Dvar Torah: Tazria/Shabbat Ha'Chodesh - God's Warning Signs

Parshat Tazria-Hachodesh

5774/2014

As I watch the preview for Noah, the new film about the famous family from the Book of Genesis that escapes alone from the destruction of the world, I can think of only one thing:  the actors in this movie look like they really are getting wet and cold. 

This story, while it is a story of utter destruction and a miraculous escape, is also a story about what is not supposed to happen again.  God promises that the world will go on, and God will not destroy the world again no matter how people think and act in the world, for good, evil, or somewhere in between.

Is God’s promise true?

While the world as we know it has not been destroyed in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our great grandparents, parts of the world have experienced war.  Post World War photos whether of nature, towns, or people certainly suggest a sense of large-scale loss, areas once populated with beautiful buildings now nothing more than a wasteland.  Nuclear weapons have the power to obliterate countries from the map.  Environmental degradation impacts the lives of animals and human beings all over the world. 

God may not destroy the world again, but sometimes it feels that we just might succeed doing it ourselves.

The promise not to bring a cataclysm like Noah’s flood does not mean, though, that God abandons humanity to a dismal fate.  We find in the way the Rabbis read our parsha, parshat Tazria, that God is still here, dropping hints to us, helping us to raise our awareness, giving us warning signs that we need to repair what is broken, and, on the other side of the coin, to celebrate what is good, what is right, and hopeful.

For the next two Shabbatot, we will study the ways that the ancient kohanim, the priests, acting like doctors of today, inspected, evaluated, and prescribed a response to an ailment called tza’ra’at.

We don’t know what tza’ra’at is.  We cannot identify it in modern medical literature.

It is peculiar because it also affects clothing and houses, and according to the Torah – it affects people, clothing, and houses in that order, or so it seems.

That’s not how the Midrash later read these passages.  They imagined that the order was completely reversed, even according to the order the Torah describes.  Tza’ra’at affects houses first, clothing next, and then the person last.  They discovered this in the story of Job whose misfortunes proceed just this way.

Why does God start with the house?

As a gentle warning from God that we are going astray and need to adjust our course.

If we do not do teshuvah, reconcile, change our ways, tza’ra’at will affect our clothing.

And in the end, God forbid, it will appear on our skin.

This is clearly a metaphor – a spiritual metaphor – a sign that starts outside of ourselves, a note of caution we feel inside, in our conscience, that may move closer and closer until it is so present and powerful that we can no longer avoid it.

A story to illustrate this point.

I was working on a school project with a colleague, a project about the meaning of Passover.  Her feeling is that the Seder is supposed to help us feel freedom, to feel we are part of the Exodus, but that she hasn’t felt that.  So there’s a structure, the Seder, something outside us that’s supposed to work in a certain way, over time maybe we also feel more and more that we’re not achieving that sense of feeling and connection, and eventually each of us feels just the opposite of free, locked into a pattern we cannot escape.

And thinking about this particular issue helps me figure out why the Torah starts with the person first – each of us has the gifts, the creativity, and the power to recast, reclaim, and reenergize any idea, any project that we care about, even the ancient Seder that we will observe in just a couple of weeks.

If we feel there is a warning sign in the world about something significant to who we are and what we believe, there is no better time than at the feast of freedom, to being the response.

The Seder is a relatively easy target, something that we can plan ourselves.  Let’s see the signs in the Seder itself and respond:  Are we really fulfilling the call of ‘All who are hungry let them come and eat?’ Are we using this time to remind ourselves what freedom is and to consider how we can help others to be more free?  Are we just going through the Seder motions – or are we telling the story in a way that engages us? 

But let’s not stop there – or we just might begin to feel as cold, soaked, and uncomfortable  as the characters in the Noah story even on the driest and warmest of spring days.

Shabbat Shalom

Shemini: Something to say?

Dvar Torah:  Shemini

Something to say?

Malaysia airlines flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8.  Now, thirteen days later, there are no significant developments in the search, only a few potential clues. 

The silence in this case is overwhelming.  Satellite images show signs of a few pieces of floating debris.  Air and ship crew look out windows, watch radar, and lower buoys into the water.  Shrines and vigils appear in different forms.  There was silence in the way that the authorities in Malaysia were lax in checking passports.  Silence as different countries in the region seemed to be napping when it came to regular surveillance.  Except for the anguished cries of family members pleading for information, there is a great deal of silence – silence that is a reminder for us here in the US of another day, not 13 days ago, but 13 years ago.

Far from the tragic events of 9/11 and the disappearance of hundreds on a commercial airplane, we contend with silence.  Silence is increasingly difficult to find.  The cell phone buzzes even when the ringer is off.  The town siren wails.  The radio blares.  It is difficult to find a moment or place of real silence, not just the absence of sound but silence as an opportunity to think deeply, to process, to hear what our hearts are saying.

Our ancestor Aharon, Aaron, brother to Moshe, first of the high priest of Israel becomes silent after flames from heaven consume his two sons Nadav and Avihu at the altar.  Putting aside for a moment why they suffer this fate, Aaron’s reaction is, “Vayidom Aharon,” and Aaron was silent. 

Aaron receives praise for his silence.  Rashi explains that Aaron then merits God speaking to him directly, but Rabbi Lipman of Radomsk once told the Rebbe of Kotzk that King David received a greater reward since at the time of David’s suffering he was not silent.  As we say every morning in Psalm 30, “Le’ma’an yezamercha chavod velo yidom!”  “That we will sing Your glory and not be silent!”  Even at a time of pain and suffering, David was able to sing to God.  And let’s not forget the immortal words from Kohelet, “There is a time for everything….a time to be quiet and a time to speak.”

Notice here that David’s choice to break the silence does not come as a result of discomfort.  We’ve all been there.  It’s the elevator, or the car ride, when a silence falls and we need to break the apparent discomfort of the silence with something, anything.  With David, he breaks the silence with something significant, praise to the Source of Life.

For all the silence that we need in our lives – silence from constant connection and communication, silence from the bombardment we get from breaking news that too soon turns out to be incorrect, silence from all the distractions that lead us away from our priorities and what is most important to us.  For all the silence we need, we also need to learn, and relearn, when and how to speak and speak up. 

While I respect Aaron’s moment of silent shock, I do not accept that he had nothing to say.  In our postmodern world, I cannot accept that his mind was blank.  What did he want to say in that moment? 

What would have been constructive and helpful to say to God in that moment?  To say to Moses? To Miriam? 

And when we do speak and speak up, we know that not only the words we say but the way we say them is so significant.  How can we express real emotion without letting emotion take over?  How can we express ourselves thoughtfully and logically without separating ourselves from what makes us frail, human, and non-robotic?

When we stand with our ancestor Aaron in his moment of distress, we stand with our fellow human beings – friends and family of flight MH370 who stand in shocked silence, and wonder what we will say, what we will do, to transform silence into meaningful words – but not only words – in Hebrew the word for ‘word’ also means thing, action, idea.  We see that when our machines, and other powers, fail or when evil people use machines and human powers to inflict pain on people, words alone cannot repair the damage, but words and actions together just might bring healing. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Dvar Torah - Terumah - Mishkan in the Heart

Parshat Terumah 5774/2014

Superbowl Sunday is as close to a national holiday as a sporting event can be in this country.  Last year, over 108 million people watched the game, that’s a full third of the population of the entire country.  In the last (2012) presidential election, it’s estimated some 126 million people voted.  It’s nice to know that the democratic process wins out against a ground game of carrying a ball over a line without getting a klop on the kop, regarding participation, albeit by less than 20%.  Clearly, there is something about this event that attracts attention, the question is whether it has anything to do with the football game.

The remainder of Sefer Shemot, the Book of Exodus, offers us a similar question.  The bulk of Exodus now will describe the design, creation, and assembly of the Mishkan, a portable Holy Place where the priests will minister to God’s Presence with prayers and sacrifices as the Israelites wander from place to place in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land.

Despite the lengthy and precise description of each part of the Mishkan, from the walls to the pegs, the structure is meaningless and empty until the tail end of the Book when God’s Presence fills it.  The same is true of anything we build or create.  Until we build the bookcase, it’s just a big door jamb.  Until kickoff, the Super Bowl is just an occasion for socializing, tourism, and entertainment.  And, by the way, after the game is over.  The winning team returns home to its city where, often, citizens celebrate them with a big parade and hoopla downtown.  I wonder why we can put up a big parade for a football team and there’s not much chance for military veterans returning from service in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to walk down the street to cheers and thanks?

As God begins to explain the design of the Mishkan, God says, “Ve’asu li mikdash ve’shachanti betocham.”  “Let them make for me a holy place and I will dwell amongst them.”  We expect God to say, “Make me a holy place and I will dwell in it, betocho instead of betocham, in them.” But God does not say that.  The Chen-Tov explains that we should not think that the most important parts of the Mishkan are its planks and the various items inside.  Rather, the people should know that their first responsibility is to purify their hearts, purify from the inside, so that the Shechinah, God’s Presence, will live within them, within us.

We’re supposed to build the holiness and spirit within ourselves first, and then that overflows into how we relate to others and to the world.  God teaches us this lesson that the later thinkers put together by example, from the beginning of thinking about the Mishkan.  The first thing that is described is the Ark, the place where the Holy Presence will be, the innermost piece, rather than any of the walls or supports that surround it, creation from the inside out.

We see that the journey of faith asks us to take not a ‘leap of faith’ but rather a ‘leap of trust’.  If we can open to the possibility that God can and will guide us, and like a trust fall be willing to allow ourselves to be carried, then we just might be able to let go of much of the stress and tension of living that comes from our need to measure and control.  No doubt, God asks the Israelites to build a Mishkan and to measure out each piece to the cubit.  There is value in precision, delicacy, and care in all human endeavors. 

But, we are not God.  We don’t have God’s eternal vision, and so we can choose God as our guide, our shepherd, just like in Psalm 23, God is my shepherd, and I lack nothing.

Putting trust in God, making God the ‘head coach’ as it were, could be a lot like realizing that, maybe, in the end, the Superbowl really is not about the game but about the community of friends and family who get together to watch, that it’s the people, and our hearts, that make the day special, the players who have gutted it out all season to get to this point, the soldiers defending our freedom who are watching from tents and barracks abroad, these are what are important.

As the great Rabbi of Kotzk said, “Each of us must build a Mishkan I our hearts, and God will live there.”

Dvar Torah Mishpatim - Why do good things happen to good people?

Mishpatim 2014

The recent New York Lottery commercials are worthy of attention.  They portray lottery winners who have leisure time to think about questions, nothing important, just musings on the world whose answers will not make much difference for anyone.  In one scene, a man driving a car on the highway thinks of the question, then shrugs, shakes it off and continues his pleasant drive.  The answer does not matter because the question never really mattered in the first place.

Now a different question, one that comes from real-life, not the imaginary world of the lottery winner.  I visited someone in a hospital, at the time she was 78, and having a hard time of it.  She described how she struggled with health issues when at the same time her older sister, did not have any significant health issues at all, smooth sailing in comparison.  This woman was, is, a good person, caring, loving, a good friend. 

And so in this situation we feel compelled to ask, as we have many times before, why do bad things happen to a good person? 

But that’s not the question that came to mind in that moment.  In that moment there was a new question, one that I’d never given much though, if any, at all:  Why do good things happen to good people?  Bad things happening to bad people, no moral problem there, that’s justice, measure for measure.  Good things happening to bad people, that’s a lament, does not make sense to us.  Bad things happening to good people, a more serious and despairing lament.  Good things happening to good people.  That’s the way things should be, right?

Or, to be more precise, it’s the way we hope things should be, the way that makes the most sense to us.  But then we get into choppy waters.  What is good for one person could be evil for another.  Does the level of reward have to match the level of good?  What if one person gets a better reward for the same good?  And if we go back to the lottery example, assuming the winner is a good person and does good things, what happens when the reward creates more problems than it could have solved.  There are many stories of lottery winners whose lives become more difficult rather than less.

Another issue, what about the neutral?  Many days are neither good nor bad, not better or worse than any other day.

The premise of our parsha, mishpatim, the continuing revelation of laws and teachings from God about how to infuse the world with justice, that evil and wrongdoing should be punished, that we should strive to maintain the integrity of society, of the family, by ensuring that those who suffer the death, pain, insult of others should have a way to achieve justice, recompense, and support.  It says very little about a person’s character, focusing more on our behavior.  Other passages in the Torah explain the rewards that come to those who do good in God’s eyes, but not this one.  This passage is about responsibility, about holding people accountable for their behavior. 

If we are accountable, then we have some reassurance of a level playing field, some reassurance that making our best effort to do what is good will make all the consequences in our parsha meaningful only as matters to reference for background knowledge.  If we are accountable to God, and to ourselves, then we can live in the hope that the world we create through every action will radiate with holiness, that each of us will be a living ner tamid, a living eternal flame, full of an animated spirit that is strong enough to recognize that we cannot avoid living in a world of good and evil, pleasure and pain, and a spirit sensitive enough to glory in the good that we experience and to never leave anyone alone in his or her suffering.

The irony in the New York lottery commercials then, is this, if the winners are free to think about and work on anything, then why not put energy into what is meaningful, what is important, and what can make a difference.

Think of it this way, the way someone once explained to us while our kids were playing at the Duck pond playground.  She said that, for her, good health, the ability to live out life fully was more than enough, she did not need lottery winnings at all, she already had won.  We are here together this Shabbat, to sing, to celebrate, to listen, to learn, to rest, to grow.  What a privilege, what a blessing, what a gift.  What good during the week to come can we take from this moment?

Shabbat Shalom

Va'era 2013/5774: Hope for a good ending

Va’era 2013/5774

Hope for a good ending

George Orwell’s 1984.

Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451

Stephen King’s the Running man.

Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

What do all these stories have in common?

Worlds in which individual lives are relatively worthless in comparison to the so-called ‘greater good’.

Worlds where violence and fear are the main tools leaders use to pacify the population and keep power.

Worlds where the voice of the individual does not count for anything, because the noise of a twisted status quo, the power of fear and the instinct for survival, shut out the call for freedom, for compassion, for hope.

The Israelites, our ancestors in Egypt, exist in just such a world.  Moses thinks they do not listen to him, to the message of hope and freedom from God, since he is not a good speaker.  Three times he tells God that he does not speak well, that perhaps he has a speech disability.  But the Torah offers another explanation for why the people do not listen to Moses, a reason that Moses himself does not acknowledge.  The people do not listen for the same reason that the characters in all these stories of a scary future do not really listen – the noise of false reassurance, censorship, media and violence overrun the senses.

The Torah teaches, “The people did not listen to Moses due to bitterness of spirit and their hard labor.”  Pharaoh tears away their faith, their strength, all the trust and history they had built up after Pharaoh welcomed their ancestors to live in Egypt during the days of the famine, a famine through which Joseph, and Joseph alone, was responsible for saving Egypt.  It’s not surprising then that the people are not open to listening to Moses.  They are so disillusioned, so in pain, that they are unwilling to hear even good news. 

Rabbi Yehudah ben Beterah (Torah Temimah Vol. 3, page 13) asks the question:  Who would not celebrate when they receive good news? 

A good question, don’t we always feel positive and receptive on hearing good news? 

Ben Beterah argues that the people had lost their identity, turned ‘Egyptian’.

Rashbam teaches the people were stifled under even more difficult labor.

Ibn Ezra suggests our exile lasted so long, that our spirits were crushed.

Chizkuni sees fear in the people, fear of even the possibility of hope under worsening conditions, lest that hope be dashed.

What is it that we fear most?  What keeps us up at night?  What fears make us change our thinking and change our plans?  Which fears do not force us to change?  Which fears have we learned to live with?

Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book ‘Conquering Fear, “sometimes I stubbornly believe as an act of faith that God has made a world in which tragedy is real but happy endings heavily outnumber tragic ones.  I resolve not to let my fears of what might happen prevent me from anticipating with pleasure what I hope will happen.”

Let’s go back to all those stories where we began and test Kushner’s stubborn belief here.

In 1984, Winston Smith succumbs, gives in to belief and love of Big Brother, gives up himself, plagued by the fears the government uses against him in room 101.  Sad ending.

Farenheit 451, Guy Montag escapes, joins the band of free spirits, reconnects with people who love words instead of burning them, there is hope.  Happier ending.

The Running Man, a broadcast goes out that begins to bring down the authoritarian government, rebels fight back, expose the truth.  Happier ending. 

The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen leads the rebellion, the authoritarian government falls.  Happier ending.

Exodus from Egypt – happier ending, from despair to celebration, miyagon lesimcha, from slavery to freedom, me’avdut lecherut.

And so despite the fact that we often find ourselves walking in a valley of deepest darkness, ‘though I walk in the valley under the dark shadow…’, we keep hope alive knowing that the sun is just over the valley wall, and will rise.