Parshat Yitro

This week we read about the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.  It is obviously a very important Parsha, and during the reading of the Parsha in synagogue we read as the Torah reader recites the Ten Commandments.  There is so much to say and so much written on this week’s Parsha.  I’d like to share with you one idea. 

Before giving the Jewish people the Torah, God tells Moses to command the people to prepare themselves to receive the Torah.  So, for the three days before they received the Torah, the Jewish people were preparing themselves.  I think that this is an important lesson with regard to our own spiritual lives.  Often we expect to have a religious experience or a spiritual feeling accessible to us at the moment we desire it.  A lesson from this week’s Parsha is that we need to prepare ourselves.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, one of the most important rabbis of the twentieth century, used to teach that there cannot be holiness without preparation.  Preparation is a necessary pre-condition to true holiness.  This is why God commanded the Jewish people to prepare themselves to receive the Torah.  Similarly, if we want to bring a little bit of holiness into our own lives, we can’t expect it just happen on its own.  To make our own lives holy, we need to be adequately prepared to have a meaningful religious experience. 

What exactly constitutes this type of preparation?  I don’t think that there is any absolute answer.  Everyone is different, and therefore what will be a meaningful preparation to one person may not work for the next person.  Personally, before celebrating a holiday or doing a mitzvah, I know that if I can find the time to learn something new about the experience I am about to have then the experience will be so much more meaningful to me than if I had just done the act without doing that preparation.  I encourage you to try and figure out for yourself what a meaningful preparation for your own spiritual life could be.  If you need help, talk about it with a friend, a loved one, or a rabbi.  I am confident you will not be disappointed by the work you put in.     

Parshat Beshalach

                A few Friday nights ago the father of a close friend of mine was hit by a car and killed on his way home from Friday night services.  Last night I got to speak to that friend for the first time since the tragedy.  I was grateful that he was in the mood to talk about his thoughts and emotions; earlier he‘d told me that his moods have been very unpredictable, sometimes leaving him in the mood to talk and sometimes not.  We talked about a number of different thoughts occupying his mind, regarding his experience of this tragedy and what the experience of the afterlife might be like for his father.  There is one thing that we talked about that I’d like to mention because it can relate to the way in which we view the experience of the Jewish people in this week’s Parsha.

                My friend shared with me that this experience has not made him lose faith in God, but it has increased his fear that maybe there is no meaning in this life, that what we do in this life doesn’t matter, and that there might not be an afterlife.  While he hasn’t lost his faith, he is occupied by these doubts constantly.

                I believe that his experience of simultaneously maintaining faith while harboring doubts is an important part of religious life.  I don’t think that religious life should be easy or obvious at all times; it is hard to see God in our everyday lives and maintaining a meaningful spiritual life for ourselves should take some effort.  To me, the idea of faith and doubt need to go hand in hand.  To not have doubts about matters of belief is not what faith is about.  Faith is about belief in matters that cannot be known absolutely.  I believe that a religious experience based on knowing that something is true without a doubt misses the point of the religious experience.   God has given us a choice when it comes to belief. By never revealing himself, he obviously leaves us with doubts.   There may be times where we experience God without a doubt, but the overall religious perspective is not about a life without doubt.

                In this week’s Parsha we read about one of the most obvious manifestations of God in this world, the miracles He performed when freeing the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, and the culmination of this event when God split the Red Sea, thus saving the Jewish people from the Egyptians.  Right after the Jewish people safely arrive on the far bank of the Red Sea and the Egyptians are drowned, we read in chapter 14 verse 31, “Israel saw the great might which God had enacted on the Egyptians, and the people feared God.  They believed in God and in Moses, his servant.”  This verse seems to refute the point I had just made about God never revealing himself obviously, so as to give us no choice but to believe in his existence and involvement in our lives.  But I don’t believe that this is the overall lesson in this week’s Parsha. 

                The splitting of the Red Sea and the song that the Jewish people sang in response to the experience of being saved are the main focus of the this week’s Parsha, but there is more in this week’s Parsha which can add some insight into how this relates to the point I was making about faith and doubt. 

It is strange that immediately following the splitting of the Red Sea the Torah recounts to us a series of complaints that the Jewish people brought to Moses.   When you read the text of the song that they sang after the splitting of the sea it seems that they had just experienced an obvious manifestation of God’s existence and involvement in taking care of them.  How is it that the same people which could spontaneously sing about such an intense miraculous experience could begin doubting where their food and water would come from in the chapter immediately following that experience?  You would think that having experienced God wage war for them (as the Torah describes in the text of the song that they sang) in such an obvious and miraculous manner, they would lose any doubts about God’s ability to sustain them in the desert.

By describing the Jewish people’s complaints and fears that they would die of thirst or starvation in the desert immediately after their miraculous salvation from the Egyptians, the Torah teaches us something important.  No matter how obvious God is at the moment of our deepest religious experience it doesn’t preclude the possibility that we will have doubts at other points in our lives.  If the Jewish people, who experienced the miracles that God performed for them while freeing them from Egypt, can doubt whether they would have food and water in the desert, then it makes sense that all of us will experience doubts with regard to God from time to time, no matter how deep our faith is. 

These doubts are a necessary part of religious life.  I believe that, by making our religious lives more challenging, these doubts also make it that much more rewarding.  If faith were an easy black and white experience, it wouldn’t be such an intense and meaningful part of our lives.  It is our ability to maintain our faith in the face of challenges that makes that faith a source of so much passion in our lives.  It might be scary to embrace doubt as part of our inner spiritual lives, but doubt also has the potential to deepen our religious passions when viewed as a religious tool to be utilized, rather than a stumbling block to be avoided.

Parshat Va-eyra

Last Saturday night I received a call from someone looking for a Rabbi.  The woman I spoke to was calling on behalf of her daughter’s best friend’s step-father who was suffering from a terminal form of cancer.  He had been moved to home hospice care, and it did not look like had much longer to live.  He had been totally disconnected from anything Jewish, but now he wanted a Rabbi to pray with him and help him find peace.  They had tried to find a Rabbi through the hospice chaplain but were unable, so they looked on the internet and that’s how they found me. 

These kinds of visits are something I’m privileged to get the opportunity to do, but not really the easiest part of my Job.  Although making visits like this was part of my rabbinic training, it’s not something I have had much experience with.  Not really knowing what to expect, somewhat apprehensive and a bit nervous, I went to go visit him on Monday afternoon.  While all the details of my visit are not relevant,  I would like to share a reflection I made while in his home because it impacted something I noticed in the Parsha which I had never seen before. 

I’m not making a judgment on the family’s behavior.  I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for them.  I’m simply making an observation.  There was a great strain on the family from needing to take care of him, in their home, 24 hours a day.  On top of that, he was on medication that was making him angry, mean, and difficult to deal with.  Their patience was wearing thin.  The tension in that house was palpable.  There were moments where I could tell that my presence was a comfort not because of anything I did, but simply because I had not been dealing with the frustrations of providing care for him, and I was able to be more patient with him than he had experienced recently. 

All week I was thinking about how powerful patience can be.  Unfortunately, more often than not, when patience is really needed it’s more difficult to come by.  As they say, patience is a virtue.  But I think the virtue of patience is incredibly subtle and its importance is really felt when there is a lack of it.  Since this was what was on my mind when I was studying the Parsha this week when I noticed that Moses was an incredibly patient man.

If you think about the Parsha, why would Pharaoh let hundreds of thousands of people who work for free just pack up and leave?  Imagine the turmoil such an event would have on Egyptian economy.  Who would do all the work that the slaves had been doing, how would the government pay to fill those empty positions?  When you think about it like that, you can begin to understand why Moses did not want to take this Job as God’s messenger.  More than one time since the end of last week’s Parsha through the beginning of this week’s Parsha Moses tries to refuse God’s command to go to Pharaoh and free the slaves.  Such a task was bound to be an incredibly frustrating experience.  But Moses did it anyway. 

Let’s think about what it must have been like for Moses.  Before each plague he would go to Pharaoh, once getting to his meeting with Pharaoh, Moses would tell him that God was instructing him to let the Jewish people go.  Pharaoh would refuse, the plague would come, and then Moses would have to go back to pharaoh.  Sometimes with a hardened heart, Pharaoh would immediately refuse to give in, other times the plague scared him enough to say he would let them go if Moses would just stop the plague.  Pharaoh would then change his mind and Moses would have to go through the whole song and dance again.    This process kept repeating itself with every new plague.  Every time Moses would say pretty much the exact same thing to Pharaoh that he had said the last time.  It's very impressive to me that throughout this week’s Parsha there is no evidence of him getting frustrated with having to do the same thing over and over again and repeat himself over and over again.

Most people, myself included, lose patience very quickly when we have to keep repeating ourselves.  Maybe you’ve heard the term, “it’s like beating your head against the wall.”  It seems like Moses was beating his against the wall with Pharaoh, but throughout the entire story Moses remains cool, calm and collected.

The importance of patience is subtle, there isn’t a clear lesson to be learnt from Moses’ patience because it doesn’t change the story at all, and everything just progresses without most of us ever paying attention to this detail.

The value of patience is really most obvious when we observe the lack of it.  Let’s take an example from this week’s Parsha.  When Moses came to tell the Jewish people that he had come as God’s messenger to deliver them to freedom they didn’t pay attention to him.  The Torah says it was because of their קוצר רוח, short spirit.  Many bible commentators explain this phrase as impatience.  The Jewish people were so frustrated with their situation that their impatience to be freed wouldn’t allow them to believe in the messenger of their deliverance. 

Another example which really drives the point home is an episode from later in Moses’ life. We will read about it later in the torah.  The Jewish people were complaining to Moses because they had no water.  After a long time in the desert, with the people’s seemingly never-ending list of complaints, Moses was no longer able to remain patient.  God had commanded him to talk to a specific rock in front of all the people and it would bring forth water.  In frustration instead of talking to it, Moses hit the rock with his stick.  This event, where Moses finally loses his patience, is seen to be his greatest flaw as a leader. 

For anyone who has children of their own or who has ever worked with children you might be able to relate to this.  It amazes me how it seems to that since he was born, my son, Yonah has had an amazing ability to be particularly difficult when I have less patience.  I joke that it’s like he’s got a patience radar, but there’s some truth this.  Babies can sense and respond negatively to our frustration.  That’s just one example.  I’m sure if each of us reflects on our lives we can come up with countless examples of where our relationships with other people, particularly those who are closest to us: Our family, friends, and co-workers, have been negatively affected when we lose our patience. 

There are always things that strain our patience. The reality is that patience isn’t always easy to come by.  We all know people who can be particularly difficult or sometimes we are just tired, hungry, cranky, etc.  So the question I have is if the Torah is teaching us about Moses being patient, does it give us advice on how to be more patient in our own lives? 

I think the most helpful piece of advice that the torah provides for us with regard this is that we need to consciously make an effort to be more patient.  Before sending Moses to speak to Pharaoh, God warns Moses that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart, meaning Moses should expect pharaoh to be stubborn.  Knowing that, Moses was able to show a great deal of patience throughout the story.  Similarly, if we expect a need to be more patient, we can consciously try to be more patient.  We don’t need a warning from God to know that people will be difficult.  I challenge everyone here to consciously make an attempt to be more patient especially in situations where we know it might be difficult and see if it makes a difference.

I’ll close with a confession:  When Naomi andI first moved to Nashville, we couldn’t help being surprised with how long our conversations with Nashvillians were; it was bit of culture shock for us.  Not that these conversations were actually excessive at all, or that we didn’t enjoy talking to people, but it was just a different than what we were used to.  You have to understand, coming from NY where even if you see a close friend who you haven’t seen for years to say more than, “hi, how are you, it’s so great to see you,” could be considered a long conversation.  We didn’t expect that people might actually want to talk to us for a few minutes.  We were afraid that people would sense our impatience and think we were being rude.  So one day we realized that the only reason we are getting impatient is because we are expecting these interactions to be like the incredibly impersonal ones we were used to in NY.  After a day or two when we realized that we needed to change our expectations we immediately felt that impatience disappear and our fear of being rude along with it.

Parshat Shemot

This Shabbat we begin reading from the second book of the Torah, the book of Exodus.  The parsha this week continues to tell the story of the Jewish people.  We learn that after the generation of Joseph and his brothers  a new Pharaoh comes to power in Egypt.  This Pharaoh, the Torah tells us, did not know Joseph and all that Joseph had done in Egypt.  He feels threatened by the Jewish people and he comes up with the idea to enslave them.  This is how the story of the Jewish people's slavery in Egypt begins.  The story from this point forward will begin to describe the Jewish people's miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt through the leadership of Moses. 
    Moses had grown up in the house of Pharaoh.  Pharaoh decreed that all male Jewish babies be killed at the time of their birth.  Moses' mother saved him by putting him in a basket and sending it down the Nile River.  Pharaoh's daughter found the basket, adopted baby Moses, and raised him as her own.  Many years later, while witnessing the cruel treatment of a Jewish slave by an Egyptian taskmaster, Moses killed the Egyptian taskmaster.   Afterwards he fled Egypt, got married, and lived for many years outside of Egypt as a shepherd.  While out with the flocks one day, God spoke to Moses from a bush that was burning but not consumed.  This is when God tells Moses that he will go back to Egypt, free the Jewish people from slavery and lead them out of Egypt. 
    During this event Moses asks God, "When I will say to the Israelites, 'the God of your fathers has sent me to you;' and they will ask me, 'what is his name?' what will I say to them?"  God's answer to Moses is, "Eheyeh asher eheyeh," which literally means, "I will be what I will be."  There are numerous explanations of what this means, and numerous ideas and meanings have been attached to them, with different and even contradictory interpretations.
    I would like to share one interpretation with you.  Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin in his classic work of Jewish mysticism, Nefesh Hachaim, describes the role of human beings in the world and our relationship with God.  He explains that when the Torah says that man was created, "in the image of God," it is not referring to a physical image.  Rather, his explanation is that just as God is the creator, human beings are to be partners in creation.  Rabbi Chaim spends a lot of time describing how every one of our actions, big or small, have an impact on the world.  Human beings' actions, good or bad, allow for God to make the world a better or worse place. 
    It is in this vein that he translates the line from our parsha¸"eheyeh asher eheyeh," to mean, "I will be with you as you are with me."  Meaning, if you have faith in me and believe in me as a God, I will be with you accordingly.   Implied in this interpretation according to Rabbi Chaim, is that human beings should consider their relationship with God as a reciprocal relationship.  Not that the relationship is entirely reciprocal in the same way it is with other people, but the idea is that it is helpful for our religious growth to think about it in that way. 
God is abstract, and often it's hard to feel God's presence during our everyday life.  As a result, many of us tend to prioritize many things over our relationship with God and cut corners in our religious life.  If we were to consider that the way in which we prioritize God is consistent with how we would want to be treated by God, it's possible that we will be motivated to act differently.  We should try to make our relationship with God a reality in our lives, and part of that is to make the same considerations that we would in a relationship with a loved one.  We would not expect  a loved one to care about us and make an effort to be close to us if we never put any effort into that relationship.  Therefore, we should expect the same dynamic in our relationship with God.  Rabbi Chaim is teaching us that the lesson from this line in our parsha, "eheyeh asher eheyeh," is that our attitude about our relationship with God should be consistent with how we would want God to behave towards us.

Parshat Vayehi

 This week’s parsha is the last parsha in the book of Genesis and the last parsha where any of our forefathers is still alive.  The parsha signals the end of an era, and I believe it has a lesson for us about what it means to be part of the Jewish people.  This lesson is derived from one of Jacob’s final actions before passing away.

Most of the parsha tells the story of Jacob on his deathbed.  Before Jacob died he spoke to each of his sons and gave them blessings.  Jacob also blesses Joseph’s children.  While giving them a blessing he does something strange.  Instead of putting his right hand on the elder’s head and his left hand on the younger one’s head as was the usual protocol, he crossed his hands put his right on the younger one and his left on the older one.  Joseph noticed this and thinking that it was strange, he corrected Jacob.  But Jacob assured Joseph that he knew which one was which and that he had a reason for switching his hand.  He then blessed them and said, “by you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying: ‘God make you like Ephraim and Menasseh’ (Joseph’s sons).”

We have a tradition for blessing our children on Shabbat.  This line is the introduction to the traditional blessing that a parent gives a son on Shabbat (the blessing for daughters is introduced with, “may God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah).  What’s strange about this blessing is that we don’t know all that much about Ephraim and Menasseh.  What are we supposed to think when we say, “God make you like Ephraim and Menasseh” ?

Every one of the forefathers’ homes had disturbing family dynamics.  Abraham is compelled by Sarah to banish Hagar and Ishmael, his other wife and son.  Isaac and Rebecca each had favorites, this led to Jacob stealing Esau’s blessing and Esau’s subsequent hatred of Jacob.  And Jacob chooses a favorite, which causes his brothers to plot his murder.  Although they never carried that out, they did succeed in selling him as a slave.  I would think that after all that, Jacob and his family would have learned its lesson about showing favoritism.   Yet, in this week’s parsha we see Jacob switching his hands while blessing his grandchildren and showing priority to the younger one over the elder. 

When Joseph arrives at Jacob’s bed with his children Jacob tells Joseph about how God blessed him and that he [Jacob] will allow Joseph’s sons to inherit as if they were is actual sons.  Then, before blessing the children he says, “Who are they?”  I find it hard to believe that Jacob didn’t know who they were considering how he had just finished telling Joseph that he was going to bless his children.  I think that when Jacob says, “who are they?” he is really wondering what type of people they are.  He wants to know if they care about each other or if they are rivals.  He wants to see if they have learned from the family history until that point or not.  So, I don’t think that Jacob is actually showing favoritism at all, rather, I think it is a test about their character and relationship.  When Jacob crosses his hands during the blessing, neither of the grandchildren corrects him.  They love each other as brothers and they do not have a rivalry that could lead to hatred like it did in previous generations.  When Jews bless their children, we are saying that we want our children to be like Ephraim and Menasseh, because they were able to love and care about each other without rivalry between them. 

Jacob was able to see in his lifetime the reconciliation of his sons, something Isaac and Abraham were never able to see.  In the beginning of the story of Joseph and his brothers the Torah tells us that Joseph and his brothers could not speak civilly to each other.  But at the end of the story they all dwelled together peacefully.  This is what made the children of Jacob worthy of becoming the heads of the tribes of Israel.  Despite the terrible family drama, by the end they were able to come together as a family and love each other as brothers.  It is the way in which Ephraim and Menasseh respond to Jacob’s test, showing brotherly love to each other, that the Jewish people bless their sons to be like them for all time.

I met a man this week who told me that he always tries to love all Jews.  Of course, there is a Jewish value in caring for all of God’s creations.  But there is an additional value of loving the Jewish people.  I believe that when one can love those closest to them despite differences, it helps towards being able to respect and care for the rest of the world as well.  Love and tolerance begins with those closest to you.  All week I’ve been thinking to myself, “what an amazing perspective, to be able to enter into a conversation or relationship with a fellow Jew with an attitude of love.”  It’s so easy to get caught up in fearing other Jews who are different from the way I am, judging them unfavorably, assuming that the other one is judging me, etc.  The way we enter into a conversation can have a powerful impact on the relationship that the conversation builds.  If we enter with negative perspectives, we continue to keep ourselves from living as brothers and sisters with our fellow Jews.  This man is an example of Ephraim and Menasseh. It’s often difficult to love and tolerate those closest to you when they are different, but being able to overcome that fear and feel unconditional love for our brothers and sisters is one of Jacob’s last lessons to the Jewish people.  In order to achieve this unity it might take work, it might take a conscious attempt to love the other, but in the end the hope is that it will lead to a better life and ultimately a better world.