PARSHAT KEE TEESA

(5768)

 

IN GOD’S PRESENCE

 

“So Moses came down from Mount Sinai, and as Moses came down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with Him.”                                (Exodus 34:29)

 

            If you have seen the famous statue by Michelangelo of Moses, you will notice the two horns that come out of his head.  This is the basis for the nuttiness still believed by some that Jews have horns.  Actually the term “horns” is based on a mistranslation by the early church father Jerome.  The Torah actually states that when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai after being in the presence of God forty days and forty nights, his face was radiant with beams of light.  Moses actually had to wear a mask to speak with the people.

            Being in the presence of God made Moses face shine.  But did Moses actually speak to God face to face?   This portion certainly says that he did.  “The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to another.”  (Exodus 33:11)  And yet there is a contradiction.  Later in the portion Moses asks to see God’s very essence.  And God has Moses hide in a crack in the rock, so he could see God’s back.  He tells him, “You cannot see My face, for man may not see me and live.”  (Exodus 33:20)  How can we explain this clear contradiction?   Moses was in the presence of God, as much as any human being can be in God’s presence.  But God has no body; one cannot literally see God face to face.  But there are moments when we humans can feel an overwhelming sense of God’s presence.

            Can people today relive that experience of being in the presence of God?   We live in far more skeptical times.  When someone says that they felt in the presence of God, we tend to look at them askance.  Even religious believers can be skeptics about those who claim direct religious experience.  And yet I believe even today standing in the presence of God is possible.

            The most obvious place to feel God’s presence is during religious worship.  I recently listened to a talk given by Rabbi Brad Artson, head of the Rabbinic program at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles.  Rabbinical students were asking about prayer.  How should we modify our religious services to make them more “user friendly?”   More English?  Less English?  Instrumental music?  New tunes?  Changing the format?  Changing the length?  More explanations?  Artson replied that in all the debates about worship services, we have lost track of what is truly important.  Prayer is about standing in the presence of God.

            I do my best to pray three times a day.  Do I feel like I am standing in the presence of God?   Occasionally.   I feel closest to God when there is a crowd and everybody is singing, when the words are ancient, when some brilliant insight comes jumping out at me from the Torah.  I feel closest to God at select moments – particularly Neilah at the end of Yom Kippur after a twenty-four hour fast, when the ark is open throughout the service.  Prayer is a discipline that sometimes leads to those Godly moments.  But those moments make daily prayer worthwhile.

            Some people feel in the presence of God in nature.  I have stood in awe on the rim of the Grand Canyon or watching the sun rise over the Dead Sea from the top of Massada.  I have felt it in the mountains and on the beach.  (In Florida there are plenty of beaches, but I need an annual trip to the mountains for my sanity.)  Nature can be an awesome place to find God.  But nature is also fickle.  It can be ugly and cruel.  The same God who made the majestic mountains made the mosquito infested swamps.  The Torah teaches that God made nature, but God is not within nature.

            I have found God in the study of sacred texts.  In Judaism study is the door to holiness.  Moses went up onto the mountain for forty days and nights of learning, and only then did his face shine.  I love my weekly Bible study class in Coral Springs.  For some people, being in the presence of God’s word is as close as they can come to being in the presence of God.

            Prayer, nature, study are all paths to the presence of God.  But there is one path that is the greatest of them all.  To be in the presence of another human being, in the full relationship of the moment, is a glimpse through to God.   The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber spoke about moments of I-Thou relationship with the other.  “Each thou is a glimpse through to the Eternal Thou.”  Perhaps moments of at-on-ness with other human beings are the surest way to be in God’s presence.  If we are lucky, we can walk away from such moments with light shining from our faces.

 

 

PARSHAT KEE TEESA

(5767)

 

DIFFICULT PEOPLE

 

“And the Lord said to Moses, Take to you sweet spices, storax, and onycha, and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense; of each shall there be a like weight.”                                                                    (Exodus 30:34)

           

            Now and again I run into someone who tells me, “Rabbi, I never set foot in a synagogue.  I find it to be full of hypocrites and sinners.”     My answer is, “Of course the synagogue is full of hypocrites and sinners; if only good people went to synagogue it would be sad.  It would be like only healthy people going to the hospital.  We need places of worship not only for good people, but for difficult people.  Maybe the synagogue will make them good.”

            On Yom Kippur evening we begin our prayers with a line that “we are permitted to pray with sinners.”   This probably goes back to the days when many Jews converted to other faiths, but would wonder back into synagogue on the holiest day of the year.  When I comment on this prayer, I often say, “We are not allowed to begin our Yom Kippur prayers unless there are some sinners present here.  Thank God this is not a problem in our synagogue.”  As I look out at my congregation, I see wonderfully saintly people.  And I also see very difficult people.  All are part of the congregation.

            This idea is made explicit in this week’s portion.  It speaks of making of the holy incense, the various spices which were combined and burned on the altar in the ancient Temple.  Among the spices mentioned is helbana, usually translated galbanum.  This spice is known for its foul odor.  The great commentator Rashi makes the comment, “Scripture includes this among the spices of the incense to teach us not to be afraid to allow sinners of Israel to join the community in prayers.”  Human beings who are difficult, who take the wrong path, who are hard to get along with, are still human beings.  They are as worthy as anybody else.

            I recently spoke to a man who has had no contact with his son for many years.  I asked him why, and he told me, “My son is very difficult.  My life is easier if I have nothing to do with him.”   I could only answer, “How sad!”  Most of us cannot totally cut ourselves off from difficult people.  They may be family members, co-workers, or members of the community.  Just as the galbanum was included among the spices, we need to include them in our lives.

            How do we deal with difficult people?   People say to me, “How can I invite my brother to my son’s bar mitzvah – he will ruin it for me.”  The first answer is “be courteous.”  Courtesy and good manners are the lubricant that allows society to function.  Being nice to people we do not like may sound hypocritical, but it is vital if we are to live in a civilized world.

            The second answer for dealing with difficult people is to listen to what they have to say.  I have had someone call me for an appointment and know that they intend to yell or express anger.   I dread the appointment.  When they come in, I sit back, let them have their say, and listen.  I may agree or disagree with their point.  But when they leave, I want them to say in their heart, “At least the rabbi listened to me.”

            I have discovered a third answer to people who are truly difficult, people who find joy in making the lives of other people miserable.  My answer is to pray for them.  Prayer allows us to recognize their humanity and see the real person.  And who knows, sometimes God does hear prayers.  Sometimes people really do change their ways.   We are all spiritual beings created in the image of God.  And sometimes we can connect with a person in spiritual way even when we are not physically present.

            Finally, when confronted with difficult people, it is important to look for the good in them.  In ancient Israel a court of twenty-three rabbis could not find a person guilty of a capital crime unless at least one rabbi was willing to argue the person’s good points.  Everybody has some redeeming quality.  Who knows, maybe that redeeming quality is the reason God put them in the world.                  

 

 

PARSHAT KEE TEESA

 (5766)

 

PEACEMAKERS

 

“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, Come make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.”                                                            (Exodus 32:1)

 

            Last night I was teaching the teens in my synagogue who participate in my Torah Corps.  One of them said to me in his usual provocative way, “Rabbi, if we could only get rid of religion, there would be no more conflict in the world.”  I replied, “Even people who share the same religion are full of conflict.”  I continued, “If only we could get rid of people, there would be no more conflict in the world.”

            Of course I was speaking tongue-in-cheek; I hope the young people caught my humor.  But I was trying to teach these young people a deep truth.  Conflict is part of human nature.  We are born to disagree, and often to fight with one another.  Religion at its worst can add fuel to fire and increase the conflicts in the world.  Religion at its best can be a source of peace between human beings.  That is why we need religious people who are peacemakers.

            In the Christian tradition, Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.”  (Matthew 5:9)   And Judaism sees Aaron the brother of Moses as the ideal peacemaker.  The great sage Hillel taught, “Be like the students of Aaron, making peace and pursuing peace.”  (Avot 1:12)  According to an ancient Rabbinic tradition, Aaron spent much of his time preventing conflicts and seeking reconciliation.  When two people were angry with one another, he would go to the tent of one and say that the other wants forgiveness.  Then he would go to the tent of the second and say the same thing.  He particularly practiced such reconciliation between husbands and wives.  Perhaps that is the reason that the people mourned the death of Aaron even more than his brother Moses.

            Aaron’s personality as the ultimate peacemaker explains a difficult problem in this week’s passage.  Why did Aaron make a Golden Calf?  But more serious, why did God not punish Aaron for this transgression?   Some commentators say that Aaron was forced on the threat of death to make it, and therefore he did not act of his free will.  However, I prefer an alternate explanation.  I believe that God knew Aaron’s gift as a peacemaker.  Perhaps in this case Aaron went too far.  But the role of making peace is so important that God was willing to overlook this transgression.

A number of years ago, after trying to counsel both sides in a particularly ugly divorce, I decided to try to sharpen my own skills as a peacemaker.  I took a five day intensive course in mediation, particularly family mediation.  In mediation a neutral party, usually an attorney but sometimes a psychologist or even a clergyperson, tries to facilitate an agreement between two parties.  The mediator is not an arbitrator; he or she has no right to force an agreement on the parties. 

The role of the mediator is to help the parties speak to one another and come to their own agreement.  A good mediator will begin with a search for ideas that both sides can agree to.  For example, in divorce mediation, perhaps both sides will at least agree that a child deserves both a mother and a father in his or her life.  If they cannot agree in that simple statement, we are in deep trouble.

In my pursuit of mediation training, I looked once again to the Biblical Aaron as a role model.  According to a rabbinic tradition, Aaron raised a question about the biblical verse "Justice justice shall you pursue" (Deuterono­my 16:20).  Why the double usage of the word "justice?"  One is pure justice, which is decided by a judge through litigation.  The other is mediation, finding a fair middle ground that both sides can agree on. (Sanhedrin 32b.)   In a divorce, the second type of justice seems far closer to God's ideal. 

Any peacemaker will occasionally make a mistake.  Certainly Aaron did with the Golden Calf.  But peacemakers at their best are truly God’s agents in perfecting this world.  Perhaps we can look forward to that day when religion becomes a source not of conflict but of peace.  For after all, Shalom – peace is one of the names of God.

 

 

 

PARSHAT KEE TEESA

 (5764)

 

REENTERING THE WORLD

 

“So Moses came down from Mount Sinai.  And as Moses came down the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since He had spoken to him.”                                   (Exodus 34:29)

 

            I was flipping through a catalog of spiritual audio tapes when I saw a series of tapes by Jack Kornfield with an intriguing title – After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.  The title succinctly summarizes the issue of our many spiritual quests.  When we are finished with our spiritual experiences, we must reenter the world.  We can confront God, have a mystical experience, enjoy rapture, but than there is laundry to be done, bills to be paid, children to be raised.  How to we go from the spiritual heights to mundane reality?

            At the end of this week’s portion, Moses finally came down the mountain after forty days and nights of communing with God.  According to the Torah, Moses neither ate nor drank during that period.  He was in a world beyond physical needs.  Then he came down the mountain and rays of light shone from his face.  (The Hebrew for a ray of light is keren, which can also be translated “horn.”  Based on this misreading of the verse, Michelangelo placed a horn on his statue of Moses.  Some ignorant people still think all Jews have horns.  If only they thought all Jews give off God’s light.)

            The light that came from Moses face was overwhelming, and Moses was forced to wear a mask when he held day to day conversations with people.  The image is powerful.  Here was a man who had such a life transforming religious experience that he literally gave off a light when he dealt with people.  Those who met Moses after this experience knew that they were in the presence of a holy man.

            What is the lesson for today?  We live in a time of spiritual seeking.  People try to find intense spiritual experiences.  They may find them in prayer, in the classical worship of the synagogue, church, or mosque.  They may find such spiritual power in meditation, yoga, or other sacred rituals and disciplines.  Jews have traditionally found such a moving spiritual experience in the study of sacred texts.  Some have found such moments in the simple rituals of the home such as a lighting Sabbath candles and eating a family dinner or participating in a Passover seder.  And some have found such experiences in pilgrimages to sacred places – Jews to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Moslems on the Hajj to Mecca, Catholics to the Vatican or to sacred shrines, Buddhists to visit learned teachers among the monasteries of the Himalayas.  

            Some spiritual traditions seek to leave this world altogether, enter nirvana or some higher spiritual plane.  Part of the wisdom of my own tradition is that spiritual highs are never permanent.  We seek God on the mountain, and then like Moses, we must come down again.  We must reenter the world, hopefully inspired and recharged.   We must do laundry again, and more important, we must interact with people on a day to day basis.  Does our spiritual experience make us give off light?

            Last week I wrote about Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ.  Is the movie good or bad?  What I wrote is that for many people, the movie is an intense spiritual experience.  My question is, when they walk out of the movie, are they better people?  Do they give off light?  

            I can ask the same question of people who come to our worship services.  Do they walk out spiritually charged, more compassionate, more sensitive, more accepting, ready to reenter the world and perfect it?   Do they see the image of God in the people they meet, and are they ready to love a little more and criticize a little less?  Do they carry God’s light into the world as Moses carried it off the mountain?  If so, then our spiritual experiences are worthy?  If not, why not?

            In this age of spiritual seeking, our ultimate goal is not to escape the world, but rather to see the world with the eyes of God.    We first touch the face of God, and then reenter this world to bring God’s light. 

           

 

PARSHAT KEE TEESA

(5763)

 

AARON THE PEACEMAKER

 

"Moses saw that the people were out of control - since Aaron had let them get out of control - so that they were a menace to any who might oppose them."

(Exodus 32:25)

 

Aaron was a great man.  He was Moses' older brother, the spokesman before Pharaoh, the first High Priest, the man responsible for the rituals in the ancient tabernacle.  How could such a man make a Golden Calf?

Aaron=s greatest strength also became his greatest weakness.  Aaron was a peacemaker.  The Talmud calls Aaron a man who loved peace and pursued peace.  (Avot 1:12)  Later Midrashim see Aaron as the great mediator, trying to end conflicts between husbands and wives or between friends.  He would speak to one party in a conflict, telling how bad the other party felt and how he or she wanted to apologize.  Then he would do the same to the other party.  He earned his reputation as a peacemaker.

            Moses on the other hand, had a very different personality.  He was a man of laws and rules, with little patience for those who would bend the laws.  He used to say, "Let the law pierce the mountain."  He did not care whether people loved him or not.  What was important was that people live according to God's laws of right and wrong.  Moses was not afraid to take a stand or make people uncomfortable.  He was not afraid to display anger.

It is fascinating to compare the Torah's description of the deaths of Aaron and of Moses.  The people truly mourned Aaron, their beloved peacemaker.  They seemed far less saddened by the death of Moses, despite his greatness as a law giver.  People love a peacemaker.

Moses was delayed coming down from Mount Sinai.  The people, fearing he was dead, demanded a Golden Calf as their symbolic leader.  Aaron the peace maker tried to stop them.  But in the end Aaron did not want trouble.  He acquiesced to the people=s demand and personally built the Golden Calf.  What is surprising is that Aaron was never punished for his actions.  It is almost as if God understood that this was Aaron=s personality, and he was only following his own inner drives.   Aaron represented the leader willing to pursue peace, whatever the price.  But in this case the price was too high.

Peace is certainly the ideal.  Three times a day we Jews say a prayer for peace in our Amida, the central prayer of our liturgy.  We end our mourners kaddish with the words, "May the One Who makes peace in the heavens make peace for us and for all Israel, and let us say Amen."  The Torah teaches that "when you approach a town to attack it, first offer it terms of peace." (Deuteronomy 20:10)  Peace is the ideal and the dream; war and conflict are a last resort.

Yet perhaps we can learn from Aaron that peace is not necessarily the right course to pursue in every situation.  Sometimes by pursuing peace we allow injustice, or even evil to flourish.  Sometimes by pursuing peace we tolerate that which ought to be intolerable.  That is the reason why the great prophet Jeremiah taught "Peace, peace, but there is no peace."  (Jeremiah 6:14)  There are times when the world needs not a mediator or a reconciler, but someone willing to take a stand.

Today our nation is at the brink of war.  Our president has called for military action against Iraq if it does not cease and desist from the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.  Should Iraq be attacked, there is a good chance that she will strike out at Israel.  Having said that, if Iraq is not stopped there is a good chance she will develop weapons that will be a much greater threat to Israel in the future.  Meanwhile, around the world hundreds of thousands of people, including many Jewish groups, are marching for peace and against any preemptive attack against Iraq.

I pray that there is not a war, but I am not hopeful.  I have mixed feelings about attacking Iraq, but I do believe the president is making a powerful case.  Sometimes, even if you love peace, you have to take a stand against evil.  Aaron=s refusal to stand up for what is right led to the Golden Calf.  Our refusal to take a strong stand for what is right can lead to consequences far more deadly.

 

PARSHAT KEE TEESA

(5762)

 

MOSES AND AARON

 

"Then he (Aaron) took it from them and cast it in a mold and made it into a molten calf.  And they proclaimed, This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!"

(Exodus 32:4)

 

As a rabbi, how do I make religious decisions for my congregation?  Allow me to share a passage based on this week=s portion from my book God, Love, Sex, and Family.

I have found great wisdom in my favorite talmudic passage about religious leadership.  It compares the personalities of Moses and Aaron, the only two brothers in the Torah who got along with one another:

Moses motto was, let the law cut through the mountain.  Aaron, however, loved peace and pursued peace and made peace between man and man. (Sanhedrin 6b)

Moses, the younger brother, was a man who loved the law; he spent forty days on the mountain studying with God Himself, neither eating nor drinking.  Yet in his passion for the law, he often had little patience for the weaknesses of the human beings whom he served.  Much of the book of Numbers shows him as an angry and frustrated man; his anger eventually prevented him from entering the Holy Land. 

In one poignant moment in the Torah, Moses rebuked his brother Aaron for a mistake regarding the sin offering.  (See Leviticus 10:16-20)  At that moment Aaron was still in mourning for two of his sons.  But Moses only cared that Aaron had broken one of God's laws.  Aaron responded to his younger brother, after such a tragedy, does God care about the details of the sin offering.  Moses could only be silent.  He was a law person, not a people person.

Aaron, the older brother, loved people.  He was a compromiser and a peace maker.  He loved the public role of High Priest, finding atonement for the people's sins.  Rabbinic lore says that he would go from home to home mediating disputes.  Often he would tell an estranged wife "your husband wants you to forgive him", and then tell the estranged husband "your wife wants you to forgive her."

Despite these beautiful qualities, Aaron's passion for peace sometimes made him lose sight of God's law.  He was willing to build a golden calf and lead the people in its worship as God.  (See Exodus 32:1-6)  He lacked the leadership to say, "no, this is wrong!"  He was a people person, not a law person.

Both Moses and Aaron were spiritual leaders;  both were role models for me as a rabbi.  Moses represents the God of law, the keeper of standards, the attribute of justice.  Some would call this the masculine persona of God.  Aaron represents the God of love, the lover of compassion, the attribute of mercy.  Some would call this the feminine persona of God.  Authentic religious leader­ship means finding a balance between the two brothers, between the two attributes of God.

There is a tightrope to walk between Moses and Aaron, between the God of law and the God of love, between the establishment of standards and the teacher of compassion.  If I tip too far towards Moses I risk the danger of becoming judgmental and intolerant, an authority figure rather than a pastor to the afflicted.  If I tip too far towards Aaron I risk the danger of becoming anarchis­tic and inauthentic, a therapist rather than a guardian of religious tradition.  By setting standards and at the same time recognizing the needs of real individuals who fall short of those standards, I can be an authentic religious voice. 

It is precisely this balance that the rabbinic midrash defines as the religious ideal:

`The Lord God made earth and heaven' (Genesis 2:4).  A parable of a king who had cups made of delicate glass.  The king said: If I pour hot water into them, they will [expand and] burst; if cold water, they will contract [and break].  What did he do?  He mixed hot and cold water, and poured it into them, and so they remained unbroken.  Likewise, the Holy One said: If I create the world with the attribute of mercy alone, its sins will be too many; if with justice alone, how could the world be expected to endure?  So I will create it with both justice and mercy, and may it endure. (Genesis Rabbah 12:15)

 

PARSHAT KEE TEESA

(5761)

 

AGE OF RESPONSIBILITY

 

"Moses stood up in the gate of the camp and said, whoever is for the Lord come here.  And all the Levites rallied to him."             (Exodus 32:25)

 

How old was Aaron when he built the Golden Calf?  Probably slightly more than eighty three years old.   At every age we have the potential to do wrong.

How old should someone be before they are fully responsible for their misdeeds?  In my own community, Lionel Tate has made national news after receiving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for a vicious murder of a young child.  Lionel is fourteen years old.

In San Diego a fifteen year old boy is going on trial as an adult for the school shooting deaths of two of his classmates and the wounding of several others.  A nephew of the Kennedy's, now an adult, is on trial in Connecticut for a murder he allegedly committed as a young teenager.  At what point are teens considered adults and expected to take full responsibility for their actions, including a lifetime in an adult jail?

Certainly in Jewish tradition, the age of responsibility is thirteen for boys.  In an Orthodox synagogue, a father recites the words "Blessed is He who freed me from punishment for this one's sins."  A girl becomes responsible even younger, at twelve.  But does that make a twelve or thirteen year old fully an adult, bearing the full responsibility for everything they do?

When Moses destroyed the Golden Calf, he called everyone opposed to this idol over to his side.  The tribe of Levi came over.  As a reward, they were given responsibility for carrying the tabernacle through the desert and assisting the priests at worship services.  Later, we learn that a Levi was not allowed to begin his training for these responsibilities until he was twenty five years old.  He did not actually start his work in the tabernacle until he was thirty years old.  (see Rashi on Numbers 8:24.)  Thirteen and even eighteen were too young for work in the tabernacle.  Different levels of responsibility come at different ages. 

Our secular law recognizes that different levels of responsibility and different consequences come at different ages.  In most states, youngsters cannot drive until they are sixteen years old.  They cannot vote, marry, or sign legal documents until they are eighteen years old.  They cannot drink or gamble until they are twenty one years old.   I see many young people in their mid-twenties or even early thirties before they truly start acting like adults.   Fourteen and fifteen year olds are too young to be held to adult levels of responsibility.

Being an adult does not happen instantaneously.  It is a long, slow process that begins with breaking away from parents and seeking one's own identity.  Anyone who works with teens knows that they often act in immature ways, heedless of the consequences of their actions.  Too many of them experiment with drugs or heavy drinking, irresponsible sexual behavior, aggressive driving, running away from home, unhealthy eating disorders, gangs and criminal activity, and sadly, sometimes suicide attempts and too often, violence.  Too many teens have still not learned to control their appetites.

The rabbis teach that the evil inclination acts within a human being from birth onwards.  The good inclination is there in potential, but does not become fully activated until the age of majority.  For young people, too often they do not learn maturity and self-control until well into adulthood.

Does that mean that there should be no consequences for teenage criminal activity?  Of course not.  The teenager who causes harm, whether by irresponsible driving or by shooting in a school, must pay the consequences of his or her actions.  But life imprisonment for a fourteen year old, however heinous the crime, is unduly harsh.  Certainly a lesser punishment can be conceived that would be significantly punitive and still give hope that someday this life can be redeemed.

Meanwhile, as we ponder how to handle teen violence, let us all take responsibility to help guide our teens in one of life=s most important lessons, self-discipline and self-control.