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Reflections
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BEHAR
12th Iyar 5768 ~ 17th May 2008
Shabbat begins in London at 20.33 and ends at 21.47
By Rabbi Jeremy Gordon
For the land is Mine [says
God] and you are strangers and sojourners with me. (Lev 25:23)
The great temptation of human
existence is to consider that which we hold in our hands is our
own, to do with as we would wish.
Thinking about the food we
shovel into our bellies is instructive. Many of the texts about
kashrut are to be found in a tractate of the Talmud called
Hullin (a cognate of the Islamic term Halal). The word means
‘profane things.’ Food is considered untouchable, beyond; kodesh
in its truest sense of being un-graspable, it is only by
entering into the a world of blessing and responding
appropriately to the gift of sustenance, that we can bring such
kodshim down to a level where we are able to consume them.
Rav Yehudah in the name of
Samuel said, ‘Taking enjoyment of anything in this world without
a blessing is like taking personal use from something
consecrated to God, as it says The earth is to God, as is its
fullness (Psalm 24)
Rabbi Levi said, ‘but what of
the verse The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth
has been given to humanity?’ (Psalms 115) There is no
contradiction, in the first case it is before a blessing has
been said, in the second it is after a blessing has been said.
Rabbi Chanina bar Papa said, ‘Taking enjoyment of anything in
this world without a blessing is like stealing from God and the
community of Israel.’ (Brachot 35 a-b)
It is, of course, a radically
different version of spirituality than that which one might
expect. I was once asked, at Christian-Jewish interfaith
gathering to ‘bless the Holy bread.’ It was a little
embarrassing; I bless God in order to make the holy into the
edible, I don’t bless bread for being Holy. The spirituality of
‘it’s not yours’ is, perhaps, the best shot we have at saving
the limited resources of this planet from being entirely
denuded. We treat the fish in the sea as ours. We treat the
clothes in the shops as ours. We treat the chocolate and the
coffee and all the rest of it as ours and it’s not. It is ours
on sufferance. It is only permitted to us if we approach the
materiality of the planet, and its creator, appropriately; with
with blessing and an understanding that we need to show respect
for the world and all that is in it.
Rabbi Jeremy Gordon
previously rabbi of SAMS is being formally inducted to his new
pulpit, NLS tomorrow. We wish him and all at NLS MazlTov
By Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz
Coercion is part of the
essence of Judaism. Indeed, a well known midrash describes God
coercing the Israelites into the acceptance of Torah. Sparked by
the Hebrew phrase "the Israelites were rooted under the
mountain" (Exodus 19:17), (most translations read "the
Israelites were at the foot of the mountain"), the rabbinic
imagination conjures up a threatening portrait of God holding
Mt. Sinai over the heads of the those assembled, declaring, "if
you accept the Torah, well and good; but if not, this shall be
your resting place" (BT Shabbat 88a). Coercion is indeed at the
heart of this teaching and potentially at the heart of Judaism.
Most observant Jews feel a sense of external motivation —
observance is not simply a matter of personal choice, but a
response to a God who has expectations.
In teaching this midrash and
the principle learned from it, I encountered a student
justifiably troubled by this notion. So disturbed was this
thoughtful, loyal Shabbat attending synagogue—goer that he woke
up this past Shabbat morning, thought about the midrash we had
learned, and decided that he would not be coerced into going to
synagogue that Shabbat morning. How could I respond meaningfully
to this student's spiritual and intellectual challenge?
This week's parashah, Parashat
Be—har, wrestles with this same tension. In the end, however, I
believe our Torah reading does provide us with an answer. In
Leviticus 25:55, God declares, "The children of Israel are
servants to Me; they are My servants that I brought out of the
Land of Egypt, for I am the Lord Your God." This verse continues
in the vein of our somewhat unflattering portrait of God. God
took us out of Egypt and now, we owe a debt of gratitude toward
God. That debt is reflected in our servitude to God. Yet, the
servitude of which the Torah speaks culminates in meaningful
relationship. Note well the latter part of the verse: 'for I am
the Lord Your God.' God is not merely a communal, impersonal
God. God becomes the God of each and every one of us. God
becomes personal through our individual embrace of commandedness.
Our freedom, then, is found in
relationship. I would suggest that in every relationship there
is some element of coercion. In particular, the parent—child
relationship comes to mind. Coercion is elemental to raising
disciplined children. And although each of us may go through a
stage of rebellion in our teenage years or beyond, we realize
quickly we have a lot more to gain from the blessing of being in
relationship — from the predictability, the structure, the
rules. Opting out leads us to a point of emptiness and
rootlessness; but reflection can lead us back to the Source.
Yehudah HaLevi, a prolific
poet of the Golden Age of Spain writes, "The slaves of time —
slaves of slaves are they; the servant of God — that individual
alone is free, And so when every human seeks his portion — my
soul says, 'My portion is the Lord's."
May each of us have the
insight and gumption of Yehudah HaLevi — understanding that our
freedom derives from the precious and treasured boundaries with
which God has circumscribed us. From within the confines of
Torah, life is always the richer.
From: The Jewish
Theological Seminary, New
York. More can be found on their website
http://www.jtsa.edu
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Reflections
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