Jacob’s Teshuvah Gemurah (Vayechi)
January 6, 2012
For me, the most powerful words of this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, the most powerful words Jacob spoke in his life (as he prepares to die), perhaps the most powerful words articulated by a human being in Genesis (as the book draws to a close), is the short phrase: yadati bni yadati, “I know, my son, I know.” It reminds me of another terse repetition from the Bible: ka’asher avadti avadti, “if I perish, I perish,” which Queen Esther declares, as she herself faces death by entering unbidden the throne room of the king. As hospital chaplains discussing patients’ different responses to illness and death, I and my colleagues have noted the difference between resignation and acceptance. Resignation still contains traces of resistance, rebellion, and anger over impending fate. By contrast, acceptance constitutes a state of complete wholeness and peace. Yadati bni yadati and ka’asher avadti avadti both exhibit complete acceptance.
Jacob’s placement of Ephraim ahead of Menasseh conforms to the basic trope of the Torah in which the younger son supplants the older. This literary pattern goes back to Cain and Abel, and includes, among other examples: Isaac and Ishmael, Moses and Aaron, and, of course, Jacob and Esau. The bechor, the firstborn, is throughout identified with the most excellent, the most exalted, the one most favored by God, whether it be the firstborn of the flock designated for the sacrificial altar, or every firstborn Israelite who is to be consecrated to God (Exodus 13:2) and redeemed through the Jewish ritual ceremony of Pidyon Haben practiced to this day. Given the significance of the status of the firstborn, the Torah’s fundamental subversion over and over again of the natural order of succession is all the more shocking.
In explanation, many scholars point to the status of the Israelite kingdom among the nations. On the stage of the ancient world, Israel was a minor province, barely worthy of notice, and hardly mentioned in the historical chronicles of the great empires that surrounded it, Egypt and Mesopotamia. By the time the Israelite people coalesced sometime around the 10th century BCE, these other civilizations had been around for millennia, since the dawn of recorded history. Israel was an upstart, a recent arrival, “the new kid on the block” in the ancient Near East. How could it be that Adonai, the mighty Ruler of the Universe, especially concerned Himself with such an insignificant populace? Deuteronomy states: “It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that Adonai set His heart on you and chose you—indeed, you are the smallest of peoples; but it was because Adonai loved you and kept the oath made to your fathers that Adonai freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 7:7) The literary theme throughout the Torah of the displacement of the older son by the younger reflects Israel’s political situation among the nations of the ancient world and justifies the legitimacy of the Torah’s claim that the children of Israel were God’s chosen people.
That may be. But for me, the power of Jacob’s words on his deathbed lies not in the grand scheme of history, but in the much more personal story of the individual—and what we are each given life to accomplish. When it comes time for Jacob to issue his final blessings, Joseph, well aware of the proper order of succession, presents his sons in correct position in front of Jacob, with Menasseh, the firstborn, in front of Jacob’s right hand, and Ephraim, the youngest, in front of Jacob’s left hand. To this day, the right-hand side symbolizes goodness, strength, and vigor. However, Jacob refuses. Openly and deliberately, he crosses his hands, advancing the younger before the older. Ephraim is to precede Menasseh. (In later history, the allotment for Ephraim included a vast area that became identified with the Northern Kingdom of Israel, whereas the tribal allotment for Menasseh was relegated across the Jordan, across the boundary of the Holy Land.) Joseph protests that it is not correct to favor the younger—despite the fact that he himself, the younger brother among his own siblings, enjoyed the special affections of his father, arousing the jealousy and hatred of his older brethren. Jacob replies in the simplest terms: yadati bni yadati, “I know, my son, I know,” meaning: “I know what I’m doing. You may think I’m blind, you may think that I can’t see, but I can see perfectly well, and I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Why do the words yadati bni yadati, “I know, my son, I know,” send shivers up my spine every time? Because Jacob’s eyes are no longer set on Joseph and Joseph’s children. Instead, he is envisioning an entirely different scene from long ago. Rolling back the years of travail and suffering to the very beginning, he sees a young child coming before his father full of hurt, because his father loves his older brother, and not him. The child is a wolf in sheep’s clothing; he is determined to wrest his father’s affections through stealth, if he cannot claim his father’s love openly. Jacob himself is that little child. When Jacob says: “I know, my son, I know,” “my son” does not so much refer to Joseph as it refers to the little boy Jacob inside of himself.
Maimonides delineates three stages of repentance: desisting from the transgression, resolving in one’s heart never to recommit the transgression, confessing the transgression and making restitution. Then, he famously posits a fourth, final stage: "What constitutes complete repentance, teshuvah gemurah? The one who is confronted by the identical situation wherein one previously sinned and it lies within one’s power to commit the sin again, but nevertheless does not succumb,” and chooses a different course of action. (Hilchot Teshuvah 2:2) At the end of his life, Jacob has come full circle back to the beginning. Once again, he finds himself in the position of claiming the blessing of the firstborn. This time, his overt articulation: “I know what I am doing, and I do so in the sight of all,” reverses his original deception. Jacob has achieved teshuvah gemurah.
Through my work as a hospital chaplain, I have learned that there is no greater gift for the dying than a clean conscience. The thing is, we mustn’t wait until we are confronted with death before we clean our conscience. We can and must live today, and every day, as if it were our last. My blessing to you today is the promise of teshuvah gemurah. May you go beyond resignation, and achieve the fullness of acceptance, wholeness and peace.
Monday, January 16, 2012
October 18, 2011: A Greater Chesed (October 18, 2011)
A Greater Chesed
A woman and a man meet later in life, fall in love, and get married. He has children from his previous marriage, but they want to build a household together with children of their own. They try, and fail, and try again (she is getting close to the end of childbearing age). At last, she conceives. With joy, they count down the months, the weeks, the days. The anticipated moment arrives, and a beautiful baby boy enters the world. He lives barely a few minutes, and expires in the birthing room. They are devastated. If they decided to set aside their dream for a family, to choke off their yearning, and to shut down their hearts, rather than risk another tragedy, who would blame them?
“Then Isaac brought [Rebecca] into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebecca as his wife. Isaac loved her, and he was comforted after the death of his mother.” (Genesis 24:67) This line completes one of the longest chapters in the Torah, the story of Isaac’s marriage quest. In what sense does Rebecca come to comfort Isaac after the death of his mother, Sarah? Although the weekly Torah portion, entitled Chayei Sarah, “the Life of Sarah,” ironically begins with the account of Sarah’s death, her presence looms large throughout it. Sarah dies on the heels of the Akeidah, the Almighty’s tragic command to Abraham that he must sacrifice his “only son” Isaac upon the altar. Isaac survives the trauma, but it is apparently too much for Sarah, with whom he is psychically intertwined. Rashi summarizes the Midrash: “The Torah recounts the death of Sarah immediately after the Akeidah to demonstrate that, as a result of hearing the news that her son was made ready for slaughter and was nearly slaughtered, her soul flew away and she died.” (Rashi on Genesis 23:2) Rashi generalizes upon the Oedipal attachment later on: “it is the way of the world that as long as a man’s mother is alive, he is bound up with her, but the words ‘Isaac was comforted after the death of his mother’ mean that when she dies, he is comforted through his wife.” (Rashi on Genesis 24:67) Rebecca is Isaac’s particular answer to the universal psychological drama first described at the beginning of Genesis: “thus a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife.” (Genesis 2:24) However, Rebecca’s arrival signifies much more than that.
The story begins when Abraham charges his servant: “You will not take a wife for my son [here] from among whom I dwell, but you will return to the land of my birth.” (Genesis 24:4) The servant looks for a sign that the woman he encounters is the one designated by God. So he prays: “Show chesed to my lord, Abraham. While I stand at the spring where the daughters of the town come out to draw water, let the maiden to whom I say, ‘please, lower your jar that I may drink,’ and who replies ‘drink, and I will also give drink to your camels,”—let her be the one whom You have decreed for Your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown chesed to my lord, Abraham.” (Genesis 24:12-14) It’s not just that Rebecca amazingly fulfills the servant’s elaborate prediction to the letter; it’s that her very actions exemplify the divine chesed that the servant seeks. Chesed, “lovingkindness,” is defined as the gratuitous outpouring of generosity. Chesed’s essential characteristic is that it exceeds obligation. That is precisely what Rebecca does when she goes beyond the servant’s request and freely offers water to the camels, in addition to giving him refreshment. Moreover, providing for domestic animals is always an act of chesed, because they cannot fend for themselves.
In Rabbinic tradition, Abraham is considered the paradigmatic purveyor of chesed throughout the world. Abraham and Sarah’s tent, whose doors were flung wide on all four sides to welcome passersby from all directions of the compass, is the paradigmatic symbol of hospitality. Rashi describes Sarah’s tent with vivid imagery: “as long as Sarah was alive, a candle remained lit from the eve of Shabbat onward, blessing was to be found in the dough of the challah, and the cloud of Shechinah (the divine Presence) rested upon [the tent].” (Rashi on Genesis 24:67) The Shabbat images, the candlelight, the challah and the dough, representing nourishment and potential, and the cloud of the Shechinah, reminiscent of the cloud that covered another tent, the Tent of Meeting, (Exodus 33:9) all powerfully express Sarah’s generosity. Only, Sarah and Abraham’s world went dark with the Akeidah. Rashi describes their spiritual devastation, followed by spiritual uplift: “when she died, all these things (the candle, the dough, the cloud) ceased, but when Rebecca came, all these things returned.” Rashi’s source Midrash puns on the word oheil, tent, which, in its verbal form, means “to brighten.” (Breishit Rabbah 60:16; cf. Job 25:5) Thus, Rebecca came to illuminate Sarah’s darkened tent, to redeem Abraham and Isaac from the calamity of the Akeidah, and to bring chesed back into the world. Abraham’s initial directive to his servant takes on symbolic import. “You will not take a wife for my son here, from among whom I dwell,” that is, Abraham realizes that he can no longer replenish his own store of chesed where he is, because tragedy has impoverished him beyond his ability to reconstitute himself. “Return to the land of my birth” means: Abraham must go back to the world he knew before tragedy struck, in order to reclaim his initial source of chesed.
A close reading of the text reveals that Rebecca’s chesed is greater than Abraham’s. After the servant recognizes Rebecca as the wife destined for Isaac, the Torah presents a new descriptor associated with chesed. It’s not just called chesed, “lovingkindness,” but chesed ve-emet, “true lovingkindness:” “the [servant] bowed low to God, and said: ‘may Adonai be blessed… for He has not withheld His chesed ve-emet from my master Abraham.’” (Genesis 24:27) In Rabbinic tradition, chesed shel emet indicates a heightened form of chesed, namely, a truly selfless act of generosity. Burial of the dead constitutes the classic example of chesed shel emet, because the deceased can never repay the kindness. (Breishit Rabbah 96:5) (Accordingly, the two sections of the JCOGS cemetery are named “Chesed” and “Emet.”) I have always been dissatisfied with the classic distinction between chesed and chesed shel emet. To my mind, love is necessarily unconditional, or else it isn’t really love. What does truth add to lovingkindness that’s not already present within lovingkindness to begin with? To put it another way, how does Rebecca’s chesed shel emet surpass Abraham’s mere chesed?
It seems to me that the element of “truth” introduced by the Rabbis with the example of burial is the acknowledgement that tragedy and suffering occupy a prominent place in the world that we inhabit. When we learn of someone’s death, the Talmud enjoins upon us the recitation: Baruch dayan ha-emet, “Blessed are You, God, the Judge of Truth.” “To bless over evil as we bless over good” (bBerachot 54b) forces us to confront the hard facts of human experience. When we bury the dead, we attest to our free desire to extend the warmth of love in the face of the cold reality of death. The essential characteristic of chesed shel emet, as distinguished from chesed alone, is the expression of love despite full awareness of the true nature of the world, where love may go unanswered or unacknowledged, or where it may even be rejected.
Throughout their lives, Abraham and Sarah welcome strangers into their tent, Sarah bakes challah and lights Shabbat candles, and they both lavish chesed upon the world. Then, the Akeidah puts an abrupt end to all their ministrations. It is at this point that Rebecca enters the scene. Rebecca’s love is called chesed shel emet, because it grows in the shadow of the Akeidah and, therefore, encompasses the truth of tragedy.
My conception of Abraham/Sarah and Rebecca as representative of two different types of chesed dovetails with the Jewish mystical framework set forth by the Zohar. In the Zohar, Abraham represents the formal attribute (or “sefirah”) of Chesed, divine Love, and Isaac represents its opposite, the formal attribute (“sefirah”) of Gevurah, divine Judgment. “[Gevurah] is the divine face Isaac sees when bound to that altar, confronting the god he believes is about to demand his life.” (Green, Introduction to the Zohar, p. 43) The Zohar considers the sefirah of Emet, divine Truth, to be the synthesis of Chesed and Gevurah, that is, Love held in check by Judgment. Emet occupies the center of the mystical universe. Emet is associated with the persona of Jacob, the progeny of Rebecca, whose birth immediately follows the conclusion of the Torah portion, Chayei Sarah. I would simply add that Rebecca’s chesed shel emet prefigures and spawns the Emet of Jacob.
Sarah can finally rest in peace, because, as Rashi comments: “Rebecca has become a model for Sarah.” (Rashi on Genesis 24:67) Rebecca has not only substituted for Sarah’s model, she has enlarged upon Sarah’s model. She has replaced generosity of spirit with generosity of spirit that continues to flow in spite of the harsh reality of evil. The divine impulse to pour forth love, which is embedded internally within every human heart, has found a way to live in harmony with the cruel external realities of human existence.
Several years after the death of their beloved son, the wife and husband decide that they want to risk breaking their hearts once more. This time, they give birth to a healthy little girl, who is growing up to be the light and joy of their lives. It’s one thing to love in blissful, carefree innocence. It’s quite another to have the courage to love in the full, sober knowledge of the tragedies of life. That is the greater chesed.
A woman and a man meet later in life, fall in love, and get married. He has children from his previous marriage, but they want to build a household together with children of their own. They try, and fail, and try again (she is getting close to the end of childbearing age). At last, she conceives. With joy, they count down the months, the weeks, the days. The anticipated moment arrives, and a beautiful baby boy enters the world. He lives barely a few minutes, and expires in the birthing room. They are devastated. If they decided to set aside their dream for a family, to choke off their yearning, and to shut down their hearts, rather than risk another tragedy, who would blame them?
“Then Isaac brought [Rebecca] into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebecca as his wife. Isaac loved her, and he was comforted after the death of his mother.” (Genesis 24:67) This line completes one of the longest chapters in the Torah, the story of Isaac’s marriage quest. In what sense does Rebecca come to comfort Isaac after the death of his mother, Sarah? Although the weekly Torah portion, entitled Chayei Sarah, “the Life of Sarah,” ironically begins with the account of Sarah’s death, her presence looms large throughout it. Sarah dies on the heels of the Akeidah, the Almighty’s tragic command to Abraham that he must sacrifice his “only son” Isaac upon the altar. Isaac survives the trauma, but it is apparently too much for Sarah, with whom he is psychically intertwined. Rashi summarizes the Midrash: “The Torah recounts the death of Sarah immediately after the Akeidah to demonstrate that, as a result of hearing the news that her son was made ready for slaughter and was nearly slaughtered, her soul flew away and she died.” (Rashi on Genesis 23:2) Rashi generalizes upon the Oedipal attachment later on: “it is the way of the world that as long as a man’s mother is alive, he is bound up with her, but the words ‘Isaac was comforted after the death of his mother’ mean that when she dies, he is comforted through his wife.” (Rashi on Genesis 24:67) Rebecca is Isaac’s particular answer to the universal psychological drama first described at the beginning of Genesis: “thus a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife.” (Genesis 2:24) However, Rebecca’s arrival signifies much more than that.
The story begins when Abraham charges his servant: “You will not take a wife for my son [here] from among whom I dwell, but you will return to the land of my birth.” (Genesis 24:4) The servant looks for a sign that the woman he encounters is the one designated by God. So he prays: “Show chesed to my lord, Abraham. While I stand at the spring where the daughters of the town come out to draw water, let the maiden to whom I say, ‘please, lower your jar that I may drink,’ and who replies ‘drink, and I will also give drink to your camels,”—let her be the one whom You have decreed for Your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown chesed to my lord, Abraham.” (Genesis 24:12-14) It’s not just that Rebecca amazingly fulfills the servant’s elaborate prediction to the letter; it’s that her very actions exemplify the divine chesed that the servant seeks. Chesed, “lovingkindness,” is defined as the gratuitous outpouring of generosity. Chesed’s essential characteristic is that it exceeds obligation. That is precisely what Rebecca does when she goes beyond the servant’s request and freely offers water to the camels, in addition to giving him refreshment. Moreover, providing for domestic animals is always an act of chesed, because they cannot fend for themselves.
In Rabbinic tradition, Abraham is considered the paradigmatic purveyor of chesed throughout the world. Abraham and Sarah’s tent, whose doors were flung wide on all four sides to welcome passersby from all directions of the compass, is the paradigmatic symbol of hospitality. Rashi describes Sarah’s tent with vivid imagery: “as long as Sarah was alive, a candle remained lit from the eve of Shabbat onward, blessing was to be found in the dough of the challah, and the cloud of Shechinah (the divine Presence) rested upon [the tent].” (Rashi on Genesis 24:67) The Shabbat images, the candlelight, the challah and the dough, representing nourishment and potential, and the cloud of the Shechinah, reminiscent of the cloud that covered another tent, the Tent of Meeting, (Exodus 33:9) all powerfully express Sarah’s generosity. Only, Sarah and Abraham’s world went dark with the Akeidah. Rashi describes their spiritual devastation, followed by spiritual uplift: “when she died, all these things (the candle, the dough, the cloud) ceased, but when Rebecca came, all these things returned.” Rashi’s source Midrash puns on the word oheil, tent, which, in its verbal form, means “to brighten.” (Breishit Rabbah 60:16; cf. Job 25:5) Thus, Rebecca came to illuminate Sarah’s darkened tent, to redeem Abraham and Isaac from the calamity of the Akeidah, and to bring chesed back into the world. Abraham’s initial directive to his servant takes on symbolic import. “You will not take a wife for my son here, from among whom I dwell,” that is, Abraham realizes that he can no longer replenish his own store of chesed where he is, because tragedy has impoverished him beyond his ability to reconstitute himself. “Return to the land of my birth” means: Abraham must go back to the world he knew before tragedy struck, in order to reclaim his initial source of chesed.
A close reading of the text reveals that Rebecca’s chesed is greater than Abraham’s. After the servant recognizes Rebecca as the wife destined for Isaac, the Torah presents a new descriptor associated with chesed. It’s not just called chesed, “lovingkindness,” but chesed ve-emet, “true lovingkindness:” “the [servant] bowed low to God, and said: ‘may Adonai be blessed… for He has not withheld His chesed ve-emet from my master Abraham.’” (Genesis 24:27) In Rabbinic tradition, chesed shel emet indicates a heightened form of chesed, namely, a truly selfless act of generosity. Burial of the dead constitutes the classic example of chesed shel emet, because the deceased can never repay the kindness. (Breishit Rabbah 96:5) (Accordingly, the two sections of the JCOGS cemetery are named “Chesed” and “Emet.”) I have always been dissatisfied with the classic distinction between chesed and chesed shel emet. To my mind, love is necessarily unconditional, or else it isn’t really love. What does truth add to lovingkindness that’s not already present within lovingkindness to begin with? To put it another way, how does Rebecca’s chesed shel emet surpass Abraham’s mere chesed?
It seems to me that the element of “truth” introduced by the Rabbis with the example of burial is the acknowledgement that tragedy and suffering occupy a prominent place in the world that we inhabit. When we learn of someone’s death, the Talmud enjoins upon us the recitation: Baruch dayan ha-emet, “Blessed are You, God, the Judge of Truth.” “To bless over evil as we bless over good” (bBerachot 54b) forces us to confront the hard facts of human experience. When we bury the dead, we attest to our free desire to extend the warmth of love in the face of the cold reality of death. The essential characteristic of chesed shel emet, as distinguished from chesed alone, is the expression of love despite full awareness of the true nature of the world, where love may go unanswered or unacknowledged, or where it may even be rejected.
Throughout their lives, Abraham and Sarah welcome strangers into their tent, Sarah bakes challah and lights Shabbat candles, and they both lavish chesed upon the world. Then, the Akeidah puts an abrupt end to all their ministrations. It is at this point that Rebecca enters the scene. Rebecca’s love is called chesed shel emet, because it grows in the shadow of the Akeidah and, therefore, encompasses the truth of tragedy.
My conception of Abraham/Sarah and Rebecca as representative of two different types of chesed dovetails with the Jewish mystical framework set forth by the Zohar. In the Zohar, Abraham represents the formal attribute (or “sefirah”) of Chesed, divine Love, and Isaac represents its opposite, the formal attribute (“sefirah”) of Gevurah, divine Judgment. “[Gevurah] is the divine face Isaac sees when bound to that altar, confronting the god he believes is about to demand his life.” (Green, Introduction to the Zohar, p. 43) The Zohar considers the sefirah of Emet, divine Truth, to be the synthesis of Chesed and Gevurah, that is, Love held in check by Judgment. Emet occupies the center of the mystical universe. Emet is associated with the persona of Jacob, the progeny of Rebecca, whose birth immediately follows the conclusion of the Torah portion, Chayei Sarah. I would simply add that Rebecca’s chesed shel emet prefigures and spawns the Emet of Jacob.
Sarah can finally rest in peace, because, as Rashi comments: “Rebecca has become a model for Sarah.” (Rashi on Genesis 24:67) Rebecca has not only substituted for Sarah’s model, she has enlarged upon Sarah’s model. She has replaced generosity of spirit with generosity of spirit that continues to flow in spite of the harsh reality of evil. The divine impulse to pour forth love, which is embedded internally within every human heart, has found a way to live in harmony with the cruel external realities of human existence.
Several years after the death of their beloved son, the wife and husband decide that they want to risk breaking their hearts once more. This time, they give birth to a healthy little girl, who is growing up to be the light and joy of their lives. It’s one thing to love in blissful, carefree innocence. It’s quite another to have the courage to love in the full, sober knowledge of the tragedies of life. That is the greater chesed.
December 16, 2011: No Rest for the Weary
No Rest for the Weary
After I delivered my sermon at the last Shabbat service on Jacob’s emotional and spiritual development, one of you came up to me and said: “I don’t like Jacob.” I asked: “Why not?” “He’s not very likeable.” It’s true that Jacob’s manipulation and deceit, his passions and jealousies, are unsavory. He vexes us because he reminds of ourselves. Biblical scholar Avivah Zornberg observes: “Jacob is Everyman.” (p. 279) Sometimes we can learn more from a life-size model such as Jacob, with foibles and faults like our own, than from an impossibly unblemished paragon such as Abraham, who seems to barely touch the ground.
At Bnei Jeshurun last week, the Rabbi sermonized on the moments of wholeness and fullness during Jacob’s life journey. She noted that after twenty years of exile and suffering, he comes home to reconcile with his brother Esau, and the Torah applies to him the epithet of completion: “Jacob came to the city of Shechem complete.” (Genesis 33:18) The Hebrew word for complete is shaleim, related directly to shalom and its connotation of peace. The Rabbi continued: we yearn for such moments of calm and serenity, and celebrate them when they arrive. Like Shabbat amid the seven days of the week, points of rest anchor us amid the turbulence of our regular experience. Even though points of calm are fleeting, they make the remainder of our lives manageable.
This week, I would like to the opposite point. In some profound sense, we are not meant to remain at rest. We are meant to strive, we are meant to struggle, and we are meant to live in turbulence. The name of this week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev, means “and he settled.” It comes from the opening verse: vayeshev Yaakov be’eretz megurei aviv be’eretz Kena’an, “And Jacob settled in the land where his father had sojourned, in the land of Canaan.” The sentence is designed to contrast Jacob’s permanent settlement in the land with his father Isaac’s temporary sojourn, since Isaac was always on the move and never owned property of his own. However, commentators have always taken the word vayeshev to point to Jacob’s state of mind, rather than his physical location. If so, the word is replete with an irony that Rashi seizes upon: “ ‘And Jacob settled:’ Jacob sought to settle in tranquility, but at that very moment the trouble of Joseph leapt upon him.” What Rashi refers to, of course, is that in the very next line we are introduced to the jealousy and resentment between Jacob’s beloved son Joseph and his brothers, which will lead in very short order to Joseph’s apparent disappearance and Jacob’s immeasurable grief. The text may state: “and Jacob settled,” but we as readers know that Jacob is about to be jolted into the greatest agitation that he has ever known.
Rashi continues with the following generalization: “The righteous seek to settle in tranquility: but God says, ‘their reward in the World to Come is not enough for them, that they seek to settle in tranquility in this world?’” (Rashi on Genesis 37:2) Rashi’s comment is surprising: why is God critical of the righteous, who desire tranquility? As the Bnei Jeshurun Rabbi noted, the desire for rest is the most universally human of cravings. However, Rashi seems to be saying that there is something wrong with settling in tranquility, with remaining in a state of ease, at least from the point of view of righteousness. To stay uniformly calm in a troubled world betokens apathy. My chaplain colleague observes: “the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is indifference.” As we prayed earlier: “if you see suffering and don’t cry out, if you don’t praise and don’t revile, then I created you in vain, says God.” By the way, it’s interesting to observe that classic Jewish descriptions of the World to Come generally do not portrayed idyllic scenes of angels reclining upon clouds and playing the lyre. Instead, in some depictions, scholars continue to spar over words of Torah. It seems that even in Heaven, there is no rest for the weary.
At fifty years old, I know myself pretty well by now. I know the types of psychological triggers that set me off. Take this morning, first instance. I noticed a seventy-five cent discrepancy on my credit card receipt, and instead of letting it go effortlessly, I allowed myself to get all worked up in a self-righteous frenzy at a senseless clod of a telephone sales rep, wasting half an hour of my life, all for the sake of seventy-five cents. It’s the principle of thing—don’t you know. I can smile at myself now, but I used to imagine that if I just lived and worked hard enough on myself, I would overcome all of my character flaws and I would live in permanent state of serenity. The lesson of Vayeshev is that the disappearance of personal setbacks is not only impossible, it’s undesirable, and that knowledge allows me a certain freedom and lightness when I discover myself in turmoil once again. Jacob will experience upset throughout his life, and, apparently, so will I. The key is to embrace difficulties not merely with composure, but even with joy, because challenge is the stuff of life. It’s like going outside into raging rain, and instead of complaining about the stormy weather, reveling in the thrill of it. Yes, Shabbat is important for the opportunity to recharge. But perpetual Shabbat would be empty. As long as we are alive, we are meant to struggle. It’s the meaning of Jacob’s acquired name: Israel, “one who struggles with God and men.” Since we are the children of Israel, it’s the meaning of our name as well.
After I delivered my sermon at the last Shabbat service on Jacob’s emotional and spiritual development, one of you came up to me and said: “I don’t like Jacob.” I asked: “Why not?” “He’s not very likeable.” It’s true that Jacob’s manipulation and deceit, his passions and jealousies, are unsavory. He vexes us because he reminds of ourselves. Biblical scholar Avivah Zornberg observes: “Jacob is Everyman.” (p. 279) Sometimes we can learn more from a life-size model such as Jacob, with foibles and faults like our own, than from an impossibly unblemished paragon such as Abraham, who seems to barely touch the ground.
At Bnei Jeshurun last week, the Rabbi sermonized on the moments of wholeness and fullness during Jacob’s life journey. She noted that after twenty years of exile and suffering, he comes home to reconcile with his brother Esau, and the Torah applies to him the epithet of completion: “Jacob came to the city of Shechem complete.” (Genesis 33:18) The Hebrew word for complete is shaleim, related directly to shalom and its connotation of peace. The Rabbi continued: we yearn for such moments of calm and serenity, and celebrate them when they arrive. Like Shabbat amid the seven days of the week, points of rest anchor us amid the turbulence of our regular experience. Even though points of calm are fleeting, they make the remainder of our lives manageable.
This week, I would like to the opposite point. In some profound sense, we are not meant to remain at rest. We are meant to strive, we are meant to struggle, and we are meant to live in turbulence. The name of this week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev, means “and he settled.” It comes from the opening verse: vayeshev Yaakov be’eretz megurei aviv be’eretz Kena’an, “And Jacob settled in the land where his father had sojourned, in the land of Canaan.” The sentence is designed to contrast Jacob’s permanent settlement in the land with his father Isaac’s temporary sojourn, since Isaac was always on the move and never owned property of his own. However, commentators have always taken the word vayeshev to point to Jacob’s state of mind, rather than his physical location. If so, the word is replete with an irony that Rashi seizes upon: “ ‘And Jacob settled:’ Jacob sought to settle in tranquility, but at that very moment the trouble of Joseph leapt upon him.” What Rashi refers to, of course, is that in the very next line we are introduced to the jealousy and resentment between Jacob’s beloved son Joseph and his brothers, which will lead in very short order to Joseph’s apparent disappearance and Jacob’s immeasurable grief. The text may state: “and Jacob settled,” but we as readers know that Jacob is about to be jolted into the greatest agitation that he has ever known.
Rashi continues with the following generalization: “The righteous seek to settle in tranquility: but God says, ‘their reward in the World to Come is not enough for them, that they seek to settle in tranquility in this world?’” (Rashi on Genesis 37:2) Rashi’s comment is surprising: why is God critical of the righteous, who desire tranquility? As the Bnei Jeshurun Rabbi noted, the desire for rest is the most universally human of cravings. However, Rashi seems to be saying that there is something wrong with settling in tranquility, with remaining in a state of ease, at least from the point of view of righteousness. To stay uniformly calm in a troubled world betokens apathy. My chaplain colleague observes: “the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is indifference.” As we prayed earlier: “if you see suffering and don’t cry out, if you don’t praise and don’t revile, then I created you in vain, says God.” By the way, it’s interesting to observe that classic Jewish descriptions of the World to Come generally do not portrayed idyllic scenes of angels reclining upon clouds and playing the lyre. Instead, in some depictions, scholars continue to spar over words of Torah. It seems that even in Heaven, there is no rest for the weary.
At fifty years old, I know myself pretty well by now. I know the types of psychological triggers that set me off. Take this morning, first instance. I noticed a seventy-five cent discrepancy on my credit card receipt, and instead of letting it go effortlessly, I allowed myself to get all worked up in a self-righteous frenzy at a senseless clod of a telephone sales rep, wasting half an hour of my life, all for the sake of seventy-five cents. It’s the principle of thing—don’t you know. I can smile at myself now, but I used to imagine that if I just lived and worked hard enough on myself, I would overcome all of my character flaws and I would live in permanent state of serenity. The lesson of Vayeshev is that the disappearance of personal setbacks is not only impossible, it’s undesirable, and that knowledge allows me a certain freedom and lightness when I discover myself in turmoil once again. Jacob will experience upset throughout his life, and, apparently, so will I. The key is to embrace difficulties not merely with composure, but even with joy, because challenge is the stuff of life. It’s like going outside into raging rain, and instead of complaining about the stormy weather, reveling in the thrill of it. Yes, Shabbat is important for the opportunity to recharge. But perpetual Shabbat would be empty. As long as we are alive, we are meant to struggle. It’s the meaning of Jacob’s acquired name: Israel, “one who struggles with God and men.” Since we are the children of Israel, it’s the meaning of our name as well.
December 2, 2011: Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Awareness
Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Awareness
As a hospital chaplain, I help the patient bring her own spiritual resources to bear on her situation. I seek to frame her experience in a theological context—her theology, not mine. The goal of the pastoral encounter is for her to develop senses of connection, comfort, and guidance—in short, to become spiritually aware. However, before I can facilitate any of that, I must first engage her on an emotional level.
We need to know what we are feeling before we are able to know what God is saying to us. If we try to force an interpretation upon personal circumstances before we are ready, we are left unenlightened, or, worse, alienated. As religion professors Killen and De Beer write in The Art of Theological Reflection: “Our human drive for meaning is so strong that it can disrupt reflection. Our habitual interpretive process can lead us to misinterpret our experience by too quickly putting a meaning on it.” (p. 29-30) Job’s so-called comforters err when they frame Job’s illness as divine punishment, not so much because their message is wrong, but because they deny Job’s true outrage at the injustice of his suffering. We, too, often deny the true nature of our feelings, because we deem them inappropriate or shameful. We formulate judgmental thoughts about our moods: “It’s wrong to feel this way,” “ I have no reason to feel this way,” “I’ve got to snap out of it,” and so on. However, true self-awareness can only come from what neuroscientists call “metacognition,” from what psychoanalysts call “the observing ego,” and from what Buddhists call “mindfulness”—a nonreactive, nonjudgmental attentiveness to our inner state of mind.
It is self-evident that the opening scene of this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitsei, portrays an epiphany. For the first time in his life, Jacob develops a sense of God. He envisions God in a dream, wakes up, and exclaims: “Surely, God is present in this place, but I did not know it.” (Genesis 28:17) Afterwards, he anoints a pillar and offers a prayer to God. So much is clear. Less apparent than his spiritual awakening, but equally significant, is Jacob’s emotional development at Beth El.
A close reading of the Biblical text reveals the dramatic conversion of Jacob’s emotional state from insensibility to passion. Last week’s Torah portion, Toldot, describes Jacob’s machinations—bartering a bowl of stew for his brother Esau’s birthright, stealing Esau’s blessing of the firstborn—without any description whatsoever of his feelings (in contrast to the Torah’s vivid account of Esau’s emotions—alternately angry, tearful, grudging, and vengeful). Jacob’s scheming actions appear to be entirely divorced from guilt, resentment, or any other feeling one might expect. The classic Rabbinic portrayal of the young Jacob, based upon the epithet “dweller of tents,” (Genesis 26:27) corroborates the image of a dispassionate intellectual. In one Midrash, he spends fourteen years studying Torah, cultivating his mind but not his heart. (Bereishit Rabbah 68:11)
Once Jacob arrives Beth El, his emotions begin to cascade fast and thick. He awakens from his sleep, and immediately the text reads: “Jacob was afraid.” (Genesis 28:17) Shortly afterwards, the Torah narrative intimates and the Rabbinic literature fleshes out Jacob’s violent mixture of shock and revulsion when, on his wedding night, Laban deceives him into marrying Leah, whom he hates. (Genesis 29:31) However, Jacob’s most complex amalgam of emotional response centers on Rachel: “When Jacob saw Rachel, he kissed her, and wept…. And Jacob loved Rachel.” (Genesis 29:11, 18) Commentators marvel that Jacob bursts into tears at the moment that he beholds Rachel for the first time. Bestselling author Daniel Goleman coined the phrase “emotional intelligence” to denote the ability to recognize and manage feelings effectively. The capacity to experience two strong and opposing feelings simultaneously—in this case, love and sadness—is the sign of a high degree of emotional intelligence. What’s more, later on, Jacob experiences anger at Rachel as well: “Rachel said to Jacob: give me children or I shall die. Jacob was incensed at Rachel, saying: can I take the place of God, who has denied you fruit of the womb?” (Genesis 30:1-2) Is guilt the basis of Jacob’s ire, since he cannot fulfill her longing for children? Or is it jealousy, since her longing for children is more important to her than her desire for him? Goleman groups all human emotions within eight primary categories, “the blue, red, and yellow of feeling from which all blends come.” The primary emotions are: anger, sadness, fear, joy, love, surprise, disgust, and shame. (p. 289-290) Within the space of a few lines of Biblical text, Jacob feels them all.
Jacob’s journey from intellectual to emotional awareness mirrors my own. I wrote the following on my application for Rabbinical School: “I was a bright student, engaging all my teachers with my probing mind and insatiable curiosity. I approached Jewish studies the same way I approached mathematics. My connection to religion was cerebral at that age.” There is a crucial difference between precocious acquisition of knowledge and deepseated exploration. These days, I try to open both my mind and my heart to wisdom and insight. Furthermore, I have come to realize that mind and heart are compatible. As Goleman observes: “IQ and emotional intelligence are not opposing competencies, but separate ones.” (p. 44)
Jacob’s encounter at Beth El represents a watershed in emotional maturity. First of all, the mere fact that it is a dream indicates a readiness to experience the unpredictable world of the unconscious, which is usually held at bay through the controlling mechanisms of the conscious mind. Dr. Avivah Zornberg points out that the young Jacob’s legendary wakefulness has prevented him from apprehending holiness until this point. Only when he lets himself fall asleep at Beth El does he open himself to the “possible gifts of unconsciousness, of knowing and dreaming [of the Divine].” (The Beginning of Desire, p. 190) Similarly, Killen and De Beer discuss imagery as an important step in theological reflection. Creating images allows direct access to affective experience, circumventing the rational mind’s attempt to control it, suppress it, or predict its meaning. (Killen and De Beer, p. 38)
Bearing Killen and De Beer’s technique in mind, I would like to forge and contemplate an image of Jacob’s dream. My image combines two Midrashic accounts. According to the first, Jacob’s body lies upon the ground while his “icon” (spiritual essence) is engraved in the Throne of Glory on high. The angels upon the ladder leap upon and scoff at Jacob for sleeping while his glorious counterpart reigns in the supernal realm. (Bereishit Rabbah 68:12) The second Midrash depicts the angels trying to land upon the supine Jacob, but God stands over him and shoos them away as if they were pesky flies. (Bereishit Rabbah 69:3)
As I contemplate the composite image, it seems to me that the sleeping Jacob symbolizes the physical body, which is the seat of our unconscious emotions. The supernal Jacob symbolizes the cognitive mind, which is the seat of our conscious thoughts. The figure of God symbolizes “metacognition,” which is closely involved with our experience and yet remains a little bit detached from it. The pesky, scoffing angels symbolize all the judgmental thoughts that inhibit direct access to our true feelings. The nonreactive Self (“God”) shoos them away like flies, clears them like so much static. Once the ladder is wiped clean of interfering angels, it presents itself as a new image—a charged current running up one side of the rungs and down the other. The electric circuit symbolizes a free flow between feelings and thoughts, a tight interconnection between our apprehensive and comprehensive minds.
The insight that arises for me from this dynamic image of Jacob’s dream concerns the nature of insight itself: clarity comes to us when we are in touch with our true feelings. If we want to hear God’s message to us, we must first set aside our mental distractions and listen to what our own bodies are telling us. At the end of the Jacob’s process, God declares: “I am with you. I will protect you and guide you, and I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised.” (Genesis 28:15) God’s promise includes connection, comfort, and guidance—in short, all of the elements of spirituality. Spiritual awareness is the grand prize for achieving emotional intelligence.
As a hospital chaplain, I help the patient bring her own spiritual resources to bear on her situation. I seek to frame her experience in a theological context—her theology, not mine. The goal of the pastoral encounter is for her to develop senses of connection, comfort, and guidance—in short, to become spiritually aware. However, before I can facilitate any of that, I must first engage her on an emotional level.
We need to know what we are feeling before we are able to know what God is saying to us. If we try to force an interpretation upon personal circumstances before we are ready, we are left unenlightened, or, worse, alienated. As religion professors Killen and De Beer write in The Art of Theological Reflection: “Our human drive for meaning is so strong that it can disrupt reflection. Our habitual interpretive process can lead us to misinterpret our experience by too quickly putting a meaning on it.” (p. 29-30) Job’s so-called comforters err when they frame Job’s illness as divine punishment, not so much because their message is wrong, but because they deny Job’s true outrage at the injustice of his suffering. We, too, often deny the true nature of our feelings, because we deem them inappropriate or shameful. We formulate judgmental thoughts about our moods: “It’s wrong to feel this way,” “ I have no reason to feel this way,” “I’ve got to snap out of it,” and so on. However, true self-awareness can only come from what neuroscientists call “metacognition,” from what psychoanalysts call “the observing ego,” and from what Buddhists call “mindfulness”—a nonreactive, nonjudgmental attentiveness to our inner state of mind.
It is self-evident that the opening scene of this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitsei, portrays an epiphany. For the first time in his life, Jacob develops a sense of God. He envisions God in a dream, wakes up, and exclaims: “Surely, God is present in this place, but I did not know it.” (Genesis 28:17) Afterwards, he anoints a pillar and offers a prayer to God. So much is clear. Less apparent than his spiritual awakening, but equally significant, is Jacob’s emotional development at Beth El.
A close reading of the Biblical text reveals the dramatic conversion of Jacob’s emotional state from insensibility to passion. Last week’s Torah portion, Toldot, describes Jacob’s machinations—bartering a bowl of stew for his brother Esau’s birthright, stealing Esau’s blessing of the firstborn—without any description whatsoever of his feelings (in contrast to the Torah’s vivid account of Esau’s emotions—alternately angry, tearful, grudging, and vengeful). Jacob’s scheming actions appear to be entirely divorced from guilt, resentment, or any other feeling one might expect. The classic Rabbinic portrayal of the young Jacob, based upon the epithet “dweller of tents,” (Genesis 26:27) corroborates the image of a dispassionate intellectual. In one Midrash, he spends fourteen years studying Torah, cultivating his mind but not his heart. (Bereishit Rabbah 68:11)
Once Jacob arrives Beth El, his emotions begin to cascade fast and thick. He awakens from his sleep, and immediately the text reads: “Jacob was afraid.” (Genesis 28:17) Shortly afterwards, the Torah narrative intimates and the Rabbinic literature fleshes out Jacob’s violent mixture of shock and revulsion when, on his wedding night, Laban deceives him into marrying Leah, whom he hates. (Genesis 29:31) However, Jacob’s most complex amalgam of emotional response centers on Rachel: “When Jacob saw Rachel, he kissed her, and wept…. And Jacob loved Rachel.” (Genesis 29:11, 18) Commentators marvel that Jacob bursts into tears at the moment that he beholds Rachel for the first time. Bestselling author Daniel Goleman coined the phrase “emotional intelligence” to denote the ability to recognize and manage feelings effectively. The capacity to experience two strong and opposing feelings simultaneously—in this case, love and sadness—is the sign of a high degree of emotional intelligence. What’s more, later on, Jacob experiences anger at Rachel as well: “Rachel said to Jacob: give me children or I shall die. Jacob was incensed at Rachel, saying: can I take the place of God, who has denied you fruit of the womb?” (Genesis 30:1-2) Is guilt the basis of Jacob’s ire, since he cannot fulfill her longing for children? Or is it jealousy, since her longing for children is more important to her than her desire for him? Goleman groups all human emotions within eight primary categories, “the blue, red, and yellow of feeling from which all blends come.” The primary emotions are: anger, sadness, fear, joy, love, surprise, disgust, and shame. (p. 289-290) Within the space of a few lines of Biblical text, Jacob feels them all.
Jacob’s journey from intellectual to emotional awareness mirrors my own. I wrote the following on my application for Rabbinical School: “I was a bright student, engaging all my teachers with my probing mind and insatiable curiosity. I approached Jewish studies the same way I approached mathematics. My connection to religion was cerebral at that age.” There is a crucial difference between precocious acquisition of knowledge and deepseated exploration. These days, I try to open both my mind and my heart to wisdom and insight. Furthermore, I have come to realize that mind and heart are compatible. As Goleman observes: “IQ and emotional intelligence are not opposing competencies, but separate ones.” (p. 44)
Jacob’s encounter at Beth El represents a watershed in emotional maturity. First of all, the mere fact that it is a dream indicates a readiness to experience the unpredictable world of the unconscious, which is usually held at bay through the controlling mechanisms of the conscious mind. Dr. Avivah Zornberg points out that the young Jacob’s legendary wakefulness has prevented him from apprehending holiness until this point. Only when he lets himself fall asleep at Beth El does he open himself to the “possible gifts of unconsciousness, of knowing and dreaming [of the Divine].” (The Beginning of Desire, p. 190) Similarly, Killen and De Beer discuss imagery as an important step in theological reflection. Creating images allows direct access to affective experience, circumventing the rational mind’s attempt to control it, suppress it, or predict its meaning. (Killen and De Beer, p. 38)
Bearing Killen and De Beer’s technique in mind, I would like to forge and contemplate an image of Jacob’s dream. My image combines two Midrashic accounts. According to the first, Jacob’s body lies upon the ground while his “icon” (spiritual essence) is engraved in the Throne of Glory on high. The angels upon the ladder leap upon and scoff at Jacob for sleeping while his glorious counterpart reigns in the supernal realm. (Bereishit Rabbah 68:12) The second Midrash depicts the angels trying to land upon the supine Jacob, but God stands over him and shoos them away as if they were pesky flies. (Bereishit Rabbah 69:3)
As I contemplate the composite image, it seems to me that the sleeping Jacob symbolizes the physical body, which is the seat of our unconscious emotions. The supernal Jacob symbolizes the cognitive mind, which is the seat of our conscious thoughts. The figure of God symbolizes “metacognition,” which is closely involved with our experience and yet remains a little bit detached from it. The pesky, scoffing angels symbolize all the judgmental thoughts that inhibit direct access to our true feelings. The nonreactive Self (“God”) shoos them away like flies, clears them like so much static. Once the ladder is wiped clean of interfering angels, it presents itself as a new image—a charged current running up one side of the rungs and down the other. The electric circuit symbolizes a free flow between feelings and thoughts, a tight interconnection between our apprehensive and comprehensive minds.
The insight that arises for me from this dynamic image of Jacob’s dream concerns the nature of insight itself: clarity comes to us when we are in touch with our true feelings. If we want to hear God’s message to us, we must first set aside our mental distractions and listen to what our own bodies are telling us. At the end of the Jacob’s process, God declares: “I am with you. I will protect you and guide you, and I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised.” (Genesis 28:15) God’s promise includes connection, comfort, and guidance—in short, all of the elements of spirituality. Spiritual awareness is the grand prize for achieving emotional intelligence.
November 4, 2011: Life is a Journey (Lech Lecha)
LIFE IS A JOURNEY
(originally written: November, 2005;
updated: November, 2011)
Birth is a beginning and death a destination.
And life is a journey:
from childhood to maturity and youth to age;
from innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing...
(Alvin Fine)
Arami oveid avi. “My forefather was a wandering Aramean.” (Deuteronomy 26:5) First and foremost, Abraham was a wanderer. His primary directive, Lech Lecha, impelled him throughout his life. Lech lecha mei’artzecha umimoladetcha umibeit avicha el ha’aretz asher areka. “Go forth from your native land, and from the place of your birth, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1) Abraham knew what he was leaving behind, but did he know where was he going? As Biblical scholar Aviva Zornberg notes, the indeterminacy of the journey is the most striking aspect of the command, and it has engendered numerous interpretations. According to Rashi, Abraham’s not knowing served to increase his longing for the Promised Land through anticipation and delayed gratification. According to Radak, it signified the difficulty of the first of his ten trials and the most difficult of them all—to leave behind familiar territory for an unknown destination. What if Canaan was not specified in Lech Lecha precisely because it was not the final resting place? After all, according to the Genesis narrative, Abraham left Canaan almost as soon as he arrived and continued on to Egypt. Even within the Land, he was constantly on the move, back and forth among Shechem, Bethel, Hebron, and Be’er Sheva. “The imperative of transformation is the driving force of Lekh Lecha,” states Zornberg. (Zornberg, p. 78) Self-transformation requires movement. The spiritual seeker never reaches the end of the road. As soon as one stops progressing, one stagnates and dies.
My significant Lech Lecha moment came when I took the plunge and decided to become a Rabbi. Although the final moment of decision came overnight, all my life I had been preparing for it. As William James describes in Varieties of Religious Experience, “what lies behind such experiences [of instantaneous conversion] is a long incubation period, in which subconscious elements prepare themselves for a flowering, which is as much of a process as an event.” (Zornberg, p. 80) Like Abraham, whose father first brought him part way toward Canaan, my family upbringing first instilled in me my love of Judaism. (When I was still a child, my parents and grandparents already predicted I was going to be a Rabbi.) However, as I matured and began to think for myself, the Jewish community I knew no longer seemed to have a place for me. I resonate deeply with the Midrashic accounts of Abraham’s early years as he became increasingly disillusioned with the society around him. I too felt misunderstood and alienated, and I brooded over my existence.
Viktor Frankl writes that the fundamental human urge is not so much the pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of meaning. Furthermore, the fundamental human fear is not death, but having lived a life devoid of purpose. “Abraham is the archetypal man in quest of meaning, the experience of meaning.” (Zornberg, p. 85) Wandering aimlessly from place to place is a crucial phase in the journey. The traveler comes upon the blazing castle and he searches desperately for a way in. His existential crisis necessarily precedes his epiphany.
Sometimes friends or acquaintances would ask me why I wanted to be a Rabbi. In response, I could enumerate various talents and interests—“I’m an experienced teacher” or “I enjoy leading services”—but the bottom line is that I was responding to a calling from deep within me. It was chiba, the passionate yearning for God. As the Maharal suggests concerning Abraham, unenlightenment generates distress, distress generates longing, and longing generates love. (Zornberg, p. 89) When one falls in love, one doesn’t ask why. I am struck by the coincidence of encountering my life partner and embarking on my life’s vocation around forty, corresponding to the age of Moses when God spoke to him out of the burning bush.
We are all fellow travelers. At every age, we are on the move. At every age, life presents us with challenges and opportunities—the man here dealing with the infirmities of old age every bit as much as the boy, Sean, there, on the cusp of his Bar Mitzvah. We may think we know where we will end up, but we are wrong. Even when we reach one milestone, we are on to the next. Where can we turn for guidance? Where do we listen for our own message of Lech Lecha? According to Midrash, the bush where God spoke to Moses is the human heart. Both burn, and are not consumed. As long as it continues to beat, the heart is a bottomless source of passion and renewal, pressing us with constancy into the unknown. We have only one final resting place.
In his book Who Dies?, Stephen Levine offers two measures of a person’s worth. The Western mind views life as a line that extends from point A to point B—we are born, we pass certain milestones along the way, and then we die. In contrast, the Native American views a fulfilled life as a circle. The circle itself may expand as we progress through life, but at any given moment it is boundless and complete. Therefore, the Native American wakes up in the morning and says: “today is a good day to die”—not with morbidity, but with the serenity that comes from knowing that there is nothing more that he needs to accomplish in order to be whole. For Abraham, the promise of immortality immediately follows the Lech Lecha command: va’avarechecha va’agadlah shemecha. “I will bless you, and I will make your name great.” (Genesis 12:2) Abraham’s eternal greatness lies in his ability and willingness to keep responding hineini, “here I am,” to the call of God and the call of his own inner urgings. In this, he endures as a model for us all.
...Birth is a beginning and death a destination
But life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage—
to life everlasting.
(originally written: November, 2005;
updated: November, 2011)
Birth is a beginning and death a destination.
And life is a journey:
from childhood to maturity and youth to age;
from innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing...
(Alvin Fine)
Arami oveid avi. “My forefather was a wandering Aramean.” (Deuteronomy 26:5) First and foremost, Abraham was a wanderer. His primary directive, Lech Lecha, impelled him throughout his life. Lech lecha mei’artzecha umimoladetcha umibeit avicha el ha’aretz asher areka. “Go forth from your native land, and from the place of your birth, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1) Abraham knew what he was leaving behind, but did he know where was he going? As Biblical scholar Aviva Zornberg notes, the indeterminacy of the journey is the most striking aspect of the command, and it has engendered numerous interpretations. According to Rashi, Abraham’s not knowing served to increase his longing for the Promised Land through anticipation and delayed gratification. According to Radak, it signified the difficulty of the first of his ten trials and the most difficult of them all—to leave behind familiar territory for an unknown destination. What if Canaan was not specified in Lech Lecha precisely because it was not the final resting place? After all, according to the Genesis narrative, Abraham left Canaan almost as soon as he arrived and continued on to Egypt. Even within the Land, he was constantly on the move, back and forth among Shechem, Bethel, Hebron, and Be’er Sheva. “The imperative of transformation is the driving force of Lekh Lecha,” states Zornberg. (Zornberg, p. 78) Self-transformation requires movement. The spiritual seeker never reaches the end of the road. As soon as one stops progressing, one stagnates and dies.
My significant Lech Lecha moment came when I took the plunge and decided to become a Rabbi. Although the final moment of decision came overnight, all my life I had been preparing for it. As William James describes in Varieties of Religious Experience, “what lies behind such experiences [of instantaneous conversion] is a long incubation period, in which subconscious elements prepare themselves for a flowering, which is as much of a process as an event.” (Zornberg, p. 80) Like Abraham, whose father first brought him part way toward Canaan, my family upbringing first instilled in me my love of Judaism. (When I was still a child, my parents and grandparents already predicted I was going to be a Rabbi.) However, as I matured and began to think for myself, the Jewish community I knew no longer seemed to have a place for me. I resonate deeply with the Midrashic accounts of Abraham’s early years as he became increasingly disillusioned with the society around him. I too felt misunderstood and alienated, and I brooded over my existence.
Viktor Frankl writes that the fundamental human urge is not so much the pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of meaning. Furthermore, the fundamental human fear is not death, but having lived a life devoid of purpose. “Abraham is the archetypal man in quest of meaning, the experience of meaning.” (Zornberg, p. 85) Wandering aimlessly from place to place is a crucial phase in the journey. The traveler comes upon the blazing castle and he searches desperately for a way in. His existential crisis necessarily precedes his epiphany.
Sometimes friends or acquaintances would ask me why I wanted to be a Rabbi. In response, I could enumerate various talents and interests—“I’m an experienced teacher” or “I enjoy leading services”—but the bottom line is that I was responding to a calling from deep within me. It was chiba, the passionate yearning for God. As the Maharal suggests concerning Abraham, unenlightenment generates distress, distress generates longing, and longing generates love. (Zornberg, p. 89) When one falls in love, one doesn’t ask why. I am struck by the coincidence of encountering my life partner and embarking on my life’s vocation around forty, corresponding to the age of Moses when God spoke to him out of the burning bush.
We are all fellow travelers. At every age, we are on the move. At every age, life presents us with challenges and opportunities—the man here dealing with the infirmities of old age every bit as much as the boy, Sean, there, on the cusp of his Bar Mitzvah. We may think we know where we will end up, but we are wrong. Even when we reach one milestone, we are on to the next. Where can we turn for guidance? Where do we listen for our own message of Lech Lecha? According to Midrash, the bush where God spoke to Moses is the human heart. Both burn, and are not consumed. As long as it continues to beat, the heart is a bottomless source of passion and renewal, pressing us with constancy into the unknown. We have only one final resting place.
In his book Who Dies?, Stephen Levine offers two measures of a person’s worth. The Western mind views life as a line that extends from point A to point B—we are born, we pass certain milestones along the way, and then we die. In contrast, the Native American views a fulfilled life as a circle. The circle itself may expand as we progress through life, but at any given moment it is boundless and complete. Therefore, the Native American wakes up in the morning and says: “today is a good day to die”—not with morbidity, but with the serenity that comes from knowing that there is nothing more that he needs to accomplish in order to be whole. For Abraham, the promise of immortality immediately follows the Lech Lecha command: va’avarechecha va’agadlah shemecha. “I will bless you, and I will make your name great.” (Genesis 12:2) Abraham’s eternal greatness lies in his ability and willingness to keep responding hineini, “here I am,” to the call of God and the call of his own inner urgings. In this, he endures as a model for us all.
...Birth is a beginning and death a destination
But life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage—
to life everlasting.
October 28, 2011: The Anguished Homecoming of Gilad Shalit
When I lived in Jerusalem three years ago, every morning I would ride my bicycle up Jabotinsky Street on my way to school past a handful of demonstrators maintaining vigil outside the Prime Minister’s residence. One placard in particular always caught my eye: “Galid Shalit: 823 days of captivity,” “824,” “825,…” Finally, this week, amid jubilation and anguish, the quixotic effort came to fruition. Jubilation—because at times Israel functions more like a large family than a country, and Gilad became the surrogate son of every Israeli household. Anguish—because some of the more than one thousand Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for his freedom will surely turn right around and plan new terrorist attacks. Nor is it the first time that the State of Israel has agreed to such a disproportionate swap. In 2004, Israel let go 436 Palestinians and Lebanese in exchange for 1 Israeli businessman and the remains of three soldiers. In 1985, Israel freed 1150 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners for three live soldiers. This latest bargain is merely the most extreme case.
The imperative to bring home a prisoner of war at all costs is embedded within the Israeli military ethos. However, it goes deeper than that. It goes back to the incalculable worth that Jewish tradition places upon human life, as articulated in a famous Talmudic statement that rests, in turn, on this week’s Torah portion, Breishit. “Why was Adam created singly?” the Talmud asks. “To teach that whosoever destroys a single soul, it is as though he had destroyed an entire world, and whosoever saves a single soul, it is as though she had saved an entire world.” (bSanhedrim 37a)
What happens when heroic efforts to save one life places others at risk? I became interested in this ethical dilemma for my final project before Rabbinic ordination, a research paper exploring Jewish perspectives on universal health care. (This was during the time when President Obama’s signature health care bill was being hotly debated throughout the country.) I realized that a major source of the health care controversy stems from the challenge of distributing limited resources across a large population. To put it crudely, there are not enough funds within the system to pay for every possible medication and medical procedure. When one person is treated for a disease or condition, there’s that much less money to go around for everyone else. The injunction to save a single soul as if the single soul were equivalent to the entire world rings resoundingly in the abstract, but, at least when it comes to universal health coverage, it cannot be the only driving principle.
I discovered another Talmudic passage that adds complexity to the argument. It reads as follows: “A caravan is traveling in the desert. A gang confronts them, saying: ‘Give us one of your men, and we will kill him; otherwise, we will kill you all.’ Even if all of the travelers are to die, they shall not hand over a single Israelite soul. Rabbi Shimon says: ‘if the gang names a specific individual who is guilty of some crime against it, then the travelers may hand him over in order to save themselves.’ Rabbi Jonathan says, ‘if the gang names a specific individual, even if he is not guilty of any crime, the travelers may hand him over in order to save themselves.’” (jTrumot 47a)
What’s fascinating here is that the passage starts out with a bold, unqualified proclamation: the group must go to any lengths to save the life of the individual, even at risk to the group. As the discussion progresses, however, the successive opinions chip away at the initial ruling. In the first instance, maybe the outsiders’ claim is justified. Maybe the person they name is a criminal and they demand him for extradition. According to Rabbi Shimon, the group should deliver him to them. In the second instance, even when the outsiders’ demand is unjustified and the person they specify is innocent, it is still permissible to hand him over in order to save the group. By the end of the passage, the only situation remaining in which it is forbidden to sacrifice a single life in order to save the group is the case where the outsiders do not specify a particular person. In essence, they say, “hand over somebody, anybody, from your group, and we kill him,” and the group is now in the anguished position, like Sophie in “Sophie’s Choice,” to choose the victim to be sacrificed for the greater good. If the group were to accede in this case, then the group would be complicit in the victim’s murder. Therefore, according to Rabbi Jonathan, it is forbidden to hand him over.
The Talmud is a layered document. Both Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Jonathan lived centuries after the sages who first formulated the expression of the supreme sanctity of human life. The original directive says: “we will never hand over anyone under any circumstances.” The Talmudic Rabbis, Shimon and Jonathan, and later commentators, such as the Bach (17th century Poland) and R. Shimon Efrati (Holocaust-era Germany), added successive limitations. My own speculation is that the constant dangers of persecution to which Jewish communities were subjected influenced the later authorities. There were times, they ruled, when their followers could not afford to stand on principle, or else they would all be annihilated.
A universal ideal such as “whosoever saves a single soul, it is as though she has saved an entire world,” may inspire us with its nobility. Unfortunately, we are rarely in the position to base real-world moral decisions upon one ethical principle alone. More often, moral dilemmas involve the clash of two competing values. In the case of Gilad Shalit, it pitted the life of one individual against the relative risk to the lives of an entire nation.
During my Kol Nidre sermon, I concluded that the fundamental diversity of humankind precludes the formation of a uniform version of the Truth—at least not until the Messianic age. Different people will never see exactly eye to eye on everything—or even on anything. Actually, I’ll go even further than what I stated on Kol Nidre. It’s not just that people inevitably conflict, it’s that even the fundamental principles of ethics inevitably conflict. No ethical system can be complete on the one hand, and consistent on the other. Some questions simply do not have a right answer. Somehow, we must learn to hold in our own hearts both the joy of the homecoming of our adopted son, Gilad Shalit, as well as the injustice of releasing convicted murderers onto the streets. We must learn to live in tension, not just in dealing with the actions of others, but even, and especially, in dealing with our own decisions. We must make the best choice possible under the circumstances, knowing that no choice is ever perfect.
The imperative to bring home a prisoner of war at all costs is embedded within the Israeli military ethos. However, it goes deeper than that. It goes back to the incalculable worth that Jewish tradition places upon human life, as articulated in a famous Talmudic statement that rests, in turn, on this week’s Torah portion, Breishit. “Why was Adam created singly?” the Talmud asks. “To teach that whosoever destroys a single soul, it is as though he had destroyed an entire world, and whosoever saves a single soul, it is as though she had saved an entire world.” (bSanhedrim 37a)
What happens when heroic efforts to save one life places others at risk? I became interested in this ethical dilemma for my final project before Rabbinic ordination, a research paper exploring Jewish perspectives on universal health care. (This was during the time when President Obama’s signature health care bill was being hotly debated throughout the country.) I realized that a major source of the health care controversy stems from the challenge of distributing limited resources across a large population. To put it crudely, there are not enough funds within the system to pay for every possible medication and medical procedure. When one person is treated for a disease or condition, there’s that much less money to go around for everyone else. The injunction to save a single soul as if the single soul were equivalent to the entire world rings resoundingly in the abstract, but, at least when it comes to universal health coverage, it cannot be the only driving principle.
I discovered another Talmudic passage that adds complexity to the argument. It reads as follows: “A caravan is traveling in the desert. A gang confronts them, saying: ‘Give us one of your men, and we will kill him; otherwise, we will kill you all.’ Even if all of the travelers are to die, they shall not hand over a single Israelite soul. Rabbi Shimon says: ‘if the gang names a specific individual who is guilty of some crime against it, then the travelers may hand him over in order to save themselves.’ Rabbi Jonathan says, ‘if the gang names a specific individual, even if he is not guilty of any crime, the travelers may hand him over in order to save themselves.’” (jTrumot 47a)
What’s fascinating here is that the passage starts out with a bold, unqualified proclamation: the group must go to any lengths to save the life of the individual, even at risk to the group. As the discussion progresses, however, the successive opinions chip away at the initial ruling. In the first instance, maybe the outsiders’ claim is justified. Maybe the person they name is a criminal and they demand him for extradition. According to Rabbi Shimon, the group should deliver him to them. In the second instance, even when the outsiders’ demand is unjustified and the person they specify is innocent, it is still permissible to hand him over in order to save the group. By the end of the passage, the only situation remaining in which it is forbidden to sacrifice a single life in order to save the group is the case where the outsiders do not specify a particular person. In essence, they say, “hand over somebody, anybody, from your group, and we kill him,” and the group is now in the anguished position, like Sophie in “Sophie’s Choice,” to choose the victim to be sacrificed for the greater good. If the group were to accede in this case, then the group would be complicit in the victim’s murder. Therefore, according to Rabbi Jonathan, it is forbidden to hand him over.
The Talmud is a layered document. Both Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Jonathan lived centuries after the sages who first formulated the expression of the supreme sanctity of human life. The original directive says: “we will never hand over anyone under any circumstances.” The Talmudic Rabbis, Shimon and Jonathan, and later commentators, such as the Bach (17th century Poland) and R. Shimon Efrati (Holocaust-era Germany), added successive limitations. My own speculation is that the constant dangers of persecution to which Jewish communities were subjected influenced the later authorities. There were times, they ruled, when their followers could not afford to stand on principle, or else they would all be annihilated.
A universal ideal such as “whosoever saves a single soul, it is as though she has saved an entire world,” may inspire us with its nobility. Unfortunately, we are rarely in the position to base real-world moral decisions upon one ethical principle alone. More often, moral dilemmas involve the clash of two competing values. In the case of Gilad Shalit, it pitted the life of one individual against the relative risk to the lives of an entire nation.
During my Kol Nidre sermon, I concluded that the fundamental diversity of humankind precludes the formation of a uniform version of the Truth—at least not until the Messianic age. Different people will never see exactly eye to eye on everything—or even on anything. Actually, I’ll go even further than what I stated on Kol Nidre. It’s not just that people inevitably conflict, it’s that even the fundamental principles of ethics inevitably conflict. No ethical system can be complete on the one hand, and consistent on the other. Some questions simply do not have a right answer. Somehow, we must learn to hold in our own hearts both the joy of the homecoming of our adopted son, Gilad Shalit, as well as the injustice of releasing convicted murderers onto the streets. We must learn to live in tension, not just in dealing with the actions of others, but even, and especially, in dealing with our own decisions. We must make the best choice possible under the circumstances, knowing that no choice is ever perfect.
September 13, 2011: Ki Teitzei on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11
(based upon a Devar by Rabbi Aryeh Cohen)
According to Maimonides, this week’s Torah reading, Ki Teitzei, contains 72 of the 613 commandments of Judaism—the most of any single weekly portion—touching on virtually every aspect of the social order. At first glance, they seem to be thrown together at random, with no apparent link from one to the next. However, the great commentator Rashi shows that this is not the case. Rashi unifies the opening section, at least, of Ki Teitzei with an underlying narrative whose moral implications are particularly appropriate for us to ponder on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Let’s take a closer look. Ki Teitzei begins with a commandment stipulating the proper treatment of female captives in war: “should you go out to battle against your enemies, and Adonai your God delivers him into your hand and you take captives from among him, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her and take her as a wife, then you shall bring her into your house, and she shall trim her hair, and pare her nails. She shall take off her dress of captivity and she shall sit in your house and weep over her father and mother for a full month. After that, you may come to bed with her, and cohabit with her, and take her as your wife.” (Deuteronomy 21:10-13) Although the commandment does not prohibit the soldier from taking his female victim, the Torah at least acknowledges and validates her feelings of grief. Next we have the following commandment: “should a man have two wives, one who is loved and one who is hated, and both the loved one and the hated one have borne him sons, but the firstborn is the son of the hated one, when it comes time to will his property to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved one as the firstborn in disregard of the son of the hated one who is actually older; rather, he must accept the son of the hated one as his firstborn, and give him the double portion that is his due.” (Deuteronomy 21:15-17) This commandment reasserts the right of primogeniture, even though in the unhappy polygamous household, the master not only favors the second wife, but rejects the first one. The third commandment in the opening section concerns the so called “rebellious son:” “should a man have a wayward and rebellious son who does not heed his father’s voice or his mother’s voice and disobeys them even after they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town to the gates of the community, and they shall declare before the elders of the town: this son of ours is wayward and rebellious and does not heed our voice… Thereupon the men of the town shall stone him to death.” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) A dire punishment—wouldn’t you say?
Rashi sees the tragic outcome as the culmination of a series of escalating transgressions in a continuous narrative. Here’s what Rashi says: “The only reason why the Torah includes these commandments is in order to combat the yetzer hara, the evil inclination. For, if the Torah didn’t prescribe a legal manner for a soldier to take a female captive, he would do so illegally anyway, as it is written: ‘should you go out to battle… and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her and take her as a wife…’ But if he takes her, then in the end, he will come to hate her, as it is written: ‘should a man have two wives, one who is loved and one who is hated…’ And if he hates his wife, then in end, he will sire a rebellious son, as it is written: ‘should a man have a wayward and rebellious son…’ That is why the Torah the conjoined all of these commandments together.”
Rashi’s linking of the three sets of laws yields a profound insight on the collateral damage of war. The Torah is saying, know that if you decide to engage in battle, you will inevitably unleash a string of unintended consequences over which you will lose control. Conquest will lead soldiers to take women captive, and captive women will lead to unhappy households in which husbands hate their wives, and hated wives will lead to children who don’t obey their parents, and rebellious children will meet a tragic fate. We have only to register the thousands of American soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan bearing invisible injuries from IEDs, and ponder how undocumented brain damage among them may result in diminished work capacity, impaired relationships, violent behavior, and worse five, ten, twenty years down the road, in order to provide just one modern-day example in the military arena of the law of unintended consequences.
Is going to war an inevitability, or an option? Is it a command, or a choice? If we take one step back to the opening verse of the Torah portion, we read: ki tetze lamilchamah al oyvechah, “should you go out to battle against your enemies…” This is Robert Alter’s translation. The King James Version (and many in its wake) reads: “when you go out to war against your enemies…” The new JPS, the standard Jewish translation, concurs: “when you take the field against your enemies…” On the other hand, the Septuagint, the ancient translation into Greek, reads more like Alter: “now, if you were to go out to battle against your enemies…” The varied translations reflect the inherent ambiguity of the Hebrew word “ki,” a linguistic fact already noted in the Talmud. (Gittin 90a) “If” means something very different from “when.”
Beyond calling into question the obligation to go to war, a close reading of the verse also reveals the psychological condition necessary in order to contemplate war to begin with. “Should you go out to battle against your enemies, and God delivers him into your hand…” Note carefully how the text characterizes the enemy as a faceless, featureless “him,” stripped of all individuality, all identity, all humanity. Indeed, this must be the case before a person can bring herself to kill another. A general must think of his troops as if they were chess pieces on a board before he is ready to command them effectively. A combat soldier must manipulate the mouse on his computer screen as if all he were engaged in was having fun with a videogame instead of directing a predator drone to bomb real targets. Likewise, dehumanization is the necessary precursor for the next step in the Torah’s description: “and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her and take her.” Let’s face it, the Torah is not talking about a romantic love affair here, as Rashi clearly recognizes when he states: “if the soldier can’t take her legally, he will take her anyway.” The Torah is talking about rape. Rape and war have always gone together.
The Jewish ethicist Emmanuel Levinas teaches: “a philosophy that allows for war is a philosophy that erases human dignity.” According to my teacher Rabbi Art Green, the most basic of all Jewish doctrines is that every individual is created in the image of God. This week’s Torah portion Ki Teitzei forces us to acknowledge that we cannot wage war without negating the central truth of Judaism. There is really no such thing as “collateral damage.” The murder, rape, and injuries that are inflicted on innocent people are not incidental to war, but are inevitable consequences of any military conflict. I am not saying that we should never go to war. After all, the Torah implicitly allows it. But I am saying that going to war is always a choice. Furthermore, going to war always unleashes a chain of uncontrolled and uncontrollable violence. We live in a complicated world, and sometimes we have to make supremely agonizing choices. But let us never lose sight of our humanity. I can think of no greater way to honor the memory of those who perished on 9/11, as well as those who died in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq during the ten years since, than to uphold the conviction of the immeasurable worth of a single human life.
According to Maimonides, this week’s Torah reading, Ki Teitzei, contains 72 of the 613 commandments of Judaism—the most of any single weekly portion—touching on virtually every aspect of the social order. At first glance, they seem to be thrown together at random, with no apparent link from one to the next. However, the great commentator Rashi shows that this is not the case. Rashi unifies the opening section, at least, of Ki Teitzei with an underlying narrative whose moral implications are particularly appropriate for us to ponder on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Let’s take a closer look. Ki Teitzei begins with a commandment stipulating the proper treatment of female captives in war: “should you go out to battle against your enemies, and Adonai your God delivers him into your hand and you take captives from among him, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her and take her as a wife, then you shall bring her into your house, and she shall trim her hair, and pare her nails. She shall take off her dress of captivity and she shall sit in your house and weep over her father and mother for a full month. After that, you may come to bed with her, and cohabit with her, and take her as your wife.” (Deuteronomy 21:10-13) Although the commandment does not prohibit the soldier from taking his female victim, the Torah at least acknowledges and validates her feelings of grief. Next we have the following commandment: “should a man have two wives, one who is loved and one who is hated, and both the loved one and the hated one have borne him sons, but the firstborn is the son of the hated one, when it comes time to will his property to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved one as the firstborn in disregard of the son of the hated one who is actually older; rather, he must accept the son of the hated one as his firstborn, and give him the double portion that is his due.” (Deuteronomy 21:15-17) This commandment reasserts the right of primogeniture, even though in the unhappy polygamous household, the master not only favors the second wife, but rejects the first one. The third commandment in the opening section concerns the so called “rebellious son:” “should a man have a wayward and rebellious son who does not heed his father’s voice or his mother’s voice and disobeys them even after they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town to the gates of the community, and they shall declare before the elders of the town: this son of ours is wayward and rebellious and does not heed our voice… Thereupon the men of the town shall stone him to death.” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) A dire punishment—wouldn’t you say?
Rashi sees the tragic outcome as the culmination of a series of escalating transgressions in a continuous narrative. Here’s what Rashi says: “The only reason why the Torah includes these commandments is in order to combat the yetzer hara, the evil inclination. For, if the Torah didn’t prescribe a legal manner for a soldier to take a female captive, he would do so illegally anyway, as it is written: ‘should you go out to battle… and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her and take her as a wife…’ But if he takes her, then in the end, he will come to hate her, as it is written: ‘should a man have two wives, one who is loved and one who is hated…’ And if he hates his wife, then in end, he will sire a rebellious son, as it is written: ‘should a man have a wayward and rebellious son…’ That is why the Torah the conjoined all of these commandments together.”
Rashi’s linking of the three sets of laws yields a profound insight on the collateral damage of war. The Torah is saying, know that if you decide to engage in battle, you will inevitably unleash a string of unintended consequences over which you will lose control. Conquest will lead soldiers to take women captive, and captive women will lead to unhappy households in which husbands hate their wives, and hated wives will lead to children who don’t obey their parents, and rebellious children will meet a tragic fate. We have only to register the thousands of American soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan bearing invisible injuries from IEDs, and ponder how undocumented brain damage among them may result in diminished work capacity, impaired relationships, violent behavior, and worse five, ten, twenty years down the road, in order to provide just one modern-day example in the military arena of the law of unintended consequences.
Is going to war an inevitability, or an option? Is it a command, or a choice? If we take one step back to the opening verse of the Torah portion, we read: ki tetze lamilchamah al oyvechah, “should you go out to battle against your enemies…” This is Robert Alter’s translation. The King James Version (and many in its wake) reads: “when you go out to war against your enemies…” The new JPS, the standard Jewish translation, concurs: “when you take the field against your enemies…” On the other hand, the Septuagint, the ancient translation into Greek, reads more like Alter: “now, if you were to go out to battle against your enemies…” The varied translations reflect the inherent ambiguity of the Hebrew word “ki,” a linguistic fact already noted in the Talmud. (Gittin 90a) “If” means something very different from “when.”
Beyond calling into question the obligation to go to war, a close reading of the verse also reveals the psychological condition necessary in order to contemplate war to begin with. “Should you go out to battle against your enemies, and God delivers him into your hand…” Note carefully how the text characterizes the enemy as a faceless, featureless “him,” stripped of all individuality, all identity, all humanity. Indeed, this must be the case before a person can bring herself to kill another. A general must think of his troops as if they were chess pieces on a board before he is ready to command them effectively. A combat soldier must manipulate the mouse on his computer screen as if all he were engaged in was having fun with a videogame instead of directing a predator drone to bomb real targets. Likewise, dehumanization is the necessary precursor for the next step in the Torah’s description: “and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire her and take her.” Let’s face it, the Torah is not talking about a romantic love affair here, as Rashi clearly recognizes when he states: “if the soldier can’t take her legally, he will take her anyway.” The Torah is talking about rape. Rape and war have always gone together.
The Jewish ethicist Emmanuel Levinas teaches: “a philosophy that allows for war is a philosophy that erases human dignity.” According to my teacher Rabbi Art Green, the most basic of all Jewish doctrines is that every individual is created in the image of God. This week’s Torah portion Ki Teitzei forces us to acknowledge that we cannot wage war without negating the central truth of Judaism. There is really no such thing as “collateral damage.” The murder, rape, and injuries that are inflicted on innocent people are not incidental to war, but are inevitable consequences of any military conflict. I am not saying that we should never go to war. After all, the Torah implicitly allows it. But I am saying that going to war is always a choice. Furthermore, going to war always unleashes a chain of uncontrolled and uncontrollable violence. We live in a complicated world, and sometimes we have to make supremely agonizing choices. But let us never lose sight of our humanity. I can think of no greater way to honor the memory of those who perished on 9/11, as well as those who died in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq during the ten years since, than to uphold the conviction of the immeasurable worth of a single human life.
September 7, 2011: In the Wake of Tropical Storm Irene: Psalm 93
In the Wake of Tropical Storm Irene (Psalm 93)
Kabbalat Shabbat, the introductory service that ushers in the Sabbath, culminates with Psalm 93, one of the shortest psalms in the liturgy:
Adonai reigns, robed in majesty!
Adonai is robed, girded in strength!
The world stands firm; it shall never be shaken.
Your throne stands firm from long ago;
You have existed since the beginning of time.
The floods raise up, Adonai,
the floods raise up their roaring,
the floods raise up their pounding.
Greater than the roaring of the tremendous waters,
Mightier than the breakers of the sea,
Mighty on high is Adonai!
Your testimonies are faithful beyond measure.
Holiness beautifies Your house.
Adonai, You shall be forevermore.
(my translation)
Psalm 93 is a prime example of the category known as “enthronement psalms,” so called because they depict Adonai as king over all creation. Mesopotamia and other ancient Near Eastern societies held an annual coronation festival in the fall, during which the king reestablished his rule over the realm. The influential Protestant Biblical scholar Sigmund Mowinckel posits that the ancient Israelites observed their own autumnal festival. He claims that originally, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot were all tied together in one, three-week-long New Year’s celebration—only instead of crowning an earthly monarch, Israel crowned Adonai sovereign of the entire world. (To this day, tradition considers Rosh Hashanah as the day the world was conceived.) According to Mowinckel, celebrants chanted Psalm 93 and the other enthronement psalms throughout the Israelite coronation festival.
Psalm 93’s powerful water imagery evinces another parallel with other Near Eastern cultures. Many ancient myths, such as the Babylonian Enuma Elish, describe a cosmic battle between the Sky God, who represents the forces of order, and the Water God, who represents the forces of chaos. Literary vestigial references appear throughout the Hebrew Bible—in the Creation Story (Genesis 1), the Flood (Genesis 6-9), the Parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14), as well as many of the psalms, including Psalm 93. (I think the repetitive phrasing of verse 3, “the floods raise up, Adonai, the floods raise up their roaring, the floods raise up their pounding,” is meant to evoke the incessant crash of waves upon the beach.) Whereas in the Enuma Elish, the Sky God and the Sea God are more or less equally matched in strength, Psalm 93 makes vividly clear Adonai’s supremacy over the waters: “greater than the roaring of the tremendous waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea, mighty on high is Adonai.” Despite the raging floods, ultimately: “the world stands firm; it shall never be shaken.”
Psalm 93’s unequivocal assurance of the world’s essential endurance affords a comforting reminder to us, as we reel from the devastation of Hurricane Irene. Vermont has just been through its worst natural disaster since the legendary floods of 1927. Many of our neighbors’ homes and communities have been destroyed. During times of severe upheaval, grief counselors advise us, mourners need to fall back on familiar surroundings and routines as much as possible. We need to remember that the sun will come up in the morning, as it always does.
Many people read the final verse of Psalm 93, “Your testimonies are faithful beyond measure…,” as an allusion to Torah, inasmuch as the Hebrew word for “testimonies,” edot, elsewhere denotes the Ten Commandments. I would like to interpret “Torah” in the most expansive manner possible. For me, the “testimonies” are the immutable Laws of Nature, which are (according to Maimonides) also part of Torah. The same physical forces that give rise to hurricanes also produce the orderly weather patterns upon which we, our livestock and our crops rely. Natural disasters such as Irene are so disruptive precisely because they are so rare. Most of the time, rivers remain within their banks. Most of the time, rain is a blessing. Judaism well acknowledges the beneficence of water. Twice daily, during the Shema, we pray for “rain in its season, the early rains and the latter rains.” Torah itself is often called “living waters,” mayim chayyim, for its power to cleanse, sustain and nurture.
Psalm 93 invites us to look beyond our immediate circumstances, however painful, and take the longest possible view of them. We can regain our composure and serenity if we remind ourselves that “this, too, shall pass.” Floods may come and go, but “You have existed since the beginning of time” and “You shall be forevermore.” The replacement of a temporary perspective with an eternal one also makes Psalm 93 a fitting entrée into the timeless atmosphere of Shabbat. Note that the very last word of Psalm 93, “forevermore,” l’orech yamim, is the same as the last word of the famous Psalm 23. (Psalm 23 begins: “the Lord is my shepherd…,” and it ends: “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forevermore,” l’orech yamim.) The ultimate consolation of both psalms is the same. Just as we have survived until now, we shall survive this too.
Kabbalat Shabbat, the introductory service that ushers in the Sabbath, culminates with Psalm 93, one of the shortest psalms in the liturgy:
Adonai reigns, robed in majesty!
Adonai is robed, girded in strength!
The world stands firm; it shall never be shaken.
Your throne stands firm from long ago;
You have existed since the beginning of time.
The floods raise up, Adonai,
the floods raise up their roaring,
the floods raise up their pounding.
Greater than the roaring of the tremendous waters,
Mightier than the breakers of the sea,
Mighty on high is Adonai!
Your testimonies are faithful beyond measure.
Holiness beautifies Your house.
Adonai, You shall be forevermore.
(my translation)
Psalm 93 is a prime example of the category known as “enthronement psalms,” so called because they depict Adonai as king over all creation. Mesopotamia and other ancient Near Eastern societies held an annual coronation festival in the fall, during which the king reestablished his rule over the realm. The influential Protestant Biblical scholar Sigmund Mowinckel posits that the ancient Israelites observed their own autumnal festival. He claims that originally, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot were all tied together in one, three-week-long New Year’s celebration—only instead of crowning an earthly monarch, Israel crowned Adonai sovereign of the entire world. (To this day, tradition considers Rosh Hashanah as the day the world was conceived.) According to Mowinckel, celebrants chanted Psalm 93 and the other enthronement psalms throughout the Israelite coronation festival.
Psalm 93’s powerful water imagery evinces another parallel with other Near Eastern cultures. Many ancient myths, such as the Babylonian Enuma Elish, describe a cosmic battle between the Sky God, who represents the forces of order, and the Water God, who represents the forces of chaos. Literary vestigial references appear throughout the Hebrew Bible—in the Creation Story (Genesis 1), the Flood (Genesis 6-9), the Parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14), as well as many of the psalms, including Psalm 93. (I think the repetitive phrasing of verse 3, “the floods raise up, Adonai, the floods raise up their roaring, the floods raise up their pounding,” is meant to evoke the incessant crash of waves upon the beach.) Whereas in the Enuma Elish, the Sky God and the Sea God are more or less equally matched in strength, Psalm 93 makes vividly clear Adonai’s supremacy over the waters: “greater than the roaring of the tremendous waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea, mighty on high is Adonai.” Despite the raging floods, ultimately: “the world stands firm; it shall never be shaken.”
Psalm 93’s unequivocal assurance of the world’s essential endurance affords a comforting reminder to us, as we reel from the devastation of Hurricane Irene. Vermont has just been through its worst natural disaster since the legendary floods of 1927. Many of our neighbors’ homes and communities have been destroyed. During times of severe upheaval, grief counselors advise us, mourners need to fall back on familiar surroundings and routines as much as possible. We need to remember that the sun will come up in the morning, as it always does.
Many people read the final verse of Psalm 93, “Your testimonies are faithful beyond measure…,” as an allusion to Torah, inasmuch as the Hebrew word for “testimonies,” edot, elsewhere denotes the Ten Commandments. I would like to interpret “Torah” in the most expansive manner possible. For me, the “testimonies” are the immutable Laws of Nature, which are (according to Maimonides) also part of Torah. The same physical forces that give rise to hurricanes also produce the orderly weather patterns upon which we, our livestock and our crops rely. Natural disasters such as Irene are so disruptive precisely because they are so rare. Most of the time, rivers remain within their banks. Most of the time, rain is a blessing. Judaism well acknowledges the beneficence of water. Twice daily, during the Shema, we pray for “rain in its season, the early rains and the latter rains.” Torah itself is often called “living waters,” mayim chayyim, for its power to cleanse, sustain and nurture.
Psalm 93 invites us to look beyond our immediate circumstances, however painful, and take the longest possible view of them. We can regain our composure and serenity if we remind ourselves that “this, too, shall pass.” Floods may come and go, but “You have existed since the beginning of time” and “You shall be forevermore.” The replacement of a temporary perspective with an eternal one also makes Psalm 93 a fitting entrée into the timeless atmosphere of Shabbat. Note that the very last word of Psalm 93, “forevermore,” l’orech yamim, is the same as the last word of the famous Psalm 23. (Psalm 23 begins: “the Lord is my shepherd…,” and it ends: “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forevermore,” l’orech yamim.) The ultimate consolation of both psalms is the same. Just as we have survived until now, we shall survive this too.
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