Tag Archives: self interest

Rosh Hashanah Sermon – We live in a participatory universe

Posted on by
Reply

L’italiano segue l’inglese

The 11th Century Andalusian Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pakuda was the author of the first Jewish system of ethics in his book known as The Duties of the Heart”  “Hovot HaLev”. He introduced his book saying that many Jews only seemed to care about the outward observances, the rituals, the duties to be performed by the parts of the body “Hovot HaEvarim” – but not those of the inner mind or the driving ideas and values of the Jewish tradition.  Bachya wanted to explain that Judaism was more than ritualistic or habitual behaviour, more than a mechanistic performance – he taught that Judaism is the embodiment of a great spiritual truth.

This truth is not folkloric or magical, but based on reason, on revelation, on the search for God through Torah. He wrote that there was a great need for the many ethical rabbinic texts to be brought together into a coherent system, in the hope that mechanistic Judaism would give way to a more thoughtful and deeper way of living the religion.

It is an unfortunate reality that for many Jews, mitzvot are categorised as being EITHER Hovot HaEvarim (duties of the limbs) OR Hovot HaLev (duties of the heart).

Rav Soloveitchik taught that one can see mitzvot as being both – in his words mitzvot are both “enacted” (Hovot HaEvarim) and “fulfilled” (Hovot HaLev), and, should we perform the mitzvah on one plane but not on the other, then we are not in fact completing the mitzvah.

Soloveitchik used the mitzvot of prayer and of repentance to demonstrate his meaning. We can turn up at the synagogue and say all the right words, but if the words have no effect upon us, then they are empty of purpose and we have not done our work.

Prayer – also known as avodah she’balev – the work of the heart, is much more than the reciting of formulae either in community or alone. Teshuvah, the act of repairing and returning, has no power if it only puts a patch over a problem without changing us and changing our future behaviour.  How do we avoid habitual words that our mouths may say or our ears may hear, but that do not reach and change our hearts?

Bachya wrote that most people act in accord with our own self-interest, with what he saw as selfish and worldly rather than with any higher or more selfless motivation. He wanted us to reach further than our own needs and wants, to willingly and joyfully serve God, whatever God demands of us.

Soloveitchik was interested not only in the doing, but the knowing of God. He wrote: “To believe is necessary but it is not enough- one must also feel and sense the existence of God”.

Both these profound thinkers can help us on the journey we are taking through the Yamim Noraim, as well as into the future. Soloveitchik created the paradigm of the repentant person, the one who returns to God, in this way- “The person embodies the experience which begins with a feeling of sin, and ends in the redemption of a wondrous proximity to God. Between these two points, human beings stand as a creator of worlds, as we shape the greatest of our works – ourselves”  I am not sure I fully agree with Soloveitchik, but where I most certainly concur is his statement that we do indeed shape ourselves through our choices and our actions – and our inaction too.

We are creators of worlds! Jewish thought has always placed human beings in this role. Bible teaches from its earliest chapters that we partner God in the ongoing creation of this world. With Adam then Noah, then Abraham the partnership is increasingly formalised until the covenant with Moses and the whole people Israel – all who will ever be or who will ever become. Rabbinic tradition bases itself on the texts describing the Sinai Covenant and teaches that there are two Torahs given there – the written (torah she’bichtav) and the oral (torah she’b’al peh). The oral Torah is not a transmitted teaching per se, but the route to interpreting the written Torah, which is open to a multiplicity of meanings.

As Nachmanides wrote ““For it was in accordance with the interpretations that the Rabbis would give, that God gave us the Torah.” “Would give” – leaving open to the future times, to new understanding, to continued creation.

For the whole of time that Judaism has evolved there is an important directive for us all – The continuing creation of the world depends not just on God, but on us.  Why is this so?

Perhaps the most developed – but certainly not the only -nor even the most important theory- is that of 16th century Lurianic Kabbalistic theory. It teaches us that our work is to gather the sparks of the divine from wherever they are embedded in the world, in order to bring about a full tikkun – to repair and restore the world to its original state of primordial unity in relationship with God

Now whether we want to return to the primordial binary state of purity and dross, unmixed and tightly boundaried, is a moot point, but certainly the Jewish world-view wherever one looks in our tradition, is that this co-creating partnership is our reason to be. It is the way that we build relationship with God, and this relationship is seen as the foundational aspiration of humanity; Our tradition tells us that this is an equal aspiration for God. God wants us – God’s creations – to become creators ourselves. To make something of our time in the world, to change it even if only a little, and to leave it a better place for our being here. As the Chasidic tradition would have it “nothing is more precious to us than that which we create through hard work and struggle. The brilliance we pull out from the dust, the beauty we can make from broken pieces…to take the things we are given, the damaged and broken, even our own lives which may be hurt and fragile, and to make them whole. This is the foundation of our worlds existence, the purpose by which it was thought into being- the Creator’s wish that those created would themselves become creators, and partners in the perfecting of Gods world” (maamar bechukotai)

What our texts are pointing towards can also be found in quantum mechanics –

According to the rules of quantum mechanics, our observations influence the universe at the most fundamental levels. The boundary between an objective “world out there” and our own subjective consciousness blurs… When physicists look at the basic constituents of reality— atoms or photons – what they see depends on how they have set up their experiment. A physicist’s observations determine whether an atom, say, behaves like a fluid wave or a hard particle, or which path it follows in traveling from one point to another. From the quantum perspective the universe is an extremely interactive place, and all possibilities exist, at least until they are observed. In the words of the American physicist John Wheeler, “we live in a “participatory universe.””

Now I am not a physicist, nor I guess are many of you, but it fascinates me how the same ideas can emerge from both science and religion.

“We live in a participatory universe.”

Judaism teaches that our actions matter, that even small changes in our behaviours can potentially cause major change both to ourselves and to others; that how we behave in the world can have transformative effects. It asks us to be aware of our environment, of how we treat the stranger and the vulnerable. It reminds us that the earth belongs not to us but to God, ultimately everything is on loan to us, we will take nothing when we depart this world. “The earth is Gods and all its fullness”, says the psalm (24),” and all who live upon it.”

(לַיהוָה, הָאָרֶץ וּמְלוֹאָהּ –

But while we are here, we have the responsibility of creation – the world is not a separate entity untouched by our presence, we live in a participatory universe.

Bachya, Soloveitchik, Lurianic Kabbalah, quantum physics – all remind us that we exist in relationship to others and to “the other” as well as to ourselves. What we do, how we act – it matters to more than just our own conscience or our own feelings. We are each of us part of the continuing creation of our world.

Bachya famously wrote “Days are scrolls, write on them what you want to be remembered”. What exactly did he mean by this? Is he referring to the Talmudic “book of life” where everyone’s deeds are recorded for the benefit of the heavenly court as well as for themselves? Is he referring to the library of history, so that while each of us lives and dies, something of us remains and can be accessed in order to remember us? Is he saying that we write only on our own scrolls or is he referring to the way we impact on others “scrolls”, how we treat them being written into their own experience, maybe to be dealt with in the future by a therapist or to be held onto as supportive help in difficult times?

During the Yamim Noraim we tend to reflect on our own lives, our goals, our hopes, our mistakes, our feelings…. We think about how we have acted and how we can repair what we did, how to make ourselves better. It is important work, reflecting on the way we are living our lives, working to become the people we would like to be.

But there is another aspect to the work of the Yamim Noraim. We belong in a participatory universe, we are the creators of worlds.

Days are scrolls. And scrolls embody the words and the experiences, the teachings and the mistakes, the learning and the doing not only of our own selves, but of our people, and ultimately of our shared humanity. What will we write in our own scrolls for the coming year? What will we write in the scrolls of others? Will we participate in the work of completing creation or will we close down the possibilities of change? Will we become more conscious of the rest of the world impacted by our choices or will we shut out the clamouring voices of environmentalists, refugees, people caught up in famine, in war, in poverty?

We begin the ten days towards return – teshuvah. What will it look like? And what will the days and weeks and months look like after we close this festival period and no longer be quite so conscious of the trails we make on the pages of life.

Days are scrolls. We make our marks whether we choose to or not. We write and we read, changing not only our own life trajectory but also potentially those of others. What will we write on the scrolls in the coming year? What will we mark on the scroll of our own life and what will we mark on the life scrolls of others?

We live in a participatory universe, we create each day anew. Today is the beginning of a new year in a number of areas where we check our accounts and rebalance what we will do going forward. Let it also be the beginning of a new way of our being aware of what each of us is creating and is contributing to creation.

Sermone per Rosh HaShanà           Viviamo in un universo partecipativo

Di Rav Sylvia Rothschild, Lev Chadash Milano 2019

Il rabbino andaluso del XI secolo Bachya Ibn Pakuda fu l’autore del primo sistema ebraico di etica, nel suo libro noto come “I doveri del cuore” “Hovot HaLev“. Introdusse il suo libro dicendo che molti ebrei sembravano preoccuparsi solo dell’osservanza esteriore, dei rituali, dei doveri che devono essere eseguiti dalle parti del corpo “Hovot HaEvarim“, ma non quelli della mente interiore o delle idee guida e dei valori della tradizione ebraica. Bachya volle spiegare che l’ebraismo era più che un comportamento rituale o abituale, più che una performance meccanicistica: insegnò che l’ebraismo è l’incarnazione di una grande verità spirituale.

Questa verità non è folcloristica o magica, ma basata sulla ragione, sulla rivelazione, sulla ricerca di Dio attraverso la Torà. Scrisse che c’era un grande bisogno che i molti testi etici rabbinici fossero riuniti in un sistema coerente, nella speranza che l’ebraismo meccanicistico lasciasse il posto a un modo più ponderato e più profondo di vivere la religione.

È una  sfortunata realtà che per molti ebrei le mitzvot siano classificate come Hovot HaEvarim (doveri degli organi) o come  Hovot HaLev (doveri del cuore).

Rav Soloveitchik ha insegnato che uno può vedere le mitzvot in entrambi i modi, nelle sue parole le mitzvot sono sia “messe in atto” (Hovot HaEvarim) che “appagate” (Hovot HaLev), e quando si esegue la mitzvà su un piano ma non sull’altro, in realtà non stiamo completando la mitzvà. Uno degli esempi di Soloveitchik in questo saggio sono le mitzvot della preghiera e del pentimento. Possiamo presentarci alla sinagoga e dire tutte le parole giuste, ma se le parole non hanno alcun effetto su di noi, allora sono prive di scopo e non abbiamo adempiuto il nostro obbligo. La preghiera, nota anche come avodà shebalev, il servizio del cuore, è molto più che la recitazione di formule sia in comunità che da soli. La teshuvà, l’atto di riparare e tornare, non ha alcun potere se mette solo una pezza su un problema senza cambiarci e cambiare il nostro comportamento futuro. Come possiamo evitare che le parole abituali che le nostre bocche possono dire o le nostre orecchie sentire, manchino di cambiare i nostri cuori?

Bachya ha scritto che la maggior parte delle persone agisce in accordo con il proprio interesse personale, con ciò che vede come egoista e mondano piuttosto che con qualsiasi motivazione più alta o più altruista. Voleva che arrivassimo oltre i nostri bisogni e desideri, per servire volontariamente e gioiosamente Dio, qualunque cosa Dio richieda da noi.

Soloveitchik era interessato non solo al fare, ma alla conoscenza di Dio. Scrisse: “Credere è necessario ma non è abbastanza, bisogna anche sentire e percepire l’esistenza di Dio”.

Entrambi questi profondi pensatori possono aiutarci nel viaggio che stiamo facendo attraverso gli Yamim Noraim, così come nel futuro. Soloveitchik ha creato il paradigma della persona pentita, quella che ritorna a Dio, in questo modo: “La persona incarna l’esperienza che inizia con un sentimento di peccato e finisce con la redenzione di una meravigliosa vicinanza a Dio. Tra questi due punti, gli esseri umani si ergono come creatori di mondi, lì, mentre modelliamo la più grande delle nostre opere, noi stessi ”Non sono sicura di essere pienamente d’accordo con Soloveitchik, ma certamente concordo sulla sua affermazione che in effetti modelliamo noi stessi attraverso le nostre scelte e le nostre azioni, e anche la nostra inazione.

Siamo creatori di mondi! Il pensiero ebraico ha sempre posto gli esseri umani in questo ruolo. La Bibbia insegna fin dai suoi primi capitoli che collaboriamo con Dio nella creazione in corso di questo mondo. Con Adamo, poi Noè, poi Abramo, la collaborazione è sempre più formalizzata fino all’alleanza con Mosè e l’intero popolo Israele, tutti quelli che ci saranno o che lo diventeranno. La tradizione rabbinica si basa sui testi che descrivono l’Alleanza del Sinai e insegna che ci sono due Torà che lì sono state date: la Torà scritta (Torà shebichtav) e quella orale (Torà she’b’al pè). La Torà orale non è di per sé un insegnamento trasmesso, ma il percorso per interpretare la Torà scritta, che è aperta a una molteplicità di significati.

Come scrisse Nachmanide “Perché era in accordo con le interpretazioni che i Rabbini avrebbero dato, che Dio ci ha dato la Torà”. “Avrebbero dato“, lasciando l’apertura ai tempi futuri, a nuove comprensioni, alla creazione continua.

Per tutto il tempo in cui l’ebraismo si è evoluto, esiste un’importante direttiva per tutti noi: la creazione continua del mondo dipende non solo da Dio, ma da noi. Perché è così?

Forse la più sviluppata, ma certamente non l’unica, e neppure la teoria più importante, è la teoria cabalistica lurianica del XVI secolo. Ci insegna che il nostro lavoro consiste nel raccogliere le scintille del divino da qualsiasi parte del mondo esse siano incorporate, al fine di creare un tikkun completo, per riparare e ripristinare il mondo al suo stato originale di unità primordiale in relazione con Dio.

Ora, se vogliamo tornare allo stato binario primordiale di purezza e scorie, non mescolate e strettamente circoscritte, siamo a un punto controverso, ma certamente la visione ebraica del mondo, ovunque uno guardi nella nostra tradizione, è che questa collaborazione di co-creazione è la nostra ragione d’essere. È il modo in cui costruiamo una relazione con Dio, e questa relazione è vista come l’aspirazione fondamentale dell’umanità; La nostra tradizione ci dice che questa aspirazione è uguale per Dio. Dio vuole che noi, le creazioni di Dio, diventiamo noi stessi creatori. Fare qualcosa del nostro tempo nel mondo, cambiarlo anche se solo un po’ e lasciarlo un posto migliore per il nostro essere qui. Come vorrebbe la tradizione chassidica “niente è più prezioso per noi di quello che creiamo attraverso il duro lavoro e la lotta. Lo splendore che estraiamo dalla polvere, la bellezza che possiamo ricavare dai pezzi rotti … prendere le cose che ci vengono date, le cose danneggiate e rotte, persino le nostre stesse vite che possono essere ferite e fragili e renderle intere. Questo è il fondamento dell’esistenza dei nostri mondi, lo scopo con cui è stato pensato, il desiderio del Creatore che quelli creati diventassero essi stessi creatori e partner nel perfezionamento del mondo di Dio”. (Maamar BeChukotai)

Ciò a cui puntano i nostri testi può essere trovato anche nella meccanica quantistica.

Secondo le regole della meccanica quantistica, le nostre osservazioni influenzano l’universo ai livelli più fondamentali. Il confine tra un “mondo là fuori” oggettivo e la nostra coscienza soggettiva sfuma … Quando i fisici guardano i costituenti di base della realtà, atomi o fotoni, ciò che vedono dipende da come hanno organizzato il loro esperimento. Le osservazioni di un fisico determinano se un atomo, per esempio, si comporti come un’onda fluida o una particella dura, o quale percorso segua nel viaggio da un punto all’altro. Dal punto di vista quantistico l’universo è un luogo estremamente interattivo e tutte le possibilità esistono, almeno fino a quando non vengono osservate. Nelle parole del fisico americano John Wheeler, “viviamo in un” universo partecipativo”.

Ora, io non sono un fisico, e credo che neppure molti di voi lo siano, ma mi affascina come le stesse idee possano emergere sia dalla scienza che dalla religione.

“Viviamo in un universo partecipativo.”

L’ebraismo insegna che le nostre azioni contano, che anche piccoli cambiamenti nei nostri comportamenti possono potenzialmente causare grandi cambiamenti sia a noi stessi che agli altri; che il modo in cui ci comportiamo nel mondo può avere effetti trasformativi. Ci chiede di essere consapevoli del nostro ambiente, di come trattiamo lo straniero e il vulnerabile. Ci ricorda che la terra non appartiene a noi ma a Dio, in definitiva tutto è in prestito per noi, non prenderemo nulla quando lasceremo questo mondo. “Al Signore appartengono la terra e tutto ciò che essa contiene”, dice il salmo (24), “e tutti coloro che vivono su di essa”.

לַיהוָה, הָאָרֶץ וּמְלוֹאָהּ –

Ma mentre siamo qui, abbiamo la responsabilità della creazione: il mondo non è un’entità separata non toccata dalla nostra presenza, viviamo in un universo partecipativo.

Bachya, Soloveitchik, la Kabbalà lurianica, la fisica quantistica, tutti ci ricordano che esistiamo in relazione con gli altri e con “l’altro” e con noi stessi. Cosa facciamo, come agiamo – è importante per qualcosa di più della nostra sola coscienza o dei nostri sentimenti. Ognuno di noi è parte della creazione continua del nostro mondo.

Ciò che ha scritto Bachya è rinomato: “I giorni sono pergamene, scrivi su di essi ciò che vuoi venga ricordato”. Cosa intendeva esattamente con questo? Si sta riferendo al “libro della vita” talmudico in cui vengono registrate le azioni di tutti a beneficio della corte celeste e per se stessi? Si riferisce alla biblioteca della storia, così che mentre ognuno di noi vive e muore, qualcosa di noi rimane e vi si può accedere per ricordarci? Sta dicendo che scriviamo solo sui nostri rotoli o si riferisce al modo in cui influenziamo gli altri “rotoli”, come li trattiamo mentre vengono scritti nella loro stessa esperienza, forse per essere trattati in futuro da un terapeuta o per essere trattenuti come aiuto di supporto in tempi difficili?

Durante gli Yamim Noraim tendiamo a riflettere sulle nostre stesse vite, i nostri obiettivi, le nostre speranze, i nostri errori, i nostri sentimenti … Pensiamo a come abbiamo agito e come possiamo riparare ciò che abbiamo fatto, come migliorarci. È un lavoro importante, che riflette sul modo in cui viviamo la nostra vita, lavorando per diventare le persone che vorremmo essere.

Ma c’è un altro aspetto nel lavoro degli Yamim Noraim. Apparteniamo a un universo partecipativo, siamo creatori di mondi.

I giorni sono pergamene. E i rotoli incarnano le parole e le esperienze, gli insegnamenti e gli errori, l’apprendimento e il fare non solo di noi stessi, ma della nostra gente e, in definitiva, della nostra umanità condivisa. Cosa scriveremo nelle nostre pergamene per il prossimo anno? Cosa scriveremo nelle pergamene degli altri? Parteciperemo al lavoro di completamento della creazione o chiuderemo le possibilità di cambiamento? Diventeremo più consapevoli del resto del mondo influenzato dalle nostre scelte o elimineremo le voci clamorose degli ambientalisti, dei rifugiati, delle persone coinvolte nella carestia, nella guerra, nella povertà?

Iniziamo i dieci giorni verso il ritorno, la teshuvà. A cosa somiglierà? E come saranno i giorni, le settimane e i mesi dopo la chiusura di questo periodo delle festività quando non saremo più così consapevoli dei sentieri che tracciamo sulle pagine della vita.

I giorni sono pergamene. Lasciamo il segno che scegliamo oppure no. Scriviamo e leggiamo, cambiando non solo la nostra traiettoria di vita ma anche potenzialmente quella degli altri. Cosa scriveremo sulle pergamene nel prossimo anno? Cosa segneremo sulla pergamena della nostra vita e cosa segneremo sulla pergamena della vita degli altri?

Viviamo in un universo partecipativo, creiamo ogni giorno nuovamente. Oggi è l’inizio di un nuovo anno in una serie di settori in cui controlliamo i nostri conti e riequilibriamo ciò che faremo in futuro. Facciamo che sia anche l’inizio di un nuovo modo di essere consapevoli di ciò che ognuno di noi sta creando e sta contribuendo alla creazione.

Traduzione di Eva Mangialajo

Parashat Shelach Lecha: The faith of women is overlooked and the result is catastrophic

Posted on by
2

וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהוָֹ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר: ב שְׁלַח־לְךָ֣ אֲנָשִׁ֗ים וְיָתֻ֨רוּ֙ אֶת־אֶ֣רֶץ כְּנַ֔עַן אֲשֶׁר־אֲנִ֥י נֹתֵ֖ן לִבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אִ֣ישׁ אֶחָד֩ אִ֨ישׁ אֶחָ֜ד לְמַטֵּ֤ה אֲבֹתָיו֙ תִּשְׁלָ֔חוּ כֹּ֖ל נָשִׂ֥יא בָהֶֽם:

God tells Moses to send men to travel round the land of Canaan, which God is giving to the children of Israel – one man from each ancestral tribe, each one a leader.

So begins the tale of the spies, whose return from reconnoitering the land  bringing stories of the hopelessness of the enterprise led to the people to become so disheartened that the story of the Israelites entering their promised land may easily have ended right here.  Certainly it becomes clear that the people are not yet ready to take the next step, and a prolonged sojourn in the wilderness as a new generation grows and takes over is necessary.

At first sight it seems a bit of an own goal – God tells Moses to send the men, trusted leaders who are – as Rashi says, commenting on the use of the word “anashim” – important and also righteous.  And yet the failure of leadership – apart from the perspectives of Joshua and Caleb – is catastrophic for the generation of the exodus.

The traditional commentators are interested in this story, in what went so badly wrong that the trajectory of the narrative was skewed and the journey that should have taken a short time ended up being one that took forty years.

Clearly there is a problem with the spies. Firstly comes the question of “shelach lecha” – a phrase that sounds so close to the divine commandment to Abraham “lech lecha”, and yet unlike Abraham’s journey of trust in God and of his own spiritual and material growth, this journey seems to be the exact opposite.

The casual reader might assume that a military reconnoitre of the land God is giving would be simple good practise. After all, even though God says “I am giving the land to the Children of Israel”,  surely a back-up plan is sensible.   But the reader trained to read through the Jewish texts will see this differently.

“Shelach lecha” – send “for yourself” – this is not something that God needed Moses to do, it was something that Moses and the children of Israel needed to do. Unlike  “Lech lecha” – Go to/for yourself” this is not a journey of discovery of the self, it is a journey to allay the fears the self already has. It bespeaks a lack of trust in God. The midrashic traditions picks this up – sending the men is a demonstration of lack of faith in God, but there is a further question we must ask. God is telling Moses not to simply have faith, but saying “you can send if you must”.

In the retelling of the story in Deuteronomy (1:20-46) it becomes clear from Moses’ speech that the request to send men does not come from God but from the people.  Moses tells the story like this “Behold, the Eternal your God has set the land before you, go up and take possession of it as the Eternal, the God of your ancestors told you. Do not fear and do not be dismayed. And you came to me, all of you, and said “Let us send men before us so that they will look out the land for us and bring us word of the way by which we should go up, and the cities we will encounter. And it seemed a good idea to me, and I took twelve men of you, one man for every tribe….”

This now begs the question, if it seemed not unreasonable that the people might want to know more about the land, and God – while not requiring this – did not command against it, then who SHOULD have been sent up to see the lay of the land?

The clue lies in the context of the story. It takes place just after the story of Miriam and the Cushite woman, where Miriam seems to be punished for speaking falsely, for asserting her own importance at the expense of another, and for showing lack of respect for others. A lesson needs to be learned, the question is – who has learned it?

Fantastically Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim ben Aaron Luntschitz, (1550 – 1619) the scholar and poet and writer of his own Torah commentary (Kli Yekar) asks this question and answers it: Who should have been sent? The women!

He bases his opinion on a number of midrashic stories where it is the women who show themselves to have more faith than the men. They continue to have babies even when the Egyptian authorities try to murder their new-borns and their men refuse to have sexual relations with them. They protect their baby sons in this time. They refuse to give up their jewellery at first when the golden calf is created.  So when faith is really needed, it is the women who provide it.

The Kli Yekar notes that when the spies bring back their report of the difficulty of taking the land which is well protected and whose people look strong and powerful, the men revolt and want to return to Egypt.  In Chapter 14 the text is clear that while all the people wept, it was the men who said “why did God bring us to this land to fall by the sword, our wives and children will be prey, it would be better to return to Egypt. So they said to each other, let us appoint a leader and let us return to Egypt” (1:2-4). This establishes the lack of faith of the men for the Kli Yakar who goes on to compare this behaviour with that of the daughters of Zelophechad who specifically ask to be able to own the land of their father who had died without a male heir. For Rabbi Luntschitz this shows – along with all the other examples of women’s faith – that the faith of women is superior to that of the men, and hence if Moses had really wanted to send people on this errand that demonstrated a lack of complete faith in God, he should have sent women who would not have fallen so easily into the fearfulness and desire to return to Egypt rather than go forward into the land.

For the Kli Yekar Moses made a disastrous decision that was informed more by his prejudice about men’s roles and women’s roles and less by any empirical observation as to who had shown real faith in God.  Had Moses sent women to spy out the land (and it doesn’t seem to worry him that women might be functioning as army scouts, unlike some of today’s rabbonim) then they would have returned with the information and framed it in the same hopeful and faithful way that Joshua and Caleb did – it is a tough land to conquer but God is with us.

Add to this that the women have seen what happened to Miriam when she was banished with a skin complaint for her ungracious behaviour that had asserted her importance over the Cushite woman – they know that God is watching closely, that trusting in God is important.

But the men – Moses among them – are caught up with their own status. They are princes, they are leadership, they are important – they are anashim.  They have learned nothing, neither about God’s continued presence nor about humility and faith. Shelach lecha – it is all about them.  And when it fails, the answer is to find another leader from among their ranks and return to business as usual, go back to the safety of the slave routine of Egypt.

As the orthodox world continues to struggle with the role of women, perpetually trying to find ways to put us out of the public space and to assert the norms of the patriarchy, it is sobering to read the thoughts of one rabbi from the 16th century who recognised the need for women to come into the public space and be acknowledged for their own selves.

The Kli Yekar takes his name from the book of Proverbs 20:15 “Gold there is, and rubies in abundance, but lips that speak knowledge are a rare jewel”

He is indeed a rare jewel, he speaks from within the tradition and he speaks a deep truth. Almost all commentators agree that God did not want Moses to send anyone to scout out the land – it was an act of lack of faith. But if someone did have to go to reassure the people, send people whose faith you can trust in- and who better in this case than the people who have demonstrated again and again their trust in God and in a better future?  – The women of the exodus.

Parashat Bemidbar:counting a community not calculating for the individual

Posted on by
Reply

 

We are in the time of the counting the omer – the days between Pesach and Shavuot – which give an awareness of, and a prominence to the link between Freedom (Pesach) and Responsibility (Shavuot).

Counting is something that has long roots in Jewish tradition- we count days and weeks of the omer, we count the days of penitence between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we count the years for the shemittah year and we count the multiples of shemittah years for the Jubilee year. The scribe will count the letters written in a Torah scroll in order to check that there are none added and none removed accidentally.  We even count the days till brit and the “white days” in the menstrual cycle.  But counting people has always been a problem in Jewish tradition – it is forbidden to take a direct numbering of the people of Israel and plague was often the result for those who tried. The Talmud tells us “Rabbi Eleazar said: Whosoever counts Israel, transgresses a [biblical] prohibition, as it is said: “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured” [Hosea]. R. Nachman b. Isaac said: He would transgress two prohibitions, for it is written: ‘Which cannot be measured or numbered’.

Counting people can be said to take away the uniqueness of the individual, turning them simply into a number, dehumanizing the person. At the same time one could argue that as every number is different, the person is stripped not so much of individuality as of community. Yet community power resides within numbers. The development of the three patriarchs to the seventy souls who went down with Jacob to Egypt, to the over six hundred thousand at Sinai show how the community, the peoplehood, grew.  We still understand a community to be the number we can count on the fingers of two hands – a minyan is ten people. Numbers bind us into community and they bind us to our roots. The traditional way of counting a minyan is to recite verse 9 of psalm 28 – the ten words of which being “hoshia et amecha uvarech et nachalatecha ur’eim venasseim ad ha’olam – Save Your people, and bless Your inheritance and tend them, and carry them for ever. Another traditional way is to say “not one, not two, not three etc”

The fear of counting people and thus separating them from the community and possibly from their own humanity has long roots in Judaism – only God is really allowed to count us, only God is seen as having the ability to count without discounting so to speak. Yet the need to understand the community and to be able to count people into the community continues.  And the way that bible recommends is that we ask for a contribution from people and each contribution is counted.

It isn’t so odd as it sounds. Effectively the half shekel poll tax in order to support the Temple was both a fundraising activity and a way of measuring the numerical strength of the community. But I particularly resonate to the requirement that asks of people that in order for their presence to be recognised, they should offer some basic support to the community, and with this support they will be counted in.

The idea of being in a community by virtue of what you are offering to that community – not life changing amounts of money per se as the half shekel was a deliberately small amount designed to be possible for everyone to give, but a contribution nevertheless is the expression of an ancient idea that you are part of the community if you choose to offer something of yourself to it, if you partake of it, if you participate within it. You are part of the community if the community can count on you.

Listening to the emotive and emotional arguments about the wider community issue on the agenda today – the arguments about whether we should remain in the European Union or leave it and forge a new path– we hear a lot of words but can discern very little useful information to help frame our thoughts. One recent analysis of the words used most by the two campaigns show that Remain repeatedly use the three words “Jobs”, “Trade”, Businesses”, while the Leave campaign use “controlled” “NHS” and “Money”. It seems clear that the argument for economic stability sits with the Remain campaign, the argument for autonomy with the Leave. But as we move from Pesach to Shavuot, from Freedom to Responsibility, and into the book of Bemidbar, of the transitional neither-here-nor-there liminal space of the wilderness on whose other side will be the border with the promised land I find myself more and more cross that the language being used is of self-interest and self-regard, of “what can I not give to the community” and “what can I get from the community”.

Where is the rhetoric of commonality or of shared aims and aspirations? Where is the language of supporting each other, of helping each other to make a better world?

All I hear is calculation, and I am reminded of a quotation attributed to the architect Daniel Libeskind that “Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it’s about experience, it’s about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.”

Life is best lived in relationship, in community with others, sometimes taking and sometimes giving but always associating with the other. The more I think of how we count a minyan – with the formula “not one, not two, not three”, the more I like the reminder that we are bound together, that while we may be individuals with our own self-interest and self-regard, what is most important about us is that we together can rise over our individualism in order to form something much bigger and much more nourishing for us all – we can  form community.