Receiving the Torah, Moving Toward Wholeness

Giving of the Torah: Becoming Whole

ראוים היו ישראל לקבל התורה במדבר דווקא, כי האדם שנקרא על שם האדמה, כאשר אין לו תורה נחשב כמדבר שאין  בו עשב וצמח האדמה. ובשביל חסרון האדם שהוא כמו מדבר ניתנה לו התורה להשלימו, ואז האדמה הזאת מוציאה אילנות וצמחים שלה.

It was appropriate for Israel to receive the Torah in, of all places, the wilderness, for a person, adam, is named for the earth, adamah, and when a person is without Torah they are considered like a wilderness, in which there is no green and no growth. It is in order to respond to the lack in a human being, which makes us like the wilderness, that the Torah was given to us, to make us whole, and then this “earth” is able to bring forth trees and growing things.  

attributed to the Maharal of Prague in Itturei Torah, Shavuot

In his college ethics class, a young product of Jewish community practice and learning recently told his mother, he discovered that he already knew much of what is considered basic Western ethics. Of course he does; the way we are meant to treat others is found in our Torah, and transmitted through not only our small Jewish community over the ages but adopted and spread far and wide via Christianity – which is the foundation of modern Western ethics even in the secular world.

We tend to believe that our sense of right and wrong is ingrained in us, in some way: we “just know” what’s just and what’s a travesty. Yet one has only to study comparative anthropology to discover that very much, if not all, of our ethical foundations are relative to our culture. This relativity unmoors certainty and left thinkers of the Enlightenment scrambling for grounding, gifting us all the –isms of modern philosophy. 

This is not to say that Torah contains perfect ethics, but that is, anyway, not a Jewish argument for authority. As Dr Byron Sherwin ז״ל used to say, where Christianity may assert that they have a certainty couched in their messianic ethics, all we have is “messy ethics”. The Torah does not offer universal (Kantian) ethics; to look for them in the revelation gifted to us via Moshe at Mount Sinai is to be stymied, discouraged, and, for many, finally, dismissive.

This is a misunderstanding of the gift’s meaning, which might be better grasped by way of the metaphor often used for the Sinai moment between HaShem and the people of Israel: a marriage, with the Torah as our ketubah. 

Consider the traditional Jewish ketubah: it consists of a promise that, in the years to come, the parameters of mutual trust and respect specified in the document will be followed, and, in the ancient language, the groom “will provide for his bride the way a Jewish man ought to”. Beyond the initial details, none are laid out; the text does not indicate exactly what trust and respect, or “ought to”, means. Why? because each case is different, and each outcome of a successful marriage is unique. No two human beings are alike; no link between two will resemble each other by very much. Most of the relationship is worked out in the living of it, and the balance that succeeds between two (or more) who are committed to each other in a family is a constantly changing reality.

The Maharal of Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew (1524-1609), offers us the best metaphor for understanding the gift of Torah in this season of the spring harvest, as green thrives around us and life turns its face to the warming sun, we are each a creature just like the earth upon which we live. We, too, turn toward the sun; we, too, are capable of giving forth growth, and fruit that nurtures not only ourselves but others. 

Torah is key to understanding our potential, because it does not present a perfect, finished system followed by saints. It is a record of ongoing struggle and very human failure on the way to the occasional joyful success, and even fulfillment. The Torah does not tell us; it shows us the way toward growth, and toward thriving. It is not and will not ever be a finished, perfect thing; it is a relationship. Between you and me; between us and HaShem. 

We exist between and among and because of, and instead of looking for an endpoint we need to get used to the idea that what we have been gifted is a support and a guide, not a book of answers that can be wielded like a recipe book of potions and spells. The only magic here is what we make, when we take the offered gift seriously enough to let it support us in the daily struggle to make sense of our failures and our – please let there be some – successes.

That is why Torah study never ends. There is always some new context, some different thought, something that didn’t come up before. The context may be similar, but something is different; the details resemble some other situation, yet there’s something new here. The answer is not on the page, nor in our hearts and minds, but somewhere in between, which is where HaShem has always promised us that we can find it. Eternally present yet always new.

In the Jerusalem Talmud this was expressed by Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, who asserted that אֲפִילוּ מַה שֶׁתַּלְמִיד וָותִיק עָתִיד לְהוֹרוֹת לִפְנֵי רַבּוֹ כְּבָר נֶאֱמַר לְמֹשֶׁה בְּסִינַי “Even what a competent student will discover before his teacher was said to Moses on Sinai.” (Peah 2.4) This is a way of saying that whatever we see has already been seen, yet what we see is entirely new, and no one ever saw it before. And both of these are true within a truly growing relationship with a loved one, with a community, and with HaShem.

Hag Shavuot sameakh, may you recognize and celebrate your harvest on this Shavuot holy day. May you feel yourself well and truly on the path, at least sometimes, toward your  wholeness.

מָזְגוּ לוֹ כוֹס שֵׁנִי….מַתְחִיל בִּגְנוּת וּמְסַיֵּם בְּשֶׁבַח

They pour the second cup, and begin with the disgrace of our ancestors, ending with glory (Mishnah Pesakhim 10.4)

1. They pour the first cup….and recite the blessing for the day

2. They bring unleavened bread, lettuce, and haroset…they bring the Pesakh lamb

3. They pour the second cup, and the talk begins with disgrace (or lowly status) of our ancestors, and concludes with glory. We consider the Torah verse “my ancestor was a wandering Aramean”

4. They pour the third cup and recite the prayer after eating

5. The fourth cup: Hallel is recited

This version of the Passover celebration, the earliest we have, is dated to the Second Temple period, during the Persian, then Greek, then Roman, occupation of Israel. Perhaps the most obvious aspect of this description is that the entire evening is organized around four cups of wine, and each cup has a text or discussion topic attached to it. The discussion is central to the Seder because the event was based upon the Greco-Roman symposium; quite often, the discussions that took place were triggered by foods or acts that were part of the ritual meal.

What is unlike any other symposium of which we know is the topic to be discussed after the second cup: g’nut, “disgrace (or lowly status) of our ancestors”; as it is said, “once we were slaves, now we are free”. The Haggadah preserves this as the origin story of the Jewish people: we began as slaves. 

Although we learn that it is the great mitzvah of Pesakh to see ourselves as going out of Egypt just as our ancestors did, on this Pesakh, it is difficult to feel free. Even more, it is difficult to imagine ourselves in the place of the oppressed, for, as terrible as it is to recognize, our people is now an oppressor. It is so painfully difficult to confront the reality of Israeli persecution of Palestinians that there are those among us who would prefer to walk away from the entire exercise of Jewish identity and call it meaningless.

Yet there is something that rings true about the ancient message, and, often, the key to healing lies in the wound itself. We are not slaves to another people in these days, perhaps, but we are in disgrace: Jews are embarrassed before the entire world. We, the people who gave the world the idea of laws that protect the weak and free the captive; we as a people have not upheld our own teaching. We as a people have made a mockery of Jewish ethics and a joke of Jewish justice.

As hard as it is to remain human in this situation, we deserve the same grace that we would give any other sinner. So let us ask, compassionately: what could possibly have caused this people to betray its path so tragically? this people has suffered terribly for generation upon generation. Too often helpless, we have seen those we love hurt or killed, that we have built destroyed. An abused child may grow up to hurt others because of the unhealed injury in their own soul. Is it so strange that Jews with power not only are corruptible like any other people with power, but that we should, on some subconscious level, seem to be bent on punishing a people that reminds us, too much, of our own painful helplessness in the past?

There is a Hasidic teaching which intuits what modern psychology can validate: individuals hate most in others that which reminds us of the part of ourselves we cannot accept. To be vulnerable, helpless, and terrified is agonizing; to be reminded of that time in our own past is insupportable.

Yet this is what we must face: we were helpless and abandoned. This is the meaning of the g’nut, “disgrace”, of the ancient text. This is the key to the entire experience: if the mitzvah is to see ourselves as going out of slavery, then our freedom is from our own past scars. We are not free until we cease to act out of our own past hurt. We are not free until we can love, forgive, learn, and live freely – no matter what has enslaved us in the past. We are not free until we stop carrying that unrisen dough on our backs.

May this Pesakh be liberating for us all, and may we find the courage to follow the path toward healing.

וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְהֹוָה֙ אֵלָ֔יו מֵאֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר׃ 

יהוה called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying (Lev. 1.1)

Vayikra is the first word of our parasha, and of the third book of the Torah, called Leviticus in English.  It comes after the customary gap in the Torah scroll of several blank lines which serve to separate book from book.  Suddenly, out of intertextual nothingness, vayikra – G*d calls to Moshe, and speaks. This is the first verse of the third book: ויקרא אל משה וידבר ה אליו Vayikra el-Moshe vayedabber HaShem eylav. 

This literally means, “he called to Moses, and HaShem spoke to him”.  Who is the one who called?  To “call”, it seems, is not necessarily to “speak”, or even, perhaps, to communicate.   Since the text refers to G*d in conjunction with the second verb, shall we assume, as translators do, that the first verb also refers to G*d?  How else might we interpret it?  Who, or what, called, and for what purpose?  

The verse uses two verbs: “called, and…spoke.”  In the creation account there is a similar pairing of verbs. In Genesis 1:3, G*d says “let there be light”:  vayomer Elohim yehi or. And then, in contrast, “G*d called the light ‘day’, vayikra elohim la’or yom”.  That which already is, is called, comes fully into being by the simple – and profound – act of naming it.  “G*d saw that the light was good…G*d called the light day” (Genesis 1.4-5).  The first earthling, the adam, reflects that power as it names all the animals in Genesis 2.5, using the same word, vayikra.  In both these instances, naming is the act of definition which gives a final reality to the creation:  the light’s creation is complete when it is called “day”, and the animals, too, are completed when they are called by their names.  

We, too, feel the need to be named in order to fully assert our existence. 

For Jewish tradition, to “call something by its name” is an act of empowerment.  So, perhaps, to give a name to one’s fear helps to control it.  Certainly, to give a name to one’s child, in Jewish tradition, is a loving and hopeful “wishing” of traits upon the child, a way to transmit values and express the depth of family ties.  To give a name is to give of oneself in the process; it is the first step toward entering into relationship with the named.

In our parashah, something is calling to Moses to name and thus bring fully into being that which is being born. The Israelites were in a chaos not dissimilar to that of creation; having left Egypt, we found ourselves in an undefined place and time. Now at the beginning of the book of VaYikra, the mishkan has been built, the covenant has been enacted, and in these two significant ways our ancestors bring order to the tohu vavohu, the unordered universe of their lives, just as G*d does at the very beginning of time. “Before every act of revelation,” our tradition teaches in a book of legends called Sifra, “G*d would call ‘Moses, Moses!’ as at the burning bush.  It was an expression of affection and of urgency.  And each time Moses would respond, ‘Here I am’.”

In these days of chaos and undefined reality, how are we being called? What is in need of being named? If we are living through a time of profound transition, what is being born?

Vayikra:  who, or what, is calling?  In a Torah scroll, the word vayikra is written with a smaller alef at the end; classic commentaries see in this a reflection of the humility of Moshe, who wrote the alef small as an expression of his own sense of unworthiness in the relationship with G*d.  

Humility is, of course, necessary if we are to stay aware of the nuances, the shadows and unrevealed corners of our unfolding reality. We are, certainly, a small alef compared to the Source of Life that we reflect.

How else might we interpret this small, shy alef?  Perhaps in the sense of the incompleteness of our understanding –  what might we “hear” as the voice of G*d calling us?  Most of us are not so lucky as to hear a voice from G*d clearly and distinctly telling us what path to take to solve our dilemmas and make the correct decisions.  Though we might harbor a sense of conviction on this or that ethical issue, most of the time these days we are far from any sense of light and clarity, of order, for our lives and our choices.

This small alef is, for us as well as Moses, a hint of the imperfect relationship we experience with our lives – with each other, with ourselves and with whatever we might call the greater whole of which we are a part. We are no where near occupying the full potential of our lives – but each of our lives is a promise of that potential. Each of us is a small part of the whole – yet a necessary part, even as the alef is a necessary part of spelling the word “call”. 

We are, each of us, a necessary part of naming the reality toward which we, as a kehillah kedoshah,  a holy community, walk. May we find our strength with each other as we go.