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The One Side of the Coin

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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.

 

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The Chaotic Serene Garden

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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.

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Passing Judgment

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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

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Acharei-Kedoshim: Impossible Love and Holiness

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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.

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The Sign on the Bus

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“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.

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How Have We Failed?

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Teresa MacBain has a secret, one she’s terrified to reveal.

“I’m currently an active pastor and I’m also an atheist,” she says. “I live a double life. I feel pretty good on Monday, but by Thursday — when Sunday’s right around the corner — I start having stomachaches, headaches, just knowing that I got to stand up and say things that I no longer believe in and portray myself in a way that’s totally false.”

“On my way to church again. Another Sunday. Man, this is getting worse,” she tells her phone in one recording. “How did I get myself in this mess? Sometimes, I think to myself, if I could just go back a few years and not ask the questions and just be one of those sheep and blindly follow and not know the truth, it would be so much easier. I’d just keep my job. But I can’t do that. I know it’s a lie. I know it’s false.”

-by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
“From Minister to Atheist: A Story of Losing Faith”
NPR.org

Our teacher the Baal Shem Tov said: Every single thing one sees or hears is an instruction for his conduct in the service of G-d. This is the idea of avoda, service, to comprehend and discern in all things a way in which to serve G-d.

Hayom Yom: Iyar 9, 24th day of the omer
Compiled and arranged by the Lubavitcher Rebbe
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, in 5703 (1943)
from the talks and letters of the sixth Chabad Rebbe
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory

Yesterday I wrote When We’re Left Behind to describe my initial reactions to reading the news story I quoted above. After some thoughts and reflection, it hasn’t gotten much better. I still don’t like being called a “sheep,” “blind,” and thought of as not knowing the “truth.” MacBain’s story is supposed to be the first in a series of news articles on losing faith. I wonder if NPR would consider writing a series on the other side of the coin about people who have struggled, endured, and persevered over their crisis of faith.

Call me cynical, but I seriously doubt it.

The Baal Shem Tov considers everything we see and hear and probably every experience we have as a lesson in how we are to behave in the service of God. I guess that’s what I was trying to convey yesterday when I said we should love and not condemn people like Teresa MacBain. I admire her husband, who has managed to retain his faith in the face of his wife’s atheism. The NPR article spent almost no time exploring how all of this affects him. And I kind of know how he feels.

No, my wife isn’t an atheist, but she isn’t a Christian either. She’s Jewish, and I very much support her in her pursuit of her faith and her identity. But as time has passed, I have come to realize that we represent two different worlds. I used to think there was significant overlap between those two realms, but now I’m not so sure.

No, I’m sure. There’s not much overlap at all.

That brings up an interesting question, both for the MacBains and for me. How do you live with someone who is utterly different from you at the very foundation of your being?

OK, men and women are different, I get that. Every person who’s been married for more than a week or so realizes that living together as a married couple is a challenge. Every couple who has been together for five, ten, twenty, thirty years or more (our 30th wedding anniversary was just last month) knows just how much of a struggle it is at times to make the sorts of adjustments required between two people as they develop and (hopefully) grow.

One of the things I’ve noticed about most of the people of faith I associate with is that, if they’re married, their spouses have the same fundamental understanding of God and religion as they do. That is, if the husband’s a Christian, chances are, so is the wife, and vice versa. Teresa and Ray MacBain have just entered the dubious club of intermarried couples.

Welcome.

So what does Ray MacBain do now? Does he go to church and leave his wife at home every Sunday? Does he go to the same church were his wife was a minister? If so, how does he deal with the inevitable gossip and tongue-wagging over his Teresa’s decision to leave the faith and her “coming out” as an atheist?

I haven’t listened to the audio interview (like most people, I can read a great deal faster than people can talk). I have briefly scanned some of the comments under the NPR story and saw the typical war of words between self-righteous atheists and self-righteous Christians. Does bashing each other really help? If an atheist wants the freedom of choice, why can’t I have that same right as a person of faith?

Here’s one of the more illuminating comments I read:

It bothers me to no end to see the intolerance and arrogance of my atheist friends who look down upon the faithful as if they’re second class muggles… just as it bothers me to watch the intolerance of the “faithful” Christian towards other beliefs or non-beliefs.

What I see are the human flaws of conceit and arrogance – people who think they know what’s “right” or what’s “best” for others, and have no room in their worldview for people with different viewpoints.

I sympathize with Teresa’s plight – I struggle with my faith. It saddens me that people seem more concerned with sticking it to their fellow human being than trying to find the best path to walk for themselves.

Alas, “intolerance and arrogance” are very human traits and not limited just to the religious or the irreligious.

As annoying as it is to be called a “sheep,” I guess it shouldn’t really surprise me. There’s nothing about being an atheist or an agnostic that should cause me to expect them to be good, bad, or indifferent. There’s not inherit moral code to not believing in God, so when someone says they’re an atheist, there’s no way I can know what exactly they’re going to say or do.

However,  I do have some sort of idea of what to expect from someone who says they are a disciple of Jesus. We are expected to take the higher moral road just because of who we are. That’s why it’s especially disappointing to see Christians making snarky comments to atheists (and I’m not immune) in an NPR online news story. If your life is supposed to be an example of how you have been changed by God, how is acting like a regular, “run-of-the-mill” human being accomplishing that?

Is that “God thing” working for you yet?

That’s what I see coming out of this news story, out of the comments, and out of the buzz about Christians vs. Atheists on the web. It’s not my faith in God I’m worried about, it’s my faith in people. On somewhat rare occasion, I meet a Christian who really deserves to be called by the name of the Master. I meet a person who is truly helpful, compassionate, charitable, kind, and loving to everyone they meet, not just the people they know and like. What really scares me is that the sort of person I’m describing is rare in religious circles. It’s even more scary that they might be more common among the atheists.

I know Christians reading what I just wrote are saying, “It doesn’t matter if an atheist is nicer than a Christian. The atheists are still going to hell.” Oh. It doesn’t matter?

“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. 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 25:31-46 (ESV)

Sure looks like it matters to me. More importantly, it sure looks like it matters to God.

I’m going to stop short of blaming “the church” for failing Teresa MacBain. We each negotiate our own relationship with God, so Teresa is just as responsible for her’s as I am for mine. However, if she had any lingering doubts about her decision, the various “bad attitude comments” from Christians in response to her “outing” herself probably sealed the deal.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, and most other religious people tend to be pretty judgmental, relative to the world around us. On the one hand, we do have a specific set or standards we feel we’re upholding, as opposed to an “anything goes” sort of world view. On the other hand, we tend to substitute judgment for compassion and “legalism” (yes, even Christians) for grace. Jesus was hammered verbally for hanging out with the low-lives of his day: prostitutes and tax-collectors (collaborators with the occupying Roman army). We’re kind of like the folks who judged Jesus. We judge and accuse and complain when a Christian hangs out with and is accepting of “low lives” such as gays, for example (a really big sin in the eyes of most Christians…much bigger than wife beating, bank robbery, and surfing porn on the web). We demand that Christians only hang out with other Christians and the split second someone tells us they have doubts about their faith, they are dead to us.

Man, do I make Christians sound bad. Almost like the way some atheists talk about us.

But if all of us were really practicing grace, and I think we can do this without compromising our principles and blending in to the moral structure of the secular world around us, I doubt if too many people would have a lot to complain about when Christianity was mentioned.

The church hasn’t failed Teresa MacBain, but a Christian fails every time he or she doesn’t show compassion for someone in pain, including someone who has struggled and even lost their faith. It is said the church is the only army that shoots its own wounded. I believe that. Teresa MacBain may never come back to faith in God and discipleship in Jesus, but if she wants to, and if she came to you about it, would you extend your hand in welcome or show her back out the door, not wanting to be tainted by a “low life?”

What are you supposed to learn from this experience about your conduct in the service of God today?

 

"When you awake in the morning, learn something to inspire you and mediate upon it, then plunge forward full of light with which to illuminate the darkness." -Rabbi Tzvi Freeman