TorahParsha

Thought for Simchat Torah/Bereishit

please pray for the health of Daniel Yehuda ben Arella and Yechiel ben Michal.

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The Torah as a book of failure

 

i

Man and woman

fail in the Garden.

Then Adam names Eve Eve, Chavah—

for she is the mother of all life.

 

ii

Moses hits the rock

against God’s words.

For this,

Moses may not enter the Land—

he dies outside of it.

 

After Moses dies,

the Torah says,

the people weep

and then they follow Joshua

—whom Moses had made leader after him—

as they had followed Moses.

And the Torah says:

there will never be another prophet

like Moses.

 

iii

So that the Torah

that begins with Creation,

with Adam and Eve,

begins in failure.

 

And the Torah

that ends with the death of Moses

ends in failure.

 

It is a book of failure.

 

iv

But this is also true:

that Adam and Eve find a name

as parents to humankind;

that, as one in a line of leaders,

Moses is the greatest of prophets.

 

v

Perhaps to say:

Alone,

at our one point in time,

we cannot truly succeed.

 

Only when we are a part

of the long history of humanity,

of the long line of our people—

then we live,

we thrive.

 

 

 

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Chag sameach and Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

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Why we were expelled from the Garden

for Parshat Bereishit

 

i

God makes mankind

from the dust of the earth

breathing into man

with His own breath.

*

And the man and the woman

stand naked before the world.

Created from the dust

that makes up the earth,

created from God’s breath,

they are a part of everything:

nothing is truly outside of them

that they should cover up from.

 

ii

But the man and the woman

take the Fruit.

This is a sin.

As a sin,

this is a declaration of separateness:

from God,

from the world He has made.

Separate,

their nakedness is truly nakedness.

So they need to cover up.

So they sew fig leaves.

So when God comes,

the man tells Him:

I cannot be before You,

for I am naked.

*

Separate from the world of God,

the man and the woman are expelled

from God’s Garden.

 

iii

So that repenting from sin

is more than self-improvement:

it is rejoining the world

—the universe—

we once belonged to.

 

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Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

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Please pray for Matan Yosef ben Chava Leah v'Yehudah Yehezkel HaCohen

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What is a home?

 for Parshat VaYikrah

i

Cain gives a gift, a minchah, to God.

Abel, too, brings his minchah.

God accepts Abel’s gift

and rejects Cain’s.

Cain kills Abel.

*

In God’s Tent, too,

you can bring a

a minchah,

a gift,

before God.

*

This is the Tent

all Israel built

from material they offered together,

from the work they shared.

 

ii

When every man is for himself

in a world of winner-take-all

there cannot be enough to go around.

Even a gift comes to violence.

*

A home is an inversion of this.

Together we take a small place

and make it a wide world.

Sometimes that place

is large enough to house God.

 

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Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for Neshama Emuna bat Batya

TorahParsha.com

 

Thought for Bereishit / Shemot

 

How we create ourselves

(The Tower of Babel)

 

i

God said: Let there be Light. And there was Light.

And God saw that the Light was Good.

And God separated the Light from the Darkness.

 

ii

In Babel, the people said: Let us make bricks; let us build a great city and a tower; we will make a name for ourselves.

*

God does not want this.

He makes the people speak different languages (before they had been of one language).

They can no longer understand one another.

They can no longer speak with one another.

They scatter from each other—across the whole earth—into many languages, many nations.

 

iii

We can create ourselves by pretending we are like God, Who creates Light from nothing: by making bricks, by building a tower, by making a name for ourselves, by building ourselves up from where we are.

Or we can create ourselves by acting as God did, when He drew out the Good Light that was hidden in Darkness:

—drawing out or own nationhoods, now hidden amongst the mass of people; discovering our place in the world.

God says: choose the second way.

 

Shabbat Shalom,

- Abe

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Please continue to pray for Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah, and for Rachel Tovah bat Yehudit Esther
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The Beginning of Sin (for Parshat Bereishit)

The Beginning of Sin

i
God makes the man sleep.

In this sleep, God crafts the Woman from the man’s side.

God presents the Woman to the man.

Saying, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, the man knows to take her for a wife.

*
The man and his wife eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Their eyes are opened. They know that they are naked. They sew fig leaves into clothes, covering their nakedness from everyone.

ii
Before he eats the Fruit, the man understands himself by understanding others.

He knows his own bones, and his own flesh, and his own destiny, only in seeing all these things in another—in his wife.

After he eats the fruit, the man looks at himself, and he looks to hide himself from the world: he sees his nakedness, he covers his nakedness.

iii

This is shift in worldview marks the beginning of all sin.

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Shabbat shalom,
Abe

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Tamar, Judah, Joseph, Symbol

i
Joseph dreams prophetic dreams. His father dresses him in a special many-colored coat. His brothers hate him for his coat, these dreams.

Joseph's brothers attack him. They call him the dreamer. They  strip him of his coat. They cast him in a pit, from which he is sold into slavery.

*
Tamar, Judah's daughter-in-law, reveals her identity (she had been disguised) by means of the cord, the staff, and the ring that Judah had given her when she was disguised.

*
Joseph becomes ruler of Egypt. He hides his identity from his brothers when he meets them again. He pretends not to speak the same language as they do: the translator is between them when they speak.

*
Finally it is Judah who approaches Joseph and causes Joseph to reveal himself to his brothers; and the brothers are reconciled.

ii
A symbol is meant to be a communication: it is meant to bind people together. A cord, staff, and ring, for instance, tells Judah that Tamar is Tamar.

Symbol can also overshadow its own meaning, making communication impossible, tearing people apart. It is language, for instance, that lets Joseph pretend he does not know his brothers.

And it is Judah, who has learned from Tamar, who approaches Joseph, who encounters Joseph face-to-face, who takes the veil of symbol away.

iii
This story holds in it the same lesson as Isaiah's chastisement to all religious hypocrites:

Bring Me no more vain offerings, says God; incense of abomination they are to Me: but cease to do evil, learn to do good: seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

Based partially on the writings of Avivah Zornberg, and on a teaching of the Ishbitzer relayed to me by Raquel Sanchez.

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Jacob / Israel

i
Jacob is named Jacob, Yaakov, because he is born clutching the heel, eikev, of Esau, his older twin brother.

He will live a life following on the heels of his brother. (Or consider the Hebrew, la'akov: to follow).

Jacob is given the family birthright, not because he is born to it but because he purchases that family birthright from Esau.

Jacob is given the family blessing, not because it is meant for him—it is meant for Esau; but because he tricks his father into giving him Esau's blessing.

ii
Then a nameless angel wounds Jacob in the thigh, and calls Jacob Israel.

Now, there is no one for Jacob—Israel—to follow after (the angel is nameless). And with the wound, the symbol of the leg (the source of following) is taken from Jacob.

*
Jacob was one who chased after his brother's life.

Becoming Israel, Jacob is called to have his own, separate life.

To be Israel is to have a life apart.

***
Based partially on comments of Rabbi Matthew Stein and my wife, Kathi.


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The Rejection of Esau

i

Before God makes Man, the plants of the field—siach ha'sadeh—had not yet sprouted. For there was no man yet to work the land.

 

And then God makes Man and places him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it.

 

*

Isaac is a man who goes out to meditate in the field: la'suach ba'sadeh.

 

Meditating, Isaac binds himself to Man's original purpose; he meditates back to the field and the protection of the field.

 

Isaac meditates back to Man's purpose of helping things grow.

 

ii

Esau, Isaac's son, is a man of the field. So he is like is father.

 

But Esau is also a Man who knows how to hunt.

 

To hunt is to undo Man's purpose in the field: to hunt is to kill.

 

iii

Esau is rejected from the line of Isaac, from the line of Abraham, from the line of men who fulfill their reason for being created.

 

This is because it is not enough to be a literalist.

 

It is not enough to say: I have shown up to the right place, I have come to the field, I am a man of the field; and that is enough.

 

Because it is not enough to only show up to the right place. You must fulfill your purpose in that right place. You must help the things of that place grow.

 

Esau does not understand this, and so he is rejected.

 

That is the tragedy of Esau.

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The Children of Rebecca and Isaac

i
The text relays how Abraham's servant brings Rebecca from her homeland to Abraham's house, to become Isaac's wife; in that story the text uses the word camel eighteen times.

For instance. The servant sets a sign to know whom of the women he meets should be Isaac's bride. The sign is that the right woman will volunteer to water the servant's camels. It is Rebecca who fulfills that sign.

And for instance. When Rebecca finally does come to the house of Abraham, to be married to Isaac, she is riding on a camel.

And we do not learn that Isaac actually sees Rebecca when she arrives. We only learn that Isaac lifted up his eyes, and behold: camels were coming.

Rebecca is signified by camels.

*
At the time that Rebecca and Isaac meet, Isaac has just gone out to meditate in the field.

*
After they meet, Isaac takes Rebecca in to the tent, in to their marital home.

And he loved her.

ii
A camel in that time and place was a vehicle of journey, like our car or our train.

So Rebecca, drawn to camels, signified by camels, is a woman of journeys. She looks out to the wide expanse of the world.

*
Isaac is a man of meditation, of plumbing the depths of all things in a single field, of things close-at-hand.

*
Isaac and Rebecca's marriage joins two opposite views within a single home of love.

iii
God gives the Law to the Children of Israel—Rebecca and Isaac's descendants—at a precise mountain, a specific spot, along the Children of Israel's journey from Egypt to Canaan, from landlessness to home, from profane to holy. 

And God asks the Children of Israel to make for him a Mishkan, a portable temple, a meeting-house for the people and God, for the people and holiness, in their journeys from place to place.

And even up through now we meditate upon the Law, that is called Halacha, that means Path, inside the room called a Beit Midrash: a House of Study: the journey and the meditation in one home.

*
So that we, who are Rebecca and Isaac's children, come to God as Rebecca and Isaac's children.

Their marriage is eternal.

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This thought owes a great deal to both an online shiur from Yaacov Steinman, and insights from Rabbi Laurie Dinnerstein-Kurs.

Home

i
Abraham sits at the entrance to his tent, in the heat of the day. And from there he sees wandering angels, who are disguised as men. And he invites the men to take food from him and to take water from him and to rest from the heat of the desert beneath his tree.

The angels accept this offer right away.

*
Lot, Abraham’s nephew, sits in the gate of Sodom, the wicked city, that is the city where he lives. And he sees the same angels-disguised-as-men, and he invites the angels-disguised-as-men in to his home.

But the angels only accept Lot’s invitation after great pressure.

*
When the angels come to Lot’s house, the people of Sodom demand that the angels come out to be raped. Lot offers to send his daughters out in the angels’ stead. The people refuse Lot’s offer; and they try to break down the door to Lot’s house.

*
Since Abraham never invites the angels into his home, and Sarah, Abraham’s wife, is in the tent when they come, the angels do not see her.

The angels need to ask: Where is Sarah, your wife?

ii
The people of Sodom do not recognize the concept of home, of private space, of a precious hidden life. They only have a public space, public wants. This is the core of their evil.

Lot, the man of Sodom, greets guests at the city gate.

Lot brings strange men in to his home, though his daughters are there.

Guests are demanded up, and daughters are offered up, and houses are destroyed, all in the name of public pleasure.

*

Abraham’s life is of the home: of things apart from the public.

Abraham greets guests at the entrance to his own tent.

Abraham does not bring the men in to his tent: so the angels cannot see his wife who is in the tent.

The things of Abraham’s life emanate from within his home, in which his life is hidden.

*
God tells Abraham that he will punish the people of Sodom. Abraham argues to God that He should spare Sodom if there will be righteous people within the city, nestled among the wicked.

In a life of the home—a life in which all wonderful things are hidden—such hope for hidden goodness is possible.

And so it is Abraham who can pray for a wicked city.

*
In this way it is the home that lays open the option that people are good. It is the home that allows for hope for humanity.

So it is the home that allows for acts of mercy.

Based, in small part, on a speech of Rabbi Michael Whitman.

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