Shabbat Mishpatim: Kavanah is in the Details

In contrast to other religious paths, Judaism offers spiritual growth within a clear and coherent framework. The word halakhah – our “path” – is understood more commonly as our “law” because of the many mitzvot (“obligations”) which serve us as signposts along the way. Our parashat hashavua for this week contains fifty-three such mitzvot, and each mitzvah commands us equally, according to Jewish tradition – civil, moral, and commercial law all come together here in a way that isn’t easy for our category-driven minds. Yet our tradition is to regard each mitzvah, each detail of our path, with the same kavanah, the same intentionality and mindfulness. We are to bring our kavanah to care we bring to settling a fight, restoring lost items, and respecting society’s vulnerable.

It’s a journey. And it is useful to think of halakhah as road law, actually – because of the myriad of laws governing our use of back roads, main street and highways, you and I can go forth on our daily journeys expecting, under normal circumstances, to stay safe as we go about answering our desires and needs for the day. The mitzvot you practice are meant to lead you somewhere. Shabbat is the epitome of that “somewhere” – it is meant to be the high point of our week, the day on which we know that we have, spiritually, arrived, even if the arrival is only partial. Summoning the kavanah for this is not always easy.

And just like a road journey, there are days when, spiritually, we can barely see for the storms. In the darkness, we anxiously look for the next road sign, struggling to to lose our way, and to bring any passengers we have with us – loved ones, children – home safely. These are the days when we most need the little details of all those mitzvot. They give us something small and regular and dependable to focus our souls, as we try not to get lost.

All those mitzvot are there to help lead you toward your kavanah, your intentionality, for Shabbat, so that it can become a shavat, “resting” of the soul. Lighting candles at sunset sparks a mood shift; singing L’kha Dodi as we bring in Shabbat at the shul triggers relaxation; having the family and friends gather for an unrushed dinner can redeem the whole week. We all have a different way into kavanah.

May your Shabbat be for you each week a chance to delight in all that is offered you, every little detail that reminds you to take care with each moment of our short, precious lives, and to come to know yourself in a whole new way which was, nevertheless, always there. 

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time

(T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”, Four Quartets)

Shabbat Yitro: What Makes a Jewish Leader?

Our parashat hashavua is Yitro. This parashah, in which we find described the revelation of the Jewish path symbolized by the Ten Words, is not named “Great Moments At Sinai” but Yitro [usually vocalized as Jethro in English], which is the name of Moshe’s father in law. Yitro is a Midianite priest – and so our parashah of the great moment of the Israelites standing at Sinai and entering into the Covenant is named for not only a non-Jew but (how to put this)  leader of a non-Jewish religion. 

About the fact that Moshe “intermarried”, this was par for the course at the time; Israelite men found life partners from everywhere. Jewish identity at the time passed through the male line, father to the son.

About Yitro, there is much midrash which recognizes that in the parashah he intervenes to give Moshe excellent leadership advice early on. The commentaries list his virtues, and those of Moshe as well (who was able to take advice from his father in law). The rabbinic focus on Yitro’s obvious leadership qualities must have been foremost in their minds when they settled upon the haftarah for today. Although it does describe a revelatory moment every bit as dramatic as that of Sinai for the prophet Isaiah, the interesting insight has to do not with the overwhelming presence of the Jewish vision of G-d, but of the uniquely Jewish sensitivities required of a Jewish leader.

In that spirit I offer you this weekly source of commentary on haftarah in hopes that you will find as much interest and insight in it as I do:

This week’s haftarah, while found in the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah, is seen by most as the Isaiah’s inaugural prophecy. In it, Isaiah experiences the famous vision of the divine throne room where the fiery angels praise God with the famous words “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole world is filled with His glory” (6:3). What confounds this majestic picture is Isaiah’s response where he seemingly expresses his unworthiness to experience this vision: “Woe is me, I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my own eyes have beheld the King Lord of Hosts.” (6:5) Isaiah’s words were followed up by what seems to be either a punishment or a purification ceremony: ‘Then flew unto me one of the fiery angels, with a glowing stone in his hand, which he had taken with his tongs from the altar and he touched my mouth with it, and said: lo, this has touched your lips and your sin is taken away.” (6:6-7)

Isaiah’s words do not offer us a clear picture of what he saw as his own failings. This gave interpreters an opportunity to express their visions of his failing. One such expression can be found in this midrash: Since he saw the ministering angels praising the Holy One Blessed Be He and did not join them in praising Him, he became troubled, likening himself to a man of unclean lips, for if I would have joined my praise to theirs, I would have lived forever like them. How could I possibly have remained silent? While he stood dumbfounded over the matter, he uttered some unnecessary words: ‘I live among an unclean people’. The Holy One Blessed Be He said to him: ‘Regarding the words ‘For I am a man of unclean lips’, I can forgive you and allow you to bear responsibility for yourself, but regarding My children how could you say ‘I live among an unclean people’? Immediately, he bore the consequences of his words, as it is written: ‘The one of the fiery angels flew over to me with a live coal’. (6:6).” (Pesikta Rabati 33)

This midrash sees the prophet as an advocate for his people. A prophet or leader who would veer from this mission was to be considered sinful and worthy of punishment. This midrash sees Isaiah as falling short of this role and as requiring intervention. Only after this initiation was Isaiah worthy to serve his people. 

This colorful interpretation of Isaiah’s introduction to his role as a prophet is intended as a powerful message to all those who take on the mantle of leadership.

About This Commentary  This study piece is offered as a service of the United Synagogue Conservative Yeshiva. It is prepared by Rabbi Mordechai (Mitchell) Silverstein, senior lecturer in  Talmud and Midrash at the Conservative Yeshiva.  He is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. 

Shabbat BeShalakh: Birds, Trees, and Song

Shabbat BeShalakh describes a moment in Jewish religious history that still reverberates throughout our study and practice. This is the parashah which retells our exodus out of Egypt. We tell the story over and over again:

* in the Shabbat Kiddush over wine: ki hu yom mikra’ey kodesh, zekher l’tziyat Mitzrayim – “this is a day of holy gathering, a reminder of going out of Egypt”

* in the Shema section of the daily prayers: miMitzrayim ga’altanu HaShem Elokeynu, umibeit avadim piditanu – “From Egypt HaShem our G-d redeemed us, from a house of slavery we were brought out”

* in the Haggadah of Pesakh….

There are many lessons we are meant to draw from the retelling of the Exodus, and even more good questions. For example:  just how would one commemorate a redemption like this? What is the proper response? For our people, it was song – and the special name for this Shabbat is Shabbat Shirah, the Shabbat of the Song [of the Sea], led by Moshe and Miriam. (Her version includes tambourines, leading to the surmise that perhaps she has a better sense of rhythm.)

We celebrate this Shabbat of Song with a special ritual during the chanting of the Song itself from the Torah, and there is also a sweet custom to give thanks for all the kinds of song in Creation by putting out food for birds on this Shabbat, in honor of their songs. 

The proximity of Tu B’Shevat to Shabbat Shirah this year allows us to embrace even more of the world around us in appreciation and in respect. Many birds, after all, depend upon trees, and Tu B’Shevat is the New Year of Trees. The most Portland-ish of all Jewish holy days!

Singing is an expression of the soul that reaches deeper in, and farther out, than words can. On this Shabbat, give yourself over to the hope of small, fundamental things: the fragile beauty of a finch, the grand glory of a sequoia, the sweetness of a shared song. And let that song give you the courage to head back out there, as our people has always done, armed with the kiddush, the mi kamokha, the Haggadah, reminding us that we belong to a millennial journey whose most beautiful moments are still to be known.

Shabbat Bo: It Starts Here

Our parashat hashavua is significant in several ways, one of which is that starting here, the Torah begins to be full of the 613 mitzvot that it is so famous for. Up until this point, there has been a narrative describing generations of Israelites, but next to no commands. The famous medieval commentator Rashi asks in his notes on this parashah, “why did the Torah not begin here, with the beginning of the mitzvot? Why did it spend a book and more dwelling on non-halakhic matters, and non-Jewish as well?

There is another question to ask, and I offer it as one answer to Rashi’s question. In this parashah, we find the Israelites to be in the middle of the chaos of the final plagues brought upon Egypt, preparing for a precipitous leave-taking from their home, albeit a place of enslavement, for 400 years. We are neither at the end nor the beginning of the story, but somewhere in the muddled middle.

Yet G-d instructs Moshe to tell our ancestors that hahodesh hazeh lakhem rosh hodashim, “this month shall be your first month”. Why here? How is this a beginning?

These two questions can usefully inform each other. Consider: it is precisely in the middle of chaos that one seeks landmarks upon which to depend. The mitzvot are those landmarks for us. At any given moment of our lives, when we aren’t sure how to respond in word or act to whatever life brings us, a Jew can always sort it out by simply asking: where is the mitzvah in this moment? what am I obligated to do?

Yet Jewish life is certainly not only about the mitzvot. They are the framework of our religious path, and give us location, speed limits and merge signs. But  the framework is an empty skeleton, incapable of sustaining life. It needs the flesh and blood of the stories that show us how the halakhah, the path, really looks in lived experience. The twelfth chapter of Exodus is the perfect place for G-d to begin to offer the mitzvot that will guide us forever after, because it’s only at this point that we see, spreading out before us, a world not bounded by slavery, but open to indeterminacy, and the responsibility to make meaningful choices.

The parashah begins with the word bo, “come here”. It is often interpreted to mean “come to yourself”, i.e. in the face of chaos and fear calm down, look inside.

It is true for us every day: chaos, and the opportunity to seek a framework that will order it. It doesn’t matter if the framework seems arbitrary to those outside of our story, because it has no rational explanation. It is simply one way forward, one promise of beauty and meaning out of the glorious contradictory maelstrom of all that is around us. Any day, every day, you can calm the chaos by looking about you and asking where is the mitzvah in this moment. Today can be for you the first of months.

Shabbat Shemot 5776: what do you see in that bush?

One of the useful things about Torah is that every word of the sacred document has been pored over for so many generations, by so many devoted readers, that the commentaries are legion, and a well-worn path of interpretation lies before us as we in our own day consider what insights our Torah might divulge. As my teacher Byron Sherwin ז״ל used to say to me, “you don’t have to go outside the sources to be a feminist, you just have to keep digging to find what’s already there.” Replace the word “feminist” with any other sense of identity that you have that you may feel is outside the reach of our ancient wells of wisdom and experience, and, well, Dr Sherwin would suggest that the fault we find is in ourselves, not the Torah (or our stars, for that matter).

Every week we gather to read the Torah and to consider ancient, medieval, and modern commentaries upon it. We sometimes struggle with questions of legitimate boundaries; what is a Jewish interpretation? how is it developed? And we tend to privilege the more ancient as the more authoritative. That’s a natural inclination, and it is true that the ancient interpretations have formed the Judaism that we live in; what is less certain, and much more open, is the question of what interpretations we help to create and carry forward to develop th Judaism of the next generation.

Our parashat hashavua (Torah parashah, “section,” of the week) begins the book of Shemot, also called Exodus. In it we have the famous story of the bush that was burned but was not consumed. The New Yorker magazine recently ran a wonderful cartoon which showed Moshe staring at the bush while G-d, behind a nearby tree, says “that’s just a burning bush; I’m over here.” What a brilliant comment on our tendency to get caught up in the images by which we visualize what truth means to us. Religious imagery is always meant as a pass-through, but we focus on what we can see, and forget about the more complicated, mysterious unseen.

That small bush has led to some wonderful interpretations. I offer you three, and urge you to consider if you can come up with a fourth, and in so doing, join us in the interpretive journey which keeps Torah an endless well of living waters for us all:

1. Why did G-d speak to Moshe out of a bush? To teach us that there is no thing that does not have its place, and no person that does not have her/his moment.  (ben Zoma, Shemot Rabbah)

2. The bush represents the Jewish people, and the fire is our many years of suffering. It cannot destroy us. (13th century French Rabbi Hizkiyanu ben Manoah, known as Hizkuni)

3. How long does it take, when looking at a fire, to notice that the wood is not burning? To see miracles takes focus, and time. (11th century Zaragozan scholar Bahya ibn Pakuda)

There are so many more possible interpretations and insights we might find in that small, ever burning bush. It’s not a trivial thing: gaining facility in finding meaningful insights in a Torah passage transfers directly to the rest of your life. What small thing is right in front of you, full of a meeting with Eternity, and your own place in it, that you need to have?

Shabbat Miketz: Life Comes At You Fast

This week’s parashah is Miketz, which literally translates as “at the end”. In the Torah’s context, it refers to the end of two years’ time during which Joseph languishes, forgotten, in an Egyptian dungeon. The word ketz, “end”, is short and sharp. It echoes another key word of the parashah, vayikatz, which refers to the way in which Pharaoh startles awake after a disturbing dream, not once but twice as the parashah unfolds its tale.

The overall impact is of language which startles with its abruptness. Life changes just that quickly: one carries on for endless days until, suddenly and shockingly, everything changes. Pharaoh is shocked out of sleep and complacency; Joseph is hauled up out of the dungeon with no warning, brought to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. We go on day by day with our lives, consuming fossil fuels or throwing things “away”, until, suddenly, the reality of climate change bursts upon us, and we have to have emergency meetings in Paris.

Life seeems to change that quickly. Even when we have a sense of warning, and think we have time to prepare, the actual moment of impact can be shockingly sudden. 

But the work of that change is actually slow, even plodding, and full of blind alleys. What seems a sudden sprouting is really the result of greater forces at work than we can possibly manage, or even discern – not to mention the forces that grind themselves out before their impact can become known. Once again we realized that we are not in control of our lives, nor of what happens to us. 

As is often said, all we can control is our response. And we sabotage our responses in many ways: we become afraid to move, we underestimate our capacity to act, we let the momentary imbalance of the shock send us into a rabbit hole of panic. 

This all sounds very personal, but it is also global. We are who we are, regardless of the scale.  And it is true that, in ways we do not easily feel in our bones, our individual responses have meaning.

We can choose as individuals to join a march to express our individual convictions, to commit to some small act to lighten our single demand on the planet, to reach for a new degree of kavvanah, mindfulness, in all our acts – and in so doing discover that many others are marching, committing, and reaching in the same way. 

During this dark time, as we struggle with so many invitations to despair, I offer you one specific act to heighten the meaning of the Hanukkah menorah you light this year (I recommend doing it on the 8th night, when the menorah is fully ablaze):  https://www.vsgoliath.org/action/blacklivesmatter-chanukah/. One small way to say to the forces of evil that they will not win. We have their number.

Life comes at us fast – but Shabbat is here to give us a moment to focus, and that slows everything down just enough. This evening we mark T’ruah’s call for a national Human Rights Shabbat. Spend some time on this Shabbat, in shul with your community if you can, lighting a candle, and meditating in its light upon how together we can help each other not to panic, to recognize our ability to respond, and then, to do so to the best of our ability.

shabbat shalom and Hanukkah sameakh!

Shabbat VaYeshev: Do You Believe In Your Life?

Do you believe in your life? Enough to lose it?

The media reports that people are frightened. More and more, the ordinary activities of daily life seem to be places in which a mass shooting might occur. “When I drop off my child at school,” “when I go to the mall,” “when I am at work,” “when I go into a cafe to grab a coffee, I realize, it could happen there.”

An article describing the rising fear Americans feel about random gun violence goes on to consider ways we might cope with this anticipatory, more and more general fear.

“I think awareness of your own fears is the only way to go and to do the things that are soothing and comforting and distracting to do, and to do things that bring meaning to your life and bring comfort to other people,” said Dr. Sherry Katz-Bearnot, assistant clinical professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. “It’s what your grandmother said: Keep busy.” (“Fear in the Air, Americans Look Over Their Shoulders”)

Our Jewish ethical tradition holds that we can do better than that. We cannot just “stay busy” if our lives do not have value to us; busy nonsense does not calm the storm of existential terror. And we cannot simply stay in bed and pull the covers up over our heads.

We Americans are beginning to experience what other peoples in our world have already learned: there is no guaranteed safety. On any day, life may end for any one of us. We are accustomed to as, as an idle conversation starter, “what would you want to do if it were your last day?” But we do not live our lives that way, because it’s not possible. 

There is a different question we should be asking ourselves. In a world in which my choices might end with my death, do I believe in my choices enough to stake my life on them?

In Israel during the second intifada of 2001-2003, I witnessed the way people behave who are used to random violence in their everyday lives. Average Israelis, many of them opposed to the policies of their government that had caused the uprising, and had no necessary connection to politics, were aware that their daily choices were existential choices. Israeli social culture has evolved, over more time than just the last decades, a common awareness that life, itself, is not a supreme value, but a relative value, to be used to demonstrate one’s convictions about how life should be lived. Israelis do not stay home and cower; they live with a heightened awareness that where they live, how they live, will cost them their lives.

In America in these dark days, we are surrounded by random violence by the armed and angry, and heinous cowardice on the part of our elected officials. The choice to live as we wish and be safe is not now, if it ever was, available. Many of us average Americans have had no direct part in what makes the gun wielders angry, but we may be killed. 

Your life as you live it, with its commitments, expectations and desires, is going to require you to walk into a world of random violence today. Do you believe in what you are doing today, this and every day, enough to say “I may be cut down before I can finish, but I am building a meaningful life day by day”.

In our parashat hashavua for this week, people suffer and sometimes die, sometimes because of choices they have made and sometimes as a result of another’s whim. May our lot be with those who are privileged to be aware that our lives are made valuable by our conscious choices, and may we believe in our lives.

Shabbat VaYishlakh: Angels Among Us

Do we believe in angels? It surprises me how often I am asked that question – that, or another one that asks about the “we” of Jews, and the “supposed to” of our beliefs. When you think about it, the whole idea that you are “supposed” to “believe” is already a curiosity. More, it is a non-sequitur: one believes, or one does not. 

True, any religion sets forth tenets for belief. That is the official level of a religion’s teachings.Then there are the traditional folk beliefs, what you might call the comfortable level, or the superstitious level, of religion. What, then, is the official status of angels in Judaism? In other words, Does Judaism expect a Jew to believe in angels?

Yes and no, and yes again.

Yes: we can clearly see in the parashat hashavua for this week, VaYishlakh, that the Torah does make reference to angels. Or, at least, it looks that way in the English translation. This leads us to a good rule of thumb for exploration of Jewish belief: don’t settle for the translation. As David Ben Gurion warned, “reading the Torah in translation is like kissing your beloved through a handkerchief”. You may not be able to read the ancient Hebrew of the Torah fluently, but remember that there is always more depth than we can access on the surface, and searching out the deeper meaning of a word, a phrase or a belief may be as close to you as inquiring after the Hebrew terminology.

No: the word for “angel” in Hebrew is mal’akh, which translates from the Hebrew simply as “messenger”. Our parashah this week begins VaYishlakh Ya’akov mal’akhim, “Jacob sent messengers.” The plain sense of the Torah is that he sent people from his large encampment, probably young men, fleet of foot, to run before him and carry a message. Why is the very same word then sometimes translated “angels”? It depends upon the dispatcher: if G-d sends a messenger, it’s an angel. Probably with big wings, maybe even breathing fire and smoke (in his prophecies, Isaiah tells the story of just such a vision). Or perhaps simply a being in human shape, such as the messenger from G-d who struggles with Jacob by the Jabok River all night long, and insists on disappearing at daybreak, on the night before Jacob sees his estranged brother for the first time in twenty-some years. Or a perfectly-normal seeming human being who shows up in a field (we never learn his name or see him again) simply to tell Joseph to turn south in order to find his brothers (stay tuned for that one).

Yes: how is an angel a messenger? Our tradition teaches that it’s the other way around: a messenger might be an angel. If we define “angel” as “messenger of G-d” then everyone we meet might be such a carrier of a truth we need to learn. We ourselves are at any moment also such an angel, for we, in our normal human undertakings, are potentially bearing some word, some thought, some message that someone else needs to hear. As one rabbi put it, it is as if:

Each of us is a puzzle, to ourselves as to those around us. We are each a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing, and we go through our lives aware that something is missing, but not knowing what it is, nor quite how to fill the holes in our own souls. Then we meet another person, and in the interchange between us, we may suddenly feel that we are more whole than we were. We know something now that we never did before, or we feel a bit more complete in ourselves. Or – and this we will never know – some word, some act, of our own may bring that same sense of being a bit more complete than before to our interlocutor.

Yes, there are winged creatures in our ancient tradition (you are allowed to chalk that up to artistic imagination, you are not required to believe in them), but also quite normal looking messengers also.

Yes, you are required to keep in mind that here are angels among us, and that you yourself are such a messenger, and to live your life aware of that gift that you carry, and that others carry for you.

Thanksgiving, the annual American day of thanks, has passed once again.Thank G-d for Shabbat, when we are reminded weekly to give thanks for all the gifts carried by all the messengers of our lives.

Shabbat VaYetze: Trans Torah on Trans Day of Remembrance

On Shabbat VaYetze we read of Jacob’s leaving his family under threat of death from his brother. His escape is hurried and frightened, and his path traces an ironic reversal of Abraham’s, as Jacob has to leave his family home, the homeland promised to his grandfather’s and father’s descendants, and his people just to survive.

At this point in the story, Jacob is alone, hunted, and vulnerable. He will survive and thrive, and he does so because he successfully transitions from who he thought he was to be, in order to find who he was really meant to be. In the process he will become so fundamentally different that he will become known by an entirely new name. But this new sense of self, and the ability it will bring with it to reconnect to family and to create his own family, is a long, difficult struggle.

It could have been much different. In his lonely vulnerability, Jacob could easily have been killed. This parashat hashavua is well suited to today’s date. Today, November 20, is recognized as International Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to commemorate and honor people who are murdered for being who they are – because their gender identities do not fit within the constrictions of their cultures. Although there are records of people throughout history and around the world who lived outside of the gender binary (a polarized construction of ‘masculine males’ and ‘feminine females’), in our own, less tolerant place and times, these people are subject to scrutiny, oppression, discrimination, assault, and sometimes even murder. 

Why take a day to focus on something so heart-wrenching, when there is so much to celebrate about transgender visibility and wellbeing? We can see famous actors, musicians, and athletes share their gender-variant lives. The White House hired the first openly transgender staff person, and President Obama included trans people in his ‘State of the Union’ address. This year Oregon became one of the first states to ensure that trans people can benefit from medical coverage they were previously excluded from receiving. Multnomah County made a commitment to gender-accessible bathrooms. And out and proud trans people play vital roles within our shul. 

But in 2015 alone, 24 trans people, disproportionately women of color, were murdered due to transphobic violence. Worldwide, one trans person is murdered every three days. In the United States and in other countries, the people who bear the brunt of societal discomfort with ‘atypical’ gender expression are overwhelmingly trans women, those who live partly or completely outside of the male sex they were assigned at birth. These women are often poor, often people of color, forced outside the safety networks that many take for granted. Trans and gender-variant people are more likely to be ostracized from their families, discriminated against at work and school, living in poverty, profiled by police and dragged into criminal systems. 

As we know, and can see playing out on the national stage, religious communities have a powerful opportunity to influence either the welcome and affirmation of trans and gender-variant people, or their rejection and marginalization. Our Jewish tradition recognizes the reality of people who lives outside of the gender binary – but most of us are never told those stories. Nor should we really need to hear them in order to finally learn the basic lesson that G-d created all of us, and we all reflect G-d’s image, equally precious beings, all needed to bring about the better world we long to live in.

According to our tradition, Jacob had to journey to Haran, where his grandfather lived (with a name which also means “anger” in Hebrew) and through Mt Moriah, where his father was almost killed by his grandfather. Although he may have left home to try to escape his family, Jewish teaching makes clear that we transition from who we are to who we are meant to be only by walking a path which leads through, not around, those from whom we inherit so much of the puzzle of who we are.

All of us transition in our lives; all of us weather changes in our world. Like Jacob, we have a long, difficult road before we truly become the Israel we are meant to be: unafraid to be compassionate, aware of our own strength, with no further need to be angry – and able to fully love.