Commanded Community or Virtuous Volunteer?

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

Honor your father and your mother, said the sages, is the most difficult commandment, the most difficult mitzvah, of all.  How shall I know when I have fulfilled it?  It has no fixed form or span of time.  It is not marked by any specific ritual act and there is no beracha, no blessing, to recite.

Sages asked Rabbi Eliezer:  How far must one take the mitzvah of honoring father and mother?

If you want to know the extent of this commandment, the master said, consider the example set by a heathen who lives in Ashkelon, Dama ben Natina, by name.  The story says that God, himself, lavishly rewarded Dama’s great filial respect—and Dama even turned that reward into a further opportunity for honoring of his father.  (Click here for Talmud Story)

Rabbi Eliezer’s questioners must have been dumbfounded:  Certainly, the honoring of parents is a common human good.  But does a non-Jew really provide the greatest example of how to fulfill a mitzvah?

Further, if God so rewards the mitzvah behavior of one who is not bound to the commandments, could this mean that a voluntary act is more worthy than the act of someone who has been commanded?

Rabbi Hanina had given thought to the issue: “One who is commanded and does is greater than one who is not commanded and does.”  His unelaborated insistence does not stem the flow of questions that are with us still:

What is the difference between being a virtuous volunteer and being an obedient member of a commanded community?  From what “address” do we engage in common human causes that are also commandments for the Jewish community?  From the address of the good citizen of humankind, or from a Jewish address?

A thousand years after Rabbi Hanina, Talmud commentators speculated about his meaning:  “It seems,” they said, “that the reason one who is commanded and does is preferred is that he worries and troubles himself lest he violate a command.”  For the volunteer, if the act becomes tiresome he is at liberty to stop.

It is not the case that Jewish behavior is more valuable than the acts of others.  Certainly, Rabbi Eliezer’s “Honor your father” hero was a non-Jew from Ashkelon.  But, for one who is a member of the mitzvah community, a common cause undertaken as a mitzvah is undertaken with a sense of memory, identity and responsibility.

Posted in Talmud | 2 Comments

A God Who Takes Place

Posted on November 8, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran (Genesis 28:10).  The landscape is a blur as Jacob makes his escape from his vengeful brother, Esau.

But Jacob’s headlong flight stills at a certain place, at the place:

And he came upon a certain place and stayed there for the night, for the sun had set.

The Genesis story mentions the place six times in short order—three times before Jacob’s dream and three times immediately after it.

This mysterious place, apparently known but unnamed, fires the imagination of an ancient sage who teaches that this is not a random place handy because of sunset.  Rather, God made the sun set early so that Jacob would stop at this certain place.  Further fuel for imaginative play: He came upon a certain place literally means, he touched, bumped into, made contact with the place.  Hence, the story that Jacob literally bumped into an invisible barrier that made him stop just here—the place where (according to another sage) Abraham had been ready to sacrifice Isaac.

These teachings affirm the importance of the place. But another ancient tradition teaches that the place is not a specific site necessary for divine presence. Rather, the place is divine presence, itself.  Place is a name for God:  Why do we nickname the Holy One, Place?  It is because he is the place of his world, but the world is not his place.  (Click here for midrash in Hebrew and English).

In the view of this tradition, God does not take a place.  Rather, God is the place. There are no sites for presence, there is only Presence.  There is no projection of God into the world, only animation of God who is the world. God takes place. 

And he came upon a certain place means that Jacob made contact with The Place, with God.  In other words, Jacob prayed.  Every place is the place where sight and insight can meet, where outer and inner join.

Rivka Miriam, a modern Israeli poet, offers a poem about her relationship with the place which she does not name.  The place has a quality of geography and of divinity, offering presence and partnership.  It becomes for her a trusted traveler on a shared journey—she in her movement, the place in its stability.  She measures her own progress by the steadfastness of the place which learns to understand her ways.  The partnership of the poet and The Place produces mutual growth which Rivka declares to be one/echad—just as God is One:

I was in the place and the place gave me its hand.
In our journeys we traveled together, I walked as the place took a stand.
On our way I rejoiced in its stance, while my steps it would soon understand.
And our mutual care was the growth we could share
which was one and the same, in the end.

 (Click here for the poem in Hebrew and English)

Posted in Midrash, Parshat HaShavuah, Poetry | 1 Comment

Isaac’s Blindness, As the Story Is Told

Posted on November 2, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

When Isaac was old, his eyes grew too dim to see (Genesis 27:1).

Isaac’s blindness—the first infirmity mentioned in Scripture—sets the stage for deception and for two brothers’ struggle over a birthright and a blessing.  For one ancient sage, Isaac’s blindness not only begins one story but it continues and deepens the traumatic story of Isaac’s near death at his father’s hand—a horror that remained with him, always:

When Isaac was old, his eyes grew too dim to see. (Genesis 27:1)  Literally, the verse reads: And it was that Isaac grew old and his eyes grew dim from seeing.  The unnamed sage teaches that Isaac was scarred by what he and the terrified angels had seen, his eyes weakened…by the power of that sight; for at the hour that Abraham, our Father, bound his son on top of the altar, the ministering angels cried.  And those tears fell from their eyes into Isaac’s eyes and they left traces in his eyes, as it is written:  And it was that Isaac grew old and his eyes grew dim from seeing.  (Click here for the midrash)

The sage has an ally in the Israeli poet, Hayim Gouri:

He lived a long life,
saw the good, until his eyes dimmed.

But that hour he bequeathed to his descendants.
They are born
with a knife in their hearts.

(Click here for the entire poem in Hebrew and English)

The phrase, as the story is told, can ring with assurance or with skepticism.  The ancient sage secures his insight regarding Isaac’s traumatized life to the story of his weak eyes precisely, literally, as the story is told in the verse: his eyes grew weak from seeing.

The poet, on the other hand, is skeptical that the nearly sacrificed Isaac could have lived a normal life: As the story is told, Isaac was not sacrificed.  But the poet does not believe it.  In some sense, Isaac was sacrificed, his life forfeited.  As the story is told, Isaac saw the good, until his eyes dimmed.  But how much goodness could Isaac have seen and appreciated from that hour onward until his eyes dimmed?

Not only did Isaac carry that sight all of his life, but it became the legacy of his descendants—as the story is told by the sage and by the poet.

Posted in Midrash, Parshat HaShavuah, Poetry | 5 Comments

Facing and Losing Face

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

An old hobbled woman
a beggar in the street
was drinking tea in a paved courtyard
in the shade of the oak.
It was wondrous to me how she could break free
from the terrors of a cursed fate
to refined etiquette
to regal manners that take wing
in a life of bounty, in a life of beauty…

But only when her heart overflowed its banks
and she offered me a jar of honey
that she had been given in some doorway
did I discover to my surprise
that my love still hovered in the lower spheres
for I had to shatter seven walls of refusal
to be able to accept from her hand
honey offered as a gift of friendship.

(Click here for the poem in Hebrew and English)

The Israeli poet, Zelda, offers a reflection on giving and receiving, on seeing and being seen.  A woman wonders at the sight of a beggar who can face the world with her need but does not “lose face” because of it.   At the end of a poem filled with accounts of sight and insight, the beggar’s offer of a gift challenges the other’s view of herself along with her sense of love for the needy—a view seemingly maintained from the safe distance of privilege.

It is a complicated matter to regard with a single glance the person along with the need while also viewing the person apart from her need.   Anonymous giving, so valued by the sages, avoids the gaze.  Anonymous giving insulates the needy from the real or imagined pitying gaze even as it insulates the giver from the complexity of face to face encounter.  But face to face giving has its merits, as well.

In a well known Talmud story, also characterized by the drama of sight and insight, giving and receiving, events conspire on a certain day to bring Mar Ukba, a hero of anonymous giving, and his wife, a hero of face to face giving, together at the door of a regular recipient of Mar Ukba’s anonymous gifts.  The events of that day offer a ripe moment in which to examine two ways of giving and receiving:

There was a poor man in Mar Ukba’s neighborhood into whose doorway Mar Ukba used to throw four coins every day.  Once, the poor man thought: “I’ll be ready today and get a look at who does me this kindness.”  On that day, it happened that Mar Ukba was late at the Bet Midrash/Study House and his wife came to meet him.   As soon as the poor man—waiting within—heard movement at the door, he began to go out after them.  When Mar Ukba and his wife saw that the door was opening, they ran from him, taking cover in a communal fireplace from which the fire had just been swept.   Mar Ukba’s feet began to burn on the hot floor and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His wife said to him: “Put your feet on top of mine.”  He did so and his feet were insulated from the heat; but his pride was wounded. (Was her merit greater than his?) She read the emotions in his face and explained:  “I am usually at home and so my gifts are direct.”  (Click here for story in original Aramaic and English)

Of the story’s three characters, two of them were not afraid to “lose face.”  The poor man wanted to greet his benefactor.  Mar Ukba’s wife, we soon learn, was used to returning the gaze of the needy.  But Mar Ukba, the master of anonymous giving, was scandalized by the possibility of standing face to face so he and his wife fled.

In the communal hearth, still hot from the fire, he who took pains not to embarrass was embarrassed.  Apparently, a miracle was made for his wife but not on account of his valiant effort to remain anonymous.  Mar Ukba’s wife, who always looked the needy in the eye, soothed his need with an explanation:  Her ability to withstand the heat was no miracle; it was a matter of conditioning.  The sages value anonymous giving, but something important is forged in the heat of regarding the other.

Posted in Poetry, Talmud | Leave a comment

Taking A Stand That Does Not Trample

Posted on October 19, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

From the place where we are right
there will never sprout
flowers in the spring

The place where we are right
is trampled and hard
like a courtyard…

The poet, Yehuda Amichai, picks up a theme both modern and ancient:  tending the soil of disagreement in such a way that it supports the productive life of community.

Rabbinic culture grows and flourishes in the loosened ground of differing opinions.  The first planting of the sages, the Mishnah, is a legal document whose “ground breaking” style sets the stage for rich harvests of discourse and practice.  Each section of Mishnah approaches an issue under consideration by presenting differing points of view—one part (helek) after the next—cultivating the fertile field of makh’loket, disagreement.

The Mishnah even contains a makh’loket, about the usefulness of makh’loket:  Of what use is the minority opinion in a makh’loket?  Is a minority opinion recorded as a possible creative voice for a future debate?  Or, is a minority opinion only the record of a failed argument that is stated as a way of dismissing it for all time?  Ironically, in this makh’loket it is the majority opinion that values the future usefulness of the minority view, while the minority opinion protects a majority view from future assault by an argument that has once failed.

In this Mishnah about makh’loket (click here for mishnah), the great “houses” of Hillel and Shammai are the heroes, “fathers of the world,” who demonstrate respect and openness towards other views allowing them to take a stand without trampling the earth to a hard, unyielding and unproductive patch.

Amichai also values such behavior, suggesting that “doubts and love” help break up the hard ground of insistence.

A position of the “House of Hillel” (or of Shammai) might give way, loosened by another point of view.  But, precisely there, listen for a new whisper of meaning where the house once stood.

But doubts and loves
loosen the world
like a mole, like a plow.
And a whisper will be heard
where the house once was,
now destroyed.

Click here for Amichai’s poem in Hebrew and English)

Posted in Mishnah, Poetry | 1 Comment

Abraham, the Son: The Image Maker and Image Breaker

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

There is an ancient story about Abraham smashing all the idols in his father’s shop to prove that the idols were only statues, not gods.  As a child, I always thought that this story was in the Torah, so often was it told, so necessary did it seem in order to explain the relationship between God and the one then called Abram.

Scripture offers no early biography of Abraham, no portrait of the spiritual father as a young man.  Rather, Abram appears on the horizon as a traveler at the end of one chapter and at the beginning of the next, God speaks to Abram—and he obeys.

The sages who told the story saw in it the pattern for their own spiritual journeys.  Abram’s trek to Canaan was preceded by an intellectual and spiritual journey in which his questions became quests; during which an inner presence became so familiar that he recognized it from beyond as well as from within.  Reflection led to revelation.

The sages’ story is a tale of the triumph of a son’s truth over a father’s falsehood, breaking idols and making the image of a faith, forever.  The Modern Hebrew poet, Yehuda Amichai, places the story in a different perspective.  The child who smashes the parent’s idols is a cyclical story, not a tale told only once, shaping an eternal truth:

We are all children of Abraham
but we are also the grandchildren of Terah, Abraham‟s father.
And now, perhaps, the time has come for the grandchildren to do
to their father what he did to his father
when he broke his statues and idols, his religion and faith.
But this, too, will be the beginning of a new religion.

Click here for complete story and poem.

Posted in Parshat HaShavuah, Poetry, Torah | 1 Comment

Noah’s Flood: Outer Landscape and Inner World

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

An ancient sage and a modern poet, each named Yehuda, give different life to the images of the biblical flood story.

The terrain of the flooded world reminded the 4th century sage, Rabbi Yehuda ben Simon, of Psalm 36:7:  Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains; your justice like the great deep.

In his imagination, the great deep became the same great deep from which arose the waters of the flood (Genesis 7:11) and the Psalm’s mighty mountains became the peaks of Arrarat where the Ark finally came to rest.  For Rabbi Yehuda, the story of the flood gave the Psalm verse a clear meaning:  Divine righteousness is like the mountains, strict justice, like the flood waters.  The heights save and the deep destroys.

A 20th century Yehuda, the Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai, disagrees with his ancient namesake.  Life is not so straightforward.  In the imagination of this modern Yehuda, the mountains, the deep and the flood are not only outer landscape, but the inner life of memory.  For this modern Yehuda, the heights do not always rescue nor do the depths always destroy:

…Sometimes memory
Is the dry land that is firm and founded
And sometimes memory is the sea that covers everything
Like in the flood.  And it is forgetting that is the dry land like Arrarat.

Click here for the full teaching of each Yehuda.

Posted in Memory, Parshat HaShavuah, Poetry | Leave a comment

The Art of Blessing

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

I am not sentimental
about old men mumbling the Hebrew by rote
with no more feeling than one says gesundheit.

Poet, Marge Piercy, is impatient with the ancient formula of beracha/blessing.  Certainly, formulas fall short of the evocative blessings that she offers in her poem, “The Art of Blessing the Day” (click here for Piercy poem).  Here she offers blessings, among others, for rain after drought, for sun after long rain; for a ripe peach and for the first garden tomato for a political victory, for the return of a favorite cat, for love returned.  Gratitude for tastes, textures, joys and everyday pleasures can barely be contained by words—and such gratitude deserves more than a formula.

The ancient sages themselves were divided over the issue of formulas (click here for Talmud excerpt).  For Rabbi Yosi, a beracha/blessing that did not abide by the rabbinic form was not a beracha/blessing.  Rabbi Meir was not so certain.  Perhaps the impulse to celebrate a moment could take another shape.

I want to ask Rabbi Yosi:  What is at stake for you that you insist upon the rabbinic form, that risks being mumbled by rote?

I want to ask Rabbi Meir:  Can a beracha be endlessly innovative? Even your examples of berachot/blessings for bread and figs suggest a loose form.  Are you freeing me from the form and offering me the burden of creative innovation?

But whether with strict form or innovation, both sages would agree that one must say something in response to a moment that reaches beyond itself.  Both sages would agree with the poet on the importance of gratitude expressed, articulated.  In Marge Piercy’s words, the “art of blessing the day” requires discipline and “the art is in compressing attention.”

But the discipline of blessings is to taste
each moment, the bitter, the sour, the sweet
and the salty, and be glad for what does not
hurt. The art is in compressing attention
to each little and big blossom of the tree
of life, to let the tongue sing each fruit,
its savor, its aroma and its use.

Beracha comes from the Hebrew verb that means “overflow.”  When marked by a beracha, the peach, the tomato or the political victory each becomes a token of wonder larger than itself.  In the presence of a beracha, a moment becomes momentous.

Posted in Blessing, Poetry | Leave a comment

The Lord Is Your Shadow

Posted on September 26, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

Here is a paraphrased teaching of the Sefat Emet from Sukkot 5650/1889:

The holy Zohar calls the Sukkah, “the shadow of the Faithful One,” a term that can be explained in this way: that holiness is the shadow cast in the Sukkah—a shadow that is the profile of one’s faith…

According to the posture of its faith did Israel merit the sheltering, Sukkah-like clouds of Divine Presence in the wilderness—clouds that led Israel in a manner beyond nature…

Just so, it is said in the name of the Ba’al Shem Tov that the verse, “Adonai is your shade” (Psalm 121:5), means that the Holy One reveals himself according to a person’s conduct.

Says the Ba’al Shem Tov:  Adonai is your shade, your shadow.  The Divine Presence is your silhouette, striking the pose of your conduct.

According to the Mishnah (Sukkah 1:1), a valid Sukkah must have more shade, more shadow than sun.  What are the qualities and characteristics of shade, of shadow that draw the attention of the Mishnah?  Certainly, shade offers protection from the sun, but blocking out all sunlight renders the Sukkah invalid.  Light allows for shade to appear.  Shadow is only revealed in the light. Shadow takes shape according to the arrangement of roof covering in each Sukkah—unique in each, present in all, abiding and shifting through the day.

Consider how you project Divine Presence into the world and how that revealing shadow shifts with the arrangement of your deeds—growing, gathering under foot and lengthening again.  An irony in the shadows:  A prayer-poet of the High Holidays refers to human life as “a passing shadow.” In the Sukkah, it is Divine Presence that is the shadow.

The God of ever changing presence is called “The Temporary One” by Rivka Miriam in a poem called “Sukkot” (click here for poem in Hebrew and English):

The Temporary covers us.
The Temporary is green. Yellow, brown and gray is the permanent.
The Temporary covers us. Let’s make ourselves beautiful for Him.
Let’s leave Him here. He will shade us from the sun. From the cold, gather us.
Let’s leave Him with us. He will cast an anchor.
Who is a better father to us than Him?
The Temporary covers us.
Our fixedness will not frighten Him. Just the opposite
We will bring Him seven of our community’s elders
Those tied by the cord of continuing.
Day after day they will pass before him, in cloaks, in turbans.
Dwell with us, Temporary, dwell.
Your place is with us.
We are the offspring of the ever-turning sword.
And who is a better father to us than You?

Posted in Holidays, Poetry | Leave a comment

My Blindness and Jerusalem’s Limp

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Sicha, Continuing the Conversation

I and Jerusalem are like a blind man and a cripple.
She sees for me
Out to the Dead Sea, out to the end of days.
While I hoist her on my shoulders
And walk blind in my darkness below.

(Click here for Yehuda Amichai’s poem in Hebrew and English)

Amichai summons an ancient image of which the rabbis made use:  Once there was a king who assigned two men—one blind and one lame—to watch over the best of his orchard’s early fruits.  One tempted by sight, the other by fragrance, the lame watchman sat upon his blind partner’s shoulders directing him towards the fruit.    The king was not fooled by the alibis of his guards:  “Could I have seen the fruit?”  “Could I have climbed up to take it?”  Rather, he realized that they had accomplished together what neither one could accomplish alone.  (Click here for the parable)

From her mountain height Jerusalem has her eyes fixed on the horizons of space and time—of the sea/yam and of days/yamim.  But, she, alone, cannot carry her own vision forward.

Can Jerusalem ever be viewed separately from those who carry her forward?  Can Jerusalem’s loyal and loving carriers—of whatever creed—blindly rely upon a vision (the city’s vision?) of space or a vision of the end of days?

Unlike the narrative voice of the parable, it is the blind accomplice himself who tells the tale and underscores his limits: blind, in darkness, and below.  Below—l’matta—is another reminder that any vision of Yerushalyim shel ma’alah, “Jerusalem above,” requires the carrier of Yerushalayim shel matta, “Jerusalem below.”

Posted in Jerusalem, Poetry | Leave a comment