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Why Are We Who We Are?

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Who am IA certain man wondered why the mussar works make such a big deal about rectifying one’s character traits. “After all, the Torah hardly deals with this area. Doesn’t that mean that middos are less important than mitzvos?” he posed.

Rav Chaim Vital, zt”l, rejected such reasoning out of hand, however. “Middos are the most important aspect of a person since without good middos it is impossible to observe the Torah properly. Conversely, if one has good middos he will have an easy time fulfilling the mitzvos, as is fitting.”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories off the Daf
“Limbs of the Spirit”
Chullin 56

I wake up in the morning with the knowledge that my unique opportunities will be used to convey my individual personality in the places I find myself, thus inspiring the people around me.

-from the Jewish Learning Institute course
“Toward a Meaningful Life”

This is a continuation of the series of blogs I’ve been writing based on the JLI course Toward a Meaningful Life. If you haven’t done so yet, please review yesterday’s installment, Who Are We to God, then return here and continue reading.

Mitzvos vs. Middos. Mitzvos can be thought of as obedience to God’s commandments or performing acts of charity and righteousness. Middos are basically personality traits. Let’s take a look at the statement I quote from the JLI course “Toward a Meaningful Life”, focusing on just a few words:

I wake up in the morning with the knowledge that my unique opportunities will be used to convey my individual personality in the places I find myself…

According to Rav Chaim Vital, my personality traits (your personality traits, anyone’s personality traits) are more important than the acts we perform. Here’s why:

The Alter of Kelm, zt”l, expands on this point. “Just as a person was created with physical abilities that are manifest through the activity of his physical organs, so too does he possess spiritual abilities that are articulated through the middos. His spiritual strengths include the desire for truth and to hate lies; feeling disgusted with injustice; love and humility; a good eye; a modest spirit; love and fear of God and many others. Since we see that people have these middos we understand that these are spiritual attributes that we were created with, just like we were endowed with physical ones. And just like the lack of an essential physical organ renders an animal a treifah, the same is true regarding these character traits. One who lacks one is like a person who has no lungs or kidneys.”

He goes on to say that, “How great is a person who uses his middos single-mindedly to serve God! How much more can he accomplish! And how great is a household that focuses on serving God. The more people who bind together to serve God, focusing on the same goals, the more they can accomplish.”

There’s a certain assumption being made here. The assumption is that all people have the same basic raw materials or personality traits that enable them to serve God in the same way (at least that’s how I’m reading it). Look at the Alter of Kelm’s list:

  • The desire for truth and to hate lies
  • Feeling disgusted with injustice
  • Love and humility
  • A good eye (generosity)
  • A modest spirit
  • Love and fear of God

The question is, does everyone come equipped with these personality traits; these built-in characteristics that are available for use in the service of God?

I don’t think so.

DirectionsI don’t think everyone just naturally has a modest spirit. I don’t think all human beings everywhere spontaneously experience love and humility. Certainly we see evidence in both current events and human history of an abundant lack of love and fear of God in many people.

So does that mean only people who have these natural personality traits (provided by God) can love and serve God? If that were true, it would mean that God has pre-selected His people, those who will be “saved”, using the Christian term, just by creating those people and “wiring” and “programming” them to naturally possess the qualities in the aforementioned bullet list. Everyone else is doomed to failure, right out of the starting gate.

OK, lets assume that’s not true. Let’s assume that it’s possible for people who aren’t naturally inclined to love God, be modest and humble, and who don’t innately desire truth to still turn to God, to learn to love Him, and then learn to serve Him. How is this done?

As it turns out, there’s no end to ways to improve your middos. A quick Internet search yielded quite a few. Examples include Tefillah – When Your Situation Doesn’t Change, Rabbi Forsythe on Perfecting Your Relationships and Self, and The Yeshiva World News discussion topic how do you improve your middos?. In fact, the Mussar movement has existed in Judaism since the 19th century and is “devoted to character and behavioral improvement”, according to Rabbi Ephraim Becker. Probably one of the best known modern texts on Mussar is Alan Morinis’s book Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar. Face it. The Jewish “self-improvement” business is booming.

It seems, despite how the matter of middos was presented in the “Story off the Daf”, there is a significant acknowledgement in Judaism that not all people are “created equal” in terms of “positive” personality traits. Some of us have to face the challenge of overcoming our natural tendencies that lead us away from God, in order to turn to Him and to serve Him and the people around us.

While writing this blog, the thought of being made a certain way and having that be immutable stirred up some rather compelling and disturbing thoughts. If, as was suggested in the Daf, people are all created with the same set of positive qualities and the only difference between people is how we use them, then it would mean people are making very radical decisions. If everyone, literally everyone, is born with an innate love for God, where do atheists come from? If we are all born to be naturally generous, why does personal and corporate greed run rampant in the world? If we all burn with a desire for truth and we hate lies, why are so many people liars?

When the Alter of Kelm says that our personality traits stem from our spiritual gifts, and compares them to our physical attributes, I can’t help but think that physically, we aren’t all the same. Some people are gifted athletes while other people are terribly disabled. If lacking some of these essential spiritual traits is like being born with a severe physical handicap, and we know that some people are born this way, then are some human beings by their very nature, spiritually crippled? Is that how we answer the questions I asked in the previous paragraph? Does this explain how people who are gay or transgender, for example, can truthfully say they were “born this way”?

Those questions and the potential answers suggest startling issues about the nature of God, man, and reality.

We have to be more or at least different than the sum of our parts, or there is no hope for repentance. It would mean that God is setting significant portions of humanity up for failure by creating standards and goals they (we) couldn’t possibly meet.

From time to time, I do encounter someone who really does seem naturally cheerful and giving. A person who just “innately” loves God and other people. Someone who seems to be just “made” to serve God. I don’t meet many people like that, even in the community of faith. Why does doing good to others and loving God seem so hard for so many people, even when they…we desire it with all our hearts?

Who are we really? Are we only the way we were born and can’t become anything more? Why are we who we are?

To keep reading in this series, go to the next “morning meditation” Time is the Fire.

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Who Are We to God?

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Who are we?Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear.”

(Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s holy people.)

Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.” –Revelation 19:7-9

“Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame.
Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
You will forget the shame of your youth
and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood.
For your Maker is your husband—
the LORD Almighty is his name—
the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer;
he is called the God of all the earth.
The LORD will call you back
as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—
a wife who married young,
only to be rejected,” says your God.
“For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
In a surge of anger
I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
I will have compassion on you,”
says the LORD your Redeemer. –Isaiah 54:4-8

This is a continuation of my series based on the JLI course Toward a Meaningful Life. If you haven’t done so already, before going on, review yesterday’s “morning meditation” Shattered Fragments. Then come back and continue reading here.

There are “marriage metaphors” recorded many places in the Bible. We see an example here of Israel being God’s “wife” but also in Revelation we have a picture of “the church” as “the bride of Christ”. Given the traditional Christian viewpoint that Jesus is part of the Trinity and thus is God as much as God the Father is God, how do we reconcile this? Does God have two brides? Is God the bridegroom of Israel and Jesus the husband of the church? Or do we have to entertain the idea that as “co-heirs”, both Jews and Christians become “one new man” and the difference between Jews and non-Jews becomes obliterated under the Kingship and glory of Jesus Christ?

I reject that last option out of hand because I see too much evidence in the Bible for the Jewish people; the nation of Israel being the beneficiaries of an eternal covenant relationship with God, while the other people of the earth can “approach the Throne” through the covenant made available through Christ.

But where does that leave us in terms of these seemingly contradictory “wedding images”?

I’ll tell you right now, that I don’t have an answer. I don’t believe that God has two brides but I don’t know how to make these different parts of the Bible fit together, either.

What I do know is that God is saying something important when he describes His relationship with people as a marital relationship.

Consider yesterday’s morning meditation. We saw a very compelling (though probably flawed) picture of a man and a woman who were “joined” since the beginning. We have an archetype of humanity, created as a single being at the dawn of Creation, and then literally split in half to become man and woman. How could any two people ever get any closer than the two who had been one?

What is God trying to tell us here? Does He really want to be that close to any of us?

The “marriage metaphor” breaks down pretty quickly when we consider that a married couple are supposed to be two equal halves of the same whole. After all, how can we even remotely consider ourselves equal to God? And since we’re not, what sort of “marriage” do we have to a groom who is infinite, all-powerful, and needs nothing from His “bride”? What can we contribute when God does the vast, vast majority of the “heavy lifting” and, by comparison, our efforts amount to a symbolic token, like allowing a four-year old to “help” set the table for dinner?

Am I being cynical?

Experiencing GodThat brings us right back to the question, why did God create us in the first place? Why does He love us? What can we contribute to God and the Universe that He can’t do for Himself?

I mentioned yesterday that only God is a unique One. Only God stands alone with no equal or peer (speaking of why marriage metaphors break down). Ideally, people are created to bond with another in marriage, and to live out the model God designed for living creatures in general and for human beings specifically.

When I started this series, it was with the intent to illustrate, if possible, that the life of each individual has a special meaning and purpose in the world and that we; each and every one of us, is loved by God for who we are and who He created us to be. Part of what I’ve written seems to show that every one of us has something unique to contribute to the world, to each other, and to God, that no one else can provide. The only real mystery involved is discovering what that purpose happens to be and then figuring out how we can possibly live up to our purpose day by day for the rest of our lives.

Put that way, just being here is kind of intimidating. After all, who wants to fail “Life 101”, right?

People’s lives are supposed to have meaning. If meaning doesn’t exist, then God just created a large cosmic maze, made a bunch of white lab rats (humanity), dumped us into the maze, and now He’s sitting back, collecting data, and seeing what we’ll come up with next.

So we decide God created us with a purpose because the alternative is to say nothing matters, life is meaningless, and we might as well devour each other alive because it’s a “dog-eat-dog” world.

Yet, as we saw in the comments section of yesterday’s “morning mediation”, if we aren’t created for one special person, if we could potentially successfully mate with any number of people; having thousands or even tens of thousands (or more) possible selections, then how “special” are our marital relationships? Extending the metaphor back to being God’s “bride”, what does this perspective do to the “specialness” of our relationship with Him? Even if there is a “bride of Christ” or of God, we always see it expressed in the Bible in terms of groups and not individuals. God chooses Israel as a wife, all of Israel, not the individual Jew. And it’s “the church” who is the bride of Christ, not individual Christians.

I can’t see this vast landscape from God’s point of view, so I have no idea how He really perceives all this and all of us. Frankly, even if I could see God’s perspective, I doubt I could comprehend it for even a second. All I can see of Creation is through the other end of the telescope and the image is small and indistinct. I don’t know why the Bible has marriage metaphors unless God, in some manner or fashion, is trying to communicate that He does want to be close to us. He wants some form of intimacy with people, either with the mass of human kind or with each of us as specific individuals (or both), but He desires something and we don’t understand what it is.

We know what we want, or we think we do. We want shelter in an uncertain world. We want to be taken care of and protected in a dangerous and violent universe. We want someone or something more powerful than us to care whether we live or die, and to care about what happens to us in-between birth and death (and beyond). It’s easy to see why people would try to imagine our relationship with God as Him being a loving and protective bridegroom. But it’s hard to see the motivation from God’s point of view.

I gratefully thank You, living and existing King
for returning my soul to me with compassion.
Abundant is your faithfulness. –Modeh Ani

Thank you that I woke up alive this morning, God. Now please tell me what I’m supposed to do.

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Shattered Fragments

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Descending SoulsWhen G-d sends the souls forth into the world, they include a male and female joined together…When they descend to the world…they are separated from each other. Sometimes one soul precedes the other in descending and entering a body of a human being. When their time to be married arrives, G-d, Who knows these souls, joins them as they were before [they descended to this world]…When they are joined together, they become one body and one soul. –Zohar 1:91b

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” –Matthew 19:4-6

This is a continuation of my commentary on the JLI course Toward the Meaning of Life. See The Prophet and the Shade Plant for the previous commentary and links to earlier lessons.

As Christians, we are generally taught that we have no pre-existence prior to conception and birth. Somehow, our individual souls are all part of that process and we exist in isolation within the womb, physically and spiritually. We do not realize the joining of two souls as one until marriage so that we become “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24), but Kabbalah suggests another interpretation. We also see this viewpoint in the Chasidic writings as related by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman’s rendition of the Rebbe’s teaching on man and woman:

It is a mistake to consider man and woman two separate beings. They are no more than two halves of a single form, two converse hemispheres that fit tightly together to make a perfect whole. They are heaven and earth encapsulated in flesh and blood.

It is only that on its way to enter this world, this sphere was shattered apart. What was once the infinity of a perfect globe became two finite surfaces. What was once a duet of sublime harmony became two bizarre solos of unfinished motions, of unresolved discord.

So much so, that each one hears in itself only half a melody, and so too it hears in the other. Each sees the other and says, “That is broken.” Feigning wholeness, the two halves wander aimlessly in space alone.

Until each fragment allows itself to surrender, to admit that it too is broken. Only then can it search for the warmth it is missing. For the depth of its own self that was ripped away. For the harmony that will make sense of its song.

And in perfect union, two finite beings find in one another infinite beauty.

While there is a beauty in this interpretation; a poetic and romantic image that calls to anyone who has found their “soulmate” in their spouse or who is ernestly seeking their bashert, couldn’t all this just be considered some non-Biblical fantasy? After all, Adam, a man, was created first and then Eve was created from his rib. This is how we understand it in Christianity. They are two separate beings who were joined together by God spiritually. The only “unity” they shared originally is that Eve was made out of one of Adam’s body parts.

But is that how it really was? Genesis 2:18 says, “And the Lord God said, it is not good for the man (ha-adam) to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.” Let’s have closer look at some of the Hebrew words and concepts. Rabbi Pinchas Stolper in his article, “The Man-Woman Dynamic of Ha-Adam: A Jewish Paradigm of Marriage provides some important insights into Genesis that we miss when we read the English text:

Who is ha-adam? It is neither man (ish) nor the first man (adam). To identify ha-adam, we turn to Genesis 1:27. “And God created ha-adam in His image, in the image of God He created him (oto); make and female, He created them (otam).” The first part of the verse clearly indicates that ha-adam is a single being. The second half indicates that this single being, at the conclusion of the creation process, becomes “otam (them),” two individuals.

The key to decoding this mystery is to be found in Rashi, the Biblical commentator par excellence, who generally anchors the Biblical text in its plain meaning. Rashi explains: “They were created shenai partzufim [of two faces, androgynous] in the original creation; and only later did God divide them.” In other words, ha-adam, the first human being is a unique creation; both male and female simultaneously (see Ketuvot 8a).

This is an amazing revelation of the first human beings and has startling implications on what it is to be created in the “image of God” (since God is without gender) and on Paul’s teaching, “neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), but can we accept the interpretation of a 12th century Jewish sage over the actual Biblical text? If ha-adam was not the actual first “man” in Creation, where did the separate entities of Adam and Eve come from? Rabbi Stolper provides an answer:

Later, the Torah records that “the Lord God put ha-adam into a tardema (deep sleep) and took one of his tzela’ot.” Rashi indicates that “tzela’otav” does not mean “one of his ribs” but, “one of his sides,” as it is taught, “the side of the Tabernacle.” This follows the meaning of the Talmud “that they were created with two faces.” Ha-adam was originally a unified individual with two “sides,” two faces, two aspects, two sexes, subsequently divided into two.

A footnote on this commentary states:

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, notes (Genesis 2:21) that “tzela does not occur elsewhere in the Tanakh (OT) as a ‘rib’, but always as a ‘side,’ which is also why tzalua means to be inclined towards one side, to limp.”

One SoulBased on the actual Hebrew of the Genesis creation story, the common interpretation of Eve being “Adam’s rib” doesn’t hold an ounce of water. Man and woman were originally united as a single, unified entity that God deliberately separated into different and equal parts designed to perform different functions in the created world. However, like any single thing that is put into two parts, neither one is complete until they are joined back together. In fact, the Hebrew for “cling to” that we find in Genesis 2:24 is the Hebrew word “vedavak” which carries the sense that a man must “leave his father and his mother, and shall glue himself to his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

But why didn’t God just let ha-adam stay as a single entity? I’m sure most married couples, who have had their fair share of marital disagreements must be asking the same question. You’d think that having an “unsplit” ha-adam would have avoided thousands of years of stormy marital discord and the proverbial “battle of the sexes”.

Interestingly enough, in Genesis 2:18, when God says, “It is not good (lo tov) for man to be alone (levado)”, the implication of the Hebrew is that “it is not yet good”. The ultimate “good” could not be achieved unless their were two of them. Animals were already created “male and female” without going through the “splitting” process described for ha-adam and thus only human beings are able to be joined together as a spiritual “one”. No other living beings in creation are capable of this level of total unity of essense, and it requires that the two must specifically be “male” and “female”, man and woman.

But that doesn’t answer the question.

Rabbi Stolper’s article quotes Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe and Rabbi Yeruchem Lovivitz on the matter and the answer in part states:

“It is clearly demonstrated to you that the Lord alone, levado, is God; there is none beside Him.” God is on the level of levado (citing Deut. 4:35).

Only God is One, a unique and radical unity (Deuteronomy 6:4) and there is no other “oneness” like God. In the Garden, part of the serpent’s temptation of Eve was that “when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…” (Genesis 3:5). This was the only sin possible for Adam and Eve to commit in Eden; to attempt to be like God. We are meant to be much more than the other creatures of Creation, but we were created to be “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:5; Hebrews 2:7). Only God is One, levado; alone. Humans are unique in creation but we are still meant to be two, man and woman, and to become “one flesh”.

There’s an obvious problem with the Chasidic interpretation of God always joining the “split souls” of man and woman together again in marriage when you consider Jewish/Gentile intermarried couples such as me and my wife. When asked “Can a Jewish woman’s berheret (soul-mate) be a non-Jew”, Rabbi Shraga Simmons
replies in part:

The Talmud says that 40 days before the formation of a fetus, it is decreed in heaven which boy will marry which girl. Since God has forbidden a Jew from marrying a non- Jew (Deut. 7:3), it is obvious that the beshert is a Jew. There is of course the possibility that one’s beshert will be a convert, though this again would only apply to someone who converted in accordance with God’s laws.

Yet here we are, man and woman, married to each other, presumably by God’s decree and (though Rabbi Simmons wouldn’t consider this a factor) commanded by Jesus that “what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

I don’t know how it works or how it’s supposed to work. I only know that things are what they are and that God is here with us, helping us to try to do our best, just the way He made us, to repair our little bit of the broken world and prepare for the coming of the Moshiach. Our two halves don’t always make an agreeable whole and like any married person, I sometimes wonder why. The only answer I can find is in how Rabbi Freeman interprets the Rebbe on the topic of getting along:

When we can’t get along with someone, we like to blame it on that person’s faults: stupidity, incompetence, outrageous actions, aggression or some other evil.

The real reason is none of these. It is that the world is broken, and we are the shattered fragments.

And all that stops us from coming back together is that we each imagine ourselves to be whole.

We are shattered fragments trying to become whole again. We contain Divine sparks within us that are constantly striving to break free and return to the One Source of all things. We are prisoners, imaging ourselves as individuals sitting isolated in a jail cell of our own making, but we’re sitting on the keys.

The next part of this series, and a continuation of the discussion about marriage, is in the “morning meditation” Who Are We to God?.

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Eikev: Blessing God

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EikevIn this week’s reading (Eikev), the Torah warns us that after the people enter Israel, they may be prone to think only about their own accomplishments, and forget the source of all blessings: “and you become haughty, and forget HaShem your G-d who brought you out from Egypt, from the house of slavery… and you say in your heart, my own might and the strength of my hand have made me all of this wealth.” [Dev. 8:14, 17]

This is something that can affect all of us. Maimonides says that we should look for the middle ground, that even bad traits have their place (meaning, sometimes it is right to appear angry, for example), but that haughtiness is the exception. There is never a time to be “full of ourselves.”

This does not mean we should fail to appreciate our gifts. Moshe was the leader and teacher of the Jewish people, he spoke directly with G-d, and received the Torah and taught it to us. But the Torah also testifies that he was more humble than anyone — and the Torah doesn’t exaggerate!

Rabbi Yaakov Menken
Director, Project Genesis / Torah.org
Note from the Director
“Talent on Loan from G-d”
Project Genesis

It seems almost an impossibility to be able to lead millions of people on a journey across great distances for forty years and even be able to talk to God “face-to-face” and yet be considered “more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). How is this possible, especially given some of our common dictionary definitions for this word?

  1. not proud or arrogant; modest: “to be humble although successful”.
  2. having a feeling of insignificance, inferiority, subservience, etc.: “In the presence of so many world-famous writers I felt very humble”.
  3. low in rank, importance, status, quality, etc.; “lowly: of humble origin; a humble home”.
  4. courteously respectful: “In my humble opinion you are wrong”.
  5. low in height, level, etc.; small in size: “a humble member of the galaxy”.

Yet, we don’t really think of Moses as arrogant, either. According to Rabbi Menken, he couldn’t have been:

Rav Shamshon Rephael Hirsch writes that arrogance is the first step towards forgetting G-d. Moshe never ignored his gifts, but he also recognized where they came from. What prevents us from becoming arrogant or haughty is the appreciation that everything we have is a gift.

How does that work for the rest of us, particularly when we’re not the leader of millions (most of us) and don’t talk to God the way Moses talked to God (I don’t know anyone who does that, although a few people claim to have this ability)? It seems like a lot of people either take no credit at all for what they do well or they take all the credit for everything that happens good in their lives and in the lives of others. Should we give total credit to God for everything at our expense or take credit for everything, leaving no room for God? Where is the balance? How does this “partnership” between people and God work?

We were all created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Think of this as meaning that God created us with a certain configuration of wiring and programming. We “naturally” have certain personality traits, talents, and characteristics that are unique to us. Some give us the ability to easily accomplish particular tasks, like a person who just “naturally” draws well, sings well, or is a gifted carpenter. Other characteristics we find we must master and bring under our control, such as a quick temper or a tendency to like alcohol too much.

HamazonWhen things go well, sometimes because of our talents, we tend to credit ourselves and feel that we’re really great. When things go badly, sometimes because of our “evil inclination” or the character traits that we need to control, we tend to either blame God for how He made us, or to suddenly remember God and beg for His forgiveness and help. We see this in Rabbi Menken’s commentary about how Moses warned the Children of Israel against haughtiness. Ironically, the answer is in a very simple but unusual (from a Christian point of view) commandment:

And you shall eat and be satisfied, and you shall thank the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you. –Deuteronomy 8:10

In Judaism, this is one of the 613 commandments that define a Jew’s obligations to God and to other people. This has resulted in the blessing of Birkat Hamazon or “Grace After Meals” being said after eating, as opposed to the Christian tradition of blessing God (sometimes at length) before a meal.

There’s a reason for this as stated by Rabbi Menken:

The Ohr Gedalyahu, Rabbi Gedalyah Schorr zt”l, tells us that the holy Kabbalistic work, the Zohar, says that the Torah frequently relates the positive and the negative. Our reading, he says, is one example of this concept. The Torah goes on to warn us that after we are sated, we can make a tragic mistake.

“Guard yourselves lest you forget HaShem your G-d… lest you eat and be satisfied, and build good houses and dwell therein… and you instill pride in your hearts and forget HaShem your G-d who took you out from Egypt, from the house of slavery… and you say in your hearts, ‘my strength and the might of my hand made me all of this great wealth!'” [8:11-17] Say a blessing recognizing that it all comes from G-d, to avoid the false claim that your own abilities brought you wealth.

It’s when we are successful and satisfied that we most need to connect to God. It’s not a sin to ask for His help when we are hurt or scared or desperate, but He must be a part of everything in our lives, to good and the bad alike, or we will forget Him. We might also forget ourselves and who He made us to be.

There is a portion of the morning prayers called Birkat HaShachar that observant Jews say every day where the person thanks God for various attributes and circumstances (the full text in English and Hebrew is found on this site as a PDF). This includes thanking God for giving us (in this context, “us” are the Jews reciting these blessings) discernment, for making us free, for making us in His Image, and so on. This, like the Birkat Hamazon, is also a good model for Christians to consider because it illustrates the partnership between people and God.

Yes, God made us and all things come from God, but He made us to possess certain “innate” talents and abilities. How we choose to use those abilities is up to us, but that they are there is both a testament to God’s mastery over Creation and the fact that we have control of what we possess as human attributes. We are not puppets on God’s string. We can take pride in our achievements and thank God for having made us the way He did at the same time.

I think that’s how Moses approached his own life and in whatever circumstances we may find ourselves, I think that’s how we can approach life, too. We can do what Moses did, by never forgetting the God who created us.

Whoever possesses the following three traits is of the disciples of our father Abraham; the disciples of our father Abraham have a good eye, a meek spirit and a humble soul. The disciples of our father Abraham benefit in this world and inherit the World To Come, and is stated, “To bequeath to those who love Me there is, and their treasures I shall fill.” –Pirkei Avot 5:19

Good Shabbos.

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Eikev: Bringing the Moshiach

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And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. –Genesis 3:15

Because (eikev) you listen to these laws and safeguard and keep them, G-d your L-rd will keep His covenant and kindness that He swore to your fathers. –Deuteronomy 7:12

The Hebrew word eikev not only means “because,” but also “heel.” Thus Midrash Tanchuma explains that “these laws” refers to mitzvos that seemingly lack significance, so that people tend to “ignore them and cast them under their heels.”

-from “The Chassidic Dimension” series
Commentary on Torah Portion Eikev
“The Healing Effect of Heeling”
Based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

This play on words would completely bypass anyone who doesn’t understand Biblical Hebrew or anyone who doesn’t read traditional or Chassidic Torah commentaries. But now that you know about it, what does it matter?

As it turns out, it matters a lot. Here’s more from the “Chassidic Dimension”:

Eikev alludes to the time just before the coming of Moshiach — “On the heels of Moshiach.” The verse is thus telling us that close to Mashiach’s coming Jews will surely obey G-d’s commands. This is in keeping with the Torah’s assurance that prior to Mashiach’s coming the Jews will return to G-d. (Or HaTorah beginning of Eikev ; ibid. p. 491; ibid. p. 504.)

Recall the quote from Genesis that starts this blog post. This is the first Messianic prophesy in the Bible, and here we see a clear association with the enmity between man and God that only the Messiah can heal, and the words of Moses as he is about to send the Children of Israel on their ordained mission to fulfill God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and take possession of the Land.

Somehow, Christianity imagines that Jesus will return and then everyone will repent and turn their hearts, minds, and hands back to God, but this is exactly the opposite of what Judaism expects. In the last days, we will all turn to God and obey His commands and His desires and only then the Messiah will come.

This rather flies in the face of traditional Christian doctrine that says we are saved by grace and not by works, as if God’s grace and our behavior were mutually exclusive concepts. While it is true that we can’t work or buy our way into heaven, it is also true that once saved, we aren’t to sit idly by, read a magazine and wait for the bus to the clouds of glory.

We were given life for a reason. We’re supposed to be doing something with it and what we do or fail to do, will make a difference in the eyes of God.

I know I’ve talked about all this before, but since Moses brought it up, I felt I should go follow his lead, so to speak.

In Deuteronomy 10:20, Moses says, “You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him and cling to Him…” Here, according to the First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) commentary for this Torah Portion. “to cling to”:

is actually the same Hebrew word which is used of Adam in the garden when it says, “a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)

But how can we cling to God in the sense that one person can cling to another person with whom they have an intimate bond? In Judaism, the traditional way of interpreting the fulfillment of this command is for a person to cling to a tzadik (Holy person) or Torah teacher. It’s the act of a disciple learning from and following in the footsteps of their Master or Rebbe. The FFOZ commentary continues:

Chasidic Judaism believes that through clinging to one’s rebbe (spiritual leader), one is brought into union with his rebbe. Because the rebbe is in union with God, the disciple is also elevated into union with God by virtue of that connection. In the same way, our Rebbe, Yeshua, taught us that in order to cling to God we must cling to him (John 15:1-7) and by clinging to him, we cling to God. “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” (John 14:20)

Cleaving to a Rebbe, honoring him, and learning from him, and then passing what you’ve learned to others and particularly down to the next generation in response to the desire to cling to God. When we cling to our “Rebbe”, to Jesus, we are fulfilling God’s desire.

One of the most important parts of the Shema appears in this Torah Portion (Deut. 11:1): “Love, therefore, the Lord your God, and always keep His charge, His laws, His rules, and His commandments. Moses continues to comment on this theme thus:

Therefore impress these My words upon your very heart: bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, and teach them to your children — reciting them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up; and inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates — to the end that you and your children may endure, in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to assign to them, as long as there is a heaven over the earth. –Deuteronomy 11:18-21

For the Children of Israel, the concepts of God’s favor and the obedience of the nation are inexorably intertwined along with clinging to God and the promise of the Messiah’s coming. The fulfilling of the promise to give the Holy Land to the Children of Israel and the promise of the coming of the Messiah to bring universal peace to the world go hand-in-hand for the Jewish people, and obedience and living in Israel is a form of joining with the Creator for the Jewish people.

ShemaWhy don’t we have such a clear picture in Christianity?

It’s as if we’ve been told that it doesn’t matter what we do. We’re covered by the grace of Jesus Christ. We’re already saved; we’re already “clinging” to Jesus, so now all we have to do is sit on our thumbs and wait for him to come back and everything will be hunky dory.

Where did we get such a disconnect between the Torah and the Gospels? Who says we just get to sit around? Who says that the minute we were saved that our obligations to God were completed? Certainly not James, the brother of the Master:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. –James 2:14-24

I know I quote a lot from this passage too, but it says something that we aren’t told very often. It says that Jesus agreed with Moses (and you don’t hear that said in church very much) that a passive faith means nothing. The Children of Israel would draw closer to God and cling to God and they would succeed on their mission to take the Holy Land as long as they obeyed God and taught their children to do the same. We Christians, you and I, have a mission, too. Not just to spread the good news of Jesus and to live lives conformed to our Master, but we have individual missions based on who we are, where we live, and the opportunities God provides for us.

We have a road to walk. God set us upon a path. He has provided us with a light (Psalm 119:105) so we can see the path. Many times He has admonished us to turn neither left nor right, but to keep our eyes on the goal, not only the ultimate goal of existence as believers, but the immediate goals of helping others, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, and performing whatever special mission and purpose God assigned to us from before the Creation of the world.

We can choose to stand still. We can choose to take God’s words and His purpose for us, throw them under our heels and walk all over them. Or we can choose to start walking and then see where the path leads. Along the way, we’ll meet people and encounter circumstances. How we manage them matters to God and to the people we interact with.

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses is trying to prepare the Israelites for a journey of fresh challenges full of promise and perils. God is doing that with us every day starting when we wake up each morning. Because somewhere out there in what we do today, tomorrow, next week, and into the future, not only affects our lives and the lives of who knows how many others, but each step we take along the path brings the footsteps of the Messiah one step closer to us. To bring the Moshiach, we must cling to our Rebbe who is close to God.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. –John 14:15

“A Jew never gives up. We’re here to bring Mashiach, we will settle for nothing less.” -Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Later this afternoon, I’ll be posting another commentary on this week’s Torah Portion called “Eikev: Blessing God”, probably a few hours before Shabbat begins.

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The Prophet and the Shade Plant

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JonahJonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. Now the Lord G-d appointed a kikayon, and it grew up over Jonah to be shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. Jonah was overjoyed with the kikayon.

But G-d designated a worm when the morning rose the next day, and the worm attacked the kikayon, and it withered.

Now it came to pass when the sun shone, that G-d appointed a stifling east wind; the sun beat on Jonah’s head, and he felt faint. He begged to die, and he said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”

And G-d said to Jonah: “Are you very grieved about the kikayon?” And he said, “I am very grieved even to the point of death.”

And the Lord said: “You took pity on the kikayon, for which you did not toil nor did you make it grow; it lived one night and the next night perished. Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people that cannot discern between their right hand and their left, and many animals as well?”–Jonah 4:5-11

Before continuing to read, if you haven’t done so already, go to yesterday’s meditation and review part 2 in this series: Mission Drift, then come back here.

The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute’s Rabbi Mordechai Dinerman wrote a commentary called “Jonah and the Big Shade” on which today’s morning meditation is based. You all probably know the basic story of Jonah. My inserting Jonah’s story here may seem a little mysterious in light of what I’m trying to study in this series of blog posts. Most people walk around the earth searching for purpose and meaning, but for Jonah, those things were abundantly clear. Right from the beginning, Jonah was a Prophet of God and his path was set before him:

The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” –Jonah 1:1-2

I would imagine that if God came out point blank and told me the specifics of my purpose in life, where I was to go to find it, and what I was to do to fulfill it, I’d be thrilled beyond comprehension. But then again, maybe not. Jonah wasn’t thrilled. In fact, he tried to run away from his purpose and from God. He didn’t get very far. He was meant to go to Ninevah one way or the other. Like the old joke says, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Jonah didn’t choose the easy way.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post as a commentary for Torah Portion Masei. One of the key features of this Torah Portion is Moses reciting all of the places the Children of Israel camped during the 40 years of wandering. Why do that? Wasn’t the journey more important than the rest stops?

Perhaps not.

Recall the quote from yesterday’s morning meditation that was taken from the course book for the “Toward a Meaningful Life” lesson:

I wake up in the morning with the knowledge that my unique opportunities will be used to convey my individual personality in the places I find myself, thus inspiring the people around me.

Pay attention to the phrases, “my unique opportunities” and “in the places I find myself”. For Jonah, he could go no place on earth besides Nineveh in order to fulfill his purpose. He tried to go just about anyplace else, but that didn’t work out. Once the Children of Israel were consigned to wander the Sinai for 40 years, were they just wandering, or was there a purpose to where they went and what they did while they were there? What would have happened if they hadn’t encountered the descendents of Lot or Esau? Was it important that Aaron die specifically on Mount Hor? What about the battles and victories over Og, King of the Bashan and Sihon, King of the Amorites?

If the wanderings were truly aimless and the people and events they encountered really just random, why did Moses recount them to all of Israel on the threshold of entering Canaan? Why did Moses even bother to remember? Why were his words recorded in the Torah for all time to come, and why do we have them today?

Jonah's KikayonJonah had a reason to be at Ninevah and there was even a special purpose in his encounter with the kikayon plant (no one know exactly what this plant was supposed to be…it’s just a plant, but it had a purpose, too). Now think about where you go every day. Think about all of the places you’ve lived. Where have you gone on vacation? Where have you been “randomly” sidetracked? What did you do there and did any of it matter?

If your life isn’t random and arbitrary but rather, has a purpose and meaning assigned by God, then so does where your feet have taken you, or your car, or a train, or a plane, or whatever transportation you have used.

But what about the kikayon? Why did Jonah care more about that plant than he did for over 120,000 people in one of the largest cities in the world (at that point in history)? For that matter, why did God care about Ninevah when they had sinned greatly, including against the Israelites? God has exterminated whole people groups for their sin. Why did he care enough to spare Ninevah?

The most common explanation is that He felt compassion for their lives. They didn’t know their left hand from their right. They were helpless and blind, as far as God was concerned. Did Jonah care about the kikayon in the same way that God cared for Ninevah?

Yes and no.

Rabbi Dinerman explains:

In fact, the final message of the Book of Jonah is much more than a message about compassion. It is a message about the utter indispensability of every creature. G-d allows Jonah to enjoy the shade of a simple plant that protects him from the blazing sun. And the relief that Jonah feels as a result is so great that he cannot imagine being deprived of it, and when it is taken away, he is so upset that he cannot imagine living without it.

Jonah wasn’t upset about the kikayon’s death because he had compassion for it. He was upset because the kikayon served the purpose of shading him from the elements, and its death ended that purpose in Jonah’s life. How does this apply to the people and animals of Ninevah? Did God spare them because they repented and He had pity on them, or did He spare them because they repented and they were ready to fulfill their purpose in life?

Wow!

Yesterday, I quoted Rabbi Simon Jacobson’s famous definition of purpose:

Birth is G-d’s way of saying “you matter.”

Perhaps life is G-d’s way of saying “you still matter.” As long as it lived, the kikayon had a purpose and when its purpose ended, God appointed the means of its death. Though Jonah fully expected to die when he was thrown into the sea, God appointed a sea creature to preserve his life and to deliver him to his destination. Although the Book of Jonah ends abruptly, as if stopping in the middle of the story, we know that God spared Ninevah for a reason, we just don’t know what happens next.

You and I are still alive today, but the rest of our story hasn’t been written yet. There are still places to go, people to meet, things to do, and somehow, that’s all part of the reason we are here, even if we don’t always understand it.

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? –Matthew 6:28-30

The kikayon was only a plant, and yet it had a purpose assigned by the Creator of the Universe. Even the cattle in Ninevah each had a purpose. Jesus talks about grass growing one day and being thrown into the fire the next, and yet it is clothed in more splendor than King Solomon in all his royal glory.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. –Matthew 10:29-31

Grass, kikayons, sparrows, and cattle. Are you not worth more than all of these? If these common things all have a purpose and significance in the eyes of the Creator, how much greater is your purpose and significance to God?

Don’t go away. I’ll publish my commentary for Torah Portion Eikev in a few hours.

This series will continue on Sunday’s “morning meditation” Shattered Fragments. How does man and woman becoming “one flesh” affect the reason God made us?