If only we had meat to eat . . .

This week's Torah portion, B'haalot'cha, states: "The people took to complaining bitterly before the Eternal . . . The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, 'If only we had meat to eat!" (Numbers 11:1, 4)  God replies, "The Eternal will give you meat and you shall eat.  You shall eat not one day, not two, not even five days or ten or twenty, but a whole month, until it come out of your nostrils and becomes laothsome to you.  For you have rejected the Eternal who among you by whining . . ."

God gives the people quails, and they eat so much that a plague kills many of them.

I have been thinking more and more about vegetarianism.  I will try to blog on that later. 

Shabbat Shalom

Mitzvah as Commission

The other day I listened to a podcast of a pucblic lecture from the Jewish Theological Society about translating the Psalms.  One of the speakers was the bible scholar Stephen Geller.  One thing that really stuck with me is that he said that we should not translate the Hebrew word mitzvah as "commandment" but as "commision."  I think the word "commission" gives the idea of mitzvah as a holy undertaking in partnership with God, rather than just following orders from a hierarchical master.      

Blessings from the High Priest Leonard Cohen

In honor of this week's Torah portion, Naso, Leonard Cohen using his Kohen status to conclude his Tel Aviv concert.  Enjoy!

Omer Counting Day 38

Since we are winding down our counting of the Omer, and we are almost at Shavuot, I have been ruminating a lot on revelation.  Do I need a firm belief in the revelation of Torah from God to celebrate Shavuot or to be a believing Jew?  I rationally know that the Torah was written and compiled by people over a period of several hundred years, but can I also believe that it was given by God? 

To help me think about these questions, I turn to a symposium in the pages of the August 1966 edition of Commentary Magazine called "The State of Jewish Belief".  (I didn't just happen to come across it while reading old Commentary magazines in a library, it is a pretty famous symposium in the Jewish thought world.  They did it again in 1996)  In the symposium, the respondents were asked a serious of questions about Jewish belief.  The first question concerns us here: In what sense do yo believe the Torah to be divine revelation?

I want to look at a few approaches to this question.  The first is from Norman Lamm, who in 1966 was the rabbi fo the Jewish Center in New York City, and is now the Chancellor of Yeshiva University.  In answering this question he writes:

I believe the Torah is divine revelation in two ways: in that it is God-given and in that it is godly.  By 'God-giver,' I mean that He willed that man abide by His commandments and that that will was communicated in discrete words and letters . . . Language, though so faulty an instrument, is still the best means of communication to most human beings . . .  Hence, I accept unapologetically the idea of the verbal revelation of the Torah.

At the time, Norman Lamm and Yeshiva University were at the center of Centrist Orthodoxy.  I cannot accept this premise that the Torah was litterally spoken by God to Moshe because I am persuaded by the historical arguments of biblical criticism.

So, on to another respondent.  Mordecai M. Kaplan, perhaps the most important American Jewish thinker of the 20th century: 

Instead of assuming the Torah "to be divine revelation," I assume it to be the expression of ancient Israel's attempt to base its life on a declaration of depndence upon God, and on a constitution which embodies the laws according to which God expected ancient Israel to live.  The declaration is spelled out in the narrative part of the Torah, and the constitution is spelled out in the law code of the Torah.

Kaplan wrote in his journal something even more radical:

The problem of Judaism would not be so acute if the traditional doctrine of revelation were merely obsolete. The trouble is that to cherish that doctrine is as unethical as being guilty of bigamy. To believe that we are in possession of the authentically revealed will of God is incompatible with religious tolerance to say nothing of religious equality.

I cannot accept Kaplan because I think he has moved God to far out of the picture.  Torah isn't simply a book that records our people's ancient stories and law codes.  I sense something divine, whatever that means, there.  Also, I don't think it is unethical to believe that God had a special revelation for Jews.  It doesn't mean that other people do not have their special revelations.

So, one more thinker, Jakob J. Petuchowski who was a very influential teacher of many of my teachers.  He was a professor at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

I believe that the Torah is a document of revelation; but I am not a fundamentalist.  I believe that the words we read in the Torah were written by men; yet I am not a non-theistic humanist.  The men who wrote the Torah wrote it under the impact of a religious experience--an experience of God's concern for Israel, of God's incursion into history.  And not only the men who wrote it.  The experience was shared by the men who accepted it--or there would have been no such acceptance. 

For Petuchowski, Torah is not simply the text in the scolls in the ark, it is what results when we hear God's command and sense God's commanding presence.  For me, this is the revelation we celebrate on Shavuot.  Sinai is where the Jewish people entered into a relationship after experiencing God.  As W. Gunther Plaut writes in the symposium:

Divine revelation is a self-disclosure of God.  It requires God as well as man to give it reality, for all revelation is a form of communication.  To reveal need not imply speaking-and-hearing--perhaps it never does; it always means the communicaiton of selfness and essence.  Divine revelation is God's-accessibility-and-man's-knowing.

Have a Shabbat Shalom.
 

   

Holiness Part 3

Contemporary rabbi Elyse Goldstein now makes her comment on Rashi's commentary in The Torah: A Women's Commentary:

Rashi's definition of kadosh (holy) as "separate" presents a fundamental feminist challenge.  The challenge is evident as well throughout rabbinic Judaism wherre authorities have portrayed the mitzvot as drawing lines between "us" and "them," lines that demarcate who is in (for example, circumcision marking a Jewish boy) and who is out (for example, the halachah of not counting women in a minyan).  While feminist have challenged specific mitzvot, finding a way "in" through creative rereading and even reinventing, we have not yet sufficiently challenged the very notion of mitzvot that rest upon the "spirituallity of separation."  This notion is at the heart of much that Jews do--including kashrut, Shabbat, and the marriage ceremony, just to name a few.  Redefining the mitzvot as connectors rather than as boundaries, as dialogue rather than answers, is a first step toward addressing the question of how we as women will be kadosh.  Although we are still at the beginning of exploring what a fully developed feminist notion of being holy mihgt look like, the opening words of this parashah--k'doshim tih'yu--cary both a command for now and promise for the future: we can and we will finds ways to be holy.

Amen.  Shabbat Shalom.

 

More on Holiness

Ramban disagrees slightly with Rashi.  Holiness is not only about keeping yourself separate form forbidden sexual relationships.  Here are some of his comments on Lev. 19:1-2:

In my opinion, [holiness] does not refer to keeeping 'separate' from the sexual trangressions, as Rashi thinks, but to the separateness ascribed throughout the Talmud to people it calls 'Pharisees,' that is, 'Separatists,' meaning those who exercise self-restraint.  You see, the Torah proscribes man and wife, eating meat, and drinking wine.  So there is license for a man of appetite to steep himself in lust with his wife (or his many wifes), or to 'be of those who guzzle wine, or glut themselves on meat' (Prov. 23:20), or to discuss all sorts of vile things, as long as they involve something that the Torah does not explicitly prohibit.  One could therefore be a scoundrel with the full permission of the Torah. [emphasis is mine] 

And now Rabbi Louis Jacob's commentary on the Ramban's commentary (don't you love Jewish learning?  We have commentary on commentary.):

Holiness, according to Nahmanides, and he is followed by other Jewish teachers, is the attitude of the Jew who has no wish, in his pungent expression, to be “a scoundrel with the full permission of the Torah.” Nahmanides’ point is that the rules and regulations of the Torah constitute the bare minimum of decent behavior expected of every Jew, a standard below which none should fall. But an essential part of the Torah discipline is that the Jew is obliged to go beyond these minimum rules. For this there can be no hard-and-fast rules, since all depends on individual character and temperament. What may be modbid indulgence, leading to a softening of the moral fiber, for one, may be a necessity for another. For all its insistence on rules, Judaism, according to Nahmanides, acknowledges that there is a whole area of life, the area of the licit, where man’s freedom of choice must operate in determining those things which will help him to live more worthily and those which can pollute his soul.

So, according to the Ramban, if one followed Rashi's definition of holiness, one could be striving to be holy like God is holy, and still be a jerk.  For the Ramban, holiness is an ongoing process of self discipline and refinement.   

What is Holiness?

In preparation for my sermon this week for the double portion of Acharei Mot-K'doshim, I have been searching for the meaning of "holiness."  K'doshim opens with the command, "The Eternal spoke to Moses saying: Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy" (Lev. 19:1-2).  The first place I usually look for quick references is myjewishlearning.com, and there I found a great article by the late Rabbi Louis Jacobs  about holiness.  He states, "The Hebrew word for “holiness,” kedushah, conveys the twin ideas of separation from and dedication to something and hence holiness as a religious ideal refers to the attitude and state of mind in which certain activities and thoughts are rejected in order to come closer to God."  In the article, he mentions three great commentators ideas about what it means to be holy.  The three are Rashi, Ramban, and Moshe Hayyim Luzzato.

Rashi's comments on our verses, "You shall be holy.  Keep yourselves apart from the forbidden sexual relationships, even from the thought of transgression.  Note that wherever sexual limits are mentioned, holiness is also mentioned" (Translation is from "The Commentators' Bible: The JPS Miqra'ot Gedolot" by Michael Carasik).  This parashah spends many verses on the sexual sins of the Torah.  Rashi is saying that to be holy, one must be very scrupulous about the sexual prohibitions of the Torah.  Jacobs writes, "On this reading, holiness is synonymous with obeying the laws of the Torah and has no special connotation of extraordinary cultivation of sanctity."

More on holiness in the next post . . .