Torah – Page 22 – The Metaphorager.

Minute Mitzvah: Keep Your Word

(N.B.: If you’re not hip to things eth(n)ospiritual, you may want to skip this post. Otherwise, feel free to comment.)

FOR ME, THE SECRET TO Jewish living can be summed up in two Hebrew words: “Na’aseh v’nishmah (We will do, and we will understand).” This is the nation’s famous response to Moses in Exodus 24:7 (which chapter/verse combo delights my study-partner no end), after the prophet asks them whether or not they’re willing to lead Torah-codified lives: “Right on! And we’ll learn by doing.”

“Torah” is often translated as “Law,” but a better translation would be “Instruction.” The sages of our tradition saw it as something alive, manifested in the day-to-day actions of ordinary people as they relate to each other and to God. Most of the 613 mitzvot (“commandments,” or what my teacher Rabbi Jack Gabriel translates as “God-connections”) deal with the currently defunct Temple sacrifical cult. But in 1931, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan sifted 270 which can still be done today — and which Serious Jews consider obligatory, or at least attainable.

When I returned to Judaism in 1997, I wanted to “do it right” and plunged headlong into a (still incomplete) study of the mitzvot. It occurred to me that most Jews are already doing 80 or so of these every day but don’t know it. And, according to Rabbi Kagan, knowing is the key: If, when your grandma enters the room, you rise because it’s good manners, that’s one experience. But if you do it because it’s expected by Torah, that’s another. Only you will know the difference. But isn’t that where it starts?

Thus: “Monday Mitzvah,” a weekly exercise in “making Torah.” (And, hopefully, a better world into the bargain.)

Today: Keep your word.

The human world is very fragile, and not only on the physical level. Human society is built on trust, and the basis of trust is the expectation that others will keep their promises to us and vice versa. That’s not to say it’s easy, especially among the important distractions of our daily lives, but when we break our word — even “just this once,” even “just a little white lie” — we disappoint someone somewhere. This adds to the net disappointment and despair in the world. And why would we want to do that? Torah tells us that we are bound to fulfill what passes from our lips, whether or not we use the magic word “promise;” better that we should say nothing than we should say and not do.

Exercise: Pay attention the next time you’re about to promise something.

Four Points of Contact

“IT IS THE NATURE OF religious ~~belief~~ knowledge to be compelling only to the ~~believer~~ knower.” So said Rabbi Micha Berger some years ago on Usenet’s soc.culture.jewish.moderated, and I have yet to see a better argument for pluralism and against proselytizing. (After all, how can you sell your vision of God when you know It only looks that way to you?)

Seen through the consciousness-shackling lens of Western culture, a popular understanding of religious/spiritual experience generally falls into one of two categories: “faith” or “reason.” Continue reading “Four Points of Contact”

Leaving room for silence

Of all the apparent opposites which Judaism wrestles to reconcile — free will v. predestination, universalism v. particularism, applesauce v. sour cream — one of the most paradoxically fertile is words v. the Wordless.

Maimonides, the great 12th century rabbi and commentator, wisely stayed out of this fray — he was more comfortable describing God in terms of what God wasn’t than in telling people what God was. Maimonides wasn’t the only one who felt this way; in fact, much of our liturgy describes the indescribability of God at great and poetic length.

Take, for example, the following words of the Chatzi Kaddish, which our ancestors loved so much they used it to mark the transition between different parts of every prayer service (translation from the new Reform siddur, Mishkan T’filah): “Blessed, praised, honored, exalted, extolled, glorified, adored, and lauded be the name of the Holy Blessed One, beyond all earthly words and songs of blessing, praise and comfort.”

Even more to the point is Nishmat: “Even if our mouths were full of song as the sea, and our tongues full of joy in countless waves, and our lips full of praise as wide as the sky’s expanse, and were our eyes to shine like sun and moon; if our hands were spread out like heaven’s eagles and our feet swift like young deer, we could never thank You adequately, Adonai, our God and God of our ancestors, to bless Your name for a ten-thousandth of the many myriads of times You granted favors to our ancestors and to us.”

If that’s the case, then why bother? If God can’t be talked about, why do we keep talking?

One answer, from Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, is, “A little is also good.” Since nobody can really appreciate God on a Godly scale, that means a level praying field for everybody. But just as each thing helps us understand its apparent opposite, perhaps our seemingly ceaseless God-talk is also one half of a whole picture: and why our most central prayer, repeated twice daily, begins: “Shema … Listen.”

An Apology to Douglas Rushkoff

In my previous, I made a cutting remark about Douglas Ruskoff’s “Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism.” While my opinion remains that the book is deeply flawed, as noted by, among others, Zeek.net), I didn’t intend to be dismissive. For one thing, Rushkoff obviously cares enough about Judaism to want to help keep it relevant; for another thing, his book is aimed at people who don’t know that the tradition wants to be questioned. If “Nothing Sacred” encourages even one Jew to say, “Maybe there’s something to this after all” and start studying on his or her own, how is that a Bad Thing?

Hiding the Hidden

Last week, we read in Parsha Beshallach about the departure from Egypt (Heb. “Mitzrayim”, or “narrows,” which the mystical tradition identifies with the forces of constraint and bad-habitry). Among the other nifty details is this one, from Exodus 13:21: “And YHVH went before them by day in pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.”

This is traditionally seen as a cloud shot through with flame — one phenomenon (or metaphor-target) with two aspects. At our post-Shabbat Dinner chevrusa, Ann & I proposed this:

– When things go well, it’s easy to see the Path. When they don’t, we need a reminder that it’s there at all.

– The cloud also figures in this week’s portion, Yitro, where it surrounds Mt. Sinai prior to the Ten Statements. Perhaps this is one of Torah’s (not-so-)subtle Hints that, as Heraclitus put it (init caps added by me]: “The Nature of things is in the habit of concealing Itself.” In other words, that G!d can only manifest in hiddenness — in the mystery of direct experience.

I think this is one of the many, many things ungotten by Christopher Hitchens, Pat Robertson and other dogmatists: “If you can figure God out, what you’ve figured out isn’t God.” Buncha weenies — cluttering up the Godscape with conditions and qualifications, as though the primate brain has an exclusive on Truth…

Torah Nerds, Unite!

Some people say that the Torah can only be meaningful if the events depicted therein are true. In other words, if 600,000 people didn’t march through the Sinai Peninsula; if the plagues were just a mythologization of natural disasters; if Lot’s wife never turned into a pillar of salt — then nothing else about this Text of Texts can be worth the parchment it’s inscribed on.

To which I say, “What’s the fun in that?”

I’ve written on this topic at length, and although my own approach differs I don’t quite know how to describe it. “Who cares? Shut up and study!” is accurate, though a tad impolite; “Judaism as Fanac” comes pretty close, but a) non-fen don’t always know what “fanac” means, and b) some Jews seem to think the phrase a trivialization. (Which indicates that they also don’t know fandom, and how seriously fen treat the objects of their fascination.)

And then, in the middle of a conversation, out it popped: “I guess I’m just a Torah Nerd.”

So with a little help from cafepress.com, I present the Torah Nerd Lifestyle Identification System. Far more than a kitschy piece of ephemera (although it’s that too), the TNLIS is designed to identify the wearer as someone who:

– Doesn’t take Torah literally to take it seriously
– Doesn’t believe in the concept of “overanalysis”
– Has $1.49 to spare. Collect the set!

Mapping God

Like any Torah Nerd, I’ve never met a commentary I didn’t like — the more abstruse and seriously-taking the better — but I’ve always had difficulty with the traditional view of God As Punisher and Rewarder.

Perhaps that stems from an inherent distrust of authority, honestly earned by dint of entering my formative years about the time Nixon was talking to the White House portrait gallery. But whatever the reason, the Deuteronomic Theology has never struck me as an accurate model for my own devotions; I’m much more of an “I can’t figure it out, so I’ll enjoy what I can while I’m here, help others do the same, and try to do my best” Ecclesiastician. Continue reading “Mapping God”

In the spirit…

… of its content, this might have been posted 12/28/6, the day I wrote and sent it to my coworkers. But it wasn’t:

Friends,

If you can imagine a universe-sized sponge made of galaxies surrounding bubble-like voids, congratulations: you’re hip to the current scientific model of the Big Picture.

We humans don’t always do too well with the Big Picture, though. Our tiny brains like to slice reality into assimilable, us-sized bites. Instead of Limitless Space, we distinguish between Here and There; instead of Eternity, we think about Then and Now. Sometimes, we even think about Later.

Every time our planet completely circles its star, many of us commit to doing (often changing) something as we travel the orbit to come. (That orbit doesn’t actually start on January 1st — that’s a date as arbitrary as the alphabet I’m using to type this email — but as the man draining the swamp said, “You have to start somewhere.”) If it’s your custom to do that, may you have the strength to live up to your commitments. If it’s also your custom to become frustrated with yourself a week later, take heart — it’s a big universe, with enough room to start over and enough time for patience.

Happy New Year, whenever it finds you.

Der Apikoyrus Rebbe

RABBI AKIVA TATZ IS A turned-on guy whose shiurim (lectures) are ripe with mystic but rational Torah learning. R’Tatz tells a wonderful story about apikorsim (singular “apikorus,” from the Greek “Epicurean;” one who disbelieves the divine origin of Torah and the rabbis’ interpretations thereof). I couldn’t find it anywhere on the ‘Net and don’t remember which specific shiur it’s from, but here’s the gist:

A young Jew once found himself possessed of unassailable doubts about Torah and decided that he was an apikorus. A good friend of his, knowing that the young man was not one to do anything by half-measures, advised him to seek out the Apikorus Rebbe.

“There’s an Apikorus Rebbe?” asked the young doubter.

“Oh, yes. He’s famous. And you can’t be a proper apikorus without his guidance.”

So the young man set off to find the Apikorus Rebbe, who lived in [insert heavily Orthodox community here]. He arrived one late Friday afternoon and was directed by a passerby to the Apikorus Rebbe’s house. Knocking at the door, he was surprised to find it answered by a woman wearing a sheitel [wig] and long dress. The heady aromas of Jewish comfort food warmed his nostrils and confusion.

“Excuse me, but I’m looking for the Apikorus Rebbe,” he said.

“Oh, he’s at the mikveh,” the woman answered. “He’ll be home after ma’ariv [evening services]. Do you have a place for Shabbos? Would you like to join us?”

So the young man entered, noting with perplexity the spotless white tablecloth, the shining brass candlesticks, the groaning bookcase filled with Torah, Talmud, Midrash and all the classics. His perplexity increased when, after a suitable interval, the Apikorus Rebbe appeared — dressed in shtreimel [big furry hat]and robe, with long peyos [sidelocks].

After a long and delicious Shabbos dinner (made longer by the Apikorus Rebbe’s insistence on singing every zemir in his well-thumbed benscher), the young man could no longer contain himself.

“Are you really the Apikorus Rebbe?” he asked.

“I am,” replied the great sage.

“But you live a traditional life,” the young man answered. “What makes you an apikorus?”

The Apikorus Rebbe pointed to a well-thumbed copy of Tao Teh Ching on the coffee-table.

“THAT’S IT?!?” cried the young man in astonishment. “That’s what makes you an apikorus? That’s nothing!”

“Well,” calmly replied the Apikorus Rebbe, “what would you do if you were an apikorus?”

“Anything I wanted!” said the youth. “I’d rob! I’d steal! I’d kill!”

“You’re not an apikorus,” said the sage. “You’re a pig.”

Contradicting the Paradox

“Most people don’t worship God. What they do is make an image of what they think God is, and worship that.”
— James “Sputnik” Gjerde

The biggest problem with Aristotelianism is that it posits false dichotomies (good/evil, up/down, is/ain’t, tastes great/less filling, et al) and forces us to choose between (and subsequently defend) inaccurate pictures of reality.

I don’t like doing that, nor should any sane person. But the Aristotelian Heresy (TM) so underlies our Western linguistic thought-frame that its perniciousness oft goes unnoticed. This is particularly true when applied to theology or other non-mystical apprehensions or understandings of [your favorite metaphor for nondualism here]. One classically smug statement of this sort of ontological oafishness is:

Can God make a rock so heavy He can’t lift it?

Rather than wasting time explaining the inapplicability of language to direct perception, perhaps the best response may be:

Yes — but He can lift it anyway.

Message From Beyond

NOT ALL MITZVOT TURN INTO ghost stories — but when doing holy work, it’s always a good idea to expect the unexpected.

Ann and I are members of the Sonoma County Chevre Kadisha, which literally means “holy fellowship;” it’s a centuries-old Jewish institution committed to preparing the dead for burial. Doing this is considered to be the most selfless of all mitzvot (commandments), partly because there’s no way the beneficiary can pay you back.

In 2002, we joined a crowd of about 50 at Cotati’s Congregation Ner Shalom where, over the course of an afternoon and under the tutelage of Rabbi Elisheva (Sachs) Salamo, we learned — as one participant put it — to “gift-wrap people for sending them back to God.” Continue reading “Message From Beyond”

Midrash Ko(r)ach

Torah Study Saturday, July 1
10:00 a.m. – noon
Neal’s and Ann’s house
Portion: Korach (Numbers 16:1-18:32)

“To a man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” – Anon of Ibid.

This week’s portion, Korach, seems fitting for the Shabbat before Independence Day: One bold man, fed up with Moses’ continual refusal to bow to the Will of the People, stands up for Truth, Justice, and the Paleoisraelite Way. “Who made you king?” he says. “The people, ALL of them, are holy.” Gd disagrees, and Korach is swallowed into the earth.

In the modern context provided by historical scholarship, Korach’s rebellion seems to echo of the ancient struggle to unify and centralize Israelite worship at one specific location: i.e., Jerusalem. A cautionary tale backed by Ultimate Authority was needed to ensure that the people toe the line drawn by Judaism’s primitive, intolerant-of-dissent early religious codifiers. Thus Korach. End of story.

Right? Well … no, at least not entirely. Because if it is – if the story is as simple as that, with only one literalist and unimaginative interpretation – then we might as well chuck the Torah and watch TV, which (superficially) seems a lot more relevant to our hectic modern lives.

One of the most difficult things to understand about Torah (both Written and Oral) is that it largely developed outside the Aristotelian tradition which shaped Western civilization and subsequently, our own education. To Aristotle, the universe was a binary matrix of yes-no, up-down, hot- cold, with no middle ground. That’s a fine approach for computers and mathematics, but it tends to blind us to more subtle and equally valid/consistent intellectual systems – such as the one we inherited from our ancestors.

Thus we assume the Torah is a history text, and wonder why it includes laws. We assume it’s a law code, and wonder why it includes myths (in the Jungian sense). We assume it’s mythic, and wonder why so much of it accords with known history.

The Torah is all of these and none of these, at the same time. Like Judaism, which defies the simplistic categories of “religion,” “ethnicity,” “faith” or “creed,” there is always more to Torah than meets the eye – as long as the eye is open, and not blinded by preconceptions.

Rabbi Larry Kushner, Temple Emanu-El’s scholar-in-residence, says we can build our Jewish study on two assumptions: Either we’re smarter than the text, or the text is smarter than us. If we assume the first, there’s no reason to study; if we assume the latter, who knows what we might learn – especially if we do it together?