Life is Change-Parashat Behar

I had a very strange childhood, probably very unlike yours.  I grew up in Apartheid South African and there was no TV and if you didn't like sports, there wasn't much to do except read.  My sisters and I pretended we were the Bronte sisters and we would recite poetry for fun.  One of the poems we really liked was this one by Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

It felt like that in South Africa then to us.  It felt like we had to hold tighter, run away or hide.  Dialogue or change didn't seem possible then, but who knew that behind the fear, it was there all along.   

Although I still feel echoes of the Yeats poem occasionally, I see there’s another way to see life, rather than as a centre that cannot hold. 

Life is change.  Despite how it looks, it’s not frozen in time like frames in a movie.  It’s a slow gradual process powered by a force that we have no control over.   

That’s the theme in the portion we read this week, that life can change for any of us at any moment- you can be very rich and powerful,  and then lose it all, but always be kind because it could be you, and it was never really yours anyway.   I wonder about Donald Trump if he looks at his good fortune and believes he’s earned it and that he’s entitled to it, instead of seeing it as dumb trust-fund luck.

In our tradition too, there has been so much truth entitlement, and so much change -

From a tribe of whining ex-slaves marching around the desert for 40 years, receiving the Torah at Sinai, and finally getting to Israel, we build the first temple, it goes down, we build the second temple; it goes down too, all is nearly lost.  Good bye Essenes, Sadducees, proto-Christians, hello Pharisees.   We smuggle the essence out in a coffin, thank you Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai, and then we write the Mishna, then some of us go into exile where we write the Babylonian Talmud.  In the Babylonian Talmud (and in the Jerusalem Talmud) many changes are made to the laws given at Sinai.  The Babylonian Talmud wins out.

Then some of us reject the Babylonian Talmud entirely, goodbye Karaites.  We don’t follow that line.  Our people take it with them along with the Mishnah and the Torah and march around Europe, Asia and North Africa arguing about God, faith and reason, Thank you Maimonides for making things so clear, although God knows you annoyed the believers in magic.

In the 18 century, we cross a very narrow bridge but the main thing is not to be afraid - thank you Rav Nachman of Breslov, thank you Hasidim.  Mitnagdim object to Hasidim and they fight like crazy.   I believe there were all kinds of battles going on in Germany too with the birth of the reform movement and modern orthodoxy as a response to that, and there is more fighting involved. But  unconcerned with the entire western European enlightenment, my line are the Mitnagdim from Lithuania who go to South Africa where we sang the national anthem Die Stem at school but we also sang Hatikva because later my people up North were assigned the state of Israel in 1948.  Anything is possible I tell you.

Many years after leaving South Africa, I stand here today with you.  I love it here, the people are lovely, the Kiddish is good and because from what I can tell, our rabbis are particularly outstanding people who see the big picture.  I wish it would stay like this forever, but I have no doubt there’s more change on the way, but we’ll be ok.  I have hope.

Like life itself that finds a way, Judaism is a living breathing thing that has evolved slowly. Halacha evolves at the speed of a glacier, Takana after Takana, adapting to life’s needs as it progresses, but it happens so slowly we don’t even notice. 

I think of the priests in the Temple that blew their trumpets at the end of Beit Hashoeivah, a fun-filled festival at the end of Sukkot that sadly we don’t have any more. It sounded like a blast.  The Mishnah describes how the priests blew their trumpets at the upper gate and then down the steps and then through the court of women, blowing their tekiah and truah all the while, and then on to the East gate where they said “our eyes are turned towards God”  

Those priests must have loved their procession and were probably not happy when it ended.  But it did.  Things took a different turn and we carried on the procession in a different way.  Our temple is no longer the literal temple encased in walls, and we no longer celebrate with harps, lyres, cymbals and trumpets, but we keep finding new ways to sound the notes and proclaim our place in the scheme of things.   We don’t go backwards, we go forwards.  Our eyes are still turned towards God.

What doesn’t change in this Judaism project of ours?  What is the essence, the one core value?  The prime directive?  It’s something I think about a lot.  Here are some thoughts…

1.     Maybe it’s related to the full range of the human experience Jewish practise supports, from grief to joy to desire and to belonging

2.     Maybe it’s related to the power of the Talmud that holds a kingdom of conflicting opinions where no one human is allowed to own the entire truth.

3.     Maybe it’s related to emunah, the flickering experienced and felt trust in a force bigger than myself.   In this imagined place, any moment is suspended between two sky hooks, the creation of the universe in the past and the possibility of an ideal future that we help create. 

4.     One final possibility is suggested at the end of Behar, the torah reading this week, although I’m open to any other ideas.   The main thing is not to make any idols to worship and all the implications of human responsibility that radical monotheism demands.

Not to believe there is more god in some things than in others   

Or to believe your way has more god in it than the other ways 

That your land is more blessed by god than any other land 

That your good fortune is an indication of your special privilege, instead of seeing it as just on loan. 

Sometimes we get to be the ones who look after others and sometimes we have to be the one who needs a little help from their friends.  

This I know for sure, that in the moment of listening to another person without judgement, or being really heard by another person, and in the moment of love and surrender, I've felt part of the intact, infinite space I call god.  There is no action, no land and no language that is not part of that.  It is a safe, shared, sacred space.  It is a place of hope and possibility. 

It is the only centre that holds and goes on holding…the rest is just to point the way.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Shabbat Zachor 1941

There’s lots about this week’s Torah and Haftorah reading I don’t like – I’m not such a fan of the sacrifices discussed in the torah portion, and there is so much in the Haftorah story I find abhorrent. I don’t believe God told Samuel to tell Saul to kill the men, women and children and all their animals. I don’t believe bad things happened to those innocent children and the animals because god told his prophet to tell his king to authorise his soldiers to kill them. In front of the pyres of burning children, I’m not pointing fingers at god; I’m pointing fingers at humans. It's humans that need to learn to behave better, not god.

In fact, in the whole dividing line in Judaism between love of god and fear of god, I’m more in the former camp.  I’m more about the chesed or lovingkindness than the din or law. I prefer Hillel to Shammai, statutes to codes, the Talmud to the Shulchan Aruch.

But as I get older, I see there is great value to the law part too, to deprioritising your personal rights to eat anything anytime, to keeping Shabbat, and to sanctifying life.  The ultimate code of Jewish law is the shulchan aruch.  It was written in Israel, by Yosef Karo in 1563 and published in Venice two years later.  That means it was written just in time for the revolution of the printing press to carry it on its wings to small communities everywhere. There was probably a copy in my great grand-parents community in Lithuania. There was certainly a copy in my parent’s home in South Africa when I was growing up.  It has been the most widely consulted source of Jewish practise for the past 500 years.

Here are two laws from the Shulchan Aruch that apply to us today particularly:

“There are those that maintain that the reading of Parshat Zachor and Parshat Parah is a Torah obligation.  Therefore, people living in an area in which there is not a congregation are obligated to come to a place that has a minyan for these Shabbatot.  This is in order to hear these Torah readings that are Torah commandments.” (Shulchan Aruch, Orech Chaim 685:7)                                                                                                                        

And also

“A minor who has reached the age of ''Hinuch'' (5 or 6 depending) and he knows to whom one is blessing, and knows how to pronounce the letters correctly, may receive the Aliyah of Maftir on Shabbat and a Festival, except for the portions ''Zachor'' and Parah”

These laws are based on the assumption that it is D’oreita to read the Amalek section because it says directly “remember what Amalek did to you” It is a basic one of the 613 mitzvot. There is even the assumption in very orthodox circles that women are also obligated to hear these words.

It’s a really important law because it roots a long story of persecution, devastation and survival to the original story of persecution, devastation and survival.  It makes a certain aspect of Jewish history a joined-up story rather than meaningless, random sad stories.

Because we are commanded to remember, and we have been commanded for so long, via the laws of the shulchan aruch, and because of the power of the printing press, I can be sure that every year for hundreds of years back, Jews in Spain, in Germany, in Lithuania, in Poland, in Egypt, in Palestine, in Syria and in Iraq, men and women, heard these words, and the ones that survived Chleminicki and other pogroms, the blood libels, the expulsion from Spain and England and the crusades, were the remnant that heard these words and remembered the suffering of those who didn't make it out alive.  

We remember for ourselves, not for the dead.   

We remember to remind ourselves that any personal story of suffering can be mixed into a bigger story of suffering, and that there will be no unseen, unremembered suffering.   It gives shape to pain and comfort from the hope that while I won’t make it out of here alive, some else will.

Someone who didn't make it out alive was my great grandmother, Agnesia Steinman.  Yad Vashem records note she was murdered in the Shoah.  She was shot in the forests of Lithuania alongside her daughter, and four of her grand-children.   There is no documentary evidence of her last moment. No-one recorded her last words. It’s horrible to think that like for the millions that died in the forests and in the trucks, in the ghettoes and in the crematoria, her last moments in front of the guns with her family around her, knowing they were going to be killed, were  unseen and un-witnessed.

Instead, I prefer to imagine I go back in time, to 1941 before they were taken, to where she is standing in shul on Shabbat Zachor.  We stand together behind the mehitza.

I can see her strong, intelligent face listening to this portion next to me, and I put my arm around her and I say to her:

 “I will remember what Amalek does to you. Your suffering will be remembered, and because I am alive to remember, all will not be lost”

Friday night prayer

On Friday night, I usually put bless my children with my hands on their heads.

I say “May God make you like Lily” or “May God make you like Jacob” or “May God make you like Lena” because those are their names, and I want them to know that the best that they can do is to be themselves.

Once a week for years and years now, I have reminded my kids that they are part of a tradition that glorifies life and that they are authentic expressions of that intact, undivided living glory.  

I can’t bless my oldest children tonight because they've gone to the Paris Climate Summit this weekend. I'm amazed that they hear the world-wide call to protect creation, because really I do diddly squat. I drive too much.  I leave the lights on too often. I don’t grow my own vegetables.  My children are far more committed to the well-being of the planet than me.  I just worry about everything.

I worry about global warming. I worry about polar bears. I worry about whales. I worry about seed diversity.  I worry about  the safety of friends and family in Israel. And now I'm worried about my children’s safety in Paris.   

They want to protect the planet and I just want to protect them.  

Although I can’t put my hands on their heads, I will say the rest of the blessing to my children tonight in a whisper, and hope that the silent ripples through the air reach them somehow in Paris…

 “ May God bless you and protect you, shine his face towards you and be gracious to you, may God turn his face towards you and give you peace”

but what difference can words make really? 

Ma’amadot project – a call to protect creation

God said, “Let the earth bring forth every kind of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind.” And it was so. God made wild beasts of every kind and cattle of every kind, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. And God saw that this was good. And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.” And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.” God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food. And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of life, [I give] all the green plants for food.” And it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Gen. 1:24–31)

Listening to birds and other animals

Prayer is in the listening. If you listen, the call of a wild goose can be a prayer.  The calls of the wild geese in Mary Oliver's poem are like angels that announce our place in the world, over and over.

I experience that kind of prayer in my community on Shabbat morning.  The prayers are less harsh and less exciting, but I still hear the kindness, loss, hope, support and belonging. It's there that I join the safe space of humans telling their stories. My shul is just one place, but it could be anywhere, because it’s not where you say it or what you say, but what you hear, that makes a difference. 

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting 

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

from Dream Work by Mary Oliver 

Ma'amadot for Thursday - part of Rabbi Arthur Green's project

God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” God created the great sea monsters, and all the living creatures of every kind that creep, which the waters brought forth in swarms, and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that this was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fertile and increase, fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. (Gen. 1:20–23)

Seeing stars

In 1610 with his refinements of the telescope to observe the phases of the planet Venus, Galileo proved that the earth revolved around the sun.   There was a new way to see our place in the universe, and we were not the centre of it.     

Judaism teaches us this also – that despite how it looks; we are not the centre of the universe.  Our daily prayer reminds us that we are, each of us, part of an undivided whole, all of us made from the same star-dust.   We say Ein Od– there is nothing else -and that consequently, it’s up to us to look after ourselves, our neighbours and our planet.  

Tonight when I look up to the sky and see the stars; I want to remember to experience my place in the universe and my obligation to the world - to be kinder to others and to help preserve the only home we humans have.  

Ma'amadot for Wednesday - part of Rabbi Arthur Green's project

God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times—the days and the years; and they shall serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, to dominate the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. (Gen. 1:14–19)

                    

Carl Sagan’s beautiful meditation:

          “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future 

standing for diversity

I'm not a person who grows things. I don't have the green thumbs of my daughter who checks her garden in the morning before school, and grows her own pumpkins, tomatoes and grapes.

I'm the kind of person who likes to turn the pumpkins into fritters, the tomatoes into tasty salads and the grapes into wine (until I discovered how much equipment was actually involved)

We need variety in this world- the people who like to cook and the people who like to grow all have jobs to do.  We need a variety of beliefs, a variety of skills and a variety of communities.

Destroying variety is going in an anti-life direction.

TUESDAY -

God said, “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas. And God saw that this was good. And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation: seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. (Gen. 1:9–13)

As part of the Ma'amadot project of Rabbi Arthur Green, today I want to stand with all communities that recognize the need to protect the biodiversity of our planet , make this bread for my family and be mindful of the joy in diversity.

Dvar Torah on Journeys

I said this at Hakol Olin in London on a Shabbat morning: 

"Have you ever surprised yourself?

I have

In fact, I’m really surprised to be standing here right now.

I’m here today as the result of a journey I’ve been on

It all started when I realized I had never spoken in public before

I had always hated speaking in public and so I never did it

Not ever

So I set myself a little challenge

To speak in public

So four months ago I agreed to speak in Assif one Shabbat morning on Maimonides

Whom I love

I spent the whole of my summer holiday thinking about what I was going to say

And my voice shook as I clutched my notes

But I survived

No one stoned me which is my sole criterion for success

Then I did it again

My voice didn’t shake but I still clutched my notes

Then I did it again

And again

So I thank you very much for allowing me to speak today

It’s still only the fourth time I have spoken in public

And I hope my voice doesn’t shake and that you don’t stone me

But I have learned that anything is possible when you start to see yourself differently

I’ve also learned baby steps are fine as long as you keep going forward

In the portion today the Israelites are moving forward too

Very slowly

They have left Egypt and after so many years of slavery, they have acquired some self-limiting beliefs of their own

That they take can’t find their own food or make their own way.

They are unwilling to see themselves as self-reliant.   

Although they are marching out of Egypt physically, the Israelites are still stuck emotionally.

They aren’t children anymore and yet they don’t see themselves as adults responsible for their own sustenance.

Like moody teenagers

All they do is moan about the water supply, the food and the unknown dangers.

It made me think of a story I had just read in the Talmud, in Berachot 10a about King David’s five stages in life and what you see at each stage.

The first stage of life is in the womb when you see are all can become

The second stage is when you are born and you peep out and are amazed at the stars.

The third is when you see your mother’s breast as the source of your survival

The fourth stage is adulthood when you see the downfall of the wicked

and the fifth stage is the day of your death.

The line that describes adulthood is puzzling. Why is adulthood about seeing the downfall of the wicked?

Now I’ve just started learning the Talmud, and one thing I’ve seen already, is that the sages are extremely wise, and no line is there by accident.

The fourth stage if David’s five stages of man is illuminated by the last line of psalm 104. It says: He (ie David) saw the downfall of the wicked and sang “Let the sinners cease from the earth, and let the wicked be no more”

Beruriah makes her first appearance in the Talmud and interprets this line as saying:  It’s how we see ourselves that matters. Teshuva is an act of changing a belief about oneself and returning to understanding the innate goodness of yourself.

So maybe it’s saying, in adulthood David confronts his own wickedness.  He sees more and he does better.

The truth is there’s no manna from heaven in real-life. There’s no free ride.  And It’s hard fending for yourself in real life isn’t it? In real life, to make a living you have to compete for limited resources, work hard and make judgements.  In real life, no one is handing it to you on a plate.  

And yes, it’s easier to make more money with less ethical choices.

Yes, you can be a bandit in Babylon and hold people up for money.

Yes, you can be a Satmar slumlord in Brooklyn and exploit the non-Jewish poor.

Yes, South Africa is free now, but corruption is spreading wider too.

It doesn’t have to be like that. And it shouldn’t be like that.

It’s easy to be innocent as a child, but it’s only when we grow up and take responsibility, do we get real freedom to make moral choices.

It’s only when we grow up, that we get the choice to act ethically, not out of fear of punishment, and the hope of a reward but because it’s the right thing to do.

And best of all, it’s only when we grow up can we go only very occasionally from fear of god to moments of love of god. And that’s the real reward.

The long walk to freedom begun by the Israelites thousands of years ago is a challenge we all walk moment to moment until this moment here now.  We need to keep moving forward, even if they’re baby steps. Luckily none of us are walking alone. But it all starts with a willingness to see yourself differently."