Listen to tonight's class, "Applying Lipstick & Eating Red Fruits on Shabbat," here.
Follow along with the sources here.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Applying Lipstick & Eating Red Fruits on Shabbat
Listen to tonight's class, "Applying Lipstick & Eating Red Fruits on Shabbat," here.
Follow along with the sources here.
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Monday, November 18, 2019
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Parashat VaYera: Making Space
Making Space
Thoughts on Parashat VaYera 2019
Click here to view as PDF
[1] Emma Hornby, “Preliminary Thoughts About Silence in Early Western Chant,” in Silence, Music, Silent Music, (Aldershot, UK, 2007). Pg. 142-3. Cited by Jane Brox, Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives (New York, NY, 2019), pg. 68.
God’s one-sentence
command of Avraham was strict and straightforward:
…And
He said, “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Yisshak, and Go
forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the
mountains which I shall say to you.”
(22:2)
It appeared to
leave Avraham with no room for self-expression or interpretation. His options
seemed simple: to listen or not to listen to God’s word.
And yet, as Avraham
began his journey to “the land of Moriah,” something unexpected took place:
On
the third day Avraham raised his eyes and saw the place from afar. (22:4)
Instead of lowering
his eyes in an obedient march to “one of the mountains which God would say,”
Avraham “raised his eyes,” and recognized the mountain – on his own – from
afar. Indeed, after Avraham had climbed
the mountain and God warned him not to harm Yisshak, Avraham again
“raised his eyes.” He again expressed himself independently, noticing a
ram that was caught in the thicket by its horns, and deeming it the right
replacement for Yisshak on the mizbeah (22:14).
Ironically, then,
the episode of the Akedah – forever remembered as Avraham’s display of
absolute deference to God and His word – lays hint to an integral element of space
in the man-God relationship. It teaches that even in the most “constricting”
circumstances of our relationship with Him, there remains a hollow void within
which each individual may carve out their own personal niche. Even as Avraham
followed the absolute order of God to sacrifice his son, the opportunity to
“raise his eyes” remained.
I first appreciated
the significance of a literal and figurative space to our lives during a
meeting with a personal mentor, David “Hurdle” Tawil. Hurdle was critiquing the
speed of my speech in a sermon on one particular Shabbat morning. He told me
that by failing to sufficiently breathe in between sentences and paragraphs, I
stole the opportunity from my listeners to reflect upon the message and find its
relevance to their own lives.
“I’ll tell you a
story to get across the point,” Hurdle then told me, with the twinkle of his
eye. He told me that over sixty years ago, a friend of his was struggling in
the retail business of clothing. Distinguished today as a standout
philanthropist of our community, this individual was struggling to make ends
meet at the beginning years of his career. And so, he called Hurdle into his
store, and asked him for advice. He showed off his high-quality merchandise and
questioned why nobody seemed interested in buying it. “And I noticed the issue
immediately,” Hurdle told me, “there was not enough space from one rack to the
next.” Entering into the store, consumers were “overwhelmed” by the vast array
of merchandise laid out in front of them, and unable to appropriately “take in”
and appreciate the value of each individual garment and parcel. “When you leave
the right amount of space,” Hurdle then taught me, “you allow for the people
around you to appreciate what you have to offer.”
The British
historian Emma Hornby pointed out that both in Hebrew and Greek words for
“spirit” also mean “breath” (nefesh and neshamah) or “wind” (ruah).
The silence of the “space in between,” a breath or the wind, allows the spirit
in.[1]
Indeed, the very creation of man entailed God “blowing into his nostrils the
breath of life – nefesh hayah,” creating a “living spirit – nishmat
hayim” (2:7). And Onkelos, the classic translator to the Torah, famously
explained that the “living spirit” of man is best defined by his ability to
speak (ruah me-malela). How ironic! Our self-identity, which is best
expressed through our speech with one another, was born out of the silent
space of a breath.
Consider the
similarity of relationships with our children to the “Akedah experience”
between God and Avraham. No, I don’t mean that we too ask our children to
slaughter others! But just as God expected Avraham to obediently follow his
word, so too do we of our children in many interactions with them. Learning
from that somewhat unexpected “space” which God carved out for Avraham, the
message to us is clear. Allow your children to “raise their eyes” and notice on
their own. Even as you intend to impart advice from years of life-experience,
the words are often understood best through a medium of appropriate space. It
is ironic yet true that guided-growth flourishes most in a context that invites
self-reflection and expression.
[1] Emma Hornby, “Preliminary Thoughts About Silence in Early Western Chant,” in Silence, Music, Silent Music, (Aldershot, UK, 2007). Pg. 142-3. Cited by Jane Brox, Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives (New York, NY, 2019), pg. 68.
Monday, November 11, 2019
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Monday, November 4, 2019
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Parashat Noah: Separation & Unity
Separation & Unity
Thoughts on Parashat Noah 2019
Click here to view as PDF
The Torah described Noah’s
actions upon descending from the ark:
And Noah
built an altar to God and he took from every clean cattle and every clean fowl
and offered burnt offerings on the altar. (Bereshit 8:20)
And God’s response:
And God
smelled the fragrant odor (re’ah
ha-nihoah) and God said in His heart: “I will not again damn the soil on
humankinds score…And I will not again strike down all living things as I did. (8:21)
God’s determination appears
to be inspired by Noah’s korbanot. His decision to spare the future of
humankind and all living things wasn’t decided by the sheer devastation of the
flood, but by Noah’s sacrifices. What was the significance of those korbanot?
“Creation is the making of
separated things,” stated the political philosopher Leo Strauss, upon counting
five explicit and ten implicit mentions of havdalah – “separation” – in
the first chapter of Bereshit.[1]
Indeed, Ramban interpreted the Torah’s first pasuk, “At the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth,” as a reference to God’s initial
creation of a single entity of formless matter.[2] God’s subsequent actions during the six days
of creation, then, gave form to that matter through a series of deliberate acts
of separation.
Consider God’s initial
actions in Creation: Light was separated from darkness (1:3-4), the “upper and
lower waters” were separated from one another (6-7), land and water were
separated (9-10), and the heavenly bodies were purposed to separate between day
and night (14-18). Leon Kass thus summarized: “Creation is the bringing of
order out of chaos largely through acts of separation, division, distinction.”[3]
Why did God bring
forth all of these separations? To create a habitable space for humankind.
After all, a world of absolute darkness and water leaves no place for man. It
is through the space that was created “in between” – the rays of light, air
space and land – that we find our place in this world.
But what is the
role of humankind in this “separated space”? I believe, perhaps paradoxically,
that it is to seek a reunification.
Consider the fact that our very creation began in a state of unity
between “upper” and “lower” realms of existence – crafted from “the dust of the
earth,” God breathed into Adam the “breath of life” (2:7).[4]
The Hakhamim similarly suggested that the “mist” which “ascended from
the earth” (2:6) immediately prior to his creation was from the clouds and was
purposed to “saturate the soil” from which he was created.[5] It
was the water of the “upper worlds,” then, that mixed with the “lower world”
soil to create a human being.[6]
Indeed, immediately after
Hava’s separation from Adam – “And God built the rib He had taken from
Adam into a woman” (2:22), she was led to a natural unity with him –
“Therefore does man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and
they become one flesh” (2:24). The Hakhamim furthermore pointed to
humankind’s task to seek unity in existence in their explanation of a
rather cryptic pasuk, “For God had not sent rain upon the earth and
there was no man to work the soil.” Rashi explained:
And what is the reason that “He had not sent rain?” Because “there
was no man to work the soil”…When Adam came and realized that they are a
necessity for the world, he prayed for them and they came down, and the trees
and types of vegetation sprouted.[7]
God withheld the downpouring
of the “upper world” rains until the creation of a human being. It was the
human’s destiny to establish a unity between his “lower” world and that of above.
But the flood of Parashat
Noah effectively “turned back the clock” of creation, rendering the world
uninhabitable by collapsing the natural separation onto itself. The “upper” and
“lower” waters crashed again into one another – “The springs of the great deep
were split open and the storehouses of the heavens opened up” (6:11), and the
waters covered the mountains (7:19), as an effective “un-creation” took place
in a world of “chaotic unity.”[8]
Noah’s subsequent emergence from the ark into a “recreated” world of
separation, then, renewed humanity’s mission of unity.
And Noah
built an altar to God and he took from every clean cattle and every clean fowl
and offered burnt offerings on the altar. (8:20)
R. Ezra Bick commented, in a
different context: “If sacrificing an animal is characterized as turning the
flesh into smoke, the inner meaning of this action is turning the physical into
the spiritual…the korban creates an actual metaphysical link by bridging
the gap, by turning the physical into the spiritual.”[9]
Noah’s decision to bring forth a korban at that time touched on the very
core of his existential mission. The divinely “fragrant odor” produced by his
sacrifice represented the necessary bridge between the material flesh of this
world with the spiritual essence of the world above. It was his immediate step
in the appropriate direction of unity – his ultimate destiny – that
inspired God’s will to secure the future of humankind and all living beings.
The call to unify
cries out to us on a constant basis in our own lives of compartmentalization. And
it is only realized when we successfully overlap the ideals of the various
realms of our lives. We are commanded, for example, to extend the time of kedushah
at the synagogue to our everyday activities. The commitment to truth and
honesty in our households must likewise be matched in our dealings at the
workplace. And a strict adherence to halakhah may not be reserved for
specific times or places, but rather exist as a part of our very identity. Unity
is found when we infuse the seemingly disparate domains of our lives with the
common essence of sanctity and truth.
[1] Leo Strauss, On the Interpretation of Genesis, L’Homme 1981 (21:1), pg. 9.
[2] Commentary of Ramban to
Bereshit 1:1 (s.v. bereshit).
[3] Leon Kass, The Beginning of
Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Chicago, IL, 2006), pg. 32.
[4] See Bereshit Rabah
12.8. See, as well, R. Hayim of Volozhin’s Nefesh HaHayim 1.5 (s.v.
hagah).
[5] Commentary of Rashi ad.
loc., s.v. ve-ed.
[6] As noted by R. Moshe Shapira, Afikei
Mayim: Sukkot ed. R. Reuven M. Shmeltzer (Jerusalem, IS, 2012), pg. 243.
[7] Commentary of Rashi to
Bereshit 2:5 s.v. ki.
[8] The Hakhamim likewise
deduced that over the course of the flood there was no distinction between day
and night (Commentary of Rashi to Bereshit 8:22, s.v. ve-yom).
[9] R. Ezra Bick, “The
Significance of Haktarah,” Torah MiEtzion: VaYikra (New Milford,
CT, 2014), pg. 32-33.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)