Plant Your Flag at the Peak / Parshat Kedoshim 2016-5776

When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mt. Everest in 1953, they

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

achieved a feat never before accomplished by human beings. The very image of a mountain suggests both aspiration and challenge. We have reached the apex of the Torah.

            Imagine the Torah—all five books—as Mount Sinai. Genesis ascends from the ground on one side, ceding turf to Exodus, which occupies the slopes above it. Deuteronomy rises from the ground on the other side, and Numbers continues the upward climb. Leviticus occupies the uppermost slopes, and at the very top is Parshat Kedoshim—the peak, the pinnacle, the apogee.

וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר.  דַּבֵּר אֶל-כָּל-עֲדַת בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ:  כִּי קָדוֹשׁ, אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.

Adonai spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: ‘You shall be holy, for I, Adonai your God, am holy.’” (Leviticus 19:1-2)

Parshat Kedoshim articulates the paramount goal of Torah: to mold us into a holy people for whom life is both a gift and a charge. Unlike the summit of Mt. Everest, this is a mountain we can all scale and each of us can plant a flag on the peak. Parshat Kedoshim teaches us that we do not live by ourselves or for ourselves, alone, but rather should strive to make the welfare of others a high priority. That is why we find in this parashah, in particular, laws designed to protect the poor, create a civil and safe society for all, insure open and straight-forward business and social dealings and an honest and upright judiciary, and set standards for moral interpersonal relationships.

            Given this Torah portion’s preeminence, isn’t it curious that the first three mitzvot—articulated succinctly and without elaboration—concern honoring one’s parents, keeping shabbat, and refraining from idolatry? Here they are:

אִישׁ אִמּוֹ וְאָבִיו תִּירָאוּ, וְאֶת-שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ:  אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.  ד אַל-תִּפְנוּ, אֶל-הָאֱלִילִם, וֵאלֹהֵי מַסֵּכָה, לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ לָכֶם:  אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.

You shall each revere your mother and your father, and keep My sabbaths; I, Adonai, am your God. Do not turn to idols or make molten gods for yourselves: I, Adonai, am your God. (Leviticus 19:3-4)

            Why are these three the headliners? To answer that question, let’s consider, for a moment, the meaning of holiness. The Maggid of Mezeritch, Dov Baer Friedman (d. 1772), understood holiness to be life itself. He quotes midrash Tanna de-bei Eliyahu Zuta which says that holiness means, “There will be no death in your midst.” This is similar to what King David said, “I shall not die but live; I will proclaim the deeds of Adonai” (Psalm 118:17). In Or Torah, the Maggid tells us:

The Zohar teaches that any prayer or word of Torah that does not come forth from the depth of the heart with reverence and love does not fly upward.^[1] Anyone who brings forth a word of Torah or prayer, heaven forbid, without love and reverence, meaning pure thought and an understanding heart, is called “dead,” because such a person has no place in Life, the name Yah, [which refers to the sefirot] Chochmah (Wisdom) and Binah (Insight),^[2] as is known. The dead will not praise God (Psalm 115:17).

Holiness, the Maggid is telling us, is the quintessence of life. But “holy” is less an adjective describing a state of being (as we are, perhaps, accustomed to thinking of the term) than it is a way of being in the world and the attributes though which one relates to everything and everybody in the world: Holiness is a deep and abiding attachment to the Source of Life—to God whose Presence and Reality fills and contains the universe—which is forged by living a life of reverence and love. That’s a pretty heady idea for most of us to grasp and keep in mind, day by day, or even hour by hour. And so the Maggid helps us by identifying the middot (character attributes) of reverence and love that help us make the connection and hold onto holiness in our day to day lives. By practicing reverence and love—which is to say, treating everything and everyone with respect and appreciation—our prayers, our thoughts, our words, and our Torah all rise to the level of Chochmah and Binah, the sefirot (emanations) that come directly from God.

            Honoring one’s parents, keeping shabbat, and refraining from idolatry provide the living framework for nurturing these attributes in ourselves. Let’s consider each, in turn, beginning with honoring one’s parents.

Our Sages taught: there are three partners in the creation of a human being: the Holy One Blessed be God, the father, and the mother. When a person honors his father and mother, the Holy Blessed One says, “I ascribe merit to them as though I had dwelled among them and they had honored Me.”  (BT Kiddushin 30b^[3])

            The Rabbis understood that parents are our first model for trying to conceive God. Even more, honoring one’s parents is both the most obvious mitzvah and, as the Rabbis note, also the chamur she-b’chamurot—the hardest of the hard. A child naturally (and properly) strives for independence, but that often clashes with hakarat ha-tov, the gratitude one owes one’s parents. Parents often want closeness and connection on their schedule, which might not synch with a child’s growth pattern and needs, or stage of life. The relationship between a child and parent involves emotional intimacy and constancy in an ever-changing relationship—children and parents both grow, mature, and change in different ways. But if we can succeed in honoring our parents despite the inherent challenges to our self-image, self-esteem, personal goals, and independence, we are well on the way to cultivating reverence and love—indeed we need to have cultivated the middot of reverence and love to succeed in fulfilling this mitzvah. Additionally, the Rabbis understood that the family is the basic unit of society. Honoring one’s parents is the glue that holds the family together, just as families are the glue that holds a society together.

            Shabbat is a gift—a day off! Shabbat is a day of rest on which to enjoy life, visit with family and friends, eat and pray and study and make love. Yet keeping shabbat entails preparation and work—a commitment of time and resources. Ironically, it isn’t easy to carve out shabbat and make it joyous and meaningful. But it grounds us in community so that our lives are intertwined with others. If family is the first social unit in which we learn to function with reverence and love, community (friends and beyond) is the next social unit in which we make our reverence and love manifest to others.

            The prohibition against idolatry caps the first three mitzvot of Kedoshim, reminding us that everything we do in life is mediated by our priorities, whether or not we are conscious of that fact. All our deeds—and especially our relationships—can be about holiness, or about idolatry depending upon the goals that motivate them. When we raise our thinking to a conscious level and approach all that we do through the middot of reverence and love, the result cannot be idolatry; it must be holiness.

            Taken together, the first three mitzvot of Kedoshim are a primer in living a life of holiness. Easier or harder than scaling Mt. Everest? But it’s not Everest we need to climb—it’s Mount Sinai. And these days between Pesach and Shavuot are a great time to take stock in ourselves, our mountaineering equipment, and our technique. The view from Sinai is great—the possibility to create holiness 360 degrees around.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

Panorama taken from the peak of "Mt. Sinai"

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^[1] He is actually quoting Tikkunei Zohar t. 10, 25b here.

^[2] The two highest divine emanations coming from Keter, the source of emanations.

^[3] Another version is found in BT Niddah 31a.

Jewish Counterculturalism / Acharei Mot 2016-5776

Long before the Beat Generation boasted its countercultural credentials, there were 17th century Romanticists and 18th century Bohemians. Today both are considered countercultural phenomena, even if terming Romanticists and Bohemians counterculturists is anachronistic. The term came into common parlance when Theodore Roszak published The Making of  Counter Culture in 1969, the heyday of hippies, the civil rights movement, opposition to the war in Vietnam, and a tidal wave of changes in sexual and social mores. The countercultural movement of the 60s had the patina of universal religion, complete with moral values (e.g., anti-materialistic, pacifistic), social values (e.g., communal, egalitarian), and spiritual values (e.g., introspective, mystical).

Judaism has always been imbued by a countercultural streak. Parshat Acharei Mot provides the template:

 וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר. דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם:  אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם. כְּמַעֲשֵׂה אֶרֶץ-מִצְרַיִם אֲשֶׁר יְשַׁבְתֶּם-בָּהּ, לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ; וּכְמַעֲשֵׂה אֶרֶץ-כְּנַעַן אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי מֵבִיא אֶתְכֶם שָׁמָּה, לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ, וּבְחֻקֹּתֵיהֶם, לֹא תֵלֵכוּ. אֶת-מִשְׁפָּטַי תַּעֲשׂוּ וְאֶת-חֻקֹּתַי תִּשְׁמְרוּ, לָלֶכֶת בָּהֶם:  אֲנִי, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם

Adonai spoke to Moses: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: “I am Adonai your God. You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws. My rules alone shall you observe, and faithfully follow My laws: I am Adonai your God. (Leviticus 18:1–4)

In four tightly constructed verses, Torah sets forth a philosophy: Don’t do what you’ve seen in the past in the land of Egypt, nor what you will see in the future in the land of Canaan. Don’t follow their laws; follow only My laws. Sounds like a call for Jewish separatism, doesn’t it? And some have, indeed, read it this way.

The icon for this philosophy might be Abraham as viewed through the lens of the Rabbis. A classic midrash imagines Abraham not only living in a culture organized around idolatry, but as the son of a professional idol-maker, Terach. Once, when Terach was away and Abraham was minding the shop:

…a woman came with a plateful of meal and requested of him, "Take this and offer it to them." So [Abraham] took a stick, broke them (the idols), and put the stick in the hand of the largest. When his father returned he demanded, "What have you done to them?" "I cannot conceal it from you," he rejoined. "A woman came with a plateful of fine meal and requested me to offer it to them. One claimed, 'I must eat first,' while another claimed, 'I must eat first.' Thereupon the largest arose, took the stick and broke them all." "Why do you make sport of me," [Terach] cried out, "have they then any knowledge?" "Should not your ears listen to what your mouth is saying," [Abraham] retorted. (Genesis Rabbah 38:13 and Tanna de-bei Eliyahu)

The Sages portray Abraham as a man who discovers God on his own. When God subsequently calls him, he is more than prepared to leave Haran behind, having already rejected the core of its culture in his heart. Is Abraham the world’s first counterculturalist, rejecting the ways, values, and norms of the society in which he grew up?

The problem is: It’s a fine line between “counterculturalist,” “rejectionist,” and “isolationist.” Too easy to leap-frog from one to the other. “Counterculturalist” is a tempting label for those who would hold up Abraham as a model for Jewish purity and isolationism, justifying throwing up walls and holding up banners reading: “Don’t be polluted by their ways!” “Avoid cultural entanglement!” “Remain pure!” Indeed we see not only a variety of Jewish and other extremists doing their best to live in silos of isolation lest “the heathen” defile them, but growing cracks in our society, as people separate along religious and cultural lines, vilifying and demonizing “others”—be they adherents to another religion, or immigrants, or people with differing political perspectives.

Yet not only are the stories about Abraham myths^[1] that are open to multiple interpretations and applications, the biblical and rabbinic stories of Abraham do not portray Abraham living in isolation. God’s call to Abraham is to leave Haran, yes, but also to go out into the world and live among others. Abraham encounters Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Amorites, Philistines, and Egyptians; he makes a covenant with King Abimelech of Gerar, receives the blessing of King Melchizedek of Salem, and buys a burial cave from the Hittites among whom he lives; he negotiates with God on behalf of the innocent in Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham’s covenant with God requires him to retain his identity and commitments to God, but not live separate and apart from the world.

Over the past 30 centuries, we Jews have lived in virtually every land on the globe and have evolved our traditions, practices, values, and understanding of the world through interaction with the wide variety of peoples and cultures among whom we’ve lived. We have learned from others and borrowed ideas from them. And they from us. To most of us, this is obvious. At the same time, we remain a vibrant, distinctive, contributing member of the human family of nations by remaining committed to the Jewish people and the Jewish enterprise, which in this day crucially includes Zionism and the revitalization of our sacred texts.

The cracks we see in the pavement of our society—fault lines between people who prefer to live in whatever isolation they can manage with others who are “like them”—are sadly mirrored in our own communities. The divide between isolationist ultra-Orthodox Haredi groups and the rest of the Jewish world is growing into a gaping, unbridgeable chasm of values, priorities, practices, and belief. One wonders if we’re still talking about the same religious covenant. And even within the liberal, open Jewish world, we must honestly face our own insularity, which we have barely come to acknowledge. This past week in New York City, 150 Jews of color gathered to discuss problems too long ignored in our communities, among them racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism. Our institutions are not yet safe places for Jews of color; they are rarely as “warm an welcoming” as we would like to think. (“Warm and welcoming” is still more a mantra than a reality.) The meeting was organized by JMN (Jewish Multiracial Network) and JFREJ (Jews for Racial & Economic Justice), and co-sponsored by Bend the Arc.

Kalycia Trishana Watson was born in Jamaica and grew up in a Reform congregation in Illinois. “It is exhausting to always feel like you are ‘other’,” she told a reporter for The Jewish Week. Whether it is far more intense questioning than other Birthright participants experience from El Al security officials, or being asked if she is “really Jewish” by speed-dating partners, “I’m always being asked to ‘prove’ my Judaism.”

Erika Davis, who blogs for JMN, writes:

For me, the idea of juggling multiple identities, was, and continues to be a struggle. My skin color always signals that I’m different. That difference often inspires questions like “How are you Jewish?”, “Was I adopted?”, “Have I met the other Jew of Color in the synagogue?” Many times I let these questions slide off my back, but other times I cannot, and am suddenly thrust into the role of educator. Add to that my lesbian identity, and it seemed that new Jewish spaces were often places not for me to reconnect to my faith and be swept away by familiar niggunim, but a place where I was on edge and defensive.

I’ll be honest. It has kept me away from synagogues in my new home town. Rather than deal with the stares due to being the black Jew compounded by more questions and inquiry due to also being the lesbian Jew, I’ve avoided going all together…

It is said that context is everything. In the case of the verses from Acharei Mot quoted above, this is especially true. The injunction warning to the Israelites not to abandon their covenant and its ways is a prelude to the gillui arayot, Leviticus’ long list of sexual prohibitions against incest, adultery, and other relationships deemed off-limits. The verses are not a global statement, but rather a very specific expression of concern about what were deemed, in its historical context, abhorrent sexual practices.

There seems to be something in our human make-up that leads us to strongly identify with our “tribe” and ascribe negative attributes and motives to outsiders.  The “Male Warrior Hypothesis,” drawing on findings in the fields of evolutionary psychology, social psychology, biology, and anthropology, posits that the long history of intergroup conflict between human tribal groups exerted an evolutionary pressure on human psychology that are felt today as intergroup prejudice and aggression, including racism, xenophobia, and classism. The abstract of Melissa M. McDonald, Carlos David Navarrete, and Mark van Vugt’s seminal article on the “Male Warrior Hypothesis” summarizes:

The social science literature contains numerous examples of human tribalism and parochialism—the tendency to categorize individuals on the basis of their group membership, and treat ingroup members benevolently and outgroup members malevolently. We hypothesize that this tribal inclination is an adaptive response to the threat of coalitional aggression and intergroup conflict perpetrated by ‘warrior males’ in both ancestral and modern human environments…^[2]

            We do not have to continue to replicate the behavior of our ancestors in this regard, viewing others with suspicion and disdain.

            In every generation and age, we have observed the ways and value systems of those among whom we live, absorbing what is  good and rejecting what is not. Unfortunately, our filters are not ideal, and we have sometimes absorbed chaff and ignored fine wheat. We need to fine tune those filters, take in more of the good wheat, and honestly identify and divest ourselves of the chaff.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

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^[1] I use “myth” in this sense: an ostensibly (but not actually) historical account of events that embodies and expresses part of the worldview of a people and explains or illustrates its deepest beliefs, values, and prized practices.

^[2] “Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis,” (January 23, 2012), http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1589/670. The theory, which describes tribal behavior, suggests that for women, intergroup proximity increases the risk for sexual assault by men of the “outgroup,” creating thereby selection pressure for women to maintain a bias against men from the outgroup.