seems to be directing us to two diametrically opposed approaches to religiosity. Chill, but be aware. In truth, the Torah is teaching us that our most profound encounters with God may very well come at the most unexpected moments, but for those encounters to be transformative, we need to recognize their profundity and respond with gratitude and wonder.

We have here a story of a patriarch who, during his travels, lies down for the night in an open space and is visited quite unexpectedly by angels and by God. It is literally in the middle of nowhere that God speaks to Jacob and reiterates the promise God had made with Abraham and Isaac before him: to become a great nation in a great land. Jacob constructs an altar at that place in the morning (Gen. 28:18), but he hadn’t done anything special the night before to prepare himself for his encounter with God, nor had he done anything special to merit such an encounter. It just happened.

But while God appears in Jacob’s sleep at a random moment in a random place, Jacob’s response to the experience is anything but random. Jacob marks his experience with words of awe, an expression of gratitude, and a vow to serve God always (28:18-22). He names that place Beit El, “House of God.” In other words, Jacob doesn’t take the experience for granted. He says, “God was in this place. This is God’s abode, the gateway to heaven.”

Just this week, I found myself someplace indoors waiting out an hour-long downpour before I could get to my car without getting completely soaked. My unwitting companion for that hour was a recent widow, who also wanted to avoid getting wet. So we sat in the lobby and chatted about politics, volunteerism, and family. A casual observer might have seen this as a routine encounter on a rainy day, or perhaps, as an ordeal for me. In fact, it was both of these, but more.

I choose to believe that my hour with this widow was a religious experience. It was an hour of connecting with someone I had never connected with before, of learning about who she is and what she cares about. It was an hour of conversation with someone who, with the passing of her husband, now craves connection. From my perspective, the world became a little bigger in that hour. I grew to know his person better. I was challenged by what she said to see things in a new light. This routine and somewhat trying encounter was also a God-filled experience.

I’m not quite ready to call my hour with this woman “awesome,” but not all religious experiences are awesome. Some are serene. Some are energizing. The awesome ones are rare and memorable. True. The secret, though, is not to discount the others. We need to be aware enough to say “God is in this place, too. In this moment of connection or serenity or excitement, I feel part of something larger than myself.”  That’s what I said to myself when the rain let up and I was finally able to get to my car.

None of this is to say, I don’t also look for God in synagogue. However, I find my time worshipping in synagogue is significantly more meaningful when I’ve been able to see God in the everyday randomness of life. I can show up on Shabbat and not feel that this is my one chance at spirituality this week. I can show up with gratitude for having known God’s presence in the ordinary and, therefore, not strain to feel it in this single moment. I can relax and enjoy my time with friends and community and let the words of the prayers transport me to another time and place.

When I stop trying to have a religious experience in synagogue, I’m often surprised to find that even in the sanctuary I am in God’s presence. While reciting prayers is not exactly the same as dreaming about God and angels as I lay asleep by the roadside with my head on a rock, it can be every bit as awesome. And I want to be as ready for that possibility at that moment as when I’m hanging out in the lobby schmoozing with a stranger.

May we find God without trying and be fortunate enough to say from time to time, “How awesome is this place!”

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Dan

Parashah Ponderings

Love Once Restored in Hebron

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Parashat Chayei Sara / פרשת חיי שרה
Torah Portion: Genesis 23:1 – 25:18

Seven years ago, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, one of the great Jewish thinkers of our day, wrote an article entitled “On Judaism and Islam” on this week’s Torah portion, Chaye Sarah. The article, which was later published in his book Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Covenant and Conversation) is as relevant today as ever.

One of the flashpoints for violence between religious Israelis and Palestinians is the city of Hebron. Hebron is holy to both Islam and Judaism because it there that our common ancestors are buried in the Cave of Machpelah. This week, in fact, we read about Abraham’s purchase of the cave in perpetuity so that he may give Sarah a proper burial upon her death. Eventually Abraham himself was buried there as were Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. (Rachel has her own burial-place, to which Jews make pilgrimage to this day.) Thus, the Cave of Machpelah and Hebrew are important, holy sites to all three Abrahamic faiths, but especially to Jews and Muslims. There is even a mosque at the site of the cave.

It saddens me greatly that a spot which should be a place of reconciliation is, instead, a place of ongoing conflict between the son of Sarah and the son of Hagar. It is as if Isaac and Ishmael never made peace with one another after their very rocky start as young boys. Recall, for example, that Abraham reluctantly did Sarah’s bidding and sent Hagar and Ishmael away because Sarah couldn’t bear the sight of Ishmael making sport with Isaac.

But Isaac and Ishmael did make peace. The Torah hints at this when it places both brothers at the side of Abraham’s grave (Gen. 25:9). The reconciliation of Isaac and Ishmael is painted even more vividly in two midrashim that Rabbi Sacks cites in his article. One midrash (Genesis Rabah 60:14) has Isaac fetching a wife for his father after Sarah died. The wife’s name in the Torah is Ketura, but the midrash says the wife’s original name was Hagar! Isaac longed for his father to be reunited with Ishmael’s mother, Sarah’s handmaiden whom she gave to Abraham when she believed it would only be through Hagar that Abraham could produce an heir.

The other midrash (Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer, 30) has Abraham visiting Ishmael twice. On the first visit, Ishmael’s wife sends Abraham away; she thought he was a beggar. After Ishmael divorces that wife, he marries a woman named Fatimah, which also happens to be the name of the prophet Mohammed’s daughter. Abraham returns to Ishmael’s house to be greeted by Fatimah, who offers him food and drink. Though Ishmael was not home at the time, Fatimah told him about the incident and Ishmael knew that Abraham still loved him.

Thus, writes Rabbi Sacks, “Yes, there was conflict and separation; but that was the beginning, not the end. Between Judaism and Islam there can be friendship and mutual respect. Abraham loved both his sons, and was laid to rest by both. There is hope for the future in this story of the past.”

Let us pray that the love restored between Isaac and Ishmael in Hebron be rekindled soon and in our day.

Parashah Ponderings

Vulnerable Isaac

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Parashat Vayera / פרשת וירא
Torah Portion: Genesis 18:1 – 22:24

This week we read the story of the Binding of Isaac, the Akedah in Hebrew. Here Abraham is put to the ultimate test when God commands him to sacrifice his son:

And God said, “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you” (Genesis 22.2).

This story is familiar to many. It is what communities read when they observe a second day of Rosh Hashana. It is by far the most haunting story of all of Torah.

The tradition asks us to see Abraham as the model of the faithful man, but others in history who have felt oppressed and at the mercy of their persecutors, have focused on Isaac, rather than on Abraham, going so far as to suggest that Isaac was actually sacrificed that day. During the Crusades, for example, Jews wrote about their communities as if they themselves were Isaac, except, unlike in the Torah, where an angel of God stays the hand of Abraham, these communities felt as if the knife actually landed on them, striking true.

I, too, like to turn the spotlight on Isaac. For me, Isaac represents the vulnerability of all people. I can’t help but imagine Isaac lying on the altar, perhaps naked, bound by his own father, watching as the sunlight glistens off the tip of the raised knife. Can there be a more perfect example of vulnerability than Isaac awaiting his fate in that moment of, what I call, utter human nakedness?

We are all Isaac from time to time. We feel pressed upon by our circumstances, by other people’s expectations of us, by our own expectations of us. When we feel such pressures, we feel vulnerable. Sometimes we make mistakes that seem to expose us for the person we try not to be. When we feel exposed, we feel vulnerable.

It’s important to remember that Isaac survived his ordeal. God halted the execution and provided Abraham a ram to sacrifice. Isaac goes on to have a good life, the least tumultuous life of any of the patriarchs, in fact. Isaac moves past the vulnerability he experienced on the altar, as we move past those moments of vulnerability in our own lives.

Sages see Abraham as the exemplar of faith, but to my mind, Isaac is the real exemplar. I imagine Isaac knew in his heart that he would live to see another day as he lay there bound. I imagine Isaac knew that, despite what his father was prepared to do, God would not let it happen. We, too, are capable of possessing that same faith. No matter how vulnerable we may feel, we will make it through our ordeal. God, however we understand God, will be there to save us.

Parashah Ponderings

Moving Right Along with Faith

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A year ago, I posted this commentary on Parashat Lech-Lecha. I can’t recall what motivated me to pursue the theme of  moving forward with life despite uncertainty. This year, however, uncertainty is everywhere. Israel faces unrest. The battle against ISIS rages on. The largest hurricane to ever hit the western hemisphere threatens Mexico. At home, politicians jockey for position in the early stages of a presidential race. Meanwhile, each of us has some kind of conflict in our lives awaiting resolution. And yet, we keep pushing forward. For many of us, it is faith that enables us to look forward to each new day, never knowing exactly what that day will bring.

Now, in focusing on the Avram (He will only become Abraham upon entering the covenant through circumcision.) this week, I do not also address the story of Hagar and Sarai (She, too, will become Sarah only after Avram enters into the covenant.), but their story is also one of faith. Sarai, barren in her old age, permits Avram to consort with her handmaiden, Hagar, in order to produce an heir. Things don’t go so well for Hagar once she conceives, and eventually she and her child, Ishmael, are sent off to the wilderness to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, Sarai at 90 miraculously gives birth to Isaac, and the narrative of our people’s founding family continues. For both Hagar and Sarai, each facing an uncertain future, God comes to provide reassurance and a promise of a better day for them and their sons.

It is God’s reassurance — or, perhaps, our faith that there is a God whose very presence makes for a better day — that first enabled our ancestors to carry on and that has since enabled the Jewish People to endure and to thrive throughout history. To endure and to thrive requires faith. As individuals and as a People, we are, indeed, the children of Abraham and Sarah.

 Lech-Lecha / פרשת לך־לך
 Genesis 12:1 – 17:27

In the Mishnah, the seminal body of rabbinic literature that developed within the first two centuries CE, the rabbis teach: “With ten tests our father Abraham was tested and he withstood them all–in order to make known how great was our father Abraham’s love [for G-d]” (Mishnah Avot 5:3). Because the rabbis of the Mishnah don’t enumerate the tests, it fell upon later authorities to speculate what they were, and by all accounts most of the trials take place in this week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, between chapters 12 and 17 of the Book of Genesis (Bereishit, in Hebrew). (See http://bit.ly/trialsofabraham for the Mishnah text and two interpreters’ lists of the trials.)

One trial, in particular, catches my attention this week. The parashah begins with God famously telling Abram, (God had not yet given him the name “Abraham), “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). Abram responds to this command by taking his wife, Sarai, their nephew Lot, and all their possessions on an epic journey to the land of Canaan. God’s call to “go forth” was Abraham’s first test, according to Maimonides, and he passed with flying colors. However, it is the next test that jumps out at me.

No sooner does Abram arrive in the land of Canaan and God promises “I will assign this land to your heirs” (Gen. 12:7) that we read: “There was a famine in the land…” (12:10). Apparently, Canaan was not yet the “land of milk and honey” that Abraham’s descendents would eventually find it to be. Rather, after the long journey from Haran, Abram, et al, find themselves in a barren wasteland. Imagine how shocked they must have been. How would Abram respond to this trial: stay put and inhabit the land or move on to more hospitable environs?

We receive our answer right away: “… and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land” (ibid.). Abram chose to relocate to a land where he and his family could find physical sustenance. Perhaps he suspected from his experience of frequent drought in that part of the world that the sojourn in Egypt would be temporary, as we find in the next chapter it was. We don’t know; the text is silent. Perhaps Abram wanted to tough it out in the barren land but those around him talked him out of it. Perhaps he had no idea if his move to Egypt would be temporary or permanent. Again, we don’t know.

What we do know is that Abram had a difficult decision to make: stay or go? If he stayed, he’d be jeopardizing the welfare of his wife, nephew, slaves and livestock. If he left, he might be betraying his God, who brought him there. Or maybe Abram understood that this initial visit to the land, accompanied by building altars here and there, was just that: a visit. Maybe he knew that eventually the land would belong to his descendents, and he saw this visit as an opportunity to scout out the land, to check out the property that his children and his children’s children would, in the future, occupy and build up into a great nation. In that case, there would be no reason not to keep going. So many possibilities. What to do?

We can’t know what was going through Abram’s mind at the time, but we can imagine his angst because we’ve all been there. We’ve all found ourselves at one time or another pursuing a dream or taking a chance on something that we hoped would bring us happiness and security. And we’ve all had an experience of disappointment when the dream fell short of our expectations or the chance we took didn’t bear fruit. We’ve all been in that place where we’ve asked ourselves “What now?”

What the sages teach us is that Abraham was a man of faith. Whenever God called to him, Abraham answered. He responded to each test, never turning his back on God even though he might have been forgiven for doing so on any number of occasions, such as when God commanded him to sacrifice his son Isaac. Here, too, when Abram was faced with a “what now” situation upon landing in the midst of a famine, we can be certain that he approached his dilemma with the faith that somehow everything would work out in the end. He might not have known exactly how things would work out, but he trusted that God would take care of him and his heirs over the long haul.

When we find ourselves at a crossroads, at a place of despair with an unknown future, do we exhibit the faith of Abraham? Do we act, as did Abram, with the belief that things might be rough now but further down the road they’ll get better? Do we move on, as did Abram, even though we can’t be 100% certain if we’re making the “right” decision? Taking action in the face of uncertainty is the very definition of faith, in my opinion. Abram couldn’t know for sure where his journey would lead, nor could he be sure that God would always accompany him. He couldn’t be sure of anything, but he had faith, and that was enough.

Don’t get me wrong: exhibiting faith doesn’t mean we live without some degree of anxiety. Abraham was human and so are we. There would be something wrong with him and us if we didn’t fret over the future from time to time. I imagine Abraham lost a lot of sleep in times of trial and that he sweat profusely. Who wouldn’t? We shouldn’t think for a minute that Abraham didn’t face his future without some trepidation.

What makes Abraham’s faith so remarkable is not that he didn’t stress out in times of uncertainty — most likely, he did — but rather, as a pioneer in the belief of the One God, he had no experience to go on that would have told him that God would always be there with him through the good and the bad. And, yet, Abraham took action over and over again and found that God WAS there. It is precisely BECAUSE of Abraham’s experience that we know, no matter how bad things get, God will always accompany us on our journey. 

When we find ourselves in lands that are parched, in promised lands that promise us little more than privation, may we remember how Abram pushed forward with faith. With Divine love always with us, let us overcome our occasional fears and doubts and keep moving right along. One day we just might find ourselves dwelling in a land flowing with milk and honey.

Parashah Ponderings

Thank God for the Ark

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Parashat Noach / פרשת נח
Torah Portion: Genesis 6:9 – 11:32

All the fountains of the great deep burst apart,
And the floodgates of the sky broke open. Genesis: 7:11

This past Memorial Day my family’s apartment in Houston got flooded. Four months later and well-settled into a second floor apartment in the same complex, rain water started to come into our house from the ceiling! In May, “the fountains of the great deep” had burst apart, causing water to rise in our home from the floor up. In September, “the floodgates of the sky broke open,” and the waters came in from on high. Oy!

The analogy of our misfortune to Noah’s flood is, I admit, imperfect. There can be no comparing our loss of property to the destruction of all humanity, save one family. To equate the two would be crass. Rather, I am struck simply by the idea that in both the Noah story and in our experience, destruction seemed to come from both above and below: what an appropriate metaphor for those times when so much seems to go wrong.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who hasn’t on occasion had to face more hardship than one person should have to handle. Thus, the old saying: “God doesn’t give us more than we can bear.” That saying may feel true for most people, but to victims of the Shoah or the Inquisition or the Crusades or severe depression or terminal illness, nothing could be further from the truth. For many, catastrophe in extreme measure is too much to bear, and the suggestion that God causes such suffering is obscene.

Theological issues and unbearable suffering aside, however, there is much we can learn from the Noah story about dealing with life’s painful contingencies.

God gave Noah notice that God would send a flood that would wipe out all of creation. With that notice, God also instructed Noah to build an ark so that he and his family and the remnants of the animal kingdom that accompanied them on board could survive and repopulate the world once the waters subsided. In the end, Noah was well-equipped to survive the deluge.

It’s important to note that it was Noah who built the ark, not God. Noah was commanded by God, or perhaps, inspired by God, to build the ark. But it was Noah who created the means for his own survival. That is a crucial point.

Many times in our lives, we are Noah. We are faced with misery akin to 40 days of rain and over 300 days cooped up in an ark with loud, smelly livestock, birds, and other creatures. We just want to the misery to end, but we are blessed to have the means to ride out the storm.

We all have our own arks. They are the networks of friends and family that support us. They are the diversions that take our mind off our concerns. They are the inner reserves we’ve cultivated to take what life doles out without breaking under the weight. If we’re smart, we’ve spent a lifetime building our arks before the crises hit, not knowing, of course, when they will hit.

True, not everyone has a support network or diversions or even the inner reserves. To them, we offer our prayers. At the very least, they can take solace knowing they live in a world where someone remembers that people suffer immensely, who don’t have an ark to shelter them. Let’s not forget them. Let’s be their ark.

As we read about the tragedy that befalls early humankind, as we imagine flood waters rising from below and rain falling ceaselessly from the heavens, we imagine ourselves aboard the ark, an ark that we built with our own hands. Let us take pride in our craftsmanship and be grateful to God for all the resources at our disposal — people and things and our own internal gifts – that make up the ark, in which we weather life’s storms.

Parashah Ponderings

Dwelling in the Sukkah of Peace begins with Smashing the Idols that Block our Way

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Sukkot Shabbat Chol ha-Moed – סוכות שבת חול המועד
Torah Portion: Exodus 33:12 – 34:26

On this, Shabbat Chol ha-Moed Sukkot, the intermediate Shabbat of Sukkot, the joy we are commanded to feel is tempered. How can we fully rejoice on Z’man Simchateinu – the time of our Rejoicing – knowing that only 130 miles from the synagogue I serve in Oregon nine lives have been snuffed out by a madman with a gun? How can we dwell in the sukkat shalom – the tabernacle of peace – knowing that in Israel a settler couple was shot dead in front of their young children? Where are the angels of peace bringing Israelis and Palestinians together? Where are the voices of reason who understand that common-sense legislation controlling the sale, ownership and use of guns in our country doesn’t mean denying responsible, law-abiding, people of sound mind the right to sell, own or use a gun? Is our Constitution so fragile that it can’t withstand limitations in the interest of safety?

How ironic, though, to be embroiled in old debates on this very Shabbat. After all, Sukkot is the great equalizing holiday. The Torah commands the sacrifice of 70 bulls during Sukkot, more than on any other festival. The bulls are a thanksgiving offering to God for all the nations of the world, which our ancestors imagined were 70 in number. This is the festival that celebrates God’s bounty, which is there for all humanity if only we would use our resources wisely. This is the festival that celebrates that period of Israel’s history when no one person was greater than another. No-one owned land. We were all nomads. We were all Children of God wandering through the wilderness. It is on this, the most universal of all Jewish festivals, that we should be celebrating that which unites all of us, Jew and gentile. Instead, gun shots have drowned out the sounds of rejoicing around the world and stopped us in our tracks.

In the Torah reading this week, we find these words: You must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, and cut down their sacred posts; for you must not worship any other god, because the Lord, whose name is Impassioned, is an impassioned God (Exodus 34:13-14). It seems to me that it’s about time we face up to those things in our society that we worship as our “sacred posts,” see them as the idols they are, and tear them down. Life is too precious to give ourselves over to greed and possessiveness. There are Rights and there are rights. No right entitles anyone to deny the innocent of their most essential Rights – the Right live with dignity — whether we’re talking guns or land or power. These are among the sacred posts here, in the Holy Land, and just about everywhere.

God is an Impassioned God. To be a Jew means to see ourselves as created in God’s image, to “walk in God’s ways.” We do this when we become as impassioned as we imagine God would be for what matters most in our world: human life and dignity. I pray for the day when our passion for our children outweighs our passion the idols whose worship imperils our very existence. On that day we will sit together in the sukkat shalom and take in the sounds of rejoicing. May it be so!

Wishing for peace and happiness this Shabbat,
Rabbi Dan

Parashah Ponderings

The Challenge of Imagining God

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Ha’Azinu / פרשת האזינו
 Deuteronomy 32:1 – 32:52

In this, the penultimate Torah portion of the yearly cycle, Moses offers an ode to God that has come to be known as “The Song of Moses.” The song contains a number of rich, evocative epithets for God, inviting us to expand our understanding of God beyond “Ruler” and “Parent,” the predominant images of God spoken of in the High Holy Day liturgy. Of course, the way we envision the Divine is inherently limited by the language that shapes the way we think.

In one of his final essays on the weekly reading, Rabbi Shai Held addresses this very issue. In his scholarly and insightful article entitled “Hearing the Whisper: God and the Limits of Language,” Rabbi Held addresses the paradox of our need to name and envision God, on one hand, and God’s utter transcendence and ineffability, on the other hand. As we renew our relationship to the Holy One at the start of this new year, I encourage you to read Rabbi Held’s article and to examine your own images of God and their limitations.

You may read and download Rabbi Held’s article here: Hearing the Whisper: God and the Limits of Language.

Parashah Ponderings

Choose to Be There on That Day

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Parashat Nitzavim / פרשת נצבים
Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 29:9 – 30:20

You stand this day all of you before the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel, Your little ones, your wives, and your stranger who is in your camp, from the hewer of your wood to the drawer of your water; That you should enter into covenant with the Lord your God, and into his oath, which the Lord your God makes with you this day; That he may establish you today for a people to himself, and that he may be to you a God, as he has said to you, and as he has sworn to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And not with you alone will I make this covenant and this oath; But with him who stands here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him who is not here with us this day…  Deuteronomy 29:9-14

In this week’s parashah, Moses’ gathers all of Israel, from the most esteemed leaders to the lowliest laborers, in order for them to formally enter into the covenant with God. This is the same covenant (with minor variations) which God had made with their parents and grandparents 40 years earlier at Mt. Sinai. The Sinai generation had uttered those famous words of consent: “All that God has said, we will do and obey.” (Exodus 24:7). But it was also the Sinai generation that, because they sent spies into Canaan to see if they’d be able to conquer the people there, was doomed to wander for 40 years in the wilderness and to die out before entering the land that God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Those who now stand before Moses “this day” have followed the faith of their forebears for four decades but have never actually given their consent to the covenant. Now, standing on the border of what will become Eretz Yisrael, the 2nd and 3rd generations after the exodus from Egypt enter into the covenant with “heaven and earth” as witnesses.

In his weekly commentary on the parashah, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of Great Britain, explains that through this ceremony Moses “ensures that this and the next  generation  and  all  future  generations  of Israel will  be bound  by  it.  He  wanted  no-one  to  be  able  to  say,  ‘G-d made  a  covenant  with  my  ancestors  but  not  with  me.  I did  not  give  my  consent.  I  was  not  there.  I  am  not bound.’  That  is  why  Moses  says:  It  is  not  with  you alone  that  I  am  making  this  sworn  covenant,  but  with whoever  is  standing  here  with  us  today  before  the  Lord our  G-d,  and  with  whoever  is  not  here  with  us  today” (Deut. 29:13-14).

The question is, however, why does Moses address not only those standing before him but also “him who is not here with us this day”? After all, can the unborn hear him and agree to the terms of the covenant with all its laws and statutes, blessings and curses? As Rabbi Sacks himself says, “There can be no obligation without consent.” In what sense, then, does Moses oblige future generations to remain faithful to the covenant?

Rabbi Sacks finds an answer to this question later in the parashah: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live” (30:19). Choose. Those present, despite being told they are part of the covenant, are given a choice to abide by its terms or not. The former will bring blessings upon them; the latter, curses. All will go well if the people embrace God and the mitzvot. Should they turn away from God, however, misery will befall them.

If the present generation has a choice to make, so do subsequent generations. Rabbi Sacks points out that Jews have made the choice to be faithful to the covenant over and over again throughout their history. During the Inquisition, many Jews converted to Christianity but still remained faithful and practiced their Judaism secretly. In Nazi extermination camps, Jews reaffirmed their faith despite the horrors they witnessed that might have caused them to abandon God and Judaism altogether. In our own day, by and large, we face no obstacles internally or externally to jettisoning our Jewish heritage and going incognito, perhaps embracing another faith tradition. And, yet, most Jews still choose to identify as descendants of those who entered the Promised Land with Joshua, even if they don’t practice ritually or allow Torah-based values to inform their behaviors.

How were our ancestors able to choose Judaism under the Inquisition or during the Shoah? How are we able to make that choice? By watching and learning from those who come before them. When Moses says he is speaking not only to those present in his day but to those yet to be born, we ought not to take him literally. Rather, the message for his generation is that it will be their responsibility to ensure that their successors learn mitzvot and are given the opportunity to choose either a life of meaning or a life devoid of meaning, a life of connection to God and humanity or a life of utter loneliness. It is toward the former that we, like Moses’s listeners and all the generations before us, should aspire to lead our children and our children’s children.

We are the inheritors of a magnificent tradition, one with the potential to illumine our lives and repair the world. Each day we choose to embrace that tradition, we give life to the souls of the men and women who so lovingly passed the tradition onto us throughout the millennia. We give life to the people who stood with Moses on “that day.” When our lives become intertwined with theirs, we can say that we, too, were sworn into the covenant on “that day.” It is incumbent upon us to ensure that future generations stand with Moses as well.

Parashah Ponderings

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Parashat Ki Teitzei / פרשת כי־תצא

Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 21:10 – 25:19

This weeks Torah portion, Parashat Ki Tetzei, contains more mitzvot (commandments) than any other parashah: 74, to be precise. Mitzvot can be divided into two categories. The first category is called “ben adam l’havero” or “between one person and another person.” These mitzvot include ethical instruction that guides us in our treatment of our fellow human being in business, at home, and out in the world. An example of this would be treat all your children equally (Deut. 21:15). Mitzvot ben adam l’havero also comprise civil and criminal legislation that tell us what to do if someone should commit a crime, kidnapping, for instance: If a man is found to have kidnapped a fellow Israelite, enslaving him or selling him, that kidnapper shall die; thus you will sweep out evil from your midst (Deut. 24:7)

The next set of mitzvot are “ben adam lamakom,” or “between a person and God.” These mitzvot deal mostly with ritual, Shabbat, keeping kosher, and the like. They address issues of how we worship, celebrate and honor God. An example of a mitzvah between a person and God from elsewhere in the Torah would be to keep the Sabbath holy.

In the midst of the litany of mitzvot this week, all of which pertain to ben adam l’havero, we find one that, on the face of it, doesn’t seem to fit into either category:

If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life (Deut. 22:6)

This mitzvah clearly deals with how we treat animals. It doesn’t tell us how to interact with another person, nor does it address how we relate to God. Do we need a third category of mitzvah for this mitzvah and others like it?

I would contend that this mitzvah is, in fact, a mitzvah ben adam l’havero and ben adam lamakom. How so? In directing us to shoo away the mother before taking her little ones or her unhatched eggs, this and similar mitzvot inculcate in us a sense of compassion and empathy. If we should care enough to shoo away the mother so she won’t see us taking her progeny, even more so should we care about the feelings of human beings. From this mitzvah about ethical treatment of animals comes an awareness of how ethically to treat human beings.

In what way is this mitzvah about us and God? By shooing away the mother, we protect her from being captured or hurt and we allow her to go on reproducing. In the future, some of the mother’s eggs will hatch and bear fledglings, who themselves will live long lives and also reproduce. Thus, this mitzvah enables us to be stewards of God’s creation and so deservedly belongs in the category of ben adam lamakom.

Ki Tetzei reminds us that all the natural world of which we are a part is integral to our existence as human beings. The way we interact with the world reveals something about how we interact with each other. Mitzvot pertaining to our treatment of animals, we have seen, also shape our treatment of human beings by sensitizing us to the feelings of creatures around us. At the same time, our relationship with nature also reveals something about our relationship to God. Any mitzvot that guide us in our interactions with nature, likewise encourage us to be mindful of our partnership with God, while also helping us realize that all the universe truly is God’s kingdom. As citizens of this kingdom, we ought to strive through mitzvot to build a world of love and trust for all, including for those who soar in the skies above.