Shabbat Nitzavim-VaYelekh: Standing Firm And Walking It Forward

We are reading a double parashah this week. The first of the two readings is called standing firm in place, and the second is walking, going forward, toward something. One teaching we can derive from the fact that these two parashot are often read together is that we are to be doing both of these apparently utterly contradictory things at the same time. It is something we do all the time in Judaism, and it is vital.

 

What does it look like to stand firm and to walk at the same time? It’s a way of separating out that which is really important from that which is simply familiar and comfortable. It’s something we strive to do in our congregational family in many ways:

 

Shabbat and Holy Day prayer

With all Jews, we stand firm with the tradition that Shabbat starts on Friday night and goes through Saturday.

We walk it forward in exploring different ways to observe Shabbat (kirtan-style Kley Kodesh services, Kabbalat Shabbat dinner instead of services, etc)…not to mention declaring that Shabbat starts when we can be together to make it, not necessarily at sundown.

 

With all other Jews, we stand firm with our holy day dates, even though they’re inconvenient.

We walk it forward by figuring out ways to bring the holy day to us – on this Rosh HaShanah, if you can’t come to morning services to hear the Shofar being blown, hopefully you can at least make it to Tashlikh at the river, where we’ll blow the biggest blast we can for you.

 

Wherever our congregation expresses our sense of what it means here and now to be Jewish, we negotiate this balancing act, between tradition and thoughtful inheritance. 

We stand firm in our belief that there is a value in the tradition we’ve inherited, because we belong to the people that has created it and passed it on in every generation. 

We walk it forward, because we are now the generation that receives it and figures out how to keep it alive and vibrant so that it can help us figure out our purpose in life – and, hopefully, those who will come after us.

 

In the Torah, the first word, Nitzavim, is in the plural: we are all standing firm together, each of us helping each other to receive the tradition, to understand it and do it. And the second word, VaYelekh, is in the singular, indicating that each one of us has the privilege and the responsibility of carrying it onward. Each of us makes all of us, and only when we are all voices are welcomed in the congregation do we lift up our voices in our shir tikvah, our “song of hope”. 

 

On this Shabbat, may you feel more honestly your own voice in the myriad harmonies of the Voice of Torah that strengthens us to stand firm, and inspires us to go forward, together.

Shabbat Ki Tavo: What Are Your First Fruits?

This week’s parashah begins with a somewhat unusually detailed description of a ritual meant to give thanks for the harvest. Later in the parashah we are told to celebrate with a big meal and invite all your friends, and be generous too, and invite neighbors and others who might otherwise be left out. The initial verses offer us some interesting guidance into how we ourselves are meant to see our own “harvests”, even if we have only a very small garden and the real strength of the passage is metaphorical:

 

When you enter the land that the Eternal your G-d is giving you as a heritage, 

and you possess it and settle in it….

 

We spend our early years getting settled into some kind of living, including making a living. Some will accumulate possessions, and others experiences; but at some point each one of us realizes that we are the fortunate recipients of a harvest.

 

What have you harvested in your life? what form do the fruits of your labors take? How do you share them, and when?

 

….you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil which you harvest 

from the land that the Eternal your G-d is giving you, 

put it in a basket, 

and go to the place where the Eternal will choose to cause the Name to dwell. 

You shall go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him,

“I acknowledge this day before the Eternal your G-d

that I have entered into the land that the Eternal swore to our ancestors

to give us.”  ….You shall leave it before the Eternal your G-d

and bow low before the Eternal your G-d. (Devarim 26.1-3…10)

 

In ancient Israel, the harvest was a tricky thing: weather permitting, local political and social conditions allowing, and, of course, no locusts, one might actually eke out enough of a harvest to be able to recite a special blessing, the one you say when you have “eaten AND been satisfied”. The latter condition was not always realistic.

 

Our ancestors understood that in order to encourage the flow of goodness, some of it had to be given back, just as fallen fruit in an orchard is plowed under to become a simple fertilizer, and to help nurture the next year’s crop. Burying figs near the fig tree’s roots is an easy way to thank the fig tree; but how does one give thanks for the fact that fig trees exist, and that I exist to eat them? How does one give thanks meaningfully to the Source of Life?

 

Our ancestors brought some of each type of food they harvested and gave it to God, in a nice basket no less.This supported the Temple workers (aka the Levites, who don’t have harvests because instead of fields, their assignment in the Promised Land is the Temple). The Temple’s existence made it possible for there to be a place for the average Israelite to focus upon when it came time to express gratitude.

 

How do you give thanks for what you have? Tzedakah is, of course, the classic Jewish expression of gratitude. It originally referred to the amount you were required to give over and above your taxes. In the narrowest sense of the word, it is still that. But some of us don’t make enough to pay taxes…and that does not mean that we do not still have a lot of gratitude to express. Happiness, as it has been noted in song, story and modern sociological study, is not dependent upon money.

 

Note one final thought: when you are moved to express your thanks for what you have, it’s not enough to donate something that’s second hand, damaged in transit, or just something you no longer want or need:

 

What is the “first fruit”? According to the Mishnah, the farmer goes into the field regularly to check on the progress of the crop. When the farmer sees the first ripening, a ribbon is tied around the stem of the fruit; this is the first fruit. If it also turns out later to be the very best fruit, that is all the better. But the meaning of the “first fruit” is faith: to give back the first fruit, before one even knows if one will have enough, is to express one’s understanding that it is not my skill that created this, and it does not belong to me. Rather, this is a blessing bestowed upon me, and in giving it away I assert that I believe that, as long as I live a life of integrity in community, I can depend on having “enough”, whatever that turns out to mean.

 

We no longer have a Temple to bring first fruits to, but we have our sacred places, and at our best, that is what we are called upon to bring to them. To give of one’s first fruits to G-d is to assert faith in the long-term outcome of your faithful daily engagement in the world, no matter what it is you do to make a living, and to make your life. On this Shabbat, may you truly be able to see the richness of your harvests, and find joy in giving of the best that you have, secure in the knowledge that more blessing will always come your way.

Shabbat Ki Tetze: Eyes Wide Open, and Blackberries Too

Sometimes I am asked why I choose to bring the woes of the world into our awareness on Shabbat. “Rabbi, I spend all week aware of all that’s wrong in the world – on Shabbat I want to get away from it.” Would that we could so easily “turn off” the world, refresh our souls in peace, and then be ready to come back out into the world full of resolve to repair it. Would that Shabbat really could be such an oasis.

 

For the oasis to be complete, however, we’d have to close our eyes to a lot of what is true of our human Jewish lives, even on Shabbat. The parashat hashavua is a good example; Ki Tetze is full of specific laws meant to correct for all-too-common human sins: social, sexual, environmental, and more.

 

When you go out to war… (Devarim 21.10)

When a husband hates a wife…(21.15)

When a child disobeys a parent’s authority…(21.18)

If a man is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death…(21.22)

Do not take the mother [bird] together with the young…(22.6)

 

In short, if you want to spend Shabbat away from the real world, you won’t be able to spend it as a Torah-learning Jew on this Shabbat.  Our Torah, and our prayers as well, are too immersed in the world – too much of the world and our place in it – to allow us to close our eyes and turn away from the world, and call it Shabbat. Not in this world; perhaps, in the World To Come.

 

The parashah is named, after all, Ki Tetze – “when you go out”. We all have an inner life and it must be nurtured, but one must also hold on to the outer world, for it offers us an anchor to reality, through the communities in which we find our place. Once in a while we all need a reality check from someone we trust.

 

Jewish spirituality is embedded in the messiness and the sinfulness of the human condition as we are, here and now. It is out of that context that we find the sparks of light to find our way. Jewish mysticism compares the presence of G-d in the world to tiny sparks of light which are hidden in klipot, in shell casings that are hard and heavy. We do not find the sparks by closing our eyes to the world of klipot, but by opening our eyes wide, bringing all our discernment to bear, and searching within the ugliness and difficulty of human life in all its pain and sorrow. 

 

That is because everything, even the klipot, are part of the Oneness of All that Is. You, and I, and those who go out to war, and those who hate, and those who mock, and those who are put to death, and the little bird on the ground trying to protect her nest. We cannot turn away from them and find G-d, for all of them, all of us together, are the reflection of G-d. The world is nothing more or less than that, though it seems madly contradictory. It is contradictory and confusing and complicated – but also sweet, with moments of blessing that are sweeter for their surprising presence underneath that which so often blocks them from our sight. We can have both, because we are constantly living in both. Sometimes we see through tears, and sometimes we are also capable of moments of reprieve, in which we can rest without turning away from the reality of those tears in our world.

 

Earth’s crammed with heaven, 

and every common bush afire with G-d, 

but only he who sees takes off his shoes. 

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries. 

(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

 

I wish you a barefoot Shabbat – and blackberries too.

Shabbat Shoftim: לא אנחנו ולו אנחנו

the Hebrew phrase in the title of this message is a play on words: lo anakhnu with an alef means “not we ourselves” and lo anakhu with a vav means “we are His”. This play on words comes from Psalm 100. In verse 3 it is written: “G-d has made us and not we ourselves”, but in the oral hearing of it, it can also sound as if we are saying “G-d has made us and we are His”. What does lo and lo have to do with the Torah this Shabbat, which, by the way, is the first Shabbat of the month of Elul?

 

Lo and lo, spelled lamed alef and lamed vav, are the four letters which spell Elul in Hebrew. “Not ourselves” and “we are His”. The Torah offers the same insight, as explored and interpreted by Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger (the Rabbi of the Sefat Emet, also known as the S’fas Emes in Eastern European Ashkenazi Yiddish inflection). We turn to it now, with one preliminary disclaimer:

 

Sorry about the gendered pronoun for G-d. It’s impossible to get around in this instance – but not impossible to rise above, which I invite you to do with me now.

 

This week’s parashat hashavua is Shoftim, “judges”. The first verse reads “appoint for yourselves judges and officers throughout your land.” The Sefat Emet suggests that we see these two terms as qualitatively different. A judge is one who thinks, considers, applies knowledge, and comes to a careful decision. Nothing is done by rote; each judgement is unique, even though we apply precedent to guide us. An officer is different; officers uphold law by enforcing it, often coercing a person to stand before a judge. Officers create the conditions for judgement, but they do not judge. 

 

This is a wonderful lesson for the beginning of Elul, the month of reflection and of preparation for the Days of Awe which conclude with Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgement. Here we are at the beginning of Elul, and the Torah command to “appoint for yourselves judges and officers throughout your land”, applied to our own efforts at self-improvement (repentance, said in Jewish) means this: appoint, or create, within yourself two types of inner control, throughout your land, that is to say, your life. The two types of inner control are lo anakhnu with an alef, the officer that forces us to turn away from the material distractions of our lives, and lo anakhnu with a vav, which links us to G-d, the Source of all Life.

 

The more a person can negate the self (“not ourselves”) the closer that person can draw to G-d (“we are His”). These are the two parts of the service of G-d. First we have to negate [discipline] the body and the corporeal world. For this, we need officers who can force the body to change its ways, to “turn from evil” (Psalm 34.15). Then one can draw near to the Creator “and do good.” For this we need to be judges, to take hold [of G-d] with our minds…. Sefat Emet 5:72, trans. Rabbi Arthur Green

 

Yes, you can freely choose to eat all the ice cream you want, but that is not really free will. It’s the powerful control over us that the body has. Those who are recovering from abuse must be similarly careful not to give the body undue control over their lives as they recover; from either direction, privileging the body causes us to risk sinking into narcissism. Disciplining the body so that one can learn, consider, and hear the mind’s careful thinking, we reach the lo anakhnu, the true place of service to G-d, where we use our G-d-given brains to their fullest and best extent.

 

The month of Elul comes to remind us every year: not because of ourselves, but because we are G-d’s, we are precious, unique, and irreplaceable: when we set officers and judges over ourselves, we can fulfill our potential of being, truly, G-d’s gift to the world.

parashat Re’eh: See Your Power to Bless

See, I set before you blessing and curse. (Dev. 11.26)

For Maimonides, the opening verse of this week’s parashah means that the choice of blessing and curse are before us. This is the proof of our free will. This question, of the meaning of human existence in a world which is immersed in G-d, has been seen by many as a paradox:

If G-d is all powerful, then we are puppets, without the ability to act unless G-d wills it.

If we have free will, then G-d’s will is not, by definition, all-powerful.

This sort of logical dilemma has driven people crazy for millennia. It may feel distant from you, but if you look at it another way, it’s actually a very familiar problem: are my actions my choice, or am I being influenced by something other than myself? The answer, we know, is yes and yes – both are true.

The implications of free choice challenge the old misunderstanding about the doctrine of reward and punishment by suggesting that sin is punished, and virtue rewarded, in a straightforward way. We are free to choose, and we deserve, therefore, to experience the consequences of our choices.

But we know that suffering in our world is not straightforward, nor easy to understand. And it is nonsense to insist that all those who suffer deserve it.

We also know that human acts do bring about both blessing and curse.

This is not only a modern philosophical problem. Already in the era of the Talmud, the verse was interpreted to mean “See, I set before you the blessing and its transmutation.” (Yonatan ben Uzziel)

The translation understands that human beings not only have the power of action for or against the good of the world, but we have another power: that of taking a blessing and transmuting it into a curse, and therefore, of taking a curse and turning it into a blessing.

The mitzvah of seeing, then, is not only to understand the impact of our power of choice, but also the power we have to destroy a blessing by our freely chosen acts. The only consolation is that we also have the power to destroy a curse, by wrestling a blessing from it.

Thus, the first word of the verse is the most important of all: see!

See your own power to challenge the strength of a curse. See your power to create blessing from despair – even your own. When you are next confronted by something that strikes you as wrong, as unethical, as evil, don’t look away; look more deeply, look for the key that will show you how to transform that curse into a blessing. If you do that, you are adding a tiny bit to the overall blessedness of the world. If you don’t, then you haven’t yet seen how important each of your choices really is.

Only when a curse is seen can it be transmuted into a blessing. See your power to choose; see the blessing your hands can bring into being.

Parashat Ekev: showing up is safer than hiding

A minyan is traditionally defined as ten Jewish men but by Progressive Jews as ten self-identified and committed Jews of any gender; any way you define it, what it means is that we need critical mass. 

What is critical mass? it’s the number you need to get the job done. In order to evoke holiness in Jewish prayer, you need a minyan. In order to study Torah, our tradition teaches, you need at least two students.  Social justice is more tricky: in order to get a possible new law on the Oregon ballot, you need 116,284 names on a petition. I know; I’ve just trained to become a signature collector for a measure on the 2014 ballot to enact marriage equality in the state of Oregon.

This week’s parashah underscores the Jewish emphasis on individual responsibility for the group’s well-being in the very first verse: If you all obey these laws and guard them carefully, God will guard the Covenant established with each of you. (Devarim 7.12) The laws must be obeyed and guarded by all of us, and then God will guard the Covenant made us as it affects us personally, one by one.

The word if in this parasha gives it its name: ekev – “on the heels of” in Hebrew. That is how closely act is followed by reaction in Jewish religious belief. Or, as we might say, “what goes around comes around”. It may take a while, but it’s always recognizable when it comes around again, whatever “it” is for you or me. Consider: we see larger social trends, and we can feel, if not always articulate, how we know our acts have been a small part of what has added up to that trend. 

Do you see less litter on the streets? you, because you do not ignore the presence of garbage but take care of it, are a small part of that trend. Do you see more justice in the world? you will if you do not ignore the presence of injustice, and take care of it, in whatever ways you may find to do so. And not only where you happen to notice it –  as the haftarah for this week reminds us, we are called upon to be rodfey tzedek, “pursuers of justice”:

Listen to Me, all who pursue justice, all who seek the Eternal!

Look to the rock from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were cut.

Look back to Avraham your father, and to Sarah who bore you.

(Isaiah 50.51.1-2)

It is not enough to quietly be in favor of change, to quietly approve of movements which seek greater justice. We have to show up. Our tradition urges us to show up and to act to guard others if we ourselves would seek to be safe. If we look to the rock of our tradition, let it remind us “to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with G-d” (Micah), and show up in the pursuit of justice, we may suffer and we may not always succeed, but we will know that we are keeping the Covenant, and that it will keep us.

As we come out of hiding, we the quiet ones in support of equality, and act for justice together, may we know justice in our individual lives – and peace in our hearts.

Shabbat Nakhamu: finding consolation together

On Tuesday of this week, the world fell apart for Jews 1,941 years ago. In 72 CE the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the mighty Roman Empire on 9 Av, which this year corresponds to Tuesday July 16. The tragedy was as great in its time as the Shoah (called in English the Holocaust) is in ours. On this Shabbat ever since, Jews have gathered together, as we do each Shabbat, but on this particular Shabbat we have come together with the sense that we are in need of consolation.

“All flesh is grass”, the prophet Isaiah proclaimed. “Nothing abides but G-d.” (40.8)

Nakhamu, nakhamu ami, “be comforted, be comforted O My people”; these opening words from the haftarah for this week (Isaiah 40.1) give this Shabbat its name. The pain of that first disaster has lessened with time, yet the Shabbat retains its relevance, for who has not known the need for consolation, for healing, for peace?

The Jewish understanding of these opening words is found in their repetition. The Biblical commentator Ibn Ezra interpreted: the repetition means that comfort will come “swiftly or repeatedly”. Since the Jewish people entered an exile that lasted for nearly two millennia on that day, we are left to conclude that the latter of the two possibilities is more likely. It has not been swift. But repeatedly, and on this Shabbat, it is needed, for some among us personally, for all of us communally.

Communally – as a community. Our Jewish response to the repeated for need for consolation among our people – and in our own individual lives, after all – is found in an even closer reading of the first word: nakhamu is said in the plural. We Jews do not find consolation by isolating ourselves, but in the intimacy of human contact. Sometimes our closeness causes friction and frustration, and even pain, but we are a community, and we will find consolation, and redemption, only through, and with, and because of our kehillah, our Jewish community.

This evening, when Shabbat begins, seek out your community. If you are in need of consolation yourself, you will find it with us. If you are not, come and help us offer it to someone who needs an outstretched hand and an open heart. 

“Each blade of grass sings its own song to G-d’s glory”. We may come and go like grass, but we do know how to find consolation in song, in Shabbat, and in each other.

Tisha B’Av 5773: what will you fast for?

Is this the fast I want – bowing down the head and sitting on sackcloth and ashes? Is this an acceptable fast? 

Is not this the fast I have chosen: 

To break open the bonds of the “I can’t help it” excuse of habitual evil, 

to undo the yoke and let the oppressed go free, 

and that you work to undo every such yoke? 

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, 

make room for the poor in your own household economy, 

when you see the naked, to clothe them, 

and refuse to turn away from your own kin?    (Isaiah 58.5-7) 

A hallmark of any thoughtful learning approach to Jewish tradition refuses to dismiss the wisdom of our ancestors as meaningless to us, but to respect it as the expression of human beings as thoughtful as we to their lives and their experiences. Tisha B’Av is a good case in point: it is the major day of mourning for the entire Jewish people, yet it is difficult for many of us to understand how to relate to this part of our inheritance.

Tisha B’Av marks the destruction of the Jewish nation and the advent of nearly 2000 years of Jewish exile. But in 1948 the Jewish state was re-established, and all the wanderers are now able to come home. Either because we do not live in Israel, or perhaps simply because our own personal experience of life is so far from the pain and vulnerability of that Exile our ancestors knew, this day seems far from us. 

To observe Tisha B’Av as if nothing happened is disrespectful to the struggles of those who established the Jewish state.

But to advocate discarding this observance opens us to the question: when does the memory of loss and its sadness end?

In its own day, the Temple’s destruction – which was also the destruction of the Jewish people; we suffered terrible loss – was as significant for us, then, as the Holocaust is in our own day. When we commemorate the Holocaust, often the question is asked of us: how shall we live, that it never happen again?

In a very powerful way, Tisha B’Av is also a necessary moment for us to experience as we move toward Yom Kippur. It has been said that if Yom Kippur is our national moment of personal accounting, then Tisha B’Av is our personal moment of national accounting. What causes the downfall of a society? What can we do to strengthen the ethics of our international Jewish peoplehood?

How shall we appropriately acknowledge Tisha B’Av in the days of a resurrected Jewish state? certainly not by ignoring that fact. And so let us look to Isaiah’s guidance: drop the sackcloth and ashes, never mind the fasting from food. Instead, do something that may very well be more difficult: fast from some behavior that adds to the degradation of our people’s ethical standards.

Fast from talking about others.

Fast from complaining about others.

Fast from harshly judging others.

Fast from your belief that you cannot influence Jewish public life for good.

And acknowledge that your private acts have public consequences.

Act, instead, on the opposite of these evils:

Instead of talking about others, talk to them. Find out how they are really doing, rather than repeating something you’ve heard second-hand. Avoid lashon hara’ – gossip.

Instead of complaining about others, let them know that there is relationship work you’d like to do with them. That’s the Jewish ethic of tokhehah.

Instead of harshly judging others, put a sign on your mirror: Jewish ethics teaches a concept called l’khaf zekhut, which means always give others the benefit of the doubt.

And break your own yoke of cynicism by supporting public Jewish ethics, and living them in your daily choices. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh – all Israel are responsible, each for each other.

The traditional greeting for Tisha B’Av is tzom kal, may you have an easy fast. 

May you find it easier, for the sake of this day and its lessons, to fast from acts that drag us all down, and choose, instead, acts that lift us all up.

parashat hashavua Balak: Jewish camping

This week’s parashah is once again curiously, albeit appropriately, named, this time for a king who is hostile to the Jewish people and suspicious of them; or so it seems. King Balak of Moab is concerned about the Israelites approaching his kingdom and camping nearby. His response is to act to defend his borders, not by raising an army or passing a budget to buy the latest war weapons, but by hiring a prophet (a vocation not exclusively Israelite, apparently) to curse the Israelites. A potent weapon if he can pull it off….

The prophet, Balaam, receives the King’s messengers and agrees to go with them to the King, warning that his ability to help would not depend upon reward: “even if Balak gives me a house full of silver and gold, I cannot do anything small or great that would transgress the word of the Lord, my God.” (Numbers 22.18)

 Sure enough, Balaam arrives at the Israelite campsite, after some adventures that include a wonderful, funny cameo with a talking ass, and is unable to do King Balak’s bidding, which is to curse the Israelites. Instead, the words that come out of his mouth have become a sort of blessing, traditionally uttered when a Jew enters a shul:

Mah tovu ohalekha Yaakov, mishk’notekha Yisrael – “how good are your tents, Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel” (Numbers 24.5).

What did Balaam see, that he praised Israel’s tents? Rashi suggests that “he saw that they pitch their tents so the doorways should not be opposite each other (respecting each other’s privacy).” In other words, they pitched their tents with consideration for their neighbors. Each had concern for something other than just her own tent, his own view, or their own situation.

How is your tent pitched? What are you saying about your neighbors by the way you have chosen to create or maintain your dwelling-place? Do you live within a homeowners’ association, or simply live surrounded by those with whom you do, inevitably, share physical space? How do you recognize it, or turn away from it? Is your tent one that would draw Balaam’s praise?

In his book Bowling Alone the sociologist Robert Putnam suggests that one of our biggest social challenges is in the way we relate to our neighbors. We are more likely to sue than to settle an issue over the back fence. Our lack of engagement with our neighbors results inevitably in more loneliness, more alienation, and less human kindness.

May your tent be blessed by not being pitched alone.

parashat hashavua Hukat: listening for the bat kol

The parashat hashavua, the Torah reading of the week read all over the Jewish world, is called Hukat – “law”. There are two words often used for “law” in the Torah: hukah, or hok, and mishpat. You will often see them mentioned together, and they are usually translated with words that seem like synonyms to us: “laws and statutes”, for example. 

     But Jewish tradition teaches that there are no synonyms in Torah, no wasted words and no redundancy: when confronted with hok and mishpat, therefore, we are to look below the surface of the text, and try to hear deeper resonances of Torah that can speak to us in many relevant ways, once we begin to look. Our ancestors described the more subtle nuances of G-d’s word with the term bat kol, a “still small voice” that brings insight, once we were quieted from our wordy struggles with meaning, so that we can calm down, and listen to it.

     Torah interpretation of these two terms is significantly informed by this week’s parashah. The text begins with “G-d spoke to Moshe and Aharon saying This is the hok of the Torah…” (Numbers 19.1-2) The hok, called in English a “statute”, is, in this case, the commandment of the ritual of the Red Heifer – a ritual so confoundingly illogical in its particulars that even the wise King Solomon, it is said, did not understand it.

     A hok, then, is a mitzvah, a command, that is not necessarily understood. One might suggest that its presence in the Torah is to teach that one to obey it as one obeys all G-d’s commands, because it is a command, not because it is understood. Maimonides explained the difference between hok and mishpat rationally: a mishpat is a law we could figure out on our own – a law that is logical in terms of social or personal life. But a hok is a law that we could not intuit on our own, i.e. it is a command that requires revelation by G-d.

     Torah laws that don’t make sense can be upsetting. We can disagree endlessly over them. Or they can invite us to an exercise of humility: painful though it might be, it is sometimes necessary for we human beings to be reminded that we are not, ourselves, capable of understanding everything about our lives. It is even possible, once in a while, that someone else is right, even when we are sure that we ourselves are correct. It is only through this struggle that new insights into Torah are revealed…and one of those insights is that some revelations will always be beyond us.

     Religious practice will always contain an element of mystery, of that response which the hok summons: I don’t get it. That is the enduring contribution of religion in our age; it gives us a framework to help us consider mystery, and to confront the meaning of faith as the place where knowledge cannot go. I am not sure; I cannot explain why I feel this; I just know. These are not statements of science, nor of certainty – yet there is no reason to feel anxious about that. There is mystery at the heart of life, and we will never solve it. It can make us anxious, though; it can cause us to argue and even to become angry.

     It is only when we stand in the presence of mystery, unafraid and ready to listen, that we begin to hear the bat kol, that sense of some voice outside of us that brings us insight we cannot achieve alone. It might be in the words of a friend, or a child, or a parent, or a stranger – or even an adversary in the struggle for meaning. G-d is heard every day, in the still small voice that calls to us all the time….but which we can only hear when we quiet our fears, our anger and our ego. And the way in which we deal with our uncertainty, and the way we treat each other in our anxiety, will determine whether the conflict produces more light, or only more heat.

     Hillel and Shammai managed to bring light into the world. They represented two opposing Torah interpretation groups in ancient Israel. It is said about them that they disagreed about every law in the Torah, yet they conducted themselves toward each other as one indivisible community – demonstrated by the fact that children from each side married each other. In one memorable debate between the two schools, they argued seemingly incompatibly opposite positions. 

     But at the moment when each side stopped arguing and listened to each other’s words, both sides heard it: a bat kol issued forth declaring these and these are the words of the Living G-d. (Talmud Bavli, Eruvim 13b) 

     “Living” – in mystery, in conflict, in disagreement and in contradiction, even as are we – only thus do we hear the Living G-d, and so gain insight, knowledge, and understanding as we are able.