Reflections on Parashat Terumah: Making Space for God and Hope

Each year, when I read Parashat Terumah, I struggle to visualize the details of the Mishkan, the tabernacle we were instructed to build in the wilderness. This year, the meticulous descriptions of gold clasps, acacia wood, and embroidered curtains left me bored. But as I sat with the text, three other thoughts emerged.

1. Creation and the Tabernacle

Commentators often compare the construction of the Mishkan to the creation of the world. This year, I finally compared the two texts myself. The contrast is striking: God’s creation of the world is described in one parasha. The instructions for building the Mishkan span many chapters. Why does it take so much effort for us to make space for God, when it took much less for God to make space for us?

Perhaps the answer lies in love. God’s creation of the world was effortless; but our building of sacred space requires effort, generosity, and precision. Parashat Terumah tells us that donations for the Mishkan should come from the heart. Maybe that is the dwelling place that God desires, not a physical structure, but the space we conscientiously carve out in ourselves through effort and intention. It may even be that the labor itself makes room in our hearts

2. The Curtain Between the Holy and the Most Holy

The Mishkan is a place of order and separation, much like the laws of kashrut or Shabbat, which divide the sacred from the profane. But the Mishkan doesn’t just divide between holy and secular; it distinguishes between holy and most holy. The innermost chamber, the Holy of Holies, is concealed behind a curtain, as the summit of Har Sinai was hidden by cloud. Holiness is not a simple binary. We might want the world to be black and white, but reality is multi-layered and complex and worthy of contemplation.

3. Hope in the Midst of Darkness

The most powerful idea in this parasha for me this year comes from a legend that the wood used to build the Mishkan came from trees that Jacob had brought to Egypt generations earlier. Over the generations, those trees stood as a silent promise. Whenever the enslaved Israelites looked at them, they felt hope that redemption would come.

Not the most compelling of Jewish legends, but it made me reflect, as I often have the last few weeks, on the hope and resilience shown by the recently released hostages who, despite the horrors of their captivity and the grief that awaited them at home, have still found a way to lift up and display their hope for all of us to see. Each and every one of them has been a radiant exemplar of the best quality of Israelis: resilience.

At the funeral of his wife and two children, for whom he had sacrificed himself, only to learn they had perished while he was in captivity, Yarden Bibas said, “Shiri, guard me so I don’t sink into darkness.” He still sees light! He still has hope. I don't know how that is possible.

An Australian news station desribed the day of the funeral as a dark day for Israel. And yet, for the first time in months, I saw light— not because of my own worldview, but because Yarden Bibas, of all people, could still find words of hope.

The Israelites carried Jacob’s trees with them into the wilderness, using them to build the Mishkan. Perhaps we, too, carry some unseen reserve of strength and resilience that allows us to build light even in the darkest places.

Korban Pesach - the holiness we no longer recognize

I’ve long been curious about the ancient practice of sacrifice. Why, I’ve often wondered was the Book of Leviticus, filled with descriptions of these rituals, considered by many to be our holiest text? Yet, I confess that I cringed yesterday, upon reading that some Orthodox men planned to enact the ancient practice by sacrificing a lamb near Temple Mount before Passover.

Undoubtedly, my reaction is a product of modern sensibilities, the misconception prevalent in our era that meat originates from styrofoam packages in grocery stores rather than from once living beings. Kosher slaughter was designed to minimize animal suffering, but today, arguments from vegans and vegetarians challenge the morality of this practice under contemporary moral attitudes.

I am convinced that comprehending why our ancestors offered animals to God as sacrifices is important. However, I cannot bridge the gap between modern perspectives and ancient practices. Even Rav Kook was uncomfortable with the idea of animal sacrifice and predicted that only grain would be offered in the Third Temple.

Would watching the video of yesterday’s sacrifice provide me with some insight or merely be an act of voyeurism?

While studying Leviticus with my chevruta in the Tucson library, I did not come any closer to an understanding or acceptance of sacrifice. However, I stumbled across a book which includes a passage describing something like a sacrifice that occurred on the Navajo Reservation. While the significance of the ritual was lost to me, it clearly held meaning for its participants. I invite you to ponder this passage and share your thoughts.

But Native American Week officially ended in the courtyard.

Only the eighth-grade students were allowed to go there. We gathered in a loud crescent inside the courtyard that morning, while teachers monitored to make sure none tried climbing the cedar tree.

The smell of snow on cedar mixed with the metallic scent of clay when they brought Dibé (the sheep) from Mr. Bahe’s auntie’s ranch near Kinlichee.

Dibé had lost his fight during the fifteen-mile drive in the back of the pickup truck. Mr. Bahe carried him in like an old laundry sack, the legs bound with hay-wire. Mr. Yazzie followed in with a cedar log and a bowl large enough to toss a salad for eight. At least three students volunteered to hold them for him.

Jeers and laughter greeted Dibé as soon as he entered. My friends whistled, snapped fingers, raised eyebrows, and shouted breath-calls until Dibé rolled his eyes in his small skull and bleated loud and hoarse. We pushed close enough to smell the thick, sweet scent of alfalfa on his wool, to see the clay stains on his feet, dark like blood. But I noticed that everyone’s hands stayed in their pockets, and the feet furthest from Dibé bore most of the weight. The crowd grew silent.

This was the respect for animals that most Navajos practiced. Sheep were the “everlasting money” that had delivered the Navajos from starvation and poverty during many winters. Many traditional Navajos still refer to sheep as “the mother of the tribe” or “our mother,” and are as attached to their animals in the way some Anglos latch on to their cats or dogs. You didn’t insult or berate them.

Dibé never felt the cold concrete under him. His wool was still thick from the long winter. When they put him down, his neck began to swing, as though shaking away gnats in some sage-meadow of his obscure, fleeting memory.

Mr. Bahe, the eighth-grade algebra and geometry teacher, cupped the sheep’s head with his hand, lifted, and turned it to the sky. Mr. Yazzie, our wood-shop teacher, came behind him and braced the neck with the cedar log, so that it bowed and Dibé saw the world upside down. Mr. Bahe held Dibé under the chin and stretched him as his hand slipped into the pocket of his thick denim jacket. It came out holding a knife with a dark, six-inch blade. Mr. Yazzie came around Mr. Bahe with the bowl. No students stepped back. Some had seen this before.

Dibé was bleating hard now, and the steam from his breath clouded in the cold March air. In Diné Bikéyah—the traditional Navajo country—spring is slow, but the grass would be growing when winter was done. The grass would push up through the sand when it had collected enough water from the runoffs of the mountains. Dibé had never seen those mountains, but he’d been fed by them.

Mr. Bahe lifted his hand—as though to trace a parabola-graph or parallelogram model on his chalkboard—and used the dark knife for what it was meant. Dibé bleated until the knife cut his throat, and his hard gasps sprayed blood over his white wool like spots of warm rust. His bleating faded, flooded, as though Mr. Bahe had pushed a rag down Dibé’s throat, and the students made no noise while they watched the bowl fill. All of them, but Gabriel Smith.

Gabriel Smith, the son of a bilagáana from New Mexico, laughed.

The crescent of students turned on Gabe, as though he were chuckling at a paraplegic who’d fallen out of a wheelchair.

Angelo James put his fist into Gabriel’s shoulder and the laughing stopped.

Dibé sought the ground with his bound legs, tried to run, but only kicked at empty air. He flexed out, relaxed, then opened up. Steaming olive pebbles fell from his rectum. He was dead.

Mr. Yazzie pulled out his own knife and unbound the legs. Mr. Bahe ran the blade around the wrists in a neat circle, then cracked the bones with a sound like chalk breaking against a blackboard. The two teachers slit down the limbs, intersected to run along the chest and belly, and then took the skin away with careful, passing cuts of their knives to avoid damaging the thick, winter wool. Finally, Mr. Bahe cut through the neck and hewed off the head. He gave it to his aide, Roberta Tahe, who ran toward the fire pit at the far corner of the courtyard with the severed head dripping blood over her pink snow-boots. They would roast the head until the wool singed away. Two lucky students would get to eat the eyeballs.

Mr. Bahe took Dibé to the cedar and gave him to the highest bough. They hung the body by a single rope, and it glistening like plastic in the sun. Mr. Yazzie cut into the inverted belly and Buddy Nez brought a large mixing bowl to catch the pale stomach, firm and shiny like wet rubber, that slid out of Dibé. He ran it inside to the kitchen at the far end of the gymnasium.

Gabriel Smith snickered again. Phil Begay hit him this time, between the shoulders, and Gabriel grunted and squinted to hide his tears.

Mr. Yazzie, as his parents had taught him, found the pale joints of cartilage at the shoulders and hips, and cut away the hindquarters and front limbs one after the other. He gave them to the larger boys—mostly football players like Alfonso Wauneka—to take to the school secretaries tending the meat at the fire-pit.

Buddy Nez ran back from the kitchen, and, since his auntie was cooking at the pit, he got to eat the first cut from one of the thighs. He returned to the crescent, his mouth shiny and smiling. The rest of us moved to the fire pit, while one of the school secretaries met us with paper plates and thick paper towels. The far side of the fire pit was used to cook frybread. The fire hissed under the drops of fat falling through the iron grill and the flattened dough hovered over the sputtering lard in the pan.

There really is no taste like fresh mutton, one of the Navajo staples. It’s also one of the fattiest meats you can eat. Grill a mutton steak, then let it sit for more than twenty minutes, and it develops a white film of congealed fat over it that shines like shortening.

We ate strips of the salty, dripping mutton, wrapped in oval sheaves of frybread and joked about who kissed whom after class, who would be fighting after school and where it was going to be, or how Charles Kee quit the basketball team because he threw up on the last leg of sprints and slipped on—and into—the stripe of vomit he’d left on the waxed court of the Fieldhouse.

I went with some of my friends to the cafeteria kitchen, where two of the custodians showed us how to clean the intestines by filling them at the sink and rinsing over and over until their surface was clean like the skin of water-balloons.

One of the building custodians showed me how to pick the stomach free of k’ah, the fat that clumped like wet cotton on its surface. I ran the organ through my hands, feeling the inner wall, rough like a cat’s tongue against my fingers. It would be filled with blood, like the intestines, to bake as sausage.

The stomach was as slick as a fish’s skin, hard to pinch, but this was the slippery world I had known. I tried not to think about Mom’s talk about moving us from the Rez to work in some border town hospital. Maybe Farmington, maybe Page, or Inscription House. Perhaps even Phoenix. There would be better pay there, and a chance for Darren and me to compete for college scholarships that were practically nonexistent for Anglo students on the Reservation.

I picked the fat and tried not to think about it.

The next week would be the section exam for Algebra I, and Mr. Bahe would yell at his students to study like always. The Ganado Hornets would play the Window Rock Scouts on their way to the state championship that year. And they would spill the blood of their rivals from over the mountain summit on the court and in the parking lot afterward, pending the game’s score.

I left that day with mutton and frybread wrapped in paper towels to deliver to Mom, Carmen, and Lorinda Benally during their shift at the hospital. Mom was eating for two now, after all.

When I got home, I picked up Yanabah from day care, bundled her into her blanket, and we began our after-school stroller ride through Ganado. I tried not to think of leaving Ganado. It was like contemplating the death of a relative or a friend, something dreaded yet certain. I knew Mom was preparing applications and that she had even talked about working at the Navajo Generating Station, a coal-burning power plant just outside Page, Arizona. But I pushed the thoughts away and turned Yanabah’s stroller toward the horse corrals and the wash.

We eventually found ourselves along the barbed-wire fence perimeter of the campus, where the wash ran in a quiet, sparkling trickle below where Ferlin and I had outrun our skinwalker, where we’d built stick-dams, tracked the prints of deer and bears that followed the water south from the Defiance plateau summit, where we’d woven a quiet respect for the life of Diné Bikéyah, The People’s Land. A land that I felt had somehow become a part of and didn’t want to leave. Yanabah and I watched the wash sparkle and wind along its sandy bed.

- Kristofic, Jim, Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life. University of New Mexico Press. Kindle Edition.

No Revelation Without Interpretation

I knew that I couldn't have been the first to notice! And, in fact, not only modern feminists, but also the Rabbis recognized that Moses interpreted God's words and, in doing so, seems to have changed their meaning. (Maybe that's the point.)

And HaShem said to Moses, "Go to the people and warn them to stay pure today and tomorrow. Let them wash their clothes. Let them be ready for the third day; for on the third day HaShem will come down, in the sight of all the people, on Mount Sinai. You shall set bounds for the people round about... When the ram's horn sounds a long blast, they may go up on the mountain."

Moses came down from the mountain to the people and warned the people to stay pure... And he said to the people, "Be ready for the third day: you should not go near a woman."

The Rabbis wanted to clarify that both men and women were participants in theophany and they interpreted the phrases, "Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob and declare to the children of Israel," to refer respectively to the men and the women."

Rashi interpreted Moses's instructions as way to ensure that women could be present. Since semen loses its purported ritual impurity after three days, if men stayed away from women, then women could be ritually pure during revelation.

What should we think of Moses changing the words of the divine command?

Judith Plaskow writes,

"Several lessons can be drawn from this. One is the inseparability of revelation and interpretation. There is no revelation without interpretation; the foundational experience of revelation also involves a crucial act of interpretation. Second, we learn that the process of interpretation is ongoing. What Moses does, the Rabbis in this case seek to undo. While they reiterate and reinforce the exclusion of women in many contexts, they mitigate it in others. Third, insofar as the task of interpretation is continuing, it now lies with us. If women's absence from Sinai is unthinkable to the Rabbis-- despite the fact that they repeatedly reenact that absence in their own work-- how much more must it be unthinkable to women and men today who function in communities in which women are full Jews? We have the privilege and the burden of recovering the divine words reverberating behind the silences in the text, recreating women's understandings of revelation throughout Jewish history." (The Torah, A Women's Commentary)

It's our privilege and responsibility to interpret Torah and we do so within a 4,000 year old tradition.

Who Was That Girl?

I was terrified to watch the video. I cringed when I saw myself on the screen—but it wasn’t me. It was some confidant, young woman. Who was she?

I am not sure what she was talking about in her d’var Torah. It sounded vaguely Buddhist, but I don’t think she’d read much about Buddhism back them. And I remember she was so proud that what she said was all her, that she could identify and express what was inside herself.

What she said was smarter than she knew. If I'd watched that video three years later, would it have helped me get through that difficult time?

mizrachi.org

The day after my conversion, a friend called me and asked, “So what happened?”

I surprised myself by saying, “It was like a wedding.” My answer surprised me because I don’t know anything about weddings and I’ve often wondered why people get married.

After that, I began to notice how frequently the analogy of marriage occurs in Jewish thought. God is married to the Torah, the Sabbath is married to the people of Israel, Shechinah is the partner of God, and even we are partners with God in perfecting the world.

There’s one midrash that I particularly like, probably because it’s a little racy.

The rabbis compared Mt. Sinai to a chuppah, the canopy under which a bride and groom are married. When the Israelites worshipped the golden calf at the foot of the mountain where they were about to enter the covenant with God, it was tantamount to a bride committing the act of adultery under the very chuppah where she is to be married.

So when I learned that my Torah portion included the story of the golden calf, I immediately thought of this midrash. However, as I studied the portion, I became confused. Why do the Rabbis compare idolatry and adultery? And what is wrong with worshipping a molten calf? God is everywhere, but since we can’t truly comprehend that, why can’t we have a symbol to help us focus our attention?

Why is it that the idol we made lead us away from God, while the Torah’s stories about God can lead us toward God? How is an idol different from a story? Either one can only approximate what God truly is.

In most of the Torah, God is not immense or perfect or beyond human comprehension, and yet we know that God must be all those things and more. But, if these stories are all right, why was worshipping the golden calf wrong?

Perhaps it is because we made the calf after we had asked Moses to keep God far from us. We chose to worship a molten calf because we didn’t want to experience God.

But after Moses left, we became afraid, we felt abandoned and we wanted something to cling to. We were afraid because it felt as if God was not with us. It felt as if God’s heart had turned away. Despite everything God had done for us, we still did not trust God.

Recollections of the Sea of Reeds and the thunder at Mt. Sinai were not enough for us and in our fear, our hearts turned away from God. We sought something else to cling to but what we chose to cling to would not have helped us deal with the reality of our fear.

When we are experiencing a powerful emotion, such as fear or pain, we immediately look for something to erase the feeling: more television, more hours at the office, socializing, reading, anything to avoid facing the feeling and the cause of that feeling. But if we can’t face our own suffering, how can we face the suffering of other people and take action to alleviate it? The diversions we seek are merely idols, like the golden calf, they cannot wash away our pain or even bring us a little comfort. They cannot substitute for our souls’ marriage with God.

Unlike the golden calf, the stories in the Torah are like a good marriage because we tend to struggle with them. When God instructs us to commit an act we find reprehensible, we try to find out what God was really trying to tell us. When the story is of God, walking like a person, in Gan Eden, we assume it is an analogy for intimacy with God. God is described in anthropomorphic terms partly because that is the easiest way for humans to understand God. The stories use familiar images to describe mystical things. So I can distinguish a difference between stories of God in the Torah and this idol.

The idol was our own creation. It could not have guided us through the wilderness and it could not have taught us how to live well.

The familiar imagery of the Torah, which often describes God as a person, also teaches us how to behave ethically toward other human beings. Relationship is essential to Judaism. And there is one relationship that Judaism seems to especially emphasize. Perhaps it is the hardest one of all: marriage.

The first commandment God pronounces in the Torah is “Be fruitful and multiply.” Tradition has it that marriage is so important that God braided Eve’s hair before her wedding.

Tamar Frankiel wrote, in The Voice of Sarah, “more than in any other tradition, marriage is the essence of Jewish work in the world. Only in the union between man and woman can we touch with our own natures the process that the whole world is about: to come together, to overcome our separation, to be at one.”

Our relationship with God should mirror our relationships with other people. But what are we supposed to do when our souls’ marriage to God turns rocky, when we feel abandoned by God, when our hearts have turned away from God, and when we are certain that God’s heart has turned away from us?

It may be human nature to run from difficult feelings and to seek distractions, but eventually, it sinks in that idols can’t help us. At that point, all we can do is sit with what we are feeling, experience it fully and get familiar, even comfortable, with it. Then suddenly our perception of reality becomes a little bit clearer. But it takes a very long time to reach that point of increased clarity. And during that time, there is nothing to hold on to.

Luckily, we are always being held. I imagine that the thing holding us is an ark, an ark that is made of the Jewish community, the rituals and the theology of Judaism. Judaism is not something we can cling to. It will not erase our pain, it will not make everything better, but it will hold us, as it has held our people for thousands of years. While we are being held we can get to know our pain or sadness or fear, become comfortable with our feelings and begin to see reality. In time, our hearts will turn back to God and God’s heart will turn back to us.

The Torah is saying that the Israelites should have waited quietly, they should have sat with their fear, they should have let themselves be held by their community and by their new religion. Better still, they could have done what Moses does later in this Torah portion, or as Elijah does in this Haftarah portion: wrestle with God, argue with God. The Israelites could have shouted to God to come back.

When our relationship to God seems to wane, we must make an effort to be reunited with God because we are partners in the covenant. The reality may be that God is always near, but that is not our experience. We can feel abandoned by God, just as we might feel abandoned by a person. Sometimes we draw strength from the depth of a relationship, at other times, we feel disconnected from that same relationship.

For three years, Judaism opened a new universe for me. One day I realized that I would not be alive in any meaningful sense unless I made a commitment to become a Jew. My conversion was the best thing that ever happened to me. I changed, the entire world changed. For more than a year, it seemed that God couldn’t shower enough blessings on me, but this past year was very difficult. And during this crisis my connection to Judaism seemed to be fading. It seemed so unfair that a faith that had meant so much to me, a faith I had sworn to uphold always might become meaningless.

I began to look everywhere for comfort, but nothing helped. Then one Sabbath, after Torah study, someone asked me, “Why did you become a Jew?” I said that I’d never been able to answer that question. I also told her that even though Judaism had brought me so much joy, I was losing my connection to it.

She said to me, “So, the honeymoon is over.” Her comment was like a bolt of lightning. It reminded me of the comparison I had made the day after my conversion. And I realized that if the honeymoon is over, there must still be a marriage. The relationship still existed and I could fight to renew it.

So I yelled at God. Later, I regretted the language I used, but the point is I did turn to God. I trusted that God would hear and care and respond.

Elijah’s words to God in this week’s Haftarah portion are “Anaini Adonai, anaini. Answer me, O Lord, answer me. That this people may know that thou, Lord, art God.”

And God responded, for God is also bound by the covenant between us. God has been gracious to us. Each of us stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai; each of us was invited to enter into that marriage with God. So even if the honeymoon is over, the marriage endures. Sometimes, it’s all joy and, other times, it’s all work, but it is our covenant. So today, I renew my commitment to rely on God for the strength to struggle against idols and to enter more fully into a relationship with God.

Hagar

On the first day of Rosh HaShanah, it is tradition to read about Hagar and Yishmael, while the second day is dedicated to the story of Avraham and Yitzhak. Each of these narratives revolves around the near-death experiences of a child under the care of a parent.

Jean-Charles Cazin

However, in a few synagogues, like the one here, only one day of Rosh HaShanah is observed, and the reading exclusively focuses on the Akedah, the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son. Consequently, the story of Hagar and Yishmael is not explored.

Today, I found myself wondering how Hagar raised her son and what lessons Avraham imparted to him. What kind of parents were they, and how did their parenting shape the lives of each of their sons?

The written Torah says little of Hagar's origins or ends, but the oral tradition has a great more to say. According to one midrash, she was the daughter of Pharaoh. Impressed by the miracles that God performed for Sarah (originally Sarai), Hagar chose to become a servant in Sarai's household, stating, "It is better for me to be a slave in Sarah's house than a mistress in my own."

Sarah, who had been childless for many years, eventually gave up on becoming a mother herself. She adhered to the custom of her era and region. She sent Hagar to Avraham so that Hagar could bear a child on Sarah's behalf.

When Hagar realized she was pregnant, "her mistress was despised in her eyes." She began to look down on Sarah. Ignoring the long partnership of Sarah and Avraham, Hagar boasted that her position in the household had become higher than Sarah's because she had conceived in one night while Sarah had not conceived in many years. This triggered a reaction from Sarah, who complained to Avraham. After consulting with God, Avraham told Sarah to to deal with Hagar as she saw fit.

Sarah chose to "afflict" or "deal harshly with" Hagar; the Torah uses the same Hebrew word (תענה/מעונה) that it would later use to describe the treatment of Israelite slaves in Egypt, generations later. This harsh treatment prompted Hagar to flee to the desert, where she encountered a messenger of God who advised her to return to Sarah, which she did.

בְּרֵאשִׁית - לֶךְ-לְךָ
16:7 And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur.
16:8 And he said: 'Hagar, Sarai's handmaid, whence camest thou? and whither goest thou?' And she said: 'I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.'
16:9 And the angel of the LORD said unto her: 'Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands.'
16:10 And the angel of the LORD said unto her: 'I will greatly multiply thy seed, that it shall not be numbered for multitude.
16:11 And the angel of the LORD said unto her: 'Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son; and thou shalt call his name Ishmael, because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.
16:12 And he shall be a wild ass of a man: his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the face of all his brethren.'
16:13 And she called the name of the LORD that spoke unto her, Thou art a God of seeing; for she said: 'Have I even here seen Him that seeth Me?'
16:14 Wherefore the well was called 'Beer-lahai-roi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.

The figure of the lone seeker in the desert is a powerful archetype. Even more powerful is the moment when Hagar named God "El Roi," meaning "The God Who Sees." To my knowledge, Hagar is the only individual in the Tanakh who names God.

Hagar eventually gave birth to a son, whom Avraham named Yishmael. Afterward, Yishmael disappears from the narrative until God made another covenant with Avraham and commanded that "every male among you shall be circumcised." Not long after this event, Sarah gave birth to Yitzhak.

The pivotal moment in the story occurred after Yitzhak's weaning, when Yishmael engaged in an action that angered Sarah. (The action is described as "m'tzahek," from the root "to play" and also related to Yitzhak's name, which means "laughter." The same word was used to describe something that later in the tale Yitzhak and Rivka do thereby exposing the fact that they are married. This ambiguity has led some Rabbis to speculate whether Yishmael did something sexual.)

In response to Sarah's displeasure, Avraham heeded her request to send Hagar and Yishmael, away into the wilderness. In the desert again, this time not of her own choosing, Hagar was lost and out of water. Her son was dying.

בְּרֵאשִׁית - וַיֵּרָא
21:14 And Abraham arose up early in the morning, and took bread and a bottle of water, and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away; and she departed, and strayed in the wilderness of Beer-sheba.
21:15 And the water in the bottle was spent, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs.
21:16 And she went, and sat her down over against him a good way off, as it were a bow-shot; for she said: 'Let me not look upon the death of the child.' And she sat over against him, and lifted up her voice, and wept.
21:17 And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her: 'What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.
21:18 Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast by thy hand; for I will make him a great nation.'
21:19 And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.
21:20 And God was with the lad, and he grew; and he dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.
21:21 And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt. 

The moment when Hagar abandoned her dying child under a shrub and distanced herself from him is as disturbing as Avraham's intention to sacrifice Yitzhak. However, it is then that a messenger of God calls to Hagar from heaven, responding to the child's cries. Hagar's inability to see the well until God opens her eyes is puzzling.

There are many things to wonder about in these seven verses.

1. Before the Akedah, God and Abraham spoke with each other often, but afterward, God never spoke to Avraham again. An angel, not god, spoke to Avraham during the Akedah. Rabbi Jill Hammer points out that the angel described Yitzhak differently than God had described him before the Akedah; the angel said, "thy son, thine only son," omitting the additional phrase God had used, "thy son... thine only son... whom thou lovest." This raises questions about Avraham's feelings toward his son. God's actions on Hagar's behalf after she abandoned her child to cry alone under a bush contrast with His silence toward Avraham. God apparently approved of Hagar's behavior during her trial, but not Avraham behavior during his.

2. God promised to make Hagar's son a great nation, just as he had promised to make Sarah's son a great nation.

3. Earlier God had seen Hagar, this time God helped Hagar see. According to another midrash, Hagar had seen the well the first time she was in the desert and had named it Be'er Lachai Roi, the "Wellspring of the Living One Who Sees Me." Hagar's ability to name both God and a place, suggests something-- I'm not sure what. Empowerment? Self awareness? A unique relationship with God?

The Tanakh shifts its focus from the parents to the children as the story progresses. However, we know a little more. Hagar reappeared when, according to oral tradition, after the death of his mother, Yitzhak traveled to Be'er Lachai Roi to bring Hagar back to Avraham. In the written Torah, she is thereafter known as Keturah, "tie," because she had remained faithful to Avraham during their time apart.

When hearing Hagar's story, we can't help but anticipate the Akedah, in which Avraham nearly sacrifices the child Sarah gave birth to. These two stories, read on Rosh HaShanah, delve into the complex relationships between parents and children. The question remains: Why do we read these narratives on Rosh HaShanah, the "birthday" of the world?

See the soul of the person sitting opposite you

On the second day of Rosh HaShana, we read the Akedah, the binding of Isaac.

One interpretation of this disturbing passage is that Avraham failed the test. God had always encouraged Avraham to argue with him, but after Avraham nearly killed Isaac, God never spoke to him again.

It's a reassuring position, and it's supported by Torah, but the interpretation feels insufficient. Rabbi Kohenet Jill Hammer shares words of Torah that are more substantial as well as beautiful and profound. Before the Akedah, God called Isaac, "Your son, your only son, the one you love." After the Akedah, the messenger did not repeat the third description of Isaac. Listen to her eight minute d'var Torah here: Missing Words from a Hidden God.

L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu!

Elul, a month of reflection and repentance is nearing its end. The High Holy Days begin the evening of September 12. It's fascinating that the Jewish calendar is both lunar and solar. It feels good that our holidays are in sync with Nature's cycles.

Sept 12 - 28 Elul - New Moon
Sept 13 - 29 Elul - Erev Rosh HaShana
Sept 14 - 1 Tishrei - Rosh HaShana
Sept 15 - 2 Tishrei - second day of Rosh HaShana 
Sept 16 - 3 Tishrei - Tzom Gedalia
Sept 19 - 6 Tishrei - Shabbat Shuva
Sept 21 - 8 Tishrei - Moon at first quarter
Sept 22 - 9 Tishrei - Autumn Equinox and Erev Yom Kippur
Sept 23 - 10 Tishrei - Yom Kippur
Sept 25 - 12 Tishrei - the Powwow begins sometime around sunset
Sept 26 - 13 Tishrei - Powwow and Shabbat
Sept 27 - 14 Tishrei - Powwow and Erev Sukkot
Oct 4 - 21 Tishrei - Moon at last quarter and seventh day of Sukkot
Oct 5/6 - 22/23 Tishrei - Simchat Torah 
Oct 10 - 27 Tishrei - Shabbat
Oct 12 - 29 Tishrei - New Moon

A parapet for your roof

The shul in downtown Olympia was welcoming. I struck up a conversation with a few people during dinner, very pleasant. One man, an attorney offered me a job. (Yes, seriously.)

The service was new to me, Reconstructionist. I could learn to like it. The week’s parasha was Ki Teitzei and the rabbi gave a short sermon on gun control.

One man commented intelligently but then continued to pontificate for much longer seemed appropriate to me. The rabbi asked if anyone else wanted to speak.

One woman did. “Look at me. I feel such empathy for the victims of gun violence. Aren’t I special? Guns should be illegal. Oh, poor me and the suffering I feel because of guns! Pay attention to me.” The rabbi let her go on and on and on. I couldn’t entirely control myself and eventually my forehead hit my palm.

Then, a young woman asked a good question. The rabbi promptly put an end to the discussion.

The young woman pointed out that the text says “When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it.” (Devarim 22:8) She was puzzled because the text seemed to indicate that our only motivation should be to avoid “blood guilt.” 

That does sound like a pretty shallow motivation; what about saving a life? What does “blood guilt” mean? Does it imply an ethical imperative to value life? What have chazal said about the phrase? I know that if the Land “swallows” too much blood it will become sick and vomit us out...

How can I research this and learn more?

It is very near you

Reworking of 03/09/14 post.

Too many times over the last twelve years, I have failed to heed my intuition. Each time, I followed the path of “good” sense to a bad end.

The Torah reminds us to pay attention to what our souls tell us and to value our own experiences of life and of divine guidance. Often we are afraid to do so.

And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them… The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. The LORD spoke with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire… And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain did burn with fire, that ye came near unto me, even all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; and ye said: 'Behold, the LORD our God hath shown us His glory and His greatness, and we have heard His voice out of the midst of the fire; we have seen this day that God doth speak with man, and he liveth. Now therefore why should we die? for this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? Go thou near, and hear all that the LORD our God may say; and thou shalt speak unto us all that the LORD our God may speak unto thee; and we will hear it and do it.' (Devarim 5:1-23)

Tradition teaches that each of us, even those who were not yet born and those who would convert millennia later, experienced theophany at Sinai. We heard god’s voice and we lived. Yet we begged not to hear god’s voice again! We asked Moses to be our intermediary. We relinquished our relationship with the divine and our own power.

We should not rely on someone else’s interpretation of his or her experience of life or of the divine. We should embrace our own experience, our own intuition.

Eve relied on Adam’s interpretation of god’s instructions. What if she had sought to hear god’s voice? What if she had listened to her own intuition? How different would her response to the serpent have been?

Adam also drew back from god. By failing to tell god honestly what he had done, he failed to embrace his relationship with god.

We’re not going to get it right when we listen to someone else as Eve did, or when we fail to treat our god as real, as a partner who is in relationship with us, as Adam did. We must not flee; we must embrace our experience of the divine.

Torah shows us that each of us should listen to god’s words, to our soul's speech. Moses wasn’t always a reliable intermediary. When god instructed Moses to talk to the people, he ran down the mountain and spoke to only the men, so an essential part of god’s instruction was lost in “translation.”

And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Go unto the people, and sanctify them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments, and be ready against the third day; for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai… And Moses said: 'Be ready against the third day; come not near a woman.' (Sh’mot 19:10-15) 


God wanted all of us to purify ourselves. Moses heard instructions directed at the males. (If god had been speaking of cooties, it was the women who should have been addressed since, according to the ritual purity laws, men were a source of ritual impurity far more often than women.) Someone else’s interpretation can be wrong. We must try to listen for ourselves. We may misunderstand (as Moses did), but we may get it right. If we do misunderstand it may, at least, be in a way that helps us gain understanding in the long run.

The god of Torah does not expect us to believe without evidence; we are expected to believe only what we have experienced. (Yirimyahu 7:9, Dvarim 11:28) And we should respond by inviting and embracing the experience—even if it means changing our minds, throwing out the rules of conventional reality, or modifying our understanding of a promise we have made. If the promise was to god… god will already understand.

Pay attention, because your intuition can guide you to do what is correct for you at this particular moment. Rational thought is a poor guide and so are rules. You must “act for the soul regardless of what this world demands.” (Mallika Sarabhai)

*   *   *   *

It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say: 'Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we may do it?' It is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it. Dvarim 30:14

Parashat Eikev

https://en.wikipedia.org

Following are some very disjointed thoughts on Parashat Eikev (Deut 7:12 – Deut 11:25) because someday I am going to learn how to read Torah even if I no longer have a community in which to study.

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I picked the image for this post because it's raining today, and wet footprints are everywhere! Conveniently, the image may also reflect the name of the parasha.

According to the commentary I'm reading, Rashi connected the word Eikev, “as a consequence of,” to a similar word that means "heel." He suggested that we are not to trample the commandments. (I wonder if the noun “heel” shares a root with a Hebrew verb “to follow.” The next word in the text is from the root “to listen,” but perhaps the two words together reflect our promise at Sinai that we would do and then hear.)

Eikev, like much of Sefer Vayikra (Deuteronomy), contains passages that feel problematic.

The writers of Vaykira were an eclectic group of people with a new vision, which included a vehement opposition to idolatry and a desire to make the Jerusalem Temple the only sanctuary.  Vaykira was “discovered” (i.e., written) during the 7th century BCE during the reign of King Josiah when those cranky, but often inspiring, prophets were coming to the fore. (Jill Hammer offers a contemporary midrash in her book, Sisters at Sinai, that describes the priests taking the text to the prophetess Hulda for confirmation of its authenticity.)

The commands in Vayikra were not “given” just prior to the supposed conquest. Its authors lived six centuries later than the apparent date of the text. Displeased with the culture around them, they posited that if their ancestors hadn’t been influenced by the Canaanites, then Israel's “flirtations with idolatry and the resultant punishments” would not have occurred. So they put orders in the mouth of Moses that archaeology shows were never carried out, but which we must contemplate and struggle with today.

In Eikev, the problematic nature of god's commands to the people "before" entering the Land, has been compared to "a handbook for the Taliban." Kill the infidels and destroy all beauty.

Explanations (i.e., excuses) seem inadequate. It hardly matters to me that other Near Eastern nations, the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Germanic tribes had “the custom to dedicate an enemy to the deity, or to ban him, or after a victory to annihilate him."

I’m thankful that the commands were never carried out; it didn’t happen that way, but what are we to make of this text that we revere? (Richard Dawkins cites a disturbing phenomenon regarding these commandments. When text was altered to seemingly describe a situation in China, Israeli school children condemned it. When shown the original text, other Israeli school children made excuses to support it. He does not clarify whether the children were secular or dati, but still...)

Archaeological finds reveal that Canaanites and Hebrews lived together and there is no evidence of warfare between them. Statues of the goddess Asherah have been found in Jewish and Canaanite homes and I’ve heard (but not confirmed) that Jericho's walls are of a much later date than the supposed conquest. In addition, well-known rabbi, David Wolpe, is a vocal proponent of the idea there may have been no escape from Egypt and no invasion of Canaan, and that the Israelites and Canaanites had lived side by side for centuries. (We may never know, even if the “port towns of Pithom and Ramses,” now under water, are found and excavated.)

I’m frustrated by my lack of books and knowledge. What have rabbis said about the “Taliban-like” commandments found in Sefer Vayikra? I am certain there are beautiful commentaries and drashot (drashim?) on other passages in Vayikra, but I don’t know what they are.

I would also like to read traditional and modern commentaries on tests and “chastisements of love” in the Torah. At least one medieval (?) commentator argued that Avraham failed his test—god did not speak with him again after the Akedah (the near sacrifice of Yitzchak).

The promises of blessings for obedience in Eikev are problematic for modern Jews—even traditional Jews whisper this portion of the Birkat HaMazon: “I was young and I’ve also grown old, but I’ve never seen a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread.” We just can’t reconcile the reality of our experience with promises such as these.

Rabbi Greenberg, whose descriptions of the holidays in The Jewish Way are pious, writes very differently of Yom HaShoah: during the Holocaust, god withdrew from the world, even further than in the time of Esther and Mordechai. In that chapter, he asserts that God broke the covenant with us and we are no longer bound by it unless we choose to be.

A phrase that has become a common saying may not mean what we think it means. When we use the expression, “by bread alone,” we are emphasizing that we have spiritual needs in addition to material needs. In the context of this parasha, it seems to mean that god can make anything nourishing, by extension, implying humanity’s powerlessness. Blessings are god’s to bestow in any way he chooses and only complete obedience to god can prevent curses.

Perhaps, if this parasha were named after the third word, tishme’un, “you will listen,” the focus would be more on listening and less on obeying, hearing the cries of others’ suffering, hearing god’s voice today instead of reading commandments that are not literally be what god expects of us—which I think Jews have rarely done; we have, I think, generally avoided fundamentalist obedience. Rabbi Berg always said difficult passages can yield the choicest fruit, if we struggle with them.

זכרונו לברכה

I am very sad to learn of the passing of W. Gunther Plaut.

The Plaut Torah Commentary and the people I studied with every Shabbat morning were my dear companions and teachers for seven years.

During this last bout of insomnia, I have been spending the middle of the night reading the Plaut's Haftarah Commentary. (I'm a little amazed that I never read it before now.)

May Rabbi Plaut's memory be a blessing.