Personal Theology

The following was my final assignment for a course in Modern Jewish Thought, taught by Rabbis Drs. David Ellenson and Eugene Borowitz at HUC-JIR. It represents my thinking thus far on several big Jewish questions.

===

In this personal statement, I will attempt to address the following questions: What is God? What is the nature of revelation, commandment, and prayer? Why be Jewish?

What is God?

God is the All-ness that underlies the universe. Humans, being finite, primarily experience this All-ness not as Infinite Unity, but in duality. Thus, we experience God through two primary categories: the transcendent and the immanent.

I will later spend more time defining each of these categories. For now, I’d like to offer a few words about what may appear to be a dualistic (rather than monotheistic) framework. I imagine these two categories as different expressions of the same idea, like two branches stemming from one tree trunk, or like the many sefirot emanating from ein sof. Our tradition has many names for God—Adonai, Elohim, El Shaddai, HaMakom, to share but a few. And yet, all these names refer to the same One God. To what may this be compared? To a human being on earth, who by some is called Mom, by others is called Sister, by others is called Daughter, by another is called My Love. As Brad Artson points out, the Platonic assumptions that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent are not native to Biblical or Rabbinic thought. Freed of these assumptions—open to the possibility that humans experience God’s Infinite Unity in a refraction of complex duality—we may begin to uncover something about the nature of God.

I have said that I think of God as manifesting in two categories: transcendent and immanent. By transcendent, I mean that God is the Source and Substance of All Creation, to borrow a phrase from Rami Shapiro. (God is the sum-total of all matter, energy, intellect, and emotion in the universe [Substance], and also the well-spring from which they originate [Source].) This aspect of God is impersonal. This is the aspect of God that keeps planets as well as electrons spinning in their orbits. This is the aspect of God that turns day into night and season into season. This is the aspect of God that maintains natural law and enables human beings to harness science for our own ends. This is the aspect of God for Whom “m’lo chol ha-aretz k’vodo / all of creation is filled with God’s presence,” and yet also is “l’eila’ min kol birchata v’shirata / above all blessings and songs.” To borrow a phrase from David Sacks, this is the aspect of God that “we’re swimming in,” and that also is “beyond beyond beyond.” This is the aspect of God that Walt Whitman called “the procession … along the grand roads of the universe.” This is the aspect of God that causes in us Heschel’s “radical amazement.” This is the aspect of God that, in the Piyyut “Adon Olam,” is referred to as “b’li reishit, b’li tachlit / without beginning, without end.” This is the aspect of God that, according to the Kabbalists, is manifest by the attribute of “din / discipline / restraint.” This is the aspect of God that our Biblical writers imagined as having created a highly ordered universe in a highly order six-day process (in Genesis 1)—an aspect of God that they called Elohim.

The other category in which God manifests God’s self in the universe is the immanent. By immanent, I mean the aspect of God that might be referred to as “the God within”—our consciousness and conscience, our divine spark. This aspect of God is personal.  This is the aspect of God that “hotzeiti etchem mei-eretz Mitzraim / redeemed (and redeems) us from our place(s) of bondage.” This is the aspect of God that, in the Decalogue, chooses to introduce God’s self to the entire Israelite people not as Creator, but as Redeemer (to borrow an observation from Ibn Ezra). This is the aspect of God that “shomei-a t’fillah / is sympathetic to prayer” and understands “imri fi v’hegyon libi / the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts.” This is the aspect of God that keeps the Gates of Repentance always open. This is the aspect of God that exhibits Heschel’s “divine pathos.” This is the aspect of God that Henri Nouwen said that we access when we act as a “wounded healer.” This is the aspect of God that heals (not to be confused with “cures”) the sick. This is the aspect of God that, in the Piyyut “Adon Olam,” is referred to as “eili, v’chai go’ali / my God, my Living Redeemer.” This is the aspect of God that, according to the Kabbalists, is manifest by the attribute of “chesed / love / boundlessness.” This is the aspect of God that our Biblical writers imagined as having the empathy to notice that “it is not good for a human to be alone” (in Genesis 2)—an aspect of God that they called Adonai.

Above, I noted that the aspect of God that “heals” the sick (Immanence) does not have the power to “cure” the sick. “Curing” is subject to the laws of nature—within the realm of God’s transcendence. While this personal statement will not deal at length with the nature of suffering, I will say for now that suffering is a result of the dual nature with which we perceive the world. The aspect of God that worries about our suffering (Immanence) is—devastatingly—distinct from the aspect of God that could cure our suffering (Transcendence). This is a function of the duality through which we experience the universe: we live in a dual world, and as a consequence, there is suffering.

The ultimate Unity that underlies all of existence is, for the most part, just beyond the horizon of human perception. Ourselves being finite, we can only contain finite amounts of the Infinite. Thus we live in a world where a person cannot be both Mother and Daughter to another single person. Thus we live in a world where we can experience both God’s immanence and transcendence, but rarely in the same moment. When we do, we do so only in split-second flashes of All-ness, where all the gears align and all the gates are open. When we die, we rejoin the “procession … along the grand roads of the universe,” and we are restored (both on the levels of the body and the soul) from our finitude to the Infinite All-ness from which we came and of which all things are a part. Then, duality again becomes Unity.

One more thought about these two aspects of God. In the Akedah (Abraham’s binding of Isaac)—one of the most troubling, most thoroughly studied, and richest texts in our canon—we see both aspects of God at work. Elohim (Transcendence) asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. Adonai (Immanence) intervenes before the act can be completed. There are two verses in the Akedah in which the names Elohim and Adonai are comingled: an angel of Adonai says to Abraham, “Now I know that you are in awe of Elohim” (Gen. 22:11-12). Indeed, the universe is a “testing” (Gen. 22:1) place; we live constantly on the threshold; natural disasters, illness, and human tragedies could at any moment change the course of our lives forever; and even if we live a life free from these catastrophic and unpredictable sources of suffering, all of us will some day die. This is the transcendent nature of the universe, impervious to our grasp; this is Elohim. When we live our lives in awe of Elohim—in awe of the God’s transcendence, in awe of the chaos and orderliness of the universe, in awe of our smallness amidst the vastness—when we live our lives in awe of Elohim, then we are better able to hear the voice of Adonai—better able to experience God’s immanence, better able to live our lives with compassion, better able to find redemption in our moments of exile.

What is the nature of revelation, commandment, and prayer?

Revelation must, by necessity, precede Commandment. Revelation refers to that split-second moment of simultaneously experiencing both God’s transcendence and immanence—a flash of All-ness, when all the gears are aligned and all the gates are open. Revelation is, in the words of Art Green, a religious experience—something that “the heart understands before the mind knows how to express it.” Revelation is non-intellectual; it occurs through nature, through poetry, through humanity, through art, through the body.

Poetry may provide a helpful framework for understanding revelation. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “every word was once a poem.” Every word is a symbol that tries to express an idea that is beyond the word. The word “water” is not water itself; rather, water is that clear, wet, liquid substance that we call “water.” This is what Emerson meant when he said that “every word was once a poem”: every word is an attempt to manifest something that is beyond the word. (As Heschel said about his own poetry: the words are meant to evoke a sense of the Idea beyond the words.) The same is also true of nature: nature is a symbolic manifestation of ideas that are beyond nature. A tree is a symbolic manifestation of rootedness, of breathing, of shade, and many other ideas. Nature is a poem, a symbolic expression of ideas that are beyond physicality.

Revelation, then, happens when we experience the Idea that is beyond the symbol. This experience can only be achieved through physical engagement with the symbol. Thus, revelation happens not intellectually, but bodily—through the experience of nature, through the words of poetry, through interactions with humanity, through the movement of dance, through the sound of music, through the colors, shapes, and lines of art, through the physical sensation of the body. The symbol is a gateway that must be entered in order to experience the Idea beyond the symbol. When a person experiences the Idea—when a person hears the Idea speaking the words “I am” through the symbol—that is Revelation. The Idea speaks in 1^st person. All intellectual activity (to borrow an idea from Art Green)—all of philosophy, art criticism, even this personal statement—is an attempt to talk about that Idea in the 3^rd person: “It is…” “God is…” “Revelation is….”

Torah, then, is not Revelation itself, but rather is a symbol of Revelation—a symbolic manifestation through which a person may be able to experience the Idea of Universe, a gateway through which a person may be able to hear the Voice of the Universe saying: “I am.” As Buber explained it: Torah is an I-It document that is intended to point to the I-Thou relationship between God and the world. Torah isn’t Revelation itself, but rather is a symbol through which we may access Revelation.

I began this section by saying that Revelation must, by necessity, precede Commandment. Having explained what I mean by Revelation, I shall now attempt to explain the rest of this statement.

Commandment is a constructive, synthetic attempt to experience (or re-experience) Revelation. Commandment can be understood in two categories: [1] the ethical (which, as we shall see, corresponds to Elohim), and [2] the ritual (which corresponds to Adonai). (Revelation, we should recall at this point, transcends these two aspects of God—it is “that split-second moment of simultaneously experiencing both God’s transcendence and God’s immanence.”)

To understand the ethical commandments, I rely on the thinking of Hermann Cohen. Cohen, an intellectual disciple of the ethicist Immanuel Kant, praised Judaism as a religion of reason. Writing at the height of Enlightenment rationalism, Cohen (and Kant) believed that everything in the universe could be understood through reason. Kant is famous for his idea of the categorical imperative—that a person’s ethical duty can be discerned through logic. Therefore, actions that are logically ethical (as determined by reason) are actions that are categorically ethical for all persons (and thus imperative). This emphasis on ethics led Cohen and his colleagues to believe (almost messianically) that reason would lead to the betterment and perfection of the world—an idea was expressed in the Union Prayerbook (1940) as follows: “Fervently we pray that the day may come … when corruption and evil shall give way to integrity and goodness, when superstition shall no longer enslave the mind, nor idolatry blind the eye.”

Cohen Judaized Kant’s ideas. Cohen believed that we live in the World-As-It-Is (represented by natural law and the human condition), while ever aware of the World-As-It-Should-Be (represented by ethics and the ideal). Cohen understood that there had to be a grounding field in which both of these Worlds stood—that, since natural law/the human condition and ethics/the ideal do in fact coexist, there has to be an idea that transcends and encompasses them both. Cohen labeled this idea: God. In this way, God is neither the World-As-It-Is nor the World-As-It-Should-Be, but rather, God is the process by which the former becomes the later. God is the bridge that enables us to cross from the World-As-It-Is into the World-As-It-Should-Be. And since the World-As-It-Should-Be represents ethics, crossing that bridge is a categorical imperative—a duty of every human being. Crossing that bridge is a commandment.

This idea is expressed elsewhere in Jewish tradition in non-philosophical terms. Tzedakah, I often tell my students, is different than charity. “Charity” comes from the Latin word caritas, meaning something like “love.” Tzedakah, on the other hand, comes from the Hebrew word tzedek, meaning “justice.” In this way, tzedakah isn’t only a loving thing to do, it’s the just thing to do. Tzedakah isn’t only a nice thing to do, it’s the right thing to do. It is required of us. Similarly, a classmate of mine likes to teach that, as Jews, when a person asks us for money, we’re relieved of the difficult internal deliberation of having to decide whether or not this person deserves our help. Rather, as Jews, we’re simply obligated to give. I heard Ruth Messinger explain it thus: a Jew doesn’t dispense of his/her tzedakah obligation by writing a large check at the beginning of the year. Rather, giving tzedakah is like using a muscle: it has to be exercised regularly in order to remain strong.

In other areas of ethics, Judaism requires a similarly high level of obligation. Whereas most states in the US do not have a Duty to Rescue law, Judaism requires that if you see a person in need of help, you are required to help (even if that means calling 911, rather than jumping on the tracks to save him). Whereas popular culture in the US is awash with celebrity gossip, Judaism strictly forbids three categories of unethical speech—lashon ha-ra (spreading hurtful truth), motzi shem ra (libel), and rechilut (triangulation).

I stated earlier that the ethical commandments correspond to God as Elohim. Elohim, let us recall, may be referred to as The Source and Substance of All Creation, the impersonal aspect of God, the force that keeps planets as well as electrons in their orbits, the Kabbalistic sefirah of “din / discipline / restraint.” Elohim is strict—natural law is maintained, regardless of how we may feel about it. So too, our ethical obligation (the categorical imperative) is strict—we’re required to give, regardless of how we may feel about it, because it’s the right thing to do. One might imagine that ethics would correspond to Adonai, rather than Elohim—after all, giving tzedekah feels not like “strictness,” but like generosity. But here, we should remember that we’re talking about tzedek, not caritas. Observing the ethical commandments is the right thing to do, rather than a nice thing to do. Our ethical obligation is strictly defined.

In order to understand the nature and purpose of the second category of Commandment—the ritual—it is necessary to undertake a short discussion on the limits of reason. Champions of the Enlightenment believed that reason—applied to the fullest possible extent and in all areas of thinking—could save humanity from its baser instincts. If every human being undertook to reason his/her way to the categorical imperative, we would live in a perfectly ethical society. As I mentioned earlier, Cohen and his colleagues believed in reason with almost messianic fervor. But Cohen and his colleagues did not live to see the horrors of the 20^th century—two World Wars, 11 million people murdered in the Holocaust, the instant annihilation of 100,000 people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and many other horrors. As Eugene Borowitz has put it, the champions of pure reason committed “a gross overestimation of human goodness and discernment.” Thus, reason alone could never be the single source of Revelation. A second category of Commandment (the ritual) is needed to balance the scales that pure reason—take to its extreme end—would otherwise tip.

To understand the ritual commandments, I rely on the thinking of Franz Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig served as an infantryman during WWI, an experience that greatly shaped his philosophy. He argued that any philosophical system that relies on rationality alone ignores our inherent human fear of death. While rationality can take us to great heights, death and infinity are beyond the horizon of reason. They are, by nature, unknowable. Thus, Rosenzweig (and other existentialist philosophers) argued that philosophy must start with the Self, with that which makes the person an “I.”

Building on this Self-oriented philosophy, Rosenzweig argued thus: Jewish ritual, when approach only on the level of reason, is completely impersonal. It is a set of dry, objective statues, addressed at once to everyone and to no one in particular. And in order for a ritual to become personal—to become addressed to the individual, to feel personally commanded—it must be taken down off the shelf and tried on for size. It must be practiced. No amount of explaining could simulate the experience of lighting Shabbat candles, or shaking the lulav, or wrapping tefilin (though explanation may heighten all of theses experiences). Thus, ritual becomes meaningful not through reason, but through practice. Rosenzweig was careful to note that even with practice, some rituals may never cause a person to feel as if that ritual was personally addressed to him/her. Even so, without practice, the likelihood of feeling personally addressed—of feeling personally commanded—is infinitely diminished. Using Rosenzweig’s model, we may speak of rituals not as commandments, but rather as invitations: invitations that we must opened in order to see if they’re addressed to us.

Rosenzweig’s idea—that ritual becomes personal commandment/invitation only through practice—is echoed elsewhere in Jewish tradition. Halakhah—the term for Jewish law—may literally be translated as “the path” or “the way of walking.” In order to engage with the halakhah, one must be engaged with the path—moving, exploring the road. Notice that halakhah is not a destination—as if a halakhically observant life is a place that can be reached, a goal that can be ultimately fulfilled—but rather, it is the journey, the road itself. A person may be said to be halakhic so long as s/he is somewhere along the road—so long as s/he is trying rituals on for size, trying to experience the commandments/invitations to see where they are personally addressed to him/her.

I stated earlier that the ritual commandments/invitations correspond to God as Adonai. Let us recall that Adonai may be referred to as “The God Within,” the personal aspect of God, the aspect of God that is sympathetic to prayer and suffering, the Kabbalistic sefirah of “chesed / love / boundlessness.” An invitation is an outpouring of love, an opportunity to draw near to God. The ritual commandments represent an opportunity to find one’s name personally inscribed on an invitation from God.

Adonai/Elohim are ultimately One; similarly, the ethical and the ritual commandments are ultimately one. Neither one is complete without the other. The Torah recognizes this fact, and makes no distinction between these two categories. Thus, what is perhaps the core ethical maxim of the Torah—“Tzedek tzedek tirdof / Justice, justice you shall pursue” (Deut. 16:20)—is bookended by two ritual commandments: a description of the pilgrimage festivals, and a prohibition against idolatry. As Gunther W. Plaut writes in Torah: A Modern Commentary: “both [ethical and ritual matters] are seen to pertain equally to the fulfillment of Israel’s covenantal obligations. … Law is religion, and religion is law.”

I began this section on Commandment by stating that Commandment is a constructive, synthetic attempt to experience (or re-experience) Revelation. I will now attempt to explain the process by which Commandment can lead to Revelation, and Who or What is doing this synthetic construction.

Revelation can happen (but doesn’t always happen) when a person undertakes an ethical or ritual Commandment. The commandments are an opportunity to experience the All-ness beyond our duality. The commandments (like nature, like language, like art) are symbolic manifestations of an Idea beyond the symbol. And only by engagement with the symbol—only by practicing ethics and rituals—can we enter the gateway and encounter the Idea. In this way, Jewish practice (both ethical and ritual) is a constructive, synthetic attempt to create (or re-create) the experience of God’s All-ness that occurs in spontaneous moments of Revelation.

Who or What is doing this synthetic construction? Both we can God are aware that our dualistic world is only a refraction of God’s Unity. God desires our unity through the duality; we as humans (whether consciously, subconsciously, or if on no other level than our own inevitable return to the “the procession … along the grand roads of the universe”) desire God’s Unity through the duality. The synthetic construction of Commandment is thus created and maintained in both directions: from God to humans and from humans to God. This is the nature of Covenant: it is, by definition, a partnership.

Prayer too (as a ritual), is a synthetically constructed attempt to experience Revelation. I spoke earlier about Art Green’s notion that philosophy is an attempt to speak in the 3^rd person (“God is…”) about the ultimate 1^st person address of Revelation (“I am…”). Prayer, in Green’s model, bridges the gap between 3^rd and 1^st person, by addressing God directly in the 2^nd person (“You are…”). When we speak of God not as some distant, abstract concept (in the 3^rd person), but rather as a nearby, relational Being to whom we can address ourselves (in the 2nd person), we approach the gateway of hearing “I am…” (in the 1^st person).

Why be Jewish?

Judaism provides a particular set of gateways for experiencing Revelation. They are no better or no worse than any other religious tradition’s set of gateways. They constitute, to borrow a phrase from Larry Hoffman, our “cultural fabric.” They belong to every Jew, even if s/he was raised on only the thinnest thread of our cultural fabric. The goal is to become rich with threads so as to see a larger swath of the tapestry, so as to discover more and more gates to Revelation.

I’d like to conclude with an idea from Franz Rosenzweig, and a story from David Sacks. In addition to his philosophical writing, Rosenzweig also established the model of the Lehrhaus—a place of Jewish learning where the Self is as much a part of the learning as the mind. Yes, the goal was to acquire more and more threads so as to see the richness of the tapestry, but moreover, the goal was to see more and more of the tapestry so as to find oneself within the fabric.

David Sacks deftly illustrates this point in a story: A certain Rebbe ran the foremost Yeshivah at the height of the golden age of Chassidut. And all of the brightest minds came to him from all over Poland to become illuminated with Torah. One afternoon, the Rebbe contacted the father of one of his students and said: “I’m expelling you son.” The father responded: “Is he not learning well?” The Rebbe: “He may be the brightest student I’ve ever had.” The father: “Then why are you expelling him?” The Rebbe: “Because I noticed that when he learns, there are no tears in his eyes.”

Jewish tradition suggests that when a person cries, the Gates of Universe are wide open. This then is our goal: to enlighten our eyes with Torah; to approach the Gates of the Universe; to feel that beyond the symbolic duality through which we experience the world, everything is part of the One.

Baruch sheim k’vod malchuto l’olam va-ed.

Mah Nishtanah -- A Story for Passover

A story, for Passover:

***

Saul—age eleven—had grown tired of having to recite the Four Questions. As the youngest among all his siblings and cousins, he knew that no matter how old he was, he would never outgrow this youngest-child responsibility. As a kid, Saul had thought it a special privilege to read the Four Questions; in a large and noisy family like his, it felt good, if only for a few minutes, to be in the spotlight. But now, after many years of family seders, he was beginning to wonder why he should have to continue to ask these questions to which he already knew the answers.

It was hard for Saul, as the youngest, to always be last in line for any major accomplishment. While his older cousins were busy preparing for SATs and college searches, Saul was bringing up the rear with Fifth Grade Graduation. What were for him milestones seemed to be for the rest of his family old news. He was always following in someone else’s footsteps. No matter how much he grew, there was always someone taller; no matter how much he learned, there was always someone smarter.

If there was one person in the family who truly understood Saul, that person was Grandpa Harry. When he was with his Grandpa Harry, Saul felt smart. His grandpa used to quiz him on all sorts of topics—the countries of the world and their capitals, US presidents, Major League Baseball teams—and for every question that Saul could correctly answer, his grandfather would reward him with a prize. It was Grandpa Harry who had taught Saul to sing the Four Questions in the first place. Saul was a natural. He learned the whole thing, without using transliteration, in less than 20 minutes. Grandpa Harry was proud. If only the rest of the family could see Saul the way that Grandpa Harry saw him, then maybe they wouldn’t think of him as just a kid.

And so it was at Grandpa Harry’s seder table one Passover night that Saul decided that this would be the year in which he would make his big debut, in which he would prove that he wasn’t just a kid, in which he would prove, once and for all, that yes, he knew the Four Questions, but more importantly, he had answers.

Saul realized his opportunity to prove himself when Grandpa Harry went to hide the afikomen. That hidden piece of matzah was like the answer to some sort of secret question, and only the quick-witted would be clever enough to uncover its mystery. He watched with eyes as big as silver dollars as Grandpa Harry carefully wrapped the coveted prize in a dinner napkin, tucked it into his breast pocket, and disappeared to some other room in the house.

Throughout the rest of the seder, Saul could focus on nothing else but devising a plan to find the afikomen before his older cousins did. He made a mental list of all the places Grandpa might have hidden it, and systematically determined the rooms that deserved the most attention. It was a puzzle, and Saul was going to solve it.

The seder seemed to drag on endlessly. But finally, after nearly two grueling hours during which Saul did indeed feel as if he had been a slave in Egypt, finally it was time to search for the afikomen.

Saul and his siblings and cousins each raced off to different rooms of the house, looking under every chair and behind every piece of furniture. It was only a matter of minutes before Saul returned, with a broken piece of matzah in hand, shouting: “I found it! I found it!” He raced over to where his grandpa was sitting and proudly held up for him the coveted prize. “I found it, grandpa! I found it first!”

“Alright, alright, slow down, boychik.”

Saul had never been more proud of himself. In his head, his siblings and cousins were already clapping him on the back, saying, “Way to go, Sauly! How’d you find it so fast?” His mom and dad were already ruffling his hair, smiles aglow across their faces. In his head, he was being paraded around the house, held high on his family members’ shoulders. He could almost hear his grandpa uttering the words: “My boy, I think you may be the best afikomen-finder that this family has ever seen.”

But these weren’t the words that were coming out of grandpa’s mouth. There was no one ruffling his hair or parading him around the house. Rather, grandpa was puzzling over the broken piece of matzah that Saul had just brought to him, trying to make it fit with the piece from which it had been broken. But like a three-pronged plug in a two-hole socket, the pieces didn’t fit.

“Saul, what have you done?” his grandfather asked.

The parade in Saul’s head came to a halt. He’d been found out. Grandpa looked at him disapprovingly. Saul’s face turned red. He felt like he wanted to throw up. He could almost taste the charoset, that strange mix of sweetness and mortar, in the back of his throat.

Just then, his cousin came running into the room, shouting, “I found it! I found it!” Saul’s eyes—green as sprigs of parsley—filled, like bowls of salt water. As he ran out of the house and down the street, his grandfather’s words—What have you done?—were still ringing in his ears, as he tried desperately to get as far away from the house as possible, where no one could ask him any more questions.

***

Second seder was held the next night at his parents’ house. Saul stayed up in his room until the last possible minute. He didn’t want to have to talk to anybody. When he finally came downstairs, he felt as if everybody was walking on eggshells. He sat sullenly on the couch, as a slow trickle of aunts and uncles approached to ask him a series of idiotic questions that, while trying to avoid the sensitive topic of last night’s debacle, only made him more and more aware of it.

He was relieved that Grandpa Harry didn’t try to come and talk to him. He didn’t think he could bear it. Grandpa Harry gave him only a nod hello when he walked in the door—a nod that seemed to say: “I’m disappointed.” Or maybe: “We all make mistakes.” Saul wasn’t sure.

At last, they sat down to begin the seder. Saul cringed as Grandpa Harry removed the middle matzah from its cover, lifted it high and the air, snapped it in two, and proclaimed: “This is the afikomen.” Though every head stared intently at its own plate, Saul felt as if all eyes were on him.

Slowly, as the seder progressed, the tension began to subside. Saul sang the Four Questions as flawlessly as ever, and the whole table breathed a deep sigh of relief. Hopefully, Saul thought to himself, this night would be different from last night.

Things began to fall back into their usual order. They went around the table, taking turns reading passages from the Haggadah. Eventually, Saul forgot about the previous night’s debacle—forgot, that is, until they got to the passage about the Four Children. As they read about each child, Saul wondered which one he was: the Wise one, or the Rebellious one? Wise, because he knew more than the rest of his family gave him credit for. Or Rebellious, because he had tried to prove it with a lie.

Just then, it was his grandfather’s turn to read: “As for the child who does not know how to ask a question: you shall tell him the Passover story from the beginning—so that even in his silence, he will absorb what he can.”

And Saul, who had so easily memorized the Four Questions; who had learned them in twenty minutes, without transliteration; who, year after year, had recited them flawlessly—Saul now sat there in silence. He had learned how to read the Questions many years before; but he had never learned how to ask them.

As the seder continued on around him, Saul felt himself in a blur. These rituals that only the night before had seemed like old news, suddenly felt completely strange and new. He was dipping his pinky in a glass of wine. He was singing songs in a foreign language about places he’d never been. At long last, Saul broke his confused silence. “Grandpa,” he asked, “why does the Haggadah tell us to drink the second cup of wine while reclining to the left?”

His Grandpa gave him a smile. “An excellent question, Sauly.”

Saul wasn’t even sure he heard the answer, or that one was even given. His head was filling up with new questions. Saul—who had never learned to ask a question—sat there in silence, absorbing what he could.

The Little Aleph

A children's story -- for children of all ages and sizes -- for Parshat Vayikra.

Building...

The following sermon will be delivered this evening at Temple Shaaray Tefila in Manhattan.

Is there any part of the Torah that’s more boring than this one? For five weeks in a row, we’ve been slaving away at the same repetitive topic: how the Israelites built the Tabernacle—their portable sanctuary. At first it was exciting. But by the time we make it to this week’s Torah portion, we’ll have already heard about it FIVE TIMES. The tedious, technical detail—verse after verse of architectural blueprints and lists of materials, precise measurements and lengthy construction protocols—it’s unrelenting! The Israelites must have been as bored of building it as we are of reading about it.

Can you imagine the Israelites’ frustration? “Avadim hayinu,” they shout, “We were slaves in Egypt for more than 400 years.” And immediately upon being granted their freedom, they’re stuck with yet another construction project. What kind of freedom is that, if you have to work all day? They feel as if they are still avadim—as if they are still slaves, burdened with a task that they never signed up for in the first place.

The work—the avodah—is seemingly endless. That’s the trick about building a portable sanctuary: the work is never actually done. As soon as they finish building it, it will be only a matter of time before they have to carefully take it down, pack it up, load it onto wagons, haul it to the next campsite, unpack it, and carefully rebuild it there. All that avodah sounds like a lot of busy work, to me.

And so, faced with the prospect of endless avodah, the Israelites feel as if they are still avadim, as if they are still slaves. They’re sunburned. They’re tired. They break their backs week-in and week-out. The task is great, and the workers are sluggish. The day is long and the Boss is pressing.

Finally, the avodah is drawing to a close. After five weeks of waking up early, of sweating through their lunch breaks, of coming too late, too many nights, the Tabernacle is nearly complete. Complete, that is, until they have to break the whole thing down and move it. But at least for now, the Israelites have responded to every email in their inbox.

And now, here comes Moses to inspect their work. He takes a careful look:

The incense altar? Perfect. It smells as sweet as havdallah spice box.

The High Priest’s robe? Perfect. It glimmers and gleams, jingles and jangles like a Torah scroll being taken from the ark.

The Menorah Lamp? Perfect. Its glow softens the night, like the last blue sliver of flame, flickering from a pair of Shabbas candlesticks.

Moses is impressed. He’s proud of the Israelites. Who knew that these former avadim could do such holy work? He blesses them for a job well done.

But then, a strange thing happens—or rather, it is strange that something does not happen. Moses blesses the Israelites, but he doesn’t acknowledge their avodah. They slaved away for all this time, and Moses doesn’t even mention it. Here Moses is so proud of what they’ve accomplished that he’s moved to bless them, and yet, in his blessing, he doesn’t even mention all the hard work put in. What kind of blessing is that?

It’s the kind of blessing that helps us find new meaning in what was previously overlooked. Because the essence of Moses’s blessing lies precisely in the fact that he doesn’t mention their avodah. He knows that it took five weeks. He knows that they broke their backs. He knows that they got home late. But this hard work wasn’t avodah, because they weren’t avadim. They were free people. Free to build for themselves a sanctuary, so that they might have a relationship with the divine. Free to wake up in the morning and find that their lives had purpose. Free to show their children and their children’s children and even us sitting here today the value of hard work towards a common goal in the company of like-minded people. And in this good work, the Israelites were transformed from a generation of former slaves—from avadim­—to a generation of change-agents—to m’lachim. And for this reason, Moses blesses their work not as avodah, but for what it truly is: m’lachah. Good work. Meaningful work. The work that changes the world.

And for the first time, the Israelites saw the beauty in the work that they’d done. For the first time, the Israelites realized that they hadn’t just made an incense altar, or a priest’s robe, or a menorah lamp. Sure these were the tasks—this was the avodah. But what was the real work? What was the m’lachah? The m’lachah was building a sanctuary. The m’lachah was to be close to God.

We may no longer have a Tabernacle, but we still have our m’lachah. The pages upon pages of paperwork that help a young family start a college fund. The hundreds of phone calls and emails that make the day of community volunteering possible. The hours spent in the laboratory, so that new cures can be found for diseases. The early mornings, the long train rides, the short lunch breaks, so that somewhere, someone can live a better life. This is our m’lachah. This is our good work.

Suddenly, the Israelites felt that all their sweat was worth it. Their work wasn’t to finish the Tabernacle, but actually to build it. And then to deconstruct it, and move it, and build it again. And again. And again.

And this is part of what it means to be a Jew—to discover our real work, and to keep at it day after day. And this is why, for five weeks in a row we read about the building of the Tabernacle. Because we can finish our avodah—but our real work, our m’lachah, is never fully done. And so we return to the same book year after year. And we light our Shabbas candles week after week. And we exercise our tzedakah muscle every day. And we imagine that we ourselves came out of Egypt generation after generation. The task is great, and the workers are sluggish. The day is long and the Boss is pressing. But the reward is exceedingly great. The Tabernacle is always being constructed. And you and I and all of us are responsible for doing the work.

Community and Commitment

Communities are about commitments.

Communities have expectations. (There is something decidedly Jewish about expectations. Commandedness is a central element of what it means to be Jewish; we’re concerned with much more than what is “nice to do,” but rather a sense of what we’re obligated to do, what we’re responsible for.) When members hold themselves accountable to a community’s expectations, they themselves are deciding whether or not they belong to the community.  In this way, we’re not dealing with enforcement, but people’s own investment.

On defining those expectations: I learned from Noa Kushner that it is important to have a strong leader who helps define expectations. A strong leader enables clear values and expectations to be articulated (and hopefully, practiced). Clear expectations lead to strong communities. Otherwise, if you try to be everything to everybody, values die a “death by committee.”

What if, rather than reading a dues structure agreement, new community members had to read and sign a brit? Or maybe a brit for their smaller community (eg: the Masa families community, the Teen Exchange community) that articulated the values of the larger community within the context of the smaller group? (More on this below. See “One practical idea:”)

What if, instead of “membership” in a synagogue, we tried using the word “belonging” to a synagogue? Membership implies a service—like a gym or a the SkyMiles club. The word belonging implies a sense of commitment. As in, “I feel like I really belong here.”

The challenge of it all is in actually enacting (practicing) your commitments. Values are easy to define, and also easy to be deeply believed in. The challenge—for me as a human being, as well as for specific Jewish communities and for liberal religious movements in general—is enact these beliefs. I’m sure that every individual Jew and Jewish institution deeply holds the value of Jewish speech ethics (lashon ha-ra, motzi shem ra, rechilut). The challenge is in enacting those values. The same can be said about ritual practice: find me a Jew who doesn’t think that rest (shavat vayinafash) is important. The challenge is in making space for rest. (Ultimately, this challenge boils down to a question of autonomy. The 21^st century Jewish community can enforce neither Jewish speech ethics nor Shabbat observance, so long as individual Jews have autonomy.)

===

One practical idea:

What if a community had a Brit Kehillah—with very well-defined, specific values. (Like Camp Coleman’s kavod, chesed, kehilla, and shalom—but maybe even more focused, like v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha and betzelem elohim.) These values would need to penetrate every aspect of synagogue (or community) life. They would inform the text study at the first 10 minutes of every Executive Committee meetings—using deep, compelling, thought-provoking Jewish texts that deepen everyone’s understanding the values. The values would be a critical aspect of meeting any new person who wanted to belong to the community. They would be referenced in sermons. They would be known by every student in the religious school. So if, for example, little Adam or Hava had to be taken to the religious school director’s office, s/he would be able to articulate that his/her behavior didn’t demonstrate v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha or betzelem elohim.