Parshat Ki Tetzeh

Once there was a king who had an identical twin brother, the king’s twin brother was the worst kind of criminal.  One day the king’s criminal brother got caught, he was hung for his crimes, and his body was left hanging as a warning for others to not turn to a life of crime.  Leaving a body hanging was, and unfortunately still is, a common punishment in some societies as a way to deter undesirable behavior.  The idea being that the horror of seeing the remains of the criminal will scare people away from following in the criminal’s footsteps.

Although the motivation for this practice might be well meaning as a way to inspire proper behavior, there is still an immoral element to this sort of practice.  In this week’s parsha we are commanded against doing such an act.  When it comes to creating a moral society, the ends do not ever justify the means.  Doing an immoral act, even if well intentioned in the desired outcome, leaves a mark on a person and on that society. 

This is what our sages were trying to teach us in the story of the king and his criminal brother.  The problem with leaving the body of the King’s criminal twin brother was that, when people saw the body hanging, it looked identical to the king’s, they didn’t know it was the king’s brother.   They thought that the king had been overthrown and killed.  Leaving the body of the king’s brother hanging might have seemed like the right thing to do, but it turned out to be an affront to the respect and authority of the king himself. 

This Midrash continues by drawing a parallel between the king and his brother and the relationship between God and human beings.  In the story, the disrespect to the identical twin brother of the king resulted in disrespect to the king as well, since the torah tells us that man is created in the image of God, the disrespect shown to human remains is also disrespectful to God.  The failure to do the right thing here, and bury the person as soon as possible, is an immoral act which causes corruption.  Immorality, no matter what, goes against what we stand for and who we are as a people.

So what are we supposed to stand for?  I believe that this law is really the key to understanding the central theme of the entire torah portion that we read today.  And that this central theme is a FUNDAMENTAL statement of what we stand for as a people and what it means to be a good Jew.  With this law the torah is saying, doing something bad, no matter the intention, will corrupt you.  But the lesson isn’t just a commandment of what not to do.  The rest of the laws in this week’s parsha are a guide to us of how to have a moral society and be moral people.

Compassion is always at the core of what the torah is teaching us when it reminds us to remember the needs of the people in society who are the most vulnerable, like the widow, the orphan, and the stranger as it does in this week’s parsha.  But we are also taught the lesson of being compassionate to the vulnerable in all aspects of life; whether it’s the way we do business: as we learn this week about paying workers on time, and not deliberately deceiving customers; or if it’s how to treat animals as we see in the commandment to send away a mother bird from her nest before taking her eggs. 

Another example is the command to put a fence around your roof.  While it might seem strange that the torah would be giving us advice on how to build a house, there is a fundamental moral lesson here. When we are commanded to build a fence around our roofs when building a house, we are being taught that we must be conscientious at all times because you never know how an action or inaction might hurt someone.  In addition, this week’s Parsha has commandments regarding the respect an individual should have of other people’s boundaries both private and public, respect for marriage, paying debts, keeping true to your word, and so many more. 

The torah is trying to teach us that it’s not enough to just not do bad things; we are being commanded to train ourselves, at our core, to be moral people who are respectful, conscientious and compassionate in all that we do.  Although this lesson may seem simple, it is by no means unimportant.   This is the fundamental mission of the Jewish people.  Being a light unto the nations means being the example of a moral society, it means being proactively positive. 

This lesson is really driven home by the bookends of the parsha.  The parsha begins with the laws of warfare and ends with the commandment to never forget Amalek.  Wartime can unfortunately be a time when morality is put on the side for what a well meaning society considers to be for the greater good.  The torah is saying the Jewish people ALWAYS need to be a beacon of morality, even during war; the ends NEVER justify the means.  It then continues with a list of ways in which a society and people need to be moral in their day to day lives.  Some of which I discussed earlier.  And then the final lesson, remembering Amalek, is a reminder of what is at stake.  Amalek is the symbol to the Jewish people of all that is wrong and immoral with the world.  Amalek is our archenemy because they exist to sow disorder, immorality and chaos.  The best way for us to defeat Amalek is to stand for a world of order and morality. 

Our tradition tells us ","סור מרע ועשה טוב stay away from Evil and do good.  Today’s parsha is saying be aware how doing bad no matter what is dangerous, therefore make a point to not only stay away from bad, but pro-actively seek to do good.  This is always an important lesson, but now in the time leading up to the high holidays it is a lesson that should be ever more present in our minds as we prepare for the upcoming holidays. 

Parshat Shoftim

This week’s Parsha contains a valuable lesson on the nature of worrying.  Many of us spend a lot of mental energy on worrying about the future and the terrible things that can possibly happen to ourselves or our loved ones.  There is nothing wrong with being concerned and planning ahead to try stave off any possible dangers, but often we worry in ways that can be somewhat debilitating or counterproductive.  The Torah is telling us that when we are wholly invested in believing that God is in control of the world, there is no need for us to worry to the point where we get paralyzed with fear over things that we have no control over. 

After commanding us not to practice different types of future telling occult practices, the Torah says (Deut. 18:13), “You must be wholehearted with the Lord your God.”  This verse seems out of place at first glance.  What does walking wholehearted with God have anything to do the prohibition of trusting in forbidden fortune telling practices?  Rashi has a beautiful answer to this seemingly strange verse which gives us some insight into human nature with regard to excessive worrying.  Rashi says, “Trust in what God has in store for you; don’t go searching after what will happen in the future.  Rather, you should wholeheartedly accept that everything that is going to happen to you is according to God’s plan, and then you will walk with God wholeheartedly.”

Rashi is pointing out, that often people become obsessed with what is going to happen in the future.  We worry so much about what might possibly happen in the future that it impacts our decisions in the present, our sense of security, and/or our stress levels.  So one way which people might try to alleviate the burden of worrying about the future is to go to a fortune teller, the hope is that once we know what will happen we won’t have to worry about it anymore.  Human beings have a need to feel secure about their future.  When we do not feel that security we feel like we are not in control.  Knowing the future is a way for us to feel like we are in control.

Unfortunately for us, the Torah is telling us, that fortune tellers can’t give us a true sense of security and control.  The Torah could have said   that fortune tellers just don’t work, but it doesn’t say that.  Instead of saying that they don’t work, the Torah simply says that we shouldn’t go to them.  The reason for this is because in some way they do work.  After going to a fortune teller, the person who believes in the fortune teller’s message will feel more secure with the knowledge they receive about the future, whether the fortune teller is correct or not.  It is the illusion of security which can bring a person peace and comfort. 

Rashi points out to us that the Jewish person’s sense of security cannot come from our illusions of being in control.  Our sense of security needs to be derived from a complete faith in God: in the fact that God is in control and that God cares about us.  If we were able to achieve such a faith, we wouldn’t ever worry.    

There is no question that such a deep faith is very difficult to achieve, and worrying over the safety and security of our loved ones is such a very strong emotion that is difficult if not almost impossible for most of us to overcome immediately.  But the lesson here isn’t simply, “don’t worry, be happy,” because God is in control.  In the Parsha, the command not to go to soothsayers is telling us not to waste our time and energy on things that we are not in control over.  Rather than make ourselves crazy worrying about every distressing thought that occurs to us, the Torah’s advice is spend to spend our energy more wisely.  In light of the fact that the Torah is telling us there is no way for us to know the future, we need to draw a lesson on what to do when we feel the need to worry.  In the Ethics of Our fathers (2:13), the Mishna asks, “Go and see what is the right way to which a person should cling…one who considers consequences.”  The lesson here is that when we worry about something unknown, we should direct our energy to what we can do about it now.  We should consider the possible consequences so that when we are worrying about the future when can think about what we can do in the present to impact our future.  When we can use this energy to come up with a productive solution to deal with our concern, great!  But when we have done everything that we can in the present, then we have to try to make ourselves stop the worrying and take comfort in the fact that God is in control.  Worrying is only as useful as the motivation it provides us with to act in the best way in the present.  When we can no longer use our concern for the future to motivate us to do something productive in the present, then the emotional energy exerted over the future begins to deteriorate our mental state in the present.  This is a very difficult but very important lesson about the nature of faith with regard to our own worrying about the future.

Parshat Re'eh

This week’s Parsha relates to us a possible situation, where you hear a rumor about another city being led astray.  This scenario is a really important lesson on how the Torah teaches us to deal with the way we react to hearing rumors.  The verse reads:

 “If, in one of your cities that the Lord your God gave to you dwell, you hear that: There are lawless men from your midst that are leading the city astray by advocating that the entire city should start worshipping other Gods.” (13:13-14)

The question we should ask ourselves is: how does the Torah want us to react?  Throughout the past few Parshiyot (plural form of Parsha) the Torah has stressed the heinousness of worshipping other Gods in the eyes of the one true God.  One might think that the nation should rush as quickly as possible to root out this possible evil form their midst. 

Yet the Torah’s advice is the opposite.  Rather than jumping to conclusions, the Torah advises us to carefully seek out the veracity of these claims.  The verse reads, “You shall seek out, and investigate, and inquire well…” (13:15).

The Torah uses 3 different terms for the methods used to establish facts: “you shall seek out, and investigate, and inquire well”.  This focus on going to great lengths to establish what the facts on the ground are is an important value in Judaism.  Despite the seriousness of the claims, the process should not be a hasty rush to eliminate this evil.  No matter how terrible the act, the values being expressed by the Torah stress the importance of truth above all else. 

Religious decisions need to be based on careful study, intellectual vigilance, and open honest inquiry.  Religious zealousness without the checks and balance of establishing truth is very dangerous.  The Torah is able to stomach the possibility of an entire city being led into the worship of foreign Gods for a little while longer in order to check the facts. 

This lesson can be applied to our lives in many ways.  We often can’t help but jump to conclusions when we hear rumors about other people; the moral immoral the rumor the more judgmental we become.  How many of us take the time to carefully inquire, deliberate and investigate the truth behind the rumors before we judge the people that the rumor is about?  It’s very difficult to do that, especially when we are emotionally compelled by moral outrage about whatever it is that we have heard.  If God can command us to delay our judgments even of idol worship in order to be careful in the decisions we make, how much more so should we be careful when judging others in our day to day lives?

I can’t help to point out another important Jewish value being expressed here.  This is a source for the centrality of the intellectual process in Jewish tradition.  There are forces in Judaism today which would have us believe that Judaism wants us to accept everything our leaders tell us without question.  The Torah here is showing us that the intellectual process is paramount when it comes to developing our own understanding of truth.  Jewish tradition stresses the importance of finding a teacher for yourself, but teachers are supposed to enable the student by giving him or her the tools of tradition to make up their own minds. 

Parshat Eikev

Does God want us to be rich?  An article in TIME magazine “Does God want us to be rich?” describes a relatively new phenomenon in the non Jewish world called prosperity theology.  The basic idea is that God wants you to be rich.  Doing the right religious acts and having the right religious faith is a way to become rich.  The reason God has certain religious expectations of you is so that when you do them, you will be rewarded with material wealth.

As crazy as this idea sounds, it’s not totally alien to Judaism.  In fact, this Parsha talks a lot about the material comforts that God provided for us in the desert and the promises of a fruitful land that God will bring us into.  This Parsha also contains the second paragraph of the Shema prayer, which on the surface, seems to be saying that God will give us material rewards in return for our love and service. 

The problem with this theology is that it is implying that God needs us to love God, to serve God by doing the commandments.  In order to get the things that God needs, God offers us incentive, prosperity.  According to this perspective, the laws are really for God, material wealth is all that the humans really need.  We each have something that the other one needs, it’s a tit-for-tat system, if we do something for God, God will do something for us. 

But this is not the lesson that this week’s Parsha is conveying.  This is not the lesson of Judaism.  God does not need us to do mitzvoth, God does not need anything.  Maimonides was very clear that God’s true nature is to not be dependent on anything.  Furthermore, the Parsha emphasizes that material comfort is not all that is important to human beings.  Chapter 8, verse 3 says, “it is not by bread alone that man lives, rather by everything that emanates from the mouth of God does man live.

This theology is emphasizing our dependence on God and not vice-versa.  This is an important lesson that can be found throughout this week’s Parsha.  We are reminded of the way we sinned against God throughout our travels in the desert, and warned about future times of material success when we might think that we deserve the comfort that we have found, that we shouldn’t forget that it is a kindness from God that we have found comfort and we owe it to him, it’s not because we deserved it. 

This week’s Parsha is a really beautiful description of what our relationship with God, as a nation, and as individuals could be.  It is a crystal clear response to the age-old question: “what does God want from us?”  You don’t have to be bible scholar to see it, Moses says it to us!  In chapter 10, verse 12 Moses says, “and now Israel what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear God, to go in his ways, and to love him.” 

Easy, right?  All you have to do is follow this incredibly long list of esoteric rules and requirements.  Maybe if you’re Moses!  The Talmud in berachot 33b points out that, “as far as Moses was concerned it was but a small matter, but for the rest of us not necessarily.  This statement can be compared to the case of a man who is asked for a large vessel and happens to have one.  To him it’s no big deal, because he has one.  But if you ask even for a small one from someone who doesn’t have anything then even the smallest vessel will seem like a large one to that person. The point being, for most of us, just following God’s laws, loving God and walking in God’s ways is much easier said than done.

But perhaps this is true only if we do these things from the perspective that they are a burden which we need to do in order to receive our reward from God.  That is not the perspective that this week’s Parsha is trying to convey. 

The lesson the Torah is trying to leave us with is that it is for our own sake that we do mitzvoth, the mitzvoth themselves are good for us, it’s not for the material reward.  Judaism is not a prosperity theology.  The next verse, verse 13 says “to keep God’s commandments for your benefit.  Upon this Nachmanides comments: “God does not require of you anything which is for His good, but it is only for your good, as is implied in Job where he says, if you are righteous, what have you given God, what has he received from your hand?  But everything is purely for your benefit.”

When the Parsha talks about our benefit, it’s not talking about material comfort.  Material comfort is only a possible outcome from our actions.  It is not the reason to do mitzvoth, nor is it a guarantee for happiness at all.  Reward and punishment according to most opinions in Judaism is not about material rewards, and we may not ever see the reward or the punishment in this lifetime, it’s a concept.  It’s a belief that God is fair. 

The reason to fear and Love God, to walk in God’s ways and to do God’s commandments is because that is the way we connect to the true source of life and lead a meaningful life.  Truly dedicating our lives to loving, fearing, emulating and serving God is a beautiful experience, we all know that there is an intangible feeling that we get when we make an effort to connect on some level.  In the long run we believe that the more you put in, the more you get out of it. 

It’s difficult to maintain this connection on a daily basis, let alone to do it all day every day.  So the end of the Parsha gives us some practical suggestions on how to at least begin the effort to do what needs to be done.  At the end of the Parsha, and it is also part of the second paragraph of the Shema, we read you should teach your children to speak about them.  Rashi gives educational advice about the necessity to Torah at all ages.  It starts at the very beginning of their lives, but when does it end?  The Talmud in kiddushin asks the same question.  It tells a story of an elderly man who used to teach his grandchildren.  That doesn’t really answer the question, because after all he’s still teaching children.  Except maybe the Talmud is telling us that even the elderly man who was still teaching his grandchildren was still learning as well.  He was partaking in the education of the next generation, his responsibility never ends.    

The Shema says you should be talking about Torah when you are home, when you are out of the house, when you rise up and when you lie down.  Many commentators have explained this as the means to achieve a true love of God.  The way to do that begins with education, both for us and for the next generation.

There is a classic debate about whether loving God is a commandment, because the torah uses commanding language when it says to love God, but love is a feeling, not an action.  Can you really command love?  The sefer Hachinuch, a medieval book of Jewish law by an unknown author says that it is absolutely a commandment.  You can’t command the feeling, but you can command the person to at least try, to focus their thoughts and attitudes on loving God.  The best way to influence your thoughts and attitudes about Judaism and God is to be continuously learning and educating ourselves, that is how we can bring about the feelings of love for God.  Similarly with the next generation, children need to be modeled this behavior, beginning with their earliest experiences through their most impressionable  years as teenagers that Judaism isn’t just something  we do sometimes, but it’s a part of who  we are.  Everything we do, we do in a Jewish way. 

This is how we can begin to influence our people and our community to do what God requires of us.  I’d like to encourage us all to think about 3 things that we can do starting today.  Think about how we can enhance our love of God through the effort we put into our own continuing education, think about some ways we can have influence our community, and think about how we can commit ourselves to the education of the next generation of Jews.

Only then can we begin to fulfill the words of the verse, “and now Israel what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear God, to go in his ways, and to love him.” 

Parshat Vaetchannan

Many people refer to the Jews as “The chosen people.”  There is often a lot of controversy and debate about what exactly that means.  Being chosen of often gives Jews a sense of pride, and it sometimes gives critics a reason to accuse us of thinking we are better than everyone else.  Much has been written on this topic, I don’t want to get in to the discussion of what it means to be chosen, but I would like to point out a verse in this week’s Parsha which our tradition has used to point out a detail of what chosenness certainly does not mean. 

At the end of this week’s Parsha (Deuteronomy 7:7-8) Moses tells the Jewish people:

It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you – Indeed, you are the smallest of peoples, but it was because the Lord favored you and kept the oath He made to your fathers that the Lord freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 

The simple meaning of these verses is that God didn’t choose you because of your large numbers, because you really aren’t that large compared to other nations.  The Jewish people didn’t deserve the goodness done unto them by God at that time, it was done from the merit of God’s feelings (so to speak) towards the forefathers and the promise he made them. 

There is also deeper meaning to this text which provides us with an important perspective when considering what being the chosen nation means.  Rashi, quoting the Talmud (Chulin 89a) points out this approach in our tradition.  The Talmud explains that the Hebrew words for “not because you’re the most numerous”, לא מרבכם, could have a different meaning than the literal meaning mentioned above.  It could also mean, it’s because you did not make yourselves great [in your own eyes] when I (God speaking) bestowed goodness unto you.  With that approach, the verse would read, “It’s because you did make yourselves great in your eyes that the Lord set his heart on you…”

According to this approach, it is specifically because the Jewish nation did not feel that they were greater than any other nation when they were singled out and given God’s deliverance and gifts, that makes them worthy in God’s eyes of being chosen.  Therefore, I feel that whatever your understanding of what it means to be the chosen people, it is important that your perspective still maintains a great sense of humility.