Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Saturday, November 7, 2009
The Face of God in the Face of the Stranger
The name Avraham means ‘exalted father of many nations.’ Avraham lives and acts in the primordial history of our people, and all the peoples of the world. His life IS Torah. His actions serve as the template upon which later commentaries and code books would canonize sacred law and righteous behavior for all generations to come. Watch him closely, emulate his every act, and you too will be a tzadik, a righteous human being. Just look at him in parashat Vayera. He has just circumcised himself, showing his commitment to God, and is recovering, in pain, in the heat of the day. Looking up, he sees three strangers approaching in the distance. Without skipping a beat, he leaps up—and even the text of the Torah is filled with quick action-verbs: he runs from the entrance of the tent. He bows. He hastens to the tent to summon Sarah. He runs to the herd to get a calf to be served, and then he waits on his guests. He is all flurry and action for the sake of total strangers. Watch him! Notice his total alacrity and eagerness to welcome guests. Here, he teaches us the mitzvah of Hachnasat Orchim, of welcoming guests. Avraham is a virtuouso, a master of gemilut Chasadim, of acts of lovingkindness. If you want to know just how good he is, compare him to his nephew, Lot.
Jump ahead just alittle bit in the pararshah: the strangers (who are, in fact, angels of God about to destroy Sodom and Gemorrah) head out to those evil cities, where they are greeted by Lot, who lives there. At first, it would seem that Lot had learned well from uncle Avraham: he bows low, he welcomes the strangers, begs them to come into his home for hospitality . But, there’s the little problem that this is Sodom and Gemorrah: the local residence come pounding on the door, demanding to have their evil way with the guests. Lot, ever the well-meaning host (?...), begs them not to attack his honored guests, so what does he do? He offers them his virgin daughters instead so that the residents can have their way with the daughters instead of the guests! There are two words we can say in response to this story: Oy gevalt! What happened? Lot seemed to be doing so well! He seemed to be similarly mastering the art of Gemilut Chasadim, of lovingkindness and welcoming strangers. So how did he fall down so profoundly in his human dignity?
The answer, of course, was that Lot himself was corrupted by Soddom and Gemorrah. And it all goes to show you how great Avraham was: nothing could lessen his sense of uncompromising goodness, justice, and kindness! In all of Judaism, Avraham is always a paragon of Chesed, of kindness, love, selfless altruism. And so it is with Avraham in mind that I would like to explore today the meaning of this powerful, central Jewish value of Chesed, of lovingkindness. Throughout our tradition, our sages are very insistant that we understand that Chesed is not just a matter of doing the nice or right thing by another human being. Chesed is different from proper manners or social graces or even just social or societal expectations of being a good host, an upstanding citizen, or a generous donor. Chesed runs deep. It is the Chesed of Avraham, and his offspring Isaac and Jacob that foments a bond with God through the generations of the Jewish people, enabling our on-going survival. It is, in turn, God’s chesed for us that enables us to escape suffering and persecution from generation to generation, whether we deserve that rescuing or not. Chesed has a faithful, undyingly loyal quality to it, and Avraham embodies it.
It is Pirkei Avot that identifies Chesed as one of the three pillars upon which the whole world stands, along with Torah and worship. We need to be really clear about what Chesed means to be the worthy descendants of Avraham, or else we risk becoming the destructive descendants of Lot instead!
There’s an old Chasidic story told about the the parents of the Baal Shem Tov, who would one day grow up to be the founder of Chasidism. The story goes that one Shabbat, a stranger happened upon his parents meager home. The stranger was a very shoddy looking wanderer, carrying nothing but a staff and a knapsack-- in violation of the Shabbat prohibitions, no less! The beggar loudly wrapped on the door, and the Baal Shem Tov’s father opened the door, and the beggar rudely pushed his way into the home. “Good Shabbes. I’m hungry. Give me something to eat! And I need a place to stay,” said the beggar. With nothing but warmth and kindness, the young couple immediately prepared the Third Meal for Shabbat for the beggar. The beggar ate and rested. All through the afternoon and evening, the beggar was as rude and brutish and as course and callous as could be, and he gave not even one word of thanks or appreciation to the young couple. Even after Shabbat had ended on Saturday night, the couple continued to feed the beggar another meal, and still, not a word of thanks or gratitude from the beggar—only gruffness and total selfishness. He spent the whole night at the couple’s home, and the next morning, he woke up to find that they had prepared a hearty breakfast and even had money for him to make his way upon leaving their home. Upon seeing this act of generosity, the beggar at once revealed himself to the young couple. “I am Elijah the Prophet,” said the beggar. “I have come to test your hospitality, to see the quality of your giving. Because you were gracious to me and never once commented on my insulting behavior, nor shamed me in any way, you have passed my test. God is pleased with my findings, and finds you worthy of a son who will illumine the eyes of all Israel.” That son, would, of course, be the great Baal Shem Tov himself.
It’s a classic story from our tradition, and a great lesson to us all about hospitality. For any of us today, the act of opening up our home to strangers is difficult. But the ability to do so is crucial. The Torah tells us to love the stranger no less than 30 times! As difficult and as challenging as the act of opening our home may be, to open our home is to open our heart: and this heart-opening is the essence of Chesed, of lovingkindness itself. But it’s only the beginning of what Chesed means in Judaism. It goes even deeper!...
Both Avraham and the Baal Shem Tov’s parents teach us the same lesson: If you go through life thinking that you love God, but simultaneously you fear the stranger, then you really don’t know what it means to have a real relationship with God in the first place! In Ultimate Truth, the only way you can enter into a real relationship with the Divine is by entering into a relationship with the stranger. The stranger and God are NOT separate at all. They are one and the same! The punchline to Avraham’s story and the chasidc story of hospitality are also the same: the strangers were angels or emissaries of God themselves—really not separate from God at all! So Chesed is not just a kind act. It is an action that flows from a very deep Awareness of where we find the presence of God—in the least likely of places! But True Chesed goes deeper still even than this insight…
Another story: this time about the life of the Baal Shem Tov himself. The Baal Shem Tov, or Besht, as he was known, travelled extensively in his lifetime. Once, he visited the Jewish community of Constantinople. There he met another childless young couple, who this time showed him great kindness and hospitality. And the Besht was not a rude guest. He was a wonderful guest. ‘How can I ever thank you for your wonderful generosity?’ the Besht asked the couple. “If you could put in a good word to favor us with a child,” the young couple said, “ we will be forever grateful.” After a moment’s pause, he said, ‘God will favor you with a son.’ And indeed, this came true. But what the couple didn’t realize is that the Besht brought about this miracle by uttering the un-sayable, ineffable Name of God! To utter this name is considered a very grave sin! Scarcely had the ineffable Name passed his lips that a heavenly Voice came down and informed him that he had forfeited his place in Olam HaBa, in the World Come! Imagine! This greatest of Tzadikim had lost his chance to sit eternally at the right hand of God for the sake of this young couple! But instead of reacting with despair, the Besht clapped his hands together joyfully and burst out “Blessed art Thou, O God, for your mercy! Now I can serve you out of pure love, since I may not expect a reward in the future world!” And the p.s. to the story : his loving joy was so pure, that God pardoned him of his sin and he eventually went to Olam HaBa anyway!
What does this story mean? Pirkei Avot in the Mishnah says it best: “Al tihyu Kaavadim hamshamshin et haRav al m’nat lekabel p’ras,” Do not be like a servant who serves his master in order to receive a reward. “Elah Hevu ka’avadim hamshammshin et haRav shlo al mnat lekabel p’ras,” Rather be like a servant serving his master with no intention of receiving a reward. (Avot 1:3). Let’s take this message in today: this is not a platitude. This is an entire orientation of the heart and soul, and if we can find it within ourselves to live this way, this can not only transform our lives, it can transform the world.
Probably the most extraordinary thing about Avraham in our Torah reading—something that most of us fail to notice—is that time and again, Avraham’s acts of Chesed, of kindness, are total failures! Think about it: the strangers happen upon his tent. He scurries to and fro and prepares a sumptuous meal for them of all the finest and choicest of cakes and meats and delicacies that he has to prepare, and it’s all for naught! His guests eat what he has prepared alright, but it’s all a sham! They’re angels of God! They actually don’t need food at all. And then, notice Avraham’s next act of kindness: he learns that God is about to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gemorrah, and Avraham gathers his courage and argues with God for the sake of the possible innocent people who might still reside in the city. He argues and argues with God, bargain from 50 down to even just 10 possible righteous souls, trying with all his might to save a city from destruction. And again, of course, it’s for naught. Despite his ultimate, and risky act of audacity before God, the city is destroyed. In both instances—the guests and Sodom and Gemorrah—no one actually benefitted from his Chesed, from his selfless acts of kindness!
And herein is the deepest lessen of what Chesed really means. To live and to act in Chesed is never about the other person. To live and act in Chesed is entirely about you! It's all about your unconditional love in action. How much can you give to the stranger, no matter whether the stranger benefits or not from your giving? This is the dfference between Lot and Avraham. Lot’s Chesed, unlike Avraham, was not genuine. All of the kindness he showed to his guests was to impress them, to elicit good will and positive validation from them! In his own twisted way, his offering of his daughters in place of them was a pitiful attempt at impressing his guests. Avraham’s thought was not about how he could impress his guests, or God, or the citizens of Sodom and Gemorrah. Instead, he saw a need, he saw potential suffering, and with no thought to himself, he responded with everything he had. This was all that mattered to him. This is Chesed.
Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi once had a beautiful way of teaching True Chesed: “when the baby cries,” he said, “ and the milk in the nursing mother lets down…that is Chesed.” It doesn’t even matter if it’s your own baby, the breast just responds by giving. This is Chesed. Can we live our lives this way? Can we walk through life with minds and hearts so wide open, so sensitive to what’s arising that we can give and give and give to relieve the suffering that we see around us—without the slightest thought about how it is received? Just take a look at what they do on the bereavement committee here at Adas Israel: when someone dies, they gently care for the body, they wash the body and lovingly prepare it for burial—even though that person is now deceased and cannot personally thank them—this is what we call Chesed shel Emet, True lovingkindness. Can we live our whole lives with this intention of giving of ourselves? Can we give tzedakah to the filthy homeless beggar on the street even if, indeed, that beggar may use the money we gave to buy drugs or alcohol? Can we give for the pure act of giving itself? Can we welcome the rude and ungrateful guest into our home, even if they’re unkind to us?
Chesed is not just about doing the nice, right thing. Chesed is a lifetime practice to shape and deepen our character, to transform us from needy, ego-centric ‘takers’ into nobler human beings who stand tall in life with no need for approval or validation or reward. Just imagine with me for a moment what that would feel like—living each and every day without the slightest need for others to express approval or to validate us. We would all finally be free! It would be a life of joy. There would be no more suffering. There would only be the spaciousness in our hearts and souls and lives to give. This is the point of living a life of Torah, of being a true child of Avraham. To expect nothing from this life but the opportunity to learn and to respond, to listen, and to take action, to love and to bring about healing. This is Chesed. This is joy. This is Torah.
We may not be there yet, at this moment, in our lives, but we can set the intention today to consciously walk the path of Avraham Avinu, of Avraham our ancestory, our teacher. Every moment that we live with no thought of reward or approval is a triumph. May our Chesed itself be its own reward. May we transform the world by transforming our hearts.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Evolutionary Judaism
I love Conservative Judaism. It is a great blessing to the Jewish world. I believe in its message and its wisdom. I know it has real limitations, yet it is poised to address the needs of the Jewish people in the 21stcentury. For decades, our movement has wisely embraced tradition while acknowledging the importance of change as generations go by. Most significantly, I appreciate Conservative Judaism’s embrace of honesty, truth, and intellectual integrity. When we study texts of Torah, we don’t suspend disbelief. We don’t ask our adherents to check their critical thinking at the door. We invite our communities to apply their intellectual vigor and the breadth of their learning from many disciplines—Jewish and non-Jewish-- to discern the meaning and the context of our teachings. We are Halakhic: we uphold the binding quality of a Jewish law that has brilliantly grown up over our 3,000 year heritage. We respect that tradition, and seek to change those laws and practices judiciously, only when careful investigation of modern circumstances clearly warrants a response in our practices. The clearest example of this process of tradition and change is the advancing role of women in Conservative Judaism over the past 30 years. Our tradition, of course, had been non-egalitarian. With the progress of our modern society, our movement endeavored not to dismiss the ancient laws and traditions outright, but to look carefully into the underlying principles, values, and teachings of mitzvot and obligation. With love and respect for the traditions themselves, we found new ways to uphold established notions of obligation and yet find new places for women alongside men in congregational life. This is a brilliant and precious approach to Judaism! Our values aren’t just about intellectual integrity, but also about pluralism, a spirit of welcoming, open-mindedness, and most importantly, of wisdom. We seek the wise middle ground between progressive values and conservative respect for the traditions of our ancestors. Our modern-day society is so often overwhelmed by messages that promote self-absorption, of “pick and choose” religious practices and spirituality. This makes our approach to Judaism all the more important.
And yet, with all of this praise, and all of its importance, Conservative Judaism itself faces many challenges. Our society is advancing at a blinding pace—new technologies, new ideas, new ways of thinking about connection and the world arise every day. A new generation of Jews is coming into the mainstream, and those Jews speak a completely different religious and spiritual language than their parents and grandparents. By and large, today’s younger Jews are not engaged by an exploration of Jewish history and through critical scholarly readings of biblical texts. The Jews of the 21st century are not interested in conceptually-based “movements” in Judaism at all! They are looking for something more immediate and compelling from Judaism.
I believe that if any expression of modern Judaism can respond wisely to this new generation of Jews, it’s the Conservative approach. Our thoughtful, historical, contextual view of Judaism is the perfect foundation for evolving with the new generation of Jews in our society. Our unofficial motto is “Tradition and Change,” and this essential approach is what we’re hungering for today—it’s just that we have to embrace tradition and change in new ways.
For most Jews today, Judaism is a collection of religious “folkways.” At key life-cycle moments and on major Jewish holidays like the New Year and Passover, we come to synagogue to find connection with family traditions. The Judaism that Jews today encounter in synagogue cannot just be an intellectualized endeavor. It’s not enough for me, as your rabbi, to explain the rational underpinnings of Kashrut. Most Jews today feel perfectly Jewish without keeping kosher at all, so a rational justification for it is interesting at best, but not personally compelling.
Conservative Judaism today is poised to heed its own message: “tradition and change” really means “Evolution.” When anything evolves—animals or ideas—it both transcends and includes what has come before it. Conservative Judaism is “Evolutionary” Judaism! The beauty of the Conservative Movement in the 20th century was that it was a great academic journey into the meaning of Judaism as an evolving civilization over thousands of years. It's time to take it to the next level. We’re ready to teach that Judaism is vastly more than “folkways” or even just a type of “identity.” What Jewish people need these days is not just Jewish distinctiveness, but a Jewish experience that can help us engage more with life, with society, with our families. Jewish people today are not anxious so much about Jewish survival in America; they’re seeking a traditional wisdom that can teach them how to be a better spouse, a better parent, a better friend, a better boss. We’re looking for a spiritual tradition that shows us how to take better care of ourselves and each other in a very complex and confusing world.
Conservative Judaism now must show our people how traditional mitzvot and rituals and observances can deepen our character, enrich our spirit, provide meaning, and relieve stress in a world of such uncertainty. We want to know how Judaism’s wisdom can give us insight into our human nature, to guide us in our difficult life decisions, and to provide relief from some of our deepest sufferings. Our people today are genuinely open to the possibility of keeping Kosher, but not because it was once a healthy diet choice in ancient times. We want to know how Kashrut can deepen our character as human beings. How can it relieve stress? How can keeping kosher make us a better citizen of the world? How can Kashrut make us engage better with life, with society, with our family, our non-Jewish business associates? How can it make us live with deeper wisdom in all aspects of our life?
The role of a Conservative congregation today is to promote the idea that our traditions and rituals are NOT just folkways, they’re meaningful and transformational! Our job as a Conservative synagogue is not to force observance on our members, but to create the conditions where our members can discover the power of observance to touch their lives, their souls—not just their intellects. We need to get the message out there that we don’t want our members just to come and pay homage to an ancient ritual, but rather to find deep personal significance in the words, the melodies, the rhythms of these rituals and practices.
The measure of our success is not how many bodies we can get in the doors on any given Shabbat or holiday or religious school program. Rather, success must be determined by how our members are when theyleave the building! Are we more ALIVE than when we came in? Are we more engaged with life, with our souls, are we kinder and more compassionate? Are we inspired to act for justice? Are we wiser and more sensitive as a human being, and not just as a Jew? The great challenge, the wonderful journey ahead of us is: can we create a synagogue community where we transform people's lives THROUGH tradition, and not in spite of tradition? Can we provide access to meaning without watering Judaism down, or simplifying it? Can we trust our members enough to know that they are more than willing to rise to the ways that our tradition challenges us to grow morally, personally, and spiritually? These are the great questions that we have yet to address fully in this new century, and in our amazing congregation. I am more than eager to join with you all and to begin to address these questions. And may these questions lead to more questions. In seeking the answers, may we grow and evolve joyfully for generations to come.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Being the Earth
It’s hard not to love the character of Noach. He’s always depicted as that dotty little old man who builds the ark, and collects the animals two by two. His ark graces the walls of countless nurseries and preschools. It might come as a surprise the Noach doesn’t quite come off so well in the Jewish tradition. Rashi explains that Noach was only a tzadik bedorotav, which means that, while he is called a Tzadik, it was only in relation to his generation (which, of course was all wanton sinners) that he looked good at all! The midrash (the rabbinic story) in Tanhuma goes even further, and calls Noach a ‘sinner,’ because he did not publicly speak out against the sinners of his generation, and only retreated into the safety of his ark. Pretty harsh words for poor old man Noach! But this is all very strange, because if you look at the literal text of the Torah, it says that Noach was Ish Tzadik Tamim Hayah bedorotav, that he was a righteous and whole-hearted man in his generation. In fact, no other figure in the entire bible is given such a glorious epithet next to his name. Why, indeed, are there so many voices in our tradition who want to denigrade Noach’s accomplishments?
A lot of the trouble comes from the fact that Noach appears very early in the biblical account, and to rabbinic eyes, Noach pales in comparison to a much more central Tzadik to the Jewish people, namely Avraham. Exactly the same descriptive words used for Noach are also used for Avraham: Hithalech lifanai v’heyeh tamim: God says to Avraham, ‘Walk before me, and be tamim, whole-hearted. ‘ (Gen. 17:1). So what’s the difference, our ancient rabbis wondered, between the two men? Obviously, Avraham is a much more active figure than Noach ever was. It was Avraham who set out and walked the land of Israel, who withstood tests of faith, who battled kings, who made a foothold in the land, who stood up even to God for the sake of the potential innocent lives that might be lost in the destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah! There isn’t even one instance of Noach standing up for anything in the story. God tells him to build an ark, so he builds an ark. He saves the animals, himself, and his family, at God’s command. And that’s it. Of course, Noach doesn’t come across as well in the rabbinic imagination!
But then again, if you look carefully throughout the ancient rabbinic texts, there are other, less well-known opinions about Noach and his righteousness: In the Talmud (B. Sanhedrin 108a) there’s a dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Resh Lakish. Rabbi Yohanan makes the standard argument that Noach was only righteous in his own sinful generation, but not any others. And Resh Lakish says, no. You’re reading it incorrectly. When the Torah says that Noach was a righteous man bedorotav—in his generation-- it means that even in his own terrible and sinful generation he was righteous, all the more so in later generations! Rabbi Oshaiya then explains: Resh Lakish’s view may be illustrated by a vial of [fragrant] …oil lying [in a foul-smelling place]: if its fragrance is sensed even in such surroundings, how much more so amid spices!
Now it starts to get interesting! Not everybody was convinced that Noach was a self-serving man in a cruel world. Maybe, say the likes of Resh Lakish, Noach was one of the greatest tzadikim, greatest righteous men, we have ever known, even as great, perhaps, as the likes of Avraham himself?! This morning, I would like us to look again at this man Noach, this Ish Tzadik Tamim, this righteous, whole-hearted man, and see if indeed we have had not yet fully learned his particular kind of righteousness. I believe that, in fact, in our world of today, we are finally ready to really understand and to take in the significance of Noach’s greatness and his righteous. Only today, in this world of global warming and ever-increasing environmental catastrophe, can we really grasp the message of Noach’s life.
Let’s think about what happens in this flood story. It is nothing less than de-creation! Quite literally, the process of creation itself that was set up in the Genesis Creation narrative is undone step by step, as the ‘flood gates’ of heaven are literally opened up, and the world is reduced again only to the spirit of God hovering upon the waters. Only this time, of course, there is that ark, a little micro-habitat of that former created world, with Noach and his family, floating in those waters. What can strike us when we consider this story in its broad strokes is that it’s not a Jewish story particularly at all. Our ancient rabbis didn’t like the description of a ‘Tzadik’ for Noach because he predates Avraham and his particular story of a founding a Jewish people with a connection to the Land of Israel. This story is way more universal. Noach is not a Jew, in particular. If he is anything, he is a second Adam, founding a whole new line of human beings in the world. There is nothing particularly Jewish about his life or his behavior, save his obedience to God’s command to build an ark.
The Sfat Emet, a great 19th century Hasidic commentary pointed out something very interesting about Noach, that his very mission and role in the world was signified by his name. The name Noach is related to the word ‘menuchah,’ which means ‘rest.’ Noach’s role is to come into the world ultimately, says the Sfat Emet, to bring about menuchah, rest itself, ‘lachzor kol echad leshorsho,’ to bring everything back to its source; to realize that ‘ain lo chiyut me’atzmo klal,” that he has no life-force at all on his own. In other words, Noach teaches us the righteousness NOT of struggling against the course of nature or against God’s plan, but to allow it to be, just as it is. (Sfat Emet 1:67)
Talk about a not-Jewish-sounding idea! When we think about Avraham, he is regularly getting involved, regularly ‘making souls,’ calling people to the service of God, making peace, struggling for holiness. He even accuses God of injustice before the destruction of Sodom and Gemorrah and says, ‘hashofet kol ha’aretz lo ya’aseh mishpat,” ‘The Judge of all the earth shall not mete out justice?!’ We all know and love the Jewish brand of righteousness: it’s called chutzpah, it ‘s all about marching alongside the oppressed and starting revolutions! Now suddenly, here is the Sfat Emet , declaring Noach to be righteous BECAUSE he didn’t protest, and just allowed the flood to be! Herein is the deeply troubling core of the Noach story. His apparent passivity, his apparent lack of a moral outcry deeply troubles not just the rabbis, but all of us to this day. How can we possibly abide a ‘righteousnes’ that is all about ‘surrender,’ of just letting things be? If we abide this approach, we fear that this is what allows evil to happen in the world, that allows Nazis to run rampant, that allows all manner of injustice to prevail!
But then again, there is the text, right in front of us, saying that this man Noach was an Ish Tzadik Tamim, a whole-heartedly righteous man—this was the man who allowed the flood to be, ‘et ha’Elohim hithalech Noach,’ who walked right alongside God’s destructive plan without hesitation or question. It’s deeply morally disturbing, this kind of passivity. But the question we must reconsider in our time is: was Noach REALLY passive after all? Let’s take a quick tour of some the midrashic descriptions of Noach’s life and career:
According to one midrash, Noach deliberately spent 52 years building that ark ever so slowly because, as the Torah makes perfectly clear, the society of his day was hopelessly corrupt, cruel, and violent. There was no place for him to speak up. No justice. No forum to be listened to. And so, he built that ark slowly so that the wicked people of his generation would take note of his actions and repent of their ways (Pirkei deRabbi Eliezar 22). To no avail, of course, so when the flood came, Noach and his family spent the whole 12 months at sea never sleeping a wink, feeding the animals and birds(Tanhuma 58:9). And it wasn’t just feeding the animals. According to the Talmud (Sanhedren 108b), the ark had three levels: a deck for the family, a middle deck for all the animals, and then a lower deck for all of the animal droppings. Can you imagine?! Noach and his family spent an inordinate amount of time just shoveling that stuff down to the lower deck. And why did they save it all? Rashi explains (Gen. 6:13) that after the flood cleared, the land had lost 12 inches of topsoil from the flood, so when Noach landed, he got right to work using the all the animal compost to work the land, dutifully, tirelessly. He was a true man of the earth, of the soil. Rashi even explains that he invented the plough, and that, “before his time, people would plant wheat and the earth would produce thorns and thistles.” But Noach, ever diligent and hard working, single-handedly regenerated the earth.
The Torah itself tells us that when Noach was born, his father gave him that name, saying “This one will provide us relief [y’nachameinu] from our work and from the toil of our hands, out of the very soil which the Lord placed under a curse.” Of course, he was referring to the curse of Adam when he was expelled from the Garden of Eden, who was now to toil and suffer by the sweat of his brow on the land. Noach is the one who, by his very birth, would point us the way to healing that sense of a cursed relationship with the land, with the earth itself. It is in this way that he is a Tzadik Tamim, a whole-hearted righteous man, because through his life, through his relationship of allowing the world to be, he shows us all how to heal ourselves, how to return to our source, and our relationship to the earth itself!
Rabbi Leib Saras once taught the true meaning of a Tzadik, of a righteous man. He said “A Tzadik is not a person who preaches Torah, but rather lives Torah. Not his words, but his actions should teach Torah to the people. I visit Tzadikim not to listen to their interpretations of Torah, but to observe how they conduct themselves from the time of their arising in the early morning until the time of their lying down to rest at night.”
If we compare Noach to Avraham, yes he will appear to come up short. But it’s not a fair comparison. Avraham’s very role in the Torah is to be a teacher of righteousness through direct action. There was no morality in Noach’s society, and so Noach could only teach righteousness by his example. All he could do was hope that others would listen and follow. Noach’s presence teaches us that there are other kinds of righteousness in life that are also equally important, namely, the righteousness of acceptance, of moving inexorably with the flow of nature itself. No matter how much cruelty and wickedness surrounded him, Noach remained TAMIM, which means ‘whole-hearted,’ but it literally means ‘simple-hearted.’ He remained close to the earth and the animals and nature and resisted the corrupting influence of the society around him. In this temimut, in this simplicity, he was righteous and a teacher to us today! No matter what environmental catastrophes resulted from human wickedness, he kept moving forward, creatively finding a way to sustain life despite catastrophe. He never lost his faith, or his faithfulness. He didn’t board the ark until the floodwaters forced him to, always holding out hope that his human bretheren might repent of their ways. When there was nothing left of the world but the ark, he still didn’t lose his faith and resolve to preserve life itself. He gave and he gave and he gave, even when there was no apparent hope of a reward.
When we talk about the modern environmental crisis, we always talk of the need to ‘save the planet earth.’ But this isn’t exactly right. No matter what we do to the earth, ultimately, the earth will be fine. The earth has survived countless catastrophes in the past. The earth will survive. The real question is: will we survive? Noach is the perfect teacher for our time because Noach IS the very embodiment of the earth itself. In his survival, he teaches us all how to survive: it can only happen through tzedek and temimut, through righteousness and simple whole-heartedness itself. No matter what terrible things happen to or around Noach, he always finds a way, he always regenerates, and returns himself and the Earth to its source.
When Noach emerges from the ark, God sends a rainbow as the sign of a new covenant, and God promises never again to destroy the world by flood. And on our end of the deal, we are asked ultimately to BE the children of Noach. We are called by that rainbow to Be the ones, like Noach before us to bring the earth back to rest, to repose, to return the earth to its source, to make the world into the Garden of Eden once again.
And we accomplish this by emulating the simple righteousness of Noach. We are to BE the earth itself. We must live our lives in tune with the rhythms of this miraculous world. We must be simple and whole-hearted, working with the world in all its challenges and limitations, always giving and giving for the sake of the earth and for one another, never expecting a reward. Perhaps the environmental crisis about us can remind us to awaken to this deep calling to be a little more Noach—to be simple lovers of this earth, of each other, of all that is. May we all activate this righteousness of temimut, of simplicity within us all, and in so doing, may we regenerate this earth and return it to its source, to peace.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Creation: Thou Art That
The texts of today’s Torah reading are the source of one of the greatest controversies of our time. Namely, the Creation verses evolution debate. It seems like you can barely turn on the television or open the papers these days without seeing some reference to this debate. Just look at the New York Times bestseller list this week and you see Richard Dawkin’s ‘The Greatest Show on Earth,’ arguing vehemently against the intelligent design argument, and there’s also Karen Armstrong’s ‘The Case for God.’ When Frances Collins was selected to head up the NIH, a veritable storm of controversy was kicked up by his scientific colleagues who could not abide his belief in God. There seems to be a modern obsession either with attacking or explaining away the biblical account of Creation in light of evolution. Richard Dawkins and his militant atheist friends seem to reduce all religion to fundamentalist literalism—that if you believe in God you MUST be a supernaturalist, and you must believe the biblical 6-day account. And folks like him arrogantly stir up all kinds of animosity toward religion in general, positing that all religions are based on facile notions of irrational faith, and the world would be better off without the scourge of irrational religion all together.
As a Conservative rabbi, this leaves me in rather a strange position. It seems pretty clear to me that life as we know it evolved over countless millions of years. It makes the most sense that some kind of process of natural selection charted the course of all the species of life we now encounter in the world. Scientific inquiry and rational investigation has yielded enormous evidence to this effect so that, while I can never know for sure, I am as certain of the validity of evolution as I can be about most aspects of life that I count on to be True. I read of fundamentalist Christians who demand equal time in school textbooks to argue that the world is about 6,000 years old and my stomach turns. I hear of some of my ultra-Orthodox rabbinic colleagues who similarly insist that God put dinosaur bones that carbon date to millions of years just as a nisayon—a test of our faith—and again, I am horrified. So what would Richard Dawkins make of the likes of me?
There are many well-meaning people who try to solve the clash of modern rationalism and religion by attempting to erase the problematic aspects of the biblical texts. There are those who argue, for example, that dinosaurs were from a previous Creation that God did “before” the account in our Torah; or those who say: what’s a “day” for God? A day for God can be millions or billions of years! So there’s no problem with our text, because each day left millions of years for evolution to happen! These justifications are nice, and they certainly solve the problem on some level, but they have always struck me as an attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Let’s face it: the Torah says that God created the world in 6 days, and on the 7th day, God rested. If the Torah had wanted to say that God brought about Creation over eons of time, it certainly could have worded it that way. The great tragedy of this evolution verses Creation debate is that both sides fundamentally miss the point of the Torah. If you scratch beneath the surface of the arrogant claims on both sides, you will notice that they, just like us, are challenged very deeply by the Torah text. The debaters on this issue, just like we are, are human. This text very deliberately flies in the face of their experience of Reality, and so in their great discomfort with this fact, they either rush to the ramparts to defend it on grounds of “faith,” or rush to obliterate it on the grounds of “reason.” And in going to either extreme, they lose the Truth—the Ultimate Truth, the beautiful and transforming wisdom--of the text itself.
Six days of Creation: beginning with Tohu vaVohu—chaos—and the Light separating from darkness, waters above and below, land and sea, plants and vegetation, stars and galaxies, all manner of creatures and animals, and then finally humankind. And behold it was very good. And then, vayechulu, it was all completed: a day of Rest, Shabbat. It’s a story of order emerging miraculously up out of chaos. Through each “day,” through each cycle we see the Divine Will moving inexorably toward some kind of goal: God works ceasely through the 6 days, creating separating, naming, leading up to the greatest achievement of all: humankind, in the very image of God, capable of ruling over and manipulating this harmonious order itself! And then…something completely different appears! Rest. Cessation. Stillness. Non-Creation! And that stillness is called “Holy.” It’s a profoundly awesome and mysterious text. This is no history book. This is not a recounting of cold facts to be taken literally “on faith.” This is a spiritual teaching that is at once beautiful and terrifying, awesome, mystifying and challenging.
The point of this text is not to give us an easy answer about the world. It’s supposed to set us into a total tailspin! This life, this Reality that you and I find ourselves in, is but a hairsbreadth away from Tohu vaVohu, from incomprehensible chaos. That idea is frightening enough. But at the same time: this whole stable world that you and I count on to live in, day by day, is moving toward complete cessation, toward stopping, toward an unfathomable stillness where all our plans and dramas and loves and strivings will merge into that stillness! When we start to look at the text on this level, then we’re really reading Genesis: the point is not to take it on faith, but to inquire what it means. The point is not to read it as a factoid that happened 6,000 years ago, but to ask ‘where is this process of Creation happening within me, right now?’
Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, the author of the Sfat Emet, a great Hasidic commentary, noticed something very interesting about the Creation account. He noticed what the account leaves out, not just what it includes. Genesis, for example, says nothing about the creation of Heaven or angels or other realms beyond the material world. Certainly, Judaism teaches all about all kinds of angels and divine messengers—what of their creation? The Sfat Emet explains: The Torah didn’t have to explain the creation of heaven and angels. The fact that we’re here means that they are there! “Hem b’atzmam hachelek haSheni hashayach l’otan habruim shel’matah. They are the other other half of the creatures who live here on earth. As you live and walk here on earth, you have your angelic “other half” as it were, on a higher realm of Creation above. All week long, you’re just you by your lonesome here on Earth. But on Shabbat, however “yored oto koach hashoresh umitchabrin shnei hachalakim,” the power of the upper root comes down, and the two halves are joined together. In other words, in the joy and completeness of Shabbat, you become more whole than what you were, because now your higher spiritual self is joined with your mudane and worldly self.
A very interesting teaching, and it unlocks much of the mystery of the account of the Creation. Don’t worry: I’m not asking us necessarily to believe that we all have guardian angels or that there’s a heaven “up there” in a celestial realm. It’s all metaphor. What does it mean? It means that the story of Creation that we read about in Genesis is not so much a description of how the universe was created. Rather, it’s a message to you about the kind of universe that you are creating! The Torah text states directly that each of us, you and I, are the very image of God. Divinity expresses itself as a powerful energy, the very urge that has brought about the very evolution of the world that we perceive. Likewise, we create as well. We spend our whole lives doing just what God was up to during those six days: we’re constantly ordering things, separating this from that, good from bad, desirable from undesirable, happiness from sadness, beginnings from endings. We function on a week of 7 days. We manipulate nature, the whole world to suit our needs and our whims. But look where the story places us in this process: right at the end of all that doing. We exist on the cusp of doing, and ceasing from all doing. Our ancient sages remind us that God created us very last, right before Shabbat came in. And the Midrash explains that it is through us that God can finish all that ‘doing’ and it is through us, that God—and we--can enter into the Shalom, the Peace of Shabbat, of rest.
The point of the Genesis Creation account is to show you the big picture, the very purpose of your life. The purpose of Creation is Shabbat. The six days culminate in Shabbat. The purpose of your life is not to mindlessly scurry about, toiling and working and struggling with problems: but live fully engaged in life, to understand that the purpose of all work and struggle is to end toil and struggle and suffering. The purpose of your life is to transform the world into Shabbat. And you do that by transforming YOUR world into Shabbat!
Zen master Dogen once famously taught: “everyday we swim on the surface of the ocean, yet our feet can walk across the bottom.” By this, he means that to live life well, we must live consciously in two realms: the conventional realm and the realm of Ultimate Reality. In our daily lives, we get up, we get dressed, we go to work, we pay bills, we make meals, watch TV, etc. Most of us only live in this world of surface-swimming—which is the 6 days of creation. This world is Tov Me’od, it is very good. It’s real and it’s important. But we’re living only half of our lives if we live only in this dimension of Reality. There’s another realm of reality as well: the deep abiding depths of the Ocean, or the heavenly realm of angels, or the timelessness and peace of Shabbat. It doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s the Ultimate. The point of it all. The six days of Creation represent our material world: that’s the world where evolution happens over millions of years—it’s the world of space and time, of science and history, the world of dualities and separations.
Vayekadesh Oto…and God called Shabbat Holy, ‘ki vo shavat mikol melachto asher bara Elohim la’asot,’ because Shabbat is what all the work was created for in the first place. Shabbat is not just a day of the week. It’s not just a day to light candles and have challah and go to shul. Shabbat is a state of being. Shabbat is your Ultimate essence. It is the timeless moment where you are not separate and alone in the world, but connected to your Higher Angels—connected to Divinity itself. Shabbat is always there, beneath the surface waves and the trials and tribulations of life. When we develop this Shabbat-consciousness, suddenly all the troubles and challenges of life take on a different hew. They have a different context. They don’t loom as large, because there is a peaceful inner timeless realm where no time or work or troubles can touch us. We have Created the conditions for Shabbat. We enact Shabbat on a weekly basis as the Jewish people, but on an even deeper level, we are, each of us, called to enact Shabbat within our very hearts and souls.
Ramana Maharshi, a great early 20th-century teacher in the Hindu Advaita Vedanta tradition, once said, “The essential purpose of … [sacred scriptures] is to teach you the nature of the imperishable (‘Atman) [Ultimate Self], and to declare with authority “Tat Tvam Asi,” “Thou art That.” What he means is: look into the sacred text, look into the Torah. What do you see? If you see just a story, you’re not really seeing it. If you see a history book, a book of facts, you’re not really seeing it. If you see something irrational and supernatural, you’re not really seeing it. Look deeper. Thou art That! That text is meant to be a mirror into your Truest and deepest Self! The whole world is being Created through you. You are the miracle arising from chaos, on an incredible journey to find peace. May we see that journey as Tov Me’od, as very good. And when we find that peace within, may we indeed declare our whole lives, and this whole world, as holy.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Death is Not as Real as Love
There’s a very fitting connection between Shmini Atzeret and the service of Yizkor. The term “Shmini Atzeret” literally means, “stopping on the eighth day.” Numbers always have great symbolic significance in Judaism. The number seven, of course, has obvious significance as the symbol of completion—like the completion of the seventh day of creation, and the completion of the week with Shabbat. But what of the number eight? When we consider the symbolic references to the number eight, we are reminded of the brit milah, the circumcision rite that always happens on the eighth day. It’s rather strange, isn’t it? Why indeed have rituals and holidays on the eighth day, when the seventh day has such a biblical connection to significance, completion, and perfection?
Our tradition teaches us to think of the eighth day as the fullness of seven, of completion… plus one more! It is true perfection, because when you reach the natural completion of seven, the eight makes a perfect circle: think of the eight-note musical scale: do re mi fa so la ti do! It’s only when you come full circle, that you can stop (“atzeret,”)turn around and behold the whole fullness of the hakafah—the circle—that we have been journeying through throughout this holiday period. That’s just the idea in a brit milah: the baby has survived the first full critical week of life, so now, on the eighth day, we can take a deep breath and truly celebrate this birth, this new little one entering the covenant of the Jewish people.
So here we are at Shmini Atzeret, the eighth day. Today we stop, we pause and look back with satisfaction and gratitude at the joy we have celebrated on Sukkot. And we are also at Yizkor: the act of looking back always reminds us of our loved ones who are no longer with us. But each service of Yizkor has its own particular character, it’s own palate of emotional experience. If, on Yom Kippur, we said Yizkor in our humility and awe from the intensity of the Yamim Noraim…today, Yizkor is recited as a simpler, sweeter reflection.
When Sarah Imenu, the great matriarch of the Jewish people, died, the Torah refers to her death rather strangely: it says “vayihiyu chayey Sarah meah shanah v’esrim shanah v’sheva shanim, shnei chayey Sarah,” which literally translates as “Sarah’s lifetime was 100 years and 20 years and 7 years, the years of the life of Sarah.” Strange wording. The Torah could have just said, “Sarah lived to be 127 years old,” but instead, it lengthed out the numbering of her years. And our sages explain that it’s worded this way because the Torah wants us to do a little “Atzeret,” to pause and consider the fullness of her years while she was live. Even before the Torah tells us that she died, it wants us to think about how she lived! …About how each and every year was well lived, beautifully and courageously lived.
I once read a story about a woman who couldn’t stop grieving over the loss of her son, who died in a mountain-climbing accident. For twenty years, this woman’s life was utterly devastated. What I read was the record of the counselor who worked with this woman: the counselor explained that this woman was stuck in an eternal mental loop that she was trapped in. Every day of her life, for twenty whole years, over and over, she watched in her imagination that image of her child slipping and falling off that cliff to his death. No! No! No! would be her silent scream in her head at this image. And then there was all her anger at him for not taking better precautions, her guilt at not doing something to protect him. Finally, the counselor asked that woman a powerful question: how many times did your son fall to his death? Once, of course. And how many times have you mentally been falling to death together with him? Hundreds of tens of thousands of times, more than anyone could count, was her answer. And with this answer, suddenly she realized that she could do her own atzeret, she could step out of that hakafah, that loop that went around over and over in her mind, and she realized that once that young man’s death happened, it was over. There was no more suffering for him, just for her because she was forcing herself to experience that death eternally. But all of a sudden, for the first time, she was able to grasp a much wider Hakafah, the much wider cycle of a beautiful life that had been gifted to her in the person of her son. Instead of just replaying his death, she had the spaciousness now to really look back at the fullness of her son’s life: this wonderful, funny, brilliant, creative, adventuresome young man whose time had come. Yes, it was so much shorter a life than anyone should live, but it was his time. And, for the first time in her life, his mother came to a place of peace, gratitude and even joy, because of the fullness of years she did share with her wonderful son.
This is the meaning of Yizkor on this day of Shmini Atzeret: that death is not a gaping emptiness that swallows up life and love. No, death is a Shmini Atzeret, it is the fullness of a completed circle. It doesn’t matter how many or how few years a life was lived in this world. Each life is perfectly whole and complete—whether we die of natural causes or of tragic circumstances—when our life comes to an end, the Hakafah, the circle is full and whole. No! No! No! we may shout. He or she was too young. He or she didn’t get to complete this or that. I didn’t get to tell them I loved them one more time. All of that, of course is true, and we grieve these losses. But even with all of that, their time is their time. And so this moment of Yizkor is so important for us to acknowledge this side of the Truth: that despite death’s experience of separation, we can see our loved one’s lives as a perfectly completed circle. We can look back and find the peace within ourselves. At this service of Yizkor, we can remember our loved ones, and find the joy and fullness beyond all experiences of emptiness and loss…
All throughout our prayers, we affirm over and over that God never forgets the lives of each and every one of us: ‘umekayem emunato lisheinei afar,’ that God keeps faith with those who sleep in the dust, with our loved ones who have passed on. In our prayers, we say that God remembers the Chasdei Avot, the loving acts of our forefathers, and in fidelity to them and their love, God will send redemption to us and to our children someday in this world. God remembers, and we remember. Our tradition calls to us to remember, again and again, that when our loved ones die, don’t focus on their death, always remember shnei chayeyhem, the years of the fullness of t heir lives. Because in our remembering them, this is how they never die.
On Yom Kippur, I did a thought experiment, where I had us picture ourselves. Now we will do another thought experiment, but this time, think someone you love who has passed on. Close your eyes, and see if you can really call to mind a vivid image of them together with you right now. Go ahead: look at their wonderful faces. Look at their smile. Look into their eyes. See how much they love you. See if you can reach out in your mind’s eye and touch their skin and feel the warmth, the life of them. Just take this moment and be in their loving presence. Isn’t it amazing how much the fullness of their life is truly there for you? And don’t discount this as just a fabrication of mind, of imagination. This isn’t a random thought that you’re having. When we see our loved ones in our mind in this way, this is coming from a very real place in our neshamah, in our soul, that has been touched and shaped, forever affected by the fullness of our their lives. That image that you just conjured up isn’t random imagination: it’s an image that flows from a place of real love within you. So in an ultimate sense, that image—which is a vivid and living memory within you—is as Real and True as our loved one’s physical presence while they were still alive! This idea might sound outlandish, but when you search your own deepest Truth, this is undeniable…
When you think about anyone whom you love—living or dead—on a very deep level, you know that they’re always with you, because you have let them into your heart. It doesn’t matter where you are: whether you’re in the living room downstairs and they’re in the bedroom upstairs—really you’re not ultimately separate. Even if you’re in one continent and they’re on another, you can really feel them—sometimes even physically—you can sense their loving presence. Their heart is with you and your heart is with them. This kind of ‘knowing’ is very subtle yet powerful, and very very deep when you love another human being. This isn’t just an act of imagination: this is real stuff. It’s the Ultimate Reality. It turns out that time and space are not quite as real as Love itself. And when it’s all said and done, death itself is not quite as real as Love itself either!
In his old age, the Gerer Rebbe told this story: “When I was still a student, Rabbi Shlomo Leib came up to me in the Beit Midrash and said: ‘Young man, you are known as a gifted Jew from Poland, so tell me why our sages commented on the verse in the scripture: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart and with all they soul,” with the words: “Even if He takes our soul [you should still love God];” but [our sages]failed to comment “Even if he takes your heart,” [meaning: why did the sages NOT command us to love God EVEN if God takes our heart away?!]
I did not know what to say, [at the time, said the Gerer rebbe]… But …The older I get, the larger his question looms before me. If God so desires, let God take our life, but God must leave us that with which we love Him—God must leave us our heart.”
And indeed, this is the Ultimately reality that we discover at Yizkor on Shemini Atzeret: God may take the lives of our loved ones, but nowhere in God’s universe is it even possible to take away their heart. You see, their heart cannot die, because it is none other than YOUR heart! This is the great way that all love cheats and trumps death. In life, when we love another, we are present in their hearts. So when we die, our hearts live on—not metaphorically, but Truly, literally as their hearts.
Yizkor uses the language of ‘memory’ and ‘rememberance,’ but in matters of love and life and death, there is no time, there is no space. Even though we say we ‘remember’ our loved ones at Yizkor, in Truth we are more correctly making ourselves Mindful of their loving Presence that is with us always, in all moments of our lives. The fullness of their lives IS the fullness of our life. This is the essence of their love for us, which doesn’t die.
So this year, let us take this moment of Shmini Atzeret, and pause and look lovingly at the fullness of the lives whose love has brought us to this joyful time. Let us come to realize that God keeps faith with their lives through our keeping faith with them through living our own lives. Let us feel their care and nurturing and concern supporting our every lifebreath. And may the wholeness and completion of their lives remind us to cherish the fullness and completeness of our own life’s blessing here and now, while we have it. May their lives be source of blessing to us and to our children from generation to generation.Monday, September 28, 2009
Where Peace Begins
Here we are in 5770. Here we are on Yom Kippur, davening together in shul, confronting our existential fears and hopes for a new year. Today in our prayers, we ask God for all kinds of things: forgiveness, atonement, blessings, sustenance, health. In our deepest prayers, we long for Shalom, for peace: peace in our homes and families, peace among our people, peace in the Land of Israel from our enemies, peace in the whole world. If there’s any one yearning that each and every one brings to synagogue today, that all of us share, it’s the yearning for Shalom. So why is Shalom, indeed, seemingly the most elusive commodity in the world? If you look in the Torah, it would seem that violence and conflict are essential parts of our human nature. The book of Genesis is filled with stories of conflict between brothers. The conflicts begin with Cain and Abel, the two sons of Adam and Eve. They both brought offerings to God. God liked Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s offering. So what did Cain do? He killed Abel! God was furious at Cain, and said ‘Your brother’s bloods cry out to me from the ground!’. And then God cursed Cain, saying: ‘And now you shall be cursed, and a ceaseless wanderer on earth’ Cain was overcome with guilt and panic, and he too cried out: ‘Gadol Avoni Min’so!’ My sin is too much to bear!..and now anyone who meets me may kill me!” …
Amazing, isn’t it? Brothers killing brothers. The beginning of all war and bloodshed began with two brothers, over our petty jealousies and the pathetic desire to get on the good side of life at the expense of another. Cain, of course, stands for each and every one of us, his descendants. There’s a dark place within each of our psyches that cries out ‘Gadol Avoni min’so! My sin is too much to bear! There’s a dark part in each of us that sees ourselves as lonely and ceaseless wanderers on earth, always existentially alone and afraid for our lives, never truly at peace, threatened by a world that we fear we can’t fully trust, feeling irrationally guilty and ever on the defensive. And that darkness seems to perpetuate more violence, and more violence, and the cycle goes on from generation to generation.
So is there really any hope for us to break the chain of violence that lives in our very souls? Indeed, there seems to be: Later in the book of Genesis, there is another story of two brothers, Jacob and Esau: One night, Jacob finds himself all alone on the banks of the River Yavok. In the darkness, a mysterious ‘man’—a kind of dark angel--suddenly appears and immediately, Jacob violently launches into a fierce struggle, a fierce wrestling match with this man. They fight and struggle all night long, right up to the approach of dawn. ‘Let me go, for the dawn is approaching,’ the man says. ‘I will not let you go until you bless me,’ Jacob says back. ‘What is your name,’ the man asks. ‘Jacob.’ ‘Your name shall no longer be called Jacob,’ the man replies, ‘but Yisrael, for you have striven with beings Divine and human, and have prevailed.’ . . .And Jacob named the place Peniel, which means the ‘Face of God,’ because Jacob realized that he encountered the face of God that night, and yet he lived!
A strange and cryptic story! What does it mean? We know that Jacob was a man with a lot of guilt on his conscience that night. Jacob had stolen the blessing of the firstborn from his brother Esau years before. And now Esau was on his way to meet up with Jacob again the next morning. Was Esau, a wild and brutish man, going to kill Jacob and his family? Did Jacob deserve to be killed because he was a thief and a cheat?...
The power of this story is its mystery. Its images of darkness, existential terror, and wild struggle are there to sink deep into our souls as we read them. This story leads us to the places of darkness and struggle that rage within each of us—that very same dark place that leads to violence. On that night on the banks of the River Yavok, Jacob went into that violent place within his soul. In that all-night struggle, he wasn’t just Jacob anymore. In his own guilt and fear surrounding his stealing the blessing from his brother Esau, Jacob became Cain struggling with Abel once again. “I won’t let you go unless you bless me!” Jacob cries to the shadowy figure, and in that outcry, he is completing Cain’s outcry: Gadol Avoni min’so! My sin is too much to bear: forgive me, Abel! Forgive me, Esau! Just bless me, God, accept me as I am, give me peace—Shalom-- despite my guilt!...
On the High Holy Days, we seek forgiveness because we can’t seem to escape Cain’s existential dread and guilt. The brilliance of this day is that today, each of us becomes Cain. We come to know that all the violence in the world begins with us. And there is an incredible message in this journey today back to our deepest fears and guilts: when we have the courage to embrace all struggles within our own hearts and souls, then paradoxically, the struggle itself transforms into peace. The only way to find peace, to heal the Mark of Cain on our soul, as I taught on Rosh HaShanah, is not to turn away but to go bravely straight into the deepest, darkest struggles of life.
On that dark night by the River Yavok, Jacob finally faced the whole Truth of his life: Yes, he stole the blessing, and tricked his own father and brother. Yes, he is guilty of wrongdoing. Yes, he is, like all of us, the descendant of Cain. But, like Cain before him, all he wanted was God’s blessing when it’s all said and done. The deepest yearning of his soul was only for love and for goodness and for life! And so the shadowy figure blessed him. His name was no longer Jacob, which means ‘heel-grabber,’ or ‘supplanter’ or ‘cheater.’ Now it was Yisrael—‘The One who Found God Because He was Willing to Face the Struggle.’
Our brothers bloods are still crying out to us: from the Middle East, from Darfur, and from violence right from here in DC and around the world. If we really long for an end to violence, are we willing to find these conflicts in our very own hearts as much as we find them ‘out there’ in the world? Our rabbis tell us something amazing: the Hebrew word Shalom, peace, is actually the name of God. Our longing for peace is our longing for God! If we really want peace, then we have to commit to creating a place for Shalom in our lives, body and soul—b’chol levavcha, uvchal nafshecha, uv’chal me’odecha—with all our hearts, souls, and might. If we’re ready, like Jacob, to cease as lonely wanderers in a world that threatens to kill us and our loved ones, then we have to be willing to change our very own name in the world. We have to be willing to look at each and every relationship, each and every moment, with the eyes of Shalom, of peace.
In our day and age, we’re a little confused about Shalom, peace. We think that Peace is the absence of struggle and conflict. But our ancient sages were clearer on this: Shalom means all of it. It means ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’ Shalom is a perfect circle: beginnings and endings, light and dark, good and bad. Peace doesn’t begin when the guns stop firing. Peace isn’t an effect of ceasefires alone. Peace is an attitude, an intention, a state of being in the midst of all conditions—when life is calm, and when life is full of conflicts and contradictions! In fact, our sages teach us that the most important place of all to seek Shalom is right in the midst of conflict itself!...
When the great Talmudic sage, Resh Lakish, died, his closest friend and study-partner, the equally great Rabbi Yohanan, was naturally despondent. On literally hundreds of pages of the Talmud, arguments between the two rabbis are recorded. So in order to bring peace to Rabbi Yochanan, many of the brightest students of the day came to Rabbi Yochanan, and he taught them a lesson on Torah. When he was finished, all the students praised Rabbi Yochanan with lavish praises, and told him ‘How brilliant you are, Rabbi Yochanan! How right you are, Rabbi Yochanan!’ And did this help Rabbi Yochanan feel more at peace? No! To this, Rabbi Yochanan cried out even more despondently: “Bring me back Resh Lakish!”[i] You see, Rabbi Yochanan wasn’t satisfied with the students because they agreed with him! What was so special to Rabbi Yochanan was that Resh Lakish challenged him.
The students couldn’t understand that the thing that made these sages great was that they welcomed the struggle from their adversaries. Each was the other’s angel with whom he could wrestle, who could make them face even the darkest places of their souls, and therefore find blessing, and ultimately inner peace!
There’s a famous Zen story about Zen master Hakuin, who lived centuries ago in a small fishing town in Japan. A beautiful young woman lived near him. One day, the young woman’s parents discovered that she was pregnant. Her parents were enraged by this dishonor. They demanded to know the father, but she refused to tell. Finally, to protect her lover, she lied and told them that the father was none other than Zen master Hakuin! Filled with rage, the parents went to Hakuin and said ‘we heard you’re responsible for getting our daughter pregnant!’ ‘Is that so?’ was all Zen master Hakuin said in response. Of course, his reputation as a great master was totally destroyed. When people passed him and said ‘you’re a despicable man,’ all he said in response was ‘Is that so?’ When the baby was born, the parents brought the child to Hakuin and said, ‘Here. You’re the father, you take care of this child.’ “Is that so?” was Hakuin’s only response. Still, for a whole year, Hakuin lovingly cared for this child, tending to all the baby’s needs. After a year, the young woman could no longer bear her guilt. She finally admitted to her parents that the real father was a young man who worked in the fishmarket. The girl’s parents came back to Hakuin begging his forgiveness and to get the child back again. Without batting an eyelash, Hakuin gave the child back to the family, and all he said was ‘Is that so?’…
As Jews, we hear this story and we think, what’s wrong with this guy? I’ll tell you one thing: if someone came to me with a baby and accused me of being the illicit father, my response would be “Ummm…No….!” I bring this story today because Zen stories, like many stories from the Torah and Midrash and Hasidic stories, are not meant to be taken literally, but metaphorically—they’re meant to shed light on our own inner world as we react to them and put ourselves in the place of the characters. So we must ask ourselves, what is this Zen master teaching us about ourselves? When the parents came to him accusing him of fathering an illicit child, what would go through your mind in that instant: “How dare you accuse me of such a thing?! Who the heck do you think you are to insult my dignity in this way?!” But instead, what did the Zen master do: he asked ‘Is that so?’. That question is not a question for the girl’s parents, nor was it a question for the town’s people who hurled insults at him. It’s an inward-turning question that we must ask ourselves! Hakuin asked himself: Is that so? Is that true? In what ways am I, indeed, ultimately connected to that girl’s, or to anyone’s recklessness? A baby is now in my care. Is it so that I am, indeed, not to play the role of ‘father’ when no one else will care for this precious life? Granted, this story really pushes things to the extreme, but it gets us to pause and to consider life differently than the ways that we’re normally conditioned to react. Whenever life thrusts a challenge, a problem, a stumbling block, an adversary, even an enemy in our face, we can ask: Is that so? Could that be True? What happens when we turn that question inward in moments when we feel attacked by someone in life?
If someone says to you, ‘You’re a liar.’ What’s our immediate, knee-jerk reaction: ‘How dare you call me a liar! I’m not a liar’ When we lash out in defense like that, then we’re being Cain all over again! Cain’s ‘How dare you!’ lash-out was so intense, he killed his brother over that reaction. So what happens if we find a way to take a deep breath, go inside, and ask ourselves, ‘Is that so?’ ‘Could he or she be right?’ Can we struggle with our inner Cain, can we struggle with our knee-jerk defensive reaction, and be still long enough to listen and ask ourselves the very tough questions that our adversaries pose to us? What happens? In that timeless instant of going inside, we can search all the dark places in ourselves we would rather not acknowledge. We can wrestle with that angel within. We can search to see if there is any truth at all to the idea that we were were a liar! And then, instead of our knee-jerk defensive Mark-of-Cain reaction, we can say peacefully to the other person, ‘Tell me more.’ If they tell us something that we have found by embracing our struggle within, we can say back, ‘You know what, you’re right. I did lie.’ If, however, so meone calls us liar and we go inside and we find that it’s not true, then that doesn’t mean that then we can lash out and say ‘How dare you’! It just means that it’s time to keep wrestling—no matter how much it hurts--to keep searching for Truth, for common ground and self-understanding, until that conflict yields and transforms into blessing, and into Peace! We can say, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t lie, but I see how upset you are. Tell me your experience, let’s figure this out.”… When Jacob was wrestling with that angel, the angel actually wounded him right in the groin. It doesn’t get more personal than that! What’s amazing is that Jacob didn’t say—okay, that’s it: now I’m going to get you right back in your groin! Instead, even while in pain, he said, ‘I won’t let you go until you bless me!’
Peace is only possible when we transform our relationship to our adversary and turn them from an enemy into a teacher, when we transform our own struggle from one directed at the other person, to one directed inwardly, to our own Shadows and to our own demons. If I reject the other person outright, I have lost an opportunity to meet someone who may very well be the kindest and most important teacher of my own Truth whom I have ever met!
The message I teach today is not a pacifist teaching. This is not a ‘turn-the-other-cheek’ sermon. My understanding of the Christian notion of ‘turn-the-other-cheek’ is that it takes martyrdom and passivity in the face of an attacker and raises it up to a holy level. ‘Turn-the-other-cheek’ takes the experience of being a victim and equates it with ‘bearing the sins’ of the other person, and in so doing, you become saintly. What I teach today is the opposite of ‘turn-the-other-cheek.’ When we welcome the struggle with the other person, we are the opposite of a victim: we can never be victimized again. We actively engage in conflict constructively and use that conflict as a tool, a gift to transform the dark places in our own souls, so that we become Yisrael, the embodiment of Peace right in the midst of the struggle.
How do we know when our work is done? The 23rd psalm said it best: ta’aroch lefanai shulchan neged tzorerai: Prepare a beautiful, peaceful banquet table before me right in the presence of my enemies! My cup runneth over with gratitude! Everyone in our life whom we perceive as an enemy—even those who may be out to kill us!—can point us back to ourselves, can point us to the path of peace in our own soul. What’s the stronger way to stand up to attackers in the world—when we’re full of rage and hate and on the defensive, or when we’re at peace? The answer is clear.
After that night of wrestling, when the sun rose over the River Yavok, Jacob—now Yisrael—went out to meet his dreaded brother in person after so many years. And lo and behold, Esau didn’t try to kill Jacob after all. The brothers embraced and wept. They met each other’s families, and they offered each other gifts. When Jacob offered Esau gifts, Esau demurred, “Yesh li rav, achi.” I have much already my brother. I don’t need such gifts. But Jacob pressed him: No, take it: To see your face is like seeing the face of God! “Kach na et birchati,” take my blessing, Jacob said …”ki chanani Elohim v’chi yesh li chol.” Because God has been gracious to me, and I have everything! Did you hear what Jacob offered Esau—birchati, blessing!? Take my blessing! It was Jacob who stole that blessing from his adversary all those years ago, but Jacob is now Yisrael. He is free! He’s at Peace! The great commentatary, the Sfat Emet explains, when Jacob said ‘Yesh li chol,” I have all, what he means is that he has found Shalom, true Peace in opening to all of it—the light and the darkness, the past guilts as well as the yearning and the love. He now knows he doesn’t need to lie or cheat or steal to have God’s blessing. He knows he is a blessing because he can look upon the face of his adversary, his enemy, and see nothing but the face of God!
Rabbi Simcha Bunam of Peshischa relays the following teaching: “Our sages taught: ‘Seek peace in your own place.’ You cannot find peace anywhere save in your own self. . .When a man has made peace within himself, he will be able to make peace in the whole world.”[ii] We live in a world beset by so much war and violence. It’s true: there are real enemies, real attacks, and a real necessity to defend ourselves. That’s the way of the world, for now, and it goes on as it must. But the greatest wisdom of our Torah teaches us that conflict and war are not the ultimate ways to end war in the world once and for all. The only path that will truly end war in Israel, in the Middle East, all around the world, begins nowhere other than in your very heart.
At the end of our prayers each day, we say the famous words: Oseh Shalom biM’romav, May God who makes peace in the Heavens above; Hu ya’aseh Shalom aleinu, May God bring peace upon us, v’al Kol Yisrael, and on all Israel, v’al Kol Yoshvei Teivel, on all human beings, v’imru, Amen. The Baal Shem Tov once taught that God’s greatest majesty is God’s humility, the highest place in the Heavens above is equal to the lowest, and simplest place here on Earth. R. Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl once taught: “Believe with complete faith that God surrounds and fills all worlds, God is both within and beyond them all.” When we say, “May God make peace biM’romav, in the heavens above—those majestic Heavens above are none other than the humblest place within our very own heart of hearts. When find peace in our own hearts, this IS how God sends peace from the heavens above! In the year 5770, may we indeed take this Torat Shalom, this Torah of Peace to heart. May we end all wars ‘right here,’ thereby bringing peace to us, to all Israel, and to all the world. Amen.
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