Yitro - what we leave out

One of the first things I ever learned in the Talmud was that 2000 years ago, when the Temple was still standing, the priests would recite daily prayers very similar to the prayers we still say today. In an unbroken line, our daily prayers still include the Shema and the Amidah. However, the priests had another part of their daily prayer, and that part was the Ten Commandments.  They would say the Shema, the Amidah and the Ten Commandments.  This makes a lot of sense as the Ten Commandments are the high point in our history at Sinai and they are an excellent executive summary. They are short, pithy and sensible.

However it was decided to take them out of the daily prayers because of Tar Omet Haminim. This translates as the grievances of the heretics. 

Their grievance was that only the Ten Commandments came directly from God and the rest came through Moses. So as not to show any favouritism to one section of the Torah over the other, they were left out of the daily prayers.

Unsurprisingly, the people didn’t like this decision. The Talmud (b.Berakhot 12a) reports many generations of people asking their rabbis (at this stage, not priests any more) to put back the Ten Commandments into the daily prayers. In Israel and later in Babylon, this request was turned down because of Tar Omet Haminim.

But the story doesn’t end there. One thousand years later, people have accepted that it isn’t in their daily prayers anymore, but they still feel there’s something special about the Ten Commandments.

So when they are read as part of the Torah reading, like yesterday in Parasha Yitro, people would stand up. (They did yesterday as well in HaKol Olin where I gave this dvar torah) People would read responsively and often the Ten Commandments would be included in the shul decoration.

We know that people would stand 1000 years ago because rabbis’ told them not to.  Maimonides writes that people should not give any status to the reading of the Ten Commandments such as standing when that portion is read in shul on Shabbat, He states that the custom found in some communities to stand during this part of the Torah reading should be discontinued (Teshuvot Ha Rambam 46)

To this day there is no clear and agreed halakha on the subject.  In Rabbinic Judaism, we can’t even agree on which part of the oral/written law was directly given by God to the people.  Was it the entire Oral/Written Torah? Was it just the Ten Commandments? Was it just the first sound of the Ten Commandments that the people heard?

In b.Makkot 23b and quoted by Maimonides in the Guide to the Perplexed, the part that was directly experienced was only the first two mitzvot of the Ten Commandments. These are: I am the Lord your God, and You shall have no other God’s before me. These commandments are not mediated by Moses because for the Rambam, these are the only mitzvot that can be fathomed by any intelligent monotheist, and need not be transmitted by Moses.

It comforts me to know that we are not the first generation to be bothered by the prayers. I like belonging to a long line and a rich tradition of people wanting things put back and left out. We’ve all got our personal grievances. We don’t like everything we get to hear and say. There are loads of sections in prayers that have bothered me at different times. (Parts of Aleinu, birkat hamazon, some of the Yom Kippur service) but I’m glad they are there to struggle with because what bothers me changes all the time. Nothing is perfect and neither should it be. It would be a pity in our desire for  perfect bubbles of pleasing thoughts that offend nobody ever, we end up only praying the lyrics of John Lennon’s Imagine. 

I like the feeling of power of the people despite the declarations of the rabbis. 

I like that we stand when we should sit, and weirdly we leave out the parts that are most precious to us.

The grievances of the heretics over 2000 years ago mean that the Ten Commandments are no longer said daily, but unlike those heretics who are long dead, we are still standing.

Tetzaveh - humility and majesty

Every day thousands of tourists visit the Tower of London to marvel at the Imperial state crown and the other highly decorated symbols of the British Monarchy. Exquisitely made in gold, velvet and ermine, and encrusted with thousands of diamonds, the crown signifies royal authority to lead the nation.   I find it interesting that interesting the names of the people that have worn this crown are exalted, while the names of the people who created these marvellous objects are unknown. ?

 There is this same distinction in Parashah Tetzaveh. Dazzling ceremonial objects are created for powerful people, while the names of the creators are erased.  Majesty and humility are subtly contrasted. Nechama Liebowitz, an important biblical scholar of the modern age, raises three challenges in this week’s Sedra. She asks: Why is Moses’s name absent? Why does the Sedra go on and on about the clothes of the High Priest and who exactly is asked to make them?

In every chapter in every book after Genesis, Moses is mentioned by name. Only in Tetzaveh is his name erased. With Moses’s name not spoken, the scene is set for Aaron and his sons to become the major players. The second issue bothering Nechama is the amount of space and detail describing the ceremonial paraphernalia. for Aaron and his sons. Among the blue, purple and crimson yarns, is my favourite detail; and that is the description of the frontlets of pure gold engraved with the words: ‘Holy to God’. That sign is placed on the forehead of the high-priest as he goes about his business of being a High-Priest.

The effect of the proto-crown, clothes, breastplate and ceremonial objects must have been dazzling to the Israelites in the desert. .Ramban, an important Spanish Medieval commentator, sees their function to enhance the dignity and prestige of the sacred office in the eyes of the people. In other words, they don’t transform the wearer in any real sense, they simply create a social reality, a majestic, dazzling, powerful social reality. 

The last contradiction in the text as Nechama points out is between 28. 2 and 28.3. Look carefully. Who is being asked to make the clothes? The un-named Moses or the wise-hearted people? I think the key lies in the use of the word Chochmah which is the word used to refer to the wisdom that comes from outside ourselves when we know before whom we stand. It is the wisdom of understanding our small selves in an infinite and intact world of unending creation. It is the essentially modest position with or without a gold crown to remind us of our powers. It is the wisdom of the monotheist who knows that whoever our parents are, or whatever talents we have, we are all equally holy to God.

Liebowitz, Nechama. 1985. Studies in Shemot.  Jerusalem:Haomanim Press.

Book of Job - Book of Wisdom for Maureen Kendler

Assif is doing a learning series in memory of Maureen Kendler, teacher, friend and mentor to many of us here.  She was a literature teacher and one of her favourite books was The Book of Job, and so in her memory we have been learning it together in a six-part series.  We’re half way there.   I’m doing from chapter 22 -till chapter 37. Then Ariel is doing the next section and finally RJW is wrapping it up.

Because it’s been a while since we spoke about it, and because there may be new people here, I’ll do a quick recap. It’s a great book of literature, 42 chapters long.   Basically, Job is an innocent, successful man who fears god and shuns evil.  Then very bad things happen to him.   God and the devil are testing him by making him suffer.  Down on earth, Job’s friends try to comfort him.  They say all kinds of things like if you were truly good, God wouldn’t have punished you.  Although they try very hard, they fail.  Job finally gets it and says therefore I recant and relent being nothing but dust and ashes.  Al afar v’eifar.   Somehow finally the light has gotten in through the cracks.  He passes the test.  He becomes a wise, wealthy man, who fears god and shuns evil.  And for the rest of his life, all is good.

The structure for the middle part of the friends trying to comfort him is intriguing. It has three cycles. In each cycle, Job debates first with Elipha, then with Bildad and then with Zophar.    Andrew Cohen drew the short straw, and he had to explain the first two cycles where the friends are not being helpful. Lucky for me, the section I am looking at includes the third round of debates and chapter 28 which is a beautiful poem on wisdom.  Let’s dive in.

In the third cycle of debates it almost but not quite follows the structure of the first two cycles.  Elipha and Bildad are trying their luck to cheer up Job up with less than useful comments like if you pray to god he will listen to you and the things you ask for will be fulfilled. Thanks Elipha.

Or this sad point of view from Bildad: How can one born of women be cleared of guilt. Unsurprisingly Job sinks into a deep depression.  (As my father would say, with friends like this, who needs enemas)  Strangely, in this cycle, there is nothing from Zophar.  Instead, there is an exquisite poem of wisdom that I highly recommend you read in full, and that is chapter 28.

The pshat version of this chapter is all about going into the earth mining it for treasures.  It says human can take out precious metals from the earth. They can probe the depths of the earth, dig tunnels and take out the gold dust, the sapphires and the iron.  Barzel mei afar yikach.

It is saying:  Man can dig for gold under the earth but man can't just dig for wisdom.  All wisdom and the path to it is sometimes beyond human knowledge. In fact, I’d say for me, wisdom is usually beyond my knowledge.  Wisdom can’t be summoned at will.  It comes when it comes, and it can come to light in the very midst of our struggles and suffering.

To understand this section of the book of Job, I need to explain the difference between wisdom and understanding.

I also need to explain the difference with getting it with your eyes and with your ears.

When I talk, you hear me and what I am trying to say and you understand me.

But really you need to see what I am saying for yourself, like a thunderbolt from the sky as Rambam would say.

I also need to explain the difference between wisdom and understanding.

Bina is the Hebrew for understanding and chochmah is the word for wisdom.

Chochmah or wisdom is the thing that is outside of ourselves.   God is chochmah.

Bina is the human part. We understand profoundly that which is true.

Where can wisdom be found? What is the source of understanding? The book of Job asks.

It is hidden from the eyes of the living.

Chapter 28 ends with this: He said to man:

See. Fear of God is wisdom. To shun evil is understanding.

All wisdom is too big for us. The most we can do is to understand our place in creation and as a consequence avoid doing bad things. In other words, I want to behave well because of my perception of where I fit into the universe.

In other words, it’s a flash of knowing I am not the universe that was, is and every could be, but I am currently in that universe.  It’s an unconditional understanding that there are no personal rewards or prizes for your good behaviour from God. There is no if…then.

It starts with being in the dust, having awe of god, to see we are not the centre of the vast and complex universe that is being constantly created before our eyes.  What we understand from that is that as living actors in this magnificent creation, it’s on us not to do bad things.

The book of Job teaches us that the best thing you can do for a friend who is suffering is to stand by them, and help them specifically with things they may need, foot-cream, meals, and tissues for the tears or a cure for cancer.  That’s the easy part. The hard part is to show up to their pain, without trying to fix it for them or to share your pity.  The worst thing you can do is to point out that they are being punished for their sins by God.  That’s not true or wise.

And now the Maureen Kendler level of interpretation… Maureen’s gift was to see the treasure, the gold and the iron in all of us even when we couldn’t see it ourselves.

When she talked to me, I felt she believed that what I had to say was worth saying. And I believed her and it was life-changing.

I would like to pass on her gift to me to you today. You have gold in you although you might not always see it.  Maureen isn’t alive to see it. But I am. And so are you.

Saying the wrong thing - Behar/Be-hukkotai

The best thing about having work colleagues is that it can force you to have conversations with people with whom you profoundly disagree.

Emily sat next to me at work. She was kind, easy to get along with and worked hard. Occasionally we chatted though, about non-work things as you do, on a long day. 

Somehow we got into the subject of why the Holocaust happened. Her opinion and mine couldn't have been more different.  I believed Emil Fackenheim who noted in a footnote in a book he wrote about Holocaust theology, about a conversation he had with a fellow academic who said that it happened because Hitler wanted it to happen.  

My colleague Emily believed it had happened because the Jews of Europe had not kept Shabbat.

I was profoundly upset by her opinion; that bad things happen to people as a punishment for their sins. I thought of my lecturer who had said whatever claims you make about the Holocaust, you have to say them in front of the pyres of burning children. 
I wanted to say this to my colleague, but I couldn't get the words out. Did she really believe a good god would burn millions of innocent children because their parents hadn't kept Shabbat? I was too upset and offended to reply. 

And a literal reading of the Parasha this week supports her position. Keep the mitzvot and God will reward you, transgress and you will suffer dreadful punishments.  We read that part of the Torah quietly and fast because we don't like it. The sages from Rav in the Talmud to Rashi and Rambam do heavy lifting to generously interpret beyond the literal meaning.    Here are some examples:

Firstly my beloved Rambam who says 'Ra' (bad or evil) results from three things.

Firstly from nature – a flood that washes you away for example.
Secondly from mankind - the wars we wage or crime for example –

and thirdly from the bad we do ourselves like overeating and over drinking.

He says We suffer when we want a different reality than the one we have. And he suggests we seek a true understanding of the world we live in as a remedy for our suffering. 

From the macro to micro:

There is much made  of the repeated use of lo Tanu ish et amito ( Leviticus 25.17) 
Don't wrong/offend/harm/deceive the person who is with you. 

The Talmud interprets it to mean don't cause verbal offense and goes on and on about how bad it is to do ona'at devarim or verbal offense. Don't use nasty nicknames or cause verbal offense for example, is when a person is suffering an illness or burying a child, one shouldn't be like the friends in the book of Job saying 'whoever perished being innocent' 

Rabbi Norman Lamm has something lovely to say.  He quotes a Hasidic master, Rabbi Yitzchak of Vorke who says there are two ways to carry out the mitzvah of lo tonu ish et amitecha- the shurat ha din way is not to harm/offend others.  The higher way of doing this mitzvah or the Lifnim shurat hadin way is not to harm/offend or deceive yourself. 
In other words, be honest with yourself. 

I think that's a good place to start. I've been having interesting conversations with a new work colleague. She is grieving her mother's death from cancer.  She says she's learned a lot from the experience.  Mostly, that people will surprise you. Some will be empathic and some will not. She says you want them to acknowledge the loss rather than not speak about it, even if they get the words wrong. 

It always comes back to empathy- the showing up for another person with awareness of yourself and your own limitations. But it's very difficult to do in real life, isn't it? We've all been there. Someone tells you of their pain, and you can't bear the pain it causes you so you try to fix it for the other person. You hear a friend has cancer and you don't know what to say so you don't call. You hear a child is lonely and you give 12 suggestions before breakfast on how to make friends. Suffering is not accepting your own reality or the person you're speaking to's reality. It's not helpful or comforting.

It’s only with honesty to yourself and with the modesty of not seeing yourself as the centre of the universe, that you can be helpful to another person. 

The liberating truth is that you don’t have to have the perfect words, solutions or answers.

Paradoxically, it’s only with honesty to your own experience that you can offer true solidarity to anyone else.

Words that create reality

When I was a child in Cape Town, negotiating with my friends, my brother and sisters, in complicated scenarios of sharing, I would say to them and they would say to me sometimes:

“Ten fingers on the Jewish Torah” and we would put our hands out with fingers spread wide as we said it. We’d say it to support our truth claims, to show we weren’t lying, to show we would definitely do what we promised to do. “It wasn’t me that broke your doll, I didn’t touch it, I’m telling the truth, ten fingers on the Jewish Torah, or “lend me ten cents, I promise I will give it back, ten fingers on the Jewish Torah”   In the shared community of meaning in the playground, the torah was the external vehicle by which we held ourselves accountable. The statement “ten fingers on the Jewish torah” was what you said to guaranteed trust between two children and it cemented what you said with what you did.  It was probably created by a Jewish child who needed their own version of the Christian: “cross my heart and hope to die” and then it caught on.  Children and adults need something outside of themselves, something shared socially, a higher authority, to hold themselves accountable, something like the Torah or God.

And according to what we read in the Torah today, we are allowed to make vows to God, as long as we keep them.  We read at the beginning of Mattot, “If a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge.  He must carry out all that has crossed his lips.” So that’s ok then, right?

But not so fast my friend. What we didn’t know in the playground in South Africa,  and what I do know now, is that there is a world of difference between what it says in the Torah and the Halachic system created by the Rabbis.  It is the vast difference between D’oreita and d’rabbanan, and contrary to what we believed in South Africa, we don’t live in D’oreita times anymore. Far from it. From the Mishna to the Talmud to the Mishnah Torah to the Shulchan Aruch, some of the laws in the Torah have been reduced, limited, ignored completely, changed and extended by a vast and living halachic system.  Some laws are literally made up out of thin air.  In the Rabbinic project that is my community of shared meaning now, the torah is the source of a muscular, living, dynamic, evolving tradition for all who cling to it. 

For example, while it says in the torah, we are allowed to make vows as long as we keep them, the rabbis, or sages were strongly against making them. They did not want people going off piste, and making vows in God’s name about not eating meat, or chocolate cake or telling the truth or even giving to charity.  So the sages created a rabbinic innovation that reduced the power of vows significantly, not just for women but for men too.  The institution of hatarat nedarim (literally, “the unbinding of vows”) allows a sage to annul vows of another person by saying “Mutar lakh” (You are unbound).

The rabbis were well aware that this innovation about releasing other people from their vows was not rooted in Torah law at all.  In the Mishnah (Hagigah 1:8), it says heter nedarim porchin ba-avir",  The laws of Heter Nedarim "float in the air" which means they are not connected at all to torah justification. Those long and complex laws of unbinding of vows in the Mishnah and later in the Gemara have no explicit Torah verses to rely upon.  But they are an essential instrument in the rabbinic system, so that people don’t suffer by promises, vows and oaths they have made, and find impossible to live by.  In fact, we start Kol Nidrei by this communal unbinding of vows and oaths.  

The Shulchan Aruch, the great Jewish law code published in Venice in 1565, that even made its way to South Africa when I was growing up, opens with the following admonition taken from the Talmud, “do not be habituated to make vows, he that makes a vow is called wicked, even vows for charitable purposes are not desirable. It is well that a person not make many vows of self-denial.   Much quoted by commentators is the line from the Yerushalmi- "aren't the laws of the Torah sufficient; must you also impose upon yourself additional obligations?” The rabbinic project opposes individual acts of extreme piety. 

And what about children in the playground swearing ten fingers on the Jewish Torah, is that allowed? Does it count? In the Talmud, Rav Nachman says it only counts if you actually holding a torah scroll when you say it, then you are referring to the letters, the laws and the name of God written there. If you aren’t holding a torah scroll and you swear by the torah, it could just mean you are swearing by the parchment.  Although I never held a Torah scroll in the playground or anywhere ever until I was in my forties, as a child, my statement about ten fingers on the Jewish torah meant something to me and to the people I said it to.  It counted to us.  What matters is what we agree matters.  It’s about shared trust in a system we agree works. It still works that way.  

Strangely, as much as I learn about changes rabbinic law makes to torah law, in my imagination there is still no higher standard or less love and respect for this fantastic endeavour that seeks for us all to live well, to live fairly, to live in community, to seek justice, mercy and to walk humbly with god.  My trust in the system remains and I continue to believe that interpreted torah is the anchor for our best selves. Eiz Chayim hi she machazikim bah.  Ten fingers on the Jewish Torah, as I used to say.  

Now we are here - Pesach

                                                      A prosperous Viennese family celebrates Passover . 

When my grandfather’s father died in South Africa in 1936, he left £850 to the great Yeshivot of his homeland in Lithuania.  His generosity was not unusual.   Before their destruction in the Shoah, students in the palaces of learning in Lomza and Telshe were fed and clothed by wealthy South Africans like him.  In their newly adopted homeland at the bottom of Africa, wealthy Jews supported local Jewish orphanages, old-aged homes and day-schools, but the bulk of their generosity went northwards, to the Eastern Europe of their youth. 

Instead of building new yeshivot in South Africa, they supported the old ones back home.   I have no idea why.   Maybe Talmud study was seen as a relic of the dark days of tsarist oppression that had no place in sunny South Africa.  So at school in South Africa, we learned Hebrew.  At home, we celebrated festivals.  At shul, girls sat upstairs and looked at boys downstairs.   In my day, no-one learned Talmud.  I was too young for its approach and subject matter anyway.   The Talmud is not for children, boys or girls.  Its pages are dripping with blood and semen, and I have read, among other things, of farting prostitutes and ejaculating rabbis.  We truly come from a long line of carnal and argumentative people. 

It’s a book for grownups who understand that life doesn’t always go your way, no matter how good you are and how hard you try.   No one is coming to save you. By the time of the writing of the Talmud, God had left the building, leaving us in charge.  It’s a tradition with no guarantees and no promises, and nobody is perfect, least of all Jewish wise-men in Babylon in late antiquity.  It seldom has answers, instead it has great concepts that don’t exist in English, but they should.

Here are five Talmudic terms that extend my experience of the world:  

The basic unit in the Talmud is a makhlóket. The English word is argument but that doesn’t capture the idea that a conflict can actually bind you to another person.   Taikoo means enough already with the contradictions and the arguments. Stop. Enough is enough. Leave it.

There is a wonderful legal category in the Talmud called Tar Omet or The right to be angry.  You don’t have the right to sue or seek recompense, but you have a God-given right to be angry.  That is all.  You don’t get money in recompense or an apology. You just get the right to be angry. The right to anger is a great thing to have.  Anger is a sign that reality isn’t how you want it to be.  You have a right to shake your fist at the sky. You have the right to shout as loud as you like, for as long as you like.  But then you have to suck it up and move on.  Hang on to anger and resentment and it will blind you from seeing new possibilities.  But it starts with recognizing that you have Tar Omet.

Nistapacha Sudhu means your field got washed away. It’s a figure of speech referring to the fact that sometimes stuff happens and it’s no one’s fault.   Sometimes bad things just happen. Sorry mate, bad luck.  Your field got washed away, bummer.   In our long history, there have been many instances of our fields being washed away, and I believe we are fully entitled to have Tar Omet, but we are here now safe and sound for the moment, in London, before Pesach 2017.

Hashta Hacha means now we are here.  I know this phrase because twice a year, at my parents Seder table in South Africa, we would drink four glasses of sweet, red, homemade wine and we would sing a strange song in Aramaic called Ha Lachma Aniya. Hashta Hacha is one of the lines in that song.  That song also contains the first line of Talmud I ever learned although I didn’t know it at the time: ‘Let all who are hungry come and eat’.  

“This is the bread of poverty that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt

All who are hungry come and eat,

All who need come share Pesach

This year we are here

next year in the land of Israel

This year we are slaves

next year we are free people”

This is a strange song for a hundred reasons.  Least of all, it was only as an adult that I discovered that it is entirely possible to enjoy a feast without the accompanying guilt.   When I grew up, I discovered that not all cultures start their celebrations with an ancient song written in Aramaic about letting all who are hungry come and tuck in.  From what I’ve read, Christians don’t offer some enticing bread of affliction to their starving guests either.  The Poor at a Christmas meal would receive roast dinner.   According to Ha Lachma, the Jews will offer you a dry cracker.  It was a particularly strange song to sing in South Africa when I grew up.  There were so many hungry in South Africa back then, but it wasn’t us anymore.  We had lots to eat and lived in big houses with swimming pools.  Guilt and its handmaiden, self-righteousness, sat with us at the table when we sang ‘Ha Lachma’ in Cape Town, South Africa.  But it wasn’t always like that for my ancestors.   ‘Ha Lachma’ has been sung by generations of Jews at their Pesach Seders in good times and in bad, from Babylon to North Africa, to Venice to France to Germany to Eastern Europe.  We carry this set of instructions with us as we go.  This is our story.  This is what we must do. This is where we are going.

I think of my great grandfather as a boy at his parents’ Seder-table in a tiny town in Lithuania, land of repressive legislation, the Chmielnicki massacres and grinding poverty.  ‘Now we are slaves’ he sang.  ‘Next year we will be free’.  The following year, aged 14, he freed himself from the bonds of the Pale of Settlement and got on a boat with his older brother and went to South Africa.  He did well in the land of milk and honey, but as we know from our long history, your money can go up as well as down and past performance is no guarantee of future success.    

I have no idea where my children will say Hasha Hachta, if they will stay in London or immigrate, if they will be rich or poor, slaves or free people or if they’ll have Seders of their own where they teach their own children to sing Ha Lachma or if they’ll feel connected at all to this long and rich textual history that is so precious to me.  I can only hope, and as I’ve learned from the Talmud - Taikoo

How to talk to someone you disagree with

Trump Tower was completed in 1983 with the help of 200 undocumented Polish immigrants 

We just read about the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:2 “they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another …come let us build  us a city, and a tower with its tops in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we will be scattered all over the world” ( JPS translation)
Here mankind in a valley decide to build a massive man-made structure and their efforts are thwarted by god who makes sure the people speak different languages and so they can’t understand each other anymore.

The Talmud, which is the source of all things wise and wonderful, considers this:  why were they standing in a valley if they wanted to build a tall tower?  (B. Sanhedrin 109a).  Why didn’t they give themselves the advantage that building a tower at the top of a mountain gives you?

And I think the answer is this. In a valley, looking up, you don’t think you know the whole picture. At the top of a tall man made structure, it’s easy to think you see the whole picture.

The Tower of Babel tells of this fundamental distinction.  Before the Tower of Babel, in a valley, we all understand each other perfectly.  There is no difference in language between what is said by one person and what was understood by another. There is perfect understanding and no gap between what you want to say and how it is heard, between speaker and listener, between writer and reader; there is no interpretation of a message needed.  There is always perfect communication.

Pre-babel, when one person said anything, everybody understood the same thing. But then, to stop us trying to get too big for our boots, god made us all speak different languages.  Now we wouldn’t be able to understand each other at all, and not just because I speak English and you speak Japanese.  There’s also the gap between me speaking as a woman and you hearing as a man or me as Jew and you as a Christian or me as a Hilary fan and you as a Trump fan or me as a Pro-choice fan and you as a pro-life fan, for example.    As much as I want it to be true, not everyone in this world sees things like I do western, liberal Zionist, feminist that I am. 

The best experiences I’ve had is when I’ve switched from post-babel standing at the top of the tower thinking the limits of my understanding of the world are the limits of the world, to pre-babel thinking which is a knowing that I don’t see the whole picture, I can’t see the whole picture and that no one else can either.  

For example, I didn’t know that different religions use the same word in different ways – I didn’t know until I listened to a Christian person on a long train journey once that the word faith in god for him is like an either/ or proposition. You do or you don’t.  To me as a Jewish person, it was more like trust; sometimes you feel it more or less than other times.  Who knew? it was exactly the same word understood in two completely different ways! I didn’t have to stop believing what I did and he didn’t either. It was a great conversation because neither of us where trying to convert the other, we were just saying what we understood in the valley.

And then there’s the god idea.  I’m not talking about a simple difference in signs like Adonai, or the eternal and infinite thing, or what will be will be, or Allah or Deo or nkosi as we say in South Africa, but what that sign signifies to each user is almost impossible to explain.  Any name we give god is not god.  To believe that what you understand by the term god is universal is definitely post-babel.   All words separate, including the word for god.  Every time we name god, we fracture the infinite and bind it to a separated form.  We can’t see the whole of the moon.

Happily, we can get back to the pre-babel place for an instant when we feel safe enough to talk honestly without being judged and when we listen to each other the same way.  When we listen not to argue or to wait for my turn to speak or to evaluate the other person, it’s when we listen seeing that this is the limit to my understanding and allowing for the separate space of the other person’s understanding. I’m not talking about self-denial; I’m talking about a movement of self-transcendence.

I tried it with my children once. One at a time, I listened to them without judgement or needing to correct them or to harp on about my agenda; I listened to them in a pre-Babel, whole-hearted way. And it was magical.

We can listen and talk like this to family, friends and even taxi drivers. We can get back to pre-Babel when we say and hear the Shma, when as a community, we all participate in the way I understand god - in the experience of listening and speaking as part of the whole, in solidarity, self-transcendence and in peace.

Potentially I could even enjoy a conversation with a Trump supporter, and really understand how they see the world without trying to convert them.  But it would have to start with neither of us on our lofty perches, and both of us in the valley.  Anything is possible.

Shabbat Shalom