Parshat Lech Lecha

I think that most of us take it for granted that we have free will, without ever thinking about what free will really means.  There are so many factors that influence our thinking and decision making that its hard to identify where, exactly, we exercise our total free will.  We are influenced by our families, friends, upbringing, schooling, work, society, culture, commercials, celebrities, etc. When you consider all of the factors that influence us, it seems pretty clear that to make a true act of free will would require a great deal of exertion on our part.  Without proper introspection in order to identify the factors that influencing the way we act and make decisions, then we just float through life without truly acting out of free will.

In this week's Parsha, God tells Avraham that he needs to remove himself from all the things that influence him, for his own sake.  The verse says, "Go for yourself, from your land, from your birthplace, from your father's house..." If we dissect the parts of this verse we will learn an important lesson about free will.  God didn't have to spell out all the places from where Avraham was supposed to leave, the verse could have just said, "go to where I'm going to show you."  By adding those superfluous words, it is indicating to us that there is a lesson to be learned.  The three places mentioned, your land, your birthplace, your father's house, are all places with a great deal of influence upon a person's identity.  People often identify with their country, their community, and their father/parent's home.  Having these identities are not inherently bad, but it's sometimes difficult to identify where the person ends and where the identity based on that external factor begins.

God is telling Avraham, that sometimes, in order to have a spiritual awakening we have to remove ourselves from the influence of external factors.  That is the nature of the words in the verse saying, "go for yourself."  The statement for yourself is also unnecessary.  But when we consider all the seemingly unnecessary parts of the verse, the idea emerges that acting in one's own best interest with true free will sometimes requires a reconstruction of our own identity separate from external influences.  Once we know where we stand on certain issues at our core, we can begin to think with our own free will, then we can go back and consider the potential impact our decisions will have for good or bad on our family, communities and larger society.

The beginning of the Parsha deals with a lesson to Avraham about removing oneself from external influences in order to make decisions based on our own free will.  If that were the end of the story, then we would be forced to conclude that the ideal way of life, would be to live in a cave away from all of society's influences and only think about ourselves.  But thankfully that is not the end of the story.  Avraham is the model of consideration for others and the champion of social justice in the ancient world.  He does go back to his family and homeland in order to find a spouse for his son.  The lesson is that in order to fully engage in the world as an individual acting on our own free will, it is necessary that we identify who we are and what we believe in, and then re-insert that image back in to society.

Shabbat Shalom!

Parshat Ki Tavo

The beginning of this week's Parsha describes the mitzvah of bikkurim, the commandment to bring your first fruits to the Temple in Jerusalem.  This commandment was carried out with a lot of fanfare, and effort.  It is hard to explain why it was so important for people to travel all the way to Jerusalem just to bring the first fruits that grew on their land.  It seems like a somewhat trivial detail, yet there is a whole ritual that revolved around this practice.  The Mishna in the third chapter of bikkurim describes how the people and local leaders would gather around like at a parade when a person bringing their fruits to the Temple would travel through their town.
Many commentators have wondered about this ritual, what was the big deal?  I'd like to share with you one of the common themes that emerges in response to this question.
The message that I'd like to share is that this ritual is teaching us that details really matter.  The fruits of someone's land seem like no big deal at all, but to be able to elevate the trivial experience of experiencing a first fruit into a religious experience makes an impact on a person.  It would be easy to absent mindedly eat the first fruit, or to get so excited that the tree had finally grown fruits and just eat it without thinking where the fruit really came from.  So when a person consciously ritualizes the experience of anticipating their first fruits, and dedicates the experience to acknowledging that the fruit comes from God, it's a big deal.
This experience educates the person participating in it that everything comes from God.  We are not the true masters of the world around us, we need to acknowledge the role God plays in our lives, even in the small details.  When we have an appreciation for the Godliness of the small things, we can influence ourselves to put more thought into the details, and to pay better attention to details.  The details matter, when someone pays attention the details in our lives, we feel cared about and appreciated.  When we learn to pay attention to the details in the way in which we do everything, work, religion, relationships; we are showing that we care.

Parshat Vaetchanan

At the beginning of this week's Parsha Moses implores God one last time to allow him to enter the land of Israel.  Moses begins his request by saying אתה החלות להרות את עבדך את גדלך ואת ידך החזקה אשר מי אל בשמים ובארץ אשר יעשה כמעשיך וכגבורתך - You have only begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your strong hand, for what power is there in the heaven or on the earth that can perform according to Your deeds and according to Your mighty acts?

The way in which Moses says, "you have only begun..." has always had an impact on me.  Moses, the person who our tradition says spoke to God face to face, the person who knew all the mysteries of the Torah, the greatest man to ever live, has only begun to understand God's greatness?!?!  I would imagine, that if anyone in the world has ever understood God's greatness, it would be Moses.  Yet, Moses himself admits to his own inadequacy in being able to fully grasp the greatness of God.

How often do we assume that we understand something, or really know the way things work, and as a result approach a given situation with less humility.  When we come from this perspective we get angry at other people (or God) much more easily, and we fail to achieve our own potential greatness because of our own inability to absorb life lessons with a humble heart.  Moses serves of an example of humility in his ability to recognize that even he doesn't know everything, and he has not seen everything, this is what makes him so great!

Behar Bechukotai

This week’s Parsha, the double portion Behar-Bechukotai, begins with the laws of Shemitah.  “…the land shall observe a Sabbath of the lord.  Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield.  But in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest... (Leviticus 25:2-4).
This idea of of working for 6 years in order to take care of our needs, but resting on the seventh is a direct parallel to the idea of Sabbath.  With the weekly Sabbath, we are told that for six days you may work, but the seventh day of the week we must cease to work.
In regards to Sabbath, in order to have a pleasant/restful day, a lot of work has to be done in preparation.  We have to prepare our food before the seventh day begins, prepare the house, prepare ourselves; all this work needs to be done in order for a positive Shabbat experience to occur.  Once the seventh day begins, we are no longer permitted to do any work.  Similarly, with the shemittah laws, in order for the people to survive the sabbatical year, they had to have been preparing for it the six previous years.
The notion of working for a designated amount of time in order to be prepared for something later becomes a very important idea in Jewish mysticism and how the mystics understand the idea of the relationship between this world and the world to come.  Some Jewish mystical traditions understand the duration of the world to be 7000 years long.  For 6000 years the world is preparing itself, and during the 7000th year, the world will reap the benefits of the work done in the previous 6000 years.  Whether we understand these years to be literal or not, the idea is a direct parallel to the Sabbath of the week and the Sabbath of the land.
Our job in this world is not to be primarily focused on the short-term, instant benefit of our work.  Everything we do should be viewed as an investment for the long-term benefit of the world, and ourselves as inhabitants of that world.  As you reap, so shall you sow.  The way in which we view the purpose and benefit of the work we do in our lives should always reflect the idea that we need to prepare the future, and not just be motivated by our own selfish short term benefit.  This idea is integral to the Jewish experience of space and time, as reflected in the laws of how treat the land (the shemittah – agricultural sabbatical), and how we treat the working week (the weeky Sabbath).  Judaism teaches us to think about preparing ourselves and our world for long term sustenance.   

Parshat Acharei Mot - Kedoshim

This week, since this year is not a leap year, we read two torah portions, Acharei-Mot and Kedoshim.  In the second portion, Kedoshim, God directs the Jewish people to be holy, and the rest of the Parsha is a list of the laws which make us holy.  One verse that I would like to discuss (19:11-12) reads, “You shall not steal, and you shall not deny falsely, and you shall not lie to one another.  And you shall not swear falsely by My Name, thereby desecrating the Name of your God – I am the Lord.”  Rashi, the medieval commentator suggests: “If you have stolen, your end will be to deny falsely; and then your end will be to lie; and then your end will be to swear falsely.”
This idea that one negative action will lead to another negative action is prevalent in Jewish thought and moral literature, not just in reference to the effects of stealing.  The idea being, that once you do something that is wrong, you have become desensitized to the inherent negativity of that act.  Initially, one’s ability to sense the wrongness of the behavior acts as a deterrent, but when that deterrent is no longer effective, the boundaries of acceptable behavior have moved for that person. When we habituate ourselves to negative acts, we no longer see them as being negative.  And, when we are habituated to doing negative acts, the human psyche needs to justify that behavior.  Eventually, we start to see the negative act as something positive, thereby negating the possibility of change.  This verse is teaching us the important impact our actions have on ourselves.  We are defined by what we do, therefore we should be careful that we are comfortable with the statement that our actions make about us.  There is a relevant rabbinic statement from Pirkei Avot (4:2), “A mitzvah leads to another mitzvah, and a sin leads to another sin.”  Nothing that we do happens in a vacuum.  This is true with regard to the way in which our actions affect others as well as ourselves.  
It is for this reason why the verse ends with the words, “I am the Lord.”  This phrase repeats itself throughout this week’s Parsha.  Its purpose in almost every case is to remind us that even when no one else sees what we will do, we still need to be honest with ourselves about our actions and their consequences.  In this case, it is often hard to see where we have convinced ourselves (and sometimes others) that what we are doing is right, simply in order to justify the behavior for our own conscience.  Nevertheless, no matter how many other people we fool with those justifications, when we fool ourselves, we end up the loser.    

Weekly Torah Portion: Tazria-Metzorah

In this week’s Parsha, Parshat Tazria/Metzorah, we are taught about tzara’at, a spiritual sickness which had physical symptoms.  If a person would get a certain type of blemish, they would be taken to the priest for a diagnosis.  The verse (13:2) makes a point of saying that they were taken, and the Ibn Ezra (Medieval Torah commentator) points out that the person was taken to the Priest even against his or her own will. 

The afflicted person was taken to the Priest and not to a doctor, because the cause of the disease was spiritual in nature, not physical.  The diagnosis therefore needed to reflect the spiritual fault, rather than physical manifestation of the disease.  Our tradition teaches us that this disease was usually a punishment for interpersonal misconduct, and speaking negatively about other people.
This type of behavior is one of the most difficult to avoid, it is hard to refrain from speaking about people in general, and it is even harder to resist listening to gossip when it is being spoken around us.  We are often tempted to believe that just speaking about someone is not harmful at all.  We tell ourselves, that we’re not actually doing anything wrong because the action is done through speech, there is nothing tangible, we don’t see how it is harmful.
The laws of tzara’at teach us that everything we do has an effect, even if we don’t see it.  Furthermore, sometimes the way in which we treat others is offensive to the people around us.  No one trusts a person who is known to be a gossip.  The way in which gossiping affects our relationships is reflected in the laws of tzara’at as well.  We may be oblivious to how the way in which we treat others is reflected in our personalities, but other people are not.  Therefore, even if the person who had been afflicted with tzara’at would not go to the priest for a diagnosis on their own, other people had the right to force them to go against their will.
No one likes being around such extreme negativity, but unfortunately the people who are being the negative force in the community are not always aware of what they are doing, so it becomes a communal obligation to fix the problem.  It is difficult to correct a person’s behavior without offending them, but if we are at least aware that there is a problem and that it shouldn’t just be ignored, then we can think of ways to make the situation better.  For instance, we can use this teaching to reflect on how we are being a negative influence on others and fix the problem ourselves, without having to be told by someone else.  Or we can try to gently move conversations in a more positive and productive direction when a social interaction devolves into gossiping.  But one thing we should not do is delude ourselves into thinking that this type of negative behavior is not going to have a negative effect on us and on our community.  

Weekly Torah Portion: Shemini

This week’s Parsha, Shemini, begins by describing the 8^th and final day of the consecration of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) for use in the desert.  For the first 7 days, Moses did all of the services himself, and on the 8^th day his brother Aaron took over from him, bringing the sacrifices and blessing the people.

This was an extremely joyous event.  The people had not felt as close to God as they did at this point in time since receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai.  But the happiness of the moment was spoiled by death of Aaron’s two eldest sons.  After Moses and Aaron finished the service commanded to them by God, Aaron’s two eldest sons, Nadav and Avihu, decided on their own to enter in the Holy of Holies and bring an incense offering.  This unsanctioned act of worship led to their deaths. 

The Midrash quotes a verse from Psalms (75:5), “say to the boastful, don’t boast,” and then gives a list of examples of different characters in the bible of people who had a lot to be happy about, but who also experienced sadness in the lives.  The sentiment conveyed in this midrash is that even when things in your life are working out, don’t boast about it.  Even some of our greatest heroes have had moments of great happiness, but they also all have had sorrow too.  Having ups and downs is a part of life; everyone has their good moments, and everyone has bad moments.   The first example that the midrash uses to make its point is God.  God, the Midrash tells us, was incredibly happy when he created the world and mankind, yet he was very distressed when man brought the world down by sinning.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all had immense blessings and so much happiness in their lives, and yet there was sadness and grief in their lives as well.  Skipping a few examples, we get to the example which makes this Midrash relevant to our Parsha. 

“Elisheva, the daughter of Aminadav was the wife of Aaron the high priest.  See how much happiness she had in her hands; her husband was the high priest; her brother in law, Moses was a king and a prophet; her sons were the assistant priests;  her brother, Nachshon, was the leader of the tribe of Judah.  Nevertheless, she had unbelievable sadness in her life when her sons went to bring their offering and were devoured by the flames of God.   Therefore the wise one says, ‘tell the boastful not to boast’.”

The message about not boasting impresses upon us the sobering reality of life.  We are given the feeling that when we are happy at the way things are going in our lives, we should not brag, because it’s just a part of life.  Especially when looked at in comparison of the greatness and blessing experienced by the heroes in the midrash, our reasons to boast are far less in comparison.  Additionally, if we think that we’re so great because things, thank God, are currently working out for us, the Midrash reminds us not to get too carried away;  There is no life that doesn’t have some sadness. 
But, in addition to this sobering lesson, if you look between the lines of what this Midrash is saying, there is an important, hopeful, message here as well.  It can be depressing to see other people’s lives and assume that they are more happy than we are because they have so much more to be happy about.  The Midrash is reminding us that all happiness is relative, no one is going to have only good things happen to them, and similarly no one in the world will only have bad things happen to them.  With this depiction of the way the world works, we can take comfort in the fact that we are never completely alone alone. 

Sometimes when we are going through things in our lives that make us feel depressed, we also might feel that no one can understand what we’re going through; that we’re alone.  This Midrash is pointing out that everyone in life, even our greatest heroes, have great moments but also have dark moments as well.  Experiencing ups and downs in life is universal. 

When we seclude ourselves, and cut ourselves off from other people, we limit our ability to see the complexity of other people’s lives.  On the surface, most people seem pretty happy most of the time.  So for the person who is struggling, if they cannot see beyond a surface judgement of the lives of the people around them, they will feel very alienated.  But when you get deeper glimpse into other people’s lives, you start to see the full spectrum of their experiences, both good and bad.  For the person who is struggling, the lesson is, push yourself to reach out for support.  Hopefully you will learn through the process of being supported that people care about you and that you’re never totally alone.  But doing this is a serious challenge to the person who is already struggling and is already feeling alienated.  Therefore the lesson for everyone is that we don’t always know what is going in the inner lives of the people around us; we don’t always know who is suffering.  With that realization we can train ourselves to be more sensitive to the people around us and more accessible as a means of support to someone in our community.