Vayera: arrogance and economic egoism destroy the world. Plus ca change plus c’est le meme chose

Posted on November 13, 2019 by sylviarothschild

L’italiano segue l’inglese

After the stories of Creation of the world at the beginning of the book of Genesis, we experience a number of cataclysmic events. After the flood that destroys almost everything that had been created, with only Noah, his family and representatives of each species saved to begin again we once again have a terrible destruction wreaked on the earth by a despairing God – this time of the cities of Sodom and Gemorah, and according to the Book of Deuteronomy also Admah and Zeboiim, four of the five Cities of the Plain in the Vale of Siddim in the lower Jordan valley/ southern Dead Sea area.. . Only Zoar escaped the terrible fate of sulphurous fire that rained down and destroyed those prosperous cities and everyone in them, so that “the smoke of the land rose like the smoke of a kiln” (19:28)

What really happened in this area known for its vineyards and crops, its prosperous and fertile soil? We cannot know whether this was a volcanic eruption or an earthquake, but the bible and our later rabbinic traditions are very clear why the cities were destroyed so thoroughly, and without any warning.

Ezekiel is very clear when he warns the kingdom of Judah of the consequences of their behaviour, in the sixth century BCE: “ Only this was the sin of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquillity; yet she did not support the poor and the needy”. (Ezekiel 16:49)

The Midrash develops this idea, speaking of the citizens of Sodom caring only for the wealthy, and saying that they expelled the poor from their midst, or even killed them. Midrash Pirkei Eliezer teaches that the denizens of the cities were forbidden by law to aid the poor with food or anything else they might need – on penalty of death. Indeed it says that Lot’s daughter – who had grown up with Abram and Sarai and who therefore had a different set of values – was convicted of giving food to the poor and was executed. Before she died she cried out to God, and this was the sound that prompted God to send the messengers to find out what was happening there.

The sin of Sodom was not that of perverse sexual activities, it was the cold hearted arrogance of ignoring the needs of the other. More than that, it was the active greed for more and more, that meant that anything or anyone in the way of acquiring more was to be got rid of. As the citizens of these cities treated each other, so they would have treated the land. It was to be worked ceaselessly, it had to produce more and more, it was given no respect or honour or care.

That greed, that narrow focus on gain and ever greater productivity, led in the end to the rebellion of the land. One thinks of the earthquakes caused in Lancashire by the fracking for shale gas. Of the dust bowls in America and Canada in the 1930’s when the mechanisation and deep level ploughing of the grasslands destroyed the ecology till the top soil simply blew away in the drought. The parallels are endless.

Meir Tamari, the economist and business ethicist, calls the sin of the cities of the plain “economic egoism”. We are seeing such behaviour again. The way richer and developed countries feel entitled to plunder those less developed. The destruction and deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. The exploitation of the oceans and the pollution of waste matter we have allowed to build up in the seas. The list goes on. We have more than enough and yet still we want more. We know that whole populations are displaced, that the age old climate patterns are changing, that drought and floods are increasingly common, but our arrogance continues and our world will pay the price.

Like Lot, we are living amongst the arrogance and greed, benefitting from it, but still a nagging voice sits in our head. Lot offered the messengers of God hospitality in a city where this was frowned upon – there was enough of a voice from his past with his uncle Abram to remind him of the importance of hospitality, yet he also gave in to the clamour of the people outside, offering his daughters to them in a horrific show of appeasement or of identification with them. We too often vacillate between the values we espouse and the behaviour we show. And all the time the world gets closer to the cataclysm.

What will it take for us to stop assuming the world belongs to us to do what we like with it, and instead to recognise and nurture the personhood of the land itself? As the extinction rebellion movement, the Fridays for future movement, the environmental personhood movement all grow in power, let’s hope it’s not too late, and that the righteous are not swept away with the wicked in one huge event of fire and brimstone.

Vayera: l’arroganza e l’egoismo economico distruggono il mondo. Più cambia, più è la stessa cosa

Di rav Sylvia Rothschild, pubblicato il 13 novembre 2019

Dopo le storie di Creazione del mondo all’inizio del libro della Genesi, viviamo una serie di eventi catastrofici. Dopo il diluvio che distrugge quasi tutto ciò che era stato creato, salvando solo Noè, la sua famiglia e i rappresentanti di ogni specie per ricominciare, abbiamo nuovamente una terribile distruzione provocata sulla terra da un Dio disperato: questa volta delle città di Sodoma e Gomorra, e, secondo il Libro del Deuteronomio, anche di Admà e Zeboiim, quattro delle cinque Città della Pianura nella Valle di Siddim nella bassa valle della Giordania, la zona del Mar Morto meridionale. Solo Zoar sfuggì al terribile destino del fuoco sulfureo che piovve distruggendo quelle città prospere e tutti quelli che vi abitavano, in modo che “il fumo della terra saliva come il fumo di un forno”. (19:28)

Cosa è realmente accaduto in questa zona conosciuta per i suoi vigneti e colture, il suo terreno fertile e fiorente? Non possiamo sapere se si sia verificata un’eruzione vulcanica o un terremoto, ma la Bibbia e le nostre successive tradizioni rabbiniche sono molto chiare sul perché le città siano state distrutte così a fondo e senza alcun preavviso.

Ezechiele è molto chiaro quando avverte il regno di Giuda delle conseguenze del loro comportamento, nel sesto secolo a.e.v.: “Questo fu il peccato di Sodoma, tua sorella: l’arroganza, lei e le sue sorelle avevano abbondanza di pane e un tranquillo benessere si impadronì di lei, sì che non posero mano al povero e al misero”. (Ezechiele 16:49)

Il Midrash sviluppa questa idea, parlando dei cittadini di Sodoma che si prendono cura solo dei ricchi e dicendo che hanno espulso i poveri da loro, o addirittura li hanno uccisi. Midrash Pirkei Eliezer insegna che agli abitanti delle città era proibito per legge di aiutare i poveri con cibo o qualsiasi altra cosa di cui potessero avere bisogno, pena la morte. In effetti, dice che la figlia di Lot, che era cresciuta con Abram e Sarai e che quindi aveva un diverso insieme di valori, fu condannata per aver dato cibo ai poveri e venne giustiziata. Prima di morire gridò a Dio, e questo fu il suono che spinse Dio a mandare i messaggeri a scoprire cosa stava succedendo lì.

Il peccato di Sodoma non era quello delle attività sessuali perverse, era l’arroganza dal cuore freddo di ignorare i bisogni dell’altro. E ancor di più, era l’avidità attiva per cercare di possedere sempre di più, ciò significava che qualsiasi cosa o chiunque potesse ottenere di più doveva essere eliminato. Poiché i cittadini di queste città si trattavano a vicenda in questo modo, così avrebbero trattato la terra. Si doveva lavorare incessantemente, si doveva produrre sempre di più, non veniva dato alcun rispetto, onore o cura.

Quell’avidità, quella spasmodica attenzione al guadagno e a una produttività sempre maggiore, portarono infine alla ribellione della terra. Si pensi ai terremoti causati nel Lancashire dal “fracking” per il gas di scisto, alle tempeste di polvere in America e in Canada negli anni ’30, quando la meccanizzazione e l’aratura profonda delle praterie distrussero l’ecosistema fino a che il suolo superficiale fu semplicemente spazzato via nella siccità. I paralleli sono infiniti.

Meir Tamari, economista ed esperto di etica aziendale, chiama il peccato delle città della pianura “egoismo economico”. Stiamo vedendo un simile comportamento ancora oggi. Il modo in cui i paesi più ricchi e sviluppati si sentono in diritto di saccheggiare quelli meno sviluppati. La distruzione e la deforestazione della foresta pluviale amazzonica. Lo sfruttamento degli oceani e l’inquinamento da rifiuti che abbiamo permesso si verificasse nei mari. L’elenco continua. Abbiamo più che abbastanza e tuttavia vogliamo ancora di più. Sappiamo che intere popolazioni sono sfollate, che i vecchi schemi climatici stanno cambiando, che la siccità e le alluvioni sono sempre più comuni, ma la nostra arroganza continua e il nostro mondo ne pagherà il prezzo.

Come Lot, viviamo tra l’arroganza e l’avidità, beneficiandone, ma nella nostra testa c’è ancora una voce assillante. Lot offrì ai messaggeri di Dio l’ospitalità in una città in cui ciò era malvisto, aveva ancora la voce dei suoi trascorsi con suo zio Abramo a ricordargli l’importanza dell’ospitalità, eppure cedette anche al clamore della gente fuori, offrendo a essa le sue figlie in uno spettacolo orribile di appagamento o di identificazione con lei. Troppo spesso vacilliamo tra i valori che sposiamo e il comportamento che mostriamo. E il mondo si avvicina sempre più al cataclisma.

Cosa ci vorrà per smettere di supporre che il mondo ci appartenga per fare ciò che ci piace e invece riconoscere e coltivare la personalità della terra stessa? Mentre il movimento Extinction Rebellion, il movimento dei Friday for Future, il movimento per la personalità giuridica dell’ambiente aumentano il loro potere, speriamo che non sia troppo tardi, e che i giusti non vengano spazzati via con i malvagi in un enorme evento di fuoco e zolfo.

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

Lech Lecha – the story of a famine which displaces vulnerable people needs to be heard

Posted on November 7, 2019 by sylviarothschild

When Abram and Sarai, his nephew Lot and the souls they had made in Haran travelled on God’s instruction to the Land of Canaan, they arrived and stopped at Shechem, where Abram built an altar and where God promised that land to his descendants. Abram journeyed on, via the mountain near Beit El, where he built another altar, and continued southwards travelling the length of the land of Israel until they exited the Land on its southern border with Egypt.

It reads rather as an anti-climax to that famous imperative in the first recorded encounter between God and Abram:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהוָֹה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵֽאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ:

God said to Abram “Go for yourself from your land and your birthplace, and from the house of our father, to the land which I will show you”

No introduction, no explanation, no conversation – just a command to go elsewhere, the trust that the journey will have an end is implicit, God will show Abram the place when he gets there.

But it isn’t exactly what happens. Because there is famine in the land – very heavy famine. Abram and Sarai will die if they stay there, so, prefiguring the Joseph narratives, they travel into Egypt for refuge.

Famine appears with grim frequency in bible. Each of the patriarchs will suffer serious famine – Abram goes to Egypt, Isaac goes to the Philistine King in Gerar rather than go to Egypt(Gen 26:1). Jacob and his sons go down into Egypt to buy food when the famine takes hold. The book of Ruth describes the famine that led Ruth and Elimelech to flee to Moab (Ruth 1:1). In David’s time there was a famine lasting three years (2Sam 21:1). The story of Elijah records the famine in the land (1Kings 17:1) and in Elisha fed the famine starved people of Gilgal (2Kings 4:38). Famines are also recorded in Jerusalem in the time of Tzedekiah (2Kings 25:3) (see also Jeremiah’s painful description of the drought 14:1-6) and in Canaan in the time of Nehemiah (Neh. 5:3)

The Land of Israel was dependent on the rainfall for its crops and trees, so drought and therefore famine were always to be feared. There was also fear of pests or diseases that would destroy the crops (Joel 1:4ff)and which we see most dramatically in the plague in Egypt just before the Hebrew slaves were able to leave.

War and sieges would also bring famines – again described in biblical texts with painful clarity. Famine, along with Pestilence and the sword (war) (Dever v’Herev v’Ra’av) appears regularly in a triumvirate in the Hebrew bible (cf. Jer. 14:12; 21:7, 9; 24:10; Ezek. 6:11,) and has entered the liturgy in both Avinu Malkeinu and in the Hashkiveinu prayer (second blessing following shema)

הָסֵר מֵעָלֵינוּ אוֹיֵב דֶבֶר וְחֶרֶב וְרָעָב וְיָגוֹן

Talmud also discusses the problems of famine. We read in Ta’anit 5a “Rav Nachman said to Rabbi Yitzḥak: What is the meaning of that which is written: “For the Eternal has called upon a famine and it shall also come upon the land seven years” (II Kings 8:1)? Specifically, in those seven years, what did they eat?

Rabbi Yitzḥak said to Rabbi Nachman that Rabbi Yoḥanan said as follows: In the first year they ate that which was in their houses; in the second year they ate that which was in their fields; in the third year they ate the meat of their remaining kosher animals; in the fourth year they ate the meat of their remaining non-kosher animals; in the fifth year they ate the meat of repugnant creatures and creeping animals, i.e., any insects they found; in the sixth year they ate the flesh of their sons and their daughters; and in the seventh year they ate the flesh of their own arms, to fulfil that which is stated: “Each man shall eat the flesh of his own arm” (Isaiah 9:19).”

The starvation and breakdown of social norms that famine brought can be seen across the literature. In the Talmud we read the pitiful story of one of the wealthiest women in Jerusalem, Marta bat Baitos who could not buy food with all her silver and gold, and who died after picking out the grain from the animal dung she stepped on (Gittin 56a; Josephus mentions the eating of children in Jerusalem during the Roman War (Wars 6:201–13). There are at least three historical references to famine caused by the observance of the Sabbatical year, one during the siege of Jerusalem by the forces of Antiochus IV (Ant. 12:378), one in the war of Herod against Antigonus (Ant. 14:476) and one during Herod’s reign (Ant. 15:7).

Drought, with the rains withheld, has generally been theologised into punishment for transgressions, a tool wielded by God when we do not follow the rules that acknowledge God’s ownership of the land by bringing tithes both to thank God and to feed those who cannot grow food for themselves, and when we fail in our our obligations to the Land to treat it well and allow it to rest.

Rabbinic responsa are also very sensitive to drought and famine, with a growing list of actions to pray for rain with special prayers added into the liturgy, fasting etc. So seriously did the rabbis take the realities of famine that they permitted emigration from the land of Israel in the case of famine, albeit only when survival would become extremely difficult(BB 91b; Gen. R. 25).

Rabba bar bar Ḥana says that Rabbi Yoḥanan says: They taught that it is prohibited to leave Eretz Yisrael only if money is cheap, i.e., not excessively difficult to obtain, and produce is expensive, similar to the case in the baraita where two se’a of wheat are sold for a sela. But when money is expensive, i.e., it is difficult to earn money for sustenance, even if the price of four se’a of grain stood at a sela, one may leave Eretz Yisrael in order to survive.(BB91b)

Basing themselves on Genesis 41:50 the rabbis (Ta’anit 11a) also forbade procreation during the years of famine.

Our tradition knows about the difficulties of living and thriving in a world where the rains may not come, where crops may fail and people may starve. It understood that while famine may come as a result of war, it is more likely to be because we, the human stewards of the world, do not treat the world as it must be treated, and the consequences of this lack of care will come to haunt us.

Abram and Sarai left their home to reach the land God had promised, but having reached it they immediately became environment migrants. The land would not let them stay and thrive, they had to put themselves at greater risk and depend on a foreign power to survive. This part of their story is not often emphasised – the great journey to the promised land is a far more palatable thread to take from this sidra, but the short verses that tell of the famine that would have killed them should they have stayed are maybe more instructive in these times of climate change happening across the globe as a direct result of human carelessness and greed.

Lech Lecha is the call to activism – Get up and go, make something happen! We Jews are called as our ur-ancestors were called. We should pay heed to the increasingly serious warnings our planet is giving us, and return to the work of stewarding, protecting and supporting a healthy and diverse world.

Parashat Noach: how to avert the severity of the climate change decree

Posted on October 31, 2019 by sylviarothschild

What are we to understand about the biblical story of Noah? How are we to relate to a God who allows such terrible destruction? How are we to relate to Nature, and the world in which we live?

Coming so soon after the story of the Creation of the world – there are just ten generations between Adam and Noah – the story bears witness to the much more complex relationship between human beings and the earth than we sometimes read from the earliest chapters in the Book of Genesis.

As we read in the first chapter, the earth and all its accoutrements – plants fish, birds and beasts – are created before human beings, and God sees them as being good. They are not created for the human being but exist in their own right. While the vegetation is available as food for the human, the animals are not so designated. As Maimonides commented “The right view, in my opinion is that it should not be believed that all creation exists for the sake of the existence of humanity. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes, and not for the sake of something else.” (Moreh Nevuchim 3:13). The Tosefta (late 2^nd century text) asks “Why were human beings created last in the order of creation?” and answers itself “So that they should not grow proud, and we can say to them ‘even the gnat can claim it came before you in Creation’” (Tosefta on Sanhedrin 8:3)

We are created within and alongside nature. Nature, in this biblical viewpoint, is not created as a tool for us to treat as we choose, but exists both symbiotically with us and independently of us.

When God blesses humanity with the benediction to be fruitful and multiply, to populate the world and to steward it, this is not something that changes the power in the relationship, but instead formalises the responsibility we have to sustain both ourselves and our world. The natural world is not given to us unconditionally, but exists in relationship with us. It is not subservient to us, but is the place where we may thrive together, or may fail together.

Many readers of Bible are tempted to read the first chapters of Genesis and find a divinely created supremacy of humanity. After all, we are the only ones created in the divine image, whatever that may mean. While all the vegetation and animals are created to be able to sustain themselves and produce offspring, only humans are told to multiply and to range over the expanse of the earth.

So one might want to read into the text the sovereign authority of the human being in the natural world, but the bible would like to warn us that this is a misreading of great proportion. While the earlier story has words which are potentially problematic, particularly in how they are understood (“subdue the earth/ have dominion over”) (Genesis 1:28), the story of the Garden of Eden clarifies the relationship – the human is placed into the garden to serve it and to guard it”. And while we read in the Midrash that “God showed Adam all of the beauty of the Garden of Eden, and God said, “See my works, how lovely they are, how fine they are. All I have created, I created for you” – we must note that the Midrash continues with the warning “Take care not to destroy My world, for if you ruin it, there is no one to come after you to put it right” (Kohelet Rabbah 7:13).

Once the first human beings are expelled from the Garden of Eden, nature will become even less benign a partner, and more of a problem as we scratch our living from the earth through the sweat of our brow; the relationship of serving the land changed to one of working it.

But even more clear a warning to us not to read ourselves as somehow permitted to use the natural world as we see fit and for our own purposes, without thought of the effects of our actions, is the story of the great flood in the time of Noah.

The bible makes a clear connection between the behaviour of the people at that time – corrupt and violent – and the bringing of the flood. As we will find later, in times of famine for example, or the plagues visited upon Egypt, Nature is a tool in the hands of God, used as a necessary corrective when humanity chooses arrogance and enormous self-centredness over the obligation to serve and to guard…. As we find in Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 8:12 (c200CE) commenting on verse 28 of the first chapter of Genesis:

God said, “I will make humankind in My image, after My likeness. They shall rule [ve-yir·du]…the whole earth”.… God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule [u-re·du]…all living things…” Rabbi Hanina said: “If humankind merits it, God says u-re·du [rule!]; while if humankind does not merit it, God says yé·ra·du [let them (the animals) rule].” (or Let them [human beings] descend [from their position of mastery]

The flood is a cataclysmic event. The bible records: “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh perished that moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle, and beast, and every swarming thing that swarmed upon the earth, and every human being; all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, whatsoever was in the dry land, died. And God blotted out every living substance which was upon the face of the ground, both human, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven; and they were blotted out from the earth; and Noah only was left, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days. ” (Genesis 7:20ff)

The destruction is incalculable, bringing death to every living thing outside of the sanctuary of the Ark. Plants and animals and birds – all gone in the space of a few months, along with the majority of human beings. Bible sees this as a consequence of the will of God, who having seen the corruption and wickedness endemic in the world, regrets ever having made it and chooses to wipe most of it out and begin again. The story is a retelling of much older flood stories, where there had been no moral conclusion drawn, simply the random destruction of the earth and her inhabitants by water, at the whim of indiscriminate and uncaring powers.

It is clear from biblical texts that Nature is, by its very existence, to be respected and held in some careful awe. Again and again we are reminded that God is the creator of not just us, but of the rest of the world; Again and again we are reminded that our time here is short and we have but a fragile hold on life. As Kohelet writes “one generation goes and another comes, but the earth abides forever” (1:4)

The mystical tradition teaches that the universe is the garment of God (Zohar 3:273a), a position also taught by the Hasidic tradition: “All that we see, the heaven, the earth and all that fills it – all these are the external garments of God” (Shneur Zalman of Liady)

There is a persistent thread within all streams of Judaism to remind us that reading the beginning of Genesis must be done most carefully – that should we derive the idea that humanity is somehow so exceptional that we are beyond the rules of nature, and beyond the obligations and morality expected of us by God, then we will indeed pay the price for that arrogance, and the price will be extracted by natural environmental events. As the unetaneh tokef prayer recited so recently in the Yamim Noraim reminds us, we will surely die, and the list of ways of us dying is instructive:

“On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed – how many shall pass away and how many shall be born, who shall live and who shall die, who in good time, and who by an untimely death, who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by wild beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague……. But repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severity of the decree.”

Repentance, prayer and righteousness may avert the severity of the decree. One might put it into more modern terms – we abuse the bounty of the natural world, are careless of its resources, wilfully blind to the effect of our actions but the actions of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – this may avert the severity of the climate change already with us.

There is more – to Repair, to allow animals and land to rest; Regenerate; Give animals freedom to range and to live a good and healthy life… Plant trees and grassland rather than paving over our environment, allow grasses to flower and insects to roam and feed, avoid pesticides and ensure our garden birds can eat safely….. these are the ways we can begin to avert the severity of the changes in our environment.

God saves Noah but repents the destruction after the event. The terror and trauma of the survivors is clear in the stories that follow, the rainbow a necessary but insufficient marker of security – the world may never again be totally destroyed by flood – but there are other ways we can destroy our world. The postdiluvian world is more complex, more violent and more painful than before. It is another kind of expulsion from Eden. Now every other animal – all living beings – will fear human beings (Genesis 9:2)– after all, it was human behaviour that had caused the destruction. Humanity is now permitted to eat anything that moves that has life – not just the vegetarian diet of before. Interestingly this permission is given only AFTER Noah has built an altar and sacrificed some of the animals on it in order for the smoke to reach God. Only the blood is forbidden to be eaten, says God. And anyone who takes the life of another – their life shall be required by God. There is a violent abrupt awareness of the flawed nature of humanity; the language is stark, unblinkingly focussed – it is ferocious.

After the flood, Noah leaves his ark, plants a vineyard and gets drunk. It is part of the story we don’t often tell. The trauma of the survivors is plain to see, the desperate fumbled attempts to rebuild the world which leads to the tragedy of the tower of Babel.

Humanity may indeed survive climate catastrophe, may go on to rebuild a new world. But would it not be better for us all to avert the evil in the decree, to help each other to rebuild this world to be a better example of what we would really want to create.

parashat bereishit: what is our part in creation? sermon 2019

Posted on October 27, 2019 by sylviarothschild

Rabbi Simcha Bunem of P’shis’kha is said to have taught that “Everyone must have two pockets. In one are to be the words “For my sake the world was created” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5) and in the other “I am but dust and ashes (Genesis 18:27)

Reading the stories of Creation in parashat Bereishit, one cannot but think of this teaching – for what is the world created? What is our part in this?

The Mishna Rav Bunem quotes from is a long one, the context being how to ensure a witness is appropriate and truthful in court, especially where the trial was of capital cases and other lives are at stake. It includes the following statements: “for this reason the human being was created alone, to teach you that whosoever destroys a single soul, scripture imputes [guilt] to them as though they had destroyed a complete world; and whosoever preserves a single soul, scripture ascribes [merit] to them as though they had preserved a complete world.

Furthermore, [Adam was created alone] for the sake of peace among people, that one might not say to the other, “My father was greater than yours”, and that the heretics might not say, there are many ruling powers in heaven; again, to proclaim the greatness of the holy one, for if a person strikes many coins from one mould, they all resemble one another, but the Holy One created every person in the stamp of the first person, and yet not one of them is exactly alike. Therefore every single person is obliged to say: the world was created for my sake” (Sanhedrin 37a)

There is so much in this Mishnah, which is devoted to fair trials and proper process in judicial hearings. We are reminded that all people are equal, that our uniqueness and diversity do not alter the fact we are all from the same Creator. We are reminded that everyone encompasses a whole world, that our having lived will echo down the generations long after we are gone. We are reminded of the power of the one true God, whose greatness and creativity are the wellspring of everything and everyone in this world. All of this emphasises and underlines the absolute and indivisible importance of the life of every human being.

So it is not surprising that the fear of a court of law giving out the death penalty improperly hangs over much of these texts; and even though Torah imposes it for a range of things – such as breaking Shabbat, bringing God’s name into disrepute, some sexual sins, murder etc., the rabbinic tradition – even though essentially acting only theoretically since the Romans had removed the right of Jewish courts to punish- works hard at making such a punishment all but impossible. Any such court had to have 23 extremely competent and experienced judges on it; should they agree unanimously that the death penalty should be applied the person must be acquitted; The offence being tried had to have been witnessed by two people, who had to have warned the perpetrator before the offence was committed, that this would be a capital offence, etc. etc. In Mishnah Makkot we read “A Sanhedrin that executes once in seven years is called murderous. Rabbi Eliezer b. Azariah Says: once in seventy years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: “Had we been members of a Sanhedrin, no person would ever be put to death.”

The sanctity and uniqueness of every single life permeates these rabbinic texts, so much so that every person ever born is obliged to understand that the world was created for them, that they are essential in the world.

Reading back into the two creation stories, this sense of the supremacy and uniqueness of human life – of every human life – is extraordinarily humbling. But at the same time it brings a potentially problematical phenomenon that could cause great arrogance and selfishness. This, I think, is the reason why we have two pockets in Rav Simcha Bunem’s teaching – we are mortal, made up of very ordinary and rather undesirable elements. The quotation comes from Avram, when he is arguing with God over what will happen to Sodom and Gomorrah. He prefaces his words challenging God with the words that show he recognises his worth, that the chutzpah of his challenge:

וְאָנֹכִי עָפָר וָאֵפֶר

V’anokhi `afar va’efer

“I am but dust and ashes”. Avram knows that his is a breath that can be gone from this world so easily. As psalm 103 puts it “God knows how we are formed, remembers that we are dust. As for human beings, our days are like grass, we flourish like a flower of the field but the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place knows us no more….”

We are mortal, we have the same worth as the dust and ashes cleaned out of every home each day, we will return to the earth after our lifespan, and melt back into the soil. We are tolerated on this earth only so long as the breath of God animates our bodies, and we should not lose awareness of this lowly and dependant status.

It is generally understood that Rabbi Simcha Bunem wanted us to be able to locate ourselves between these two positions, articulated by the quotations in different pockets. That when we feel low and worthless we remind ourselves that for us the world was created, we are the most beloved creation of the great Creator; that when we feel a little too proud we remind ourselves of our mortality, much as memento mori function in art or in as artefacts we carry with us. Generally memento mori were designed to nudge us along, to motivate our living full lives – a slightly different image to how most people understand the words of Simcha Bunem. Generally his teaching is seen as a way of balancing our sense of self-worth, providing a corrective for our unbalanced sense of ourselves, but I think there is more than this going on.

The two quotations – one from Avram challenging God to behave with righteousness, the other from a mishnah set in the context of potential judicial execution (one might see them as essentially being the same situation) both remind us that for the sake even of a very few good people, rather than destroy the innocent along with the guilty, we must err on the side of protecting everyone present, of defending all those who live, regardless of the beliefs they espouse or the behaviour they enact.

These two quotations work together. Far from being either/or, the two bowls of a weighing scale or a continuum along which we must locate ourselves, they are a reminder that human life, while sacred, has a limited span. So we must use that span as well as we can, and endeavour to live up to the holiness inherent within it as well as allow the holiness of others to have a chance to blossom.

Each of the two quotations holds an extreme position, neither of them are a way for us to encounter the world and thrive. For those who arrogantly assume the world belongs to them, it would be easy to abuse this earth, taking and taking without thought of the future. For those whose self-awareness of our limited mortal state is so acute as to paralyse, our lives would simply fail to grow and we would not develop anywhere near our potential. In the words of Rabbi Professor Dalia Marx, “I understand the passage as a warning: Both statements caution us against equally dangerous attitudes. Both are indications of an incomplete self, and are laced with a narcissistic thread. An “it’s-all -about-me” stance often reflects a sense of worthlessness. Instead of reaching into either pocket, instead of pampering one’s ego or denying it, we are challenged to use the ego carefully.”

These are not words of comfort to be brought out to make ourselves feel better. They are carefully selected reminders that human beings are the creation of God, and that we are here to do the work of God. We do not have the right to judge others to the point of removing them from this world, we do not have the right to wallow in our own impotence in the face of the politics we face nor to feel this is not our battleground as we are ok.

There is a sin we confess to in the Al Chet prayer we have just been reciting in every service of Yom Kippur – “for the sin we have committed by giving in to despair”.

We each of us despair. We despair the pain of refugees, we despair the problems of climate change and environmental disaster. We despair about the terrorism and racism growing in our world. We despair about the future for our children and the present which seems to chaotic.

The two quotations from Rabbi Simcha Bunem are warnings. We are warned to remember both our value and our mortality, and we are to use the two together to spur ourselves to the work of God – to creation. Some human beings may cause us anger by their behaviour, others may cause us to feel impotent at the situation they find themselves in, yet others may horrify us by their rhetoric – yet we are reminded each of them are created by God, each of them has a place in the world. It is not for us to make decisions about them, our work is to be spurred on to partner God in creation, to use – and to overcome – our ego, our fear and our pride – and to build a world that will be better for our having been in it.

Sermone Bereshit 2019/5780 Di rav Sylvia Rothschild

Si dice che il rabbino Simcha Bunem di P’shis’kha abbia insegnato che “Ognuno deve avere due tasche. In una vi sono le parole ‘Per amor mio il mondo è stato creato’ (Mishnà Sanhedrin 4:5) e nell’altra ‘Io sono solo polvere e cenere’. (Genesi 18:27)”

Leggendo le storie della Creazione nella Parashà di Bereshit, non si può non pensare a questo insegnamento: per cosa viene creato il mondo? Che parte abbiamo in tutto ciò?

La Mishnà dalla quale Rav Bunem cita è lunga, e il contesto riguarda il modo di garantire che un testimone sia appropriato e veritiero in tribunale, soprattutto qualora sia in corso un processo per casi capitali e siano in gioco altre vite. Sono incluse le seguenti affermazioni: “per questo motivo l’essere umano è stato creato singolo, per insegnarti che a chiunque distrugga una sola anima, le Scritture imputano [colpa] come se avesse distrutto un mondo completo; e a chiunque conservi una sola anima, le Scritture attribuiscono [merito] come se avesse preservato un mondo completo.

Inoltre, [Adamo è stato creato da solo] per motivi di pace tra le persone, in modo che uno non possa dire ad un altro: ‘Mio padre era più grande del tuo’ e che gli eretici non possano dire che ci siano tanti poteri al comando nei cieli; di nuovo, per proclamare la grandezza del Signore, perché se una persona conia molte monete da uno stampo, queste si assomigliano tutte, ma il Signore ha creato ogni persona con lo stampo della prima persona, eppure nessuna di esse è esattamente uguale. Pertanto ogni singola persona è obbligata a dire: ‘il mondo è stato creato per me’.” (Sanhedrin 37a).

Vi è davvero tanto in questa Mishnà, dedicata a processi equi e a un’adeguata procedura nelle udienze giudiziarie. Ci viene ricordato che tutte le persone sono uguali, che la nostra unicità e diversità non alterano il fatto che siamo tutti dello stesso Creatore. Ci viene ricordato che in ognuno è racchiuso un intero mondo, che il nostro aver vissuto echeggerà le generazioni molto tempo dopo la nostra scomparsa. Ci viene ricordato il potere dell’unico vero Dio, la cui grandezza e creatività sono la sorgente di tutto e di tutti in questo mondo. Tutto ciò enfatizza e sottolinea l’importanza assoluta e indivisibile della vita di ogni essere umano.

Quindi non sorprende che la paura di un tribunale che emette la pena di morte incomba impropriamente su gran parte di questi testi; e anche se la Torà la impone per una serie di cose, quali rompere lo Shabbat, screditare il nome di Dio, alcuni peccati sessuali, omicidi etc., la tradizione rabbinica, anche se agendo essenzialmente solo su base teorica da quando i romani tolsero ai tribunali ebraici il diritto di punire, lavora sodo per rendere tale punizione quasi impossibile. Ogni tribunale di questo tipo doveva disporre di 23 giudici estremamente competenti ed esperti; se avessero concordato all’unanimità sull’applicazione della pena di morte, la persona doveva essere assolta; l’offesa in corso di giudizio doveva essere stata testimoniata da due persone, che dovevano aver avvertito l’autore prima che fosse commesso il reato che questo sarebbe stato un reato capitale, etc. In Mishnà Makkot leggiamo: “Un sinedrio che decide un’esecuzione una volta ogni sette anni si chiama omicida”. Rabbi Eliezer b. Azarià dice: “Una volta ogni settant’anni”. Rabbi Tarfon e Rabbi Akiva dicono: “Se fossimo stati membri di un sinedrio, nessuno sarebbe mai stato messo a morte”.

La santità e l’unicità di ogni singola vita permea questi testi rabbinici, al punto che chiunque sia nato è obbligato a capire che il mondo è stato creato per lui, e che lui è essenziale nel mondo.

Rileggendo le due storie della creazione, questo senso di supremazia e unicità della vita umana, di ogni vita umana, dona una straordinaria umiltà. Ma, allo stesso tempo, porta un fenomeno potenzialmente problematico che potrebbe causare grande arroganza ed egoismo. Questo, penso, è il motivo per cui abbiamo due tasche nell’insegnamento di Rav Simcha Bunem: siamo mortali, composti da elementi molto ordinari e piuttosto indesiderabili. La citazione viene da Abramo, quando egli discute con Dio su ciò che accadrà a Sodoma e Gomorra. Abramo premette alle sue parole di sfida verso Dio le parole che mostrano che egli riconosce il proprio valore, e qui sta la faccia tosta della sua sfida:

וְאָנֹכִי עָפָר וָאֵפֶר

V’anokhi `afar va’efer

“Io sono solo polvere e cenere”. Abramo sa che il suo è un respiro che può andarsene da questo mondo facilmente. Come dice il salmo 103 “Dio conosce il nostro istinto. Si ricorda, ricorda che noi siamo polvere. I giorni dell’uomo sono brevi come quelli dell’erba, e la sua fioritura dura come quella di un fiore di campo, poiché basta che un alito divento passi su di lui ed egli non c’è più ed il luogo dove si trovava non lo conoscerà più… ”

Siamo mortali, abbiamo lo stesso valore della polvere e delle ceneri spazzate in ogni casa ogni giorno, torneremo alla terra dopo la nostra vita e ci scioglieremo di nuovo nel terreno. Siamo tollerati su questa terra solo fintanto che il respiro di Dio anima i nostri corpi e non dovremmo perdere la consapevolezza di questo stato umile e dipendente.

Resta generalmente inteso che il rabbino Simcha Bunem voleva che fossimo in grado di collocarci tra queste due posizioni, articolate dalle citazioni nelle due diverse tasche. Che quando ci sentiamo giù di morale e senza valore ricordiamo a noi stessi che il mondo è stato creato per noi, che siamo la creazione più amata del grande Creatore; che quando ci sentiamo un po’ troppo orgogliosi ci ricordiamo della nostra mortalità, proprio come la funzione del ‘memento mori’ nell’arte o negli artefatti che portiamo con noi. Generalmente i memento mori sono stati progettati per spingerci avanti, per motivare il nostro vivere vite piene, un’immagine leggermente diversa da come la maggior parte delle persone intende le parole di Simcha Bunem. Generalmente il suo insegnamento è visto come un modo per bilanciare il nostro senso di autostima, fornendo un correttivo per il nostro squilibrato senso di noi stessi, anche se penso che ci sia molto di più.

Le due citazioni, una di Abramo che sfida Dio a comportarsi con giustizia, l’altra di una mishnà ambientata nel contesto di una potenziale esecuzione giudiziaria (il che potrebbe essere visto essenzialmente come la stessa situazione) ci ricordano entrambe che per amor di poche brave persone, piuttosto che distruggere gli innocenti insieme ai colpevoli dobbiamo sbagliare per proteggere tutti i presenti, per difendere tutti coloro che vivono, indipendentemente dalle convinzioni che sposano o dal comportamento che mettono in atto.

Queste due citazioni funzionano insieme. Lungi dall’essere “o l’una o l’altra”, o i due piatti di una bilancia o una linea continua lungo la quale dobbiamo sistemarci, ricordano che la vita umana, sebbene sacra, ha una durata limitata. Quindi dobbiamo usare questo arco nel miglior modo possibile e sforzarci di essere all’altezza della santità insita in essa e di permettere alla santità degli altri di avere una possibilità di fiorire.

Ciascuna delle due citazioni ha una posizione estrema, nessuna delle due è un modo per noi di affrontare il mondo e prosperare. Per coloro che presumono con arroganza che il mondo appartenga a loro, sarebbe facile abusare di questa terra continuando a prendere senza pensare al futuro. Per coloro la cui autocoscienza del nostro limitato stato mortale è così acuta da paralizzare, la nostra vita semplicemente non riuscirebbe a crescere e non ci svilupperemmo così da arrivare vicini al nostro potenziale, con le parole della professoressa Rabbina Dalia Marx: “interpreto il passaggio come un avvertimento: entrambe le affermazioni ci mettono in guardia contro atteggiamenti altrettanto pericolosi. Entrambe sono indicazioni di un sé incompleto e sono intrecciate con un filo narcisistico. La posizione ‘tutto ruota intorno me’ spesso riflette un senso di inutilità. Invece di entrare in una delle tasche, invece di coccolare il proprio ego o negarlo, siamo sfidati a usare l’ego con attenzione.”

Queste non sono parole di conforto da mettere in risalto per farci sentire meglio. Sono promemoria accuratamente selezionati: gli esseri umani sono la creazione di Dio e siamo qui per fare il lavoro di Dio. Non abbiamo il diritto di giudicare gli altri al punto di rimuoverli da questo mondo, non abbiamo il diritto di sguazzare nella nostra stessa impotenza quando affrontiamo la politica, né di sentire che questo non è il nostro campo di battaglia quando ci sentiamo bene.

C’è un peccato che confessiamo nella preghiera di Al Chet che abbiamo appena recitato in ogni servizio di Yom Kippur: “per il peccato che abbiamo commesso cedendo alla disperazione”.

Ognuno di noi dispera. Ci disperiamo del dolore dei rifugiati, ci disperiamo dei problemi del cambiamento climatico e del disastro ambientale. Ci disperiamo per il terrorismo e il razzismo che crescono nel nostro mondo. Ci disperiamo per il futuro dei nostri figli e per il presente che sembra caotico.

Le due citazioni del rabbino Simcha Bunem sono avvertimenti. Siamo avvertiti di ricordare sia il nostro valore che la nostra mortalità, e dobbiamo usarli insieme per spronarci all’opera di Dio: alla creazione. Alcuni esseri umani possono farci arrabbiare a causa del loro comportamento, altri possono farci sentire impotenti per la situazione in cui si trovano, mentre altri possono inorridirci con la loro retorica. Tuttavia ci viene ricordato che ognuno di loro è stato creato da Dio, ognuno di loro ha un posto nel mondo. Non spetta a noi prendere decisioni su di loro, il nostro lavoro deve essere incoraggiato a collaborare con Dio nella creazione, a usare, e a superare, il nostro ego, la nostra paura e il nostro orgoglio e a costruire un mondo che sarà migliore per il nostro esserci dentro.

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

Bereishit -subduing the earth or serving her – not slaves but co-creators to protect and nurture our world

Posted on October 24, 2019 by sylviarothschild

L’italiano segue l’inglese

וַיְבָ֣רֶךְ אֹתָם֘ אֱלֹהִים֒ וַיֹּ֨אמֶר לָהֶ֜ם אֱלֹהִ֗ים פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ וּרְד֞וּ בִּדְגַ֤ת הַיָּם֙ וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וּבְכָל־חַיָּ֖ה הָֽרֹמֶ֥שֶׂת עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ:

And God blessed them; and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth.’ (Genesis 1:28)

The stories of creation found in the first chapters of the book of Genesis provide the foundation for the myth of human ownership of the world; something which has allowed us to feel ourselves permitted to exploit and use the natural world for our own benefit. And no verse has been quite so powerful in this myth as the one quoted above – translating the verbs as humanity “subduing / ruling / dominating” the earth.

But this reading is, at best, a partial understanding of the texts of Creation, and I would like to offer a more nuanced and less literalist view.

To begin – the verbs whose roots are

כבש רדד / רדה

Have multiple meanings, but for each of them the base meaning from which subdue/dominate arises is the physical act of treading down/ trampling /spreading out. It would not be too far a literary stretch in the context of the words coming before – be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth – to read the next part of the verse as “and stretch out/make pathways over her (the earth), and stretch [your reach] over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every living thing on the earth. The root כבש

Is used today to describe roads and pathways – the methods by which we extend our ability to travel the earth.

But should this be a “spreading out” too far for some readers, one must also be aware of the context of this verse – both historically in terms of other earlier creation myths, and textually in the Book of Genesis.

Enumah Elish, the Babylonian myth of creation, describes the creation of humankind like this:

“Blood will I form and cause bone to be
Then will I set up a “lullu” [savage], ‘Man’ shall be his name!
Yes, I will create savage Man!
(Upon him) shall the services of the gods be imposed
That they may be at rest.”

For the Babylonians, the creation of human beings is about them being the slaves of the divinities, freeing the gods from the actual work of the world. Human beings would work the earth, and provide the food and drink and other necessities or desires of the gods through sacrifices and libations.

It is this mythic story that informs the biblical creation stories, and some of the dynamic of owner/owned from the Enumah Elish may be found in the biblical text – but this is a very different creation story, with the human being created ‘b’tzelem Elohim’, and the self-sufficient God going on to offer the plant based foods for all the newly created beings, both human and animal.

This is also not the only creation story in Bible, and one cannot read the first iteration in Chapter 1 without the second iteration in Chapter 2 – the story of the Garden of Eden.

וַיִּקַּ֛ח יְהוָֹ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ:

And the Eternal God took the human, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it

The verbs here are quite different

עבד שמר

Mean literally to serve and to guard/protect.

So even if we took the verbs in chapter one to mean “to rule/to subdue” the earth, here in chapter two that dimension is mitigated greatly. The role of the paradigmatic human being is that of carer for the earth, serving it rather than exploiting it.

Any power of the ownership implied in the first story must now be understood to be that of the obligation to nurture and guard something that is precious to God. To work with God (rather than for the gods) is to have an authority and role in creation, it gives no permission to use or exploit without care or consideration for the earth and its future.

The rabbinic tradition clearly understands this – and reminds us that we are not to exceed our powers, not to selfishly take and exploit and damage in order to meet our own desires and needs – indeed this would bring us back full circle to the Enumah Elish and the selfish greedy lazy and thoughtless gods. Famously in Midrash Kohelet Rabbah we read

“Look at God’s work – for who can straighten what He has twisted? When the Blessed Holy One created the first human, God took him and led him round all the trees of the Garden of Eden and said: “Look at My works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are! And all that I have created, it was for you that I created it. Pay attention that you do not corrupt and destroy My world: if you corrupt it, there is no one to repair it after you. “ (Kohelet Rabbah 7:13)

Read together, the two creation stories provide a picture of the complex and important relationship between humanity, God and nature. God, having created the world to be self-sustaining, is still involved through the work of human beings. We are, as ever, the hands of God in the world. We can manage and care for the natural world, sometimes – as in a garden- having to be creative in order to get the best results. Any gardener will tell about the importance of pruning, of digging up weeds by the roots, of dead heading or thinning plants – all things that may seem “heavy handed” but ultimately provide the best environment.

Is our role to subdue the world or to spread out within it, causing fruitfulness and the fullness of nature? I would suggest that the long standing myth of our being the pinnacle of creation meaning we have the right to dominate the world is a misunderstanding at a very deep level. To serve and to protect the earth – it is for this we were created, and this is how we most profoundly embody the idea of our being ‘b’tzelem Elohim”

Bereishit: sottomettere la terra o servirla, non schiavi ma co-creatori per proteggere e nutrire il nostro mondo

“E Dio li benedisse; e Dio stesso disse loro: Prolificate, moltiplicatevi, empite la terra e rendetevela soggetta; dominate sui pesci del mare, e sui volatili del cielo e su tutti gli animali che si muovono sulla terra.” (Genesi 1:28)

Le storie della creazione che si trovano nei primi capitoli del libro della Genesi forniscono le basi per il mito della proprietà umana del mondo: qualcosa che ci ha permesso di sentirci autorizzati a sfruttare e usare il mondo naturale a nostro vantaggio. E nessun verso è stato così potente in questo mito quanto quello sopra citato, per tradurre i verbi relativi all’agire dell’umanità in “sopraffare, controllare, dominare” la terra.

Ma questa lettura è, nella migliore delle ipotesi, una comprensione parziale dei testi della Creazione, e vorrei offrire una visione più sfumata e meno letterale.

Per cominciare, i verbi le cui radici sono רדה / רדד כבש hanno significati multipli, ma per ognuno di essi il significato base da cui emerge ‘sottomettere o dominare’ è l’atto fisico di schiacciare, calpestare, spargere. Non sarebbe troppo una forzatura letteraria nel contesto delle parole che precedono ‘siate fecondi, moltiplicate e riempite la terra’ leggere la parte successiva del verso come “e allungatevi, percorretela (la terra), e allungate [la vostra portata] sui pesci del mare e sugli uccelli del cielo e su ogni cosa vivente sulla terra”.

La radice כבש oggi è usata per descrivere strade e percorsi, i metodi con cui estendiamo la nostra capacità di viaggiare sulla terra.

Ma se questo dovesse essere un “allargamento” eccessivo per alcuni lettori, si deve anche essere consapevoli del contesto di questo versetto: sia storicamente, in termini di altri miti della creazione precedente, sia testualmente, nel Libro della Genesi.

Enumah Elish, il mito babilonese della creazione, descrive la creazione dell’umanità in questo modo:

“Formerò il sangue e farò esistere l’osso

Quindi creerò un “lullu” [selvaggio], “Uomo” sarà il suo nome!

Sì, creerò un uomo selvaggio!

(Su di lui) saranno imposti i servizi degli dei

Che possano essere in pace.”

Per i babilonesi, la creazione di esseri umani riguarda il fatto che essi sono gli schiavi delle divinità, liberando così gli dei dal lavoro reale del mondo. Gli esseri umani lavorerebbero la terra fornendo cibo e bevande e altre necessità o desideri degli dei attraverso sacrifici e libagioni.

Questa storia mitica, presente nel contesto in cui vennero scritte le storie della creazione biblica, e alcune delle dinamiche proprietario/proprietà dell’Enumah Elish possono essere trovate nel testo biblico, ma questa è una storia della creazione molto diversa, con l’essere umano creato ‘b’ tzelem Elohim’ e il Dio autosufficiente che continua a offrire alimenti a base vegetale per tutti gli esseri appena creati, sia umani che animali.

Questa non è nemmeno l’unica storia della creazione nella Bibbia, e non si può leggere la prima iterazione nel capitolo 1 senza la seconda, la ripetizione nel capitolo 2: la storia del Giardino dell’Eden.

וַיִּקַּ֛ח יְהוָֹ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶת־הָֽאָדָ֑ם וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ:

E l’Eterno Dio prese l’uomo e lo pose nel Giardino di Eden perché lo coltivasse e lo custodisse.

I verbi qui sono abbastanza diversi: שמר עבד, significano letteralmente servire e fare la guardia, proteggere.

Quindi, anche se abbiamo considerato i verbi nel primo capitolo per significare “governare/ sottomettere” la terra, qui nel secondo capitolo quella dimensione è notevolmente mitigata. Il ruolo dell’essere umano paradigmatico è quello di prendersi cura della terra, servendola piuttosto che sfruttandola.

Qualsiasi potere della proprietà implicito nella prima storia deve ora essere inteso come quello dell’obbligo di nutrire e custodire qualcosa di prezioso per Dio. Lavorare con Dio (piuttosto che per gli dei) significa avere un’autorità e un ruolo nella creazione, non dà il permesso di usare o sfruttare senza cura o considerazione alcuna la terra e il suo futuro.

La tradizione rabbinica lo comprende chiaramente, e ci ricorda che non dobbiamo eccedere i nostri poteri, non dobbiamo prendere egoisticamente e sfruttare e danneggiare per soddisfare i nostri desideri e bisogni, in effetti questo ci riporterebbe al punto di partenza dell’Enumah Elish e gli dei egoisti, avidi, pigri e sconsiderati. Notoriamente nel Midrash Kohelet Rabbà leggiamo:

“Guarda il lavoro di Dio: per chi può raddrizzare ciò che ha distorto? Quando l’Uno, Santo e Benedetto, creò il primo essere umano, Dio lo prese e lo condusse attorno a tutti gli alberi del Giardino dell’Eden e disse: ‘Guarda le mie opere, quanto sono belle e lodevoli! E tutto ciò che ho creato, è stato creato per te. Fai attenzione a non corrompere e distruggere il mio mondo: se lo corrompi, non c’è nessuno che lo ripari dopo di te.’” (Kohelet Rabbà 7:13)

Lette insieme, le due storie della creazione forniscono un quadro del complesso e importante rapporto tra umanità, Dio e natura. Dio, avendo creato il mondo per essere autosufficiente, è ancora coinvolto attraverso il lavoro degli esseri umani. Siamo, come sempre, le mani di Dio nel mondo. Possiamo gestire e prenderci cura del mondo naturale, a volte, come in un giardino, dovendo essere creativi per ottenere i migliori risultati. Ogni giardiniere parlerà dell’importanza della potatura, dello scavo delle erbe infestanti dalle radici, della selezione o del diradamento delle piante, tutte cose che possono sembrare “pesanti” ma alla fine forniscono l’ambiente migliore.

Il nostro ruolo è sottomettere il mondo o spargerci al suo interno, causando fecondità e pienezza della natura? Suggerirei che l’antico mito del nostro essere l’apice della creazione, nel senso che abbiamo il diritto di dominare il mondo, è un malinteso a un livello molto profondo. Siamo stati creati per servire e proteggere la terra, ed è così che incarniamo profondamente l’idea del nostro essere “b’tzelem Elohim”.

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

Parashat Emor: Proclaim God’s Time or Time is more than a packages of moments; it encodes our history, our identity, our meaning, our purpose

Posted on May 9, 2019 by sylviarothschild

Right at the beginning of the bible comes the need to distinguish time. God divides the phases of creation into days and nights and sets up structures in the universe to define the time that already exists, making the sun, moon and stars. Then God models for us the structure of six days of work followed by a seventh day of rest.

Jewish time is further developed in the rest of the bible. In the book of Exodus in Parashat Bo we find the very first commandment in Torah that is addressed to the entire Jewish people and we find that it is about Time. “Hachodesh hazeh lachem rosh chodashim rishon . . . , “This month shall be to you the first of the months . . . “(Exodus 12:2).

Tradition reads this as an instruction to organise a calendar. And this week, in Parashat Emor, we are given the monthly and daily specifics of what goes on it. Mo-adei Adonai Asher Tikr’u otam . . . , “These are God’s set times which you shall proclaim . . . “(Leviticus 23:2).

Jewish time is the ebb and flow of working week and restful shabbat; it is structured around the major festivals which bound the year – so that until recently most Jews would remember a birthdate or a yahrzeit as being in relation to the nearest festival.

Our calendar is a way of making sure that life is not simply the flow of one homogenous day after another. It is a way of structuring and therefore being able to use and understand, time.

But it’s not just a matter of giving dates for our holy days in order for us to remember and mark them. Our calendar is more complex and more nuanced than that.

First of all, the days of the year must be indexed to the seasons, otherwise even the tiniest annual discrepancy would, over the decades and centuries, mean that we would be celebrating the Spring festival of Pesach in the winter, and the Autumn festival of Sukkot in the spring. So we have to intervene in how we describe time in order to allow it to work in the right and proper place.

Our sages quickly worked out that neither the solar nor the lunar calendar on their own will solve our problem. Counting full days does not bring the earth back to precisely the same place in its solar orbit. The solar year – the time it takes the sun to pass from vernal (or spring) equinox to vernal equinox is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds, so there is about a six-hour or quarter-day margin of error each year. If we did not compensate for this we would create a margin of error of about 24 days after only 100 years.

So in the Gregorian calendar we add a “leap year” with one more day every four years to bring us back to ‘true’.

The lunar calendar, while having the great visual advantage that the eve of the fourteenth day of every lunar month has a full moon (Pesach, Sukkot, Purim, Tu B’Shevat), still brings the difficulty of being one whole lunar month short every two or three years as it is about eleven days shorter than the solar month. We solve this by adding an Adar Sheini, a second month of Adar nine times every seventeen years.

The creation and structuring of time in order to use it is one of the things that makes us human, and how we do it in our particular tradition is one of the things that makes us who we are as Jews. By our working alongside the natural world of day and night, of solar year and lunar cycle and by adding something of our own so as to keep our festivals in their seasons, we are working alongside of God to co-create both our environment and our expression of our history and spirituality. And it is the list of festivals in parashat Emor which gives us the permission and the expectation to do this. Having been able to create our time and associate our festivals not just with dates, not simply with seasons, but also with a quasi historical meaning, we Jews, so long uprooted from our land and from the agricultural tradition, have learned to build and to buttress our identity and our history through the use of time. Pesach has become the time of redemption from slavery, Shavuot the time of connection with God through Torah, Sukkot gives meaning through our recognition of our mortality and fragility, as well as acknowledging God’s real and practical gifts to us. Time is more than a series of events of packages of moments; it encodes our history, our identity, our meaning, our purpose.

However secular or distanced from tradition we may be, we still sense the flow of sacred time alongside our awareness of our routine diaries and the calendars of secular events. Spring time still brings thoughts of Pesach, the Autumn heralds the solemn festivals of new year and Yom Kippur. And Jews who rarely feel the need for community or ritual will contact a local community to find out about seder, or a ticket to the high holy days. We still sense the sacredness of time, but how do we express its holiness apart from a tug into community a few times a year? The psalms tell us the messianic age could arrive tomorrow, if only we would listen. Today’s sidra is called “Emor” – the imperative to speak. Yet if we focus only on speaking we would quickly dislocate ourselves in our dialogue, for just as time is lunar AND solar, so is communication about speaking AND listening. What we listen to, what we hear bible telling us again and again, is the requirement to be holy because God is holy. And how do we do that? Clearly in part it is a focus on what we do, how we act in the world, but Emor tells us also that becoming holy has something to do with how we ‘make time’ for the important things in life, with we use our time on this earth.

Rabbi Jon Adland (US Reform Rabbi) put it like this: “Time is all we’ve got in our lives, and how we use this precious inheritance will determine the mark we leave on this world. Holy days and holidays are not only about acknowledging God, but also about affirming community and remembering that which came before. The rest of time, the majority of moments outside of the holy days, are left for us to structure. In many ways, every day that isn’t a Jewish holiday is chol hamo-eid, an “intermediate day” in a year-long calendar. Just because a day is not a holy day on the calendar doesn’t mean it can’t be made holy through our actions.”

So we need to be asking ourselves each day: “What should we be doing to sanctify our time?” “In what way should we be speaking out? In what way should we be listening?”

Our religious practise has moved on since the days that we brought offerings to God at set times to the Temple. Now we have to ask how we use our time in a way that honours God and our tradition. Be it fighting for social justice or bringing compassion to individuals in distress; be it offering gifts of food or money or opportunity to those in need or our living with low impact on the environment; be it political activism or small acts of kindness – there are a myriad ways we can use our time in this world. The important thing is that we use our time well, and create holiness in our world.

Sermon 2018

Kedoshim Tihyu: Holiness lies in the interconnected world, in our relationships and our responsibilities

Posted on May 7, 2019 by sylviarothschild

Parashat Kedoshim takes its name from the phrase it begins with: “Kedoshim tihyu, ki Kadosh Ani Adonai Eloheichem” – You will be Kadosh, as I the Eternal your God Am Kadosh. (Leviticus 19:2)

The root K.D.Sh appears 152 times in the Book of Leviticus, and while usually translated as “separate/distinct” or “holy”, it has a richer and more complex life within Jewish thought than to be boundaried in such a way. It is difficult to fully explicate this word, in part because Kedushah is an attribute of the essence of God, and something we human beings are to pursue in our behaviour and being, the result of such pursuit is attachment to the Divine, understood in mystical tradition as the ultimate goal of all our spiritual strivings.

The 16^th century kabbalist Rabbi Eliyahu deVidas explains in his mystical and meditative work (Reishit Chochma) that fleeing evil and doing good creates within us the ability to receive holiness from God. Holiness is a Divine response to our actions, and inhabits and shapes our soul, creating the possibility for communion with God.

Holiness exists in two different frameworks in bible: one is the sanctity of the priesthood and temple rituals which is the focus of much of this book of Leviticus; the second is the sanctity of peoplehood, of the whole community, as is underscored with the first verse of this sidra – “Speak to the whole Israelite community and say to them: You (voi) shall be holy, for I, YHVH your God, am holy (Lev. 19:2).”. It is this second framework that speaks to us. Holiness is an aspiration for a community much more than a state for priest and temple. The focus moves a little away from the ritual rooted in the sacrificial system and more towards the ethical rooted in community living.

Avoiding evil and doing good seems to the main thrust of much of what is contained in the apex of the holiness school of guidance, found in Leviticus chapter 19.(Full holiness Code found Leviticus 17-26) According to Sefer haChinuch, there are 13 positive and 38 negative mitzvot in sidra kedoshim, guiding us towards doing good things, and away from improper behaviour.

We are used to categorising these mitzvot (commandments) in Kedoshim as either Ritual ones or Ethical ones, but there is another way to see these imperatives that does not divide them into different and separate types, but functioning instead together, as part of a whole and complex system.

The commandments that guide us towards holiness can be understood as being ecological in structure –together they are a description of the web of relationships that unite the people, the land, the environment including both flora and fauna, and God. Together they both set the balance that allows each component to flourish, each constituent to be in harmonious relationship.

There are curious parallels that signal the interconnectedness if one looks – for example the law of pe’ah forbids us to cut the edges of the land (19:9) and the edges of the human head and beard (19:27). People and land are treated in the same way, albeit for different motivations.

The section of bible known to us as “holiness code” (Leviticus 17-26) can be understood as a coherent and unified corpus, which aims to bring together – through varied and diverse subject matter, terminology and historical perspective – the connection of people and land. Specifically here people and land which each have a distinct relationship with God. The people are to aspire towards ideal behaviour; the land is to embody the sacred. Each generation is to learn and understand the principles that underlie this text, to draw out and fulfil those principles in their own time and their own context. The texts play with time. This is the generation of the desert being told how to behave in the land they have settled. We are simultaneously at Sinai shortly after the exodus from Egypt, in the desert as a travelling and unrooted people, and in the Land of Israel as the people who are responsible for the welfare of both land and society.

The effect of these time distortions within the text is to reinforce the timelessness of the message and of those to whom the message is addressed – to remind us that each generation of the people Israel is to understand that we too are part of the web of relationship. Just as the Pesach Haggadah reminds us that each of us is to consider ourselves part of the generation that was freed from Egyptian slavery, so here we are reminded that the relationship between people, land and God is one we are firmly held within.

This year the message of the ecology, the web of the relationships and the connections between plants, animals, people, and the environment, has never been so powerful to me, and the balances and imbalances between these relationships cry out for our attention.

We are living in a time of climate change happening with unprecedented speed. Everything is being affected and generally not for the good of the world. Be it the insect populations diminishing or disappearing due to insecticides, or else the changes in weather which have disrupted their breeding; or the crops blighted by drought or to-heavy rains; be it the animals whose habitats are changing around them, leaving them ill equipped to survive, or the people who face tsunami or cyclones, or drought or blistering heat – we are once again forced to pay attention to the interdependability of our world, and to note how our behaviour is unbalancing not only our own context but the future world of our children.

When one reads this section of Leviticus not to tease out the ritual or ethical behaviours we feel ourselves commanded to follow, but to become more fully conscious of what it means to hear the imperative to holiness that we must pursue in order to come closer to God, it is impossible to ignore how the impetus to Kedushah is situated within the web of relationships between people, animals and land. The book of Genesis (2:15) tells us we have a responsibility to steward the land, to keep it in good order and fully functioning, we have to work it responsibly and mindfully. The book of Deuteronomy reminds us that should we not care properly for the land and for the people we will be expelled from living in the land, reminds us too that God is watching how people treat the land that is so special to God (Deut 11:12) And all the books of bible repeatedly remind us that we are not inheritors of this world by right, but that we are privileged to live here and have a role we must play, relationships we must nurture, transmission we must be part of. How we live our lives matters not just to us or our close family or generation, how we live our lives is part of the ecology of the world and how it will thrive – or not

Imitatio Dei, the imitation of the attributes of God, holds a central place in Jewish thinking, right from the creation of people b’tzelem Elohim – in the image of God. We cannot absorb God nor become God, we cannot understand or encompass God, but we still have the obligation to come closer to Kedushah. The Talmud phrases it best, I think, like this: “Rabbi Hama the son of Rabbi Hanina said: (Deuteronomy 13:5) “After God you shall walk.” And is it possible for a person to walk after the Presence of God? And doesn’t it already say (Deuteronomy 4:24) “Because God is a consuming flame”? Rather, [it means] to walk after the characteristics of God. Just as God clothed the naked [in the case of Adam and Chava]… so, too, should you clothe the naked. Just as the Holy One Blessed be God visited the sick [in the case of Avraham after his brit milah]…so, too, should you visit the sick. Just as the Holy One Blessed be God comforted the mourners [in the case of Yitzhak after Avraham’s passing]…so, too, should you comfort the mourners. Just as the Holy One Blessed be God buried the dead [in the case of Moshe]…so, too, should you bury the dead” (Sotah 14a:3-4)

It is a lovely description of how to imitate God to make the world a better place. But as our liturgy reminds us three times a day in the Aleinu prayer, it is our duty “letaken olam b’malchut Shaddai” To repair and maintain the world with the sovereignty of God. This is bigger than the cases suggested by Rav Hama – for the sovereignty of God is more than the relationships between people, important as they are. Instead I think the phrase is referring to the Kedushah we find in the Holiness Section of Leviticus – we must maintain and repair the relationships not simply bein Adam v’Chavero (between people) but bein Adam v’Olam – between people and the living beings – animal and vegetable – on this earth.

How we treat the earth – the rainforests with its trees often logged mercilessly and the environment of the animals who live there decimated and unsustainable; the rivers we clog with chemicals or detritus, the seas filled with plastic and becoming toxic to so many who swim in them, be they small turtles or huge orcas; the air in cities that are filled with pollutants, the fields we drench with fertilizers or insecticides, the animals and birds we so carelessly damage, the environment we so thoughtlessly injure, the casual littering and the mindless consumption of limited resources – all of this is in direct contradiction to what we are told about Kedushah, the holiness we should be striving to attain.

In London this week a 16 year old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, came to speak to Parliament and also to the many protestors of Climate Change who brought our cities to a standstill as they sought to persuade the government, by non-violent action, to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions to zero. The group “Extinction Rebellion” which has a Jewish section also held a Seder outside the Parliament buildings, linking the traditional ten plagues to the many threats to the earth if greenhouse gas emissions are not massively reduced, and global warming brought below two degrees. They linked too to the damage to seas and air and land we are increasingly seeing happen. (The group is also protesting in Milan, Rome and Torino and in other countries too).

Reactions were mixed to the protests – in part because of the inconvenience caused to daily living, in part to vested interests, in part to political games-playing. But what became clearer to me was not just the science the protesters were drawing our attention to, but the religious values we have been ignoring for so long.

For when we categorise mitzvot into ethical or ritual, meaningful or opaque, spiritual or mundane, we mask over something else – the inter-relatedness of our world, which the mitzvot are designed to help us to understand if only we would pay attention, the web of relationships between us and our environment, between animals and plants and humans and land and God.

When God tells the people that we must strive for Kedushah, an essential attribute of the divine, we often put this into the domain of the heavens, and forget that we live on the earth. We forget that the web of relationships is planet wide, that it involves trees and plants and soil and animals and insects…. Holiness demands from us the awareness of these relationships, and a response that values them. “Le’taken olam b’malchut Shaddai” – to maintain and repair the world with divine ruling” – that is out task, and it is not in the heavens or far from us, but in our everyday interactions with the created world.

(sermon given 2019)

Tzav- we need to understand commandedness through the lens of both halacha and aggadah or we will miss the point completely

Posted on March 11, 2019 by sylviarothschild

Sermon given 2018 Lev Chadash Milano

Every so often the Jewish world erupts into a debate about authenticity and flung into the mix are accusations about what Torah is, what mitzvot are, and who has the right to decide.

In parashat Tzav we find God telling Moses “Command Aaron and his sons to do these rituals” There follows a description of the five sacrifices the priests are to perform, the limits to the acceptable consumption of the meat of the sacrifices, and the details about how Aaron and his sons were to be prepared for ordination as priests.

The power of that imperative “Tzav!” which introduces the details of the ritual reverberates across the centuries. To this day Jews view ourselves as commanded, and Rabbinic Judaism has grounded itself on the Halachah of mitzvot, what they are and how to do them, while Jewish theology and the meaning of WHY we live in this way, essentially remains in the area of aggadah.

It is the tension between these two ways of ‘being Jewish” that causes us so many problems. For Eugene Borowitz, possibly the most influential Reform Jewish thinker, “While Halachah seeks to define just what constitutes one’s obligation, the aggadah often attempts to supply the theological and historical foundation of Jewish duty” or as AJ Heschel formulated it, Halacha becomes Jewish behaviour while the motivation for these behaviours is aggadah.

How we approach God is important, and to know that there is more than one way to do this within Judaism, offers a validity to what we know Judaism to be – a variety of ways in which to be authentically Jewish, rather than a doctrinal or behavioural “orthodoxy” which itself creates heresy.

Halacha gives form and structure, provides a system for us to live and work within. Aggadah is harder to define, but must express our limitless striving to relate to God in the world. Essentially Halacha – and the system of mitzvot that Rabbinic Judaism cherishes – prescribes for us how to behave in the world while Aggadah helps us formulate our aspirations for what life is about, helps give meaning to our existence, and inspires us to continue the search for relationship with God.

The Rabbinic Judaism within whose system we all now function began as a wonderfully dynamic melding of both halachic and aggadic discourse. Talmud is its apotheosis. Within Talmud there is very little interest in proclaiming what the halachah actually is, and indeed any such ruling is hardly ever found. Instead we have a variety of opinions recorded, debated, refuted or supported with biblical verses or teachings from either inside or outside the text of the Talmud itself, and this rich raw material becomes the foundation of how Judaism could develop. Halachah and aggadah coexist in this system, each informing and enriching the other, providing balance and dynamism. The two systems probably only begin to diverge in the Geonic Period (c600 – 1000 CE) and with the codifying of the Oral Torah we find that the system of halachah and mitzvot becomes rigid and stultifies, while the creative emotive and wide-ranging aggadic system often gets relegated to a less important status. Yet, as Heschel wrote: ”To maintain that the essence of Judaism consists exclusively of halachah is as erroneous as to maintain that the essence of Judaism consists exclusively of aggadah. The interrelationship of halachah and aggadah is the very heart of Judaism. Halachah without aggadah is dead, aggadah without halachah is wild.”

We Jews see ourselves as a commanded and covenanted people, a people who perform mitzvot, who follow the directives of God with whom we are in a covenant of obligation. Yet we cannot quite agree on the Who is doing the commanding, nor what the commandments actually are, let alone how we must carry them out authentically.

Is the commander the God of Torah – and if so, which of God’s commands in bible are even applicable to us, let alone take precedence? Is the commander the God of later literature, of the Nevi’im, the Prophetic books and the Ketuvim (Writings)? Is the Commander the Voice of God we discern in our lives and through our experiences? Is it the Voice of our tradition and history, the chain of which we are but one generational link? Is the voice emanating from our modern ethical understanding of the world? There are as many answers are there are Jews formulating them – in the words of Leonard Cohen in “Who by Fire”, a treatment of the famous Rosh Hashanah prayer: “And who shall I say is calling?”

Yet that word follows us – Tzav! We are a commanded and covenanted people.

How are we to understand it? Mitzvah is not “the law” – or at least it is only one of ten biblical terms used to describe regulation of the people. There are also “din” “tzedakah” “davar” “mishmeret” “torah” “Mishpat” “chok” “edut” “ot” in bible, terms often used interchangeably in the biblical text, reminding us that the guidelines come in various ways and are just that – guidelines. Even the word “halachah” comes from the root lalechet – to go or to walk, and Torah is related to the word for parents – the people who guide us and help us become our best selves.

Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef, the great scholar and 1^st-2^nd century Tanna (the early generation of teacher) developed the idea that the language of Torah is divinely revealed, so that there was semantic significance, or at least midrashic potential, to every word and every letter in the Torah – nothing in it was a mistake or an addition, the document was in every sense divine. His slightly younger peer, Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha took a different view – he said that the Torah speaks to human beings in human language, with repetitions and metaphor and so on. The views of both continued into the development of Judaism, yet it seems that Rabbi Akiva’s view took the ascendant over time, and that while Yishmael developed principles for understanding the divine intention, the notion of “Torah miSinai” hardened over time into what people generally take it to mean today – that everything from Torah to rabbinic teshuvot today were revealed to Moses at Sinai

The origin of this idea can be found not in Torah but in Talmud: “Rabbi Levi bar Hama said that Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said “ God said to Moses: Ascend to me on the mountain and be there, and I will give you the stone tablets and the Torah and the mitzvah that I have written that you may teach them” (Exodus 24:12). What is the meaning of this verse? “Tablets of stone”-these are the Ten Commandments, “the Torah”-this is the Torah (five books of Moses), “the Mitzvah”- this is the Mishnah,” which I have written”- these are the Prophets and the Writings, “that you may teach them”- this is the Gemara. And it teaches that they were all given to Moses on Sinai (TB Brachot 5a).

From this aggadic text comes the idea that everything, ALL aspects of Torah, all halachic rulings, were given to Moses at Sinai by God and thus are incontestable, and not liable to challenge or modification. Resh Lakish’s statement appears in different places in gemara, attributed to others, but we also find an extension of it in the Jerusalem Talmud (Peah 2:4) commenting on a verse found in Deuteronomy :”Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: …Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud and Aggada — even that which an experienced student is destined to teach before his master — were all told to Moses at Sinai…”

From the process of discussion and debate that epitomises Talmud, we come to a place of no discussion and of rulings given from “on high” with the barely veiled threat of delegitimising anyone who questions.

It is quite a leap, yet it seems to be one that many barely notice these days. I have lost count of the number of times people have told me – wrongly even in the terms of foundational Rabbinic Judaism – that as a Reform Jew I am not following “real” Judaism, that halachic rulings cannot ever be challenged, that every mitzvah ever is to be found in Torah itself, and every Jew is obligated to follow them all, without exception, (aside from the ones that have to happen within the Temple or the Land of Israel. )

It worries me that Rabbi Akiva has such an ascendancy over Rabbi Ishmael, that Torah is not read as a document for human beings to encounter but only for accepted scholars within an increasingly narrow tradition. It worries me that a hardening has happened so that whereas the Mishnah only documents three “laws given to Moses from Sinai”, by the time we get to the medieval period and Maimonides the laws are codified and fixed, and the tradition of ascribing them as Torah from Sinai is used to suppress debate or challenge.

Torah miSinai to the rabbinic world was not what it means today. The original understanding was that while the Written Torah was given to Moses, the Oral Torah – or rather the authority to create and develop oral torah that would impact on our understanding of written torah – was given alongside it, in order to both bolster the claim to authority of the rabbinic tradition, and also to keep relevant and human a text given in the desert in a particular and ancient context at one moment in time. Torah mi Sinai became the process, the dynamism, the way we can keep written Torah open to us and our own contexts. So to the Rabbis Torah mi Sinai was the whole range of midrashic exploration, all of the interpretations, the discussions and the disputes, the variety of recorded opinion, the consensus of each generation as matters became relevant and live to them. Torah miSinai is contradictory, it is interpretive, it holds opposing and dissonant views, it is alive. This best described in a midrash (Midrash Tehilim (11-14^th century) where Rav Yannai taught “Had the words of Torah been given in clear decisions, our condition would have been intolerable. How so? When God spoke to Moses, Moses said “Define the law precisely, leaving no doubt, no ambiguity.” But God answered “follow the majority. If the majority acquit, acquit, If the majority condemn, condemn. Torah is to be interpreted in 49 ways to say something is pure and 49 ways to say something is impure” (12:7)

We are a commanded people. Our text matters to us, we hold it as sacred, we read it and study it and try to ascertain its meaning for us. We must never let go of this, even as personal autonomy takes pride of place in our lives.

Eugene Borowitz spent his life thinking and writing about the dialectic between our commandedness and our sense as Reform Jews of a personal autonomy. He could not square the circle, but he taught that while we have autonomy he insisted that we must confront our Judaism with our Jewish selves, not as “autonomous persons-in-general”. He taught the importance of our decision making based on informed and understood knowledge of our tradition and our texts. He felt that Reform Jews must be “rooted in Israel’s corporate faithfulness to God” and that this would help structure how we live our lives. Borowitz advocated for the importance of Reform Jews knowing our tradition, interacting with our texts, understanding the historic covenant that Jews have with God. Yet he also wrote “this does not rise to the point of validating law in the traditional sense, for personal autonomy remains the cornerstone of this piety.”

It is I think harder to be a Reform Jew than a traditional Jew, for we must bring ourselves into the thinking, rather than accept the crumbs offered as “torah miSinai”.

And Borowitz added an extra piece to our work. Whatever we ”do or say in the name of Judaism must be ethical”. While many see mitzvot as prescribed behaviour, often focusing on the minutiae of ritual activity, we Reform Jews must see mitzvot as behaviour that will bring us closer to God by doing God’s will. We may not follow all of the ritual mitzvot that have developed in Rabbinic Judaism but that is not how we should be defining ourselves – we must define ourselves by what we do rather than what we don’t do. And more than that, anything that we do not do, that may separate us from the weight of traditional consensus, should be understood and considered and be open to revisiting rather than have the door closed on it forever. So early Reformers did not do Purim, seeing it as somewhat repellent, but now almost all progressive synagogues have brought it back. Many early Reformers gave up kashrut as being anachronistic, whereas now kashrut has once again found a home in our tradition, both as normative tradition, and also as an expression of concern for the environment – eco kashrut.

A colleague of Borowitz’, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, also advocated for informed decision making to be a hallmark of Reform Judaism, and challenged us to “ethicize the ritual mitzvot and ritualise the ethical mitzvot”, as in the interplay of Halachah and Aggadah, we need both the practical behaviour and the understanding, the ritual and the ethical driver of the ritual.

We Reform Jews are part of a tradition going back to Sinai – the tradition of Aggadah and Halachah influencing each other, the tradition of commandedness, the tradition of covenant with God. We are part of the tradition that says we must question and know our texts, learn, debate, act.

Tzav – we are a commanded people. We may not be in agreement about many things within this statement but the statement itself stands.

So for we Reform Jews, while we may challenge the idea and substance of the 613 mitzvot, while we may debate the relevance of or even need for some of the ritual mitzvot, we are part of the system of halachah and aggadah, of mitzvot and Jewish texts. We cannot step away and abdicate responsibility; we must be part of the dialogue. And as we add our voices and our experience to the voice of commandment, to the history of our people, we shall enhance and nourish it, as we ourselves will be enhanced and nourished.

Ken y’hi ratzon. May it be God’s will

Ogni tanto dal mondo ebraico scaturisce un dibattito a proposito dell’autenticità, e ci si mettere a discutere su cosa sia la Torà, quali siano le mitzvot e chi abbia il diritto di deciderlo.

Nella parashà Tzav troviamo Dio che dice a Mosè: “Comanda ad Aronne e ai suoi figli di compiere questi rituali”. Segue una descrizione dei cinque sacrifici che i sacerdoti devono compiere, dei limiti del consumo accettabile della carne dei sacrifici e i dettagli su come Aronne e i suoi figli debbano essere preparati per l’ordinazione sacerdotale.

Il potere di quell’imperativo: “Tzav!”, che introduce i dettagli del rituale, trova riverbero attraverso i secoli. Fino ai nostri giorni noi ebrei vediamo noi stessi come precettati e il giudaismo rabbinico si è basato sulla Halachà delle mitzvot, su cosa siano e come adempierle, mentre la teologia ebraica, e il significato del PERCHÉ viviamo in questo modo, rimane essenzialmente nell’area dell’Haggadà.

È la tensione tra questi due modi di “essere ebrei” che ci causa tanti problemi. Per Eugene Borowitz, forse il più influente pensatore ebreo riformato, “Mentre l’Halachà cerca soltanto di definire ciò che costituisce il proprio obbligo, l’Haggadà tenta sovente di fornire il fondamento teologico e storico del dovere ebraico” o, come formulato da A.J. Heschel: l’Halachà diventa un comportamento ebraico mentre la motivazione di questo comportamento è l’Haggadà.

Il modo in cui noi ci avviciniamo a Dio è importante, e sapere che nell’ebraismo c’è più di un modo per farlo offre validità a ciò che sappiamo essere l’ebraismo: una varietà di modi in cui si può autenticamente essere ebrei, piuttosto che una “ortodossia” dottrinale o comportamentale che già di per sé crea eresia.

L’Halachà dà forma e struttura, ci fornisce un sistema per vivere e al cui interno lavorare. L’Haggadà è più difficile da definire, ma deve esprimere il nostro sforzo illimitato di relazionarci con Dio nel mondo. Essenzialmente l’Halachà, e il sistema di mitzvot che il giudaismo rabbinico apprezza, ci dà prescrizioni su come comportarci nel mondo mentre l’Haggadà ci aiuta a formulare le nostre aspirazioni per ciò che riguarda la vita, ci aiuta a dare un senso alla nostra esistenza e ci ispira a continuare la ricerca di relazione con Dio.

L’ebraismo rabbinico, nel cui sistema noi tutti ora operiamo, ha avuto inizio come una fusione meravigliosamente dinamica del discorso halachico e di quello haggadico. Il Talmud ne è la sua apoteosi. All’interno del Talmud c’è pochissimo interesse nel proclamare ciò che realmente sia l’Halachà, e, in effetti, una tale sentenza non si trova quasi mai. Abbiamo invece una varietà di opinioni registrate, discusse, confutate o supportate con versetti o insegnamenti biblici, sia all’interno che all’esterno del testo del Talmud stesso, e questa ricca materia prima diventa il fondamento di come l’ebraismo potrebbe svilupparsi. Halachà e Haggadà coesistono in questo sistema, ciascuna informando e arricchendo l’altra, fornendo vicendevolmente equilibrio e dinamismo. I due sistemi iniziarono probabilmente a divergere solo nel Periodo Geonico (circa 600 – 1000 E.V.), e, con la codificazione della Torà orale, troviamo che il sistema dell’Halachà e delle mitzvot diventa rigido e illogico, mentre il sistema haggadico, legato alle emozioni, creativo e ad ampio spettro, spesso viene relegato in uno status meno importante. Tuttavia, come scrisse Heschel: “Sostenere che l’essenza dell’ebraismo consista esclusivamente di Halachà è errato quanto affermare che l’essenza dell’ebraismo consista esclusivamente di Haggadà. L’interrelazione tra Halachà e Haggadà è il vero cuore dell’ebraismo. L’Halachà senza Haggadà è morta, l’Haggadà senza Halachà è selvaggia”.

Noi ebrei vediamo noi stessi come popolo che ha ricevuto precetti e che è coinvolto in un patto, ovvero un popolo che compie mitzvot, che segue le direttive di Dio, con il quale abbiamo un patto di obblighi. Tuttavia non possiamo essere completamente d’accordo su chi stia impartendo il comando, né su cosa siano effettivamente i precetti, per non parlare poi di come dobbiamo adempierli autenticamente.

Chi dà i precetti è il Dio della Torà? E, se sì, quale tra i precetti di Dio nella Bibbia è applicabile anche a noi, per non parlare delle priorità? Chi dà i precetti è il Dio della letteratura successiva, dei Nevi’im, dei Libri Profetici e dei Ketuvim (Scritti)? Chi dà i precetti è la Voce di Dio che discerniamo nelle nostre vite e attraverso le nostre esperienze? È la Voce della nostra tradizione e della nostra storia, la catena di cui siamo solo un anello generazionale? La Voce è emanazione della nostra moderna comprensione etica del mondo? Ci sono tante risposte quante sono gli ebrei che hanno formulato le domande, per usare le parole di Leonard Cohen in “Who by Fire”, adattamento della famosa preghiera di Rosh Hashanà: “E chi dirò che sta chiamando?”

Eppure quella parola ci segue: “Tzav!” Siamo un popolo precettato e che si è impegnato in un patto.

Come possiamo intenderlo? Mitzvà non significa “la legge”, quantomeno è solo uno dei dieci termini biblici usati per descrivere le regole date al popolo. Nella Bibbia sono presenti anche “Din”, “Tzedakà”, “Davar”, “Mishmeret” “Torà”, “Mishpat”, “Chok”, “Edut” e “Ot”. Termini spesso usati in modo intercambiabile nel testo biblico, che ci ricordando che le linee guida giungono in vari modi e sono proprio questo: linee guida. Anche la parola “Halachà” deriva dalla radice lalechet, andare o camminare, e la Torà stessa è legata alla parola che significa genitori: le persone che ci guidano e ci aiutano a diventare i nostri migliori sé.

Il rabbino Akiva ben Yosef, grande studioso e Tanna del I-II secolo (la prima generazione di insegnanti), sviluppò l’idea che il linguaggio della Torà sia stato divinamente rivelato, che ci fosse quindi un significato semantico, o almeno un potenziale midrashico, in ogni sua parola e in ogni sua lettera; nulla in essa era stato frutto di un errore o di un’aggiunta: il documento era in ogni senso divino. Il suo collega un po’ più giovane, il rabbino Yishmael ben Elisha, adottò un punto di vista differente: disse che la Torà parla agli esseri umani nella lingua umana, con ripetizioni, metafore e così via. Le opinioni di entrambi trovarono seguito nello sviluppo dell’ebraismo, eppure sembra che la visione di Rabbi Akiva ebbe la meglio nel tempo e che, mentre Yishmael sviluppava i principi per comprendere l’intenzione divina, la nozione di Torà miSinai si sia consolidata nei secoli in ciò che generalmente si intende che significhi oggi: che tutto, dalla Torà alle teshuvot rabbiniche odierne, sia stato rivelato a Mosè al Sinai.

L’origine di questa idea non si trova nella Torà ma nel Talmud: “Rabbi Levi bar Hama disse che Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish disse: ‘Dio disse a Mosè: sali verso di Me sul monte e rimani là, e Io ti darò le tavole di pietra, la Torà e la mitzvà che Io ho scritto per istruirli (Esodo 24:12). Qual è il significato di questo verso? ‘Tavole di pietra’: sono i Dieci Comandamenti; ‘La Torà’: questa è la Torà (cinque libri di Mosè); ’la Mitzvà’: questa è la Mishnà; ‘che ho scritto’: questi sono i Profeti e gli Scritti; “per poterli insegnare”: questa è la Ghemarà. E ciò ci insegna che erano tutti dati a Mosè sul Sinai” (TB Brachot 5a).

Da questo testo haggadico proviene l’idea che tutto, TUTTI gli aspetti della Torà, tutte le regole halachiche, siano stati dati a Mosè al Sinai da Dio e che quindi siano incontestabili, e non suscettibili di contestazioni o modifiche. L’affermazione di Resh Lakish appare in diversi punti della Ghemarà, attribuita ad altri, ma se ne trova un’estensione anche nel Talmud di Gerusalemme (Peah 2: 4), nel commento di un verso tratto dal Deuteronomio: “il Rabbino Joshua ben Levi disse: … Scrittura, Mishnà, Talmud e Haggadà, anche quello che uno studente esperto è destinato a insegnare prima del suo maestro, sono stati tutti raccontati a Mosè al Sinai … ”

Dal processo di discussione e dibattito che si incarna nel Talmud, arriviamo a un luogo di non discussione e di decisioni date da “in alto”, con la minaccia appena velata di delegittimazione per chiunque faccia domande.

È un bel salto, eppure sembra essere uno di quelli di cui a malapena ci si accorge, di questi tempi. Ho perso il conto del numero di volte in cui le persone mi hanno detto, erroneamente anche nei termini dell’ebraismo rabbinico fondativo, che come ebrea della riforma non sto seguendo il giudaismo “reale”, che le regole halachiche non possono mai essere sfidate, che ogni mitzvà di ogni epoca si trova nella Torà, e ogni ebreo è obbligato a seguirle tutte, senza eccezioni (a parte quelle che devono aver luogo all’interno del Tempio o della Terra di Israele).

Mi preoccupa che Rabbi Akiva abbia un tale sopravvento su Rabbi Ishmael, che la Torà non sia letta come un documento per esseri umani da incontrare, ma solo per studiosi accettati all’interno di una tradizione sempre più ristretta. Mi preoccupa che sia accaduto un inasprimento tale che, mentre la Mishnà documenta solo tre “leggi date a Mosè dal Sinai”, quando arriviamo al periodo medievale e a Maimonide le leggi sono codificate e fissate, e la tradizione di attribuirle come Torà del Sinai sia usata per sopprimere il dibattito o la sfida.

La Torà miSinai per il mondo rabbinico non era ciò che significa oggi. L’interpretazione originale era che, mentre la Torà scritta venne data a Mosè, la Torà orale, o piuttosto l’autorità per creare e sviluppare la Torà orale che avrebbe avuto un impatto sulla nostra comprensione della Torà scritta, le fu affiancata al fine di sostenere il richiamo all’autorità della tradizione rabbinica e per mantenere rilevante e umano un testo dato nel deserto in un contesto antico e particolare e in uno specifico momento temporale. Torà miSinai è diventato il processo, il dinamismo, il modo in cui possiamo tenere la Torà scritta aperta a noi e ai nostri contesti. Così per i rabbini Torà miSinai era l’intera gamma di esplorazioni midrashiche, di tutte le interpretazioni, le discussioni e le dispute, della varietà di opinioni registrate, del consenso di ogni generazione quando le questioni diventavano rilevanti e vive per loro. Torà miSinai è contraddittoria, è interpretativa, ha punti di vista opposti e dissonanti, è viva. Questo è meglio descritto in un midrash (Midrash Tehilim – 11-14 ° secolo) in cui Rav Yannai insegnava: “Se le parole della Torà fossero state date in decisioni chiare, la nostra condizione sarebbe stata intollerabile. In che modo? Quando Dio parlò a Mosè, Mosè disse: ‘Definisci la legge con precisione, senza lasciare dubbi, senza ambiguità.’ Ma Dio rispose: ‘segui la maggioranza, se la maggioranza assolve, assolvi, se la maggioranza condanna, condanna, la Torà deve essere interpretata in 49 modi per dire che qualcosa è puro e 49 modi per dire che qualcosa è impuro.” (12: 7)

Siamo un popolo che ha ricevuto precetti. Il nostro testo conta per noi, lo riteniamo sacro, lo leggiamo e lo studiamo e cerchiamo di accertare il suo significato per noi. Non dobbiamo mai lasciarlo andare, anche se l’autonomia personale è al primo posto nelle nostre vite.

Eugene Borowitz trascorse la sua vita a pensare e scrivere a proposito della dialettica tra il nostro aver ricevuto un comando e il significato dell’autonomia personale in quanto ebrei riformati. Non ha potuto quadrare il cerchio, ma ha insegnato che nonostante abbiamo autonomia ha insistito sul fatto che dobbiamo affrontare il nostro ebraismo con i nostri sé ebraici, non come “persone autonome in generale”. Ha insegnato l’importanza del nostro processo decisionale basato sulla conoscenza informata e consapevole della nostra tradizione e dei nostri testi. Sentiva che gli ebrei riformati devono essere “radicati nella fedeltà di Israele a Dio” e che ciò aiuterebbe a strutturare il modo in cui viviamo le nostre vite. Borowitz sostenne l’importanza degli ebrei riformati conoscendo la nostra tradizione, interagendo con i nostri testi, comprendendo l’alleanza storica che gli ebrei hanno con Dio. Eppure ha anche scritto che “questo non porta al punto di convalidare la legge nel senso tradizionale, perché l’autonomia personale rimane la pietra angolare di questa fede”.

Penso che sia più difficile essere un ebreo riformato di un ebreo tradizionale, perché dobbiamo concentrarci sul pensiero, piuttosto che accettare le briciole offerte come “Torà miSinai”.

E Borowitz ha aggiunto un pezzo in più al nostro lavoro. Qualsiasi cosa “facciamo o diciamo nel nome dell’ebraismo deve essere etica”. Mentre molti vedono le mitzvot come un comportamento prescritto, spesso concentrandosi sulle minuzie dell’attività rituale, noi ebrei riformati dobbiamo vedere le mitzvot come un comportamento che ci porterà più vicini a Dio, facendo la volontà di Dio. Potremmo non seguire tutte le mitzvot rituali che si sono sviluppate nel giudaismo rabbinico, ma non è così che dovremmo definire noi stessi, dobbiamo definire noi stessi per mezzo di ciò che facciamo piuttosto che di ciò che non facciamo. Inoltre, tutto ciò che non facciamo, ciò che potrebbe separarci dal peso del consenso tradizionale, dovrebbe essere compreso e considerato ed essere aperto alla rivisitazione invece che essere chiuso per sempre. Quindi i primi riformatori non festeggiavano Purim, considerandolo un po’ repellente, ma ora quasi tutte le sinagoghe progressiste lo hanno ristabilito. Molti primi riformatori abbandonarono la Kashrut in quanto anacronistica, mentre ora la Kashrut trova nuovamente posto nella nostra tradizione, sia come tradizione normativa, sia come espressione di preoccupazione per l’ambiente, la eco-kashrut.
Un collega di Borowitz, il rabbino Arnold Jacob Wolf, sosteneva anche che il processo decisionale informato fosse un segno distintivo dell’ebraismo riformato e ci sfidava a “rendere etiche le mitzvot rituali e ritualizzare le mitzvot etiche”, come nell’interazione di Halachà e Haggadà, abbiamo bisogno sia del comportamento pratico che della comprensione, del rituale e del motore etico del rituale.
Noi ebrei riformati facciamo parte di una tradizione che risale al Sinai, la tradizione in cui Haggadà e Halachà si influenzano a vicenda, la tradizione dei precetti, la tradizione dell’alleanza con Dio. Facciamo parte della tradizione secondo cui dobbiamo interrogare e conoscere i nostri testi, imparare, discutere, agire.
Tzav: siamo un popolo con dei precetti. Potremmo non essere d’accordo su molte cose all’interno di questa affermazione, ma la dichiarazione stessa è valida.

Quindi, noi ebrei riformati, mentre possiamo sfidare l’idea e la sostanza delle seicentotredici mitzvot, mentre possiamo discutere l’importanza o addirittura la necessità di alcune delle mitzvot rituali, siamo anche parte del sistema di Halachà e Haggadà, mitzvot e testi ebraici Non possiamo allontanarci e abdicare alla responsabilità; dobbiamo essere parte del dialogo. E mentre aggiungiamo le nostre voci e la nostra esperienza alla voce del comandamento, alla storia della nostra gente, la valorizzeremo e la nutriremo, poiché noi stessi saremo valorizzati e nutriti.
Ken y’hi ratzon. Possa essere la volontà di Dio

Pekudei – continuing creation gives purpose, recreating creation is our role

Posted on March 8, 2019 by sylviarothschild

The book of Exodus ends with the completion of the portable Tabernacle painstakingly made to God’s exact instructions by the children of Israel. It seems that we have been reading about this building work for weeks – no other event in the journey the Israelites make in the wilderness has been told us in such detail. And now, finally, a year after Moses had told the people to prepare for leaving slavery in Egypt, the place is ready – and Moses is checking the last details, assembling the artefacts, making sure everything is as it should be.

There is a beautiful symmetry in the torah between the events here at the end of the book of Exodus and the ones at the beginning of the book of Genesis. And the words used in the narrative here are an echo of those used at the beginning of our text – just as Moses finishes the work he has done (va’y’chal Moshe et ham’lacha) so we are reminded that God in creating the Shabbat, also finishes the work he had done. V’y’chal elohim b’yom hash’vi’i et ha’m’lachto.

We are being deliberately reminded of the work of Creation as the Tabernacle is completed. We are being clearly prompted to understand that the creation of the sanctuary in the wilderness by the children of Israel is a mirroring of the divine creation of the universe. In making the world God created a home for us, and in the making of the tabernacle we echoed that creation – but for whom are we making a home? What are the responsibilities we are taking on by behaving within our microcosm like the divine creator of the universe?

When God told the people to make the tabernacle, the instruction was to build the place so that God would dwell among them. The purpose of the Mishkan wasn’t so much the place itself as the process of building with shared intention, the learning for the people was about larger issues than construction – it was about responsibility for others, about development of relationship, about removing oneself from the centre and instead becoming part of the whole system.

Building the tabernacle in effect transferred the power and the responsibility of creation from heaven to earth, and God was no longer simply the Mover behind the creation of the universe, but became part of human experience – Because of the building of the tabernacle, God now dwelled among the people who were created in the image of the divinity, they had built a place for the divine presence to enter the world – not in the tabernacle as such, but in the actions of the people who worked together to bring it into being.

By the end of the book of Exodus, God and people are truly partners in creation. It is an image we continue to use to this day – the idea that the world is not yet completed, that people are completing it. Unlike the creation of humanity at the beginning of the book of Genesis, the people are required not to be the passive consumers of the garden of Eden, nor are they to be so focussed on making a living that they cannot begin to consider other more metaphysical needs – by the end of the book of exodus we find that we are indeed to work hard in life, but for a greater cause than to earn our daily bread. Our hard work is the necessary ingredient to complete the work of creation begun with the words of God.

Something else emerges from the texts surrounding the building of the tabernacle which adds to our understanding of what it is to take on the responsibility for creation in our sphere as God does for the universe. Even a brief reading of the stories of the time in the wilderness will reveal a people who are unhappy with their lot, who foment rebellion, who wish to return to slavery rather than face the unknown of the future land. Already in the year before the building of the Mishkan – a year in which they had seen the terrible things done in Egypt, a year in which they had found freedom – a year in which the people were able to experience the Revelation at Sinai; already the people had rebelled, had complained, had tried to rid themselves of the leadership of Moses, and had begged Aaron to create the golden calf for them to worship. And yet this should have been the most wonderful and undemanding year of their lives. They were no longer enslaved, no longer routinely humiliated in the society in which they lived. They had food every day which simply fell from heaven and lay there for them to collect, their clothing never needed mending, and their shoes never wore out. All of their material needs were met. The leadership of Moses and Aaron and Miriam took over all their responsibilities and resolved the disputes that arose, there was absolutely nothing to worry about or concern themselves with. Like the first humans in the Garden of Eden, everything should have been perfect – yet somehow it wasn’t.

The Midrash notes the continual stream of complaining and notes too that God responded to it compassionately – “it was because of their constant murmurings that the Holy One asked them to put their hand to the making of the Mishkan” And the response works – the Midrash again highlights the fact that there were no complaints, no rebellions and no conflict recorded during any of the chapters in Torah that describe the building of the tabernacle: “the whole time they were engaged with the work of the Mishkan they did not grumble” (Midrash Pesikta Rabbati).

So what do we learn from this, what did God bring about in the world with this task?

God understood that human beings need a sense of purpose, that we need to have a point to our existence, we need to be able to care about something and to be able to engage in meaningful activity. Without such endeavour we dissolve into bad tempered pointlessness, into destructive behaviour, into misery and self indulgent self-centredness. Left to our own purposelessness we create a sort of human tohu va’vohu, and it becomes harder and harder for human relationships to take root and for society to develop to the benefit of its members.

If the Midrash is right, that the people complained and the society disintegrated because everyone felt superfluous and without any role or consequence, then the notion of our taking on the task of being creator of our world is even more important, and it is increasingly vital that we consider just how we bring God into our Mishkan. How are we building the Mishkan today, creating the space for the divine to be experienced in our world? How are we making sure that everyone, not just the leadership or the elite are able to contribute to making our world a better place? It is a question we have to ask again and again – for the Mishkan is a travelling structure, constantly taken down and put up again, reflecting the reality that we re create our world each day, in every aspect of our lives.

Tetzaveh

Posted on February 14, 2019 by sylviarothschild

“And you will command the children of Israel to bring you pure oil of beaten olives for lighting, to cause a lamp to burn continually (ner tamid)” (Exodus 27:20-12)

This first mitzvah of the tabernacle is interesting for several reasons. It echoes the first words of God at creation– y’hi or – let there be light. And in a narrative dedicated to the clothing and behaviour of the priests, the command here is communal – the responsibility for an eternal light belongs to the people, not the priesthood. The lamp sits facing the ark curtain, prepared and lit by the priests each evening to burn through till the morning. In the parallel passage in Leviticus 24:2-4 the ner tamid clearly has several flames, and far from hanging over the ark as a modern ner tamid does, it is part of a lampstand on the opposite wall to the ark– the seven branched menorah. Indeed during the temple period its other name was the ner ma’aravi, the western light. It is thought that while all the lights burned through the night, only one was kept burning continually (1Sam 3:3)

Why does the bible ask us to keep a small light burning continually since clearly the function of lighting the sacred space is done by the other lights? And why must we repeatedly light more lights? We often say the ner tamid is a reminder of God’s continuing presence in our world, a small beacon of hope that stays with us as the pillar of fire guided us in the desert. Yet this is not enough. The echo of y’hi or reminds us that we too must play our role in the creation of our world. Every day we must tend to this work. The people must bring the prepared oil – this is our job and no one else’s.

written for “the bible says what?” Jewish News February 2019

rabbisylviarothschild

the occasional thoughts of a working woman rabbi in England

Category Archives: parashat hashavua

Vayera: arrogance and economic egoism destroy the world. Plus ca change plus c’est le meme chose

Lech Lecha – the story of a famine which displaces vulnerable people needs to be heard

Parashat Noach: how to avert the severity of the climate change decree

parashat bereishit: what is our part in creation? sermon 2019

Bereishit -subduing the earth or serving her – not slaves but co-creators to protect and nurture our world

Parashat Emor: Proclaim God’s Time or Time is more than a packages of moments; it encodes our history, our identity, our meaning, our purpose

Kedoshim Tihyu: Holiness lies in the interconnected world, in our relationships and our responsibilities

Tzav- we need to understand commandedness through the lens of both halacha and aggadah or we will miss the point completely

Pekudei – continuing creation gives purpose, recreating creation is our role

Tetzaveh