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September 26, 2023

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Is Failure the Greatest Teacher? – Yom Kippur 5784

“The greatest teacher, failure is,” we learn from the great Rabbi… Yoda.

Popular wisdom would seem to affirm this.

In its early years, Facebook was famous for the motto “move fast and break things.”

The bestselling book, Grit, by Angela Duckworth, showed how the most successful people embody qualities of passion and perseverence that enable them to stay focused on their goals and overcome the obstacles that rise in their path.

In the realm of parenting, The Blessings of a Skinned Knee, followed up by The Blessings of a B Minus, by Wendy Mogel, turned to Jewish teachings and psychology to emphasize how letting our children make mistakes and figure out how to deal with the repercussions leads to them becoming resilient and confident adults.

And of course, we must not forget Thomas Edison, who famously said “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” That’s lovely. Inspiring. The problem is, most of us are not Thomas Edison.

We do not particularly like to fail. In fact, despite it’s inevitability, we try to avoid it at all possible costs. Failure is unpleasant. As much as we might like to think that failure is the best teacher, the truth is quite different.

Professors Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach conducted a study[1] in which they gave participants a series of ten questions. The questions were multiple choice, and had only two possible answers. 

Subjects were instructed to learn as much as possible from the results of the tests. With only two possible choices, they learned the true answer, whether or not they got the question right.

And the questions were impossible to know ahead of time, having to do with obscure data about customer service call center statistics. For example: “How much money, anually, do US companies lose due to poor customer service?” Is it A. over $90 billion, or B. over $60 billion?

After completing the test, the subjects were given the results with instructions to learn the answers so that they could do better when they took the test a second time.

Half of the group were told which questions they had gotten correct. The other half were told which questions they had gotten incorrect. Because there were only two possible answers, both groups now had all the information they needed to learn the material.

Then they took the test a second time.

The participants who had been told which answers they got correct, the “success feedback” group, did better the second time. In other words, they learned from their “success.”

The “failure feedback” group, which had been told which questions they answered incorrectly, did not do as well, many recording no improvement and not even remembering the answers they got correct the first time. In other words, “failure” was not an effective teacher. Interestingly, when a third party observed the “failure feedback” group, they were able to learn the material just as effectively as those who observed the “success feedback” group.

Failure prompts us to shut down. When I get something wrong, I internalize that there is something wrong with me. It is much harder to learn and grow when I feel this way about myself.

If failure is our greatest teacher, it seems that we may be sleeping through class.

Don’t worry, we are not the only ones.

The Israelites had completed the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle that they would carry with them through the wilderness. Moses is set to turn over control to the priests, under the leadership of his brother, Aaron. He instructs him

Come forward to the altar and sacrifice your sin offering and your burnt offering, making atonement for yourself and for the people; and sacrifice the people’s offering and make atonement for them, as the LORD has commanded.

Leviticus 9:7

This is to be Aaron’s first formal act of worship. The problem is, Aaron already knows that he is supposed to come forward to offer his sacrifice. Why does Moses need to tell him a second time?

According to a midrash, (Sifra, Tzav, Mechilta d’Miluim 1:1; Sifra, Shemini, Mechilta d’Miluim 2:8; Rashi on Leviticus 9:7, Ramban on Leviticus 9:7) it is because Aaron panics. He suddenly thinks about the sin he had committed with the Golden Calf. If you recall, not knowing what had happened to Moses after he went up to Mt. Sinai, the Israelites ask Aaron to make an image of God to lead them through the wilderness. Aaron collects their gold and forms the Golden Calf.

This is one of the most disastrous episodes in the Israelites’ forty years of wandering in the wilderness.

Now poised to become High Priest, Aaron, overcome with shame and embarrasment, freezes.

Understanding what is going through his brother’s mind, Moses turns to Aaron and exclaims, “Why are you ashamed? You have been chosen for this very purpopse.”

The function of the Mishkan is to enable the Israelites to seek atonement. Sin is going to happen. Impurity will interfere with the relationship between God and the Israelites. Aaron, the High Priest, plays the central role in mending that relationship.

As an outside observer, Moses sees what his brother cannot: that Aaron’s failure with the Golden Calf makes him perfectly suited for the job. In the ritual of Yom Kippur, the High Priest must first bring an offering of atonement for himself and his household, before he can facilitate the people’s atonement. The High Priest was never expected to be perfect.

One version of the midrash adds a twist by suggesting that it is Satan who shows Aaron the pointed horns of the altar. This sends Aaron’s mind straight to the horns on the Golden Calf, provoking his moment of shame.

Our tradition identifies the Satan, the Adversary, with the Yetzer Hara, literally the “evil inclination.” A more modern understanding of Yetzer hara is the ego.

The ego, the Yetzer Hara, is our sense of self, the part of us that seeks to expand in the world. It is the source of desire and self interest, and drives our instinct for self preservation. Our Yetzer Hara compels us to go on the defensive whenever we perceive a threat, real or imagined. Without the yetzer hara, we would not survive.

Viewing the midrash through this lens, it is Aaron’s ego that causes him to freeze.

Ashamed by the greatest mistake of his life, he is unable to learn. Instead, it immobilizes him. The prospect of having to go out in front of the people threatens him with reliving his failure again and again.

This is similar to what the researchers who developed the Facing Failure Game found. Our egos are implicated by our successes and failures. It is not that I made a mistake: I am a mistake.

So we avoid situations which remind us of our past errors, which is what Aaron tries to do. Alternatively, we pretend the failure did not happen. Consider the Sour Grapes Effect and the Ostrich Effect.

First, the Sour Grapes effect.

Remember the story of the fox from Aesop’s Fables.

One day, Fox is walking along and spies a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine that has wound itself up a tree branch. The grapes are bursting with juice, and the fox is so thirsty. Fox jumps grab the grapes, but misses by a mile. Stepping back a few paces, Fox takes a running leap, but still misses. Over and over again, Fox tries to get the grapes, but falls short every time. Finally, Fox sits down, frowning. “What a fool I am. Here I have been wearing myself out, when these are nothing but sour grapes.” With that, Fox stands up and walks away scornfully… and thirsty.

The Sour Grapes effect is our tendency, when we fail, to change our beliefs about what we wanted in the first place. 

After altering the story, Fox no longer failed to get the grapes. Fox decided that they were not worth it. “I didn’t fail, I just decided to stop trying.” The ego is safe.

The Ostrich Effect refers to our tendency to avoid evidence of our past mistakes. We bury our heads in the sand. As an example, investors whose stocks are doing well tend to check their portfolios more often than investors whose stocks are doing poorly.

If I do not have to look at the evidence of my mistakes, maybe they will go away. Perhaps they do not even exist. 

Fox could have potentially learned a lesson about how to reach something that is out of reach if they had been willing to take a good look at what went wrong. I might learn to be a better investor if I paid more attention to my losing stock picks. 

In both cases, my self-defense instincts kicked in to make me feel better in the short run, but actually made me worse off in the long run. I failed to learn from the greatest teacher: failure.

We would be so much better off if we could train ourselves to separate our actions from our egos. The Book of Proverbs teaches: 

Seven times the tzadik (righteous person) falls and gets up, while the wicked are tripped by one misfortune.

Proverbs 24:7

One Rabbi, responding to an inquiry from a student, explains that

Foolish people think that this [verse] means, “Even though a righteous person falls seven times, he will rise.” The wise know well that the meaning is: “Because a tzaddik falls seven times, he will rise.”

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, Pachad Yitzchak: Igrot U’ketavim No. 128

In other words, a person only becomes a tzadik, develops qualities of righteousness, if they continually pick themselves back up after they fall. In other words, if they make a habit of learning from their failures. This is something that any of us can achieve, but most of us do not. 

Why seven times? Seven are the days of week. Falling down is a daily occurrence.  

A story is told in the Talmud (Gittin 43a) about Rabba bar Rav Huna. He issues a halakhic ruling, but another Rabbi comes up to him with an objection. It turns out, Rabba bar Rav Huna is wrong.

So now he has to deal with his error. First, he appoints a spokesperson to help him get the word out. Then he offers a short drash. Quoting Isaiah, “And let this stumbling-block be under your hand,” Rabba bar Rav Huna explains that a person cannot understand matters of Torah unless he stumbles in them. Then he issues a public retraction of his earlier ruling, setting himself up as the case in point. 

The Talmud records this entire incident, including the details of Rabba bar Rav Huna’s mistake. This humble man does not conflate his error with his ego.

He is not afraid of publicly owning his failure and taking responsibility. The result is that he comes across as someone of great character and wisdom. 

It can be so empowering to admit our failures, but this is often difficult for us. 

Maimoinides, the twelfth century Rabbi, physician, philosopher, and community leader, provides great insight into the human condition in his discussion of the laws of teshuvah, repentance. 

He teaches that the first step is the vidui – the confession. We cannot begin to repent without first acknowledging that we have made a mistake, that we have failed in some way. 

We ritualize this in our liturgy, with our alphabetical Ashamnu and Al Chet. We recite long lists of sins that we — first person, plural — have all committed, striking our chests as we proceed from alef through tav.

But let’s be real. These are not actual confessions. They are just examples. For a confession to count, it must be personal — first person singular. 

Maimonides emphasizes that our confession must be public, in front of other people. He acknowledges that pride often prevents a person from confessing their sins, but reminds us that full teshuvah cannot happen while a person keeps their sins to themself.

This makes sense. If I am still holding on to my shame, how can I learn, grow, and move on?

What are we to do? How can we begin to separate our actions from our ego?

The truth is, it is much easier to talk about our successes. It feels so much better to feed our egos with all the things that make us great. Consider the “About Me” section of a blog or web page.

What is listed? Typically, the degrees that a person has earned, the boards they serve on, the awards and certifications they have received. Maybe it lists their hobbies and interests.

The “About Me” page rarely lists a person’s failures. And yet, to truly get a full picture of a human being, we should know something about what did not go according to plan. After all, if this person is truly great, “righteous” to use the language of Proverbs, they must have fallen and gotten up again on a regular basis.

A recent trend in some academic and business circles has been to compose a “Failure Resume.”

It is the opposite of a typical resume, where a person lists all of their professional accomplishments.

A Failure Resume lists the schools to which a person applied and did not get in, the numerous journals that rejected papers, the classes failed, tests and essays bombed, jobs fired from, and so on. If we are honest, it should be a long list.

Such a resume could really help us learn from the failures which we tend to repress.

What would my Rabbinic Failure Resume look like? People often ask me how things are going at Sinai. I tend to mention the successes.

What do I not mention? The sermons that fell flat. I do not talk about the former congregants who left the synagogue because of something that I did, or failed to do. I leave out the sick and suffering people whom I did not call when they needed to hear from me. 

In the context of Yom Kippur, I suggest that we include some additional categories in our Failure Resumes:

We all have relationship failures, including marriages, children and parents. Friends we let down.

Obligations to community, the tzedakah I did not give. The people who needed support whom I did not assist.

Failures to God: mitzvot I did not fulfill that I could have, opportunities to study Torah that I did not embrace. 

When I have assembled my Failure Resume, what next?

First of all, it would be a great exercise to share it with someone I trust. And what an honor it would be for the recipient of such sharing.

Second, beating ourselves up over our failures is not very productive. It may even be harmful. I suggest a different approach. Pick something on the resume.  What advice would I offer to someone who is struggling with the same failure?

A person who has been trying to quit smoking for twenty years does not need to be reminded how unhealthy cigarettes are. They know. What they could be really good at, however, is coming up with advice for someone else who is trying to quite smoking.

In one study, middle school students were asked to offer suggestions for an incoming student about how to overcome a lack of academic motivation. The other group of students was given written advice from the teacher to do a better job completing their assignments. Over the next four weeks, the students who came up with the recommendations procrastinated less and completed more of their own homework assignments than the group who were told to do better by a teacher.

If we allow ourselves to really reflect on our mistakes, we can often figure out the solutions on our own.

One final point. We tend to be really bad about receiving criticism. Negative feedback is perceived as a direct assault on the ego which drives us straight into self defense mode.

As my late father-in-law, Gary, zikhro livracha, used to say, “unsolicited advice is never appreciated.”

Here is my unsolicited advice: refrain, as often as possible, from offering advice unless it is asked for.

Nevertheless, all of us are frequent recipients of criticism, most of it probably unsolicited. Might I suggest we adopt a model from synagogue. During the Torah reading, there are two gabbaim up here on the bimah, positioned on either side of the reading table. Their job is to supervise the Torah reading, offering corrections and cues whenever the Torah reader makes a mistake or gets stuck.

Sometimes, Torah readers get flustered by the gabbaim. They can be intimidated by the prospect that the gabbaim will be standing next to them, checking their work, so to speak, and pointing out all of their failings.

But the role of the gabbai is not to spring an embarrassing, public “gotcha” on the poor Torah reader. They should properly be seen as partners. We are all part of a team whose goal is to give honor to God and the Torah through a ritualized study of sacred text. The gabbaim are there to help the reader do their best possible work.

What if we treated every interaction like this – particularly the difficult ones? This person before me, full of complaints and criticism, is actually my gabbai, here to support me and make me better. My job is to figure out what it is that they are here to teach me.

This Yom Kippur, as we reflect on the year that is past and prepare ourselves for the year ahead, help us truly understand that our failures do not define us.

Instead of burying them in shame, grant us the courage to acknowledge our mistakes to ourselves, and share them with trusted companions. When we fall, may we rise despite the certainty that we will fall again, confident that this is the only path towards righteousness. May we recognize those who point out our mistakes as our gabbaim, our partners who are there to help us learn and be better. May we embody the teaching that the only way to understand Torah is to stumble through it. 

May the year ahead be filled with constructive failure, learning, and growth.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach – Not Learning From Failure—the Greatest Failure of All

Tim Herrera – How Early-Career Setbacks Can Set You Up for Success

Hidden Brain Podcast – Learning From Your Mistakes

Jeremy Adam Smith – How to Learn from your Failures

 

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797619881133

[2] Sifra, Tzav, Mechilta d’Miluim 1:1; Sifra, Shemini, Mechilta d’Miluim 2:8; Rashi on Leviticus 9:7, Ramban on Leviticus 9:7

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Sarah’s Howl – Rosh Hashanah II 5784

How did the ram’s horn get its name?

Because you can hear it from shofar away.

Now that we have firmly established the linguistic origin of the word shofar, where does this tradition of hearing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah come from? What might that origin teach us about the meaning and purpose of the shofar?

The Maftir Torah reading, from our second Torah scroll, is identified as the source of the obligation.

In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a sacred occasion: you shall not work at your occupations. A Day of Blasting it shall be for you.

Numbers 29:1

This is the Torah’s name for today: Yom Teruah, “A Day of Blasting.” Other than a few typical sacrifices, blasting the shofar is the only specific action that the Torah commands.

Nowhere is our holiday called Rosh Hashanah. It is never acknowledged as the new year, nor is it claimed to have anything to do with creation. Teshuvah is never mentioned.

It would seem that Rosh Hashanah’s significance, in the Torah, is in respect to Yom Kippur. We sound the shofar as an announcement of the upcoming Day of Atonement. In contrast, Yom Kippur does have great significance and lots of detail in the Torah. 

The deeper meaning of our holiday is revealed through our rabbinic traditions. It is Rosh Hashanah: the new year. It celebrates creation and the enthronement of God as king. It is the Day of Judgment, the first step in what will eventually result in our souls being purified on Yom Kippur. It is the day when we eat apples dipped in honey and make our challahs round.

Through multiple layers of significance, the shofar remains the most iconic element of Rosh Hashanah, the most unique and special ritual of the holiday.

But what does it mean? Maimonides acknowledges that the Torah provides no explicit reason for the shofar, but suggests that there is a hint as to its purpose. The sound announces:

You who sleep, bestir yourselves from your sleep, and you who slumber, emerge from your slumber. Examine your actions, return, and remember your Creator. Those who forget the truth in the vanities of time and waste all their years with vanity and emptiness, which is not effective and does not save, look inside yourselves. Improve your ways and your actions, let each one of you abandon their evil path and their thoughts that are not good!

Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 3:4

For Rambam, the shofar is a moral alarm clock, meant to awaken us to what is really going on with our lives. Most of us devote most of our energies to tasks that are unimportant in the grand scheme of things. If we are paying the right kind of attention, the shofar blast shatters our complacency, and reorients us to what truly matters. In other words, the sound of the shofar is an important step in the process of teshuvah, repentance.

While Maimonides offers us a psychological explanation, the Talmud offers something more theological, imagining a conversation between God and the Jewish people. God says:

Sound a blast before Me with a shofar from a ram, so that I will remember for you the binding of Isaac, son of Abraham, and I will consider it as if you had bound yourselves before Me.

Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16a

The Torah reading from this morning, the Binding of Isaac, ends with Abraham offering up a ram as a burnt offering in place of his son Isaac. This story was chosen for today as a testament to Abraham’s total and complete faith in God, as well as Isaac’s willingness to go along with the Divine command.

Sounding the shofar is our way of symbolically participating in that act. It is a way of offering up our faith to God, putting our lives in God’s hands, so to speak, so that God considers us with mercy on the Day of Judgment.

Of course, the story itself never claims to have taken place on Rosh Hashanah, nor does the Torah ever make a connection between the Binding of Isaac and our holiday.

Maimonides’ explanation characterizes the sound of the shofar as a call to us to perform teshuvah. The Talmud says that it is a reminder to God to remember the Binding of Isaac and have mercy upon us.

A midrash provides a third explanation for the origin and the meaning of the shofar that digs even deeper. It suggests a deeply emotional origin for our beloved ritual.

This midrash picks up on the juxtaposition of the story of the Akeidah with the death of Sarah in the subsequent chapter. It addresses Sarah’s absence in the story. Did she know what Abraham was doing with her son? Did she ever find out afterward? Did she wake up the morning they left to pack them a lunch and see them off? “Bye honey, be back in time for dinner.” The Torah is silent.

This midrash brings in Samael, an evil angel who serves as God’s adversary. Samael expects Abraham to chicken out at the last minute, revealing the weakness of his faith. But Abraham’s commitment to God is so strong that an angel has to call out his name, not once, but twice to get his attention and stop him from slaughtering Isaac.

His plan frustrated, Samael sets out for revenge. Hastily, he rushes to Sarah with a message:

“Sarah, Have you not heard what has happened?”

“No.”

“Your old man (Yes, he calls Abraham ‘old man.’) took your son Isaac to sacrifice as a burnt offering. The boy was crying and howling that he would not be able to be saved.”

[Then Sarah] began to cry and howl. She cried three cries, corresponding to the three tekiot. Three howls corresponding to the three yevavot.[Then] her soul departed, and she died.

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 32:8

A few words of explanation.

The three tekiot and three yevavot refer to the required number of blasts that one is required to hear on Rosh Hashanah. A tekiah is an uninterrupted note. A Yevavais a broken note, what we call teruah. The Rabbis translated Yom Teruah, a “Day of Blasting” into Aramaic as Yom Yabava.

This remarkable midrash provides a very different origin story for our shofar.  Instead of representing the willingness of a father to sacrifice his son, it expresses the grief and utter loss of control of a mother who discovers she has just lost her child. As Aviva Zornberg explains, the word for howl, yelalah, is

a wordless sound made by women particularly at moments of birth or death, at extreme moments when all normal patterns and understandings of the world break down.

“Cries and Whispers: The Death of Sarah” in Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holidays, p. 185.

It is pure emotion, uninhibited and unrestrained. When the Rabbis in the Talmud argue over what the broken short notes, the yevavot, are supposed to sound like, they compare them to the yelalah – the raw cry of motherly grief. There is no discernable message in the yelalah. No reminder for self reflection, no call for Teshuvah, and no appeal to Divine mercy. Just honest, unfiltered emotion.

We encounter another weeping mother in today’s Haftarah. Picture the scene in your mind’s eye.

A cry is heard in Ramah—wailing, bitter weeping—Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, who are gone.

Jeremiah 31:15

While the passage continues with God’s words of comfort and promises to restore her children to their land, Rachel’s crying reverberates.  She refuses to be comforted. In this haunting scene, we are reminded that sometimes, before we can embark on a path of introspection and repentance, we need a moment to howl, to let out our rage and grief.

The howl of the shofar echoes the sorrow and despair in our world: mothers and fathers who have lost children to violence and suicide; families and communities devastated by earthquake, flood, and fire; humans suffering from poverty and oppression, addiction and depression; as well as many of us whose lives have not unfolded as we had hoped. 

If we allow it to penetrate us, the cry of the shofar can awaken the compassion and empathy necessary to truly evaluate our own lives and pray for Divine mercy, not only for ourselves, but for all who suffer. As we open our hearts to the shofar’s call for personal growth, let us also extend our hands. May the echoes of Sarah’s howl and Rachel’s bitter weeping, along withthe cries of all who grieve, inspire us to be agents of healing, kindness, and transformation in the year ahead.

May the pure sound of the shofar serve as a beacon of hope, reminding us that even in our moments of deepest sorrow, we can find the strength to move forward, to mend, and to repair our world.

Shanah Tovah, may we all have a sweet and meaningful new year filled with love, compassion, and positive change.

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The Cure for Loneliness – Rosh Hashanah I 5784

What is the number one public health challenge in America?

Loneliness.

That is not something that we typically associate with health.

Dr. Vivek Murthy became the Surgeon General of the United States in 2014. Dr. Murthy spent his first several months visiting communities large and small, urban and rural. He met with health care professionals and farmers, small business owners and teachers. Of course, he heard all about heart disease and diabetes, cancer, drug and alcohol addiction, the opioid epidemic and obesity. These were expected.

But what surprised him was to encounter, over and over, that people were experiencing loneliness and isolation in profound ways.

Now in his second stint as Surgeon General, Dr. Murthy’s department released, this past April, a general advisory for our nation entitled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.

What is loneliness? First of all, it is subjective. We experience it when there is a gap between the social connections that we desire and those that we have. 

Aloneness and Loneliness are not the same. It is possible to be alone in a crowd, just as it is possible to spend large amounts of time by oneself and feel socially fulfilled. 

Consider your own life. If you have felt lonely at some point in the past year, and if you are comfortable doing so, I invite you to raise your hand…

A related, objective term is “social isolation.” This refers to having few social relationships and roles, group memberships and interactions with others.

Social isolation has been increasing in the United States for the past half century, and especially over the past twenty years. For example, between 2003 and 2020, the average number of hours adults spent by themselves increased by 24 hours per month. Time spent engaging, in person, with friends decreased from 30 to 10 hours per month. Even within households, we spent 5 fewer hours per month interacting with our family members.

This is bad for us. Decades of research has found connections between loneliness, social isolation, and health outcomes.

Lacking social connection puts a person at about the same risk of early mortality as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day and is a greater risk factor than drinking 6 alcoholic drinks a day, physical inactivity, obesity, or exposure to air pollution.

Those with poor social relationships are associated with having a 29% increase in risk for heart disease and 32% increase in risk of stroke. Similar links exist with hypertension, diabetes, cognitive decline, and dementia.

It should come as no surprise that those who are more socially isolated are more likely to experience depression and anxiety, to become addicted to opioids, and self harm.

Gun violence is exacerbated by loneliness and isolation.

Loneliness also brings an economic cost. First, the obvious: healthcare and social services. But there are other expenses. Children who are isolated have lower academic achievement. Workers experiencing loneliness are less productive in their jobs. One study found that loneliness led to increased rates of stress-related absenteeism, costing employers $154 billion each year.

There is one additional harm that bears mentioning. The terrible political and social polarization plaguing us is directly related to the loneliness and social isolation that has exploded over the past decades. Loneliness drives us to extremes.

How did we get here?

For most of human existence, survival required membership in deeply integrated social communities. Our prehistoric ancestors formed tribes for mutual protection from outside enemies as well as to meet basic needs, i.e., food, clothing, and shelter. Religious beliefs, moral codes, meaning, and purpose all emerged out of this collective social orientation.

Now, we can survive day-to-day without ever sharing air with another person. I can work remotely. I can have all my food, clothing and cleaning supplies delivered to my door. I can consume an endless amount of entertainment from the comfort of my sofa. And I can even complain to my therapist about my lack of a social life from the comfort of my laptop. 

In his final book, Morality, published in 2020, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z”l, points to the beginning of the Enlightenment, approximately 400 years ago, as the moment when humans began to shift the way that we perceive ourselves in relation to our communities.

Instead of existing as part of a collective “We,” individuals began to think of themselves as a unique, sovereign “I.”

Without going into a social, political, religious, and economic history of the past four hundred years, it is safe to say that the quest for meaning and purpose in life is now something that we each must figure out on our own. This has not always been the case.

In his 1961 inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy famously challenged, “And so, my fellow American: ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” It was a call for children and adults to do something to contribute to the public good, to selflessly give of themselves for the collective “We.”

His challenge presupposed a shared national identity and system of collective values.

Can you imagine a national politician putting out a similar call today?

By the way, the continuation of the speech included this line: “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

I think we know, deep down, that we need each other, that we are better off when we face life’s challenges together, and that our society is more cohesive when we embrace a shared set of values.

But now it is not uncommon to ask, “What does my Judaism mean to me?” That is a lonely question that would have been considered absurd until very recently.

Facebook is less than twenty years old. Newer still are Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, X—human beings around the world have never been more connected. Ironically, we have also never felt so alone.

Think for a moment about some of the terms we associate with social media: Influencer; My personal brand; Followers, The selfie.

While presented as tools to bring people together, these social media apps prey on our attachment to self and need for validation. But the result is that we feel inadequate. Do we feel more or less connected to fellow human beings after scrolling through our feed for an hour?  

So many of our face-to-face encounters have been replaced by screen time. Our social muscles are atrophying. Even when we are together, we are distracted. It is so disheartening to look around a restaurant and see families, friends, and colleagues mesmerized by their phones, oblivious to the person sitting across from them. Is this the purpose for which we are created?

Our tradition teaches that Rosh Hashanah, the first of Tishrei, coincides with the day on which humanity was born. After creating the first human in the Garden of Eden, God declares, lo tov heyot adam levado. “It is not good for a human to be alone.”

So, God makes all the animals off the ground and the air, bringing them to Adam, one by one. But no fitting helper can be found.  It is then that God casts a sleep upon the human and forms a woman out of its side. Now identified by gender, the man and the woman find companionship in each other. 

Humanity’s very first experience is loneliness. The Torah unambiguously declares it lo tov, “not good.” Its remedy, the solution provided by God, is human companionship.

Our present epidemic is not how we are meant to live, neither from a biological perspective, an evolutionary perspective, nor a religious perspective.

Turning to our Rosh Hashanah liturgy, we find the theme of loneliness woven throughout. In our Torah portion, after God remembers Sarah and blesses her with a child, she orders Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael. 

Cast out that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.

Genesis 21:10

This is not mere physical exile, but social excommunication. Hagar and Ishmael can no longer be part of the family. When their supplies run out in the wilderness, Hagar, depressed, abandons her son, thinking “Let me not look on as the child dies.” Hagar’s loneliness is answered when God sends an angel to announce that God has heard the cry of the boy “where he is.”

Our Haftarah tells the story of another barren woman. As the story begins, Hannah is teased and tormented continuously by Peninnah, her rival wife. Her tone-deaf husband, Elkanah, tries to console her:

Hannah, why are you crying and why aren’t you eating? Why are you so sad? Am I not more devoted to you than ten sons?

I Samuel 1:8

The Bible does not dignify Elkanah’s selfish words with an answer. Hannah prays, silently moving her lips while weeping. Even the priest Eli looks right past her. He scolds her as a drunk. Only then does Hannah recite her first words out loud.

Oh no, my lord! I am a very unhappy woman. I have drunk no wine or other strong drink, but I have been pouring out my heart to Adonai. Do not take your maidservant for a worthless woman; I have only been speaking all this time out of my great anguish and distress.

I Samuel 1:15-16

That must have taken a lot of courage: to speak up for herself, to own her sadness and loneliness, and to share it with a stranger. Now Eli really does see her. He prays for God to grant her wishes. As Hannah leaves, she eats and she is no longer downcoast. A moment of empathy, of being seen, has made all the difference.

These stories evoke our own loneliness. How have we been forgotten? Does God hear our prayers? Is there a remedy for our own loneliness?

Look around the room. We come to shul.  We sit side by side. We sing in harmony (or something resembling harmony). We catch up. We wish each other a good year. Amidst the angst and uncertainty that fill our lives, we come together to share our loneliness. And suddenly we are not so lonely.  All of us recognize, at some level, that the only way to celebrate the new year is together.

It should not surprise any of us to learn that people who are involved in religious communities are less lonely, and experience higher levels of social support and integration. In other words, Shul is good for your health – emotionally, psychologically, maybe even physically. (Although we might want to take it easy during Kiddush.)

To reverse our loneliness epidemic, Rabbi Sacks suggests that we need to shift our focus back from “I” to “We.” How do we begin?

In one experiment, participants were given a sum of money. Half were told to spend the money on treats for themselves. Half were told to spend the money on a person in need. The subjects were asked questions before and after to measure their relative levels of happiness. Which group do you think was happier at the end of the experiment?

It was the group that spent the money on someone else. Taking those few moments to think “What would make another person happy,” increased their own happiness. We experience the greatest joy when we stop thinking about ourselves. 

Instead of turning to “Self-Help” to work on what is wrong with us, how about trying “Other-Help?”  What if, every day, we consciously do one thing solely for another person’s benefit. 

There is a particular concept in Judaism that Rabbi Sacks suggests could help us reframe our relationship to community: the brit, or covenant. A covenant is different than a contract. In a contract, I am me and you are you. Contracts deal with tangible things and specific responsibilities. I agree to pay you five thousand dollars, and you agree to give me a car in working order. When we complete our responsibilities as outlined by the contract, we never have to see each other again. A covenant is different. It establishes a relationship. Fundamentally, it calls on the parties of the covenant to be loyal to one another. It transforms you and me into we. 

As Jews, we are quite familiar with this idea, at least conceptually. Covenant is how we describe our relationship with God. Our brit establishes mutual loyalty, care, and compassion; not only between God and us, but between and among one another. If I am not responding to the needs of my fellow Jew, I am not being faithful to the covenant. Meaning in is found by sharing a common set of stories and values that tell us where we come from, who we are, and what our purpose is. 

Rabbi Sacks argues that it is our mutual loyalty to one another and to God which forms the basis of morality. Living covenantally asks me to give up some of my need to self actualize and self authenticate, to set aside my self interest and prioritize the other. The goal of any society should be to prioritize the well-being of all its members, and to serve the common good, rather than the interests of a select few. If I am to belong to that society, those must be my priorities as well.

Covenants can exist at varying levels. At the smallest, a marriage is a covenant between two people who make a commitment of loyalty and care to one another. As the Torah explains after the creation of man and woman: v’hayu l’vasar echad. “They become one flesh.”

Ostensibly, the Jewish people are covenantally committed to mutual care and compassion. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh, goes the saying. “All of Israel are surety for one another.” How well we live up to that ideal is debatable.

Do we have a national covenant that binds Americans together in loyalty and mutual responsibility? At the moment, it does not seem like we do.

Rabbi Sacks even posits the existence of 

a covenant of human solidarity that binds all [eight] billion of us alive today to act responsibly toward the environment, human rights, and the alleviation of poverty for the sake of generations not yet born.

Jonathan Sacks, Morality, 313-314

How different our world would be if humanity truly saw itself committed to this shared vision. Perhaps that is the meaning of the words of Zekhariah that conclude the prayer Aleinu, originally recited only on Rosh Hashanah.

V’hayah Adonai l’melekh al kol-ha’aretz,
bayom hahu yihyeh Adonai echad ush’mo Echad

Adonai shall be ruler over all of the earth.
On that day, Adonai will be One and the name of Adonai, One.

Let us each take the steps within our power to bring that day closer.

This year, may we dedicate ourselves to cultivate compassion and empathy, to truly see one another, and to put other before self. May we, together, be worthy of a year filled with health, happiness, meaning, and growth. L’Shanah Tovah.

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August 29, 2023

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Be The One to Take the First Step – Ki Teitzei 5783

One of my personal favorite mitzvot appears in this morning’s Torah portion. It is called hashevat aveidah – the return of a lost item.

I love it so much because I know what it is like to lose something that is important to me, and to despair about ever getting it back.

When someone, out of the blue, brings that lost item back to me, the feeling transcends the mere restoration of an item of value. It is a reminder of the potential goodness in a random stranger. What a gift to be able to be that stranger for someone else.

Parashat Ki Teitzei is notable for containing the most number of mitzvot, commandments, of any portion in the Torah: 74. Like many of the Torah’s law codes, the topics range widely, covering ritual obligations, business law, criminal law, as well as personal and family ethics. 

One of these laws is hashevat aveidah. This is how it is introduced:

If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your fellow. 

Deuteronomy 22:1

The Torah continues to specify that we have an obligation to take the lost animal home and care for it if the owner cannot be immediately identified or located. It then expands beyond animals to include garments, or any other item that we may find.

Twice, the Torah emphasizes that we are not allowed to remain indifferent, using the expression v’hit’alamta mahem – which literally means “and hide yourself from them.” If I find a lost item, I must return it.

A corollary mitzvah follows this one, also with instructions to not “hide yourself from them.”

If you see your fellow’s donkey or ox fallen on the road… you must help him raise it.

Deuteronomy 22:4

I have always liked these two mitzvot. Being part of the covenanted community of the Jewish people means more than just treating one another properly. Our obligations extend to one another’s possessions as well. Consider for a moment what these mitzvot are saying. I incur an obligation simply for my discovery of an item, even when I do not know to whom that item belongs. I am obligated to a mystery person such that I commit a sin if I do not step up.

I recently discovered a commentary by a medieval Spanish sage, Rabbi Baḥya ben Asher. Rabbeinu Baḥya, as he is known, wrote a commentary on the Torah that offers allegorical, midrashic, and mystical interpretations. In his discussion, Rabbeinu Baḥya offers three explanations for these commandments to take responsibility for the property of our neighbors.

First, he cites the Talmud. The Torah repeats Hebrew words hashev teshivem, “Return you shall return.” This does not merely emphasize our obligation to return a lost object. It conveys that we must keep returning it, even 100 times in a row, if necessary.

Imagine my neighbor has a donkey that keeps wandering on to my property. As many times as it wanders over, I must still make the effort to bring it back home, however annoying or inconvenient it might be. That is a fairly conventional midrashic interpretation.

Rabbeinu Baḥya then explains that this kind of behavior is midarkhei haḥesed v’haraḥamim – among the ways of kindness and compassion. This is how people who are all descended from the same human ancestor ought to treat one another. We each have an interest in the success and well-being of one another, he says. As such, we must go beyond the obligation to merely care for the “things” belonging to our neighbor. It is not just about stuff. If I find myself in a position in which I have the ability to protect another person from financial loss, I must do so. I may not “hide myself.”

The principal behind this responsibility, says Rabbeinu Baḥya, is v’ahavta l’re’ekha kamokha, which we usually translate as “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But here, Rabbeinu Baḥya understands it as “You shall love that which is your neighbor’s as if it were your own.” It is quite an extension of the principle.

His second explanation is a theological one, focusing on the warning against “hiding yourself.” He notes that it is easy to look the other way and pretend not to have seen a wandering donkey, or a lost item. Who is going to know?

The answer is “God knows.” And just as we are commanded to return that which is our neighbor’s, God will one day return that which is ours.  That is to say, God will return our souls to our bodies. And here, Rabbeinu Bahya goes into a description of the Jewish concept of the resurrection of the dead, which will occur after the coming of the mashiaḥ. The point is, how can we expect God to return our souls to us if we fail to return that which is our neighbor’s?

The third explanation is the one that most took me by surprise. Rabbeinu Baḥya notes that these mitzvot in Parashat Ki Teitzei are a reiteration of mitzvot that first appear in the the book of Exodus, but with a significant distinction. Where Deuteronomy uses the word aḥikha, “your brother,” to describe the person whose donkey has wandered off and gotten into trouble, Exodus uses the word son’ekha, “your enemy.”

That is a pretty significant difference. What does it mean? At first, we might think that this merely indicates that it does not matter whether or not I like the owner of the donkey. I am still obligated.

Rabbeinu Baḥya suggests that there is a deeper lesson to be learned. If I assist my enemy with their fallen donkey, they may come to see me differently, and my enemy may transform into my brother. The assistance I offer may be the very thing to cause the hatred to be forgotten and the love that unites us to be remembered.

What an inspiring—and difficult—observation.

I suspect Rabbeinu Baḥya may be talking about more than just a wandering donkey. When there is conflict, it can be really hard to be the one to take the first step at reconcilliation. Our egos get too involved.  How often do we get into fights with other people when we forget the reason for the conflict in the first place, and it becomes all about the hatred, the negative feelings which are reinforced every time I hear that person’s name.

What would be so terrible about swallowing my pride and taking that first step to do something that helps out my enemy? Perhaps that is the very act to shatter the hostility.

As we prepare for the new year, this is the time when we are supposed to be examining our relationships, reviewing our deeds. We engage in teshuvah, repentance. Our tradition teaches us the only way to do teshuvah for sins between ourselves and another person is to appease that person directly.

Rabbeinu Baḥya offers us an approach to repair broken relationships. Swallow my pride, do not wait for them to apologize first. After all, they are probably waiting for me to apologize first. Just take the first step. Perhaps this will be the year that my enemy becomes my friend.

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August 24, 2023

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How do we know whom to listen to? – Shoftim 5783

How do we know who to listen to? Whom to trust?

This is a real problem for all of us, with so much conflicting information and sources surrounding us. It is one of the major sources of division in our world.

It turns out, this is nothing new.

This morning’s Torah portion, Shoftim, is primarily about leadership. It focuses on rules for judges and kings, as  well as laws about the waging of war. One area that it covers is what to do when situations arise that the Torah does not anticipate. Who should be consulted for leadership and guidance? Who can be trusted?

To introduce this question, Moses first reminds the Israelites of what happened at Mount Sinai nearly forty years earlier. God’s Presence descended on the mountain in a tremendous cacophony of sound, light, smoke, and shaking.

The people freak out, telling Moses, “We can’t take it anymore. This is going to kill us. You go talk to God and report back to us. We’ll do whatever you say.”

Moses reports that God was pleased with the Israelites’ response. It seems that, in fact, this reaction was what God was aiming for all along. The purpose of the overwhelming display of power was to get the people to put their trust in God’s Prophet—Moses. Here in Deuteronomy, Moses expands on God’s words to him at that time, with an eye towards the future. 

“…I will raise up a prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself: I will put My words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him; and if anybody fails to heed the words he speaks in My name, I Myself will call him to account.

Deuteronomy 18:18-19

God’s plan, apparently, is to have prophets who will convey the Divine will to human beings. They carry the authority to speak in God’s name, and the people will be expected to follow their instructions.

But there is a problem, which God anticipates: what to do about fakes.

But any prophet who presumes to speak in My name an oracle that I did not command him to utter, or who speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet shall die.”

Deuteronomy 18:20

That seems straightforward enough. Of course, how are we supposed to know if someone is a fake? Again, Moses provides the answer:

And should you ask yourselves, “How can we know that the oracle was not spoken by the LORD?”— if the prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and the oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by the LORD; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of him. (Deut. 18:21-22)

If a prophet’s prediction does not happen, then they are not to be believed. Honestly, that does not seem like a very good test. What if the prediction is for something that is supposed to happen fifty years from now? Or ten years? Or even next month? How am I supposed to know, right now, whether to listen to this purported prophet?

The passage in Shoftim about prophecy seems so optimistic. God is pleased that the Israelites agree to listen to Moses and follows his instructions. And yet, if we actually follow the careers of the prophets through the Bible, we find that them to be a tragic lot. 

To illustrate the problem, we turn to the book of Jeremiah. It is during the final decades of the First Temple, towards the end of the reign of the dynasty of King David.

Jeremiah was a tortured soul. He preached doom and gloom for several decades, speaking God’s word to several kings, along with the residents of Jerusalem. The great tragedy is that nobody listens to Jeremiah. In fact, there are a lot of other prophets running around preaching messages of hope and victory – the kinds of predictions that kings and the Jerusalem upper crust like to hear. 

As a result of his prophecies, Jeremiah himself is sent to prison.

In one moment of exasperation, Jeremiah turns his rage to God.

Accursed be the day that I was born! Let not the day be blessed when my mother bore me! Accursed be the man who brought my father the news and said, “A boy Is born to you,” and gave him such joy! Let that man become like the cities which the LORD overthrew without relenting! Let him hear shrieks in the morning and battle shouts at noontide—because he did not kill me before birth so that my mother might be my grave, and her womb big [with me] for all time. Why did I ever issue from the womb, to see misery and woe, to spend all my days in shame!

Jeremiah 20:14-18

This is the great irony. The true prophet is not believed, and the false prophets are embraced. The rules in Parashat Shoftim do not appear to have been particularly effective.

The following story takes place early in the reign of King Zedekiah, the final king to rule over Judah before the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians in 586 BCE.

Jeremiah sends leather straps and wooden yokes to all of the surrounding kings, as well to King Zedekiah. The accompanying message is that they should submit to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, to whom God will be delivering all of their lands. There is no point in resisting.

To demonstrate the seriousness of his point, Jeremiah puts King Zedekiah’s yoke on his own neck and straps it closed. He had a flair for dramatic gestures.

One of the many other prophets, Hananiah son of Azzur, comes to the Temple to offer a counterprophecy. This is what he says:

Thus said the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: I hereby break the yoke of the king of Babylon. In two years, I will restore to this place all the vessels of the House of the LORD which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took from this place and brought to Babylon. And I will bring back to this place King Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim of Judah, and all the Judean exiles who went to Babylon—declares the LORD. Yes, I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.

Jeremiah 28:2-4

Basically, “Don’t worry about Nechudnezzar. We got this.”

Jeremiah, who is present for this speech, turns to the assembled priests and Israelites, reminds them to watch out for false prophets, and offers a test for identifying one. This test, as we will see, is a clarification of Moses’ test in Parashat Shoftim.

The prophets who lived before you and me from ancient times prophesied war, disaster, and pestilence against many lands and great kingdoms. So if a prophet prophesies good fortune, then only when the word of the prophet comes true can it be known that the LORD really sent him.”

Jeremiah 28:8-9

If a prophet predicts death and destruction, you’d better listen. But if a prophet says that everything is going to be great, it would be best to wait and see if it comes true before following said prophet.

Not to be dissuaded, Hananiah breaks the wooden yoke from Jeremiah’s neck, and declares:

Thus said the LORD: So will I break the yoke of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon from off the necks of all the nations, in two years.

Jeremiah 28:11

Jeremiah confronts Hananiah once again, 

“Listen, Hananiah! The LORD did not send you, and you have given this people lying assurances. Assuredly, thus said the LORD: I am going to banish you from off the earth. This year you shall die, for you have urged disloyalty to the LORD.”

And the prophet Hananiah died that year, in the seventh month.

Jeremiah 28:15-17

Even Hanahiah’s death does not convince the people to heed Jeremiah’s warnings.

Overall, the Israelite prophets were not especially successful in their own day. They underwent immense personal hardship and suffering. They were despised by their neighbors. Kings did not especially appreciate their warnings. And when they tried to convince the people and/or the rulers to follow God’s will, nobody really listened.

The prophets failed in all of their major endeavors. They were unable to save the united kingdom from splitting. They did not prevent the Northern Kingdom from falling to the Assyrians. They did not prevent the Temple from being destroyed by the Babylonians. 

Perhaps this is what leads the Rabbis to officially declare the era of the prophets over. 

Rabbi Avdimi from Haifa says: From the day that the Temple was destroyed prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the Sages.

BT Bava Batra 12a

The subsequent discussion concludes that Sages are and were always superior to prophets in the first place. The pursuit of wisdom, the preoccupation of the Sages, offers a path towards propehcy. A prophet may or may not have wisdom, but a wise person can access the Divine will. (It is a nice idea, especially if one is a Sage.)

Rabbi Yoḥanan offers a different insight.

Rabbi Yoḥanan said: From the day that the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to imbeciles and children.

Ibid.

What is this suggesting? Perhaps that prophecy, the revelation of the true Divine will, is only given to those who are destined to not be taken seriously.

In this, perhaps, not much has changed. As exemplified by Jeremiah, the tragedy of the true Prophet is that the truth that the prophet pronounces is not accepted by those who most need to hear it. People are much more likely to listen to what they already know, or what they want to hear.

I fear not much has changed. The ancient prophets were the social and political critics of their day. Most of them would have met the criteria—either Moses’ or Jeremiah’—of the false prophet.

What concerned the true prophets? They worried about the nation’s allegiance to God. They warned against the adoption by the leaders of immoral practices. They worried about the mistreatment and the neglect of the poor, both by the leaders and the population at large. They spoke out against immoral behavior by the population. They tried to convince the people to return to the moral path.

Today, how do we determine who to listen to? I fear that the determination is made, more and more, by an algorithm designed to feed us that to which we are most likely to respond positively, a phenomenon strikingly similar to the false prophets who fed the king and the people the message that they thought would be most well-received (and would be most likely to keep them from being jailed or executed).

It is the fools and children, those who, in their naivete, are less concerned with how their words will be received; or the wise, those whose allegiance to the pursuit of truth outweighs the desire for fame and fortune, whose words we perhaps ought to listen for.

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August 18, 2023

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Deuteronomy and the American Dream – Parashat Re’eh 5783

What is the American Dream?

The term was first used by the historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book, The Epic of America. This is how he describes it: The American Dream is

that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.

…It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

He complained that although society tends to measure a person’s achievement of the American Dream by economic success, it was originally about quality and spiritual values. He warned that “in our struggle to ‘make a living'” we were neglecting “to live”.

It seems to me that we often conflate the idea of the American Dream with the idea of meritocracy. Under American meritocracy, the goal is to be “the best.” The most educated, most committed, most accomplished, most disciplined. These people are rewarded with success, which we measure by income and wealth.

The corollary is that someone who does not have income and wealth must not be someone of merit. They must be deficient in some way. It must be their fault.

Maybe some of you are familiar with the HR practice of “Up or Out.” I understand it is quite common in Silicon Valley. A worker is given a certain amount of time to prove themself, and is then either promoted or laid off. Fortunately, this is not practiced in the rabbinic world.

Such extreme focus on merit produces some pretty rigid social hierarchies. In a recent article, David Brooks writes about one of the major self-perpetuating measures—education—which has become one of the real dividing lines in society. He writes:

We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.

While the American Dream, as an ideal, offers anyone with a strong work ethic the prospect of rising to a higher social class, the reality is often quite different. If the American Dream were a reality than we would see high levels of social mobility. Social mobility refers to the likelihood that a child born into a poor family will be able to rise into a higher economic level.

A 2020 report by the World Economic Forum measured social mobility by country. It used an index that measured education, access to technology, healthcare, social protection and employment opportunities. It found that the countries with the greatest levels of social mobility were in Europe, primarily the Nordic countries. The United States was 27th, second to last among the G7 nations.

This is an issue that appears prominently in this morning’s Torah portion, Re’eh. In the first half of chapter fifteen, Moses offers some instructions and pronouncements to the Israelites regarding the obligation to care for the poor. In so doing, he offers some pretty contradictory messages about the presence of poverty within the community. First, he says:

Efes ki lo yihyeh l’kha evyon— There need not be any poor among you—since the Lord your God will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion—

Deuteronomy 15:4

In other words, God has not only the capacity, but also the willingness, to bless us sufficiently so that we can eradicate poverty.  A few verses later, Moses acknowledges that this might be too lofty an ideal.

ki yihyeh v’kha evyon—If, however, there is a needy person among you, one of your brothers in any of your settlements in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kin. Rather, you must open your hand and lend whatever is sufficient to meet the need.

Deuteronomy 15:7-8

A few verses after that Moses just gives up.

ki lo yeḥdal l’kha evyon—For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to your poor and needy brother in your land. (15:11)

Deuteronomy 15:11

In just a few verses, we descend from the possibility of eradicating poverty, to being commanded to respond to poverty if it appears, to resignation to the fact that poverty will never be eliminated.

Within these pronouncements, Re’eh offers three policy statements. Three mitzvot incumbent on the Israelite.

The first is to cancel all debts every seven years. Universal debt forgiveness.

The second is to offer loans to the needy among you—”whatever is sufficient to meet the need”—with a warning not to hold back out of knowledge that the loan will be cancelled if still unpaid in the seventh year.

The third commandment refers to someone who has become enslaved due to their inability to pay back their debt. That person must also be freed in the seventh year. Furthermore, the owner is prohibited from sending the freed slave away empty-handed. They have to be paid.

These three commandments are essentially a form of economic redistribution of resources from the rich to the poor. It would take the form of the rich helping out the poor financially when the poor fall upon hard times, and then offering loan forgiveness so that people do not suffocate under a mountain of debt that they can never dig themselves out of. (Some of that may sound familiar.)

While there are similarities here to mitzvot appearing in other parts of the Torah, Deuteronomy adds some unique points. In Exodus, the warning is against oppressing the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger. If we do, God will hear their cry and punish us.

Deuteronomy takes it a step further. Now, failure to actively help will result in God’s curse or, conversely, God’s blessing. Not offering the loan, failing to free the debt-slave, or refusal to cancel the debt, is the moral equivalent of oppressing them – from God’s vantage point.

In Exodus, the debt slave merely goes free in the seventh year. In Deuteronomy, the owner has to pay him. He cannot be sent away empty-handed. 

The passage ends with a familiar refrain:

Bear in mind that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I enjoin this commandment upon you today.

Deuteronomy 15:15

God made sure that the Israelites went free from slavery in Egypt with vast wealth, taken from their former masters. This reminder, as the punctuation to the warning against not letting the freed debt slave leave empty handed, is not merely a command for compassion and empathy. It contains a veiled threat. The slave owner is in the same relative position as the Egyptians. When the Israelites left Egypt, they took all sorts of treasures from their former masters, at God’s direction. The warning here is that if the owner fails to provide for the freed slave, God will again take the situation in hand. 

This system operates under the assumption that neutrality regarding the poor is insufficient. Simply leaving them alone is a recipe for a return to the former state of poverty and inequality. To break the cycle requires an additional step on the part of those at the upper end of the socioeconomic system. 

It is easy to take the position that as long as I am leaving my neighbor alone, not actively doing anything to hold them back, then my responsibilities have been met. Another person’s success or failure in life is up to them, and really has no bearing on my own situation. 

But Deuteronomy introduces the idea that failure to take pro-active steps to help the poor is the equivalent of oppressing them. It offers a model for breaking the cycle of poverty.

But this is a bitter pill to swallow. We do not like to be forced to part with our hard-earned possessions to pay for what we often see as somebody else’s mistakes.

So Deuteronomy goes beyond the financial obligations. It also legislates an attitude. Over and over, it uses the word achikha – your brother – to refer to your fellow Israelite who has not been so fortunate. To be clear, in this text, there is a definite distinction between the obligations one has to fellow Israelites and obligations to non-Israelite residents. Regarding the unfortunate Israelite, the Torah says, you have to see this person as your brother.

This focus on achikha, the theme of brotherhood, reappears throughout Deuteronomy.  In chapter one, Moses instructs the judges to “hear between your brothers and rule justly between a man and his brother or between his foreigner.” (1:16) In next week’s portion, as Moses addresses the Israelites about the future monarchy, he tells them that they are to select someone from among their brothers to be the King. (17:15) And the King is warned against acting haughtily towards his brothers. (17:20)

Deuteronomy calls out positions in society which could lend themselves to unequal social divisions: the wealthy, the judges, and the king (i.e. the politicians), and knocks them off their pedestals. They must relate to the those people upon whom they would be most inclined to look down as brothers.

This goes way beyond a mere economic obligation. It is mandating social relations. There must be mixing between classes. There must be true social mobility. Looking at it through a contemporary lens, the American Dream must not be just a myth. 

And it is clear in these texts that God takes the side of the poor over the rich. We are blessed—or cursed—to the extent that we do not ignore the poor and suffering. So when Moses says— 

There need not be any poor among you—since the Lord your God will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion—

Moses is giving us a challenge. But which comes first. Does God bless us in the land so that there will be no poverty? Or, will the land be blessed only if, or when, we eradicate poverty?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, Volume 2, pp. 230-234.

https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index-2020-why-economies-benefit-from-fixing-inequality/#what-does-it-do-that-other-indices-don-t

David Brooks, “What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?”, New York Times, August 2, 2023

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/24/20919030/meritocracy-book-daniel-markovits-inequality-rich

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January 31, 2023

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Talking Face to Screen: My Chavruta with ChatGPT – Bo 5783

The robots are here. ChatGPT was released to the public on November 30 by OpenAI. In less than two months, it is already creating massive disruptions in many aspects of modern life.

ChatGPT is a computer program that can understand and respond to people’s words. It can help with different language tasks like answering questions and making sentences.

That definition, by the way, was composed by Chat GPT when I asked it what it was, and instructed it to give the answer in a simple style mean to be delivered orally.

It is selling itself a bit short, however.  ChatGPT is far more powerful than it describes, making quite a few headlines just in the last week. Here are a few examples:

It has been used to write computer code. 

A recent attempt to use Artificial Intelligence to argue a case in traffic court was shut down by the State Bar of California, which threatened the person who came up with the idea with possible prosecution for the unlicensed practice of law.

Schools have been totally taken by surprise. A student can have ChatGPT compose an original essay, or any other written assignment for that matter, in a matter of seconds. 

This week, it was reported that ChatGPT was able to score passing grades on law school and business school exams.

The temptation for a stressed out student to turn to this free tool is pretty hard to resist. It is already happening. Schools are rushing to come up with ways to either prevent students from using it or to incorporate it into curricula.

Wondering how this might impact religion, I spent some time this week in conversation with ChatGPT. I asked it to do the following

Write a 150 word D’var Torah about the importance of parents transmitting the story of the Exodus to their children, based on verses from Parashat Bo, using a commentary by Rashi

Here was its answer, and I am editing it a little for brevity. ChatGPT tends to repeat itself:

This week’s Torah portion, Bo, highlights the importance of parents transmitting the story of the Exodus to their children. Rashi, one of the most famous commentators of the Torah, comments on the verse in Exodus 13:8, “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt.” Rashi notes that the verse commands parents to transmit the story of the Exodus to their children through verbal storytelling. This is because the story of the Exodus is not just a historical event, but a personal one that has ongoing relevance and significance.

Rashi emphasizes that passing down the story of the Exodus from parent to child allows the child to connect to the story on a personal level, and to internalize its lessons and values. Additionally, Rashi notes that the story of the Exodus should be passed down not only to one’s own children, but to all children, “to your children and to your children’s children.” This emphasizes the importance of passing on the story for the benefit of future generations.

In short, this week’s Torah portion highlights the importance of parents transmitting the story of the Exodus to their children, as it is not only a historical event but a personal one that has ongoing relevance and significance. Parents are commanded to tell the story verbally, to their own children and to future generations, to ensure that the story will be passed down and remind the connection to our heritage and to God.

Not bad. It is a perfectly serviceable D’var Torah. Kind of conventional, if I am going to be critical. But it is certainly consistent with sermons I have given in the past.

In general, it seems that it is able to create original content that is consistent with the “average” quality of what can be found online. Its dataset, by the way, stops before 2021, so it has no knowledge of current events.

I have to admit that during my conversations with ChatGPT, I found myself feeling guilty at times about asking it tedious questions, or for pausing too long between my responses. I’m sure that, after time, I will be less likely to anthropomorphize the algorithm.

I decided to push it in a more theological direction. Parashat Bo includes the tenth plague, the killing of the firstborn. The Israelites are instructed to paint the doorposts of their homes with the blood from the Pesach sacrifice. This will serve as a sign for the Angel of Death to “pass over” their homes, thereby allowing the Israelite first born children to survive.

So I instructed ChatGPT to compare and contrast ChatGPT with an angel. Here was its answer.

ChatGPT, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is an AI language model created by OpenAI, while an angel is a supernatural being found in various religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

The main difference between ChatGPT and an angel is their nature and origin. ChatGPT is a machine learning model, created by humans using advanced technology, while angels are believed to be supernatural beings created by God or a higher power.

Another difference is their abilities and purpose. ChatGPT is designed to generate human-like text based on patterns it has learned from a large dataset. It can answer questions, generate creative writing and perform many other natural language processing tasks. While angels, according to religious belief, have the ability to communicate with God, perform miracles, and act as messengers between God and humans.

In terms of intelligence, ChatGPT is considered to be highly intelligent, but it is limited to the scope of its training data and the algorithms that have been programmed into it. On the other hand, angels are believed to possess superior intelligence, wisdom and knowledge, as they are considered to be closer to the divine.

It did not want to bite. So I followed up, “But how are they similar?” Unable to avoid the question, it listed three similarities. I’m going to paraphrase a bit.  ChatGPT can get a bit wordy:

Both ChatGPT and angels can be considered as messengers or communicators. ChatGPT can generate text based on patterns it has learned and can provide information or respond to questions, while angels are believed to act as messengers between God and humans, communicating God’s will and messages to them.

Both ChatGPT and angels can be considered as sources of knowledge or information. ChatGPT can provide information based on patterns it has learned from its training data, while angels are believed to possess superior intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge, as they are considered to be closer to the divine.

Both ChatGPT and angels can be considered as having the ability to transcend time and space. ChatGPT can generate text based on patterns it has learned, regardless of the time and place, while angels are believed to have the ability to transcend time and space, and can appear and disappear at will.

So I responded: According to Maimonides in the Mishnah Torah, angels have form but no substance, like ChatGPT. Both angels and ChatGPT are sophisticated non-human intelligences. Angels serve at God’s command and do not have independent will. Similarly, ChatGPT cannot do anything other than follow its programming. Thus, it also lacks free will.

It acknowledged my point.

You are correct, Maimonides in his “Mishneh Torah” describes the nature of angels as having form but no substance. According to Maimonides, angels are spiritual entities that do not have physical bodies, but they do have a form that allows them to perform their functions. This is similar to how ChatGPT is a non-physical entity that exists only in the digital realm and is able to perform its functions through its programming.

You also pointed out correctly that both angels and ChatGPT are sophisticated non-human intelligences, which serve at the command of a higher power. Angels serve at God’s command and do not have independent will, similarly, ChatGPT cannot do anything other than follow its programming and also lacks free will.

I went for what I thought would be the kill. Does it not follow that the ChatGPT’s programming functions as God?

Here’s the answer I got.

No, ChatGPT’s programming does not function as God.

ChatGPT is a machine learning model that was created by humans using advanced technology, it is a product of human design and engineering. It follows a set of rules and instructions (programming) to generate text based on patterns it has learned from its training data. The programming of ChatGPT is a set of instructions to the computer that enables it to perform certain tasks, it does not have consciousness or free will.

On the other hand, God is typically understood as a supreme being, the creator and ruler of the universe, who is often believed to possess qualities such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. God is believed to be the ultimate source of morality, justice, and purpose in the world, and to have the power to intervene in the natural world, as well as to have the ability to create and sustain everything that exists.

It is somewhat reassuring that the robot resists being compared to an angel and following God’s will. But is it coming for my job?

I asked it about the integrity of a sermon written by an algorithm.  It took a bit of back and forth for me to figure out how to best frame the question, but in the end I was impressed by its response. Does a sermon written by a machine learning model have less validity or integrity because it is not written by a human? I am not talking about the technical accuracy of the sermon, but rather of its spiritual integrity. Does it matter whether it was written by a machine or a human?

The answer was so good I gave it a “thumbs up.”

From a spiritual perspective, the source or origin of a sermon may not be as important as its content and message. A sermon written by a machine learning model like ChatGPT could still convey valuable spiritual insights and teachings, as long as the model was trained on a diverse and high-quality dataset of religious texts and sermons.

However, it’s worth noting that sermons are often delivered in a religious context and are a medium of human connection. The act of preaching is often not only about passing on information but also about connecting with the congregation, engaging with them, and providing them with guidance, support and inspiration. A machine model like ChatGPT may not have the ability to have personal experiences, emotions, self-awareness, or consciousness, and it does not have the ability to introspect, reflect or have any sense of self, which may affect the emotional and spiritual impact of the sermon.

And this brings us back to Parashat Bo. The instructions that the Israelites receive just before they leave Egypt are about personal connections. Our ancestors, and us, are instructed to transmit our experiences to our children through a medium that transcends words. 

It has been thousands of years since that initial command, during which the technology has changed many times. At first, the stories were personal and unscripted. Gradually, these oral traditions became codified in permanent words. We call those words the written Torah and ascribe to them Divine provenance. They are holy, sacred words.

Those words were eventually written down on scrolls. The scroll gave way to the codex, what we call a book. For some reason, we held out against this new, far more convenient technology. For two thousand years, we Jews have stubbornly refused to change with the times and still read out of hand-written scrolls on without vowels or trope symbols. This is the most difficult, inefficient way imaginable. 

What is Torah? Is it the scroll? I would argue that it is the words. Does the form in which It is transmitted matter? Perhaps there is something in this clumsy medium that fosters the personal connection, that encourages experiences between people.

In any event, the hand-written codex eventually became supplanted by the printing press. Now, the sacred words could be inexpensively disseminated far and wide. Great news, no?

Rabbi Hayyim ben Bezalel, the brother of the Maharal of Prague, did not think so. He complained in the 16th century about the printing and spread of the Talmud.  What could be wrong with that?

He was concerned that Jews, reading it on their own, would make lots of errors and draw incorrect conclusions. The proper place for the study of Talmud was in the Yeshivah, where students could learn under the guidance of experienced teachers. He wrote a diatribe on the topic. But note as well that what concerned him was the impersonal nature of reading words out of a book by oneself. He wanted to retain the face to face transmission of knowledge and experience.

It goes without saying that Rabbi Hayyim lost his battle against the printing press. I can only imagine what he would have to say about the internet.

It is now possible to access the entire canon of Jewish sacred literature in its original language and in translation, along with most of the important commentaries written over the past two thousand years, many of those also in translation. All for free. I do it all the time in my work.

The ability for dissemination of sacred words and religious ideas has never been greater. And yet, we do not hold the newer media in the same high esteem.

The words of Torah are considered to be so sacred that when they appear in writing on any substance, whether scroll, book, handwritten page, or photocopy – we treat it as holy. It is forbidden to throw it away – it must be stored in a genizah and buried.

But what happens when those words are digitized?

There is no problem deleting God’s name from my computer. I don’t kiss the screen when I close down my browser window, the way I might do with a siddur or chumash. Nor do I bury my cell phone or laptop when it is time to upgrade. 

Humanity is now at the next technological turning point. We no longer need human beings to translate experiences and ideas into language.  We now have the algorithm, and it is going to be increasingly difficult to distinguish whether what we are reading was created by a human or a robot. From this moment on, you are not going to know for certain whether what I am teaching was written by me or by a robot.

Like Rabbi Chayim ben Bezalel, there will certainly be some who lament this new development and argue for its suppression, but the cat is already out of the bag. We are going to have to learn to live with it. This is the last thing I asked ChatGPT:

I am a Rabbi. In 25 words or less, do you have any final messages for my congregation?

This was its answer:

Focus on compassion, empathy and making the world a better place for all, rather than judgment and punishment.

Words to live by.

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November 12, 2022

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Abraham, Isaac, Sarah and their Alter-Egos – Vayera 5783

So much has been written and spoken about the Binding of Isaac, the Akeidah. The story, as it appears in the Torah, is so spare, especially of emotion, that its meaning is determined through the experience of the reader.

What do we know from the words in the Torah itself? God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.  Abraham obeys without any apparent hesitation. When Isaac asks him about the sacrifice, Abraham dodges the question. Isaac does not seem to struggle against his father’s attempts to bind him to the altar.

Abraham expresses zero hesitation through to the very end, to the extent that the angel has to call out his name twice to stop him from slaughtering Isaac.

Finally, according to every indication in the text, Abraham passes this test with flying colors, as indicated by the angel’s blessing of Abraham for having demonstrated his fear of God.

That is the canvas. To create the portrait, we are going to have to apply the paint ourselves.

This morning, I’d like to look at a version that appears in Midrash Tanchuma, which is dated to the early middle ages. The style of the midrash is to quote a section from the Torah, and then to expand on its meaning. In the interest of brevity, I am going to skip over parts of the midrash.

The midrash will feature Abraham and Isaac. It will also bring Sarah into the story. The fourth character appears nowhere in the text. You’ll know when we meet him.

The midrash introduces Abraham as eager to fulfill God’s command, and in full control of his actions. As we jump into the story, Abraham is considering an important issue.

Abraham had asked himself: What shall I do? If I tell Sarah all about it, consider what may happen. After all, a woman’s mind becomes distraught over insignificant matters; how much more disturbed would she become if she heard something as shocking as this! However, if I tell her nothing at all, and simply steal him away from her when she is not looking, she will kill herself.”

What did he do? He said to Sarah: “Prepare some food and drink so that we can eat and rejoice.”

“But why is this day different from other days?” she asked. “What is the nature of our celebration?”

He replied: “When a couple our age has a son, it is fitting, indeed, that they should eat, drink, and rejoice.” Whereupon she prepared the food.

While they were eating, he said to her: “You know, when I was a child of three, I already knew my Creator, yet this child is growing up and still has had no education. There is a place a short distance away where children are being taught, I will take him to be educated there.”

She said to him: “Go in peace.” 

[Then the midrash quotes the Torah]: And Abraham arose early in the morning (ibid., v. 3). Why did he arise early in the morning? He had said to himself: Perhaps Sarah will change her mind and not permit me to go; I will arise before she gets up.”…

This is shocking. Abraham flat-out lies to Sarah. He knows how she will react if she finds out what he plans to do with Isaac. The midrash characterizes it, at least in Abraham’s mind, as the weak-mindedness of women, but I detect at least a little bit of guilt on Abraham’s part.

It is a great setup for what comes next. The midrash jumps ahead. Abraham and Isaac are on their journey when they meet a traveler. 

Satan appeared before him on the road in the guise of an old man and asked: “Where are you going?”

Abraham replied: “To pray.”

“Does a person going to pray usually carry fire and a knife in his hands, and wood on his shoulders?”

“We may stay there for several days,” said Abraham, “and slaughter an animal and cook it.”

The old man responded: “That is not so; I was there when the Holy Blessed One ordered you to take your son. Why should an old man, who begets a son at the age of a hundred, destroy him? Have you not heard the parable of the man who destroyed his own possessions and then was forced to beg from others? If you believe that you are going to be able to have another son, you are listening to the words of a trickster. And furthermore, if you destroy a soul, you will be held legally accountable for it.”

Abraham answered: “It was not a trickster, but the Holy Blessed One who told me what I must do. I am not going to listen to you.”

There is no indication in this midrash that Abraham knows the true identity of the old man. As far as he is concerned, it’s just another old man, like himself. His first instinct, when asked where he is going, is to lie. When challenged on the lie, he doubles down.

Then, remarkably, the old man suggests that this mission of Abraham’s to sacrifice his son did not actually come from God, but from hamastin, in other words, from Satan himself. Abraham’s response? “No it wasn’t.” I’ve got to say, not a super strong comeback. The midrash goes on.

Satan left him and appeared at Isaac’s right hand in the guise of a youth. He inquired: “Where are you going?”

“To study Torah,” Isaac replied.

“Alive or dead?” he retorted.

“Is it possible for a man to learn Torah after he is dead?” Isaac queried.

He said to him: “Oh, unfortunate son of an unhappy mother, many days your mother fasted before your birth, and now this demented old man is about to sacrifice you.”

Isaac replied: “Even so, I will not disregard the will of my Creator, nor the command of my father.”

He turned to his father and said: “Father, do you hear what this man has told me?”

He replied: “Pay no heed to him, he has come only to wear us down.”…

Apparently, Abraham has been passing off the same lie to Isaac as he had told Sarah. Satan, who is honest throughout this story, tells Isaac the truth. When he asks his father about it, Abraham avoids the question.

Are these the words of someone who is confident that he is doing the right thing?

The midrash goes on to address another problem in the text. The journey to Mt. Moriah is not actually that far.  So why does it take them three days to get there?

When Satan realized that they would not pay any attention to him, he went ahead and created a river in their path. When Abraham stepped into the river, it reached his knees.

He said to his servants, “Come after me,” and they did so.

When he reached the middle of the river, the water reached his neck.

Satan seems to be genuinely concerned for Isaac’s welfare. If the truth could not convince Abraham or Isaac to change their course, then maybe he can put an insurmountable obstacle in their path.

Thereupon, Abraham lifted his eyes to heaven and cried out: “Master of the Universe, You chose me; You instructed me; You revealed Yourself to me; You said to me: I am one and You are one, and through you shall my name be made known in My world. You ordered me: Offer Isaac your son as burnt offering to me, and I did not refuse! Now, as I am about to fulfill Your command, these waters endanger my life. If either I or my son, Isaac, should drown, who will fulfill Your decrees, and who will proclaim the Unity of Your Name?”

The Holy Blessed One, responded: “Be assured that through you the Unity of My Name will be made known throughout the world.”

Thereupon the Holy One, blessed be He, rebuked the source of the water, and caused the river to dry up. Once again, they stood on dry land. 

To God, Abraham speaks honestly. It comes across almost like a plot between the two of them. Why does it actually matter whether or not Isaac drowns in the river?  He is going to be dead either way, as far as Abraham is aware. God’s unity is certainly not going to be proclaimed through any action on Isaac’s part.

We are left to conclude that it is the sacrifice of Isaac itself which will make God’s unity be known in the world. I admit, I do not understand how that works.

Back to the midrash.

What did Satan do then? He said to Abraham (quoting Job): A word came to me in stealth; My ear caught a whisper of it. (Job 4:12); that is, I heard from behind the heavenly curtain that a lamb will be sacrificed as a burnt offering instead of Isaac.”

Satan spoils the plan! He tells Abraham that God is not going to let him go through with it. At this point in the midrash, how would you expect Abraham to respond?

Whatever your answer is, it’s wrong.

“This is the punishment of the liar.” Abraham responded. “Even when he tells the truth, no one will believe him.” 

Such irony! Listen again to Abraham’s response, “This is the punishment of the liar. Even when he tells the truth, no one will believe him.” Who is the liar? Who is telling the truth?

Throughout the story, Satan has said nothing but the truth. Abraham is the liar. He concocts stories. He doubles down when confronted. He does not answer anyone’s questions directly. Notice as well that God (at best) “hides” the truth from Abraham.

There is a moving scene in the midrash when Abraham and Isaac build the altar together. Isaac, by now, knows that he is to be the burnt offering. He asks his father to tie him especially tightly so that he does not twitch in fear and cause Abraham to invalidate the sacrifice by making a blemish. Then he asks that Abraham not tell Sarah about his death while she is standing on the roof or next to a pit. He is worried she might fall and die. He is concerned for his mother.

After all of this, Abraham is ready to slaughter Isaac.

He took the knife to slaughter him until a fourth of a measure of blood should come from his body. [Suddenly,] Satan came, pushed Abraham’s hand aside and knocked the knife down. As he reached out his hand to pick it up, a voice came from heaven and said to him, Do not raise your hand against the boy. And if it had not happened, he would have been slaughtered.

Satan literally saved Isaac’s life! The midrash continues and describes Satan’s final appearance in the story. 

At that moment, Satan went to Sarah disguised as Isaac. When she saw him she asked: “What did your father do to you, my son?”

He replied: “My father led me over mountains and through valleys until we finally reached the top of a certain mountain. There he built an altar, arranged the firewood, bound me upon the altar, and took a knife to slaughter me. If the Holy Blessed One had not called out, Do not raise your hand against the boy, I would have been slaughtered.”

He had hardly finished relating what had transpired when she passed away…

It is a remarkable midrash. I will let it speak for itself. The one question to consider is, “Who is Satan in this story?” To Abraham, he appears as an old man and to Isaac, a young man. A plausible reading would be to suggest that they are facing themselves. They are confronted by their own alter-egos.

Abraham knows in his heart that his mission is problematic. Sarah would never let him do it. It would invalidate God’s promise to him. And finally, it is illegal. These are all doubts that any rational man would hold. Nevertheless, he is laser-focused on his mission.

For Isaac, who is identified as a 37 year old man, it is impossible that he does not know what is actually going on. His interlocutor presents him with the truth. Isaac’s concern, however, is only to help his father succeed and to save his mother from too much suffering. He is completely selfless in this story.

To Sarah, the mother, Satan appears as her son, whom she loves more than anyone. He also reveals the truth. And it is this truth which kills her. Ironically, this is exactly what Abraham was worried about in the first place.

I appreciate this midrash for not making any apologies for Abraham. It humanizes all of the characters, revealing them to be conflicted individuals who, even when focused on what they know to be a Divine mission, are filled with self-doubt.

It does not answer any of our questions about the story of the Akeidah, but it paints a moving picture.

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September 28, 2022

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The Friendship of the King – Rosh Hashanah 5783

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when I say the word “King?”

Given recent events, I imagine that the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles III probably come to mind.

In the United States, the concept of royalty is not particularly relevant to our lives. Our nation was founded when we gained independence from a king. It is a matter of national pride that we have no royalty.

Monarchy is not a particularly common form of government these days. The British Crown, as a Constitutional Monarchy, is largely symbolic.  There are just a handful of absolute monarchies left in the world, and I am not sure that any of them are in places that you or I would want to live.

And yet, “King” is one of the dominant symbols and the primary metaphor that we use to describe God on Rosh Hashanah.

Our High Holiday liturgy is filled with pageantry. All of the ark openings. The standing. The sitting. Much of the music we sing is meant to sound like a royal procession.

We shift the beginning of the morning service so that the first word is hamelekh, the King. What is the most iconic prayer of Rosh Hashanah? Avinu Malkeinu, Our Father our King. We even braid the Challah into a round loaf resembling a crown. Rosh Hashanah is a coronation, a crowning of the King of Kings on the New Year.

This is expressed nowhere better than in a glorious piyyut which we will sing in a little while. Here is a preview. It can be found on page 150 in the mahzor. In this particular melody, the last line of the poem serves as the congregational response. The words are v’yitnu l’kha keter m’lukhah – “And they will give You a crown of kingship.”

The prayer imagines a future in which all of humanity joins in glorious unity, rejecting all forms of idolatry and recognizing God as King. Let’s practice singing it right now. I’ll sing the leader’s part without using any words. All you have to do is repeat the exact melody that I sing, using the final line v’yitnu l’kha keter m’lukhah.  After three lines, we’ll join together in the niggun, a wordless melody.

[SING]

When we talk about a human King, what qualities come to mind?

Kings are not like us. They sit far away, upon an elevated throne. They have absolute power. The King is the law. The King is male.

What does it mean when we describe God as a King? This metaphor might work for some of us. Or, maybe we try not to think too hard about what “God is King” might imply. Or, maybe the idea of God as a King turns us off.

I personally have a difficult time with it.  When teaching Avinu Malkeinu to our religious school students recently, I struggled with how to translate it and explain its meaning. I ended up using “Ruler,” which is not really the same thing. For the handout, I hedged by just writing Avinu Malkeinu in English,

What do we say in Avinu Malkeinu? “Our Father, Our King. Have mercy on us, answer us, for our deeds are insufficient; deal with us charitably and lovingly, and redeem us.”

We ask for compassion from a King who is far away. ‘We don’t deserve your mercy,’ we admit. There is no claim whatsoever that we can make. We are entirely in Your hands; we exist at Your whim. Maybe that is the appropriate way to understand our relationship with our Creator, but it does not feel very good.

Maimonides says that there are no words that can accurately define God. We can only say what God is not. All descriptions are metaphors which, if we took them literally, would make us guilty of idolatry. For the most part, our descriptions of God are really descriptions of the best qualities that we hope to see in ourselves: kindness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, reliability, constancy, fairness, justice. We project on God those qualities to which we aspire…

…which brings us to another problem with Kings. They are, by and large, terrible. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses tells the Israelites that there may be a time in the future when they say “I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me.” When the request comes a few centuries later, in the days of the Prophet Samuel, he agrees to help the Israelites, but tells them, “You can do it, but you’re not gonna like it.”

Here are some of the rules that Moses outlines for Kings: he can’t have too many horses, he can’t send people back to Egypt to get more horses. He can’t have too many wives.  And further, the King can’t do whatever he wants. He must keep a copy of the Torah with him at all times, read it daily, and follow the commandments closely.  And, he cannot set himself above his subjects.  Basically, he does not get to do any of the fun stuff that Kings like to do. With all due respect to Mel Brooks, “It is not good to be the King.”

When the Israelites do establish a monarchy, it is essentially a disaster, with a few exceptional bright spots here and there. And let’s not even get started with the non-Israelite kings.

If human royalty is so terrible, why on earth is it the metaphor we use for God?

The Rabbis are aware that the nature of God’s Kingship is fundamentally different than an earthly King. The Talmud (BT Avodah Zarah 11a) tells the story Onkelos bar Kelonimos. According to one legend, he was the nephew of the Roman Emperor Titus. He converted to Judaism in the first century, CE, and wrote what came to be known as Targum Onkelos, the earliest Aramaic translation of the Bible.

News of Onkelos’ conversion spreads, and the Roman emperor sends a troop of soldiers to arrest him. As the soldiers approach, Onkelos starts reciting verses of Torah, as one does. He is very persuasive, and they convert.

The emperor sends in another troop of soldiers to arrest Onkelos. This time he instructs them: “Do not talk to him.”

They arrest Onkelos, and as they are walking along, he says to them: “I just have one thing I’d like to say. It is the job of the junior officer to hold the torch for the senior officer. The senior officer holds the torch for the Duke. The Duke holds the torch for the Governor. And the Governor holds the torch for the King. So,” he asks the soldiers. “Does the King hold the torch for the people?”

The soldiers, mesmerized by Onkelos, forget their orders and answer: “No. Of course not.”

Onkelos turns to them and says: “And yet, the Holy One holds a torch for the Jewish people.” Then he quotes Exodus: “The Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud by day, to guide them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light.” (Exodus 13:21).

Hearing this brilliant exposition, the entire second troop of soldiers converts.

Word reaches the Emperor, who he is beside himself. As he sends out the third troop, he commands them: “Do not speak with him at all. Not a word!”

The soldiers follow their orders. They arrest Onkelos and start marching. As they are walking along, Onkelos sees a mezuzah on a doorpost. He puts his hand on it and looks over at the soldiers: “What is this?”

They look at one another, thinking of the Emperor’s order. But they are curious. So one of them shrugs his shoulders and quietly whispers for Onkelos to answer his question.

So Onkelos says: “The standard practice around the world is that the king sits inside his palace, while his servants stand guard at the gates, protecting him from any threats. But when it comes to the Holy One, it is the opposite.” He points to the mezuzah. “God’s servants, the Jewish people, sit inside their homes with their mezuzahs on their doors, while God stands guard over them.” 

When the soldiers hear this, what can they do but convert on the spot? 

The Emperor does not bother sending any more soldiers.

This story is all about contrasting the human King with the Divine King. Notice how the Roman Emperor remains inside his palace while his servants, the guards, are sent outside to supposedly protect his interests. Onkelos, who has chosen to be a servant of God, is protected by verses of Torah. Even when he is out on the road, the Divine King is with him to light his way and guard him from harm.

Although calling God “King” might seem like such a given, it might be surprising to learn that God is not a King in the Torah. None of the Patriarchs or Matriarchs relate to God in that way. Moses never instructs Pharaoh to submit before the King of Kings. When the Israelites build a place of worship, they construct a Tabernacle, not a palace.

The word melekh, King, referring to God, or its related verb, occurs just three, or possibly even only two times in the entire Torah, which creates a problem for our machzor.

The Musaf service contains three special sections called Malkhuyot – Kingship, Zikhronot – Remembrances,  and Shofarot – Shofar blasts. Each of these sections are comprised of ten verses from the Hebrew Bible: three from Torah, three from Writings, three from Prophets, and a final verse from Torah. The verses conclude with a closing blessing, followed by shofar blasts.

The Talmud has no problem at all in associating Zikhronot – Remembrances –  and Shofarot – Shofar blasts – to Rosh Hashanah, or in finding appropriate verses. But it really struggles to find four verses from the Torah for Malkhuyot. Most appear in poems. The first is from the Song of the Sea: Adonai yimlokh l’olam va’ed – “The Lord will reign for ever and ever.” The second is recited by Balaam, the non-Israelite Prophet, when he utters words of blessing upon the Israelites. We’ll come back to it. The third verse, from Deuteronomy, might actually be referring to Moses instead of God. The fourth verse is Shema Yisrael, which does not even have the word melekh. None of these four verses have anything to do with Rosh Hashanah.

Now back to our verse from Balaam. Summoned by the human King Balak of Moab to curse the Israelites, Balaam instead offers words of blessing, including our verse:

No harm is in sight for Jacob, No woe in view for Israel. 

The Lord their God is with them, And the teruah of the King among them.

Numbers 23:21

Ut’ruat melekh bo. Do you hear anything familiar? The teruah of the King among them. What is teruah? It means “blasting,” probably referring to a trumpet fanfare announcing the King’s entrance. It is one of the three notes sounded by the shofar. It is a word used to refer to our holiday – zikhron teruah – a remembrance of blasting.

So maybe we can make an indirect connection.  If melekh has a connection to teruah, and teruah is associated with Rosh Hashanah, then by analogy melekh is connected to Rosh Hashanah. If A = B, and B = C, then A = C. Maybe.

Before we get too excited, let’s look again at teruah. Does it actually mean “blasting?”

Remember Onkelos? His Aramaic translation uses a curious word.  It says ush’khinat malk’hon beineihon – “The Shechinah of the king is among them.” No blasting. Instead, it is the Shechinah, the indwelling of God’s Presence. Rather than triumphant horns, the image shifts to one of intimacy and comfort.

Perhaps this is what leads the commentator Rashbam to explain the verse in this way. The word Teruah is related to the word re’ut, which means “friendship.”  On the inside of our wedding rings, Dana and I have the words Zeh dodi v’zeh re’i inscribed.  “This is my beloved, this is my friend.”

Teruah therefore means friendship.  ut’ruat melekh bo – “and the friendship of the king is among them.”

Turning to the opening words of the verse, Lo hibit aven b’ya’akov – Rashbam explains that God does not want to punish the children of Israel even when they sin.  Literally, “God cannot see sin in Jacob.”

What kind of King is this? One who is in intimate relationship with the beloved, who deliberately overlooks sin, ignoring imperfections, who is blinded by love. 

That is a very different image of a King. Instead of the majestic, male, distant Ruler seated upon a lofty throne, with trumpets blaring, this King is at our level, feminine perhaps, a loving companion who accepts us with all of our imperfections. In other words, nothing at all like a human king.

What kind of relationship do I want with my Creator? No question that there is a rather large power imbalance. But don’t I want to be seen and accepted by the universe, told that I matter?

While our High Holiday liturgy is filled with royal language and imagery, I struggle to relate to those metaphors. Maybe this other type of King, the loving companion, offers an alternative.

If it is true that God knows us better than we even know ourselves, then maybe what we want from God is to be a close friend, an intimate companion.

What do we need from our closest relationships? We need to be accepted for who we are and loved — no matter what.

We talk about the unconditional love of parents for their children. Unconditional means love without judgment, accepting our child for exactly who they are.

That is pretty difficult to achieve, because we actually judge our kids regularly. We hold them to the standards we set for ourselves – standards which we often fail to meet. We judge them by our own deficiencies.

And they feel judged by us, even when we are trying to accept them for who they are. Judgment interferes with acceptance and love.

As parents, isn’t it our jobs to try to set aside our judgment, to make sure our kids know that they are seen, accepted, and loved?

The same is true of any quality relationship with another person, whether a lover, a  family member, or a friend.

A true friend is someone with whom I am safe to be vulnerable. Someone who, when I share my deepest secrets, my shame, will not judge me. A real friend will accept me in all my imperfections. With all of my self doubt. 

We are asked each year to take account of our souls, to perform Cheshbon HaNefesh. This requires brutal honesty. And it is hard to be so open if I know that I am going to face judgment. But if I know that I am opening up to a loving companion…

This intimacy and companionship is what so many of are missing after the past two and a half years. It is starting to feel like we are getting back to normal. But we are still so divided, so quick to judge. We cannot expect God to be a loving companion in our midst unless we are also prepared to be that for each other.

The dominant depiction of God is as the King of the universe, sitting on His high and lofty throne, but perhaps what we really want is for God to be a companion in our midst, accepting and loving us for exactly who we are. 

And perhaps that loving companion is also what we want, what we need from — and to be for — each other.

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August 6, 2022

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May We Deserve to be Klal Yisrael – Devarim 5782

Exactly one year ago, a particularly awful scene descended on Jerusalem. It was the evening of Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning for all of the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people throughout history, especially the destruction of the First and Second Temples

Men and women gathered together at the Egalitarian Section of the Kotel, the Western wall, to observe the holiday by chanting Eichah, the Book of Lamentations. This is the site designated as Ezrat Yisrael, the courtyard of Israel, by the Israeli government, where men and women can gather together in worship. It is located underneath Robinson’s Arch, just South of the main plaza in front of the Kotel. The service was organized and hosted by the Conservative movement.

Suddenly, hundreds of young yeshiva students, breached the area. They forcibly took over, cursing and screaming at the worshippers. They put up a mechitza, a barrier to separate men and women, and began singing songs of devotion to Jerusalem.

Just a month and a half ago, as several families celebrated Bar and Bat Mitzvahs at the Egalitarian Kotel, a similar scene recurred. Again, services were interrupted by a group of hardline Orthodox extremists. The students overran the worshippers, took over the site, tore up siddurim, and shouted insults at the worshippers, calling them “Nazis” and “Christians.” One hooligan was even caught on camera blowing his nose into a page from the siddur with God’s name written on it.

During both episodes, the police charged with security at the Kotel area stood by and watched.

The latter incident drew particularly fierce criticism from many circles, including Prime Minister Lapid, who personally called one of the young people who was celebrating his Bar Mitzvah.

As this year’s observance of Tisha B’Av nears, these two Chilul Hashem’s, desecrations of God’s name, haunt us. As we celebrate Shabbat this morning here in San Jose, in Israel, the fast has already begun. 

The Rabbis explain that the second Temple was destroyed on account of sin’at chinam, the senseless hatred of Jew against Jew. Indeed, the historical record indicates that there were numerous factions of Jews living within the walls of the besieged city of Jerusalem. Josephus reports that they fought against each other even more fiercely than against the Romans.

It is certainly true that we can be our own worst enemies.

The Jewish Torah reading cycle is constructed so that this morning’s parashah, Devarim, always occurs right before Tisha B’Av. The Torah portion begins with the words:

אֵ֣לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֤ר מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶל־כׇּל־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל בְּעֵ֖בֶר הַיַּרְדֵּ֑ן

These are the words which Moses spoke to all of Israel on the other side of the Jordan

Deuteronomy 1:1

The introduction seems innocuous enough, but most of the commentaries explains that Moses is issuing words of tokhekha, rebuke. He has gathered the Israelites together just before they are to enter the Promised Land. Knowing he will not be going with them, he delivers a series of warnings, essentially pleading with them to stay the course and not screw up when he is gone.

Maybe it’s the era in which we are living, but I tend to favor the carrot over the stick as a way to influence behavior. On the surface, though, Moses, and God, offer far more criticism of the Israelites than praise.

Throughout Deuteronomy, Moses tries to influence the Israelites’ behavior by pointing out all of their past mistakes, telling them how they are going to continuing screwing up, and threatening them with punishment if they do not do better.

Doesn’t he know that members of the most effective teams, not to mention successful marriages, give each other at least five positive comments for every negative one?

According to a number of commentators, however, Moses hides more positive messages within his words of admonishment.

The Vilna Gaon, the great eighteenth century Rabbi, claims that the expression el-kol-Yisrael contains Moses’ essential message. All we have to do is add an extra letter lamed. Kol – kaf, lamed – meaning “all,” should actually be read as k’lal – kaf, lamed, lamed – meaning “entirety,” as in k’lal Yisrael. Moses is appealing to the Jewish people in its absolute entirety, assembled before him in body and in spirit. He tells us that unity should reside amongst us, that we should be umah achat, k’lal Yisrael — one nation, the Jewish people in its entirety.

Of course, whenever someone appeals for unity, they usually have in mind that it is their opponents who are to blame for causing division; that their opponents are the ones who ought to change, to conform to our own vision of what things should look like. If we look at those who were overrunning the Kotel, that is exactly the kind of language that they are using under the mantle of K’lal Yisrael. But when I look at that scene, I see one group of people minding their own business and another group of people trying to forcibly change the other. So we seem to have a disagreement on what it means to be a unified Jewish people everywhere around the world.

Again focusing on the expression el-kol-Yisrael, the Hassidic Rebbe, Simchah Bunim, declares that “the words which Moses spoke” were fitting “to all of Israel,” that is to say, to each individual person according to their own qualities and level, understanding and comprehension, everyone according to their own measure.

Simchah Bunim, like the Vilna Gaon, also sees this as an inclusive statement. But rather than focus on the totality of the nation, in which the individual is subsumed within the collective, he highlights the uniqueness of each person. Moses, as the greatest of our teachers, reaches every single person in a way that is uniquely suited to their own personality and capability. The message of Torah is too important to risk leaving anyone behind.

This is a view which recognizes and accepts difference. Unity does not mean that everyone must conform to the same ideal. Unity means that everyone has access to the Torah, according to their own capabilities.

A later Chassidic teacher, Reb Yehudah Leib Eiger, brings the universal and the individual together. Yehudah Leib, also sees Moses’ rebuke being directed to K’lal Yisrael, the collective totality of the Jewish people.

But then he explains that the k’lal is holy and exalted. Creation itself depends on the unity of the Jewish people. If k’lal Yisrael were to become detached from holiness for even one moment, the world would return to tohu vavohu – primordial chaos.

So there is much at stake in Jewish unity.

Then he offers an incredibly uplifting message. He suggests that being part of the k’lal should be a great consolation to every sinner amongst the Jewish people. For even though I may be filled with sins, full of imperfections, I am never disconnected from the source, as long as I am part of k’lal Yisrael. 

Of course, he describes all of us. To be human is to be full of sins. But we really on each other, k’lal Yisrael, to hold each other up, give each other hope, and sustain the world.

Today is actually the ninth of Av. Since we do not fast on Shabbat (except for Yom Kippur), we delay our observance.

Even though we are pushing off the fast until tonight and tomorrow, perhaps we should be toning things down a bit from our regular Shabbos joy. The Talmud considers this question and offers a definitive answer. If the ninth of Av occurs on Shabbat, a person may eat and drink as much as one needs, even putting on a meal as lavish as that of King Solomon in his day. (Taanit 29b)

Reb Yehudah Leib Eiger explains that the Talmud’s reference to King Solomon’s table contains a hidden message. In building the First Temple, King Solomon introduced an element of redemption to the world. The Temple was the conduit, the pipe, through which salvation flowed into the world. Modeled on King Solomon’s table, our feasting on Tisha B’av, when it falls on Shabbat, also can serve as an awakening of redemption for the world.

Our traditions considers a Shabbat on which Tisha B’av falls to be the absolute holiest Shabbat of the year, for it offers a flame in the darkness. It reveals the good that is usually hidden within the sorrow.

But we should not think about this as some magical quality that is the result of the vagaries of the calendar. It is a message for us to be that light, to find that spark amidst the darkness in our world.

In the end, we each have to choose to be part of k’lal Yisrael.

On a day when there is so much disunity not just in the world, but even among the Jewish people; on a day when we know that there is so much antisemitism in the world, and when Israel at this moment is fighting Islamic Jihad in Gaza; our prayer is that we should be able to heed Moses’ message: first of all to be a k’lal Yisrael, a united people; but also to recognize that a k’lal is comprised of lots and lots of individuals. Our primary focus should not be on judging our neighbors, but should be on working on ourselves, and taking strength from our neighbors.

If we do that, maybe we can serve as that conduit to bring redemption to the world. I pray that we merit, that we become deserving of being k’lal Yisrael, of being a united people of Israel.