Friday, September 30, 2011

The Song of Heaven and Earth

The Song of Heaven and Earth
D’var Torah on Parashat Haazinu (Deuteronomy chapter 32)
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman


For his last lesson to the Israelite people, Moses sings a song. His career is spanned by song: After crossing the Red Sea, he sings “The Song of the Sea” (which includes the Mi Chamocha we know from services); now, about to close this 40-plus year career, Moses sings again.

The poetry of parashat Haazinu is some of the most exalted in the entire body of Hebrew literature. The parameters of this poem are grandiose, as Moses calls upon the Earth and the Heavens to be his witness. Within the timeless expanse of sacred Eternity, Moses bids the Israelites to find themselves and their role in history.

Moses reminds the Israelites of the many times God had redeemed them—starting from the moment God had designated them to be His people from among all other nations. Despite their small size, God stood by them countless times, protecting them from their enemies with the ferocity of eagles shielding their young. The steadfast strength of Israel is not in its numbers or weapons, but rather in their faith in God.

There is bitterness is Moses’s voice. It isn’t merely that he won’t behold with his own eyes the glorious climax of all his work, the entry of the Israelites into the Promised Land. Some of his bitterness stems from the fact that this bitter punishment was brought about by the stubborn ways of the people. But more than that, Moses can see into the future and can foresee that the people will continue rebelling against God. Their needs satisfied, the lessons he has worked so hard to teach them will be forgotten. The Israelites will turn to other gods, losing their vision and purpose on Earth. They will lose their way and find themselves dispersed throughout the world. Whereas before, God had let Israel “draw honey from the rock and oil from the flinty rock” (Deut. 32:13), now the very earth will give way beneath their feet, and the wine they drink will turn poisonous.

Yet—as God turns and points to the very Heavens God had created—His wrath against Israel is not eternal. God takes an oath saying that as soon as Israel repents and turns back to Him, God will vindicate them and punish their tormentors for all the pain they had inflicted upon God’s Chosen.

Parashat Haazinu is always read on the Shabbat between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, as this is the very message the Holy Days convey to us. All Creation has a sacred purpose. Israel plays an important role in the plan that God had devised.

Betraying this role can only lead to disaster; but t’shuva—literally “returning,” but connoting also spiritual repentance and a return to God’s ways—will result in restored order to the universe and, on a somewhat smaller scale, in Israel’s restoration as well.

The choice is ours. Let us choose wisely.


© 2011 by Boaz D. Heilman

Friday, September 23, 2011

From Infinity to Eternity

From Infinity to Eternity
D’var Torah for Nitzavim/Vayelech
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman


A double portion—Nitzavim/Vayelech (Deuteronomy 29:9-31:30)—closes our Torah readings for this year. This powerful, last message that Moses delivers to the Israelites right before they enter the Promised Land is written in simple and direct fashion. God’s words shouldn’t be hard to understand. “No,” says Moses. “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it” (Deut. 30:14). Though many lessons can be learned from these two portions, this time I want to focus on a Hebrew word: Vayelech (“he went”), the title of the second half of the week’s reading. The complete verse (chapter 31, verse 1) reads: “Then Moses went and spoke these words to all Israel.”

Vayelech reminds us of another going, nearly five books earlier. “Lech l’cha,” God’s command to Abram, was to “go forth to a land which I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). Two going-forth’s, one at the beginning of our story, one at the end—or really yet another beginning.

Abram (he hasn’t yet received from God the additional “ha”) is told to “go forth”—but without any specific direction. God will let him know when he gets there. We can just imagine the old man getting up one day and saying to Sarai, “Wife, pack up the tents. We’re moving.” Perhaps because he has always been a wanderer, Sarai doesn’t ask why, where to or how far. She trusts his sense of direction: it hasn’t failed them yet. Abram, however, has no idea. He trusts God and just goes forward in the direction his heart tells him. The goal, he knows, would reveal itself in due time.

Moses, however, is altogether another story. When Moses goes forth, he does so with a specific purpose in his heart: to speak God’s words to the Israelites. He knows exactly where he is going and what he is going to do once he gets there. It’s a short line between two points, one from which he will not meander. Not for him the ambling about that Abraham liked to do. Moses is out of time now—he knows he has but a few short days left to live.

Though the Torah’s stories span many generations—400 years’ worth—it really is the journey of just one human life. Like Abram, we begin with little or no knowledge. But faith and trust lead us on. Trusting our sense of awe, we follow the road we believe in. The variables of life take each of us on a distinct and unique path. We meander, taking time to experience the moment and to ponder the meaning of our existence in it. Sometimes we lose our way or find that it is blocked, fenced off. Yet somehow, a roadmap always appears—all we have to do is open our eyes and we see it. And so, having made the journey, we reach a point where we know we are supposed to be. Suddenly it becomes clear why we did what we did. A purpose emerges. Unexpectedly, we also find that we have very little time left to do what we know we must now do.

Abraham and Moses are the bookends that define the arch of every human life. We begin by asking and learning; we end by teaching and explaining.

The irony here is that Abraham had the rest of his life before him when he heard God’s word telling him to go forth. But where was Moses going to? Ostensibly, to his death.

Yet his death is not the end. From that point on, Moses would live on in us and through us. Having told us God’s words, having commanded us to write them on stone, to recite them publicly at least once every seven years, to teach them diligently to our children, to sing them on special occasions—he made sure these words would live on and reverberate through the millennia.

How well Moses succeeded is clear. We are still reading these same words, writing them down and teaching them to our children. Better than once in seven years, we read (actually chant) the Torah in an annual cycle, making sure its words are inscribed in our souls, incised in our hearts.

Infinity turned into Eternity as Moses completes Abraham’s journey, as he goes forth to deliver God’s message to the people. That done, he will now turn around, climb the mountain one last time, and become part of the eternal enigma we call God.

Now it’s our turn to go forth, set out on a new beginning and find our own path. A new year begins.


©2011 by Boaz D. Heilman

Friday, September 16, 2011

The World-To-Come (And How To Get There From Here)

The World-To-Come (And How To Get There From Here)
D’var Torah on Parashat Ki Tavo
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
September 16, 2011


The Torah conscientiously avoids any talk of the afterlife. Not that the topic was ever far from anyone’s mind. In ancient days, death was everywhere. The widespread belief systems of the time all gave detailed descriptions of what happened after death. Early Judaism was the exception. In Judaism, it is this life that matters, not the one following.

It is curious that while literature and art from all periods of world history contain depictions of hell, feverish images that are the fruit of some very disturbed minds, only scant material about it can be found anywhere in the Jewish sources and texts.

Again, that isn’t because people didn’t think about it all the time; in fact, much of the art of Medieval Europe is a depiction of either hell or of the Last Judgment and the damnation of the non-believer. Dante’s Inferno is a guided tour of the ten circles of hell, each worse than its predecessor. None of that is part of the Jewish concept of the afterworld, a place and/or time that the ancient Rabbis called ‘Olam Ha-ba, “the world to come.”

Contrary to Christian belief, the Jewish concept of the World To Come was of a good place, the reward of the righteous. Envisioning it was one of the fantasies Jews would indulge in—the food one would eat, the look and feel of that coveted seat at the Eastern Wall of the synagogue, the discussions one would have about difficult issues in the Torah and Talmud!

Hell did exist, as much for the early Jews as for the non-Jews around them. Only it didn’t occupy the world to come. It could happen anytime, anywhere in this world, during one’s lifetime, not after.

The dreadful Hell that some think God had devised for sinners doesn’t hold a candle to the devilish, cruel hell that we human beings can create for ourselves and for one another.

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo (“When You Arrive,” Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8) contains passages that do conjure up that nightmare—for that is what it is: A nightmare.

The portion contains some of Moses’s final words to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land. He will not be at their lead from that point on. On their own, they would now have to rely on other leaders and visionaries. Moses instructs the people to write the words of the Torah on stone, to review and understand, to interpret and adapt throughout the generations. At least once a year, Moses instructs the Israelites to recite a formal account of their history (a ritual we still perform, 3000 years later, repeating its words verbatim when we read the Passover Haggadah). The basic rules of Judaism are then repeated: Honor your parents; do not push back your neighbor’s boundary stone; do not subvert justice in the case of the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphan; do not take bribes; do not engage in acts of sexual depravity. And then come the lists of blessings and curses. If you do the right thing, you will be blessed. If you fail to do the right thing, you will be cursed.

The character and course of these blessings and curses are not unnatural. They all deal with the world we know—the seasons; the earth; the fruit of the grasses and trees; the fruit of the womb. Rather than the curses we see flying around in the exciting conclusion of Harry Potter, the curses we read about in Ki Tavo are the result of our own doings. Call them punishment, call them curses—what they really represent is the consequences of our actions and choices. For better—and they become blessings; or for worse—curses.

The horrors depicted in these chapters are so upsetting, that a tradition has evolved in synagogues where the whole portion is chanted on its appropriate Shabbat. The passages of Ki Tavo that contain the curses are chanted quickly and in a low, subdued undertone. Nobody really needs to be reminded of the horrors that surround us. They emerge out of the darkness, unbidden, in nightmares. They cause rubbernecking on the highways; they fill our newspapers with lurid detail.

So why do we read them anyway? To reinforce in us what we already know, as well as to teach the younger generation, which may not know yet, how terrible we can make our world—this world—with the choices we make; and, conversely, what a wonderful place it could be if only we followed these basic laws of humanity (Deut. 27:15—26).
Ki Tavo—“When you arrive.” Perhaps there is an afterlife and an afterworld after all. Ki Tavo implies we’re not there yet. It’s true. Just open up the newspaper and start reading. We are still so far from that wonderful place of blessings! Our world is anything but that.

But if we wait for God to spread some sort of holy blanket over us, one which would turn everything as though by magic into a blessing, we are bound for disappointment. If we wait, we will never get to that Promised Land. We have to create it ourselves. For us and for our children, not for eternity. Not for tomorrow—for today! Not tomorrow—but rather, now, starting at this moment. Only then will the words of this Torah come true: “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out” (Deut. 28:6). Blessed, indeed, in all our endeavors.



©2011 by Boaz D. Heilman

Friday, September 2, 2011

Judging in 3-D

Judging in 3-D
D’var Torah for Parashat Shoftim (Deut. 16:18—21:9)
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman


Whenever I read this week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, I am invariably struck by the irony in being told almost immediately, “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deut. 16:20) and, just a few verses later (17:2-5), being commanded to put to death anyone who strays from God’s path and worships other deities.

Granted, the people are warned to “investigate thoroughly” the matter. Still, is that justice? Sounds more like the kind of fury and zealotry that some people associate with the “Old Testament God.”

Yet isn’t it so? How else are we to read these passages?

When I think of the kind of “thorough investigations” that the Inquisition carried out in unmasking secret Jews during its reign of terror, I can practically see the bony finger of the Grand Inquisitor pointing to this chapter and verse as proof for permission to exercise cruelty and abuse. Under the guidance of the Inquisition (as in other totalitarian regimes), children were taught to inform on their parents, neighbors on neighbors. The property of the convicted “criminal” would then be divided between the Crown and the Church, with some smaller tip given to the informer.

Was that justice?

Yet, here it is, in the Bible’s own words.

Reconciling the irony was not easy, but by the beginning of the Common Era, the ancient Rabbis who constructed the Judaism we know and practice today came to a much different conclusion. They eliminated the death penalty altogether.

Fundamentalists who see the Bible as God’s own words, rigid, invariable and definitive, fail to understand the process of evolution that one can discern through the Bible. Often a stated law is meant not as a commandment, but rather to launch a whole discussion; the conclusion might be very different from the starting point. In the case of the death penalty, the discussion begins very early on. After all, how can a people who sanctify life also sanction taking a life?

This paradox occupied Jewish minds for centuries. One side cited the fundamentalist view. The other, more liberal, expressed the opinion that, if all life is sacred, any killing—even for a good reason—is immoral. The Talmudic Rabbis (1st—6th century) ordained that for a capital crime, a court must be comprised of 23 judges (and never less than two witnesses). After hearing the evidence, the judges must then part into two groups, one arguing for conviction, the other, for acquittal. A majority of one was sufficient to acquit, while a majority of two was needed to condemn.

The need to find some—any—extenuating circumstance was compelling. The Talmud rules that even in a case where all the evidence points to the guilt of the accused; even where all 23 judges agree among themselves on the guilt of the accused; yet, says the Talmud, in such a case, a miscarriage of justice had to be declared.

That is not to say that the accused is found innocent and acquitted. Rather, the inability of the court to find any—any at all—explanation for the actions of the accused means that this is “a court that obviously has very little understanding of who he is and what he has done. Such a court has disqualified itself from passing judgment on him.”

This explanation, offered by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, holds the key to understanding the cornerstone of Jewish Law, found in this week’s parasha: “Justice, justice shall you pursue” (Deut. 16:20). The course of justice is not always a straight line. It meanders through cause and effect, through the vicissitudes and inconsistencies of human experience. Similarly, the course of judgment is also complex. So many factors influence our perception, that something that may seem crystal clear at one moment may be clouded the next.

Hence the doubling of the word “justice.” It isn’t there for emphasis alone. It is also meant to show the difficulty and complexity of pursuing true justice. Depth vision is always a function of two or more angles and the way our brain reconciles the differences in perception.

Justice that is achieved without a measure of struggle is not possible for us humans. Pirkei Avot, the Mishanic tractate known as “Chapters of the Fathers,” teaches: “Do not judge alone, for no one can judge alone but the One.” Nor may we subvert justice by forcing our view on others, or by taking or giving bribes. Whereas the Torah and the rest of the Bible show argument and discussion (see Abraham’s argument with God in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 18:22-33), whereas the Talmud includes in its law discussions both the arguments of the winning side and those of the losing, no such process can be found in the vast records the Inquisition kept.

To point at any verse in the Torah and say, “So it is and so it must remain” is to ignore the progression and progress that characterize human nature. In fact, such a dim view of humanity barely recognizes that presence of God’s image in us.

Parashat Shoftim (“judges”) teaches us not only to follow laws blindly, but to understand them and let them evolve with us. It also teaches us to develop understanding of one another, of our own foibles as well as those of others; to be more accepting; to temper judgment with compassion. Thus Shoftim creates a more compelling image of God: a loving and just God, not a zealous, passionate and murderous one.


©2011 by Boaz D. Heilman