The More We Get Together, the Happier We'll Be (Portion Vayakhel)

In recent weeks, I have been privileged to work with an extraordinary group of activists (including some wonderful fellow clergy and CABI members Jeannette Bowman and Sydney Fidler) pressing our legislature to finally add four words—“sexual orientation” and “gender identity”—that would extend basic human rights protections to the LGBT community.  Recently, our leader, the peerless activist and former Senator Nicole LeFavour, asked me to write a statement about why I am participating in this effort.  I penned a brief response, which I offer below.  Note that this week’s Torah portion is called Vayakhel, which means “And you shall assemble.” Our tradition has long recognized that we need sacred community--kehillah kedoshah--to create justice and peace.  Both the name of the parsha and my experience with “Add the Words” serve as powerful reminders of the holy labor that can only be done when we work in concert.  Or, as the old song goes, "The more we get together, the happier we'll be."

My statement for Nicole:

One of my heroes, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, marched with Martin Luther King in Selma.  Sometime later, when an interviewer asked him about the experience, Rabbi Heschel responded: “I felt my feet were praying.”

I have always taken Rabbi Heschel’s words to heart.  Why have I spent time demonstrating at the Statehouse and even getting arrested?  Because I believe that my prayers in synagogue would be empty and even hypocritical if they were not accompanied by those of my feet participating in this struggle for equality for my LGBT brothers and sisters. 

Another hero of mine, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel has said: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

I am inspired by the Idahoans of all faiths and of none, of all sexual orientations and gender identities, who are working so hard to “Add the 4 Words.”  It is an honor to have my feet marching, standing—praying—together with theirs.

And here's a great soundtrack for the work, from Dan Nichols:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B4WHXTvjcs

Against Fundamentalism (Portion Ki Tissa)

The tablets [of the Law] were inscribed on both sides, front and back. The tablets were the work of God; the writing was the writing of God, engraved on the tablets.

                        (Exodus 32:15-16)

I recently saw a car bearing a bumper sticker that decreed: “God said it.  I believe it.  That settles it.” 

Thankfully, our tradition does not think of Torah in this way. 

As this week’s portion, Ki Tissa, describes the tablets that Moses carries down from Mount Sinai, it goes out of its way to note that they were inscribed on both sides, front and back.  While one could take this literally, most of our commentators prefer to read this metaphorically.  The eighteenth century Chasidic commentary, Tiferet Uziel (by Rabbi Uziel Meizels, a student of the Baal Shem Tov) notes: “There are reasons to interpret a passage in Scripture to say ‘Pure!’ and reasons to interpret the same passage to say ‘Impure!’ and many similar cases.  This is the writing ‘on both sides.’  One person’s view may differ from a friend’s as widely as possible but ‘both are the words of the living God.’”

Both sides—directly opposing views and interpretations!—are the words of the living God!  This is the theology at the heart of Judaism.  Our tradition stridently rejects the notion of “God said it.  I believe it.  That settles it.”  For us, serious Jewish commitment and love of Torah do not entail fundamentalism.  Indeed, the roots of this notion that “both are the words of the living God” point to an imperative to respect and listen seriously to views other than our own.  The phrase goes back to the ancient Talmudic debate between Hillel and Shammai, who famously disagreed about almost everything.  The Talmud notes that in virtually every case, we follow the path of Hillel.  As Tractate Eruvin 13b famously explains: “A heavenly voice declared: ‘The words of both schools are the words of the living God, but the law follows the rulings of the school of Hillel.’”  And why does the school of Hillel win this dispute?  The text answers: “The disciples of Hillel were gentle and modest, and studied both their own opinions and the opinions of the other school, and humbly mentioned the words of the other school before their own.”

In other words, the best and truest faith is that which denies the arrogance of certainty and acknowledges the importance of understanding views other than our own. 

Our Torah is written in a way—“on both sides”—that invites and encourages loving debate and respectful differences of opinion.

Thank God.

Or, as my bumper sticker might read: “God said it.  Let’s discuss and debate it—and so learn from it, and from one another.”  (I may need a bigger bumper. . . )

Raising Light (Portion Terumah)

Our Jewish tradition calls us to raise up both our world and our selves by casting light into dark places.

This week’s Torah portion begins with God’s command to Moses and the Israelites: “Bring me an offering—let every person whose heart moves them make an offering to me.”  The Hebrew word for “offering”—terumah—which gives the portion its name, literally means “uplifting.”  Thus the interpretation of this verse by the Hasidic commentary No’am Elimelech: “Strive to enjoy the light of My divine presence in your life. . . This verse tells you to draw the Blessed Creator to you and rejoice in the Divine Presence.”

This sacred calling can push us into difficult places, both within and without.  For instance, the Talmudic sages once debated whether or not Jews should be permitted to attend the Roman gladiatorial games, which were brutally violent and rife with gratuitous carnage.  Rabbi Meir understandably forbid it, arguing that one who goes to the stadium to watch was complicit in the bloodshed.  But Rabbi Natan argued that Jews could attend—in order to cry out for mercy and potentially save someone.

Rabbi Natan believed it a mistake to pretend that we could above the fray.  For him, our challenge is to step down into the darkness and add to the light that might lift it away.  He asks us to engage in the world, with all of its ugliness, for we cannot possibly help to heal it from a pure but aloof distance.

So, too, with the dark places of our own souls.  Rather than pretending they do not exist, we should endeavor to lighten and lift them up.  When we find ourselves sinking into the blackness, we should strive to pull ourselves up and, when need be, reach out to those willing and able to throw us a lifeline when we cannot raise ourselves.  And when we emerge back into the light, we have a duty to pay it forward and offer our own lifelines to help raise those needing our love and care and support.

The Psalmist declares: “Ivdu et Ha-Shem b’simchah—serve God with joy.”  May we be givers and receivers of light and uplift toward this end in the coming week .

For a great contemporary Jewish song on the topic:

https://myspace.com/dannicholsandeighteen/music/song/get-up-74139716-81804888

Blink (Portion Mishpatim)

In the introduction to his book, Blink, writer Malcolm Gladwell notes: “We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it...We believe that we are always better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible in deliberation. But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world. The first task of Blink is to convince you of a simple fact: decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.” 

The Torah certainly agrees with Gladwell.  In this week’s portion, Mishpatim, the Israelites accept the yoke of the Torah’s teachings at Mount Sinai—well before reading the fine print of what they are committing themselves to practice.  They say to Moses: “Na’aseh v’nishmah—All that God has spoken, we will do and understand.”  As countless sages have noted, the doing precedes the understanding.  Commenting on this, Rashi notes: “In that instant, the Israelites acted with the genius of the Ministering Angels.”  For Rashi, Gladwell’s snap intuition is a kind of angelic gift. 

When we think back on most of the biggest decisions of our lives—such as choosing a college, taking (or leaving) a job, getting married (or not), having (or not having) a child, buying a house, moving to a new place, when to retire, etc—we realize that we never really understand full implications of our actions before we make them.  No matter how much research and deliberation we do, in the end, we always make a kind of leap of faith into the unknown because we cannot ever truly grasp, in such situations, what we are really getting ourselves into.  Our course at Sinai, Na’aseh v’nishmah—to act, and only afterwards, gradually, come to appreciate the consequences of our actions—remains the only way to move forward in our personal, professional, and communal lives.  In the end, there is no path that does not demand significant faith.  In those fearful times just before we leap, it is good to know that our ancestors have been there before us, and that, with God’s help, we are likely to land with the earth solidly beneath our feet.

The Ten Commandments--Forty Years On (portion Yitro)

Forty years ago, as a blizzard blanketed my hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, I seriously encountered this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, for the first time, at my Bar Mitzvah.  Standing in front of Beth El Hebrew Congregation in my abominably loud plaid sports jacket (OK, it was 1974), guided by my father, Rabbi Arnold Fink, I made my way through the Ten Commandments.  Since it was not yet customary in Reform synagogues to leyn (chant) the portion, I read it, first in Hebrew from the Torah scroll and then in English, following the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation.  By far the most challenging moment of the day came when, following that English passage, I had to declare, out loud and in front of all of my adolescent peers: “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s ass.”  At thirteen, this was embarrassingly hard to say and even harder to do!

Four decades later, fashion and English Torah translations have both, thankfully, improved, but the Ten Commandments themselves (or, as they are known in Hebrew, aseret ha-dibrot, the Ten Utterances) remain central.  As I have grown and changed through the years, I have tried to live my life by their principles and guidance, along with the rest of the Torah’s mitzvot, even though I have broken, often repeatedly, eight of the ten (all but #6 and #7 for those who are counting).  As I have grown and changed, so has my understanding of, and appreciation for, their wisdom.  And now that the last commandment is read as a neighbor’s donkey, it’s a lot easier to both keep and read!

Next Shabbat, I will mark the fortieth anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah in the best way I can imagine: learning about the Ten Commandments with my community and family at our annual Feast of Torah.  Sandy Berenter has done her usual extraordinary job of organizing a marvelous program of Jewish learning and living, centered this year around these core teachings that lie at the heart of our tradition and, indeed, of all of western culture.  Please join me there to study and share and celebrate together.  I even promise to tone down the sports jacket!