STANDING AT THE EDGE OF THE UNKNOWN
In this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, Moses comes down from the Mountain and calls out to the People waiting below: “will you take upon yourselves this Covenant?” They exclaim in one voice: na’aseh ve-nishma, “we will do it and we will hear it.” (Exodus 24:7) The Rabbis ask: why do they put forth: “we will do it” before “we will hear it?” Shouldn’t it be the other way around: “first, we’ll hear it, and then, if we like what we hear, we’ll do it?” For the Rabbis, na’aseh ve-nishma becomes the paradigm for bold commitment, for stepping into the unknown, for agreeing to the terms without actually knowing what the terms entail.
I often point out the lesson of na’aseh ve-nishma when I stand in front of the bride and groom under the Chuppah. They may imagine their future “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health”—of course, we Jews don’t actually say those words—but does the young couple know what the declaration really entails? Those of you here who have been married for decades, think back to your wedding day, and consider all the twists and turns that have led to today. Isn’t the journey beyond your wildest dreams? Indeed, the Rabbinic mind often depicts the moment of Revelation as a wedding ceremony between people of Israel and their God. The Chuppah is Mount Sinai, and the Ketubah is the Torah itself. However, marriage is only one of many examples of a profound life transition—embarking upon a new career, starting a new enterprise, acquiring a new home, moving to a new location, coming to terms with a new diagnosis, God forbid, adjusting to a new life after the death of a beloved family member, God forbid.
Any significant change can be terrifying. At moments like these, we stand at the edge of the unknown. We peer into the abyss, groping for any familiar landmark to guide us. No matter how hard we try, we cannot pierce the veil of the future. As we step off the edge into the darkness, to what can we cling that will give us some measure of comfort, some degree of assurance?
Let’s take a closer look at na’aseh venishma, which the Talmud discusses at length. Here’s one piece of the Talmudic discussion: “Rabbi Elazar said: at the moment when Israel put forth ‘we will do’ before ‘we will hear,’ a voice rang out from Heaven, crying: ‘who revealed to My children the secret of the angels?’” (bShabbat 88a) Now, in order to understand Rabbi Elazar’s statement, we need to appreciate some characteristic differences between angels and human beings. For one thing, angels are immortal, but we are not. More importantly, angels lack free will. “Ever obedient to do God’s bidding,” (Psalm 103:20) they have no choice but to carry out whatever God demands of them. We, of course, are not compelled to follow God’s commandments. So, when Rabbi Elazar reports that the Israelites have learned “the secret of the angels,” he means that they have acquired unquestioning allegiance at the expense of free will.
Rabbi Elazar’s praise of the Israelites is undercut by the prevailing negative bias against blind obedience throughout the rest of Rabbinic literature. In the Midrash, God usually favors human beings more than angels. For example, a little later on in the Talmud, the angels complain to God: “why are you sullying the Torah by giving it to human beings? We are perfect. Give it to us!” God replies to the angels: “Do you murder? Do you commit adultery? Do you steal? They need the Torah; you do not.” (bShabbat 88b) It is the very fact of our human fallibility that endears us to God. The English rendering of Psalm 8 that we read earlier this evening derives originally from the King James Bible: “What are we, that You are mindful of us, mere mortals, that You take account of us? Yet You have made us but little lower than the angels, and have crowned us with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:5-6) However, “angels” is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word Elohim, causing the entire English passage to convey not only the wrong meaning but the opposite meaning of what the psalm actually intends. The correct translation is: “You have made us but little lower than God.”
We human beings are not lower but higher than the angels. We were created betzelem Elohim, in the image of God; they were not. We are more God-like than the angels, because we have freedom of choice. God wants us to stumble from time to time. God loves us when we harbor doubts. Why? Because then it means something to Him when we turn back to Him and turn back to faith. To put it another way, angels merely act. We human beings act, but we also think about our actions. Na’aseh ve-nishma, to do before completely understanding what we are doing, is praiseworthy. But na’aseh without nishma, to do without attempting to understand at all, would rob us of our humanity.
The Talmud continues with another interpretation of na’aseh ve-nishma: “Rabbi Chama son of Rabbi Chanina said: in the Song of Songs, God says to Israel, ‘you are like an apple tree among the trees of the forest.’ (Song of Songs 2:3) Why is Israel compared to an apple tree? Because just as the apple precedes its leaves, so Israel put forth ‘we will do’ before ‘we will hear.’” (bShabbat 88b) Now, in order to understand Rabbi Chama’s statement, we need to first figure out the meaning of the phrase: “the apple precedes its leaves.” When I was studying this passage yesterday afternoon with my colleague Rabbi Karen Silberman, she suggested that the apple hangs lower on the tree than the leaves that surround it—it’s more visible, it’s more prominent—and that’s what Rabbi Chama means when he says “the apple precedes its leaves.” Rashi, who, in addition to being the greatest Talmudic commentator of all time, was also a horticulturist, takes a similar tack. In contrast to other fruit, says Rashi, the apple ripens earlier than its surrounding leaves mature. (I confess, I’ve never noticed the phenomenon on the apple tree in my backyard, but I’ll take Rashi’s word for it.) So, when Rabbi Chama reports that the Israelites put forth ‘we will do’ before ‘we will hear’ just as the apple precedes its leaves, he means, if we align Rabbi Silberman’s and Rashi’s interpretations, that doing is a more prominent, more visible, riper, more mature way of responding to the world than understanding what we are doing. In Halachic terms, performing a Mitzvah is more important than studying it. Talmud Torah ke-neged kulam, “the study of Torah is equivalent to all the commandments,” only if it leads to the performance of the commandments.
Perhaps because recently, I have been reading a book on ecology, a different interpretation has occurred to me. What separate biological purposes, after all, do leaves and fruit serve on the apple tree? Leaves nourish the tree; they transform sunlight into food through the process of photosynthesis. In contrast, the apple falls to the ground and eventually produces baby apple trees. Furthermore, in the forest, the apple provides nourishment for animals—for the deer, and, frankly, for us. The function of leaves is essentially self-serving—they feed the tree, but nothing else. The function of the apple is the opposite of self-serving—it serves the next generation of apple trees, and it serves other species entirely.
Armed with this botanical observation, now, what does Rabbi Chama mean when he says that the Children of Israel put forth “we will do” before “we will hear” just as “the apple precedes its leaves?” I think that he is pointing out that when we study and learn, the activity benefits ourselves exclusively, but when we perform deeds for others, for the next generation, or for all life, then the activity has ultimate worth. Here, the emphasis is not so much on action over understanding, but on the enduring joy that stems from service beyond oneself.
If na’aseh ve-nishma is the prime Rabbinic paradigm for courageously stepping into the unknown, what does our brief survey of the Talmudic discussion on na’aseh ve-nishma teach us? All change can be terrifying. It is our terror that is most endearing to God. God expects fear from us—that’s what makes us human and not angels. More than expecting us to be afraid, God wants us to be afraid. There is something elevated, something noble, something divine, about confronting our fears with courage and not running from them.
What gives us the courage to exclaim “we will do it” before “we will hear it?” Maybe simply this: at a certain moment in our growth, we finally come to realize that we taste the sweetest fruit in life not by serving ourselves but by nourishing others—and, in so doing, we ensure our immortality. “Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?/ Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ With your one wild and precious life?” (Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”)
Today, you and I stand at the edge of the unknown. We peer across the edge, trying to imagine what our lives may be like next year, five years from now—what JCOGS will be like with a new spiritual leader. No matter how hard we try, we cannot pierce the veil of the future. Someday, we will turn around, look back at this transition point, and see how it fits into the grand narrative of our lives and into the long-range story of JCOGS—but not yet. As we step off the edge, may the nobility of our own courage to confront our fears inspire us to pursue the only enduring goal in life, which is service outside ourselves. Na’aseh ve-nishma! Let us do, now, and someday, may we come to understand.
Monday, February 20, 2012
January 20, 2012: Pharaoh's Hardened Heart (Va'era)
PHARAOH’S HARDENED HEART – THE EXCEPTION THAT PROVES THE RULE
Rick (not his real name) was admitted on New Year’s Day after a night of binge drinking. “I guess I wasn’t too steady on my feet when I walked into the middle of the road,” Rick tells me. “They say I flipped over the windshield of the car that hit me. I guess I’m lucky to be alive.” When I peruse the medical records, I see that Rick has landed in the hospital four times in the last seven years from accidents and injuries. “I know I’m an alcoholic, but sometimes the urge to drink is so strong, it blocks out everything else.” I think about all the times in my own life that I feel possessed by the desire to shut down and withdraw emotionally, possessed by the impulse to act out in rage, or possessed to distraction by obsessive thoughts.
And Adonai said to Moses: “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the marvels that I have put in your power. I, however will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.” (Exodus 4:21) Beginning with this verse, ten times, the Torah tells us that God intends to harden Pharaoh’s heart. Ten times, God afflicts him and his people with plagues. Can God be so cruel, so sadistic, that He hardens Pharaoh’s heart only to punish him for it? Whenever we reach the point in the Torah’s narrative of this week’s portion, Va’era, I find myself perennially gravitating to the age-old theological dilemma clearly posed by the Biblical commentator, Umberto Cassuto: “if it is the Lord who hardens the heart of Pharaoh, then the latter cannot be blamed for this, and consequently it is unethical for Pharaoh to suffer retribution.” More basically, the story seems to contradict the fundamental Jewish doctrine of free will. As Maimonides puts it: “If God were to decree that a person should be either good or bad, … what room would there be for the entire Torah?” (Hilchot Teshuvah 6:4)
There is no shortage of explanations to show that Pharaoh actually deserved all that he suffered. Many interpreters point out that before God sent any of the plagues, Pharaoh had already transgressed seriously enough to warrant them, when he ordered that all Israelite male infants be thrown into the Nile. Others cite the subtle but significant shift in language midway through the plagues. Each time God reverses the first few plagues, the text reads: “and Pharaoh hardened his heart,” but after the sixth plague, the plague of boils: “and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” From this literary detail, Maimonides makes an astute, psychological observation about human nature. Although when we transgress initially, it may be voluntary, once we transgress over and over again, it becomes habitual. The behavior takes on a life of its own, and becomes nearly impossible to break.
The problem with these justifications is that they seek a rational basis for rejecting the position that the Torah seems to plainly maintain: Pharaoh, or any human individual, can be robbed of his ability to choose his behavior. They remind me of the slew of rational conjectures for explaining away the plagues themselves. The Nile turned to blood, for example, because of the red tide, a fungus that in turn killed the frogs. When the frogs died, the lice came to feed upon the corpses, and so on. However, the import of all these signs and wonders lies precisely in their supernatural transcendence, and any attempt to naturalize them misses the point. The plagues are miracles. What’s more, Pharaoh’s hardened heart is a miracle too. Pharaoh’s hardened heart is a subversion of the natural order. Pharaoh’s hardened heart is the exception that proves the rule.
Ten times (once again ten!), the Torah reminds us that the purpose of all the signs, wonders and plagues of Egypt is knowledge of God, beginning with: “Thus says the Lord: By this you shall know that I am the Lord.” (Exodus 7:17) However, awareness of the Divine is an elusive thing. The 19th century Eastern European Rabbi, Joseph Caro, writes the following about our general incapacity to perceive God’s presence in the world: “People are fools, for everything that seems to them the usual course of nature, they will pay no attention to. They have eyes, but will not see, unless God creates something totally new upon the earth. Then, they will hop and skip like a ram, on the hind legs of their reason, saying: Look! Now, sure, Adonai is God!, as they exclaimed at the Red Sea. Only then do they believe, whereas the insightful sage will say, aren’t these mighty waters that have been flowing for thousands of years a greater testament to the power of their Creator? What could the [circumstance] of the waters drying up for a few hours at His command possibly add to that?” (Arthur Waskow, Torah of the Earth: Volume I, pp. 194-195)
If we admit that the divine act of hardening Pharaoh’s heart is no less a miracle in the moral universe as the divine act of splitting the sea in the natural world, where can we apprehend God’s underlying presence? The natural world and the moral universe lie very close. Rabbi Caro chides us with his reminder that God surrounds us in the everyday wonders of nature, if only we opened our eyes to them. Well, maybe God surrounds us just as surely in everyday acts of human kindness—a smile, a look of understanding, a gesture of compassion—if only we opened our hearts to accept them. We sit bolt upright and cry foul when God shuts up Pharaoh’s heart, but that’s only because we take our moral freedom for granted.
The fundamental doctrine of Jewish ethics is encoded in the second half of the classic paradox formulated in Pirkei Avot: hakol tzafui ve-hareshut netunah, “everything is foreseen, but permission [to choose] is given.” (Pirkei Avot 3:19) We certainly have plenty of excuses for wrongdoing besides pinning our “villainy upon the spherical predominance of sun, moon, stars, and planetary influence,” as Shakespeare puts it. (King Lear, I, ii, 125-130) “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” “they were a bad influence on me,” “I needed the money,”… More sophisticated exculpatory defenses, especially in a legal context, might invoke psychological, social, or genetic factors. However, the entire ethical and Halachic structure of Judaism rests on the principle that all such determinisms are fundamentally false.
If so, then how do we reconcile the two halves of the aphorism from Pirkei Avot, “permission to choose is given” with “everything is foreseen?” Perhaps they refer to two different time periods—the present and the future. Perhaps the statement means that in the age that we live, God has voluntarily set limits to His own power, vowing not to interfere in human affairs just as He has chosen not to interfere with the “Laws of Nature,” but at the end of days, He will reassert His omnipotence (in both the natural and moral order). Note that ha-reshut netunah could just as well be translated “the domain is given:”—this world is our domain to act freely, but in the Next World, God will retract our freedom.*
Alternatively, perhaps the tension between “everything is foreseen” and “permission to choose is given” lies entirely in the present, within this world. Perhaps the paradoxical formulation operates like a Zen koan, inviting us to meditate upon our freedom of choice, teaching us not to take our moral autonomy for granted, not to throw it away, not to confuse it with random, instinctual, or coerced behavior. Note that hakol tzafui could just as well be translated “everything is observed.” Freedom of choice demands that we observe, watch, and remain on the lookout for opportunities to open our hearts and turn them to good. After all, a hardened heart is not always the willful expression of rebellion. Sometimes our callousness simply stems from apathy.
I told Rick that I couldn’t predict the future, but that if he continued down the path he’s on, chances are that one of these days he would wind up in the morgue, not the hospital. He nodded his head in agreement. “But it’s not inevitable,” I continued, and the two of us spent the rest of the pastoral visit strategizing on the structures he would put in place to support his recovery once he left the hospital. His heart was open and receptive—at least for the moment. Actually, that’s where free will has to operate for all of us—in the moment. Rick and I concluded our conversation by reciting the Serenity Prayer. I would like to conclude now with a serenity prayer of my own: “God, grant us the wisdom to appreciate Your underlying presence in the moral as well as the natural order, the courage to open our hearts to change, and the serenity to observe and celebrate the prevailing moments for exercising our God-given freedom of choice.”
========
*The Aleinu prayer, recited three times daily, includes the following powerful eschatological vision: “We therefore hope in You, Lord our God, that we shall soon see Your glory, to remove the abominations of the earth and all idolatry destroyed, to perfect the world under the kingdom of the Almighty, and all humanity will call upon Your name, to turn to You all the wicked of the earth.” I have intentionally tried to preserve in translation the grammatical ambiguity of the Hebrew text. Who will remove the abominations of the earth, God or human beings? Who will destroy idolatry? Who will perfect the world? Will God Himself turn every human heart to Him (just as He once hardened Pharaoh’s heart), or will every person on Earth of her own accord be inspired to turn her heart to God? Which outcome would be more miraculous? The syntax is vague—perhaps deliberately so.
Rick (not his real name) was admitted on New Year’s Day after a night of binge drinking. “I guess I wasn’t too steady on my feet when I walked into the middle of the road,” Rick tells me. “They say I flipped over the windshield of the car that hit me. I guess I’m lucky to be alive.” When I peruse the medical records, I see that Rick has landed in the hospital four times in the last seven years from accidents and injuries. “I know I’m an alcoholic, but sometimes the urge to drink is so strong, it blocks out everything else.” I think about all the times in my own life that I feel possessed by the desire to shut down and withdraw emotionally, possessed by the impulse to act out in rage, or possessed to distraction by obsessive thoughts.
And Adonai said to Moses: “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the marvels that I have put in your power. I, however will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.” (Exodus 4:21) Beginning with this verse, ten times, the Torah tells us that God intends to harden Pharaoh’s heart. Ten times, God afflicts him and his people with plagues. Can God be so cruel, so sadistic, that He hardens Pharaoh’s heart only to punish him for it? Whenever we reach the point in the Torah’s narrative of this week’s portion, Va’era, I find myself perennially gravitating to the age-old theological dilemma clearly posed by the Biblical commentator, Umberto Cassuto: “if it is the Lord who hardens the heart of Pharaoh, then the latter cannot be blamed for this, and consequently it is unethical for Pharaoh to suffer retribution.” More basically, the story seems to contradict the fundamental Jewish doctrine of free will. As Maimonides puts it: “If God were to decree that a person should be either good or bad, … what room would there be for the entire Torah?” (Hilchot Teshuvah 6:4)
There is no shortage of explanations to show that Pharaoh actually deserved all that he suffered. Many interpreters point out that before God sent any of the plagues, Pharaoh had already transgressed seriously enough to warrant them, when he ordered that all Israelite male infants be thrown into the Nile. Others cite the subtle but significant shift in language midway through the plagues. Each time God reverses the first few plagues, the text reads: “and Pharaoh hardened his heart,” but after the sixth plague, the plague of boils: “and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” From this literary detail, Maimonides makes an astute, psychological observation about human nature. Although when we transgress initially, it may be voluntary, once we transgress over and over again, it becomes habitual. The behavior takes on a life of its own, and becomes nearly impossible to break.
The problem with these justifications is that they seek a rational basis for rejecting the position that the Torah seems to plainly maintain: Pharaoh, or any human individual, can be robbed of his ability to choose his behavior. They remind me of the slew of rational conjectures for explaining away the plagues themselves. The Nile turned to blood, for example, because of the red tide, a fungus that in turn killed the frogs. When the frogs died, the lice came to feed upon the corpses, and so on. However, the import of all these signs and wonders lies precisely in their supernatural transcendence, and any attempt to naturalize them misses the point. The plagues are miracles. What’s more, Pharaoh’s hardened heart is a miracle too. Pharaoh’s hardened heart is a subversion of the natural order. Pharaoh’s hardened heart is the exception that proves the rule.
Ten times (once again ten!), the Torah reminds us that the purpose of all the signs, wonders and plagues of Egypt is knowledge of God, beginning with: “Thus says the Lord: By this you shall know that I am the Lord.” (Exodus 7:17) However, awareness of the Divine is an elusive thing. The 19th century Eastern European Rabbi, Joseph Caro, writes the following about our general incapacity to perceive God’s presence in the world: “People are fools, for everything that seems to them the usual course of nature, they will pay no attention to. They have eyes, but will not see, unless God creates something totally new upon the earth. Then, they will hop and skip like a ram, on the hind legs of their reason, saying: Look! Now, sure, Adonai is God!, as they exclaimed at the Red Sea. Only then do they believe, whereas the insightful sage will say, aren’t these mighty waters that have been flowing for thousands of years a greater testament to the power of their Creator? What could the [circumstance] of the waters drying up for a few hours at His command possibly add to that?” (Arthur Waskow, Torah of the Earth: Volume I, pp. 194-195)
If we admit that the divine act of hardening Pharaoh’s heart is no less a miracle in the moral universe as the divine act of splitting the sea in the natural world, where can we apprehend God’s underlying presence? The natural world and the moral universe lie very close. Rabbi Caro chides us with his reminder that God surrounds us in the everyday wonders of nature, if only we opened our eyes to them. Well, maybe God surrounds us just as surely in everyday acts of human kindness—a smile, a look of understanding, a gesture of compassion—if only we opened our hearts to accept them. We sit bolt upright and cry foul when God shuts up Pharaoh’s heart, but that’s only because we take our moral freedom for granted.
The fundamental doctrine of Jewish ethics is encoded in the second half of the classic paradox formulated in Pirkei Avot: hakol tzafui ve-hareshut netunah, “everything is foreseen, but permission [to choose] is given.” (Pirkei Avot 3:19) We certainly have plenty of excuses for wrongdoing besides pinning our “villainy upon the spherical predominance of sun, moon, stars, and planetary influence,” as Shakespeare puts it. (King Lear, I, ii, 125-130) “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” “they were a bad influence on me,” “I needed the money,”… More sophisticated exculpatory defenses, especially in a legal context, might invoke psychological, social, or genetic factors. However, the entire ethical and Halachic structure of Judaism rests on the principle that all such determinisms are fundamentally false.
If so, then how do we reconcile the two halves of the aphorism from Pirkei Avot, “permission to choose is given” with “everything is foreseen?” Perhaps they refer to two different time periods—the present and the future. Perhaps the statement means that in the age that we live, God has voluntarily set limits to His own power, vowing not to interfere in human affairs just as He has chosen not to interfere with the “Laws of Nature,” but at the end of days, He will reassert His omnipotence (in both the natural and moral order). Note that ha-reshut netunah could just as well be translated “the domain is given:”—this world is our domain to act freely, but in the Next World, God will retract our freedom.*
Alternatively, perhaps the tension between “everything is foreseen” and “permission to choose is given” lies entirely in the present, within this world. Perhaps the paradoxical formulation operates like a Zen koan, inviting us to meditate upon our freedom of choice, teaching us not to take our moral autonomy for granted, not to throw it away, not to confuse it with random, instinctual, or coerced behavior. Note that hakol tzafui could just as well be translated “everything is observed.” Freedom of choice demands that we observe, watch, and remain on the lookout for opportunities to open our hearts and turn them to good. After all, a hardened heart is not always the willful expression of rebellion. Sometimes our callousness simply stems from apathy.
I told Rick that I couldn’t predict the future, but that if he continued down the path he’s on, chances are that one of these days he would wind up in the morgue, not the hospital. He nodded his head in agreement. “But it’s not inevitable,” I continued, and the two of us spent the rest of the pastoral visit strategizing on the structures he would put in place to support his recovery once he left the hospital. His heart was open and receptive—at least for the moment. Actually, that’s where free will has to operate for all of us—in the moment. Rick and I concluded our conversation by reciting the Serenity Prayer. I would like to conclude now with a serenity prayer of my own: “God, grant us the wisdom to appreciate Your underlying presence in the moral as well as the natural order, the courage to open our hearts to change, and the serenity to observe and celebrate the prevailing moments for exercising our God-given freedom of choice.”
========
*The Aleinu prayer, recited three times daily, includes the following powerful eschatological vision: “We therefore hope in You, Lord our God, that we shall soon see Your glory, to remove the abominations of the earth and all idolatry destroyed, to perfect the world under the kingdom of the Almighty, and all humanity will call upon Your name, to turn to You all the wicked of the earth.” I have intentionally tried to preserve in translation the grammatical ambiguity of the Hebrew text. Who will remove the abominations of the earth, God or human beings? Who will destroy idolatry? Who will perfect the world? Will God Himself turn every human heart to Him (just as He once hardened Pharaoh’s heart), or will every person on Earth of her own accord be inspired to turn her heart to God? Which outcome would be more miraculous? The syntax is vague—perhaps deliberately so.
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