Shabbat Lekh L’kha: Avraham did nothing (alone)

עֲשָׂרָה שֶׁיּוֹשְׁבִין וְעוֹסְקִין בַּתּוֹרָה, שְׁכִינָה שְׁרוּיָה בֵינֵיהֶם

Ten who are sitting together and engaging in Torah, the Divine Presence rests among them (Pirke Avot 3.6)

In our parashat hashavua, the weekly reading of the Torah, we begin the story of Abraham (originally Avram) who is seen as the ancestor of the Jewish people. As our tradition preserves the myth, Avraham is the עברי ivri, a word which literally means “one who crosses over.” Avraham is an immigrant from Mesopotamia (the area which is today Iraq) and it is this identity which defines him, and all of us after him who are part of the community then called Ivrim, Hebrews. 

This is the “great man” approach to history. It is one way to interpret human experience and turn it into a narrative. We are very familiar with this way of telling the human story: it is the habit of believing that individuals make history. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves; Alexander the Great conquered the world; Moshe Rabbenu led the Jews out of Egypt.

The “great man” theory of history is convenient for simple storytelling. It’s also wildly wrong, and, what’s more, it erases the real stories of what happens to us. It is clear that no one person can make history, really: the circumstances of our lives are made up of a myriad of confusing, conflicting, mostly unsensed words, and acts, and expectations, and assumptions.

The “great man” theory of history is a lazy way to understand existence. And it is an inevitable if mistaken outgrowth of our dependence upon the modern idea that we, as individuals, have the potential to change the world, when in actuality, all we have the potential to do is to agree with enough others to make something happen, whether it’s a barn raising, or an election, or a war. 

Abraham didn’t do anything alone. We’re not even sure that Abraham was the primary actor in his story; evidence indicates that his partners, Sarah and Hagar, and later Keturah, are independent actors with their own agendas (to literally see this plainly in the text, look at the way that Leah and Rachel decide how Jacob will spend the night in Genesis 30.14-18). We only know the story they way transmitters assumed it should be told; we don’t know what else was erased by the decisions they made.

What are you assuming today, after Tuesday’s monumental Election Day and its truly frightening aftermath, with newly emboldened thugs already seeking to persecute the vulnerable?  What does our assumption about the capacity of the individual say to us right now: that one person can upend everything about our lives? That it has happened before? That the U.S. democracy is now inevitably ended?

This is the enervating poison of the belief in individual agency, the dark flip side of the encouragement we give each other that each one of us is special and capable of great things. That is the simple truth. The complex truth, however, is that you and I as individuals are capable of very little unless we are united in our efforts with others with whom we share not only common purpose but trust, reliance, and awareness that I can do nothing without you.

During the years 2017-2020, Trump didn’t incarcerate thousands of immigrant children separated from their parents; he probably didn’t lift a personal hand to add a single string of barbed wire to a concentration camp. A whole lot of other people all agreed to help make the horrors he envisioned into the trauma too many innocents suffered. 

And l’havdil (not comparing the two individuals) Abraham didn’t create a people; we did, the ערב רב “erev rav” (mixed multitude) that went out of Egypt afraid but committed to each other, over many years of walking and stumbling and trying again to discern the path we are meant to take together through the wildnerness of this life and its promises and dangers. That is why there is another origin story preserved in our sacred text, that of parashat HaAzinu: 

יִמְצָאֵ֙הוּ֙ בְּאֶ֣רֶץ מִדְבָּ֔ר        וּבְתֹ֖הוּ יְלֵ֣ל יְשִׁמֹ֑ן יְסֹבְבֶ֙נְהוּ֙ יְב֣וֹנְנֵ֔הוּ        יִצְּרֶ֖נְהוּ כְּאִישׁ֥וֹן עֵינֽוֹ

HaShem found them in a desert region, in an empty howling waste; engirded them, watched over them, guarded them as the pupil of the eye. (Deut. 32.10)

Them, not him, or her – a people, not a “great man.” No individual shapes the world. No individual can do everything, or, really, anything, without cooperation and collaboration. Individuality is a dangerous myth when it leads us to feeling that there is nothing we can do, since an individual has won an election. 

There’s a lot you can do now, but, frankly, none of it can be done alone. This is the time for belonging. If you are not a member of some group of people upon whom you can rely for a sense of belonging, now is the time to remedy that lack in your life. 

It may be difficult at first to realize that the silly slogan of our time, “I’m just not a joiner” has always been a self-delusion. We may each have to do some dis-assembly of parts of the story we’ve been telling ourselves about our individuality, and strike out, like Abraham, but more like Sarah and Hagar who made common cause (according to the actual text!) toward a new understanding of the world and our place in it. 

Fulfilling one’s destiny as one of the ivrim, the Hebrews, means that crossing over must still be an important part of the defining story of who we Jews are: from the known to the unknown, not as a solitary individual in some self-deluded sense of individual capacity, but rather with the sobering realization that we all are in need, most of all, of each other. No one person is a kehillah, a community, and that we are meant to be in community.

חזק חזק ונתחזק

hazak, hazak v’nit’hazek

May we find our strength in each other, and so find HaShem

Shabbat Noah: The End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine?)

אלה תולדות נח [נח איש צדיק תמים היה בדורותיו] א”ר יוחנן בדורותיו ולא בדורות אחרים וריש לקיש אמר בדורותיו כ”ש בדורות אחרים 

With regard to the verse: These are the generations of Noah; Noah was a righteous man, and wholehearted in his generations (Genesis 6:9), 

Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Relative to the other people of his generation he was righteous and wholehearted, but not relative to those of other generations. 

Reish Lakish says: In his generation he was righteous and wholehearted despite being surrounded by bad influences; all the more so would he have been considered righteous and wholehearted in other generations. (BT Sanhedrin 108a)

Today (I am posting this on Wednesday, the day after U.S. Election Day, even though it is last Shabbat’s parashah) feels like the end of the world. And so I’d like to offer you a thought based on the fact that human beings have faced and coped with and been defeated by and got up again in the face of absolute disaster many, many times in human history.

Consider the ancient story of the Great Flood. This story is retold in sagas all over the ancient Mesopotamian world as a disaster which ended all life – except for a saving remnant from which life was continued. The world seems to have ended, and yet: the disaster ends, the catastrophe recedes, the war ends…the Flood ebbs away. The Bible relates nothing of Noah’s mental state, but in catastrophic situations there are two human responses: either to act to cope, or to give up and be swallowed up by the chaos.

Noah was presented with the end of the world as he knew it. It would have been understandable if he had judged the situation to be terminally hopeless, and refused to continue living under the circumstances. But Noah, when surrounded by the muddy devastation of the aftermath of the great Flood, pulls himself together and starts to plant. He raises a grape vine. He nurtures life in the shadow of the great death.

Confronting large scale disaster by planting a grape vine, a symbol of joy, is a demonstration of anti-apocalypse thinking. It’s not “all or nothing”; it’s not going to be all over, even if it is over for me or for you. There will still be life to nurture. May we do our human ancestors proud by adopting their stubborn capacity to focus on beautiful small things even in the midst of so much that seems to be looming disaster: may we look out for, nurture, and protect the small, momentary, everyday lives of all those we interact with. 

Come, my friends; consider what is in your hands to plant, and to nurture. In so doing may you find support to nurture the hope that keeps you going.

Shabbat Bereshit: Beginning Again, With You

The Thing Is

To love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

Ellen Bass

Now we begin again. This is, after all, the reality of our lives, as we are lucky enough to be alive: every morning is a new beginning. Jewish tradition gifts us with ways to contemplate what would otherwise go unmarked: whenever you choose to take part in it, you are able to live a moment more deeply. This is a moment of beginning. But what is a new beginning, when one has begun so many times before?

There are constants, of course, for as long as we live: we breathe, we need, we yearn. Similarly, the Torah is always there, always the same words. But such is the extent of what is the same. Experience changes us, and perforce changes what we behold as well. We are taught that there are seventy faces to Torah; seventy ways to understand each story, each verse, each word. 

In this week’s parashah, we encounter a world of beginnings. Let this invitation refresh our vision and open us to new learnings. The Torah is the same, but you and I are renewed, and through our relationship with Torah and with each other, we will find new insights to strengthen and support us through the days to come.

At Rosh HaShanah, the day we dedicate to encouraging each other and ourselves to believe in renewal, we considered what it means to be gathered together. What is the difference between a roomful of people and a kehillah kedoshah, a “holy community”, which is the traditional designation of a Jewish congregation?

This week, our Torah offers us the only bedrock certainty we will ever have. From our creation story, we know that it is a fundamental teaching that we are created in the Image of G*d. That is to say, all life is a reflection of Life and proceeds from its Source. The mystics derive from this an insight parallel to the modern scientific theory of the Big Bang: all of us are part of an explosion of life out of the same overflowing source. We each come from it, equally, and we each are made of it. Thus we reflect it.

Riffing on this idea as only a mystic would, the sage Isaiah Horowitz quoted the book of Job: מבסרי אחזה אלוה – “from my body I will see G*d” (Iyov 19.26) While Job may have meant this to say “while I am alive,” the Jewish understanding that there is more than one way to understand any text allows him to suggest the idea that this is about introspection: from contemplating the physical body, one moves toward an understanding of how one reflects holiness. 

From our flesh we see HaShem. Not from denying our body, or rising above it, but from it, including it as we learn and grow toward the kind of personal integrity that is the prerequisite for relationships with others and a sense of one’s meaning in the world.

Each of us, then, reflects something equally precious and true about Life and its Source. As our kehillah continues to grow, meaning precisely that new reflections of Life are joining us, the palette of our shared experience expands in color and in depth. As the mystics suggest, it’s like sunlight coming through a window: it’s all brightness and light. Put a few bottles of different colored glass in the window, and suddenly you have different colored light. Put in a complicated stained glass window, and now your sunlight is a myriad of shades and hues.

We consider a stained glass window beautiful. Why not behold the variety of our community in exactly the same way?

Some of us are old, some young. Some are middle class, some are living paycheck to paycheck, and some are wealthy. Some of us are parents, some grandparents, and some do not have children. Some of us are healthy and some of us are chronically ill, or struggling with an acute ailment. Some of us converted to Judaism and others grew up with a Jewish parent who may or may not have transmitted a sense of Jewish belonging. Some of us are disabled physically or mentally. Some of us are heterosexual and some are queer; some of us are trans and some are cisgender. Some of us are female, some male, some are elsewhere on a spectrum that is every bit as varied as the window in the Gaudi cathedrale in Barcelona pictured above.

But these are all just the colors of the glass, that “glass” that we are taught to see as having seventy different colors. Beyond it all, we are each of us made of the same Light. Why ask if you belong? Why entertain for a single moment, rather, the idea that you do not?

It’s not necessarily easy to find one’s place in a varied multiscape, but monolithism is boring and, in the end, inimical to Life, which is about growth through adapting to change and variation.

Here we are, beginning again. May we begin again to try again to see HaShem reflected, not only in our own flesh, but in each other’s. Not because we look the same, but precisely because we do not.

Shabbat Ki Tavo: Change Is The Only Certainty

וּנְתַנֶּה תֹּקֶף קְדֻשַּׁת הַיּוֹם כִּי הוּא נוֹרָא וְאָיֹם וּבוֹ תִּנָּשֵׂא מַלְכוּתֶךָ וְיִכּוֹן בְּחֶסֶד כִּסְאֶךָ וְתֵשֵׁב עָלָיו בְּאֱמֶת  

We recognize the power of the holiness of this day; it is terrifying and awesome, and on it we see that we are overwhelmed, we are caught by truth, and we are desperately in need of compassion. (Unetaneh Tokef prayer from the High Holy Days Musaf Amidah)

The discourse around the difficulty of change often evokes the idea that the unknown is the most terrifying of human challenges. Change is avoided because uncertainty is uncomfortable; change is difficult to effect because we seek safety, which is not found in the unknown future but in the “devil you know”, i.e. the well-known present, even if unpleasant.

But the only constant our lives know is change. It happens every day, in the constant processes of our reality: growth and in decay, development and destruction, birth and in death. Despite that which longs for stasis, there is an inevitable movement in our lives.

Survival has always required the ability to adapt successfully. For our ancestors at the cusp of the land of promise, the home they’ve longed for, adaptation – change – is now required. Is it any wonder that the entire book of Deuteronomy sees them located in one place, the steppes of Moab, clearly trying to get up the sufficient collective courage to take the necessary step into the unknown?

Change is hard. Yet on Rosh HaShanah and all through the fall hagim, we focus upon the possibility of change. Change is key in our human journey toward wholeness. The message that change is not only possible, but is that which redeems us, is repeated over and over throughout the holy days, as Rabbi Yitzhak asserts: 

וְאָמַר רַבִּי יִצְחָק: אַרְבָּעָה דְּבָרִים מְקָרְעִין גְּזַר דִּינוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם, אֵלּוּ הֵן: צְדָקָה, צְעָקָה, שִׁינּוּי הַשֵּׁם, וְשִׁינּוּי מַעֲשֶׂה. צְדָקָה, דִּכְתִיב: ״וּצְדָקָה תַּצִּיל מִמָּוֶת״. צְעָקָה, דִּכְתִיב: ״וַיִּצְעֲקוּ אֶל ה׳ בַּצַּר לָהֶם וּמִמְּצוּקוֹתֵיהֶם יוֹצִיאֵם״. שִׁינּוּי הַשֵּׁם, דִּכְתִיב: ״שָׂרַי אִשְׁתְּךָ לֹא תִקְרָא אֶת שְׁמָהּ שָׂרָי כִּי שָׂרָה שְׁמָהּ״, וּכְתִיב: ״וּבֵרַכְתִּי אוֹתָהּ וְגַם נָתַתִּי מִמֶּנָּה לְךָ בֵּן״. שִׁינּוּי מַעֲשֶׂה, דִּכְתִיב: ״וַיַּרְא הָאֱלֹהִים אֶת מַעֲשֵׂיהֶם״, וּכְתִיב: ״וַיִּנָּחֶם הָאֱלֹהִים עַל הָרָעָה אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר לַעֲשׂוֹת לָהֶם וְלֹא עָשָׂה״. 

Rabbi Yitzḥak said: A person’s sentence is torn up on account of four types of actions. These are: Giving tzedakah, crying out in prayer, a change of one’s name, and a change of one’s deeds for the better. An allusion may be found in Scripture for all of them: Giving charity, as it is written: “And tzedakah delivers from death” (Proverbs 10:2); crying out in prayer, as it is written: “Then they cry to HaShem in their trouble, and HaShem brings them out of their distresses” (Psalms 107:28); a change of one’s name, as it is written: “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be” (Genesis 17:15), and it is written there: “And I will bless her, and I will also give you a child from her” (Genesis 17:16); a change of one’s deeds for the better, as it is written: “And God saw their deeds” (Jonah 3:10), and it is written there: “And God repented of the evil, which HaShem had said would happen to them, and did not do it” (Jonah 3:10). (BT Rosh HaShanah 16b)

From this ancient belief we derive not only the modern Israeli saying משנה מקום משנה מזל m’shaneh makom m’shaneh mazal, “change your place, change your luck” but also the widespread superstition that if someone is in danger of dying, one way to help them is to change their Hebrew name, so that the Angel of Death cannot find them. (I do this readily when the occasion arises.)

Interestingly, in our Unetaneh Tokef prayer, a name change is the one act that is not included, perhaps because it is the most easily abused of the paths of change – if you can change your name to cheat death, it’s too easy a temptation to cheat one’s creditors similarly.

That leaves us with צדקה Tzedakah, תפילה Tefilah, and תשובה Teshuvah as the keys to the kind of change that allows for successful adaptation throughout our lives. As we near the date of Rosh Hashanah, with Yom Kippur looming close beyond, it can all seem like too much. 

I believe that Rabbi Yitzhak is trying to offer us encouragement. If teshuvah seems too hard to get a handle on, would it be possible to effect personal change for the better by praying more, or more intently, with more emotional investment in “crying out”? Perhaps: if we understand prayer to be a regular exercise in self-reflection, in line with the actual meaning of the Hebrew word, “to judge oneself.” And might it be possible to effect personal change for the better by focusing more on meaningful tzedakah? To believe in one’s power to do justice through giving of oneself, in many small ways that we might dismiss as “not enough” when we are too focused on trying to save the world somehow.

One way to learn from the recurrence of High Holy Days every year is to see that while the days contain the same message every year, we are – inevitably – different, so there is a real chance that meaningful change has occurred, or is possible. One way to look at ourselves during this time is over time, rather than as a static reality; when you look back over the past year, or over five or ten, could you ever imagine where you would find yourself? 

One way to engage in change is to embrace its inevitability and believe in your – in our – shared capacity not only to meet the moment, but to thrive. Not to conquer the moment and move on, but to adapt to the idea of constancy, rather than a moment of triumph, as the best kind of change. As this High Holy Days of 5785 comes close, with all the overwhelm that life brings us every day, may we not only recognize our need for compassion from each other and ourselves in the face of truth, but also be able to see our ability to find joy in it.

That’s the sacred power of this day; may we recognize it.

Shabbat Ki Tetze: Tit For Tat?

“an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” – Variously attributed to both the Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, but also already expressed in the legislation of the ancient rabbis of the Talmud

In this preparatory period which is the month of Elul, we are encouraged by our tradition to believe that the human species has the capacity to improve, and so to look to our moral state as individuals, as a people, and as a society.

In parashat Ki Tetze we are presented by the Book of Deuteronomy with commands that are not only about social interaction, but the morality that should undergird our acts toward each other. The very first verse of the triennial cycle reading offers the highest possible standard for us to consider:

לֹֽא־תְתַעֵ֣ב אֲדֹמִ֔י כִּ֥י אָחִ֖יךָ ה֑וּא לֹא־תְתַעֵ֣ב מִצְרִ֔י כִּי־גֵ֖ר הָיִ֥יתָ בְאַרְצֽוֹ׃ 

You shall not abhor an Edomite, for such is your kin. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in that land.  (Deut. 23.8)

Jewish ethics is derived primarily from Torah, and secondarily Tanakh, sources. The most famous is perhaps do not do to another that which you hate done to you, Hillel’s interpretation of love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19.18). This is easy to quote and terribly difficult to do: contemporary U.S. cancel culture and call-out practices isolate and shun a neighbor, and are defended as justice against an abuser or another kind of person defined as wrong or bad within a social circle.

Such righteous anger is completely ruled out by Rashi: “although they cast your male children into the Nile, you shall not utterly abhor them because they were your hosts in the time of famine (during Joseph’s reign).” A modern commentator sometimes compared to Rashi explains:

“We have seen repeated laws requiring Israelites to give aliens the same protections as citizens. And apparently this is the ultimate expression of that principle (and possibly the reason for it): Israelites themselves were aliens in Egypt, and they were abhorred and mistreated, so they must now never abhor an Egyptian or mistreate any alien.” (Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, 636 n.23.8)

There are two related ethical teachings there:

  1. you must not do to others that which was done to you. While psychological studies show that those who are abused as children are likely to perpetuate the cycle of abuse as adults, our Torah insists that the pattern can and must be broken. At least one recent study holds out this hope as well.
  2. It is precisely forbidden to treat the person or people who hurt you in the same way. Tit for tat, in other words, is not acceptable Jewish ethics.

Jewish teachings on forgiveness recognize that it feels natural and justifiable when others suffer in the same way that they caused suffering; we might even declare that it’s karma, i.e. inevitably and poetically appropriate when it happens. But the author points out that Jewish tradition requires us to examine our motivations when we say we are seeking redress: if we are angry, if something inside of us wants someone else to suffer because we suffered, this is categorically wrong.

It is typical these days to hear the opinion that if the family of an Israeli hostage or Palestinian political prisoner is in favor of the other side’s total destruction, it’s understandable for them. Yet it is precisely from those bereaved that we hear the opposite: no one should suffer like this.

According to the ethical insights of Jewish mysticism, there are two places – in the self and in the larger aggregate self that is the community – from which mercy emerges. The lower place, we are taught, mingles with judgement and is drenched by contradictory emotional storms. That quality of mercy is confused and loses quite a bit in translation into action.

But there is a higher place; it is a place of serenity, a place of wholeness in which we have settled with our contradictions and shortcomings, and have learned the difference between what we feel and what someone else is culpable for. It is a place where no one says “I suffered, so should you.” The mystics identify it as a place that dwells with understanding and wisdom, in which mercy has risen above judgement, and is clear and certain. “No one should suffer like this.”

The higher place is not only within our grasp, it is already part of us, as we are created in the Image of G*d. When we are hurting and our vision narrows to anger, it is difficult to remember that we are also capable of a holy generosity. Yet it is the easiest place of all to reach when one learns to put down one’s burden of hate, anger, resentment, and the rest of the self-righteous complex of focusing upon how one was hurt – and instead we put that energy toward our own higher – and much better-feeling – state of being.

Shabbat Shoftim: Don’t Be Like Them, Be Like You

כִּ֤י אַתָּה֙ בָּ֣א אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֣ן לָ֑ךְ לֹֽא־תִלְמַ֣ד לַעֲשׂ֔וֹת כְּתוֹעֲבֹ֖ת הַגּוֹיִ֥ם הָהֵֽם׃ 

When you enter the land that your God ‘ה is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. (Devarim 18.9)

מֶען טָאר זִיךְ נִישְׁט מְיַאֵשׁ זַיין – Men tor zich nisht m’ya’esh zayn  “It is forbidden to despair.” – Rebbe Nahman of Bratslav

Once again in this week’s parashah the Torah reminds us, a propos to the new school year, not to copy our neighbors’, but to do our own, work. On this particular week the world has brought to us Jews and the Jew-adjacent more particular horror, even enervation, as we watch the Jewish state doing just that in the worst way: imitating the abhorrent practices of realpolitik, of engaging in international arms sales and domestic economic injustice, of making war and destroying the environment, of acting like a state like all other states.

Only eighty years ago, Jews had no state of our own; we suffered the diverse and mostly helpless fortunes of the homeless wanderer. And so when the utopian socialist movement in Europe asserted that each people deserved its own home and its own flag, the Jews of Europe perceived salvation within the workings of politics. On European political-philosophical terms, the state emerged: with a statement of independent existence, an anthem, and a flag.

From a Torah perspective, perhaps this was when things began to go wrong. Religious leaders who were opposed to Zionism warned that modern nation-states do not offer friendly grounding for applied ethics. Some sociological observers of the Israeli scene look to the progression of the kibbutz for insight: the kibbutz, a utopian socialist vision for living, required the absolute equality of each member. If one member received a gift of a radio, they could not keep it in their room unless every other member of the kibbutz also had a radio; if not, they would need to keep it in a common room so that everyone could share the benefit of the radio equally.

But in the course of one hundred years, Israel, originally part of a non-aligned group of nations, leaned toward Western identification and practice. And so the once proudly socialist nation began to adopt capitalist practices; income inequality began to grow, and the discernment of status by social class to increase. Finally, the dichotomy between founding philosophy and what seemed to actually be viable caused not only the kibbutzim (270 of them at the height of the movement) to shift from rural to urban, agricultural to industrial, and equal to stratified, national structures.

All this can be justified with commonplace ideas: one must go along to get along. A state must play the game of statehood according to rules established by all the states in their collective pratices. Finally, one arrives as the argument that states cannot be expected to live according to the ethics of their people; they must act according to a different set of rules.

In our parashat hashavua, the Torah’s urging in this context is jarring: “When you enter the land that your God ‘ה is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.” And for we who are old enough to remember when Israel’s declaration of independence seemed an inspiring possibility of a better way of life for all humans, the state of today doesn’t feel very Jewish….except in the worst way, that evoked by extremists misquoting, misunderstanding, and manipulating our tradition and making a mockery of its ethics.

As Jews not living in the State of Israel, there is not much we can do to act upon our discomfort with the clash between our sense of hows Jews behave and how the State of Israel is behaving. True, we can support organizations both in the U.S. and in Israel which work toward justice, and that is important. But we must resist the practices of other nations in another way: in the West, we are conditioned to believe that we can, and should, act to change the world. The daily headlines that assault our psyches echo it: “who is about to destroy the world and what you can do about it” is a not uncommon approach.

But in Judaism we are taught to differently:

הוא היה אומר לא עליך המלאכה לגמור. ולא אתה בן חורין ליבטל ממנה. אם למדת תורה הרבה נותנים לך שכר הרבה. ונאמן הוא בעל מלאכתך שישלם לך שכר פעולתך. ודע מתן שכרן של צדיקים לעתיד לבא:  

[Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it; If you have studied much Torah, you shall be given much reward. Faithful is your employer to pay you the reward of your labor; And know that the grant of reward unto the righteous is in the age to come.

In the fourth week of what is traditionally a time devoted to finding nekhemta, consolation, we must turn away from the idea that we can change the world toward a more Jewish stance: we must envision the World To Come and act toward it. The difference is crucial, because rather than spend our days castigating ourselves for not being superhuman, we are able to focus at every moment on what we can do. 

You can’t do it all; you must do what you can.

If you keep at your spiritual growth, it will pay off.

There will be results for your efforts.

You might not see them – and that’s okay.

Only when we are able to cling to the difference of this Jewish path will we be able to keep taking one step at a time in the footsteps of Rebbe Nakhman of Bratslav: “Jews! don’t despair!”

It is possible to live differently.

Despair is enervating. Don’t give in; listen to a podcast instead.

Shabbat Re’eh: Torah Against Occupation

Even the devil can quote Scripture

This is the Third Shabbat of Consolation; as we move toward the High Holy Days of 5785, may we find the inner strength to believe in the possibility of positive change in ourselves, and in our world.

אֵ֣ת כׇּל־הַדָּבָ֗ר אֲשֶׁ֤ר אָנֹכִי֙ מְצַוֶּ֣ה אֶתְכֶ֔ם אֹת֥וֹ תִשְׁמְר֖וּ לַעֲשׂ֑וֹת לֹא־תֹסֵ֣ף עָלָ֔יו וְלֹ֥א תִגְרַ֖ע מִמֶּֽנּוּ

 Be careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you: neither add to it nor take away from it. (Deut. 13.1)

Parashat Re’eh is full of alluring material: how to observe the Pilgrimage Festivals, rules for prophecy, even some kashrut tips. Most commentators can manage to completely ignore the more problematic topic covered in verses 12.29-31, in which we are warned about idolatry in the following context:

כִּֽי־יַכְרִית֩ ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ אֶת־הַגּוֹיִ֗ם אֲשֶׁ֨ר אַתָּ֥ה בָא־שָׁ֛מָּה לָרֶ֥שֶׁת אוֹתָ֖ם מִפָּנֶ֑יךָ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֹתָ֔ם וְיָשַׁבְתָּ֖ בְּאַרְצָֽם׃ 

When your God ‘ה has cut down before you the nations that you are about to enter and dispossess, and you have dispossessed them and settled in their land… (Deut 12.29)

For our homeless ancestors wandering through Europe and the Mediterranean basin, as far as India and Morocco, the idea of HaShem ethnically cleansing the land of Canaan so that Jews could live there in peace was either a long-ago legend or a reference to an impossibly distant future. To the extent that they suffered persecution in that Exile, it may have seemed an attractive dream, but unrealistic and unreachable dream it was.

In our own day we have witnessed the terrible cost of the idea that one people deserves to live in peace at the cost of another people’s existence. Survivors of the great Holocaust of our people are still living reminders. Because of our own still-recent history of oppression, before this Torah text we find ourselves nearly without precedent to refer to, with no Rashi to tell us how to interpret for our own day, when our own people attempt to apply such a text to our neighbors, the Palestinian people who also call the modern land of Canaan their ancestral home. Is it then a legitimate reading to assert, as some Jews do, that it is HaShem’s will that Jews occupy, displace and dispossess Palestinians? 

Yet this parashah also warns us, in the very next verse, about being “lured into the ways” of the nations around us, as the very definition of idolatry, which is to fall away from the righteous path. From this very verse the early modern scholar known as the Hatam Sofer developed his rule: hehadash asur min haTorah, “anything new is forbidden by Torah.” This offers us grounding, already, to ask how modern Palestinians could possibly be compared to the ancient “seven nations of Canaan.” Yet how might we respond to the rabbinic idea that ayn mukdam um’uchar baTorah, “there is no early or late in Torah” – that everything always is now, and always applies?

“The more study, the more life,” as our ancestors say: looking more deeply into the question of the seven nations of Canaan, we find that Maimonides, our Rambam, has done his Talmudic reading:

Rabbi Yehoshua said to Rabban Gamliel: Do Ammon and Moab reside in their place? [The Assyrian king] Sennakherib (destroyer of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE) already came and, through his policy of population transfer, scrambled all the nations and settled other nations in place of Ammon. Consequently, the current residents of Ammon and Moab are not ethnic Ammonites and Moabites, as it is stated in reference to Sennakherib: “I have removed the bounds of the peoples, and have robbed their treasures, and have brought down as one mighty the inhabitants” (Isaiah 10:13) – BT Berakhot 28a)

Rambam therefore teaches that although “it is a positive mitzvah to destroy the seven nations [of Canaan], as it is said: ‘You shall utterly destroy them’ (Deuteronomy 7:2), and anyone who encounters one of them and does not kill him has violated an injunction, as it is said, ‘Do not keep alive a soul’ (Deuteronomy 20:16),” it is also true that, because of Sennakherib’s policy of population transfer, “their memory has already been erased.” (Hilkhot Melakhim 5.4)

 Jews are like anyone else; when traumatized, we develop maladaptive behaviors. Abusers are most like those who have been abused. This is why some Israelis and Palestinians in the peace camp today recognized that intervention by the U.S. and Europe in the current conflagration might be the only way to help break the cycle of violence.

It is no wonder, given so many generations of brutalization, that some proclaim that Gaza should be “bombed flat” even as some call for Israel’s total destruction. Much violence has drained away the humanity from many suffering souls. But we need neither to “add to nor detract from” the message of our Torah to reclaim it.

כִּֽי־תִרְאֶ֞ה חֲמ֣וֹר שֹׂנַאֲךָ֗ רֹבֵץ֙ תַּ֣חַת מַשָּׂא֔וֹ וְחָדַלְתָּ֖ מֵעֲזֹ֣ב ל֑וֹ עָזֹ֥ב תַּעֲזֹ֖ב עִמּֽוֹ׃     

When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden and would refrain from raising it, you must nevertheless help raise it. (Exodus 23.5)

“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19.18) is applicable only to those we consider as in some way like us (it was traditionally meant as an intra-Jewish obligation). In some distant messianic future we may find out how to love an enemy, but in our current benighted state it seems to be asking too much. Yet there are also rules, called derekh eretz, oftentranslated”common decency,” for how we are to behave toward an enemy!

If ancient non-Jewish reality (the invasion of Assyria) made the seven nations of Canaan mitzvah defunct, then modern reality can do the same. It has never been more important for us to assert that Jews do not follow the Torah word for word: we are not literalists, not fundamentalists, in that way. That would be a new and different way of reading for us, inspired by Western reading; and that is forbidden, directly by our Torah itself.

Shabbat Ekev: What If You’re Mistaken?

Getting all judge-y

אַל־תֹּאמַ֣ר בִּלְבָבְךָ֗ בַּהֲדֹ֣ף יְהֹוָה֩ אֱלֹהֶ֨יךָ אֹתָ֥ם ׀ מִלְּפָנֶ֘יךָ֮ לֵאמֹר֒ בְּצִדְקָתִי֙ הֱבִיאַ֣נִי ה’ לָרֶ֖שֶׁת אֶת־הָאָ֣רֶץ הַזֹּ֑את

And when your God ‘ה has thrust them from your path, say not to yourselves, “יהוה has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues”. (Devarim 9.4)

This week is the second of Seven Weeks of Consolation, during which we are meant to focus upon self-improvement in the most important ways: how we get along.

The first step in any teshuvah, any act of return and repair, is to identify the mistake. In order to do this we must bring our best judgement to bear upon our actions. But, since our perceptual abilities are constrained by so many factors (mood, hearing, attention span, biases, and so much more), how do we know if we are judging our actions accurately?

 Our Western society encourages us to turn away from judgment with stock phrases like “it’s not up to me to judge” and the quote “judge not lest you be judged.” But that quote comes from someone else’s Bible – Matthew 7.1 – and it’s usually misquoted, anyway. The Jewish ethic is found more correctly here: 

לֹֽא־תִשְׂנָ֥א אֶת־אָחִ֖יךָ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶ֔ךָ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֥א עָלָ֖יו חֵֽטְא

You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kin but incur no guilt on their account.  (VaYikra 19.17)

We are called upon to keep each other in line – the line of the way of Jewish ethics, and to do so with care for each other. We are to be our “brother’s keeper”, to go even further back, to the original sin of humanity as Judaism sees it: not sharing fruit in a garden, but in ending a life and lying about one’s guilt.

Some of our ancestors, and some of our people at this time, argue that the land of Israel is given incontrovertibly to the Jewish people (even the lyrics of the old film “Exodus” make the claim). But our parashat hashavua clearly speaks against this idea. 

וְהָיָ֗ה אִם־שָׁכֹ֤חַ תִּשְׁכַּח֙ אֶת־ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ וְהָֽלַכְתָּ֗ אַחֲרֵי֙ אֱלֹהִ֣ים אֲחֵרִ֔ים וַעֲבַדְתָּ֖ם וְהִשְׁתַּחֲוִ֣יתָ לָהֶ֑ם הַעִדֹ֤תִי בָכֶם֙ הַיּ֔וֹם כִּ֥י אָבֹ֖ד תֹּאבֵדֽוּן׃ 

If you do forget your God ‘ה and follow other gods to serve them or bow down to them, I warn you this day that you shall certainly perish (Devarim 8.19)

The Torah indicates that believing that the land is ours beyond any other claim, that any behavior toward others is justified because of some sacred right, is an act of serving “other gods”, not HaShem: gods of fear and anger and trauma, gods of greed and the madness of power. 

If we are to judge ourselves and our acts, what will help up see beyond our own emotions – our own fears and hopes and needs – so that we can see ourselves accurately, and so judge correctly? 

The cost of judging ones’s acts incorrectly is merely that no progress toward becoming a happier, more complete human being is possible. This is why our ethical tradition advises that we seek out someone we respect to help us see past our own natural blind spots – a mentor, a teacher – someone who will be (hopefully gently) honest. 

Rather than be sure of your judgment of your relationship with another person, consider what might be if you are mistaken. And if you find that you are, may that moment of spiritual growth and promise bring you strength to see more clearly your ability to rise up, at any moment, to follow the path of becoming who, and what, you are meant to be.

Shabbat Nahamu: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

עֲלֵ֣ה ׀ רֹ֣אשׁ הַפִּסְגָּ֗ה וְשָׂ֥א עֵינֶ֛יךָ יָ֧מָּה וְצָפֹ֛נָה וְתֵימָ֥נָה וּמִזְרָ֖חָה וּרְאֵ֣ה בְעֵינֶ֑יךָ כִּי־לֹ֥א תַעֲבֹ֖ר אֶת־הַיַּרְדֵּ֥ן הַזֶּֽה׃ 

Go up to the summit of Pisgah and gaze about, to the west, the north, the south, and the east. Look at it well, for you shall not go across yonder Jordan. (Dev. 3.27)

Moshe Rabbenu is held up in song and story as the greatest of leaders and the most amazing human being as well, humble despite his unparalleled access to the Divine, and loyal to a fault to his people. But he is also a mere flesh and blood human being, and in this week’s Torah narrative,  he must face what we all, sooner or later, share in common; human limits. Or, by another name: mortality.

One of the prisms of interpretation through which we relate to the Torah is as the story of human birth, growth, and maturation. In her Biography of Ancient Israel Ilana Pardes presents the wilderness wandering as a people’s adolescent development in which we might see our own, and the death of Moshe in our present Book of Devarim symbolizing the inevitable loss of those who led the way for us in our youth.

Yet it is possible to grow old without growing up, and Jewish ethical tradition comes to answer the question: how might we, following in the footsteps of our ancient myths, avail ourselves of the learning implicit in this last book of our Torah? Especially this year, how do we of the Jewish community follow along with the arc of this next seven Weeks of Consolation, from Tisha B’Av to Rosh HaShanah? The fears and anxiety distracting us are overwhelming.

The answer is like all good Jewish answers: on the one hand and on the other hand. In one hand each of us is precious and worth the world, and on the other hand, each of us is but dust and ashes. And that neither of our hands is going to achieve what we are able to do when we find a way to join them with others.

On this Shabbat Nakhamu, we are invited to let ourselves be consoled, even in the face of much that is yet and will always be challenging to our peace of mind. To find consolation not from miraculous deliverance from without but because we can finally see that we’re not supposed to be perfect and conquer the world, nor can we save it. To find relief in seeing a bit more clearly the value in our limited lives, and learn to cherish the magical moments that shine forth from every human being when we encounter them as we ourselves wish to be encountered: not perfect. Not constant. But here, and capable of doing something.

We are not immortal; we cannot have it all; we will not always get what we want. On this Shabbat, as we gaze with Moshe across to the place we will never go, may we find the spiritual maturity to celebrate the day and its possibilities, even in the face of all our grief. And may we find a way to do it together; to lift each other up and in so doing find our own individual burdens lightened, as well.

May we find consolation in our place with each other, within the holy community we are building, learning by learning, mitzvah by mitzvah.

Shabbat Hazon: Facing It

With this week’s parashah we begin the last of the five books of the Torah, what our tradition also refers to as Torat Moshe, the Torah of Moshe. The entire book is a retrospective, a re-telling (the meaning of the word “deuteronomy”) of the epic myth of the Jewish people. 

We can tell it like a joke, that HaShem invites Moshe up Mt Nebo to see the land promised to the people before his death at the end of the previous Book of Numbers – and then it takes Moshe all of the thirty-four chapters of Deuteronomy to die. But when the time comes for each of us to look at our lives and consider the trace we left among our people, it will probably take each of us some undetermined – but longer than we might anticipate – amount of time, and devarim, “words” (the Hebrew name for this final book of the Torah), to come to understand ourselves.

In the second year of the Triennial Cycle, we begin the reading with Devarim 2.2-3:  

וַיֹּ֥אמֶר ה’ אֵלַ֥י לֵאמֹֽר׃ רַב־לָכֶ֕ם סֹ֖ב אֶת־הָהָ֣ר הַזֶּ֑ה פְּנ֥וּ לָכֶ֖ם צָפֹֽנָה׃ 

Then ‘ה said to me, “You have been skirting this hill country long enough; now turn north.”(Dev. 2.2-3)

It’s as if we are being told to stop beating around the bush. “Skirting,” avoiding, taking the long way around, is usually the way of putting off something both inevitable and unwanted. The prophet Jeremiah, who lived through those terrible days, warns, “From the north shall disaster break loose upon all the inhabitants of the land” (Jeremiah 1.14)

As we near the end of the Three Weeks that bring us to Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of Av upon which, 2610 years ago, the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed, our ancient tradition urges us to face it: not to look away any longer from the destruction, and from taking stock of how it could have happened. 

“North” refers in that day to the direction from with the enemy empire’s army descended upon our people to destroy us and our home. Geographically it is the direction in which the city of Jerusalem is most vulnerable; but we are taught that the direction in which we should be looking is ethical, not topographical.

Like nothing else, the clear call of our prophetic tradition insists that destruction of a city begins with its own internal moral rot. This is as true of Jerusalem then as Portland Oregon today, where I write these words. 

And we must face it: it is also true of Jerusalem today.

Many of us who come from an orientation of ahavat Yisrael, love of all things Israel – people, place, language, culture, spirituality – have been rising up to declare by our acts that the haftarah for this week is more relevant than ever: 

לִמְד֥וּ הֵיטֵ֛ב דִּרְשׁ֥וּ מִשְׁפָּ֖ט אַשְּׁר֣וּ חָמ֑וֹץ שִׁפְט֣וּ יָת֔וֹם רִ֖יבוּ אַלְמָנָֽה׃       

Learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow. (Isaiah 1.17)

The leadership of our U.S. Jewish community, traumatized and torn, complicit and confused, will not face it. Those who call themselves the left in the U.S. cannot discern it through the fog of their own ignorance and antisemitism. And none of us can take any comfort in what we see when we turn toward this truth (partial though it is).

Our ancestors recorded their own conclusions in our Talmud, that Jerusalem was destroyed because of “Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed.” 

שְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים, דִּכְתִיב: ״וְגַם דָּם נָקִי שָׁפַךְ מְנַשֶּׁה עַד אֲשֶׁר מִלֵּא אֶת יְרוּשָׁלִַם פֶּה לָפֶה״. 

With regard to bloodshed it is written: “Moreover, [King] Menashe shed innocent blood very much, until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another” (II Kings 21:16). – BT Yoma 9b

On this Shabbat Hazon, a time of apprehension for so many generations, we also find ourselves caught up in fear of evil from the north, this time Iran. We also are dismayed by bloodshed carried out by the rulers of Israel today. We, also, may find ourselves like Jeremiah, eyes streaming with tears for the people and land he loved, as it is brutalized by those who thrive on hate and fear.

It is not easy to face. But “facing it” in our English language should remind us of the Hebrew, panim, a word often encountered in relational terms, with HaShem: panim el panim, face to face.” This stance facing HaShem is a way to speak of undeniable, in-your-heart knowledge. The kind you don’t want to know, and will do anything not to admit.

It’s easier to lose oneself in anger, to deny complexity, to skip over facing and feeling and go directly to blaming. Even easier than that would be to avoid thinking about it altogether. But haven’t we been skirting this hill country long enough? Mourning must be faced; all that has been lost must be grieved. Only then might we together find a way forward toward redemption.

This is the hope our ancestors eked out of the horrors of their own day, building upon the final verses of that same prophet Isaiah, whose words will offer some small consolation next Shabbat:

כׇּל הַמִּתְאַבֵּל עַל יְרוּשָׁלַיִם — זוֹכֶה וְרוֹאֶה בְּשִׂמְחָתָהּ,

Whoever mourns for Jerusalem will merit to see her future joy. – BT Ta’anit 30b