Monday, February 21, 2011

Parshat Ki Tissa


One of my favorite things about  characters in the Torah is how they breakdown stereotypes.  I think that many people have the notion of a religious person as someone who does God’s will unquestioningly, and therefore they think that religion places a high value on the ability for a person not to question God.  In this week’s Parsha,  Moses does the opposite, and he teaches us a valuable lesson in the process.
After the Jewish people form a golden calf and worship it as a god, God is ready to destroy the Jewish people.  God tells Moses, “I have seen that this is a stiff-necked people…now let my anger blaze forth against them and I will destroy them and make from you a great nation” (Exodus 32: 9-10).  One might think that the truly religious person’s attitude when hearing such news would be to accept God’s decision without question.  But that is not what Moses does. 
Moses argues with God on the basis that it’s not a good plan saying, “Let not the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that He delivered them, only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth’ ” (Exodus 32:12).  God listens to Moses, follows his advice, and does not destroy the Jewish people. 
Similarly, when God wanted to destroy Sodom, he told Abraham about his plans to do so.  Abraham also could not accept God’s decision without question, and Abraham argued with God that it would be unjust to do such a thing.  It happens to be that God decides to continue with his plan, where in the case in our Parsha God follows Moses’ advice and does not go through with the destruction of the Jewish people.  But the similarity between the two stories is that not only does God not get angry at Abraham and Moses for questioning God’s decision, God actually considers their points. 
I don’t think the lesson from this is that we should always question, disagree, or argue with God.  After all, we are not Moses or Abraham.  But I do think that these examples should challenge the perspective that it’s never ok to question, disagree, or argue with God.  When coming from a good place, not from a desire to disprove or defeat God, the process of challenging God can be sign of a deep emotional and personal relationship with God.  And, you never know, maybe God will listen.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Parshat Terumah


What would you think if I said build me a house so that I can live with you?  Most people wouldn’t even be able to hear the second part of the question, we’d all get stuck on the build me a house part.   You’d probably think, build you a house?!?!?! What are you crazy?!?!?!?  We’d be so distracted by the first part of the question that we wouldn’t even consider the irrational nature of the second part of the question.  Build me a house so that I can live with you.  Seriously?  You want me to build you a house so that you can then move in with me?!??!?  The least you could do if you’re asking me to build you a house is live there and stay away from me. 
 Despite the seemingly ridiculousness of this question when you imagine one person asking it to another person, it doesn’t seem bother us as much when the question is being asked to us by God. But I think it should.  The classic question asked by many commentators in this week’s Parsha is: why does the verse say “and I will dwell among them,” when grammatically it should have said, “and I will dwell in it.” 
Often this question gets focused on so much that we don’t ask about anything else.  A few of the questions I have are:  In the verse immediately following the command for the Jewish people to build God a sanctuary, it says that we should make it according to God’s design.  If God has a plan for what he wants and we believe that God can do anything, why does God need us to go through the trouble of building it ourselves?  Why doesn’t God just build it and leave us alone?  If God’s wants this sanctuary so that God can, as the verse says, dwell among us, what difference does it make who actually builds it? 
I’d like to suggest a possible answer which I think answers all of the above questions.  I think the answer is precisely because God wants us to do the work.  It is not the final product that really matters; it’s the work that is done.  This is something that is obvious to most of us.  Judaism puts a stress on the actions that we do more than the outcome.  We are a religion that is more concerned with the day to day, rather than being preoccupied with the afterlife.  It is the act of building which brings God into our midst.  It would defeat the purpose for God to do the work himself, the whole point of it is for us to do the work.  It is our participation in the creation that God desires.
This is not only true with regard to building a sanctuary for God.  That is just a symbol for us.  The sanctuary, in Jewish tradition, is often discussed as being a microcosm of the world.  Therefore whatever is true about building the sanctuary is only small scale example of a larger lesson.  The message I really want to get across is that God has made the world in such a way that we are his partners in creation.  Everything we do is important; big or small, good or bad, any act that we do has a consequence. 
We all know this, but how often are we mindful of it?  How often do we think that we can cut corners or try to get away with something because we think that no one will notice?  How often do we act without thinking about what the outcome of that action could be? 
Jewish life is based on a code of laws which we call Halacha, which means a path or a way of going.  The focus of Jewish life is on what we do, it’s the way we go, but tradition teaches us that everything we do is accentuated and enhanced when it is coupled with Kavannah, intellectual and emotional intention.  The kabbalists teach that everything we do makes an impact on the world, and therefore we need to be really careful with our actions.  We need to think about the possible outcomes of our actions, what will be their possible effect on others or the world around us, and we need to make plans so that we can achieve the best possible outcome for everything that we do.
I think that this lesson is hinted at in another part of this week’s Parsha.  One of the main supplies needed to build the sanctuary was wood.  The question is, how could the Jewish people have built the Mishkan, with all of its required wood, in the middle of a desert where there were no trees?  Rashi tells us that Jacob, foreseeing the time that the Jewish people might need the wood, planted trees which the Jewish people chopped down and took out of Egypt with them on their way out.  What interests me about this is not whether this is a historically accurate event or not, but the moral of this story.  The story shows us that the Jewish people were only able to do what they needed to do because of conscious act of foresight and planning generations earlier. 
If we think about what’s going on in Egypt.  One of the things that is captivating us, what all the talk shows and news analysts have been discussing is: what’s going to happen?  One of the problems we have with understanding the outcome of the events in Egypt is that the people have done a great job organizing and making the point that something needs to happen, but no one has prepared for a next step.  There hasn’t been a plan on how to transfer power, who will be in power, what their policies will be.  The fear that the Muslim brotherhood will takeover is in part because they are one of the only organized opposition groups.  So the whole world has been watching anxiously for a hint about what will happen next.  Seizing power is one thing, knowing what to do with it once you get it is another.  Many revolutions have failed because they were not adequately prepared to actually do the necessary work of governing. 
In conclusion, I want to reiterate that this lesson isn’t a new insight into life; it’s a restatement of something we all know but don’t always think about.  God desires our participation in this world; Everything we do matters; we need to act in a way that reflects this point.  May we all be blessed with the ability to recognize the importance of our actions, to take the time and effort to consider the impact of our actions, and the ability to act with foresight and purpose, and may we be lucky enough to see the goodness of our actions come to fruition.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Parshat Mishpatim


In Hebrew, this week’s Parsha is called Mishpatim, which means Laws.  That’s basically what the whole Parsha is: a list of laws.  For most people, a list of laws is not as interesting to read and learn about as the stories of the Torah and their lessons.  But the laws of the Torah have a lot to teach us about the ultimate goals of Judaism.   
One way to understand the relationship between a legal system and the morality of that culture is to understand the legal code as the bottom line standard to which people in the society need to adhere.  Ultimately, society has a desire for people to be motivated to live up to its moral ideal out of a desire to be moral people.  In order for that society to ensure that a bottom line morality will exist, societies set up legal codes to force desired behavior.  The laws of any given society are a reflection of that society’s moral priorities. 
When you look at the list of laws in this week’s Parsha in this way, you can get a sense of an overarching morality that the Torah is trying to teach.  I know that there are critics who will use this week’s Parsha to argue the lack of morality in the Torah, on account of the Torah’s sanctioning of slavery detailed in Mishpatim, but I think there is more to this week’s Parsha than meets the eye.  Our rabbis have taught us over the generations that the Torah speaks with a relevant message to every generation.  The Torah’s discussion of slavery has been explained by many commentators to be a submission to the morality of the times.  They explain that the Torah’s ideal is ultimately for there to not be any slavery, slavery is not a good thing (it is interesting to note that during the Civil War, rabbis from the North used arguments from the Torah to argue against slavery, and rabbis from the south defended slavery with arguments from the Torah).  But to try and go against what was a fabric of society throughout the entire world at that time would not work.  So instead of totally abolishing slavery right off the bat, the Torah first changed the nature of slavery.  The laws of responsibility that the slave owner had towards the slave was a revolution in morality for that period.  The slave owner could no longer deal with his slave as merely an object to be treated in whatever way the slave owner wanted; the slave still had certain basic human rights which needed to be respected.  
With this understanding of slavery in mind we can see how it fits into one of the many moral themes found within the Parsha. Some of the other laws that I’d like to point out here are civil laws such as: a person is obligated to pay for damages he has caused to others, who is responsible to pay damages when a pair of individuals is fighting and a third party gets hurt during their fight , if someone’s property damages another person’s property (in the Parsha it’s talking about a person’s ox, but it could be interpreted for modern society to other things such as a car), and not to harass the weak members of society. 
The society these laws are creating places a responsibility on the guilty party, and does not allow (ideally) for a system where the powerful bear no responsibility for who they hurt.  A common element in all of these laws is that might does not make right.  The Torah is putting into place a legal system which is aware of power dynamics in society, and which protects the rights of the weak.  In much of the ancient world the powerful could often do whatever they wanted to anyone weaker than them.  The Torah lesson here is that society needs to put in place laws which protect the weak from the strong-- a moral revolution for that period of time.  This lesson is most explicit in the Torah’s command (Chapter 22, Verses 20-22): “You shall not wrong a stranger (or convert) or oppress him (or her), for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.  You shall not oppress a widow or orphan.  If you do oppress him (or her), I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to me.”  The Torah uses its classic example of the unprotected members of society to make the point that their vulnerability is not a reason to oppress them.  So we see that the minimal standard of a Torah society is not to oppress the weak; the societal norm is to help the weak; the ideal moral behavior is to protect the weak.
Many of these civil laws on the surface were meant for a time when the Jewish people lived in a Jewish land which was governed by Torah laws.  But the timelessness of the Jewish legal system insists that we apply the morality of the Torah to our own lives whenever possible.  On a national level it is easy to identify the bad guys who are abusing their power and to say that their behavior needs to change.  On a personal level it is a lot more difficult to make that same observation about ourselves in our own relationships.   Interpersonal power dynamics can be difficult to identify and even more difficult to change even when a need for change can be identified.  But the Torah’s lesson with regard to power dynamics is that we always need to make sure that the powerful are not taking advantage of the less powerful.  To try and identify in our own lives where we are the powerful party, to make sure that we do not abuse that power and to change our behavior when we find that we do, is a very difficult but crucial part of being a moral Jew.