Random Musing Before Shabbat - Emor 5770 G"d's Shabbat II

(One of my favorite musings from the early years is one I wrote in 1998 for parashat Emor, entitled "G"d's Shabbat." I thought I might revisit that musing and flesh it out a bit.)

...Shabbat hi L'Ad"nai b'kol moshvoteikhem. (Lev 23:3 )

It shall be a Sabbath of the L"rd through your settlements (JPS)
It is a Sabbath to YHWH, throughout your settlements (Fox)
It is a Sabbath to YHWH in all your homes (Friedman)

or more poetically:

Wherever you may live, It is G"d's Shabbat. (Or, more precisely, a Shabbat for G"d.)

Not our Shabbat, not a Shabbat for you, not the Shabbat given to us by G"d. A Shabbat for G"d. G"d's Shabbat. Wherever we live. In all the places we live (Hmmm. What about places we lived, but perhaps are not currently occupying?)

We speak of "making Shabbat" or "keeping Shabbat" or "observing Shabbat" as if it were ours to have or not have. That is where we lead ourselves astray. It isn't our Shabbat at all, and it's not up to us to create Shabbat. Here Torah reminds us that it is Shabbat, whether we make, keep or observe it. That is the real magic. Shabbat is always there for us-all we have to do is reach out and embrace it. If there are times we have not kept Shabbat, that does not mean we have lost it forever. We can always partake of it.
We are not like Tantalus. Shabbat is never truly out of our reach. Yes, there are obstacles to observing Shabbat. Some are obstacles over which we exercise little control. Others are obstacles over which we exercise a great deal of control. If we really and truly want to partake of G"d's Shabbat, it is there if we but reach out for it and grasp it - whether tentatively or firmly. If we let go, we do not lose it forever, but only for the moment.

Cars might drive down streets in Jerusalem, some Jews might work, or go to the mall, or mow their lawn. Nevertheless, it is still Shabbat. G"d made it so, and we cannot take that away, even with our transgressions. What a truly magnificent gift. I wonder what makes it so difficult for so many of us to accept this gift? Perhaps we fear a certain loss of control, a loss of connectedness to the outside world. (Why, just the other day, some 7th graders asked me, in earnest,  why they shouldn't be allowed to bring their cell phones to services and text their friends during them. That, they said, might actually get them to services and enjoy them. Of course, I asked them, if you spend the whole time texting your friends while at services, how can you possibly be enjoying the service and getting anything out of it? We can multi-task, they say. I tell them of all the studies that seem to show that the ability to multi-task is really a myth. So why go to services if you don't get anything out of them? Because we have to go. I asked them what percentage of people at a typical service were actually there to get a serious spiritual experience through prayer. They guessed 15%. And the rest, I asked? Well, some of them are there out of a sense of obligation, others because they are being required or forced to come. Some are there just to say kaddish. Finally, a bon mot from one student who says that she thinks a lot of people are there trying to get or find something they need and can't seem to get anywhere else. They still might not get it, but they keep trying.  What an insight. But I digress. Shabbat isn't about services, though it seems we've given an awful lot of importance to attending services on Shabbat, as opposed to actually "keeping" or "remembering" or "observing" or "doing" Shabbat.) If Shabbat is a gift, it seems to come with strings from the viewpoint of some people. Should it? Is it up to us to decide?

We ought not waste this gift, or insult its value by wantonly disregarding the commandment given to us - to remember Shabbat and keep it kadosh (holy.) Perhaps it might be better if cars weren't driving down the streets of Jerusalem, some Jews weren't working, or weren't going to the mall. The ever available to us aspect of Shabbat is not license to waste it. Nevertheless, whether we observe it or not, it' still Shabbat. Maybe, for some, it's enough to have Shabbat vicariously (though this smacks of the of the sense of inauthenticity that often confounds liberal Jews and compels them to support Chabad.)

In another sense, knowing that there are people who really and truly find a way to do Shabbat gives me hope that perhaps someday I will do so as well. Of course, I don't want to to surrender my authenticity. I may not be as observant as some, yet if I can find my own understanding of Shabbat, and my own way to keep and observe and do it, why should I always feel like I'm not doing enough? Do people who observe each jot and tittle of Halacha in observing Shabbat also feel this way - that they could still be doing more? I suspect the answer is yes (and if not, I question their complacency and self-satisfaction.) Judaism is a journey, a path with myriad twists and turns. G"d help me if I ever reach a place of such complacency that I feel there is no more I can do. Let me stumble down the path, experience and learn. When I reach a goal, insure that there is yet another. Nevertheless, at the same time, insure that I am not too hard on myself for my failures, and allow me my mistakes, that I may grow from them.  Allow me to take a moment's respite when needed, along the way - both when I've reached a goal, and when I'm simply on the path somewhere.

Thanks for this gift of Shabbat. For this challenge of Shabbat. For this puzzle of Shabbat. Maybe it always continue to be a gift, a challenge, and a puzzle.

More than Israel has kept Shabbat, Shabbat kept Israel. No truer words were ever spoken.

May this Shabbat keep you and yours.

Shabbat Shalom,

Adrian
© 2010 (portions ©1998) by Adrian A. Durlester

Technorati tags: judaism, torah, commentary, Emor, Shabbat

Random Musings Before Shabbat Aharei Mot-Kedoshim 5770 – Redux 5762 Dis tinct Unities and United Dis junctions

(A busy week, Haverim, so I offer this musing from 5762.)

Every once in a while I like to wander back to the main path from the various byways I tend to wander down as I walk the path of Torah. So this week, I'd like to muse on three little words that one sage considers the great teaching of our Torah. Words that have been spoken about many times, by many commentators. An idea that has been examined from seemingly every conceivable angle.

I am speaking, of course, of Leviticus 19:18 - v'ahavata l'reiakha kamokha. Love your neighbor as yourself.

A seemingly simple idea, yet one, as scholar Richard Elliot Friedman points out in his commentary, that stands out as unique among all the rest of the Torah, which is otherwise so focused, he says, on distinctions between things, and yet here instructs us to observe an equivalency in regard to relationships between human beings.

There is no doubt that each of us is unique-in many ways. And thus we are clearly distinctive. Yet we are, each of us, b'tzelem Elokim, in the image of G"d. And we create new life through the merger of body and soul, through an act in which distinctions are often lost.

When, I wonder, are we separate and distinct in Gd's eyes, and when are we all of a kind? And how does that affect our relationship to G"d? Is G"d more receptive to us when we are distinct and single, or when we are simply a part of a great whole?

Does the Torah make such an important point about making distinctions in part to teach us that our greatest gift and our greatest ambition is to be distinct yet not distinct at one and the same time? Do we recognize this gift and use it to its fullest potential?

Am I to love my neighbor as I love myself because my neighbor is like me, unlike me, or because my neighbor is both at the same time? I submit that the latter may hold an important key. I think of the situation in Israel. Palestinian and Israeli- so alike and yet so different. How do we bring them (and ourselves) past the perverse corruption of v'ahavta l'reiakha kamokha, which is hate your neighbor as your neighbor hates you? Or worse, the even more perverse hate your neighbor as you hate yourself.

Understanding that we are different yet all the same seems one way to bring greater peace between neighbors. But this simplistic formula seems to fail time and time again. Is that so perhaps because we fail to truly internalize this concept? Is it so because we have a hard time loving our neighbor when we think they hate us?

I've no quick or easy answers to these questions, but I am glad I have raised them for myself and for you. That's how I show my love for my neighbor-by engaging them in the same search for meaning as I engage in. If we could all but work together, yet at the same time draw upon the differences and uniquenesses we have, we might have a chance at finding some answers we all could live with. Ken y'hi ratson. May this be G"d's will. Ken y'hi ratsoneinu. May this be our will.

Shabbat Shalom,

Adrian
©2002 by Adrian A. Durlester

Technorati tags: torah, commentary, judaism

Random Musing Before Shabbat – Tazria 5770 – Excessive Prevention

Sometimes the ideas for my musings come from unexpected places. I’ve actually been having a somewhat difficult time finding words to speak once again about Tazria-Metzora. I’ve sat down several times, each time doing the digital equivalent of crumbling up the paper and throwing it away. So I took a break from it.

As I was doing other chores this afternoon, I was also listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday. The topic was anti-biotic-resistant infections, and how they were on the rise yet again on our population.

Many interesting points were raised by the participants in the discussion, as well as by callers.  We have a truly paradoxical situation here. Our efforts to prevent disease are actually working against us.

We’ve become an extremely germ-phobic society. We have anti-biotic agents that we build into our work surfaces, cookware, storage containers, clothing, linens, and more. Bottles of antiseptic hand wash are prevalent everywhere – even our supermarkets and big-box stores have anti-bacterial washing materials near their entrances. We’ve become ridiculously obsessed with preventing sickness.

As one expert on the radio said, it’s a pointless battle. It’s a battle between our intelligence and bacterial genes. The genes are going to win every time. It’s the job of every bacterial strain to find a way to survive. Survive it will. Put it in the presence of many anti-biotics, and evolutionary pressures will force the dominance of an anti-biotic resistant strain. One expert suggested that we should simply stop all the “routine” uses of anti-biotics (for example, in animal feed) and simply allow the normal, non-resistant strains of bacteria to thrive. This will reduce the presence of the resistant strains, an we can then treat those who get sick from the ordinary strains as necessary (but not too excess, or we’re back in the same vicious cycle.)

What’s all this to do with our parasha? Well, some obvious questions come to mind. Is this ancient obsession with skin diseases, molds, etc.  really a good idea?  Could such a strong focus on these conditions actually be counter-productive, and actually increase their occurrence?

Of course, like so much else in the Torah, this could all be metaphorical-really being about “spiritual rot” as I’ve written about in these musings in the past. Nevertheless, isolating one with an obvious skin condition from the rest of the community seems like a reasonably prudent idea, especially considering that they really had no clear knowledge or idea about disease transmission. (Of course, just as some still insist that the dietary laws were rudimentary forms of health codes, they say the same of the rules in Tazria-Metzora. I don’t buy it, personally, but I also agree with the idea that what we think of as primitive societies aren’t always so primitive.)

So, if this is all about spiritual rot, is there still a connection? Yes. Look at how obsessed we are these days about religion and G”d. Books critical of and supportive of religion and a belief in G”d. It’s a hot topic. It’s far too easy for us to get all wrapped up in a debate that maybe we really don’t need to be having. Or perhaps this debate is just what is needed to sustain the necessary balance between resistant and non-resistant strains of belief. Both sides in this debate are coming on strong. The opponents of religion see religion as a bacteria that we need to wipe out. Yet there seems to be an even stronger strain of resistant believers coming into existence. Maybe if the opponents of religion eased off on their attack, there’d be less of the fanatical resistant strains of believers. Similarly, maybe if people of faith stopped hitting back so hard at their opponents, they, too, would decrease in numbers, and a more natural balance could be restored to our society.

You know, with all the internal struggles and doubt we all deal with on a daily basis, with our constant struggle to be true (or deliberately untrue) to ethical and religious principals, it’s no wonder we aren’t all struggling with outward skin conditions that betray our inner turmoil.

Or maybe it’s not us showing these manifestations, but our greater society itself? Is our society showing physical manifestations of the spiritual rot that may be undermining our social structure? What might these manifestations be? (Could the Holocaust have been one of them?) Tough questions to ask. Even tougher to answer. enjoy the struggle.

Shabbat Shalom

Adrian
©2010 by Adrian A. Durlester

Technorati tags: torah, commentary, judaism

Random Musing Before Shabbat – Sh’mini 5770 – Don’t Eat That, It’s Not Kosher

Here’s another of my truly random, train of thought musings.

Creation is so abundant with life, that survival doesn’t require that one consume everything. That, in a nutshell, may be the unspoken message in our dietary laws. These rules raise so many questions.

If these rules exist to teach us to limit our desires, then why not simple admonitions against gluttony and waste, instead of a seemingly random selection of animals that are fit to eat and not fit to eat?

Why should the list of things not to eat include so many things that humans find tasty or enjoyable?  Why exclude crustaceans, bivalves, and the like?

Why aren’t certain plants and grains deemed unfit to eat? And just who decided that quinoa (or corn, for that matter) was hametz, anyway?

Some scholars say the dietary laws were to separate us from the other tribes of the times. Others, now largely discredited, suggest these were rudimentary health codes. The rabbis tell us that it is about sanctifying our lives and making the very act of eating holy.

They say if you don’t know something, you can’t miss it. Isn’t that the same sort of bad parenting 101 as “eat anything in the garden except from that tree?” We know we’re not supposed to eat it, but we know it exists. How can we not be tempted?

Now, I’m certainly not tempted to eat many of the prohibited foods. I’ve no desire to sample camel meat or iguana meat, for example. Surely, however, there have been Jews who were curious about those.

There are so many things that, under Jewish dietary law, one can eat, so why so much fuss about what we can’t eat? Why do so many Israeli restaurants serve mock shrimp? Why do kosher imitation bacon bits exist?

Did G”d (or Moshe) even have an inkling of what these dietary practices would lead to? I find it amusing that I received an email plea from a certain Jewish sect’s rabbi to write in to protest the harsh punishment handed down against one of the Rubashkins. How ironic to be timed with this parasha.

Kashrut has become an industry. Yes, there are now brave attempts to reclaim kashrut on the basis of ethical and environmental standards. How did we let the system evolve into the corrupt, letter of the law rather than intent system that it has become. Why has it taken us so many thousands of years to seriously consider re-organizing the system?

As I read the dietary laws as listed in parashat Sh’mini, I find myself asking the same questions that people must have been asking at the time. Why this? Why that? Why not this? Why not that? Do I need to follow every capricious whim of  G”d in order to show my loyalty and devotion?

I cannot claim to have lived a life of continuous kashrut observance. I have had periods in my life when my observance of kashrut was stricter than at other times. I don’t find my inconsistency all that troubling. In fact, consistency, I would find troubling. Consistency leads to complacency, and if there’s anything that Jews should not be, it’s complacent.

That’s a challenge in our society. I suppose my thoughts here are influenced by the fact that I am currently reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bright-Sided” an excoriation of “positive thinking.” Positive thinking is just what the CEOs and rich capitalists want. It’s just what the Rubashkins and their ilk want. That’s not the Jewish way. We were born to kvetch, to question, to challenge. Yet we passively accepted the laws of kashrut as handed =down to us not only by G”d but by the rabbis interpretations of what they think G”d might possibly have meant.

Just some things to think about the next time someone says to you “don’t eat that, it’s not kosher!”

Shabbat Shalom,

Adrian
©2010 by Adrian A. Durlester

Technorati tags: torah, commentary

Random Musing Before Shabbat-Hol HaMoed Pesakh 5770-The Missing Encounter

In the Torah reading for Hol HaMoed Pesakh we re-read about Moshe’s second time on the mountain (after the Golden Calf incident) and the second set of tablets.

This passage includes many well worn highways and byways, among them G”d’s self-description (which, truth be told, is not all that accurate a self-description.) Not today’s topic.

It concludes with another well worn piece of text about not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. On such few words is built an entire segment of the kashrut laws. Truth be told, I don’t think the rabbis were so successful with this one. Not today’s topic.

In the haftarah, we revisit Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones. Can these bones live? Only their hairdresser knows for sure? In any case, not today’s topic.

So what is today’s topic? It’s one that I had often thought to muse about when it came up in the regular Torah reading rotation in parashat Ki Tissa. It’s the “G”d’s backside” incident.

Moshe asks to behold G”d’s presence. God tells Moshe to stand in a cleft in the rock, and G”d will pass him by.

That’s what G”d says will happen. Guess what’s missing from the text? There absolutely no assertion in the text that G”d actually did so!

You’d think that such a glorious and magnificent moment would call for some serious prose or poetic imagery. What do we get? Bupkis. It’s left entirely to our imagination.

Of course, I hear some say, that’s exactly the point-it’s left to our imagination. The experience might be totally different for each one of us, were we granted such an opportunity. So describing it would be pointless.

That’s not good enough for me. At least we need a teaser, the biblical equivalent of the famous line from 2001: A Space Odyssey, “My G”d, it’s full of stars!”

The author(s) of Torah, whoever he/she/it (they) is/are passed up an incredible literary opportunity. Or, perhaps such a passage was there, and later expurgated by some redactor with the strong belief that such specific visages should be left to the imagination, or the belief that it somehow reduces G”d to something too real and tangible.

I’m going to occupy my Shabbat with attempts to make a midrash here, to fill in the blanks, and describe the actual encounter that is only hinted at in the text. I commend the same to you. what would it be like to have G”d allow G”d’self to be seen as G”d passes you by? what would you see, sense, taste, feel, experience? I’d love to hear your stories, and perhaps someday I’ll share mine as well.

Shabbat Shalom,

Adrian

©2010 by Adrian A. Durlester

Technorati tags: judaism, torah, commentary

Random Musing Before Shabbat-Hol HaMoed Pesakh 5770-The Missing Encounter

In the Torah reading for Hol HaMoed Pesakh we re-read about Moshe’s second time on the mountain (after the Golden Calf incident) and the second set of tablets.

This passage includes many well worn highways and byways, among them G”d’s self-description (which, truth be told, is not all that accurate a self-description.) Not today’s topic.

It concludes with another well worn piece of text about not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. On such few words is built an entire segment of the kashrut laws. Truth be told, I don’t think the rabbis were so successful with this one. Not today’s topic.

In the haftarah, we revisit Ezekiel’s valley of the dry bones. Can these bones live? Only their hairdresser knows for sure? In any case, not today’s topic.

So what is today’s topic? It’s one that I had often thought to muse about when it came up in the regular Torah reading rotation in parashat Ki Tissa. It’s the “G”d’s backside” incident.

Moshe asks to behold G”d’s presence. God tells Moshe to stand in a cleft in the rock, and G”d will pass him by.

That’s what G”d says will happen. Guess what’s missing from the text? There absolutely no assertion in the text that G”d actually did so!

You’d think that such a glorious and magnificent moment would call for some serious prose or poetic imagery. What do we get? Bupkis. It’s left entirely to our imagination.

Of course, I hear some say, that’s exactly the point-it’s left to our imagination. The experience might be totally different for each one of us, were we granted such an opportunity. So describing it would be pointless.

That’s not good enough for me. At least we need a teaser, the biblical equivalent of the famous line from 2001: A Space Odyssey, “My G”d, it’s full of stars!”

The author(s) of Torah, whoever he/she/it (they) is/are passed up an incredible literary opportunity. Or, perhaps such a passage was there, and later expurgated by some redactor with the strong belief that such specific visages should be left to the imagination, or the belief that it somehow reduces G”d to something too real and tangible.

I’m going to occupy my Shabbat with attempts to make a midrash here, to fill in the blanks, and describe the actual encounter that is only hinted at in the text. I commend the same to you. what would it be like to have G”d allow G”d’self to be seen as G”d passes you by? what would you see, sense, taste, feel, experience? I’d love to hear your stories, and perhaps someday I’ll share mine as well.

Shabbat Shalom,

Adrian

©2010 by Adrian A. Durlester

Technorati tags: judaism, torah, commentary