PARSHAT YITRO

 (5768)

 

DAY OF REST

 

“Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.”

                                    (Exodus 20:8)

 

            I had a fascinating flight home from New York to Fort Lauderdale this week.  I sat next to a gentleman who works as an investment banker, coming down to Florida for a conference.   He was Jewish, with young children, somewhat involved with Jewish life.  For two hours we spoke about parenting, being a rabbi, and being a banker.  And I learned some real insights on what he does for a living.

            I used to believe one of the best career paths for our young people who get a college education is investment banking.  Now I am not sure.  The man described to me how his company trains young future investment bankers.  (At the early stage they are called analysts.)  They are forced to work nearly impossible hours, over eighty a week.  After a few weeks they are forced to do a few all nighters, just to see if they have what it takes.  They are free to leave if they cannot handle the pressure, but are told not to come back.  He described a job with impossible hours and impossible demands.  Many drop out.  Others stick it out with the hope of serious financial rewards at the end.

            When he was done describing the life of a young, future investment banker, I said, “It sounds like boot camp in the military.”  He replied, “It is the same idea.  You have to teach them to work.  Many of them end up divorced.  There is no personal life; maybe a few drinks at midnight before going to work at seven the next day.  Many drop out.  But those who stick it out and learn to perform do very well.”

            I am glad I am a rabbi and not an investment banker.  Certainly being a rabbi is a demanding, time-consuming job.  But after this conversation, I decided I would rather deal with people’s personal problems than with corporations’ money.  At least my job allows me to stop occasionally, spend time with my wife and my children.  At least my job is built around one of the central ideas of Judaism – a Sabbath of rest each week.  (Actually for rabbis, it is hard to totally rest on the Sabbath when you have to conduct services.  But I have always tried to eat with my family Friday night, take a nap Saturday afternoon, and avoid the stress of conducting life’s business for 25 hours.  I avoid paying bills, doing work, shopping, even laundry.  It is day for God, for family and for myself.)

            I was tempted to ask my airplane mate, can one be a successful New York investment banker and observe the Sabbath.  Somehow I doubt it.  But many of us in many different professions work the same kind of long difficult hours.   Even if we are not sitting at a computer analyzing corporate finances, we have demands on us that take us from early morning to late at night seven days a week.  We work.  We have appointments.  Our children have lessons and sports, scouts and dance and too many other activities.  We have household chores and yard work.  The car needs gas, a washing, an oil change.  We need to go to the gym, to the market, to the mall.  And then there are all those unpaid bills.  And if there is a little bit of extra time, we can go the computer, read the hundreds of emails and reply to some of them.  We go to bed, wake up the next day, and it starts all over again.

            The Sabbath is a way of telling ourselves – Stop!  Instead of doing, simply be.  Enjoy a good meal with family members.  Take a long walk.  Come to services and commune with God for a period of time.  Or simply rest, and do not feel guilty about unfinished work.  The work will still be there, unfinished, when the sun sets on Saturday night.

            One of my goals as a rabbi is to convince Jews to rediscover the Sabbath.  I am not looking for them necessarily to become Orthodox in practice.  Many of the Orthodox Sabbath prohibitions are based on what Jews used to do for a living – farming, grinding grain, baking bread, making thread, weaving clothing, preparing skins for parchment, writing on that parchment, building a shelter, or creating a fire.  Most of us do not do these things for a living.  We work with computers and information, we practice law and medicine, we buy and sell and teach, or we analyze corporate finances.  Can we stop these activities for a day?

            As you read the Ten Commandments this week including “Remember the Sabbath,” can you think of one thing you are willing to give up doing one day a week in order to make that day special. It will add holiness to your life.

 

 

PARSHAT YITRO

 (5767)

 

LEARNING FROM ALL FAITHS

 

“When Moses’ father-in-law saw how much he had to do for the people, he said, `what is this thing that you are doing to the people?  Why do you act alone, while all the people stand about you from morning until evening.’”  (Exodus 18:14)

 

            This portion begins with Moses learning a valuable lesson from his father-in-law.  Moses should appoint judges to handle the burden of judging the people from morning until night, taking only the most difficult cases for himself.  Moses learns from his non-Israelite father-in-law Yitro, a Midianite, a people who would later become the bitter enemies of Israel.  As Ben Zoma taught in the Mishnah, “Who is Wise?  Whoever learns from all people.”  (Avot 4:1)

            One of the great mistakes many religious people make is thinking that wisdom is only found in their own tradition.  Jews read the writings of other Jews, Christians read the writings of other Christians, Buddhists read the writings of other Buddhists.  In fact, sometimes within a faith, people limit their study to those who agree with them.  Orthodox Jews and liberal Jews will not read each other’s teachings, evangelical Christians and liberal Christians feel they have nothing to teach one another.  There are bookstores, both those run by Orthodox Jews and those run by Christians, which refuse to carry my books because I am not an Orthodox Jew and not a Christian.  If we limit our reading to our own we are closing our minds.

            As a rabbi, what can I learn from other faiths?  My beliefs are strongly built on the Jewish idea of covenant (humans as partners with God) and Israel (humans wrestling with God.)  These beliefs have given us Jews our passion for struggling with the world and trying to perfect it, for arguing with God when necessary, for an emphasis on action rather than simply faith.  But what can I learn from other religious traditions?

            From the Christians I have met, I have learned about faith.  If Jews speak of a leap of action, Christians speak of a leap of faith.  (It was the Christian existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who coined the phrase.)   Perhaps this faith, or trust in God goes back to Paul’s idea of justification by faith alone.  It gives Christians serenity and an acceptance of adversity, which I admire.  As a Jew, I am always ready to argue with God.  But maybe there is a time simply to say, I believe in God and I trust in God.  I have learned that from Christians.

            From the Moslems I have met, I have learned about surrender.  After all, the very name Islam means surrender to God.  Judaism tends to emphasize the power of humans as God’s partners; Islam the limitations of humans in the face of God’s presence.  Again there is a time for arguing with God and a time to surrender to God’s will.  Even the twelve step programs are built on the idea that there are things in life we cannot control.  There are times when we must surrender to a force greater than ourselves. 

            I have even tried to learn from the great religions of the Far East, Buddhism and Hinduism.  If Judaism has emphasized how to live in this world, the religions of the East have seen this world as a place of suffering and ultimately non-reality.  They have developed pathways to connect with the world of the spirit, whether through meditation, yoga, or other spiritual practices.  They have developed an entire science of the inner self and inner mind that has become influential in the West, including Kabbala.  The East has powerful insights to teach Judaism.

            I have even learned from atheism.  I am reminded of a well-known story told in Jewish circles.  A rabbi tells his students that we can learn valuable lessons from everything God put on the earth.  One student challenges the rabbi.  “What can we learn from atheism?”   The rabbi replies, “We can learn a great deal from atheism.  When you see your brother or sister in trouble, do not say `God will take care of you.’  Act as if there is no God, and everything is in your hands.”

            I believe in Judaism.  But I can learn from Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, atheism, and many other worldviews.  Wisdom is the ability to learn from all humans and all approaches.  Such open mindedness can only make our religion stronger.

 

 

PARSHAT YITRO

 (5766)

 

GOD TALKS TO HUMANITY

 

“And when the voice of the shofar sounded long, and became louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by a voice.” (Exodus 19:19)

 

            For believers, the events of this week’s portion changed the course of history.  God, creator of heaven and earth, at one moment in history, communicated to humanity.  At Mt. Sinai, the great moment of revelation occurred.   The people Israel, and ultimately all humanity, walked away from these events with an overwhelming knowledge – this is what God wants us to do.

            What did God actually communicate on Mt. Sinai?  Was it the actual Ten Commandments?  The entire Torah?  Or just an overwhelming sense of God’s presence?  If you read through the portion, the events are less than clear.  This has allowed the human imagination to take over.  There are opinions than range from a minimalist position to a maximalist position, and everything in between.  (The following insights came from Professor Arthur Green’s wonderful book Seek My Face; A Jewish Mystical Theology published by Jewish Lights.)

            What is the maximalist position?  According to Green, “The Bible’s claim in this regard is fairly obvious, `Y-H-W-H spoke all these words, saying’ is followed by the Ten Commandments.  But some of the early rabbis expand this claim vastly and include the entire Torah within the scope of revelation at the moment of Sinai.”  Later rabbis would expand it even further.  The entire oral law, set down in the Mishnah and the Talmud, was already revealed to the people Israel at Mt. Sinai.  Rabbi Joshua ben Levi taught, `Everything a faithful student is ever to say was already given to Moses at Sinai.’ …  The final maximalist view is that of the Zohar, `There is nothing that has not been hinted at in the Torah.’  Everything was revealed in the Torah.

            Does this view make sense?  It is doubtful that even in Rabbinic times anybody took this view literally.  The Rabbis tell a story of Moses visiting the academy of the great Talmudic Rabbi Akiba, seeing him explaining all the little crowns on the letters of the Torah, and not understanding a word he is saying.  Moses began to feel weak.  Only when Akiba said, “This is the law which Moses taught us at Mt. Sinai” did Moses feel better.  The future teachings were not literally given at Mt. Sinai.  They were only locked up in the Torah potentially, just as a future oak tree is locked up in an acorn potentially.  The job of future teachers, each of us in every generation, is to uncover the potential teachings which are locked up in words of Torah. 

            In a way, this view is like the strict constructionists of the Constitution.  They try to uncover what our founding fathers actually meant when they drafted the words of the Constitution, and what rulings are hidden in potential.  It is as if they are uncovering secrets that are already there. 

            On the other extreme is the minimalist position.   It teaches that only the first two commandments were given directly by God.  (They are the only two where God speaks in the first person; the rest of the commandments are in the third person.)  The rest came from Moses.  Green continues, “The philosopher Franz Rosenzweig apparently at one point considered a more restricted formulation, whether God had spoken even the first word of the commandments. (`I am’).  All the rest is Israel’s commentary, elaboration, and response.  Another radically minimalist view is to be found in the teachings of a Hasidic master.  This view has God speaking only the first letter of the first word.  That letter, aleph, is by itself silent.”    

            What God spoke was silence, an overwhelming sense of God’s presence.  The Torah grows out of a human interpretation of that moment.  The great mystic and philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel developed this idea in his book God in Search of Man. “Thus Judaism is based upon a minimum of revelation and a maximum of interpretation.”  This is similar to the loose constructionist view of the Constitution.  The document is merely the starting point; human reason and insights must apply it in every generation.

            So what are modern humans to believe about revelation?  Whether you accept the minimalist or maximalist position, it is clear that humans have a role in interpreting and applying the Torah.  We humans did not passively receive and write down the Torah, like a secretary taking dictation.  Ultimately, we are God’s partners in revelation.

 

 

 

 

PARSHAT YITRO

 (5764)

 

CAN FEELINGS BE COMMANDED

 

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house: you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”                          (Exodus 20:14)

 

Last week I spoke about the world of action.  Jewish tradition seeks a leap of action.  Most of the Ten Commandments speak of actions - no false gods, honoring parents, keeping the Sabbath, the prohibition of bloodshed, no stealing, adultery, bearing false witness, etc.  But when we reach the tenth commandment, the mood changes.  We are commanded not to covet, not to desire anything that belongs to our neighbor.

Can feelings be commanded?  Early in my Rabbinic studies in pastoral counseling classes, I learned that a feeling is a fact.  It is neither good nor bad, it simply is.  If someone says to me, “Rabbi, I may be wrong but I feel very angry at my parents,” I reply, “Feelings are not right or wrong.  They simply are.”  We cannot help our feelings, we can only help how we act on our feelings.  We can feel anger or sadness or love or attraction or jealousy, but we need to control our actions.  Yet, this commandment seems to ask us to control our feelings. 

The Biblical Commentator Ibn Ezra tried to explain this commandment.  Imagine a lowly peasant who sees the king=s daughter, a young, beautiful woman.  He would never desire her, because he would know that she is far beyond his reach.  Today we would speak of the common person who would never lust for the famous movie star, the super model or star athlete, knowing he or she is beyond reach.   In the same way, people should accustom themselves to see their neighbor=s property to be out of reach like the king’s daughter.  Only in that way can we fulfill the Talmudic injunction, “Who is rich?  Whoever is satisfied with their lot.”

Perhaps the Bible is teaching that we do have a certain amount of control of our feelings.  We can train ourselves to see things we desire like the peasant looking at the king’s daughter, something out of reach and therefore not worth becoming distressed about.  Perhaps we can train ourselves in the art of serenity, the ability to accept what we have with quietude and a deep sense of gratitude.  Perhaps while I am driving around in my old Ford, I could look at my neighbor’s new Jaguar with a sense of thanksgiving for what I have, at least I have transportation.  So many in the world do not.  It means training the mind and the emotions.

The issue of controlling feelings often comes up in my discussion with the teens in my synagogue.  I ask high school kids, “Do you have any control over who you fall in love with?”  They often reply, “No, that is what falling in love means.  It is as if gravity grabs you and you lose all control.”  I then ask, “What if they person you fall in love with is totally wrong for you?”  Now the kids become uncomfortable.  “A person cannot help how they feel.”  But that is the point; we can control our feelings.  We can decide not to fall in love with a particular individual, because such love is not in our own best self interest.  We can control our feelings, rather than having our feelings control us.

In Kabbala, the second world is Olam HaYitzira, the World of Formation, what I sometimes call the world of passion.   In this world we function with the animal level of our soul.  We feel anger, love, sadness, jealousy, excitement, joy, frustration, the full range of human emotions.   Mr. Spock in Star Trek lived a life beyond emotion; there is something non-human about that.  Emotions are real, part of what makes us human.  Nonetheless, part of what makes us human is also the ability to control emotions, to accept with serenity what life sends our way.  A good place to begin is by not coveting our neighbor’s possessions, but thanking God for our own gifts.  That is the message of the tenth commandment.

 

 

PARSHAT YITRO

(5763)

 

THE FIRST FIVE COMMANDMENTS

 

"I am the Lord your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage."        (Exodus 20:2)

 

In this week's portion the Israelites received the Ten Commandments.  According to Rabbinic tradition, the first five commandments deal with our relationship with God.  The second five commandments deal with our relationship with one another.  The first five commandments build an entire theology on the relationship between God and human beings.

The First Commandment - Not only is there a God, but God brought us out of Egypt.  God is an actor in the drama of human history.  Deism, the view that God created a world, set it on its path, and has proceeded to ignore this world, is rejected.  We look at human history, and we see the hand of God.

The Second Commandment - Even as God is involved in history, God has no physical body and no image.  God may be involved in this physical world, but God is not of this physical world.  We see the actions of God in this world, but we cannot see the body of God.

This idea is developed further.  We humans become God's agents, acting in the world.  God needs us to complete God's tasks in this world.  That is the meaning of the phrase that if we love God we are rewarded for thousands of generations.  Our work can perfect this world, but it takes thousands of generations.  We each have a mission and must do our part.  Ultimately, we humans are God=s partners in history.

The Third Commandment - God has given us His name.  God has shared some of His essence or His power with us.  We are not to use that God given power in vain. 

We have been given God=s ability to create.  Like the builders of the Tower of Babel, we can create technological marvels to challenge God and make a name for ourselves.  We can make a golden calf to worship as a false god.  We can clone babies, explode nuclear bombs, destroy the rain forest, and use our technology and our creativity to challenge God.  Or we can use it to do God=s work in this world.  We are warned against the misuse of God's creative power.

The Fourth Commandment - How do we remember that we are God's partners in creation, but that we are not gods?  How do we keep our humanity and not misuse our power?  Six days we do our creative work in the world.  One day a week we stop all creative work, and leave the world alone.  We cannot build a fire, pick a blade of grass, or change God's world at all.  One day a week we remember that the world does not belong to us.  Rather, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof."  (Psalms 24:1)

For six weeks we do all our work, and we become God's partners in perfecting this world.  One day a week we stop and simply be, remembering who we really are.

The Fifth Commandment - What does honoring parents have to do with God?  If we are God's partners in perfecting the world, then our parents are God's agents in teaching us what to do.  To be a parent is not simply something biological.  It has to do with mentoring and coaching us, showing us the path and raising us to do our God appointed tasks.  It means embracing our uniqueness and helping us find our mission.

God needs parents.  And when we honor our parents, ultimately we are honoring God.

 

Parshat Yitro

(5762)

 

God as Teacher

 

"God spoke all of these words saying."                      (Exodus 20:1)

 

In this week's portion we reach the high point of the book of Exodus.  The Israelites reached the foot of the mountain known as Sinai or Horeb.  God revealed His will to them in a series of statements known as the Ten Commandments.  We have already met God as creator of the universe and God as redeemer from slavery.  Now we meet God in the vital role as revealer of His will, or as a teacher.

Most moderns can accept the belief that God created the world, even if it took billions of years and very slow evolution to do it.  Much more difficult is the idea that the same God who created us also revealed His will and His teachings to us.  It is easy to accept Deism, the notion that God created a universe but since then has allowed us humans to fend for ourselves.  More difficult is the notion that God somehow communicated information to us humans on how to live our lives.

One of the central claims of our religious faith is that God is a teacher.  Some understand the notion of God the teacher in a simplistic almost fundamentalist way.  God gave information to us in a flow of words and letters, similar to how we download information through our modem unto our computer.  This is the thinking of those who would search the written Torah for hidden codes.  If God communicated precise words and letters which were written down by Moses and remain unchanged through the ages, there must be messages hidden in the text just waiting to be uncovered by our computers.

On the other extreme are those that believe the Torah was not communicated by God at all.  It is merely literature, great literature to be sure, literature sanctified by millennia of study.  But as literature, the Torah is still man made, and no different in essence from the great works of Shakespeare or the Declaration of Independence.  Such literature may have much to teach us, as Aesop's fables have much to teach us.  But ultimately, this view sees the Torah as man-made.  The Torah reflects humanity reaching up to God rather than God reaching down to humanity.

Between these two extremes there is a middle view that sees God as a teacher without reading the Torah in a literalist way.  This view can understand the reality of revelation without rejecting modern Biblical criticism. We see hints of this view in the giving of the Ten Commandments.

What did God actually communicate to His people at Mt. Sinai?  In the beginning God spoke in the first person, as if God was directly speaking to the people: "I am the Lord your God", "You shall have no other gods before me."  Then suddenly the words switched to the third person:  "Do not take the Lord's name in vain."  The people grew frightened of hearing God's direct communication and asked Moses to take over and speak in God's name.  Based on this, some say God only publicly spoke the first two of the Ten Commandments.  Moses spoke the rest.

Franz Rosensweig taught that the people grew frightened even more quickly, after hearing just the first word: Anochi or I am.  After only one word, the direct voice of God became too much to bear.  Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rymanov taught that the people grew frightened after the first letter, the aleph in Anochi.  After but one letter the people asked Moses to communicate instead.  But the first letter of the Ten Commandments, the aleph, is the only letter in the Hebrew alphabet that is silent.  Perhaps there was but silence, and such an overwhelming sense of God=s presence that the people could not bear it.  Moses communicated God's will instead.

The events on Mt. Sinai come to teach me that God communicated with us humans.  But the communication was intercepted, interpreted, made clear by Moses and later by the other prophets, and eventually by the great rabbis and teachers of our tradition.  Torah reflects the will of God.  But as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught, "Torah is a minimum of revelation and a maximum of interpretation."

God is a teacher.  But ultimately it is up to us humans to interpret, understand, and apply God=s teaching in our own lives.

PARSHAT YITRO

(5761)

 

ADULTERY

 

"You shall not commit adultery."

(Exodus 20:13)

 

I recently asked a group of our teenagers a series of questions about marriage.  "Do you think a rabbi should perform a wedding between a Jew and a Christian?"  True liberals, they all said yes.  "Do you think a rabbi should perform a `marriage= between two gay men?"  About half the youngsters said yes.  "Do you think a rabbi should perform a ceremony for a couple who wants an open marriage - the permission to have sexual affairs outside the marriage?"  They all said the rabbi should refuse such a wedding.  There is a deep sense even among teens that a marriage without a presumption of fidelity is not really a marriage.

The teens in my synagogue, struggling to find their footing after the sexual revolution, realize that adultery is wrong.  After all, adultery is the only sexual transgression to make it into the Ten Commandments.  The penalty for transgression is death.  The rabbis taught that adultery (and incest) make up one of three commandments for which one should die rather than transgress.  (The other two are murder and idolatry).  It is one of seven fundamental laws given to the children of Noah.

A more careful reading of these laws proves that the Biblical prohibition against adultery is not so simple.  Whenever the Torah speaks of adultery, it refers to a married woman having a sexual encounter with a man not her husband.  There is nothing in the Torah to forbid a married man from having a series of affairs with other women (as long as they are single), frequenting prostitutes, or even maintaining a mistress on the side.  Abraham had a wife and a concubine, Jacob had two wives and two concubines.  David and Solomon each had numerous wives.

Certainly this double standard reflects the patriarchy of the age when they were written.  Nonetheless, if we study the Garden of Eden story we see a far more egalitarian view of marriage.  The Torah tells a man to "leave his mother and father and cleave unto his wife."  Note that it says "wife", not "wives" or "wife and concubine."  The Torah demands that a man limit himself to one woman.  This is not something that comes naturally to men, with their powerful, often insatiable sexual drive.  After all, consider the animal kingdom where males, concerned with genetic survival, try to spread their seed to as many females as possible.

Nonetheless, we humans are not animals, and monogamy is the Biblical ideal.  If a man is to limit his sexual drive to one woman, he wants to know that the children she conceives are truly "his".  I believe that it was this concern about paternity that caused the Bible to deal so harshly with a wife's adultery.  Underneath it all is the presumption from the Garden of Eden of "one wife, one husband, and mutual faithfulness."

Later the rabbis made this requirement of faithfulness by the man more explicit.  Throughout Talmudic times there was a presumption that a man would limit himself to only one wife.  (A second wife was called a tzara, meaning trouble.)  All the rabbis of the Talmud had but one wife.  By the middle ages, Rabbenu Gershom outlawed polygamy altogether, at least for Ashkenazic Jews.

Therefore, the thrust of Jewish tradition is towards marital fidelity by both the husband and wife.  The laws against adultery began as an attempt to insure paternity of any children she may have.  However, the rabbis understood and eventually made explicit the fact that a man cannot expect faithfulness by the wife while he is unfaithful.  We can say without equivocation from a Jewish perspective, for both men and women, adultery is wrong.