Tag Archives: Rav Kook

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October 6, 2024

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A Four-Fold Song – Rosh Hashanah 5785

God never promised it would be easy.

This morning’s Torah portion tells the story of the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah recognizes something untoward in the way that Ishmael is playing with her son. She demands that Abraham send him out into the wilderness with his mother.

When their supplies run out, Hagar places her son underneath a bush so she does not have to watch him die. God hears the cry of the boy and sends an angel to Hagar with a prophecy.

Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him.

Then the angel reveals a well of water, and they are saved.

A midrash (Tanchuma Vayetzei 5:2) describes a scene that transpires in heaven, just before this moment. When God commands the angel to reveal the well, the angel objects: “Master of the Universe, why do you bring forth a well for this wicked person who will ultimately waylay travelers and wayfarers?”

The Holy One, blessed be He, retorts: “What is he right now? Is he not righteous? I judge a person only according to the moment at which he stands before me.”

The midrash derives this response from the Torah’s language: God has heeded the cry of the boy ba’asher hu sham – “in the place where he is.”

Midrashim often put into words their authors’ struggles with the Sacred Text. In this case, we witness the tension between the suffering of a child, for which any human with a heart must feel compassion and pity; and tribal protectiveness. This struggle is personified through Sarah versus Hagar, Isaac versus Ishmael.

The angel’s objection captures our defensive instinct to close ranks and protect our own. God ‘s rebuke expresses the universalism which seeks to break down barriers between peoples and treat individuals as they are, human beings made in the Divine image.

God does not suffer from human parochialism.

It is a particularly poignant midrash for us this year, conveying this tension between tribalism and universalism. I ask myself, in this moment: “Do I resonate more with the angel, or with God?”

As we celebrate Rosh Hashanah, welcoming 5785, it is a time for us to reflect on the ways in which we value peoplehood and humanity. Or is it peoplehood versus humanity?

One of the most beautiful expressions of this was described by Rav Abraham Isaac Kook over one hundred years ago, at a time which bore certain similiarities to our own.

Rav Kook is considered to be be the founder of religious Zionism. He was born and grew up in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1905, he moved to Yaffo, in Palestine, then controlled by the Ottoman Emprire.

At the outbreak of the first World War, Rav Kook happened to be in Germany, where he was interned as an alien. He managed to escape and lived for the remainder of the war in London, stuck in exile, unable to return to Palestine.

It was a tumultuous time, full of danger, uncertainty, and change. The world was at war. Empires fell while nationalist movements reared their heads. Russia was aflame in revolution. A global pandemic was incubating. It was during this time period that Rav Kook wrote Shir Meruba, A Four-Fold Song.

He imagines four ways that a person might see themself; might orient their life and find meaning. He describes each of these four ways as a kind of song: the song of the self, the song of the nation, the song of humanity, and the song of the universe.

There is one who sings the song of oneself, and in themself findseverything, full spiritual satisfaction in its entirety.

There is another who sings the song of one’s people. He leaves the circle of his own individual self, because he finds it without sufficient breadth, without an idealistic basis. He aspires toward the heights, and he cleaves with a gentle love to the whole community of Israel. Together with her he sings her songs. He feels grieved in her afflictions and delights in her hopes. He contemplates noble and pure thoughts about her past and her future, and probes with love and wisdom her innerspiritual essence.

There is another who reaches toward more distant realms, and going beyond the boundary of Israel to sing the song of humanity. Her spirit extends to the wider vistas of the majesty of humanity in general, and its noble essence…

Then there is one who rises toward even wider horizons, until he links himself with all existence, with all God’s creatures, with all worlds, and he sings his song with all of them…

As Rav Kook describes so evocatively, each of us sings one of these four songs. He describes them as reflecting wider and wider perspectives, ever-expanding concentric circles.

What is my primary area of concern? Who do I care about most? Where do I invest my emotional energy? Form which wellsprings do I draw meaning and purpose in life?

Do I wake up each day to advance myself? Am I devoted to the Jewish people? Do I work for humanity? Or is my concern even more global?

Which song do I sing most strongly?

Rav Kook suggests that most people primarily sing one of these four songs. It is tempting to restrict our perspective to the narrowest of the concentric circles. Perhaps that is the song that most of us sing, most of the time.

This is the drive for self-preservation, for placing self over others.  It evokes the most famous teaching of Hillel the Elder in Pirkei Avot: 

אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

The next part of Hillel’s teaching warns of the risk of only focusing on the self

וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. “But if I am (only) for myself, what am I?”

Hillel suggests that a self-focused life is incomplete. Meaning and worth must include a concern for and commitment to others. But his teaching does not go so far as to distinguish how far that concern should extend: just to the Jewish people, to humanity, or to all of creation.

As we look back at the past year, I fear that we may have placed too great a focus on the universal, and not enough on the particular. Maybe we did not emphasize enough to our children how important it is to form our structures of meaning specifically around the history, values, and traditions of the Jewish people. We did not sufficiently emphasize that it is not only ok but necessary to feel particular connection to our Jewish brothers and sisters around the world.

We are now being taught that lesson. The borders that surround us are pressing in.

We are four days away from the one-year anniversary of the October 7 massacre, which changed the way Jewish people everywhere view ourselves as individuals, as part of the Jewish people, and within the wider society of humankind. 

Within hours of that horrific event, antisemitism had already begun its surge.

This past year has seen the international double standard against the world’s only Jewish state laid bare. We are still praying for the return of 97 hostages.

Many university campuses became unwelcome places for Jewish college students. We felt the need to further harden the barriers around our houses of worship and Jewish institutions, increasing our stress and fear.

So many experienced abandonment by friends, who could not bear to even have a relationship with someone who supports the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

And some of us painfully faced the conflict between the song of the nation and the song of humanity within our own families.

How have these forces, pushing in against us, affected our song?

After October 7, so many of us sought out one another, to be together, shed tears, express our grief, find solidarity —to experience some measure of comfort.

Many of us were surprised to find ourselves feeling connected to the Jewish people more profoundly than ever before.

This amplification of our song has not only been reactive. We are experiencing renewed eagerness to embrace Jewish tradition and practice. Participation in Jewish life is rising all over the world. 

Membership at Congregation Sinai is at its all-time high, along with the number of children learning in our religious school. What began as a defensive reaction has evolved into an awakening curiosity and eagerness to explore and find meaning in Judaism’s rich history and culture.

As we gather as a people to observe the new year, what are we to make of this seeming dissonance between Jewish peoplehood and universalism?

Rosh Hashanah is not a particularly particularistic holiday. It does not have an historic or symbolic connection to the Exodus from Egypt. It does not mark any moment in the history of the Jewish people. 

We describe it as Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment. Not judgment for the Jewish people – but rather, judgment for all humanity. Unetaneh Tokef describes how “all who live on earth shall pass before You like a flock of sheep.”

A few lines later, we sing “On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on the fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed.” The fate of every living person in the year ahead is determined.

Rosh Hashanah is said to take place on the sixth day, the day on which God completed all the works of creation by forming humanity in the Divine image.

It is the most universal of Jewish holidays. Perhaps Rosh Hashanah is a holiday for singing the song of humanity, or the song of the universe, rather than the song of our people.

Does it have to be either/or? Must concern for the Jewish people come at the expense of concern for humanity, or vice versa? Let us return to Rav Kook’s Four Fold Song, which continues from where we left it. He imagines the rare individual who harmonizes the four competing melodies

…into one ensemble, each joining their voices… lending vitality and life to one another. They are sounds of joy and gladness, sounds of jubilation and celebration, sounds of ecstasy and holiness.

The song of the self, the song of the people, the song of humanity, the song of the universe continuously merged…

Rav Kook describes this four-part harmony as a “song of holiness.” It is the song of Yisrael, which, with the first two letters switched, spells Shir El – the song of God.

Rav Kook challenges us to merge our various identities. We start by asking: Which song do I primarily sing? Has my song changed in the past year?

With Israel at war, and the Jewish people threatened, is there space left in my heart to maintain my commitment to myself and my people, as well as to humanity and creation?

Rav Kook would argue that I do not have a choice. Humanity’s mission is to strive towards wholeness and perfection. Israel, like other peoples, has a unique contribution to make.

From the beginning, when God first revealed Godself to Abraham, our challenge as a people has always been to be a blessing to the world, as a distinct people, and through our commitment to Torah. 

For humanity to rise higher, we must be able to sing both songs. Rav Kook wrote:. “The upright person must believe in their own life.” He also wrote “the Love of Israel requires the love of the whole of humanity.”

Even when segments of humanity do not behave so lovingingly towards us.

We celebrate our new year with complicated emotions. We pray that our brothers and sisters still held hostage will return to their families embrace. We pray for God to protect our people who are at war, and to deliver the brave souls fighting to defend them.

We pray that we be strengthened in our communities and drawn closer as a people. We pray for love, connection, and healing within our families.

We pray for all people, everywhere, to learn to recognize the Divine sparks in one another. We pray for unity in humanity’s collective striving for wholeness, for each person and nation to contribute their own blessings to our shared task.

May all of these prayers blend together to produce a glorious masterpiece, the song of God, the Song of Songs.

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May 7, 2016

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Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

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Judaism, Meat, and the Environment – Acharei Mot 5776

This morning’s Torah portion contains some of the central principles of kashrut, our Jewish dietary practices.  While other sections of the Torah describe the kinds of animals that may or may not be eaten, Parashat Acharei Mot tells us how they are to be eaten.

It seems to be describing an early stage of ancient Israelite society, when there were lots of local shrines with altars throughout the land of Israel.

God tells Moses to instruct the Israelites that when they get a hunkering for meat, they may not just slaughter animals from their herds wherever they want.  It must be done in the sanctuary.  The blood must be poured out, and certain internal fats must be burned on the altar as a pleasing offering to God.  This requirement essentially transforms all meat consumption into a sacrifice, and elevates our eating into a sacred act.

The purpose of this requirement, God tells Moses, is to stop the people from making their offerings to the se’irim.  The se’irim seem to have been some sort of goat-demon that resided in the wilderness, and ancient Canaanites would apparently make offerings to them out in the wild.

The Torah goes on to state that whenever an animal is slaughtered outside of this sacred context, that person is considered to be cut off from the rest of the people.

The next restriction has to do with hunted game.  There were certain undomesticated animals that were kosher, and could be hunted.  Elsewhere the bible mentions deer, gazelles, roebuck, and several other unidentified species.  Most likely, these were only available to the elite.  But the Torah has to account for these as well.  So it specifies that when someone hunts an animal, it’s blood must be poured out on the ground and covered in order to be eaten.

You might be thinking right about now, “but Jews don’t hunt.”  And you would be correct.  These rules about eating meat have not reflected Jewish practice for thousands of years.  They describe an earlier time, before worship was centralized in the Temple in Jerusalem.  It was possible to bring an animal to the local shrine so that it could be slaughtered in a sacred context.

Later, as described in the book of Deuteronomy, the local shrines are abolished and worship is consolidated to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Along with this change, Israelites are given permission to slaughter animals on their own, outside of a sacrificial context.

Our great commentator Rashi notices something about the Torah’s regulations regarding meat – and specifically the hunting clause.  The word “hunt” appears twice.  asher yatzud tzeid-chayyah.  …anyone who “hunts down any hunted wild animal…”  Seemingly superfluous words are typically interpreted to have additional meanings.  Rashi cites the Talmudic teaching that a person should never eat meat as a casual thing.  (BT Chullin 84a)  Any time we eat meat, we should consider it as if we had gone through the extensive trouble of actually hunting it down.  In its context, the Talmud seems to be concerned with what in those days was the exorbitant cost of meat.  It advises that a person should not impoverish himself or neglect his family’s needs to satisfy his cravings.  It reports that a given quantity of meat costs 50 times the same quantity of vegetables.  And so, the Talmud recommends that, except for the very wealthy, a person should only have a little bit of meat once a week, on Shabbat.

Rashi cites the Talmud’s initial conclusion that eating meat should not be casual to us, but he does not cite the economic reasons.  Rather, meat consumption itself should be uncommon and special.

This would seem to reflect the early practice of our ancient Israelite ancestors, for whom meat could only be eaten in a sacred context.  By taking life to nourish ourselves, we commit an inherently violent act.  That is why it can only be done in a sacred context, recognizing that it is only God who has the right to determine matters of life and death.

How far we have descended from that lofty ideal.  Now, most of us never meet the animals we eat.  We buy them off the refrigerated shelf in the grocery store, wrapped in styrofoam and plastic.  Kosher meat is no different.  Are those of us who do eat meat living up to Rashi’s ideal of meat consumption not being casual?

The most famous Jew to argue for vegetarianism from a religious standpoint was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel.  Rav Kook was a Chassidic Rebbe, a mystic, an early Zionist, and a prolific thinker and writer.  He believed that religious and non-religious Jews needed to work together, and that Judaism needed to be an active and involved force for change in the world.

Rav Kook notes that God’s original plan for creation is for humans to be vegetarians.  When Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden of Eden, they are given the plants and the fruit bearing trees for consumption, but not the animals.  Only after humanity has corrupted its ways on Earth, prompting God to wipe out all creation with the flood and start over, does God introduce the idea of eating meat.

It is a concession, argues Rav Kook, to humanity’s inability to reign in its appetites.  While God’s compassion is equal for all creatures, God recognizes that humans need to be given an elevated view of themselves vis a vis other animals in order to get them to concentrate on improving their relations with each other.

And so, God authorizes Noah and his descendants to have dominion over the animals, including eating them – but with certain restrictions.

To the Jewish people, God gives even more restrictions.  The menu of available animals is severely limited to us.  We are forbidden from consuming the blood.  We cannot mix meat and milk.  And there are additional restrictions as well.  Each of these restrictions, according to Rav Kook, is intended to elevate our moral consciousness and instill in us a profound reverence for life, even while we are eating animals.  We should never take eating meat for granted.  As Rashi says, it should not be a casual thing for us.

For example, Rav Kook explains that pouring out and covering the blood of the hunted animal is an act of “shame” on our part for committing such a “morally base” act of killing a living creature which had once known freedom.  There are similar moral and spiritual dimensions to each of the other mitzvot that regulate our eating of animals.

If we are paying close attention, we will as individuals come closer and closer to the ideal.  We will live in greater balance with the world around us.  We will treat God’s other creations better, reduce suffering, and be altogether more peaceful in our lives.  As a people, and collectively, as humanity, our heightened consciousness will produce greater unity and harmony in the world.

Rav Kook’s vegetarianism was an integral part of his Messianism.  The permission to eat meat is only temporary, he says.  It is a “transitional tax” until we arrive at a “brighter era” when we will all return to vegetarianism.  When that day arrives, human beings themselves will detest the idea of eating meat with “moral loathing.”  We will all become vegetarians, and balance between the species will be restored.  The sacrifices which will be offered in the rebuilt Temple will be exclusively plant-based.

In his personal life, Rav Kook would eat a small amount of chicken each Shabbat in acknowledgment that the day had not yet arrived.  Rav Kook was incredibly optimistic.  He lived at a time when Jews were building a life in the land of Israel.  He saw humanity as moving forward, closer and closer to perfection.  Rav Kook died in 1935, and so he did not witness the cataclysm of the Holocaust which surely would have affected his positive view of human moral progress.  But he has much to teach us.

In recent weeks, we have received reports of collapsing populations of coral in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and across the globe off the coast of Florida – the results of rising ocean temperatures and acid levels.  I am scared about what that portends for ocean ecosystems upon which we are more dependent than we know.

As a global species, we have done a terrible job of managing our consumption of this planet’s resources.  The Jewish laws of kashrut, in placing limitations on our consumption of meat, offer us a model for how we might relate to our consumption of the other resources of our world.

While Rav Kook’s vegetarianism does not reflect mainstream Jewish attitudes, he gives us something important to consider.  He suggests that there are spiritual and ethical dimensions of consumption, along with the environmental.  God created our world with the intention that its creatures live on it in balance.  As humans, our purpose across generations is to gradually approach that ideal of perfection.

Our Jewish tradition offers us thoughtful limits on our behavior when it comes to diet, and most other aspects of our lives.  If we are paying attention, living by the Torah will refine our character and help us to become our ideal selves.

In the contemporary world, with our scientific abilities to study the global environment and understand our lifestyles’ impacts on the global ecosystem, we would do well to consider what limits we ought to impose on ourselves, not only on our consumption of meat, but of are use of all the resources of this wonderful world that God has created for us.

Rav Kook, by personally eating a little bit of chicken each week, models for us that it does not have to be all or nothing.  Let’s pay a bit closer attention to what we consume.  Let’s try to distinguish between what we need to survive, and what we want.  What is necessary for us to live, and what, if we are really honest with ourselves, can we live without?

 

Bibliography: Rav Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook, A Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace, Edited by Rabbi David Cohen