Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

Who is Worthy of God’s Word?

2 Comments

To some, G-d is great because He makes the wind blow.

For others, because He projects space and time out of the void.

The men of thought laugh and say He is far beyond any of this, for His Oneness remains unaltered even by the event of Creation.

We Jews, this is what we have always said:

G-d is so great, He stoops to listen to the prayer of a small child;

He paints the petals of each wildflower and awaits us there to catch Him doing so;

He plays with the rules of the world He has made to comfort the oppressed and support those who champion justice.

He transcends the bounds of higher and lower.

He transcends all bounds.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Greatness Unlimited”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Indeed, the prayer of the community was born the very instant the prophetic community expired and, when it did come into the spiritual world of the Jew of old, it did not supersede the prophetic community but rather perpetuated it. Prayer is the continuation of prophecy, and the fellowship of prayerful men is ipso facto the fellowship of prophets.

-Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
from Chapter VII of his book
The Lonely Man of Faith

Rabbi Soloveitchik says a very interesting thing. He links the age of the prophets to the post-Second Temple world of Rabbinic Judaism. This may seem strange to most Christians, since we are taught a good many things passed away with the ascendency of Christ and the demise of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, Christianity tends to discount the early Rabbinic period forward in the history of Judaism and “replace” it with the grace of Jesus Christ.

Of course Rabbi Soloveitchik as an Orthodox Jew, would not offer any sort of acknowledgement of Christ, but I think we can take his words, and those of Rabbi Freeman’s and try to apply them to the world of prayer among all men. While the prophets of old were unique and (as far as I can tell) no man has the “gift of prophesy” today as did Jewish men such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, we all have the capacity to engage God in the realm of prayer. This makes no man a prophet in the manner of those I have just mentioned, but the ability of humanity to connect, through faith, with God was not ended when the Second Temple was destroyed. Nor did it end with the life, death, life, and ascendency of Jesus. As Rabbi Freeman tells us, God is so great that “He stoops to listen to the prayer of a small child.”

And yet, from a Jewish point of view, prayer is not the exclusive property of the individual as Rabbi Soloveitchik notes:

No man, however great and noble, is worthy of God’s word if he fancies that the word is his private property not to be shared by others.

Judaism sees its relationship with God as largely corporate as indeed, is the Sinai covenant between God and the Israelites. Yet each Jew living today is also to consider himself as having stood personally at the foot of Mount Sinai as God gave the Torah through Moses. By comparison, Christianity, though the “body of Christ,” exists conceptually as a large collection of individuals, and each believer interacts as a unique personality, almost exclusively independent of the community of the church.

We see this most often in how we, as Christians, pray. It’s an almost irresistible temptation to pray about me, myself, and I, and Jesus did not prohibit this. And yet, he also told us to pray for others, even our enemies, and to petition God for the welfare of our leaders, our neighbors, and our oppressors. Rabbi Soloveitchik echos this when he writes “Man should avoid praying for himself alone…When disaster strikes, one must not be immersed completely in his own passional destiny, thinking exclusively for himself, being concerned only with himself, and petitioning God merely for himself.” To do so would be to imagine that God is little more than Aladdin’s genie and we alone are the one holding onto the lamp.

PrayingBut what is prayer and how is it somehow connected to perpetuating the continuation of prophecy?

Who is qualified to engage God in the prayer colloquy? Clearly, the person who is ready to cleanse himself of imperfection and evil. Any kind of injustice, corruption, cruelty, or the like desecrates the very essence of the prayer adventure, since it encases man in an ugly little world into which God is unwilling to enter. If man craves to meet God in prayer, then he must purge himself of all that separates him from God.

God hearkens to prayer if it rises from a contrite heart over a muddled and faulty life and from a resolute mind ready to redeem this life, In short, only the committed person is qualified to pray and to meet God. Prayer is always the harbinger of moral reformation.

So who can pray? On the one hand, it seems as if prayer is reserved for the person who is passionately dedicated to removing all sin and evil from his being and who longs to engage God in a realm of purity. On the other hand, what man, no matter what his condition, is completely clean and pure except that God has made him so?

Even an unbeliever can pray and be heard by God, otherwise no one could ever come to faith and be accepted by God. No one would ever be able to come to faith in God through Jesus Christ and be cleansed, healed, and reconciled with his Creator unless God was willing to hear the prayers of people covered in filth. It’s the desire to have the mantle of sin be removed from our shoulders, not the success of that removal whereby God is willing to hear us. In that sense, we do possess a “specialness” that was experienced by the prophets of old in that they too were willing, though still mortal and imperfect men.

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” –Isaiah 6:4-5 (ESV)

As I mentioned before, the prophets didn’t consider God’s revelations to them to be their exclusive property but rather, they shared God’s word with all, even as they were commanded to do. Should we, in our own human need, keep prayer just for us and not share it with all of God’s creations?

But since we are all imperfect and perhaps never, even for a moment, attain a purity that allows a true connection to God, how does God hear? What of the person so damaged and injured in his spirit, that he only knows to cry out but is unable to shed his “skin of evil?”

Likewise, we encourage the sinner to pray even though he is not ready yet for repentance and moral regeneration, because any mitzvah performance, be it prayer, be it another moral act, has a cleansing effect upon the doer and may influence his life and bring about a complete change in his personality.

It seems as if I’m wandering further and further away from the prophets or rather, Rabbi Soloveitchik did when he penned these words. On the other hand, the Rav seems to be saying what he did before; that prayer isn’t the exclusive property of the pious and the holy and the righteous. Even sinners can and absolutely need to connect to God. Jesus was criticized for eating with sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors, yet he said this:

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” –Luke 5:31-32 (ESV)

Thus access to the heart of God is available to all, not just to the perfect and those who sit in clean suits and dresses in pews on Sunday morning.

But going back to the very beginning of today’s “meditation,” we as Christians see that God is accessible not just to us and not just to “sinners,” but to all Jews everywhere, whether they are in the Messiah or not (and I am not lumping the Jewish people in with “sinners”).

I know it’s strange. Do I speak blasphemy? Do I ignore John 14:6? I suppose it looks that way. But I’m not willing to throw post-Jesus Jews under a bus because Christianity (and many in the Hebrew Roots movement) think “Rabbinic Judaism” is a dirty word.

I’ve sat in synagogues on Shabbat and during the Shema, have felt God enter as a tangible presence. I’ve sat in churches during prayer and singing and felt as if the room were completely empty. This is not to say that all synagogues possess God’s presence and all churches contain only God’s absence. Far from it. I am only saying that the 21st century church is not the only receptacle for the spirit of God. God is present where all men who desire Him are gathered, and resides in the heart of each individual, no matter who he is, who longs for the lover of his soul.

Who is qualified to engage God in the prayer colloquy? The person who is ready to cleanse himself certainly, but more than that, even the person who is at present unable or unwilling to be clean may still cry out. The very act of calling God’s Name may not “command” God to listen, but it may require the person praying to change his heart in acknowledgement of Him.

Thousands of years before the coming of Christ, while most of our non-Jewish ancestors (I’m speaking to Christians right now) were dancing around the pagan fires and worshiping “gods” of stone and wood, the Jewish people were turning their hearts to the One God. True, they also turned away many times, but God called them back and they returned. Otherwise, there would be no Christians today, for there would have been no Judaism by which the Messiah entered the world (and will enter it again).

Whoever you are reading this, know that God is not your exclusive property. God is a God to all or He is a God to none. While He has a special and unique relationship with the Jewish people which is perpetual and unable to be broken, He sent His only begotten Son for the rest of us, too. The rest of us just need to make sure that we don’t try to “take over” and restrict God to only ourselves.

Uncategorized

The One Side of the Coin

4 Comments

As a matter of fact, at the level of his cosmic confrontation with God, man is faced with an exasperating paradox. On the one hand, he beholds God in every nook and corner of creation, in the flowering plant, in the rushing of the tide, and in the movement of his own muscle, as if God were at hand, close to and beside man, engaging him in a friendly dialogue. And yet the very moment man turns his face to God, he finds Him remote, un-approachable, enveloped in transcendence and mystery. Did not Isaiah behold God, exalted and enthroned above creation, and at the same time, the train of his skirts filling the Temple, the great universe, from the flying nebulae to one’s most intimate heartbeat? Did not the angels sing holy, holy, holy, transcendent, transcendent, transcendent, yet He is the Lord of hosts, who resides in every infinitesimal particle of creation and the whole universe is replete with His glory?

-Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
from Chapter VI of his book
The Lonely Man of Faith

Fusing the existential acuity of Kierkegaard with the wisdom of the Old Testament, Boston Orthodox rabbi Soloveitchik has produced a timeless spiritual guide for men and women of all religions. In this soaring, eloquent essay, first published in Tradition magazine in 1965, “The Rav,” as he is known to his followers worldwide, investigates the essential aloneness of the person of faith, whom he deems a misfit in our narcissistic, technologically oriented, utilitarian society. Using the story of Adam and Eve as a springboard, Soloveitchik explains prayer as “the harbinger of moral reformation” and probes the despair and exasperation of individuals who seek to redeem existence through direct knowledge of a God who seems remote and unapproachable. Although the faithful may become members of a “convenantal community,” their true home, he writes, is “the abode of loneliness” as they shuttle between the transcendent and the mundane. Sudden shafts of illumination confront the reader at every turn in this inspirational personal testament.

-from Publishers Weekly, 1992

Rabbi Soloveitchik uses the two descriptions of the creation of man from the first two chapters of Genesis to illustrate the two natures of humanity: the physical nature and the spiritual nature. I’m being very simplistic in this explanation, but as I read Soloveitchik, the basic conflict of any person of faith is in the dichotomy of the natural and supernatural human being. The first seeks significance and even triumph in domination over the created world, while the second sees transcendence beyond the world, to peek, as it were, under the hood, and to touch the very garment of the Creator.

Christianity’s response to this dilemma is to completely separate the physical and the spiritual, giving the latter ascendance and (ideally) priority over the former (it doesn’t often work out this way). This creates a barrier between the “two Adams” who, living in one flesh, travel in two apparently opposite directions. However, maybe Judaism has another approach:

Yula is an enlightened being. He spends his life in the wilderness, far from humanity, focusing his mind on the higher realms.

Harriet Goldberg is a schoolteacher. She spends her life cultivating small minds, hoping to give them a sense of wonder for the world they live in.

Who is closer to G-d?

That depends. Where is G-d?

If G‑d emanated a world spontaneously, dispassionately—just as the sun provides us light and warmth without any investment on its part—then G-d is found beyond this world, and Yula is closer.

But if G-d created a world deliberately, because that is what He desires and cares for, and so He invested Himself within that creation, so that His very essence and being can be found here, then Harriet is closer.

You choose.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“How to be Spiritual”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Then again, maybe not. But do we really have to make a choice between Yula and Harriet? Why must one be closer to God than the other? Isn’t there room in God’s throne room or His heart for both?

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok of Lubavitch wrote:

When my grandmother, the Rebbetzin Rivkah, was eighteen years old she fell ill and the doctor ordered that she eat immediately upon waking. But grandmother, who did not wish to eat before prayer, would pray at an early hour and only afterwards eat her breakfast.

When her father-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, heard of this, he said to her: “A Jew must be healthy and strong. Concerning the precepts of the Torah it is written “live in them”- one is to infuse life into the mitzvos; and in order to infuse life into the mitzvos, one must be fit and joyful.”

Concluded Rabbi Menachem Mendel: “Better to eat in order to pray, than to pray in order to eat.”

-Rabbi Yanki Tauber
Commentary on Torah Portion Acharei
Leviticus 21:1-24:23
Chabad.org

Here we see that the physical is ascendant over the spiritual, but only so the former can serve the latter’s purpose. However, Rabbi Freeman has another way of looking at the human condition:

There are crossroads where you choose not only your future, but your past as well.

Take one path, and your past becomes but a silly, useless dream that might as well never have happened.

Take another road, and your past becomes a magnificent frame for a glorious moment of life. The moment now. The moment for which your soul was formed.

—Padah B’shalom, 5738

Future and past, humanity and Divinity, secular and spiritual, each human being, perhaps even those who refuse to acknowledge the possibility of God, stands at the center of a room with two doors, each leading into two directions that are impossible to fuse into a single path.

But each of us is only a single being. While Rabbi Soloveitchik uses the two different descriptions of the creation of Adam to illustrate these separate paths, in fact, Adam was one man who was created into two worlds. He was commanded to dominate and rule over a physical Creation, but he was also directed to transcendently guard Creation for the sake of Heaven. When man fell, it did not destroy the “second Adam,” it just made it harder for the two paths to unite into a single journey.

Since the day when Adam and Eve were rejected by Eden, we have been trying to walk both east and west in search of God. Where might He be found; in the Heavens above, or in the earth below?

Ironically, we find Him at once in both, which is just plain confusing to most people. To solve the confusion, some men turn only to Heaven while others choose to observe Him only in how He manifests in nature. One extreme imprisons God in the realm of spirituality while the other traps Him on earth or worse, leads man to worship only the observable.

At the end of the book of Exodus, God dwelt among His people in the “form” of the Shekhinah, which indeed seemed to possess a heaviness and “substance” within the material world. But God did not cease to exist as the infinite and unknowable Ein Sof in His highest Heavens.

Is God found in the human heart and in the unattainable mystic domains beyond man’s ability to conceive? Most certainly. But where does that leave man? How can we find God when He exists in two impossibly incompatible realms?

I don’t know. I only know that the reason both “Adams” are lonely is not just because of their great difficulty in attaching to God, but because of the near impossibility in talking to each other. Two essences are trapped in one flesh, the first being completely at home there and the second being a complete foreigner.

But we can’t live, one without the other. The material man without the spiritual man, is just a machine who perceives only the world around him and is unable, by default, to understand anything else. God is lost to him or man himself becomes his own “god.” The spiritual man without the material man is at best, indifferent to the physical world and obsessed with ephemeral mysticism. At worst, he is just plain dead. In this extreme, if we refuse to eat and drink in order to “better” pray to God, we starve our bodies and deny our lives.

But God made us as both and for the length of our earthly existence, this is who we are. Man struggles to make his peace with God but in reality, we cannot be at peace with our Creator until we find peace within ourselves. The Adams must learn to live with each other and to appreciate and embrace both sets of priorities, not as incompatible opposites, but as two fused sides to a single coin.

God cannot be anything but the unique and radical One. We human beings, created in His image, are two, but as two we are incomplete. We must also be One, as He is One. That is the destination to which we are striving all our lives to attain.

Perhaps that’s the answer to how we must be holy as God is holy and how we must be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. We must be One, as God is One.

In the end, the coin will only have one side.

 

Uncategorized

The Chaotic Serene Garden

5 Comments

I have no problem-solving thoughts. I do not intend to suggest a new method of remedying the human situation which I am about to describe; neither do I believe that it can be remedied at all. The role of the man of faith, whose religious experience is fraught with inner conflicts and incongruities, who oscillates between ecstasy in God’s companionship and despair when he feels abandoned by God, and who is torn asunder by the heightened contrast between self-appreciation and abnegation, has been a difficult one since the times of Abraham and Moses. It would be presumptuous of me to attempt to convert the passional, antinomic faith-experience into a eudaemonic, harmonious one, while the Biblical knights of faith lived heroically with this very tragic and paradoxical experience.

All I want is to follow the advice given by Elihu, the son of Berachel of old, who said, “I will speak that I may find relief”; for there is a redemptive quality for an agitated mind in the spoken word, and a tormented soul finds peace in confessing.

-Joseph B. Soloveitchik
from the Foreword of his book
The Lonely Man of Faith

In many ways, reading the first part of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s book is like looking in a mirror. Well, not exactly. He was born over half a century before I was and after all, I’m not Jewish, let alone a Rabbi. Yet everything he says about his own experience and the experience of a man of faith completely reflects my own thoughts, feelings, and uneasy journey with God.

I’ve talked before about trying to find a storyteller who speaks in metaphors I can understand, and so far Rabbi Soloveitchik is one of those storytellers. I don’t think I’ll ever know why men like Rabbi Tzvi Freeman and even the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of righteous memory, use “my metaphors” so much more clearly than any Christian author I’ve ever read. It is true that Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk, spoke very well and clearly to some parts of me in his book The Seven Storey Mountain, but that’s something of a rarity.

I’m not going to presume a Jewish soul, and in so many ways, I’m such a Goy (at least according to my Jewish wife), so I really don’t have an answer. But at least as far as my reading up to the end of Chapter 1 is concerned, Rabbi Soloveitchik is speaking in a language that could apply to people of many different faiths, not just to the Jew.

And he’s talking about exactly what I experience.

I have a confession to make. There were times when I thought I was going crazy. There were times when I thought I was just a bad Christian, a person with a bad or weak faith, someone who just didn’t “get” what it was to walk on a path that leads to God. And yet just look at how Rabbi Soloveitchik starts the first chapter of his book:

The nature of the dilemma can be stated in a three-word sentence. I am lonely. Let me emphasize, however, that by stating “I am lonely” I do not intend to convey to you that impression that I am alone. I, thank God, do enjoy the love and friendship of many. I meet people, talk, preach, argue, reason; I am surrounded by comrades and acquaintances. And yet, companionship and friendship do not alleviate the passional experience of loneliness which trails me constantly. I am lonely because at times I feel rejected and thrust away by everybody, not excluding my own intimate friends, and the words of the Psalmist, “My father and my mother have forsaken me,” ring quite often in my ears like the plaintive cooing of the turtledove. It is a strange, alas, absurd experience engendering sharp, enervating pain as well as stimulating, cathartic feeling. I despair because I am lonely and, hence feel frustrated. On the other hand, I also feel invigorated because this very experience of loneliness presses everything in me into the service of God.

While Rabbi Soloveitchik’s writing style is very different from mine, what he’s actually saying is just what I’ve been trying to say for a long as I have been blogging. Actually, it’s been a lot longer than that, but blogging has provided me with a unique outlet for my frustration and my need to “follow the advice given by Elihu, the son of Berachel of old” and to “speak that I may find relief.”

Joseph Ber Soloeitchik was born over a century ago, was an American Orthodox rabbi, Talmudist and modern Jewish philosopher, and a descendant of the Lithuanian Jewish Soloveitchik rabbinic dynasty. The words of his book first appeared in print over fifty years ago, when I was still in elementary school. He died at the age of 90 nearly twenty years ago and a continent away from where I was living at the moment his soul ascended to God. I don’t imagine that we would have had a lot in common had we ever met.

Except for how we experience our faith.

Maybe I’m not crazy after all. Maybe faith is designed to be lonely, inconsistent, and chaotic, like riding a roller coaster that alternately travels through a beautiful and serene Japanese garden and the fresh hell of a radioactive Chernobyl.

If I can take the beginning words of the Rav’s book at face value, I guess my journey of faith will never get any easier, and my only solace is in “confessing” my “tortured soul” (in my case, as a blogger on the web). And yet, it’s nice to find out that I’m not alone in feeling alone in my faith.

I’ll let you know how the rest of the book turns out.

Uncategorized

Passing Judgment

Leave a comment

Said Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov:

When a person comes before the supernal court to account for sojourn on earth, he is first asked to voice his opinion on another life. “What do you think,” he is asked, “about one who has done so and so?” After he offers his verdict, it is demonstrated to him how these deeds and circumstances parallel those of his own life. Ultimately, it is the person himself who passes judgment on his own failings and achievements.

This explains the peculiar wording of the above passage of the Ethics, “before whom you are destined to give a judgment and accounting.” Is not the verdict handed down after the cross-examination of the defendant? So should not the “judgment” follow the “accounting”? And why are you destined to “give judgment” as opposed to being judged? But no judgment is ever passed on a person from above. Only after he has himself ruled on any given deed does the heavenly court make him account for a matching episode in his own life.

The same idea is also implicit in another passage in our chapter of the Ethics: “Retribution is extracted from a person, with his knowledge and without his knowledge.” As a person knowingly expresses his opinion on a certain matter, he is unwittingly passing judgment on himself.

Commentary on Ethics of Our Fathers
Chapter 3
“Subjective Judge”
Iyar 10, 5772 * May 2, 2012
Chabad.org

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.”

–Matthew 25:31-33 (ESV)

I don’t think many Christians believe they’ll be given the opportunity to judge themselves in Messianic days, but then most Christians think they won’t be judged at all. Only sinners (i.e. non-Christians) will be judged. Christians are saved and exempt from all this sort of stuff.

Whew! What a relief.

But wait a minute. What else did Jesus say?

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” –Matthew 25:34-46 (ESV)

Now that’s odd. It sounds like we aren’t judged based on what we believe in our hearts but on what we actually do with that belief. The Master’s own brother said, “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” If faith without works is dead, then if we are without works, regardless of what we feel or believe inside, are we dead, too?

I’m not really going to try to evaluate the mechanics of how salvation works or who does or doesn’t merit a place in the world to come (i.e. “Heaven” as Christianity understands it). I do want to talk about the times when you judge other people.

C’mon. Admit it. You do judge other people, dear Christian friends. So do I, though I’m not saying that out of any sense of pride. Think of the guy or gal who cut you off in traffic yesterday when you were driving to work. Didn’t you, even in the privacy of your own thoughts and emotions, momentarily “judge” that person and their relative driving skills? Any time you become angry at another person, don’t you judge them in terms of their worthiness or some other attribute they possess or lack? If you’re a football fan, when your favorite quarterback fumbles what should have been your team’s winning play, don’t you judge that knucklehea…uh, player for his failure to lead his team to victory?

Do you want to be judged by the same standards you use to judge others?

and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors. –Matthew 6:12 (ESV)

I’ve mentioned this particularly telling part of the Lord’s Prayer before. It certainly seems like Jesus is saying that we will be forgiven in direct relation to how we forgive others.

Oh certainly, Jesus couldn’t have meant anything like that! Oh yeah?

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” –Matthew 18:23-35 (ESV)

Oh wow! Apparently, he did.

Now look back at the commentary for chapter 3 of Ethics of the Fathers. Imagine that’s how you’ll actually be judged; by how you judge others. Now imagine that if you show mercy to others to such and thus degree, God will show you the same mercy. But if you show such and thus judgement toward others, God will judge you to the same degree. When you judge, you’re looking in a mirror.

Imagine you have control over how your life will be judged. Imagine you can determine how harsh or how merciful God will treat you at the end of your days. Imagine how you forgive or condemn one human being today will affect how God judges you tomorrow. Imagine.

A gentile once came to Shammai, and wanted to convert to Judaism. But he insisted on learning the whole Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai rejected him, so he went to Hillel, who taught him: “What you dislike, do not do to your friend. That is the basis of the Torah. The rest is commentary; go and learn!”

-Rabbi Hillel

Uncategorized

Acharei-Kedoshim: Impossible Love and Holiness

2 Comments

Following the deaths of Nadav and Avihu, G‑d warns against unauthorized entry “into the holy.” Only one person, the kohen gadol (“high priest”), may, but once a year, on Yom Kippur, enter the innermost chamber in the Sanctuary to offer the sacred ketoret to G‑d.

Another feature of the Day of Atonement service is the casting of lots over two goats, to determine which should be offered to G‑d and which should be dispatched to carry off the sins of Israel to the wilderness.

The Parshah of Acharei also warns against bringing korbanot (animal or meal offerings) anywhere but in the Holy Temple, forbids the consumption of blood, and details the laws prohibiting incest and other deviant sexual relations.

The Parshah of Kedoshim begins with the statement: “You shall be holy, for I, the L‑rd your G‑d, am holy.” This is followed by dozens of mitzvot (divine commandments) through which the Jew sanctifies him- or herself and relates to the holiness of G‑d.

These include: the prohibition against idolatry, the mitzvah of charity, the principle of equality before the law, Shabbat, sexual morality, honesty in business, honor and awe of one’s parents, and the sacredness of life.

Also in Kedoshim is the dictum which the great sage Rabbi Akiva called a cardinal principle of Torah, and of which Hillel said, “This is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary”—“Love your fellow as yourself.”

Parshah in a Nutshell
Commentary on Acharei–Kedoshim
Leviticus 16:1–20:27
Chabad.org

Okay, here’s the problem: I’m supposed to love my fellow man. Which means that I should accept my fellow human beings as they are. (That’s what love means, right?) But can I—indeed, should I—accept my fellow human beings as they are?

Should I accept a malnourished child as she is? Should I accept a drug-addicted teenager, a suicidal spouse or a bigoted friend as he is? If a person I love suffers from a lack of something—whether that something is food, money, knowledge, health, moral integrity or peace of mind—and whether that person wants to be helped or not, should I not do everything in my power to fill that lack?

-Rabbi Yanki Tauber
“Love Yourself”
Commentary on Acharei–Kedoshim
Leviticus 16:1–20:27
Chabad.org

Love your fellow as yourself: I am the Lord.

–Leviticus 19:10 (JPS Tanakh)

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m beating a dead horse as far as this “love” stuff in the Bible is concerned. I’ve been writing about love, or our woeful lack of it, all this week now and I can’t even stop long enough to write a commentary on this week’s Torah Portion. And yet the Bible speaks to both the Jews and the Christians (and everyone else) about the need; the absolute requirement for love.

It also speaks about the absolute need for holiness and perfection, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Christians should be very familiar with the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. –Matthew 22:39 (ESV)

That’s the second of the two greatest commandments issued by the Master and as I’m sure you can tell, this week’s Torah Portion was Christ’s “source material.”

But what does it mean to love someone else as you love yourself? Rabbi Tauber’s commentary is very eye opening.

Love is an oxymoron. To truly love someone, I have to do two contradictory things: I have to respect him, and I have to care for him. If I do not accept him as he is, that means that I do not respect him. It means that I don’t really love him—I love only what I wish to make of him. But to love someone also means that I care for him and desire the best for him. And since very, very few people are the best that they can be, caring for someone means not accepting him as he is, but believing in his potential to be better, and doing everything I can to reveal that potential.

I can respect someone. I can care for someone. I can accept a person as she is. I can not accept a person as he is. But I can’t do both at the same time. Love sounds great in principle. In practice, it’s impossible.

But I love myself. I’m not unaware of my deficiencies; indeed, in a certain sense, I am more aware of them than anyone else. I want to improve myself, but I don’t think less of myself because I haven’t yet done so. I respect myself and I care for myself; I accept myself as I am, while incessantly striving to make myself better than I am. I love myself—truly, fully, in every sense of the word.

Two and OneOften, husbands complain that their wives are always trying to change them, and usually in ways the husband doesn’t want to change. Here we see a little bit about why wives are motivated in this direction. If a wife loves her husband “as herself,” then she sees the faults in him and wants to help him be a better person. But what about the part of love that requires respecting the other? Is it respectful to try and change a person when they don’t want to be changed? Is it possible for a wife to love her husband enough to help him realize his greater potential and still respect him for who he is today?

If a person were trying to kill himself and you could stop him, would you stop him or respect his wish to die?

That’s a tough one, since some people feel that they should, under certain circumstances, respect another individual’s “right to die.” But what about an alcoholic drinking herself to death? What about a drug addict shooting chemicals into her arm while ignoring her baby crying in his crib? If you love someone and they are on a path toward self-destruction in any way, shape or form, could you stand idly by and allow it to happen? Won’t that self-destruction hurt or even destroy others around the person you love? Is allowing a person to “crash and burn” loving and respectful?

I don’t think there’s an easy answer to that one, but I do think that’s why both the Torah of Moses and the commandment of Christ specifically teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Love isn’t easy.

But how does holiness figure into all of this?

Indeed, a Jew’s sanctity can be so lofty that it bears some comparison with G-d’s, as the verse states: “You shall… be holy, for I… am holy.”

But how is it possible for corporeal man to reach such heights? The verse addresses itself to this question when it states “for I, the L-rd your G-d, am holy.” Since G-d is holy, each and every Jew can and must be holy as well, for all Jews “are truly part of G-d above.”

The measure of sanctity which each and every Jew is capable of achieving may best be appreciated when one realizes that the sanctity we are told to aspire to in Kedoshim follows that previously achieved in Acharei. In that portion, the passing of Nadav and Avihu is described as the result of their souls’ extreme longing for G-d. So great was their love that their bodies could no longer contain their souls, which literally expired.

The portion of Kedoshim informs every Jew that he is capable of even greater heights. For the pursuit of holiness is never-ending, one level always following another, the reason being that holiness emanates from G-d, who is truly infinite — “for I am holy.”

-from the Chassidic Dimension
“Holy and Holier”
Chabad.org

Now recall the first of the two greatest commandments given by Jesus as quoted from the Torah:

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” –Matthew 22:37-38 (ESV)

Marry all of that to what the Torah says about being holy and what the Master said about being perfect.

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. –Matthew 5:48 (ESV)

The idea mixed in all of that is we can somehow be holy and perfect as God is, or at least shoot for that as a life-long goal; a series of levels that we’re continually climbing toward. But if that also has to do with how we love, then we are being commanded to continually love just like God loves.

How does God love? Unconditionally?

I’m tempted to say He loves us as He loves Himself, but trying to understand how God conceptualizes His own Being is beyond my limited human ability to imagine. But I do know that He loves us enough to have our welfare and what’s best for us at heart.

OK, I know what some of you are thinking. You’re thinking, “Good grief! How can you say that!” If God really loved us and had our best interests at heart, how come children are beaten, women are raped, people are maimed and killed in wars, car accidents, and plane crashes, and how come so many people suffer lingering and horrible deaths from cancer and other miserable diseases?

I don’t know.

I only know that, even in the midst of hideous, nightmarish suffering such as was found in the camps of Dachau, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, God was there. He’s there when your doctor diagnoses you with cancer. He’s there when you have been assaulted by thugs and left for dead. He’s there when your spouse tells you he want a divorce. He’s there when you feel you haven’t the strength to go on and suicide seems the only way out.

He’s there when someone else needs His love and you are the only conduit available to provide that love. That’s the connection between love, holiness, and perfection. God’s love isn’t just some supernatural event or experience. If you are a Jew or a Christian and someone around you is suffering, you are God’s opportunity to love that person. When you are suffering, God has made it possible for someone near you to love you and comfort you in a way that is only possible for God.

Loving someone enough to perceive their faults and loving them enough to respect their wishes seems like trying to travel both east and west at the same time. It’s impossible. But that’s what God asks of us: the impossible. It’s impossible for us to be perfect like God is perfect. It’s impossible for us to be holy like God is holy. It’s impossible for us to love people like God loves people; to love our neighbor just as we love ourselves.

And yet, that’s what God requires of you and me with each waking moment of each passing day of our lives.

To love someone just as they are and still want to help them be the best they can be is to be holy and perfect. Love, holiness, and perfection are not destinations, they’re part of the journey we travel as we walk with God. When Jesus said to the righteous, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me,’ as found in Matthew 25:40, he was talking about this kind of love.

When we feed a hungry person, visit someone in the hospital, or comfort a recent widow in her grief, we aren’t just giving them our love, we are giving them God’s love. It’s what makes it possible for us to be perfect and holy. It’s what makes it possible for a weak and frail human being mired in the abyss of despair to experience God’s infinite love and strength on earth. It’s what makes it possible for us to do the impossible; to rise above the pain and suffering of life and to experience the glorious, majestic holiness of God.

Be holy. Be perfect. Give love.

Good Shabbos.

Uncategorized

The Sign on the Bus

2 Comments

“You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.”

–Leviticus 19:32 (ESV)

The Torah (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 244:1) tells us to rise before old people aged seventy or older, even if they are not Torah-scholars, out of respect “for the trials and tribulations they have undergone” ( Talmud Kiddushin 33a)

-quoted from sichosinenglish.org

On the bus you will find a sign saying, “Mipnei Sevah Takum” … The sign on the bus confronts the bus rider with the command, “Stand up for the elderly!”

-by Lawrence Grossman
“Jewish Ethics, from Ancient Bible to Modern Bus”
Jewish Ideas Daily

My wife read to me from one of the email newsletters she gets periodically, probably from Chabad, about the signs you see on Israeli buses to “stand for the elderly.” The signs are used to indicate certain seats that are set aside for older people or anyone else who would have trouble with mobility or standing for long periods of time. The irony, as pointed out in Grossman’s article, is the “collision” between the holy and the secular. Even though the majority of Israel’s Jewish population isn’t religious, the Torah and the intent of God cannot be so easily removed from being Jewish.

In quoting Leviticus 19:32, my wife made the same sort of remark as Grossman did in his news story. Then she said an interesting thing. She said that, for a Jew, it is impossible to separate loving and obeying God with being good to other human beings. She quoted from a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov (which I don’t have immediately available to me) to support this point.

I agreed with her and remarked that I often say the same thing, however I declined to mention that my source is from a different teacher:

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” –Matthew 22:36-40 (ESV)

As far as I can tell, Jesus is saying the same thing: Loving God means loving human beings. You can’t separate the two. If you say you love God and you hate people, something is wrong with your love for God.

But it’s not easy to love other people, at least not all other people. After all, who gets along with everyone all of the time? I don’t. And yet Paul added some commentary (midrash on Torah, perhaps) that speaks to this very issue.

Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. –Romans 12:17-18 (ESV)

Oh snap! Really?

Going to verses 20 and 21, Paul adds, “…if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. It almost sounds like Paul is connecting his message to the Romans back to what the Master said in Matthew 25:31-46. If so, then giving food and drink to our “enemies” and not just our friends, is the same as feeding a hungry and thirsty Jesus. Does that mean we will be rewarded for serving our enemies as if we were serving Christ?

That’s a startling thought.

So doing good to others, even if you don’t want to, and even if they’re your “enemy” (in this context, it means a person you don’t like, not someone who is trying to kill you in war) is a very Christian value. And yet we see it is also very Jewish.

But more importantly, it just isn’t Christians being good to Christians and Jews being good to Jews:

“They said of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai that no man ever greeted him first, even idol worshippers in the market” [i.e., Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai was the first to greet every person, even idol worshippers] (Berachot 17). At the same location the sage Abaye advocated soft speech and words of peace to everyone, especially including idol worshippers.

“[it is proper to] support the idol worshippers during the sabbatical year… and to inquire after their welfare [commentators: even on the days of the holidays of their idols, even if they do not keep the seven Noahide commandments] because of the ways of peace.” (Shevi’it 4,3)

The rabbis taught: ‘We support poor Gentiles with the poor people of Israel, and we visit sick Gentiles as well as the sick of Israel and we bury the dead of the Gentiles as well as the dead of Israel, because of the ways of peace.” (Gitin 61a)

I “borrowed” those quotes from an older blog post of mine called What the Talmud Says About Gentiles, Revisited as a reminder of who is the root and who is the branch.

Lately, I’ve been writing about why loving isn’t easy and why we should love even a person who leaves the faith and becomes an atheist. Quite the opposite of what you’d expect, religious people have the toughest time loving each other and especially loving people who are different in their religious orientation than they are. In spite of the supposed similarities between Christians and Jews (Judaism being the foundation of Christianity), we have a very hard time being civil with each other on certain occasions.

The conversation going on right now at Gene Shlomovich’s blog Daily Minyan is one minor example. Actually, the transactions are pretty civil for the most part, especially when I recall the verbal “blood bathes” I’ve witnessed in the past. However, even between Gentiles and Jews who are all disciples of the Jewish Messiah, we have a long way to go.

And yet God tells us that if we love Him, we must love other people, even if we don’t always like them. The next time you are tempted to think of yourself as especially holy and righteous, recall the last time when you had thoughts and feelings of disrespect and hostility for your fellow human being.

Maybe we can rescue some feelings of humility from this experience.