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Words
of Torah
Archives
High Holiday 5766
Davar
Torah on the Akedah
by Joann G. Breuer
1
Good Morning.
Today
I want to speak about nothing. From nothing comes everything, everything
which exists, everything living.
Nothing is necessary for everything to be. From the void, creation. The
breath of life fills the cavern of the lungs.
From the hollow of the womb, the child grows and is born. Without silence,
speech is unintelligible. For the continuous process of creation, space
is required.
I want to speak about absence. The absence of Sarah in this story. The
absence of protest of Abraham and Isaac as they acquiesce to increasing
pressure for the sacrifice of Isaac, “your son, your favored one,
Isaac, whom you love”.
I want to speak about silence, because the moral dilemmas of the Akedah
are sufficient to bind the most philosophical mind and the most eloquent
mouth, neither of which I possess , to a mute tangle of thoughts.
2
I want to speak about nothing, because I believe that not-ness is at the
center of this pivotal, essential event in the birth of Judaism, the birth
of our world, and ultimately in the birth of each of us. And birth is
a continuing experience.
In Isaiah we hear that Abraham is our father, Sarah our mother, so we
must also be Isaac, an adult, asking only: ‘where is the animal to
be sacrificed?’ The animal is, for the moment, absent. Isaac is silent
as the wood is lain next to him, and a knife in his father’s, our
father’s, hand, is held above him.
Does Isaac choose NOT to see, in this place of vision, his eyes fading to blindness in old age, when he can no longer distinguish one son from another?
At this
moment between life and death, a fulcrum of being and non-being, to look
in either direction is unbearable.
Three times we hear Abraham’s Hineni.
Here I am he calls to HaShem.
Here I am to Isaac.
Here I am to the angel of the Lord.
3
Like Abraham, we are here. We do not perceive every moment of our lives
as heightened drama. Such dazzling vision might leave us immobile. We
are born not simply to be, but also to do. Eternity is of potential; we
mortals are of deeds.
Where is Sarah, the mother? Does her sleep leave her absent from Abraham
and Isaac’s journey, absent even of awareness of it? Sages have interpreted
Sarah’s subsequent death as shock, not at the death of her son, which
did not happen, but that his death might have been. Or, is she struck
down with the horror of her own absence at a moment of such trial.
Obedience to God in the face of orders which defy everything one wants
to believe in. Where is the moral path?
We are on the horns of a dilemma, a ram’s horns.
4
Human sacrifice continued in myth and practice. The Greeks wrote of Agamemnon’s
offering his daughter, Iphigenia, to the Gods, that the winds might blow
favorably. In some versions she is saved to become a priestess, but in
Aeschylus’s version, The Oresteia, Agamemnon kills his daughter,
initiating revenge murders for generations. Historically, the Phoenicians
ritualized child sacrifice to save their beseiged city; archaeologists
have found large child graveyards among Carthagenian ruins . Lest we exempt
ourselves, in Judges Jephthah seems to sacrifice his daughter for a battle
already won; in Second Kings, Moab offers his son. In the Greek era, Hannah
exhorts her seven sons to die rather than renounce God; In the Roman era,
Pinchas ben Yair and others at Masada kill themselves and their children
rather than be subjugated.
In many
societies, the worse conditions became, the fewer lambs and the more children
were sacrificed, an effort to appease the divine. Exodus 13:15 Moses reminds
the people that the Lord slew every first born in the land of Egypt, and
“therefore”, he says,
5
“I sacrifice to the Lord every first male issue of the womb, but
redeem every first born among my sons”. That is, a sheep or a shekel
for some babies, but only some.
Maimonides tells us that the Beit Hamikdash, the temple, was erected on
the very spot, Mount Moriah, where Abraham bound his son. Within the silences
of Abraham’s non-sacrifice, there must be a voice to be sustained,
heeded, and cherished.
Countering the silences of Abraham, Isaac and Sarah , are the careful
words and delicate structure of the text.
We call this portion AKEDAH, binding. Yet that word appears only once
.
Another
word appears nine times: BEN: son. It echoes throughout and resonates
within. The son: the one who was so long awaited, is present, and is a
promise of the future. Nine times we hear the word SON. I think we are
meant to remember it.
There is another remarkable word in the text. To my knowledge it is the
first time it is mentioned in the Torah:
6
LOVE. What an stunning concept. Your son , whom you love. Each day of
creation God saw that it was good, but after breathing life into MAN,
at the resting day of creation, God saw that what had been good, now with
man , was/is very good: tov becomes tov m’od - an anagram in Hebrew
of M’OD (very) is ADAM.Humanity
makes creation very good.
At this
binding, even more: man is infused with acknowledged love. Yet, this command
to go forth leads to the knife of a father held above the throat of a
son.
This is the tenth test of Abraham. One might say, enough already. Perhaps
it is enough. From this time on, God does not speak to Abraham again.
Significant silence after a significant command and release. Today, these
generations later, we remember both voice and silence, and wrestle with
them both.
This son, Isaac, is NOT sacrificed. The sacrifice of another son, Jesus,
promises atonement for his followers. What atonement do we Jews achieve
from this NON sacrifice, this fraught nothingness.
7
I think of this nothing as a moment of spiritual consciousness. Hineni.
Here I am.
Albert Einstein had but one regret about being Jewish: that he was born
a Jew. He would have preferred to have chosen his beloved faith. Continual
choice is humanity‘s destiny. Einstein showed us how all matter,
human and non, are formed of atoms, atoms which hold power beyond all
other worldly power, paradoxically in their undoing.
As Rabbi Broitman reminded us yesterday, the traditional Rabbi carries
a note in each of two pockets. One reads: I am but dust and ashes: the
other: for me the entire world was created. Both are true. We are participants
in the process of creation: Dust we are, powerful, very good, and loving.
8
We hear the spine tingling sounds of the shofar, the ram’s horn,
reminding us of the ram which appeared as offering in Isaac’s stead.
The twisted ram’s horn fills with the breath of the one who holds
it. Sound emerges: a call to awaken, a cry of the triumph of life, and
simultaneusly, a sob; exuberance , and exhaustion, melded in semblance
of God’s blowing his breath into the dust that becomes man. We hear
an echo of Abraham’s wail at the death of Sarah in the shofar. We
hear an echo of Sarah’s sigh at her own death. The ineffable, untranslatable
shofar sound, is also an echo of Isaac‘s unasked heart rending questions,
questions which binds us to each New Year’s retelling of their story.
Loss and promise, our destiny, are united in now, neither past nor future,
but escorted by time, we go forth. Lekh l’khah.
Kierkegaard writes that, like Abraham, we go in fear and trembling. Our
way is twisted, with sounds and silences beyond our understanding. But
we go on, and the ways of our going create our world.
9
The midwife turns the child as he emerges from its narrow place, the birth
canal. We are twisted into earthly life.
The twisted shofar heralds our presence, its tones a breath-formed, wordless
HINENI: I am here.
Genesis 22 ends with a recitation of the children of Abraham’s brother,
Nahor and Nahor’s wife Milcah.
Stories of brothers are pillars of the Judaic monumental tradition. Why
finish this startlingly ambiguous event with the naming of these children,
not Abraham’s?
Are we
at last to see these children, symbolically, as also the children of Abraham?
Are we to skew our vision further, and perceive all the children of the
world, metaphorically, also as our own. In aged Isaac’s blindness,
his not-seeing, his inability to identify a particular child, can we prefigure
the blessed gift of community? Can this chapter’s closing literary
gesture be, in fact, a measure of vital, moral reality.
I close with, to me, the most striking silence in the life of Abraham:
10
the silence of God’s voice to Abraham after Isaac lies bound. God
spoke to Abraham with instructions for the journey and Isaac’s binding,
but it is an angel of the Lord who asks for release that binding. In the
midst of the silences of Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah, what is that voice,
that angel, which speaks to Abraham in his silence?
Perhaps in that silence, Abraham confronts his moment of spiritual consciousness.
In his silence he hears the voice of the angel, the likeness of God within
himself: truly, here I am.
Can this
have been Abraham’s ultimate test? From this time on, Abraham, our
father, the first Jew, within his silences, is able to hear his own innate
loving message of self , breathed into his dust, powerful, alive, and
indeed very good.
May we also, in the profound silence of our soul, hear the voice of the
angel within each of us, a voice which calls: Choose Life, as we go forth
to create our own mysterious, wonder filled, winding paths into each new
year.
L’shanah tovah
* * * * *
High Holiday 5765
Joann
Breuer
Max Jasny
Joy Ganapol
D'var Torah - Parashat Kedoshim
Touched (by JIM PEPPER, who was working in Biloxi, MI)
With
gratitude to, and words of, many rabbis
Joann Breuer
Good morning.
As the great cellist Jacqueline du Pre lay dying, she asked that her recording of Kol Nidre be played by her bedside. She knew music, and she knew her urgent need: to hear the haunting strains of this mysterious, magical melody, leading into a personal and communal song of remembrance and of promise.
Few among us have the gift of du Pre’s mastery, but each of us can listen to the music of our lives. Today is our urgent day, our temple in time.
This morning’s portion, acharei mot, after the death, delineating rites of atonement, begins with the remembrance of the death of two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu. Our sorrow, our empathy, our deepest fears, are engaged. The death of two sons.
What should we, what can we, make of our lives after such loss?
It is
not easy to keep company with the dying. We face our own fears, even as
the dying face theirs. Can such companionship possibly offer particular
blessings? Perhaps, this companionship offers blessings of awareness of
the fragility of life, and the breadth and
depth of the spirit within each life.
In such awareness may come healing.
That healing is the gift from the dying to us, the living.
So we begin our fast, our deprivations, our brief semblance of life’s absence, remembering the death of Aaron’s sons, that by this pause we may become even more appreciative of the feast to come, the reaping of nature’s harvest, and a sweet succot.
The rites of atonement in the days of the Temple begin with the high priest’s making atonement, through sacrifice of a bull, for himself and for his household.
His second confession, also by animal sacrifice, a he-goat, one of two chosen by lots, is on behalf of himself, his household, and the children of Aaron, ‘your holy people’.
Why does the Priest confess himself twice? I suspect, with some rabbis, that the High Priest recognized, as we are obligated to acknowledge, that no one can separate himself from his people, least of all the their mentor.
One comment about God, for the sake of those among us who find the concept of God, however one shapes that concept, somewhat awkward.
A poem by Czeslaw Milosz:
If there is no God,
Not everything is permitted to man.
He is still his brother’s keeper
And he is not permitted to sadden his brother,
By saying that there is no God.
We can appreciate the past practice of animal sacrifice through its historical context. It is the third ritual of the Biblical Yom Kippur service, one devised with the intuition and cunning of ancient Jewish leaders, which remains most problematic.
The High Priest turns to the other goat. The escape goat.
He no longer refers to himself, but now to God’s attachment.
He symbolically places the sins of the community on that little goat, and sends the goat away, to, or for, Azazel.
Is Azazel satan? The wilderness? A place in the wilderness? Certainly the Jewish people would not make a sacrifice to the devil. As in Proverb 16 :
Lots are cast into the lap.
The decision depends on the Lord.
Both goats, therefore, are for God. One dies in the presence of the group; and one lives, for some time, away from sight.
I picture this little temple goat, a red ribbon, signifying the sins of the community, split: one half tied to his horn, the other half tied to a fence post….this sweet goat, trotting past crowds of jeering strangers, folks who understandably mock the notion of such a diminutive creature bearing such an enormous burden.
Will the red ribbon turn white as the community sins are expiated? Will the little goat find succor or suffering in the wilderness?
We cannot tell how long that goat survives. Perhaps he does fall from a cliff in, perhaps he lives off the wild berries and bushes for a full span. Either way, how can a little goat carry the sins of the community, and should he?
Today, animal sacrifice is behind us. Yet, the sensibility behind these rites remain, and remain challenging.
As Maimonides says:
This portion sustains an active allegory:
our sins lead to a wasteland.
I am reminded of other wildernesses of our tradition:
that to which Hagar is sent; the bush burning in the wilderness; even Mt. Sinai looming above the wilderness of Sinai.
As we say on another holiday: such miracles happened here.
The Maggid of Koznitz tells us:
every day man shall go forth out of Egypt, out of distress.
So, in a true metaphorical sense, we are each also that little goat.
Perhaps time and weather will bleach those red ribbons to white, even as the congregants atone. But perhaps, significantly, we are not meant to know the fate of the goat, that we may keep him, and the reasons for his going, visible only to our mind’s eye, ourselves now unburdened by public guilt, but remaining as private memory, available to each of us to inform more enlightened, paths in the world.
I am reminded also of other goats trotting through Jewish tradition.
Chad Gad’ya, the only goat of Pesach, of whom we sing, through disaster upon disaster, until the rhythm of his hooves, echoing in the song, vanquishes of the angel of death.
I think especially of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s version of the folk tale of Zlateh, a she-goat, her name a cognate of Polish money.
Zlateh was not giving sufficient milk to support the country peasants, and so a boy, Aaron, note the name, is sent with the goat to sell her in the town. On their way, winter rolls in.
Cold, snow, and wind halt Aaron and Zlateh on their journey. Ahead of them, Aaron spies a last haystack of autumn.
Aaron and Zlateh take shelter within it.
Through days and nights of blizzards Zlateh munches on the linings of his hay house, and Aaron slakes his thirst with the milk of the goat. They survive.
When the sun and its warmth finally appear, after this long time near death, Aaron cannot bear to part with Zlateh.
Every journey is, after all, also an inner journey.
Aaron and Zlateh return to grieving peasants, who are overjoyed to see the pair. The peasants had presumed them dead, that they had lost both Aaron and Zlateh forever. In their mourning, the peasants had turned to each other They had become a community; at first, in sorrow, and now, in joy.
As Martin Buber says:
In your love for your neighbor, you shall find God.
So may it be this Yom Kippur as we read of Aaron’s legacy, and the ancient escape goat. May our teshuvah be, as was the High Priest’s, a turning to each other.
May an awareness of death inspire us to new life.
As Rosh HaShana celebrates the birthday of the world, may this Yom Kippur contain, for each of us, a melody of celebration of the birth of new wisdom and new compassion; and, for all of us, a harmony of the birth of a renewed and responsible community.
Kavannah
for Forgiveness (Selichot)
Max Jasny
The word "sin" always strikes me as not very Jewish. In fact, this translation of the Hebrew word ³chet² is somewhat inadequate. It might better be translated as ³to err, to wander from² . . . as though we have just unintentionally taken a wrong path and gotten divided from the group. So I started thinking about ³sins² as acts that separate us. Each transgression is like a wedge driven between us, making us feel more isolated and alienated S from each other, from our true selves, and from G-d.
In atoning for the sins committed against each other, we take certain steps. We admit the transgression. We repair the damage. We apologize. We vow never to repeat it. We do these things in order to change our behavior. But forgiveness is the more intangible, emotional part of the healing.
You can¹t
forgive someone who has truly apologized to you without giving up any
anger or resentment you may have toward them. And being forgiven for something
you¹ve done to someone else can help you to let go of any feelings
of guilt. We can only recover our inherently loving connection with each
other by ridding ourselves of anger and guilt between us. T¹shuva,
is a return to closeness. And forgiveness really puts the transgression
behind us and completes the healing of our relationships.
In thinking about closeness, I had this image of a baby developing in the womb. For nine months, we float in intimate physical contact with their entire universe, as we know it. After birth, we crave closeness with parents, family, with other people. Even with the inanimate objects around us, we want to touch, taste, smell everything in reach to make contact with the world.
Each of the hurts we suffer or inflict gets in the way of the closeness we seek.
That¹s
why we ask forgiveness together as a community. In a way, the High Holy
Days are a workshop. We participate together in doing t¹shuva. We
support each other in grappling with the ideas, practices, prayers and
emotions involved in these days of transformation. It¹s an intensive
shared
experience that brings us closer to each other.
We go through a similar process of t¹shuva in repairing the sins committed against G-d. What are we trying to do when we ask for
G-d¹s forgiveness what is happening in our hearts?
I think if G-d can forgive us, with our imperfections, then maybe we can also really forgive ourselves. If G-d can be delighted with us, then we can decide to stop feeling bad about ourselves -- for anything we might have done, or for anything within us that we might have thought was not good enough. Even if you¹re not sure of the existence of G-d, this process is still just as genuine.
Atoning for sins bring us closer together. In asking for forgiveness, we are reaching for closeness to a Divine Spirit. We try to bring this spirit into ourselves. To return to a vision of a world that welcomes and encourages us, and gives us the strength and desire to be our truest selves.
High
Holiday 5765
Kavanah for Zichronot
by Joy Ganapol
In Zichronot we are challenged to remember, to create an ongoing mindfulness of our values and beliefs. We are told that for god there is no such thing as forgetting, that nothing remains hidden.
For us too there is no real forgetting. Our memories haunt our dreams and enrich our lives and live in our bodies.
As Heschel says, “the substance of our very being is memory… when we want to understand ourselves, to find out what is most precious in our lives, we search our memory. Recollection is a holy act- we sanctify the present by remembering the past-keeping the past alive in the present.”
We need to be conscious of and grapple with the importance of our disturbing as well as our positive memories in order to live fully rather than merely survive. Living well requires a healthy acceptance of our past.
Today is one day, one time of many that we should stop and remember our passions, our indiscretions, our pain and our joys, our hidden and our revealed past - our history. Let us together accept the challenge to remember, be mindful and grow from our examination of memories.
As Milton Steinberg wrote:
“Remember! All our ancestors live in us. Though their tongues are silent, they speak with ours. Though their hands are still they labor through us.
The past lives in us, in our very bodies. The structure of our organs, the energy that moves our muscles, the nerves and brain wherewith we apprehend our World, all are an inheritance from generations that have passed.
Remember! The past lives in our worlds, in our ability to reason, to communicate thought and feeling, to work, to love.
Remember! The past lives in the world’s wealth and resources. We eat the fruit of trees planted by forebears long gone. With metals stored in the earth we forge our tools. Through skills and devices conceived by vanished generations, we survive in the world.
Remember! The past lives in our society and our folkways. Others before us originated government to make us secure, courts to administer justice and protect our liberties, ritual to enhance our days.
May we cherish justice and freedom in the affairs of our land, peace and equality among the peoples, that our children after us may not revile us for bequeathing a heritage of evil.
May we be true to our past as Jews, seeking to fulfill the unrealized ideals of our prophets and sages. May we fit ourselves to be their successors, and to impart to our children the vision of a godly kingdom.”
D'var
Torah - Parashat Kedoshim
By Devorah Medwin
Kinahora. My mother is spitting. This means things are going well in my family, everyone is healthy, everyone is very happy and all of us are finding our places in the world. This terrifies my mother, but in a good way. For her, things should be good, but not too good. We should be happy, but not too happy that we're happy. We should all be successful, but not too excited that we're all successful. Not that it's bad, but that God might get angry. I grew up thinking that somewhere there was a God who was measuring my happiness, a little bit was okay…too much and I might draw God's attention. Somehow it was understood that drawing God's attention wasn't a good thing. And as I got older and life got better, I followed the tradition, I spit, nicely, tcho, tcho, and I cautioned myself not to get too excited.
The Parashat Kedoshim opens with God saying to Moses and including the entire Israelite community, "You shall be holy, ki I, Adonai your God, am holy." In a UAHC commentary, David Nelson interprets the text "You shall be Holy if/when I, Adonai your God, am Holy." This raises the possibility, Nelson says, that God's holiness may be intimately linked to our own. In this covenant, "we are holy only when God is holy; conversely, God is holy only when we are holy."
The covenant takes on a whole new meaning if you imagine that it refers to our relationship with God as one of mutual exchange between loving partners rather than of a judging God ready to pull the rug out at the first sign of success,
The words that Marianne Williamson wrote and Nelson Mandela quoted in his 1994 inaugural speech help to illustrate the idea;
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?" Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us: It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, in The Torah: A modern commentary, describes how the spirit of God, which is in man, is to elevate everything.
That God's Schechinah lowers itself down to us in proportion to the degree that we morally raise ourselves to God. So suddenly there's an image not of towering over God, not of a finger-pointing God - but of a compassionate God who will bend down to reach us wherever we are.
So why play small? Why not reach toward God instead God bending down to reach us? So there I am, in a moment when things were going very well, standing on my coffee table, terrified and spitting. I was excited and I was terrified to think what God would think once God realized things were going well. But this time I remember the covenant. This time I thought... it might even be in God's best interest for me to have things go well, God might even be thinking it would be nice, God might be thinking, this would be a good time for her to reach up toward me. And then I thought about the nurturing energy it takes to bend down to reach someone for 37 years and I thought it's time, it's my turn to stretch...God's back must be breaking...
And if we are truly intertwined, if there is really that kind of give and take, then it's true, "We are only holy when god is holy and God is holy when we are holy."
Rabbi Shoni Labowitz in her incredibly inspiring book, Miraculous Living, says, "through the garments of the soul, holiness enters the world. The soul is clothed in thoughts, words and actions. How you fashion the garments of the soul in your everyday life affects your awareness of holiness in the world. therefore, your awareness of the sanctity within yourself and the sacredness of all existence affects everything, everywhere. When you recognize your holiness, you think, speak, and act in holiness."
"You shall be holy, ki, if/when, I, Adonai your God, am holy."
TOUCHED
by JIM PEPPER, who was working in Biloxi, MI
Nothing here is untouched by the storm. Anywhere you look you see the signs. "Damaged" doesn't begin to describe some of it. Vacant lots with a set of concrete stairs going to that cool front porch that no longer exists. A front porch that was a place for rest and reflection. Where families and neighbors sat in rocking chairs or the glider turned sideways at the end. Cool drinks, passing the warm afternoons before supper. The porch that fronted the old family homestead, where generations had lived, loved and died for their place in the community. Gone now.
Gas pumps lean at odd angles in an open field, seeming like lost drunks looking for home. Long gone is the little neighborhood store where they stood guard. The store where the kids bought soda and candy, mom picked up the milk and the gossip, and Dad bought his Camels and talked about the fishin'. All gone.
People go from agency to organization to shelters and back. More have jobs and families to juggle with the only hot meals served by walkup kitchens or from trucks driving to the neighborhood. Day after day, they are looking for help, or trying to help. Thousands of them looking. Thousands of us trying to help. We mix in ways we never would have considered a few weeks ago. Doing things we never would have imagined. Trying to put the best face on a difficult situation; we're all the same in that.
When mother nature meets human nature, we're all touched. We build our lives where our community exists, and it exists in whatever form nature allows. We bend nature and it bends us. Sometimes we're at odds and the bends become breaks. In the end it's the bending and breaking, time and again, that defines the community. So the community lives with nature.
My experience here has been incredible. Sharing this experience with my community of volunteers, helping the local community regain its feet, is rewarding in ways I could not even try to describe. It is broadening me in ways I had never considered and more importantly has affirmed all that I have known about myself. I live in a room with 750 others, in a building housing now over 1200. All volunteers. All colors, all religions, all walks of life. Within arms length of my cot is an old-time english teacher from Virginia, a latino woman with orange hair, a coed from Oregon, a rastafarian from NYC and a high school dropout from Jersey City. I brush my teeth each morning next to a woman in her seventies, who stands on a bucket to put on her make-up. We do that outside at a line of 10 sinks. I eat with a different group of people each meal. While people wait for their rides in the morning some do Tai Chi exercises. All kinds of folks, all here to help together and to help each other. There is no class distinction. Blue states and red states mix (does that make green?) Nothing here is untouched by the storm. We are all here together, touched. I'm here, touched.