Dear Chevre (Friends):
In the Jewish liturgical calendar, we are now entering the Season of Liberation: first Purim, then Passover. Both festivals celebrate the victory of our ancestors over their oppressors. I have just returned from three weeks in South Africa, a country that overthrew its own system of oppression twenty years ago. Although the legacy of apartheid still remains in the squalor of the townships and the disparity of opportunity among the citizens (you walk into a typical Cape Town sidewalk café and the entire clientele is white, while the entire wait staff is black or coloured), nevertheless, the dismantling of state sanctioned persecution through nearly bloodless revolution stands as one of the great human achievements of the twentieth century.
The Season of Liberation teaches two fundamental lessons about freedom. First, liberation does not entail the freedom to do as one pleases; rather, liberation merely affords the opportunity to follow God’s commandments in the perennial advance toward tikkun olam, ultimate Redemption. Accordingly, the Season of Liberation properly culminates with Shavuot, celebrating the giving of the Law. I was amazed to read Nelson Mandela echoing a similar message. One page 751 of his autobiographical tome Long Walk to Freedom (the length of the book mirrors the interminability of his 27-year incarceration), he writes: “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.”
Second, as long as human society endures, victory over oppression will always remain tentative and incomplete. That’s why we must come back to Passover year after year. At the beginning the Seder we chant: avadim hayinu atah bnei chorin, “we were once slaves, now we are free,” but then follow up with: hashata avdei lashanah haba’ah bnei chorin, “now we are slaves, next year may we be free.” In the same vein, Mandela concludes his treatise: “I have walked that long road to freedom, and I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”
Rabbi Brian
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
February 9, 2011: It's Adar: Be Happy!
Dear Chevre (Friends):
Adar is the happiest month. “When Adar comes in, joy increases.” Why? Because Adar contains Purim, which celebrates the redemption of the Jews through the agency of Queen Esther. Even though it is forbidden “to be happy when your enemy falls,” (Pirkei Avot 4:24) an exception is made in the case of the Haman, who, like the Biblical Amalek with whom he is identified, very nearly represents pure evil. (Because we are in a leap year, we get two months to be happy this time around—Adar 1 and Adar 2.)
In the calendar, the opposite of Adar is the month of Av. “Just as joy is increased at the start of Adar, joy is reduced at the start of Av.” Why? Because Av contains Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple and all other national calamities that have befallen the Jews over the centuries (except for the Holocaust, which is in a class by itself). It is the distinctive yin-yang feature of the Jewish religion that it fails to recognize pure joy or pure sadness. All joy is mitigated by a teardrop of sadness, and all bitterness is alleviated by a touch of sweetness. Accordingly, a week after Tisha B’Av comes Tu B’Av, about which the Talmud records: “there was no happier day for all Israel, when the daughters of Jerusalem would go out dressed in white and dance in the vineyards.” And a week before Purim comes the Seventh of Adar, the yahrzeit of Moshe Rabbeinu (Thursday, February 10, this year).
So let’s go out and be happy—even as we acknowledge the pain that exists in our lives and throughout the world.
Rabbi Brian
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
Adar is the happiest month. “When Adar comes in, joy increases.” Why? Because Adar contains Purim, which celebrates the redemption of the Jews through the agency of Queen Esther. Even though it is forbidden “to be happy when your enemy falls,” (Pirkei Avot 4:24) an exception is made in the case of the Haman, who, like the Biblical Amalek with whom he is identified, very nearly represents pure evil. (Because we are in a leap year, we get two months to be happy this time around—Adar 1 and Adar 2.)
In the calendar, the opposite of Adar is the month of Av. “Just as joy is increased at the start of Adar, joy is reduced at the start of Av.” Why? Because Av contains Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple and all other national calamities that have befallen the Jews over the centuries (except for the Holocaust, which is in a class by itself). It is the distinctive yin-yang feature of the Jewish religion that it fails to recognize pure joy or pure sadness. All joy is mitigated by a teardrop of sadness, and all bitterness is alleviated by a touch of sweetness. Accordingly, a week after Tisha B’Av comes Tu B’Av, about which the Talmud records: “there was no happier day for all Israel, when the daughters of Jerusalem would go out dressed in white and dance in the vineyards.” And a week before Purim comes the Seventh of Adar, the yahrzeit of Moshe Rabbeinu (Thursday, February 10, this year).
So let’s go out and be happy—even as we acknowledge the pain that exists in our lives and throughout the world.
Rabbi Brian
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
February 2, 2011: Egypt is In Our Blood
Dear Chevre (Friends):
As we witness the breathtaking events unfold in neighboring Egypt, our thoughts turn immediately to their potentially grave implications for the security of the State of Israel. What I want to stress in this column is the deep kinship between our two peoples, at least from a Biblical perspective. Do not think that because a despotic Pharaoh oppressed our ancestors and enslaved them, we considered Egypt our perennial archenemy. To the contrary, all of the patriarchs (except for Isaac) went down to Egypt and were welcome there—evidence that the Pharaoh who opposed Moses was the exception, rather than the rule.
More significantly, consider that only 70 individuals went down to Egypt with Jacob, but some 600,000 men of fighting age (Exodus 12:37)—equivalent to over two million men, women, and children—left Egypt during the Exodus. It is in Land of Egypt, not in the Land of Israel, that the clan of Jacob became the Israelite people. “They multiplied and increased very greatly” (Exodus 1:7)—clearly, despite Midrashim that extravagantly claim that the Israelite women bore sextuplets, many, if not most, of the swelling ranks of the emerging nation came from the Egyptian populace itself. “A mixed multitude went up.” (Exodus 12:38) The Egyptians are in our blood.
Therefore, when we pray for peace in Egypt, we are not merely hoping for an easing of tensions, as we would concerning any flare up of violence in the world. Nor are we merely hoping for a satisfactory outcome concerning Israeli security. We are praying for our Egyptian brethren. The prophet Isaiah’s Messianic vision makes clear that our own welfare depends upon that of our neighbors: “On that day, Israel shall be the third partner to Egypt and Assyria as a blessing upon the earth, for Adonai of Hosts shall bless them, saying: blessed be (first) My people Egypt, (second) My handiwork Assyria, and (third) My possession Israel.” (Isaiah 19:24-25)
Rabbi Brian
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
As we witness the breathtaking events unfold in neighboring Egypt, our thoughts turn immediately to their potentially grave implications for the security of the State of Israel. What I want to stress in this column is the deep kinship between our two peoples, at least from a Biblical perspective. Do not think that because a despotic Pharaoh oppressed our ancestors and enslaved them, we considered Egypt our perennial archenemy. To the contrary, all of the patriarchs (except for Isaac) went down to Egypt and were welcome there—evidence that the Pharaoh who opposed Moses was the exception, rather than the rule.
More significantly, consider that only 70 individuals went down to Egypt with Jacob, but some 600,000 men of fighting age (Exodus 12:37)—equivalent to over two million men, women, and children—left Egypt during the Exodus. It is in Land of Egypt, not in the Land of Israel, that the clan of Jacob became the Israelite people. “They multiplied and increased very greatly” (Exodus 1:7)—clearly, despite Midrashim that extravagantly claim that the Israelite women bore sextuplets, many, if not most, of the swelling ranks of the emerging nation came from the Egyptian populace itself. “A mixed multitude went up.” (Exodus 12:38) The Egyptians are in our blood.
Therefore, when we pray for peace in Egypt, we are not merely hoping for an easing of tensions, as we would concerning any flare up of violence in the world. Nor are we merely hoping for a satisfactory outcome concerning Israeli security. We are praying for our Egyptian brethren. The prophet Isaiah’s Messianic vision makes clear that our own welfare depends upon that of our neighbors: “On that day, Israel shall be the third partner to Egypt and Assyria as a blessing upon the earth, for Adonai of Hosts shall bless them, saying: blessed be (first) My people Egypt, (second) My handiwork Assyria, and (third) My possession Israel.” (Isaiah 19:24-25)
Rabbi Brian
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
January 26, 2011: The Evolution of Justice
Dear Chevre (Friends):
After an hour of studying the Torah’s laws of slavery (Exodus 21:1-11) in this past week’s Rabbi’s Study class, a participant raised his hand and said: “I have to say, I am deeply disturbed by all this.” I responded: “you have every right to be deeply disturbed.” I encountered a similar challenge at my entry interview for Rabbinical School, when the rector asked me to justify Leviticus 18:22: “you shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination.” How can we revere the Torah, with its resounding exhortation: “justice, justice you shall pursue!” (Deuteronomy 16:20), when some of its own commandments are so unjust? If the presumptive Word of God fails the test of right and wrong, just where are we supposed to turn in our own quest for truth?
From our high moral perch at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we look down upon the benighted ethics of prior generations. We shake our heads at our American Jewish forbears in the Deep South, who celebrated Passover even as their Negro slaves waited upon them at the Seder feast. All of us today condemn human slavery; nearly all of us in this country advocate racial equality; most of us argue for equal opportunity between men and women; some of us believe that gays and lesbians deserve basic civil liberties, including marriage; very few of us would argue that all life forms on the planet deserve equal protection. However, as far back as 1936, the humanitarian Albert Schweitzer proposed the following definition of the universal ethic: “evil is anything that annihilates, hampers, or hinders life. Goodness, by the same token, is the saving or helping of life”—any life, from the sparrow to the human being. (cf. The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer, pp. 180-194) Who’s to say that several centuries from now, they won’t look back at us and shake their heads, when they see us cut off the prized dorsal fin from the hammerhead shark and throw the still thrashing, still living carcass overboard as if the creature were trash? (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/gordon-ramsay-shark-bait/) I don’t necessarily equate the slaughter of animals with murder, but maybe they will in the twenty-third century.
Nobody has a monopoly on the Truth—not the Torah, as written, and certainly not us. As Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote: “the Bible was God’s first word on the subject [of right and wrong], not His last.” (Who Needs God, p. 85) When Dr. Martin Luther King stated: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it tends toward justice,” he didn’t mean that someday, the entire world would come to embrace his vision of justice. He meant that all visions of justice, including his own, were necessarily imperfect and incomplete, but that over the long haul, they progressed and converged upon Absolute Truth. We need the humility not simply to admit that our civilization fails to live up to its own standards of justice. We need the humility to admit that our civilization lacks complete knowledge of what justice is.
Rabbi Brian
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
After an hour of studying the Torah’s laws of slavery (Exodus 21:1-11) in this past week’s Rabbi’s Study class, a participant raised his hand and said: “I have to say, I am deeply disturbed by all this.” I responded: “you have every right to be deeply disturbed.” I encountered a similar challenge at my entry interview for Rabbinical School, when the rector asked me to justify Leviticus 18:22: “you shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination.” How can we revere the Torah, with its resounding exhortation: “justice, justice you shall pursue!” (Deuteronomy 16:20), when some of its own commandments are so unjust? If the presumptive Word of God fails the test of right and wrong, just where are we supposed to turn in our own quest for truth?
From our high moral perch at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we look down upon the benighted ethics of prior generations. We shake our heads at our American Jewish forbears in the Deep South, who celebrated Passover even as their Negro slaves waited upon them at the Seder feast. All of us today condemn human slavery; nearly all of us in this country advocate racial equality; most of us argue for equal opportunity between men and women; some of us believe that gays and lesbians deserve basic civil liberties, including marriage; very few of us would argue that all life forms on the planet deserve equal protection. However, as far back as 1936, the humanitarian Albert Schweitzer proposed the following definition of the universal ethic: “evil is anything that annihilates, hampers, or hinders life. Goodness, by the same token, is the saving or helping of life”—any life, from the sparrow to the human being. (cf. The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer, pp. 180-194) Who’s to say that several centuries from now, they won’t look back at us and shake their heads, when they see us cut off the prized dorsal fin from the hammerhead shark and throw the still thrashing, still living carcass overboard as if the creature were trash? (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/gordon-ramsay-shark-bait/) I don’t necessarily equate the slaughter of animals with murder, but maybe they will in the twenty-third century.
Nobody has a monopoly on the Truth—not the Torah, as written, and certainly not us. As Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote: “the Bible was God’s first word on the subject [of right and wrong], not His last.” (Who Needs God, p. 85) When Dr. Martin Luther King stated: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it tends toward justice,” he didn’t mean that someday, the entire world would come to embrace his vision of justice. He meant that all visions of justice, including his own, were necessarily imperfect and incomplete, but that over the long haul, they progressed and converged upon Absolute Truth. We need the humility not simply to admit that our civilization fails to live up to its own standards of justice. We need the humility to admit that our civilization lacks complete knowledge of what justice is.
Rabbi Brian
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
January 19, 2011: Blessing Entails Obligation
Dear Chevre (Friends):
Why is Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, in the dead of winter? It seems odd to be celebrating the glory of creation when the earth is sleeping under a thick blanket of snow. Actually, the Rabbis deliberately chose a quiescent period in the natural cycle to mark the turn of the fiscal year. Originally, Tu B’Shevat, the 15th of the month of Shevat, served as Tax Day, like our April 15. It was the day when tithes came due. All residents of the land (ancient Israel was a primarily agricultural society) remitted one tenth of their annual produce to the priests, who redistributed it to the poor and destitute. Naturally, it was easiest for farmers to compute their total yield after the completion of one growing season and before the beginning of the next.
The origins of Tu B’Shevat remind us of the inextricable link between our gratitude for nature’s bounty and our obligation to share it with those less fortunate. “Everything from the earth is sacred property. Anyone who derives pleasure from the world without first reciting a berachah (blessing) is guilty of stealing sacred property.” (bBerachot 35a) In part, blessings over food express gratitude, and in part, they remind us of our sacred obligation to share our food with the poor. Of course, we recite a blessing not just at this evening’s Tu B’Shevat Seder, but every time we sit down to a meal.
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
Why is Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, in the dead of winter? It seems odd to be celebrating the glory of creation when the earth is sleeping under a thick blanket of snow. Actually, the Rabbis deliberately chose a quiescent period in the natural cycle to mark the turn of the fiscal year. Originally, Tu B’Shevat, the 15th of the month of Shevat, served as Tax Day, like our April 15. It was the day when tithes came due. All residents of the land (ancient Israel was a primarily agricultural society) remitted one tenth of their annual produce to the priests, who redistributed it to the poor and destitute. Naturally, it was easiest for farmers to compute their total yield after the completion of one growing season and before the beginning of the next.
The origins of Tu B’Shevat remind us of the inextricable link between our gratitude for nature’s bounty and our obligation to share it with those less fortunate. “Everything from the earth is sacred property. Anyone who derives pleasure from the world without first reciting a berachah (blessing) is guilty of stealing sacred property.” (bBerachot 35a) In part, blessings over food express gratitude, and in part, they remind us of our sacred obligation to share our food with the poor. Of course, we recite a blessing not just at this evening’s Tu B’Shevat Seder, but every time we sit down to a meal.
rabbi.brian.besser@gmail.com
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