Parshat HaShavua

Living a life in accord with the Torah’s teachings is a daunting proposition.  Six hundred thirteen is a big number.  Even the top ten commandments can be challenging; try going a week without coveting something.

For many Jews taking the steps toward a more observant life, steps like keeping kosher or even skipping a secular workday for a Jewish holiday*, can seem so challenging that one wonders whether these laws are really meant for us.  Can human beings really follow all these rules?  Even with the encouragement of tremendous blessings and fearsome curses, perhaps the prescriptions and prohibitions of the Torah are more of an ideal, a path to sainthood, but not for everyday people.

Nitzavim reminds us that we all have the ability to hold up our end of the covenant.  We have the strength, the intelligence, the will, and most importantly, the proximity:

Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach.  It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us?”  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?”  No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it. (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Etz Hayim Humash)

The Torah is not for angels; it is for us diverse and flawed humans.  It is not inaccessibly distant; it is in our mouths and in our hearts.  Some mitzvot are readily easy.  Others take study and practice.  Many require a Temple and perhaps a messiah.  But there is nothing in our part of the covenant that we are permanently incapable of handling.

When you consider the overwhelming task of being one of God’s people, don’t look to heaven and despair.  Don’t consider the vast distance of foreign shores or the distance in time from Sinai our modern age and give up.  Look into your heart, and get started.

* I’m talking to you, mid-week Sukkot.

Parshat Re’eh, 5768

A riddle:

In Deuteronomy 15:4-5, God tells us, through Moses, that if we follow God’s laws, there will be no needy people among us.

Later, in Deuteronomy 15:11, He says that the the poor will never cease out of the land.

What gives?

At first I thought this was a rebuke.  If someone says to you, if you do X, I will give you Y, but you will never get Y, what does that mean?  That we can’t be trusted to do X?

It’s as if God is telling us straight up that He doesn’t believe we will do as we are told, or even as we have agreed to do by joining the convenant.  And would it be the first time we’ve heard this sentiment?

Thanks, Dad.

A closer reading perhaps redeems this apparent dearth of trust.  Verse 4 talks about the lack of needy “among you”, whereas verse 11 says that there will always be poor and needy “in the land”.

What this says to me is that even if we keep all the laws, and even if as a result there are no needy among us, that is to say, no needy Jews, or no needy among whatever group of with whom we identify, there will always be people who need help or compassion in the land in which we dwell, whether in ISrael or abroad.  If all of our family or community or political party or religion are prosperous, well fed, and well cared for, can we be satisfied that we’ve abided by the laws of the covenant?  I think not.  God makes it clear here that there will always be those in our land who need our help, and we will always be obliged to help them.

This week I heard a stirring editorial on the radio.  A woman was talking about visiting New Orleans and encountering a young couple in a bar in the French Quarter.  When she asked the young man what he thought of the fact that so much outside of the tourist area had not been rebuilt, the young man said, those people chose to live in a flood plain, in substandard housing, with inadequate insurance.  How much can we be expected to do for people who make bad choices?  What is the value of personal responsiblity if people aren’t held accountable for those choices?

God is not telling us that He doesn’t trust us to do His will.  He is telling us that even if we follow the law to the letter, and our own communities prosper thereby, we are not done.  We are still on the hook to help even those who don’t follow all the rules.  Wherever there is suffering that can benefit from compassion, “Thou shalt surely open thy hand unto thy poor and needy brother, in thy land.” (D 15:11)

Parshat Eikev, 5768

In the beginning of my quest to become a rabbi, I was introduced to the term “binding” as a feature of Jewish law, by way of a question: Do I feel bound by the law?  Do I feel personally obligated, and if so, is this obligation solely personal, or do I think all Jews have the same obligation?  In other words, is the law “binding” on all Jews?

A rabbi asked me this question about six months ago.  Not only do I still feel unqualified to answer it, especially on behalf of all Jews; I’m also still grappling with a broader question:

What does “binding” mean?

When I think about this question, I think about the book “How to Read the Jewish Bible” by Mark Zvi Brettler.  This book turned me on to the idea that book of Deuteronomy / Devarim is written in a form similar to that of political treaties or business arrangements of its day.  It has a preamble (recapping the journey of Israel, Moses, and God) which establishes the authority of the counterparties to enter into such an agreement.  It spells out the duties to be performed (loving the Lord, teaching the children, keeping the commandments, etc.), and then it describes the remuneration for fulfilling the duties (crops, children, personal and communal longevity) and the penalties for breach of contract (eviction, starvation, personal and communal short-evity).

So I asked the rabbi, is this what “binding” means?  Abiding by a contract/covenant, with expectation of reward or punishment tied to our performance?

“It’s not that simple.”

The universe is not a simple performance/reward system.  Push one button, you get a food pellet.  Push another, electric shock.  Feeding the hungry today means good harvest tomorrow.  Gossip over dinner, and read gossip about yourself in the morning paper.  Even a contract as comprehensive and explicit as Devarim is not as simple as it sounds, or its ramifications as direct.

Even as last week’s reading (Va’etchanan) told us about intergenerational responsibility and transgenerational justice, Eikev tells us about the complexity of God’s scales.

“Speak not thou in thy heart, after that the LORD thy God hath thrust them out from before thee, saying: ‘For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land’; whereas for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.  Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thy heart, dost thou go in to possess their land; but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that He may establish the word which the LORD swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”  (D. 9:4-5)

We do not inherit the land by our own virtue; God made a deal with our ancestors, and we’re collecting on a prior arrangement.  The nations do not whither before us because of our strength, but rather, because of their weakness, and because of the strength of those who walked before us, and because the strength of the One who walks with us.  When we deserve it.  And sometimes when we don’t.

As Va’etchanan said, those who love God are blessed to the thousandth generation.  Are we blessed for our love of God, or because we’re somewhere within that thousand generations?

For me this idea begs credulity for the case of the “binding” nature of the law.  Whether we are blessed or cursed for the actions of our fathers, our lot appears disconnected from our performance.  Does Eikev make a case for a bit of randomness in the process, a Skinner box of unconnected cause and effect that can only reinforce skeptics’ attachement to the problem of the existence of evil?

I think one answer can be found in taking a longer view of time, in returning to the transgenerational nature of justice.  This may be a story about God’s bringing a stiff-necked people into a land they don’t deserve.  It is also a story of God’s honoring a covenent with our ancestors, regardless of the behavior of their progeny. 

The One whose justice is not always transparent is also the One whose mercy is not always transparent.  And though neither are transparent, both are evident.  When we dwell in homes that we didn’t build, drinking from vineyards we did not plant, let us not only bless God, as Va’etchanan says, but follow the lesson of Eikev and consider:

What reward or punishment will our children inherit because of what we do today?  If it happens that we are in the thousandth generation, what have we done, or can we do, to secure blessing for the thousand and first?  And if we can’t be bothered with that, who will live in the houses we build, and drink from the vineyards we plant?

Often when a parsha begins with or contains a genealogical passage, it suggest an exploration of transgenerational issues.  What is one generation’s responsibility to its children, or to its parents?  This parsha contains no such genealogies, yet it is rich with transgenerational responsibilities worth exploring.

Foremost is the assertion of one generation’s responsibility for the next.  These words which God has given you this day you shall teach to your children.  We are responsible for the Talmud Torah of our children, as our parents were responsible for our Talmud Torah.

Second, we learn of transgenerational accountability.  For our sins God promises justice to be delivered to the third or fourth generation after the sin.  What human standard of justice is conceived or worded so, or is even capable of such enforcement?  On the other hand, one theme we see time and again in the Torah is that the certainty and ferocity of God’s justice is exceeded only by the depth and breadth of his mercy, and this parsha even quantifies (if metaphorically) this beautiful inequality.  While God’s justice extends to the third and fourth generations, His mercy extends to the thousandth generation of those who love Him. 

For those keep keeping score at home, the winner is mercy, 1000 to 4.

Or if you’re a geek like me, 250:1.

Finally is the exortation that once we enter the promised land, and we dwell in houses and cities not built by us, and we eat to satiey from groves and vinyards not planted by us, that we be careful not to forget the Lord that brought us there.  Commentaries in the Etz Chaim chumash interpret this as another message of transgenerational responsibility.  We all dwell in houses that were built before we got there, and we all exist by the grace of the work that came before we got here.  To me this makes a nice book-end to the idea of parental responsibility to teach…the responsibility of children to remember what we are taught, that we may carry the lessons forward to our children.

Just as a fundamental block of Jewish identity is the family, a fundamental block of Jewish time is the generation.  In the enumeration of the covenant that is central to this parsha, we are taught that God’s role in the bargain is to render justice and grant mercy from one generation to the next, and ours is to transmit (both send and receive) His instruction, blessing, and praise from one generation to the next.  And while it is within our power to bridge just one generation at a time, we can count on His love for a thousand generations.