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If you will truly listen - Ekev 5784

8/24/2024

This past week in my Wednesday hassidut class, we learned an interpretation from a line in the second paragraph of the Shema, which begins והיה אם שמוע or ‘and if your will listen to the commandments which I command you to on this day,’ which is Deuteronomy 11:13. This is a text that most of you are incredibly familiar with, as we say it every morning and evening. You may not realize that this paragraph is, in fact, quite controversial. I can remember the first time I attended a conservative service in college - I had certainly been to a few as part of the bar mitzvah circuit in Los Angeles California back in 1989 at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino or Knesseth Israel in Hollywood, but to be honest I wasn’t really paying attention. But I distinctly remember walking into the Conservative friday night service at George Washington University, and taking part in the service, and the student leader concluding the VeAhavta section, and then saying, continue silently in the second and third paragraph of the Shema, and me thinking - wait, there’s a second and a third paragraph? Because growing up in the Reform movement, there is really only one paragraph. We said VeAhavata, including the words ‘uVisharEcha’ - and upon your gates - and then we said ‘lemaan tizkeiru’ - so that you will remember to do all my commandments.

You see, the Reform movement very intentionally deleted the second paragraph of the shema, which talks about the reward for faithfully observing the commandments being rain and grain and years of plenty, and the punishment for failing to do the commandments as famine and drought and suffering. Beginning with the Reform movement’s conference in Pittsburgh in 1885 at the Concordia Club located on Stockton Ave and Anderson St on the north side and continuing with the publication of the first Union Prayerbook in 1892, the Reform movement wanted to distance itself from theologically troubling or disagreeable statements, like that God rewarded us for good behavior and punished us for bad. And so it was removed, and it had been so long ago that it had been removed that in my first 19 years of existence on this earth, nobody have ever bothered to mention that the shema once had three paragraphs –
but Reform Judaism had pared it down to one and a half. I don’t think my parents, or my grandparents, or even my great grandparents, were even aware this paragraph existed.

And so early on in my journey to Conservative Judaism, there on the second floor of GW Hillel, I read this new old paragraph and had to decide - what does this mean for me? More on that later.

Back to the original point: in our hassidut class, we learned a mind-blowing interpretation of two words that appear in the second paragraph on the words - veAvadatem maHeira - which translates as ‘you will quickly be destroyed’ - If you want to take a look at what we’re talking about, it is in your Lev Shalem siddur on page 156, seven lines down from the top. Regard what happens if we stray from worshiping our God, the text reads

וְחָרָה אַף־יְהֹוָה בָּכֶם וְעָצַר אֶת־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְלֹא־יִהְיֶה מָטָר וְהָאֲדָמָה לֹא תִתֵּן אֶת־יְבוּלָהּ וַאֲבַדְתֶּם מְהֵרָה מֵעַל הָאָרֶץ הַטֹּבָה אֲשֶׁר יְהֹוָה נֹתֵן לָכֶם׃

For God’s anger will flare up against you, shutting up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will quickly be destroyed from the good land that God is assigning to you.

The founder of hasidism, Israel Baal Shem Tov, is credited with the following teaching:

[Read not “You will be quickly destroyed” -but rather ‘you must destroy your quickness, i.e. your impatience,’ and your impulsiveness, and your turmoil. Redirect the intent of your action towards doing it with patience, with presence of mind and with a calm spirit.*
It’s a great teaching - we should all resist the urge to get more done quicker, but rather, in a very Buddhist manner, pay more attention to the things we do, and do them better, and slowly, and with proper intention. It’s not ideal to rush through the prayer service and be able to say ‘I can daven maariv in 9 minutes flat’ - the ideal approach according to this teaching is that our actions are done for quality, not quantity or efficiency.

But this one student in the hassidut class asked a really profound question, which is ‘is it legitimate to read the text this way?’ Remember that the middle paragraph of the shema is mainly focused on reminding us not to let our hearts go astray to other gods, and that our obedience and performance of the commandments has literal life-or-death, feast-or-famine, fire and brimstone consequences. Meanwhile the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching completely ignores this literal read altogether - he takes a text about fealty to god or else we get punished and re-read’s it into a teaching about living and acting with intention and a sense of zen calm. The student’s question is ‘can he do that?’ And more importantly, do we have to choose one of these meanings or the other? Is the middle paragraph of the shema either about killing your hurriedness, or the punishment god hands down when we are bad?

It bears repeating that Judaism believes in an idea known as shivim panim leTorah, that our bible has seventy levels of interpretation. All of our holy texts can hold multiple meanings at the same time. This can get messy. Who’s to say what is and isn’t a legitimate interpretation of a text? Ultimately the rabbis created a system of careful legal principles and majority decision based rule in order to define what was in and what was out. But each successive generation of rabbis tests and pushes these boundaries. That’s why the rabbis of the talmud can decide that the ancient biblical punishment of stoning the rebellious child is from this point onward illegitimate, and the rabbis of the gaonic period of 9th century Babylonia can decide that we shouldn’t read the story of Noah or Adam and Eve literally, or that modern rabbis can decide that women are to be granted equal rights under Judaism.

It also means that Jews of today can dispense with theologies that don’t work for them anymore - and moreover, that we must re-read the Torah for new meanings when the old meanings no longer are suitable. For the Reform movement, it was perfectly reasonable to then apply this desire to rethink theology in order to chuck the middle paragraph of the Shema. A like-minded thinker, Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, did similarly for reconstructionism when he stated how a Jew should approach things in the liturgy they find objectionable. “If you don’t believe it, don’t say it” Kaplan would say.

I have always found the Conservative Jewish approach to be challenging, in a good way. Our approach regarding the second paragraph of the Shema is probably best summarized by the story of Jacob and the Angel: we left to wrestle with it, with God, and with our discomfort. In 2002, a friend of mine and rabbinical school classmate of mine suffered a brain aneurysm. She was rushed to UCLA, where after a quick assessment at the ER it was determined she needed immediate brain surgery. For the next 16 hours she went through a marathon surgery to stop a massive bleed caused by a malformed tangle of arteries at the base of her skull, while her friends stood vigil in the vast surgical waiting room of the hospital. While I was there waiting, I was chatting with a fellow student, a fifth-year named Rachel Lawson Shere, and we started somehow discussing the second paragraph of the Shema. I expressed to her how I said that paragraph day and night, but couldn’t quite make sense of what to do with it. I didn’t really believe that putting on tefillin or returning a lost object to its owner or not making a sacrifice to a false god resulted in better weather or improved crop yields in the California central valley. What the hell was I saying this stupid paragraph for, then, if I don’t believe it?
Rachel replied by saying that she found it incredibly profound to say, twice daily, that what I do each day, and what I say each day, has some impact on the universe - that God, the unmoved mover, is in fact somehow moved by my actions and my words. That our lives and our actions are not irrelevant or meaningless, but that rather, in the grand scheme of things, it all truly does add up to something. Rachel stopped short of saying that what it all added up to was reward for good and punishment for bad, or rain for mitzvot and drought for aveirot. What she had said, though, was that there was room enough in the text, even a troubling theological text, to flip the script and make it into something not only palatable, but meaningful.

On some level, Rachel Lawson-Shere’s take was the most powerful endorsement of the Conservative movement’s approach to text one could ever give. You don’t throw out a troublesome text because you don’t like it. You lean into the troubling text - searching it for alternate understandings and different reads, like the Baal Shem Tov’s read of killing your inclination to hurry.

A side note, my friend Julie recovered from the life-saving surgery, and very slowly and with many years of physical therapy, recovered from the brain aneurysm and went on to be synagogue rabbi and a licensed therapist. It will forever remain a mystery as to if my wearing of tefillin or observance of mitzvot or my adding her name to the misheberach list contributed in any way to the goodly blessings that God bestowed upon her, but it couldn’t have hurt.

Our Hebrew texts are open to interpretation - wide ranging interpretation that allows one branch of Judaism to completely unread a text, and another branch to effectively delete it entirely. To some degree, you trust that the rabbis of today will determine what is legitimately in and out of bounds - but additionally, the Jews of today vote with their feet. The different streams of Judaism, and the different leaders within them, expose you to the interpretations that speak to your soul, and if it speaks to you, you’ll engage with it, and if enough people engage with a certain new idea or interpretation, then it sparks a movement. That’s how Conservative Judaism, and the hassidic movement started, and Reform Judaism, and everything started. The old interpretations were stale and wrang hollow, and a new take was needed. Sometimes the various interpretations are all simultaneously needed so that different folks can address different needs at different times.

This whole discussion was sparked by three words in Deuteronomy 11: vehayah im shamoah tishma’oo - and if you will truly listen.
We are all moving at our own pace towards God’s truth as revealed in Torah. All that God asks is that you listen and invest the time and energy in seeking the path that speaks to your soul. Shabbat Shalom

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What it means that Kamala picked Tim - Devarim 5784

8/11/2024

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This past week, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris - rhymes with mama-la - selected a running mate for the 2024. Some folks were disappointed that Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, was not selected. I’m not disappointed. I’m fine with it. Tim Walz seems like a decent man, and as a former classroom teacher for 12 years, I can safely say that if you can handle a room of thirty teenagers every morning for 9 months straight without losing your mind, you can handle anything.

What I am disappointed in is the national discourse around the selection of a running mate. Kamala Harris is a black and asian woman, so the conversation on who she might select - or better said, who she needed to select as her running mate - was that, to get elected and provide balance and appeal to QUOTE a certain demographic, she had to pick a white male. And so the short list according to most was white male Andy Bashear, and white male Pete Buttegieg, and white male Josh Shapiro, and white male Mark Kelly and white male Tim Walz.

Now, I will say that it’s only fair that I add the obvious dash of perspective to this observation: a candidate for president is a woman of mixed black and indian heritage, a remarkable thing. Our first 43 president-vice president pairings in this country were a white male with a white male. So complaining that the vice presidential pick - and the conversation around all the potential picks - is a white male might be perhaps expecting too much.
Still, I will be honest - as a society, I think in the year 2024 we should have progressed further than this. I am frankly disappointed that the realities of electoral politics mean that our choices for vice president were among a wide range of white men, because the assumption is that America is not ready for a ticket of two women, or two minorities. Several people; my mom, my optometrist, a friend; asked me last week who I liked as potential vp candidates. And I told them my top three: Katie Porter, the California congresswoman famous for pulling out a dry erase board to hammer corporate ceos; and Stacey Abrams, the quick witted and eloquent native of Georgia, and Elizabeth Warren, an experienced senator who brought us the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which quietly keeps all Americans from being ripped off by big banks and credit cards and other potentially unscrupulous monopolies trying to maximize profit at our expense.
And of course, all of my friends laughed at me. “Two women running together?” they said. “The democrats would never do that.” And yes, I see the point to some degree. After the experience the democrats had with their last female presidential candidate, I can understand a degree of caution. But also, I can’t see it, and I’m disappointed. To quote Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was asked how many women would be enough on the supreme court. She replied “Nine.” When pushed, she replied, “ why not; there were always nine men and nobody ever raised a question about that.”

Now, I’m not naive. I understand the legitimate fear that two women, or two persons of color, couldn’t win. I understand the inherent belief that the candidate who I will most identify with and will best represent me will look like me. But I actually think that it’s false. I even think that that belief – that a person can’t understand me, my humanity, my life experiences, and what I’ve gone through, unless they are the same race and gender as me – I think that belief might be dangerous. The assumption that I cannot relate adequately to another human because our skin tone or our physically assigned characteristics at birth are different is the kind of belief that holds us back as a species.

A major recurring theme of the Torah, and of the Talmud, and of Jewish history writ large, is the polar opposites of belonging and othering. We like to define our community and create a sense of belonging and inclusion, but in that process of establishing the fenceposts of community, inevitably some folks fall outside the boundaries and are othered. We define ourselves as the children of Abraham, but incidentally imply that those children of other fathers are lesser. We create 12 tribes, we become proud of our heritage within the tribe of Judah while simultaneously creating a paradigm in which the Levites are other than ourselves. In this week’s Torah portion, we see this tension of inclusion, categorization, and othering as Moses tells the children of Israel about the inhabitants of the land. In Deuteronomy 2 verses 4 and 5 we read the following: “And charge the people as follows: You will be passing through the territory of your kin, the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. Though they will be afraid of you, be very careful
not to provoke them. For I will not give you of their land so much as a foot can tread on; I have given the hill country of Seir as a possession to Esau.”

So, there are three notable things here. 1) We are reminded again of the disagreement and reconciliation of Jacob and Esau, but here, instead of it being a small matter between two brothers that is instructive in interpersonal relations, it is related on a national scale. ‘אַתֶּם עֹבְרִים בִּגְבוּל אֲחֵיכֶם בְּנֵי־עֵשָׂו’ - you pass the border of your brothers, the children of Esau. The implication is that although this is a foreign people not of your own, you are to regard them as family. The reconciliation holds. You are family.

2) They are afraid of you, and not the other way around. This is a striking line to me. In the Exodus, the Israelites were afraid of the Egyptians. They were attacked and harassed by the Amalakites. Upon entry to the land, they are a wandering nomadic tribe in search of a place to lay down roots. Every other nation inside the land they will be making war with - the Hivvites and Jebusites and Hittites and Amorites and Peruzites, etc. It seems to me that the Israelites have reason to be afraid of everything before them. But God doesn’t say ‘don’t be afraid of them’. God tells Moses to charge the people and say they will be afraid of you.

3) We are told not to take their land, and in no uncertain terms. The Torah, which never wastes ink or says something carelessly, explains that we shall not take even
עַד מִדְרַךְ כַּף־רָגֶל - don’t even take a foot’s worth of what is theirs.

By both of these verses, we see a conscious attempt for the Israelites, who are an invading army, to not see everything before them as other. They are to be relational. This section of the text is not entirely exceptional, since a few verses later, the Torah tells us essentially that as things go toward the children of Esau we call the Edomites, so too shall we treat the Moabites, and the Ammonites. They are again noted as family, since Moab and Ammon are the children of Lot’s daughters. Ultimately, the Torah here is attempting to draw lines of community and obliterate the inclination to other these people. Yes, you are strangers in a strange land. But your ultimate goal here is to fit in, not stand out. See these other tribes on your borders not as threats. See them as family.
Our upcoming holiday, or better to call it a commemoration, is Tisha BeAv, the 9th of the month of Av, which marks the day on which the first and second temples were destroyed. Many of you may know the story in the Talmud that is told of the incident that led to the destruction of the Temple, but for those of you that don’t, I will retell it. Either way, it happens to be a perfect expression of the need to be inclusive and not divisive when we have the opportunity. The story in Tractate Gittin is this: there once was a man that wanted to throw a party, so he invited all his friends. One invitation was meant to be sent to his friend Kamtza, but the servant delivering the invitation mistakenly dropped it at the house of Bar Kamtza. We can all relate - I cannot tell you how many times I’ve taken the Amazon package meant for my neighbor off of my porch and put it onto the correct porch, despite the many times that I really wanted a new iphone case.

Anyhow, Bar Kamtza happens to be the party host’s sworn enemy. Bar Kamtza doesn’t know that though, and he shows up to the party at the appointed time. The host is appalled and proceeds to make a scene, demanding bar kamtza leave. ‘Please’ says bar kamtza, ‘don’t kick me out.’ I’ll pay for my dinner. The host says no. ‘I’ll pay for half the party.’ The host says no. ‘I’ll pay for the whole party’. The host says no. Bar kamtza leaves, humiliated. Apparently a bunch of rabbis present at the party were witness to the whole thing, but chose to say nothing.

So bar kamtza is furious, and he decides to direct his ire at the rabbis and their most precious possession. This is the year 67 CE. The Romans and the Jews are experiencing great tension - rebellion is in the air, many folks want to rebel. If you’ve seen ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’ you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, go home and stream it. Bar Kamtza tells the Romans ‘The Jews are rebelling!’ The Romans say ‘how do you know?’ Bar Kamtza says ‘I can prove it: if the Jews reject your offering for the upcoming sacrifice, it’s a sign of rebellion.’ So the Romans prepare a heifer as an offering. Bar Kamtza sneaks over to the animal on its way to be sacrificed and gives it a cut on its lip. The Talmud tells us this is a place where the rabbis consider it a forbidden blemish in their offerings, while the Romans, who also bring sacrifices at their Roman temples, do not consider it a blemish. The rabbis get the offering and reject it. The Romans crack down. The Temple is destroyed. Elsewhere in the talmud, we are told that the second temple is destroyed due to baseless hatred - sinat hinam - and it seems like perhaps that was at play in this story too.

Our story of the host that mixed up kamtza and bar kamtza has many possible interpretations. But one simple one is that the desire to exclude others, and bar kamtza specifically, was a toxic trait in the host which ultimately lead to the downfall of Jerusalem. But there’s a meta-message going on here too that recurs throughout Talmud regarding the rabbis attitudes towards the Romans, which is this: our incessant need to be right and to be holy and to be pure led to a demand by the extremists of the time, called in the Talmud kanaim or fanatics, that we should rid ourselves of the Romans. I’m no Roman apologist; the historical texts we have documenting their rule tell us there were legitimate frustrations which came with Roman rule. But the rabbis attitude in the time was that they were anti rebellion; and the destruction of the Temple serves as justification for their message. For the rabbis, the loss of the beit ha mikdash - the Temple - and the suffering that came with the Great Revolt of 67 CE far outweighed any benefit that may have come from Jewish independence.

In other words, a lesson in our texts is that evaluating others on superficial criteria like national origin, as with the Romans and the Moabites and the Edomites, in order to exclude or reject or create conflict, is harmful not only to them but to ourselves. That’s not to say that we are supposed to live in a simplistic and colorblind world. There is difference. That’s ok. We’re Jews, they’re Moabites. And our Torah tells us that creates a climate in which one fears the other. And our behavior is conditioned in Torah as requiring us to assuage and lessen that fear.
We ought to see past other people’s difference in order to see them and who they are. And I know we as a human society aren’t there yet, and there are elements of our society that seem to actually be attempting to drag us back in the wrong direction. There have been anti- immigrant riots the past week in Sunderland and Middlesborough and a dozen other English cities because of a lie that whipped around the internet that the perpetrator of a knife attack was an immigrant. This is just the gazillionth example of small minded troglodytes spreading fear about those that are different than us.

Martin Luther King gave his famous line in the I have a Dream speech about being judge not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. He said that line on August 28, 1963. That was sixty years ago. We have certainly made some progress towards a color-blind and gender blind America since then. We have had a black president. We have four women on the supreme court - it’s not nine, but Ruth, we’re tryin’, bubbele. But people also still look at me when I suggestion that the best democratic ticket would be Kamala Harris and Stacey Abrams like I’m crazy. So we still have a ways to go - we’re still fearing the Moabites; we’re still not inviting the proverbial bar kamtza to our parties.

The destruction of the Temple text is mostly about the bad that led up to it: the othering, the baseless hatred, the sowing of discord. But there is a nice text to proscribe the antidote which will help rebuild the temple. The Sfat Emet, the third gerrer rebbe, who live from 1847 to 1905, wrote the following:

And by Aaron merit he merited the building of the Temple. Because the destruction of the Temple took place because of baseless hatred - sinat hinam. And Aaron is the complete opposite of that - that he is rodef shalom ve ahavah - he is a pursuer of peace and one that loves others. And thus he is the foundation of the beit hamikdash. So ends Rabbi Yehuda Lieb of Ger.

In other words, the third temple will come about because of Aaron, when we embody the virtues he stood for, which our tradition tells us is being a lover of peace and pursuer of peace. We’re not quite at the point of being race and gender blind enough to see others soley by the content of their character, but each day that we get closer to that point is another day we draw closer to rebuilding the third temple. Shabbat shalom.

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If you will truly listen - Ekev 5784

What it means that Kamala picked Tim - Devarim 5784

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