The Wells We Dig (portion Toldot)

Issac dug anew the wells which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death; and he gave them the same names that his father had given them.

In many ways, this line—from our weekly Torah portion, Toldot—captures the essence of Isaac’s character.  Sandwiched between Abraham, the first Jew, and Jacob, the father of Israel’s tribes, Isaac is primarily a transitional figure.  He is, at heart, a conservator: he guards his revolutionary father’s legacy, which will later be fleshed out and re-defined by his son.  Isaac reminds us that it is often enough to re-dig old wells of knowledge and truth, and preserve their traditions.

But although Isaac is the most passive of the patriarchs, our parashah notes that he does, in fact, go on to dig and name three of his own wells.  He calls the first Eshek—Contention.  The second he names Sitnah—Deep Fear.  Last, but not least, he unearths the well that he calls Rehovot—Expansive.  And then, upon finishing this sacred work, he hears the voice of the Holy One issuing forth words of comfort: “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”

Isaac’s journey echoes our own.  Our challenge is to move away from strife and fear, towards openness.  We do this largely by digging deeply within ourselves, by mustering the faith and courage to confront that which divides and frightens us.  Only when we acknowledge the dark, narrow, hostile impulses that well up inside of us can we pass through them to a place of freedom and expansiveness.

As Rabbi Yael Levy writes:

Yitzhak stands at places of transition,

            Guarding the passage, showing the way.

He says to himself and to us:

Dig deeply. 

Don't be misled by struggle and contention.

Don't be stopped by fear.

This is never all there is.

Keep searching. Keep looking. Keep returning.

There is a way into the expanse

And the journey is continuous.

We rise.  We fall.  We rise again.

We gain perspective and lose it.

We are besieged by doubt and fear.

And we are released into the expanse of possibility

And the journey is continuous.

Reach deeply, Yitzhak calls,

And open to the presence of the Mystery.

For in every moment, the Holy One calls,

Do not be afraid. Wherever you are, with you, I am.

May our journeys this week and beyond move us from fear to faith, from narrowness to expansive freedom and possibility.

Pursuing Peace (Chayei Sarah)

Sometimes, peace emerges out of difficult circumstances.

At the end of this week’s portion, Chayei Sarah, Abraham dies.  In the wake of that misfortune, there is one bright note: after decades of enmity, the patriarch’s two sons, Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury and mourn for their father.  Their reunion is a source of hope.  Isaac and Ishmael remind us that it is possible to heal long-festering wounds and restore badly sundered relationships.  As Rabbi Harold Kushner considers: “Can this not be a model for the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac, contemporary Arabs and Israeli Jews, to find grounds for forgiveness and reconciliation?”

I have been thinking about this passage, and its promise, as we approach what will, by most accounts, be a critical and contentious Election Day.  Isaac and Ishmael seem more relevant than ever, as the two presidential candidates have battled fiercely over policy toward the Middle East in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular.  Both Governor Romney and President Obama claim to be Israel’s friend, and I believe that they are both sincere in their assertions.  Yet they may differ on what, exactly, it means to be a friend.

Some American Jews—and Israelis—believe that friendship essentially means fealty—that to be a friend is to support whatever policy the Israeli government feels is best.  By this view, any American leader who takes issue with Bibi Netanyahu on anything of substance is guilty of “throwing Israel under the bus.”

I disagree.  I believe that Israel needs friends who clearly and unequivocally have her back—but who are not sycophants.  A friend is someone we can trust—and who, therefore, can gently advise us when we are going astray.  Friends are those who want us to be the very best that we can be, who understand that there are times that call for tough love.  In short, a true friend exemplifies the relationship that Torah describes between loving partners: ezer k’negdo, a helper who stands opposite us, who will push us to do difficult things—like making peace—when it is in our benefit to do so.

I believe that Israel needs America to elect a president who is also a friend in just this manner.  It behooves all parties for our president to be a peace-maker who commands the respect of both Israelis and Palestinians, who has the trust and respect to bring both sides to the table.  We need a president who believes in the critical need to achieve a two-state solution before it is too late, so that Israel can remain both a democracy and a Jewish state.  

If Isaac and Ishmael can make peace, so can their descendants.  But it will take a US president with the vision, determination—and yes, the tough love—to make this happen.  I will leave it to each of you to decide who best meets that description when you go to the voting both this week.  

Between Speech and Silence (Portion Vayera)

There is—as Ecclesiastes teaches— a time to be silent and a time to speak.  Our challenge is to figure out which is the right response in any given situation.

Lately, I have been pondering the nature of silence.  On Sunday, I will leave for my annual five day retreat at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico.  This is a place of intense quiet and stillness.  Words are few and far between.  The daily monastic liturgy of the hours is filled with intense silences, and the red rock cliffs that surround the abbey inspire a kind of hushed awe.  No one speaks after 7pm each night, and the communal meals are eaten in complete silence. 

When I am there, I am often struck by how much I love this stillness.  I am, after all, a rabbi, the representative of a tradition that places a premium on words.  In Genesis, God creates the world with language, and we, too, shape our worlds with the words that we speak. 

And speak we must.  As the AIDS activists in the 1980s reminded us, in the face of oppression, silence = death.  Secrecy is the breeding ground of complicity and evil.  As Louis Brandeis noted, sunlight—speech—is the best disinfectant.  We use language to create community, fight persecution, cement relationships, and establish our place in the world.

So when do we keep silence and when do we speak?  This question lies at the heart of our Torah portion for this week, Vayera.  It is filled with silences, both sacred and disquieting.  When Sarah hears that she will bear a child at ninety, she laughs inwardly—silently.   Lot’s wife, upon looking back at the destruction of her home in Sodom, is turned into an eternally silent pillar of salt.  Ishmael and Hagar are banished to the harsh, mute wilderness.  And most notably of all, Abraham binds Isaac to the altar and raises a slaughtering knife to his throat—and neither father nor son utters a word.  The same patriarch who argues fiercely with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah responds with stunning silence when God commands him to offer up his own child.

Torah and life are both full of complexity and paradox.  Silence does indeed equal death—but it also equals life.  It is both a primary cause of injustice and a source of strength and liberation.  Silence is the beginning of wisdom and the font of ignorance, the ladder to heaven and the highway to hell. 

May our times, of speech and of silence, be properly aligned, and may we gain insights into this delicate and difficult dance in the week ahead.

You Must Go (Portion Lech L'chah)

One of my favorite musicians, John Hiatt, conjures the spirit of this week’s Torah portion in his song, “You Must Go”:

When that howling wind

Comes to carry you again

Just like your next of kin

You must go

To a far away place

Where you don’t recognize one face

Don’t unpack your old suitcase

Cause you must go

You must go and you must ramble

Through every briar and bramble

Till your life is in a shambles

Maybe then you will know

You were born to blunder

Born to wander, born to wonder

Even when you’re six feet under

There’s a place

You must go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hQuxmBVtMc

“You must go. . .”  This is a good translation of the opening line of this week’s portion, Lech L’chah.    The Eternal calls Abraham and tells him, “You must go. . . from your homeland, your birthplace, your kin. . . and head out into the unknown, to the place that I will show you.”

Abraham heeds the command and goes forth, as does his wife Sarah.  This demonstrates remarkable courage.  Abraham leaves behind so much that he knows and loves: family and friends, familiar language and culture, plans and expectations for his future.  His ability to muster the faith to leave on the basis of a mysterious divine call is extraordinary.  And I find Sarah’s faith greater still, for she makes all of the same sacrifices as her husband—without having heard the call directly herself.

Yet Abraham and Sarah do not set out without any resources.  As the text tells us, they brought with them “ the souls that they had acquired in Haran.”  As Rabbi Yael Levy interprets this: Torah here reminds us that we don’t have to let go of everything in order to become more of ourselves.  We can lift up where we have been, we can call forth love, we can hold the resources we have gathered.  These practices can help us step forward into the paths of uncertainty.

We all have our “Abraham/Sarah moments.”  With almost every major challenge that we confront, whether planned (new job or school, relationship, move, having a child) or unplanned (illness, relationship, having a child), we essentially journey into the unknown.  We make our choices, but when we do, we are largely in the dark, without a clear understanding of what we are really getting ourselves into.  This is frightening for us, as it was for Abraham and Sarah.

But we do not journey alone.  As Rabbi Levy concludes:  The Mystery of the Universe is by our side, has our back and will be with us through the challenges and into the blessings.  The Mystery of the Universe will help us find our way again and again.

Closing (and Beginning) the Circle

Sometimes, you are closer to your destination than you might think.

In his wonderful book about the Days of Awe, This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew recalls a lesson that he learned from the great Orthodox Rabbi Joseph Solovetchik.  He notes: “If you are moving along the circumference of a circle, it might seem at first as if the starting point is getting farther and farther away, but actually it is getting closer and closer.  The calendar year is such a circle.  On Rosh Hashanah, a new year begins, and every day is one day farther from the starting point; but every day is also a return, a drawing closer to the completion of the cycle.”

If one thinks of our fall holy day season as a kind of marathon, then Simchat Torah represents the finish line—and it is within sight.  After the preparation of the month of Elul, the introspection of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the harvest festival of Sukkot, we at last arrive at a time of pure and unabashed joy.  We exhale a collective sigh of relief: we have been written and sealed in the Book of Life, the harvest is secure—and now, at last, we can celebrate.

We dance, we sing, we stomp and swirl and carry flags and Torah scrolls.   And amidst all this revelry, we welcome our newest students with a ceremony of consecration.  It is a raucous occasion; we’ve paid our dues and now it is time to party.  In the words of Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, “Simchat Torah celebrates a Torah of pure joy, a Torah without restrictions or sense of burden. . . It is a magical moment when all that exists are God and Torah and ourselves.  We throw ourselves into endless circles of dancing and become time lost.”

The circle is, indeed, the central image of the festival.  The Torah scroll circles back on itself, as we conclude the end of Deuteronmy and begin again with the Creation.

Our circle dances echo that circle of the text itself—and the circles that mark the journeys of our individual and communal lives.

Most marathons follow a circuit route: the finish and the starting lines are the same.  So, too, in so much of life: we end up, essentially, back where we began. 

But what matters is what we see and do along the way—the twenty six miles of the marathon, or whatever the years allotted to us.  “In the beginning” God creates the world.  At Torah’s end, Moses dies.  In between, in both the words and the spaces, life is lived.  And then God creates the world anew.  Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it.

Chag sameach—a joyous end of Sukkot and Simchat Torah to all.