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The Rabbinization of Abraham

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When Abraham heeded G-d’s order he was already fully proficient in what was to become known as Kabbalah. He had even authored a major Kabbalistic text – Sefer HaYetzira (the Book of Creative Formation). He was an acclaimed astrologer and conversant in the magic of the East. In his youth, Abraham had turned his back on the negative forces of tum’ah (spiritual blemish) and adopted the pathway of spiritual monotheism.

-from Practical Kabbalah: A Guide to Jewish Wisdom for Everyday Life (pp 19-20)
by Rabbi Laibl Wolf

You shall not practice divination or soothsaying. –Leviticus 19:26 (JPS Tanakh)

The word “se’onenu” in the verse cited above (Lev 19:26) can be a derivation of the root onah (time season) or of the root ayin (eye). Consequently, two different prohibitions are based on this verse. One, quoted by Rashi on the verse, is the prohibition against “calculating times and hours.” It is forbidden to employ astrological (Rambam Hilchos Avodas Kochavim 11:8) calculations in order to determine when to engage in or refrain from a certain activity.

-Rabbi Doniel Neustadt
“Selected Halachos relating to Parshas Kedoshim”
Torah.org

I don’t always understand what I’m reading in the Jewish teachings, or at least I don’t always understand it well enough to agree with what is being taught. For instance, Rabbi Wolf plainly states in his book that Abraham was “an acclaimed astrologer” and yet Rabbi Neustadt, referencing Rashi and the Rambam, interprets Leviticus 19:26 as prohibiting the use of astrology. Furthermore, practicing various types of sorcery and magic is forbidden in Torah as described here:

Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead. For anyone who does such things is abhorrent to the Lord, and it is because of these abhorrent things that the Lord your God is dispossessing them before you. You must be wholehearted with the Lord your God. Those nations that you are about to dispossess do indeed resort to soothsayers and augurs; to you, however, the Lord your God has not assigned the like. –Deuteronomy 18:10-14 (JPS Tanakh)

So where would Rabbi Wolf get the idea that Abraham was an accomplished astrologer and “conversant in the magic of the East?”

There are two ways to look at this. The first is that Kabbalah suggests many things that we can’t derive from the plain meaning of the Torah text. While proponents of Kabbalah believe that it has its origins as an oral tradition that predated Jesus and indeed, may have been practiced in some manner by Abraham and even by Noah and Adam, other Jewish scholars attribute the rise of Kabbalah to a much later time, with the writing of the Zohar (presumably by Moses de Lyon, although this is not firmly established) in the 13th century CE. Given the historical “uncertainty” about Kabbalistic teachings, not everything we read about figures such as Abraham in Kabbalah can be taken as completely factual.

The second is that Abraham lived in an age far earlier than Moses and the giving of the Torah at Sinai and he can’t be expected to have understood all of the prohibitions it contained (and thus, may have possibly practiced magic and astrology in his earlier days, although this is pure conjecture). Nevertheless, there is also a tradition in Judaism that says Abraham was certainly aware of everything in the Torah, even though it had yet to be written down.

The Talmud states that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all studied in the academies of Shem and Eber. The Talmud further proclaims that the Patriarchs kept the entire Torah before it was given. How was this possible? The Kabbalists explain that they kept the Torah in its spiritual form, for it was only subsequently through Moses that the Torah instruction became manifest in the physical observance of Mitzvot.

-Rabbi Nissan Dovid Dubov
“The Key to Kabbalah”
Chabad.org

But since this information takes us back to Kabbalah, we may tend to disregard it as a source of historical fact and relegate it to the status of almost legend.

But there are many observant Jews who consider everything I’ve just said about Abraham’s history as outlined in Kabbalah as absolutely true.

As a Christian who doesn’t have the benefit of a classical Jewish education, let alone a working knowledge of Kabbalah, how am I to interpret all this, as Rabbinic fiction or even fantasy? That seems a little harsh, but many of the statements about Abraham studying Torah in the House of Shem and practicing the magic of the East stretch credibility beyond the breaking point. Is it that I am just so ignorant of Jewish tradition and the Hebraic mindset that I am unable to grasp the deeper and hidden (Sod) meaning in Torah, or is there something else going on?

The process is evident even on the basis of a casual reading of Midrash Genesis Rabbah. The rabbinic ideal of “Talmud Torah” as the driving force in Jewish religious behavior is projected as a constant factor in the lives of the patriarchs: The children of the patriarchs study in the batei midrash of Shem and ‘Ever’ (e.g. Genesis Rabbah 63:10); Jacob strives to establish “a house of Talmud where he might teach Torah” in Egypt (Genesis Rabbah 95:3); Abraham was well versed in the prohibition of carrying on Shabbat without an ‘eruv’ (specifically an ‘eruv hazerot’ Bereshit Rabbah 49:2)…

-Isaiah Gafni
“Rabbinic Historiography and Representations of the Past” (pg 305)
The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature
Edited by Charlotte E. Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee

In his essay, Gafni speaks of the Talmud’s “Rabbinization of the past”.

If, indeed, we can assume that the contemporary rabbinic Judaism espoused by certain talmudic sages held up favorably when compared with earlier expressions of the faith, issues of past and present no longer suggest a one-directional regression from the glories of the past. With this in mind, we might better understand a well-documented phenomenon in rabbinic midrash, namely, the “rabbinization of the past.” (pg 304)

One way to establish and support an acceptance of Talmudic interpretation and judgment relative to Torah for post-Second Temple Judaism is to project the values and even the “reality” of Talmud (and later, Kabbalah) not only forward in time but backward. Peering at the Patriarchs through this lens, we can indeed “see” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob studying Torah and Talmud in the study house of Shem when by historical knowledge and a plain reading of the Torah, such events seem very unlikely to have actually taken place.

However, the Rabbis may have had other motivations besides cementing the validity of Talmud for the Jewish people as Gafni points out.

But while the practical observation of the Law by pre-Sinaitic figures predates the rabbis, the more thorough rabbinization of the past by endowing it with a more focused stress on uniquely post-Destruction religious and social categories was clearly the work of talmudic sages, emerging primarily in amoraic (and not tannaitic) literature. The rabbis may have been motivated, at least in part, by a wish to avoid a type of supersession imagery embraced by the Church. However, in fact they were, to a certain degree, doing precisely what the Fathers had done, namely, applying to the patriarchs a more spiritualized behavior in manifesting their Jewish identity. (pg 308)

I find it more than a little ironic that the “rabbinization” of the ancient men and women of the Torah, which Christianity criticizes with great zeal, was possibly motivated in part, by the Jewish need to defend itself against early Christian supersessionism.

Viewed through the eyes of Gafni’s study, we can read many of the Talmudic and Kabbalistic “histories” of the patriarchs and matriarchs as, not exactly fiction, but a “rabbinization” process designed in the early centuries of the Common Era, to preserve the Jewish people as a people, which was a requirement in the face of the exile from the Land of Israel and hostile persecution by the official Church of the Roman Empire.

So we can hardly blame the Rabbis (well, I can’t anyway) when we read something like this.

But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, “If so, why do I exist?” She went to inquire of the Lord. –Genesis 25:22 (JPS Tanakh)

When she passed the academy of Shem and Ever, Jacob struggled to leave the womb, and when she passed a temple of idol worship, Esav fought to leave. – Rashi

It seems unlikely that a “Torah academy of Shem and Ever” really existed and even if somehow it did, that Jacob would struggle to escape his mother’s womb in order to study Torah (as an unborn child) there whenever she was near that place.

Strangely enough though, we have a sort of parallel in Christianity.

Miryam arose in those days and went quickly to the mountains, to a town of Yehudah. She entered the house of Zecharyah and blessed Elisheva. When Elisheva heard Miryam’s brachah, the child danced inside of her and Elisheva was filled with the Holy Spirit. –Luke 1:39-41 (DHE Gospels)

If the unborn John could dance in his mother’s womb at the sound of the blessing of Miryam (Mary) who was pregnant with Messiah and Savior, is this scripture a sort of “Christian rabbinization” of the Gospels or is it something more? If it is more, then what are we to make of the “rabbinization of the patriarchs?”

If we were prophets or people of vision, we would see what is important and what is not, what will bear fruits and what will remain barren.

But we are simple people in an age of confusion. Our lives are filled with uncertainties—anything could happen, we have no way of telling.

We cannot decide which mitzvah is important and which will bear fruit. Neither are we expected to make our decisions that way.

All that’s expected of us is to simply grab whatever G‑d sends our way, and do our very best at it. What will come of it? What is its purpose?

Only He needs to know.

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

The teachings of the Jewish masters are difficult for me to comprehend at times but then again, for the same reasons, so are the teachings of the Jewish writers of the Gospels.

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Immanu-El

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Ending and Beginning“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know – this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. For David says of Him,

‘I saw the Lord always in my presence;
For He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken.
‘Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted;
Moreover my flesh also will live in hope;
Because You will not abandon my soul to She’ol,
nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.
‘You have made known to me the ways of life;
You will make me full of gladness with Your presence.’

“Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to his seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was neither abandoned to She’ol, nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says:

‘The Lord said to my Lord
“Sit at My right hand,
until I make your enemies a footstool at your feet.”’

Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ – this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” So then, those who had received his word were baptized; and that day there were added about three thousand souls. They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. –Acts 2:22-42 (NASB)

I have a personal tradition of reading this passage from the Book of Acts on Yom Kippur every year along with the other Yom Kippur readings. It is a reminder that people can be confronted with the truth and by the Spirit of God, change at the core and become new again in Him. These words provide hope and a certain warmth in my heart along with the Yom Kippur Haftarah portion:

If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
From pursuing your affairs on My holy day;
If call the sabbath “delight,”
The Lord’s holy day “honored”;
And if you honor it and go not your ways
Nor look to yours affairs, nor strike bargains —
Then you can seek the favor of the Lord.
I will set you astride the heights of the earth,
And let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob —
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. –Isaiah 59:13-14 (JPS Tanakh)

For another year, Jews all over the world feel a lightening in their souls as they approach the world and a new year with much excess baggage lifted from them. For Christians, there is no analogous time on our calendar in which we specifically approach the Throne of God in humility and perhaps in shame, and beg our Creator to make everything clean between us again. We can approach God through Jesus Christ on a daily basis, so there’s no need for a “Christian Yom Kippur”, right? Believe it or not, Jews think this way about Yom Kippur too and ask:

Question: Regarding Yom Kippur, why is there a necessity in Judaism to designate a particular day for atonement when one could atone any minute of the day as he or she chooses? Isn’t G-d listening all the time? Why designate a day that could potentially encourage sinful behavior during the year only to repent on Yom Kippur?

Answer: Maimonides addresses both your questions in his “Laws of Repentance”. In Chapter 2 he states,

Even though repentance is always good, during the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur it is more desirable, and is accepted [by G-d] immediately… Yom Kippur is the time for repentance for the individual and community, and it is the end time of forgiveness and atonement for Israel. Therefore everyone is obligated to repent at this time…

During the year, a person has the option. At this time it is obligatory, and easier to accomplish. Consider the difference between flicking a bug off the table, and pushing a tiger off the table.

In Chapter 4 he says that one who sins with the intent of obtaining forgiveness on Yom Kippur is held back from repenting. We all know, the guy who says, “my diet starts tomorrow” never loses weight.

Best Wishes,
Shlomo Soroka
JewishAnswers.org

Inner lightAre there times of year when God is closer and repentence is more at hand? Remember, traditionally Jews prepare for the Days of Awe for over a month prior to the actual Day of Atonement. I hardly think the intent and anguish built up over that period of time in anticipation of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can be compared to asking for God’s forgiveness in your prayers each morning (but who am I to know).

Rabbi Mordechai Dixler, Program Director at Project Genesis – Torah.org puts it this way:

Many have had the experience of offering an apology, only to be told that “sorry isn’t good enough.” It’s fundamental to Judaism that G-d always accepts a sincere apology, is always ready to welcome us back. There are, however, times that a person can commit such a breach that the relationship with G-d needs major repairs, where a simple apology is not enough by itself.

On Yom Kippur this all changes. The Nesivos Shalom writes (based on the Zohar) that Kol Nidrei‘s annulment of vows erases all spiritual decrees. Major repairs are no longer needed. The opportunity to approach G-d and ask forgiveness for the past and make a commitment for the future is suddenly open to everyone. That is why on Yom Kippur, a simple apology is indeed all it takes. As all obstacles vanish, all hearts and souls open up.

You may not see any validity in Jewish mystic teachings, but if your faith is a Jewish faith, then the entrance to the gates of Heaven are open a bit wider at a certain time of year than at other times. Even without a Jewish faith, in preparing yourself over the course of time to stand and face God as the person you are, you can only be assumed to have a greater readiness to pour your soul out like a drink offering at His feet in this most holy of encounters. We can see God’s desire for this, not only in the Yom Kippur service, and not only in Kaballah, but in Christianity’s own mystic writings:

And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He *said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. –Revelation 21:5-7 (NASB)

In Yom Kippur, we can see the imagery of “He who overcomes” and at the breaking of the fast, as “one who thirsts” we can receive “the spring of the water of life without cost.”

But the day after Yom Kippur is also like another day we have yet to see.

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper. It had a great and high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel.

I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. In the daytime (for there will be no night there) its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it… –Revelation 21:10-12; 22-26 (NASB)

Throughout the Bible, the chronicle of God’s interaction with human beings, we see an unbroken thread of God’s intent to live with us, from Eden, to the Mishkan in the desert, to the Temple in Holy Jerusalem, to the Spirit which has always lived in the heart of the faithful, and finally to a New Jerusalem descending from Heaven, with God and the Lamb as its Temple. Here, both Christianity and Judaism have a tradition of the Song of the Lamb (Revelation 15:2-3) and the Song of the Messiah representing “a new song, shir chadash”; a “universal vision of complete redemption and the perfection of the world” as a “promise of a glorious future for all humanity” and “one of Judaism’s greatest gifts to the world.”

The Lord is with youChristians tend to create a dichotomy between the secular and the holy, between man and God. We also see some of this symbolism of division in how Judaism presents the Shabbat in opposition to the rest of the week. We strive for God in His Heaven above while we struggle with our mortality and humanity on the earth below. Christians talk about “going to Heaven” to be with God when they die, but we see in the vision of Eden and New Jerusalem that in the end, we do not go to God; God comes to us…as it was in the beginning.

The teachings of the Rebbe are not just a collection of advice and nice thoughts —just as a year is more than the sum of 365 days. The teachings of the Rebbe make up one simple whole. All revolve around the same essential concept: The fusion of the loftiest spiritual heights with the most mundane physicality. In the Rebbe’s words, “the highest with the lowest”.

The concept is not only radical but powerful: It means I can be myself, living a “down to earth” existence, and yet fulfilling a transcendental goal. It means that there is nothing we are trying to escape – other than the notion that we must escape something. We don’t run away from this world to join a higher one, instead we work to fuse the two. We aren’t in the business of “making it to heaven” – we’re busy bringing heaven down to earth.

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

It’s no coincidence that the expression of God’s desire to live among men comes right before the Festival of Sukkot which will be upon us in just a few days. We will pitch our tents in our backyards and at the synagogues and invite all His holy ones to dwell with us in an imperfect container, with God providing the sheltering roof over us, making the incomplete, complete.

May the expressions of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart find favor before You, HASHEM, my Rock and my Redeemer. –Psalm 19:14

God is with us.

divinity

The Death of the Tzaddik

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Torah at SinaiRav Zalman Sorotzkin, zt”l, taught the extent of the oneness of the actions of all Jews from the prohibition of slaughtering a mother animal and her calf on the same day. “The verse states, ‘It and its progeny you shall not slaughter on the same day.’ The word for ‘slaughter’ is plural to teach that if one Jew slaughters the mother and a second Jew slaughters the child, this violates the prohibition. He explained, “We can learn a very important lesson from this.

We see that there is a very special connection between the actions of one Jew and the actions of his fellow. Our mission as a nation is to be a light unto the nations and we can only do this if we are united. Whether we know it or not, every Jew is part of one collective Jewish soul. This explains the unreasonable tendency of the non-Jewish nations to blame all Jews for heinous acts done by unworthy individuals. It is surely strange that they do not judge other nations this way. But when we consider that every Jew is part of a single whole, this begins to make a strange kind of sense, at least on a cosmic level…”

When Rav Chaim Vital, zt”l, noticed the Arizal saying a tearful heartfelt vidui during davening he wondered about this. “Why are you saying vidui? Surely you have never violated any of the heinous sins mentioned.”

The Arizal admitted that he had not violated the sins listed. He said, “Nevertheless, I must at least repent for all of them. Although I have never transgressed, what about my fellow Jews who have?

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Parts of a Whole”
Chullin 81

I sometimes despair over the lack of unity in the body of Christ or in the larger collection of people of faith. We seem so fragmented and disorganized for a group of human beings who supposedly all worship the same God and who all long for the coming of the Messiah (for Christians that’s “second coming”). Despite the lesson we see off the Daf, it seems as if even the Jewish people are not unified in their approach to and understanding of God, the Torah, and even whether or not a Jew must believe in God to be a Jew.

Yet if we look at the Sinai event, the Torah wasn’t given to each Israelite individually but to Israel as a single body.

Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of the Lord and all the rules; and all the people answered as one man with one heart, saying, “All the things that the Lord has commanded we will do!” –Exodus 24:3

Rashi comments that the Egyptians were pursuing the Jews “With one heart, like one person.” This comment is interesting because Rashi makes almost the same exact comment in next week’s parsha, when the Torah describes the Jewish people camping at the foot of Mt Sinai. There too, the Torah used the singular tense to describe the Jewish people, “and Israel encamped there opposite the mountain” (Exodus 19:2). On that verse, Rashi describes the powerful unity the Jews felt as they were about to receive the Torah, that they were “Like one person with one heart.”

-Rabbi Leiby Burnham
Parasha Perspectives
Torah Portion Beshalach – 5769
Partners in Torah

While modern Judaism may not function “like one person with one heart”, at least on the surface, we see that when the nation of Israel was formed and the Torah was given at Sinai, Israel accepted the Law of God “with one heart”. That was God’s intent and I believe that the Jewish people will return to complete unity under God in the days of the Messiah.

But what about Christians? We are sometimes called “the body of Christ”, implying that we are a unified group or collective, but is that really true and was it true from the beginning? Particularly in Western culture, the value of the individual is considered paramount and we tend not to respond well to being treated as a group under the authority of a Pastor, Rabbi, or other governing body. We each demand the right to determine what the Bible says for ourselves, which often results in the Bible saying many different things to many different people.

I won’t quote the various New Testament examples because there are far too many, but Paul’s mission to the Gentiles to preach the Good News of Christ was carried, by necessity, to individual Gentiles, families, or small groups. It would have been impossible to deliver the Gospel message to “the nations” as a unified whole, if only because the world is so big and Gentiles, even in the Second Temple era, were so numerous. There could be no “Sinai event” for us the way there was for the Children of Israel, and maybe that represents a fundamental difference between Jews and Christians.

Even though the various branches of religious Judaism (as well as secular Jews) don’t see eye to eye, when you take away the differences and distill the Jewish people down to their very essence, there is a very basic “Jewishness” that cannot be removed, erased, or diminished beyond a certain point. A Jew will always be a Jew. When push comes to shove, the Jews are a people as established by the will of God.

Not so a Christian.

We are not born, we are made. More accurately, we make a decision; becoming a Christian is a choice. Becoming not a Christian is also a choice. There really is no such thing as an “ex-Jew”. Even for Jews who convert to Christianity, the Jewishness is still there. That isn’t true for Gentile believers. There is a point where you can reduce the Jews down to a common denominator where they are all one (as God is One), but Christians are not “one”, we are many.

I wonder if that’s our problem?

Mount SinaiI can only imagine that, in the end, God will gather the faithful together and we will all be “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15) as, in theory, we are supposed to be right now, but we’re not there yet. In my own little corner of the world, exploring a path rarely traveled by any other Christian, I feel very much alone most of the time. That’s probably by choice as well, although I feel like there’s a bit of wiring and programming inside of me that will not let me seek a different road and will not let me blend in with the masses of the Messiah’s sheep in their Christian sheepfold.

I wonder if that’s my problem?

(Actually, I don’t feel that odd anymore. I just read an article about how Koreans, both in their native country and in the U.S., are fascinated with Talmud and its wisdom. Korean translations of Talmud and books about Talmud are common in Korean bookstores.)

Can we be one? Is Christian unity an illusion? How are we to gather together under the One God and be a unique body, set apart in holiness?

…so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him. –Hebrews 9:28

The murder of Rabbi Elazar Abuhatzeira, the “Baba Elazar,” on Thursday night saved the people of Israel from other tragedies, leading rabbis said Friday.

“Harsh punishments were decreed on the people of Israel, and he wanted to nullify them,” said the slain rabbi’s brother, Rabbi Baruch Abuhatzeira, also known as the Baba Baruch, speaking at Rabbi Abuhatzeira’s funeral.

by Maayana Miskin
“Rabbi Abuhatzeira Bore the Burden of Evil Decrees”
IsraelNationalNews.com

God is One and His Name is One. As Christians, we believe that the Son of Man came to die for the sins of many. Although Judaism traditionally does not believe that one person can die for the sins of another, the Kabbalistic perspective states otherwise:

The Bible is clear, and it is consistent. One person cannot die for the sins of another. This means that the guilt from the sins committed by one person cannot be wiped out by the punishment given to another person. First, in Exodus 32:30-35, Moses asks God to punish him for the sin of the Golden Calf, committed by the people. God tells Moses that the person who committed the sin is the person who must receive the punishment. Then, in Deuteronomy 24:16, God simply states this as a basic principle, “Every man shall be put to death for his own sins.” This concept is repeated in the Prophets, in Ezekiel 18 “The soul that sinneth, it shall die… the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.”

-Rabbi Stuart Federow
“Jews believe that one person cannot die for the sins of another person”
What Jews Believe

“… suffering and pain may be imposed on a tzaddik as an atonement for his entire generation. This tzaddik must then accept this suffering with love for the benefit of his generation, just as he accepts the suffering imposed upon him for his own sake. In doing so, he benefits his generation by atoning for it, and at the same time is himself elevated to a very great degree … In addition, there is a special, higher type of suffering that comes to a tzaddik who is even greater and more highly perfected than the ones discussed above. This suffering comes to provide the help necessary to bring about the chain of events leading to the ultimate perfection of mankind as a whole.”

Derech Hashem (The Way of God)
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto
As translated and annotated by Aryeh Kaplan
Feldheim Publishers
Jerusalem, 1997, p. 122.
Quoted from Yashanet.com

It’s with a certain amount of irony that I find the only “reasonable” explanation for how a person, a tzaddik, can give his life to avert the “evil decrees” of an entire people (without admitting that God accepts human sacrifice), is within the confines of Jewish mysticism (you’ll find Judah Himango struggling with the issue of Leviticus 27 and human sacrifice at Kineti L’Tziyon).

If Christianity can be said to have a “Sinai event” it is the crucifixion (or can we also include the resurrection?). Not that we were all there. In fact, the vast majority of people who were in the general vicinity were Jews, who came from every corner of Israel and the diaspora for the festival of Passover.

On the other hand, every Jew, even today, is to consider himself or herself as having stood personally at the foot of Sinai to receive the Torah. Why not (and this is just my imagination speaking) consider every Christian and every disciple of the “great Rebbe of Nazaret”, the most righteous tzaddik of all generations; why not consider us all as having stood at the foot of his execution stake personally, each of us as a witness to his bloody, sacrificial death on our behalf?

The Death of the MasterWe sometimes call Jesus our “living Torah” since he embodied the lifestyle of one who was fully human yet fully obedient to God and without sin. If the giving of the Torah at Sinai to the Jewish people unites them as one, does not the giving of the blood of the living Torah at Golgotha, the place of the skull, unite the disciples of Christ?

There’s a problem of two separate people groups under God and two separate events. Do the Jews have Moses and the Gentiles have Jesus? Are there two “Messiahs”? Not ultimately, for we all spring from a single root (Romans 11) and we are all branches on the same tree. More than that, Jesus came for the lost sheep of Israel and Paul went first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. The Jewish Moshiach came for the Jews and also came to unite all of humanity under God.

But every year, when they sound the shofar at Rosh HaShana it is revealed, a new revelation of infinite life is drawn to the world, beginning with the Land of Israel (see Tanya, pg. 239).

That is why the Torah says G-d’s eyes are on the Land of Israel from the beginning of the year to the end; it is referring to this new flow of life begun each Rosh HaShana.

And why will the Patriarchs be revived in Israel? Because as the ultimate Jews they will link and reveal the holiness of the people of Israel to the Land of Israel.

But this will only happen through our efforts to transform the entire world into holiness NOW — that is, to make Israel everywhere and prepare the world for Moshiach.

Because ONLY Moshiach will bring the Jews to Israel when the Great Shofar will be sounded by HaShem Himself.

We just have to do all we can in thought, speech, and action to bring . . .

Moshiach NOW!

-Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Commentary on Parashat Eikev (5766)
Ohr Tmimim

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. –Revelation 22:1-5

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Searching by Ineffable Light

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Light at nightGod is not a scientific problem, and scientific methods are not capable of solving it. The reason why scientific methods are often thought to be capable of solving it is the success of their application in positive sciences. The fallacy involved in this analogy is that of treating God as if He were a phenomenon within the order of nature. The truth, however, is that the problem of God is not only related to phenomena within nature but to nature itself; not only to concepts within thinking but to thinking itself. It is a problem that refers to what surpasses nature, so what lies beyond all things and all concepts. (page 102)

The object of science is to explain the processes of nature. (page 104)

-Abraham Joshua Heschel
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

He made His world of contradictions, opposites that combine as one.

Being and not being,
infinity and finitude,
light and darkness,
form and matter,
quantity and quality,
giving and withholding.

At their nexus, a world is formed: Neither can exist without the other, all function together as a single whole.

They are mere modalities—He Himself is none of them. He mixes them and matches them at whim.

Paradox is our window to the Unknowable.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Being and Not Being”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

The “mystery” of God is both that He is unknowable and that the attempt to “know” Him is irresistibly compelling. This is probably why I write on the topic so much (my most recent entry being Mystery Story). Yet the mere act of prayer is an attempt to interface the ordinary with the fantastic; the finite with the infinite; the temporal and the immortal. As Rabbi Freeman says, God “made His world of contradictions, opposites that combine as one.” But while God can exist without us, we can’t exist without Him.

In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded.
But you remain the same,
and your years will never end. –Psalm 102:25-27

The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more. –Psalm 103:15-16

In touching the hem of God’s garment, we cannot truly know Him; in approaching the throne, we cannot truly comprehend Him. We are like ancient men trying to understand how an airplane flies or how a submarine descends to tremendous depths. In truth, we are much more ignorant than they. But we still have the need to draw nearer to God, and even the secular person searches for Him without realizing it. To again quote from Heschel’s book:

No one is without a sense of awe, a need to adore, an urge to worship. The question is only what to adore, or more specifically, what object is worthy of supreme worship. (page 88)

We are all in search of the One God but people, in our confusion and incomprehension, turn to other objects, stars, trees, and even people, and devote all our adoration to them, rather than to our Creator and in doing so, declare ourselves “free” of the confines of “religion” and accountability to a standard of holiness we do not understand nor desire to emulate.

More’s the pity.

Indeed, secular man considers Biblical man to be the one who is ignorant and even superstitious, and who can blame him?

The prophet is a fool. The man of spirit is mad. –Hosea 9:7

There is a certain madness to this idea of talking to G-d, of saying “You” to the Ground of Reality–as though this is a person. Like the madness of love or of unbounded joy. Not the madness of a derelict mind, but the madness that rides upon the shoulders of reason, with all its qualities, but beyond.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Divine Madness”
Chabad.org

OceanYet what we seek and the faith we grasp so tightly is not without logic but beyond logic. It is not irrational, but super-rational.

I recently attempted to delve into a comparison between Jesus, the Oral Law, and the Talmud, which is a subject far too complex for a single blog post. While there is a tradition in Judaism that says Moses was given both a written and an oral Torah, Kabbalistic adherents believe there is a third, “hidden” Torah as revealed in the Zohar or other mystic writings.

This is certainly controversial and is not accepted among all Jewish authorities. And although Christianity enjoys its own rich, mystic tradition, the vast majority of believers in the church disdain not only the Zohar and any of the Chassidic writings, but even the more rational and grounded Talmud.

And yet, the mystic, in both Judaism and Christianity, exists because of the ineffable nature of the unknowable God, as Rabbi Heschel writes:

By ineffable we do not mean the unknown as such; things unknown today may be known a thousand years from now. By the ineffable we mean that aspect of reality which by its very nature lies beyond our comprehension, and is acknowledged by the mind to be beyond the scope of the mind. Nor does the ineffable refer to the realm detached from the perceptible and the known. It refers to the correlation of the known and the unknown, of the knowable and the unknowable, upon which the mind comes in all its acts of thinking and feeling.

The sense of the ineffable is a sense for transcendence, a sense for the allusiveness of reality to the super-rational meaning. The ineffable, then, is a synonym for hidden meaning rather than for absence of meaning. It stands for a dimension which in the Bible is called glory, a dimension so real and sublime that it stuns our ability to adore it, and fills us with awe rather than curiosity.

No wonder David wrote this:

..what is a human being that you are mindful of him, a son of man that you care for him? –Psalm 8:4

What are we indeed, but the handiwork of the Creator and the clay vessels which contain transformative infinite light. And what Shakespeare said with irony, we can say with conviction:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god!

-Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 303–312

Light under the doorWhile not “angel” nor “god”, we do tread on the edge or madness and the abyss at each encounter with the Creator, attempting to touch what is beyond our reach and to know what knowledge cannot imagine. Yet it was for this purpose that God created each of us, and that we even have such a word as “ineffable” in our vocabulary speaks to the need to cross the boundary between the tangible and the mystic and to walk the corridors of a Temple not made by the hand of man.

Reason stands on the threshold, trembling to open the door to her own womb, although a blinding light bursts from between the cracks. For in that place, she knows, there is no reason. She has shown the way, but now she must step aside for madness to break in.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Divine Madness

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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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Healing the Wounded

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Snake swallowing tailWhen the Egyptians realized that they were being attacked by supernatural forces at the Red Sea, they said, “I must flee from the presence of Israel, for G-d [Havayah] is fighting for them against Egypt.” (Ex. 14:25)

As you know, Pharaoh derived sustenance entirely from immature divine consciousness [mochin d’katnut], which is alluded to by the word “End”.

The words usually translated as “Red Sea” [in Hebrew, “Yam Suf”] really mean “Reed Sea”, and can also be read as if they were vocalized “Yam Sof”, meaning “Sea of the End”. The “end” is the final sefira, malchut, which descends into the lower worlds, i.e. the lower levels of divine consciousness. Relative to its native environment, these lower levels of consciousness are “immature” or “constricted”.

This is the significance of [the fact that] the snake puts its tail in its mouth.

Pharaoh personified the Primordial Snake.

From the teachings of Rabbi Yitzchak Luria
adapted by Rabbi Moshe Yaakov Wisnefsky
“The Snake at the Sea’s End”
Chabad.org

This is Part 3 in a 3-part series. Before reading this, see Part 1: Overcoming Evil and Part 2: The Primordial Serpent.

The surprise appearance of Pharaoh, King of Egypt (yes, “that” Pharaoh, King of Egypt…the one that gave Moses so much trouble) in the role of the primordial serpent may take you a little off guard, but from the perspective of Kabbalah, many things look different. In Judaism, the serpent is less a specific being or entity (i.e. Satan) and more a representation of an idea or a force, in this case, the personification of the evil inclination. In this sense, you could have many evil people across history personifying the snake. Hitler could be a personification of the ancient serpent of Eden.

But there’s more:

This being the case, Pharaoh was both a head and a tail, in the idiom of the verse, “G-d will cut off from Israel both the head and the tail…on one day.”(Isaiah 9:14)

Pharaoh, here signifying the evil inclination in general, acts as the tail, the lowest consciousness of the Jew, and as the head, i.e. the tail elevated to and usurping the role of the head, proper divine consciousness.

This also alludes to the [Primordial] Snake. Originally, he was the tail and Adam was the head, but [because of the Primordial Sin] this was inverted and the snake became the head and Adam the tail.

Adam here personifies the Good Inclination, or divine consciousness. Sin consists of reversing the hierarchy between divine and material consciousness.

This is the mystical meaning of the verse “He will hit you on the head and you will bite him in the heel” (Gen. 3:15).

Man hits the snake on the head because the snake has usurped man’s role as the leader; the snake bites the heel because by sinning man has become the heel/tail instead of the head.

This is very interesting when your deconstruct the role of snake as Pharaoh back to the original appearance of the serpent in the Garden, and then re-visit the relationship between the snake and Adam (which I suppose we could project back up to the relationship between Pharaoh and Moses).

Adam is the heel (or tail) rather than the head because by sinning, he exchanged roles with the serpent. Instead of man ruling over Creation, now evil rules and man struggles to allow good to ascend while evil inhibits his efforts. The snake bites the heel but the heel will crush the snake.

In Christian thought, the heel of man is symbolized by Jesus crushing the evil of Satan, and Rabbi Wisnefsky, when recounting the wisdom of the Rebbe in his article Transforming the Primordial Snake, presents an interesting interpretation that seems to apply:

Since the snakes were deadly, anyone who had been bitten was for all intents and purposes already dead. Healing the bitten person was thus tantamount to resurrecting him.

Now, in order to resurrect a dead person, it is not enough to simply infuse his body with life, because the body has already lost its capacity to support life. First, the dead body had to be made capable once more of living. This can be done only by a force that transcends the laws of nature, including the dichotomy of life and death. Infusing this transcendent force into the dead body restores its capacity to support life, after which the person’s soul can re-enter it and he can live again.

This is why G-d also commanded Moses to heal the people using a snake. By using the image of the deadly, Primordial Snake to restore life, G-d indicated to them that resurrection requires eliciting a level of divinity that transcends the dichotomy of life and death. When people saw the snake, they understood that in order to elicit this transcendent divinity and be healed, they had to transform their own, inner “snake” – their evil inclination – into a force of good.

What was that? Resurrect the dead?

River of LifeLet’s weave Rabbi Wisnefsky’s commentary into more familiar language. When man fell in the Garden, he was “bitten” by a “poisonous” snake and that “poison”, the evil within us, has continued to sicken humanity down through the ages. Christianity considers a sinner as “spiritually dead”, unable to perceive God let alone to attempt to perform His will.

Jesus, by his death and resurrection, provides the means by which mankind can be healed of our poison and by which we can be brought back from the dead. The commentary above talks about the restoration of the soul and the resurrection of the body, both of which we see in the promise of Jesus Christ. The last paragraph of the Rabbi’s missive illustrates that we must see and be aware of our evil inclination, how it serves as the barrier preventing us from a holy life, and also shows us how we can conqueror that nature and bend it to our will and God’s will (Romans 8:37).

I’m sure that Rabbi Wisnefsky would say that I’m playing fast and loose with his interpretation of the Rebbe’s teachings, but there seems to be more than a casual similarity between the Rebbe’s lesson and what we know of the role of the Messiah relative to the subjugation of evil. Jesus came during the Second Temple period to provide for the repairing of our damaged souls, to reconcile us with God, and to prepare the way to eternal life. When he returns, he will finish the job and completely heal us and the world of the evil that plagues us and restore us to the state which we enjoyed with God in Eden.

All Israel has a share in the World to Come, as is stated: “And your people are all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever. They are the shoot of My planting, the work of My hands, in which I take pride.” –Sanhedrin, 11:1

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. –Revelation 22:1-5

We’re not there yet. We’re still in “exile”. However, God is here with us.

Perhaps, for you, this exile is not so bad. And you feel you are doing whatever you can about it, anyway.

But it is not just you. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all their children through all the generations, as well as all the heavenly hosts,
the entire Creation—all is unfulfilled, in exile and imprisoned.

Even the Creator, blessed be He, locks Himself into prison along with His Creation.

Until you get us out of here.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
“Pity on the Cosmos”
Chabad.org