Equality and Wealth--What Moses Teaches Us

I delivered this as the d'var Torah (sermon) at Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA on August 7, 2021.

All of us face moments when we very consciously are at the intersection of before and after, of past and future. It may be as we plan out a career change. As we leap into parenthood. As we leave a home where we’ve built a life, to start a new stage in our journey. Or as we end a period of drifting and begin to build a settled life.

That last type of transition is the intersection of past and future at which the Israelites find themselves before crossing the Jordan, and in Parasha Re’eh Moses helps them to establish clear distinctions between the two. At the same time, he draws some threads between them, so we have forever remained bound up with yet separate from our time as wanderers in the desert.

If the Israelites don’t know they are at this at this crossroads—or more accurately cross-river—Moses is going to make sure they figure it out.

As soon as they enter the land, he tells them, they must reaffirm the covenant in a ceremony that will be described when we get to Parasha Ki Tavo in a few weeks. This points to just how transformative it will be to cross the Jordan, that it requires a sort of reboot of our covenant with God.

Then they must destroy any site of worship or sacrifice that will not be the central one. This seems like it would be connected to ensuring there is no vestige of Paganism. But that doesn’t seem to be to be the whole story. Because it’s not only about destroying the prior sites. They also cannot establish any such site anew. There is only one, and it is fixed. Wandering in the desert, the place of God’s presence was, like the entire community, a roving site. But now connection with God, where God inhabits and can be worshipped, is rooted firmly in place. This is so critical, that the people are given permission to slaughter and eat meat where they live, so long as it is not a sacrificial slaughter, so the urge for meat can be satisfied without worrying about creating sacrificial sites that are conveniently close to home.  With the settlement of the people comes the settlement of God in their midst, and by laying it out Moses clearly signals a new phase, the passage from past to future.

I find especially interesting the advice Moses gives on discerning true prophecy from false. Those giving “a sign or a portent” should not be heeded. Instead we must listen to the message –“God’s commandments alone”—and know the difference. We must not be distracted from the substance of God’s word by what appear as wonders. Yet God provided Moses with the ability to perform signs and wonders in order to be believed, in the desert we know God’s presence through visual wonders—a pilar of cloud and fire. So again, the Israelites understand that their world is about to change, and they must change with it. They must live by the firm and fast words of the commandments and no longer be distracted by the types of bells and whistles that until now pulled their attention where it needed to go—but now would only serve to lead them astray.

So what are they learning about this imminent future?

It’s a different life—so different, the covenant needs affirmation there. The change will be so jarring, that they’ll need this ceremonial reminder, this reassertion.

It’s a fixed kind of life—so fixed, that even sacrificial worship, even God’s inhabitance, has one and only one place. No urge to connect with God, wherever one may be,  can warrant sacrifice elsewhere.

It’s a serious kind of life, one that requires substantive discernment to overcome the lure and distraction of visual enticements.

As Moses says, it’s a disciplined life, where “[y]ou shall not act at all as we now act here, every man as he pleases.” In return for the land and the security it affords, we have to change. And with that security, we have the wherewithal to change. The insecurities and physical challenges of wandering without a stable home or homeland, with only a memory of slavery behind us, has not left a lot of time, energy or focus for the level of discipline and clarity that Moses is describing.

There’s another big change, which also derives from entering a more secure and stable life. As Rabbi Shai Held puts it in The Heart of Torah, this is a point of “transform[ing] Israel into a community of mutual care and concern.” In this parashah we are told to tithe to sustain the Levites, the strangers, the orphans and the widows; to forgive debts; to “open your hand” to the needy so they will have what they require; to free slaves and when doing so to give them the sustaining assets they need to forge an independent life.

It’s interesting that just before telling the Israelites to care for the needy, Moses says “There shall be no needy among you.” This may seem like a contradiction.

But I believe that it is at the heart of these commandments to care for those in need. It’s a statement of our fundamental equality. Some may need financial help, but we are equally endowed as members of society, and what we do to redistribute wealth more equitably is simply in the service of that basic equality. As Rabbi Held puts it, “The Torah exhorts Israel to remember that socioeconomic status tells us nothing at all about the real worth of people.” Quoting biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, he adds “…economic realities are not definitional; rather what is definitional is a common memory of the Exodus; a common blessing in the land; and a common allegiance to the God of Exodus and the land.”

We cannot simply avoid oppressing. We must actively seek to help, taking part with intention in equalizing the stability and security that is endowed to us as we cross the Jordan. If we don’t help the poor, in fact, they should cry out and God will find our lack of generosity beyond toleration—we will be punished. Economic viability is in the service of community viability, and that healthy social fabric is contingent on the economic health of each and every individual.

After Moses lays down these and many other rules for the land and life to come, he moves on the pilgrimage festivals. The Passover sacrifice followed by seven days eating unleavened bread; seven weeks later, to mark the end of the harvest, the Feast of Weeks; and then once the produce is processed, the Feast of Booths.

We have just been lectured on the strikingly different life we must lead in this future, and now we are told to observe festivals that will interweave that future with the past we are leaving.

Passover connects us to our departure from Egypt as we struck out to be desert wanderers. The harvest pull us forward again to a life rooted in a fixed agricultural society. And then Sukkot returns us to our uprooted existence in impermanent structures.

Why should the parashah end this way?

We cannot advance our future without knowing where we are from. Remember Brueggemann’s observation that “what is definitional is a common memory of the Exodus; a common blessing in the land; and a common allegiance to the God of Exodus and the land.”

There is no severing those connections. As sharply different as a future stage in life may be, we build it on and in reaction to the experiences of our past. When Moses tells us to free our slaves, he reminds us that we were slaves in Egypt. By nestling the celebration of the harvest—the quintessential bounty of wealth and security in a settled land—between the experiences of the exodus and our nomadic wandering, we remember where we came from and the hardships we endured on the way to crossing the Jordan. And in remembering that, perhaps we can remember to do our part in equalizing our wealth and security, and thus strengthening the social fabric for all.

 

 

Bullies

Preamble:

In honor of my father, I delivered this essay as the d'var Torah (words of Torah, or sermon) at Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA on July 28, 2018. The 7th anniversary of my father's death, on the Jewish calendar, would be the coming Wednesday. 

This was the first I've felt nervous before speaking in a long time. I knew there was risk in delivering these words. Thanks to a sudden inspiration just before I came up to the lectern, I set the stage by telling a story of when my son was a child and he pre-negotiated my understanding and patience ("promise you won't lose it with me") before telling me he'd bounced a super ball in his room and right through the glass of his front window...leading to some valuable lessons learned. I asked the congregation also to not lose it, because what I was about to say may be jarring but maybe we'd find things to learn together if they stuck with me.

My father, of course, always was frightened for me when I took risks; but he also was proud of me once I had. I hope this essay would have made him proud.

Vocabulary notes:

• Parashah = weekly Torah portion
• Torah = the Five Books of Moses
• Va-etḥannan = the name of the week's portion, which encompasses Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11
• JPS Tanach = An edition of the complete Hebrew bible published by the Jewish Publication Society
• Humash = the Torah in printed form (rather than in the sacred scroll)
• Etz Hayyim humash = a particular printing of the humash from the Rabbinical Assembly of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, with translation and commentary; the edition is titled "Etz Hayyim" or "Tree of Life"
• Adonai = a term for God that I use when the translation says "Lord," as I am uncomfortable with the gendered translation

~~~

I don’t like God very much, in this parashah.

Running a search on the JPS Tanach translation, I found God described as “impassioned” three times and “compassionate” only once. God’s mood is portrayed three times as angry, while God’s love for us mentioned just once—yet our required love for God surfaces three times.

These data underscore the emotional response I feel when reading the parashah this year—that it portrays God primarily as an angry and self-referential authoritarian.

I’ve studied, written and spoken about Va-etḥannan before, and this isn’t always what rises to the top for me.  Just last year, speaking on the occasion of my father’s yahrzeit as I am today, I focused on the imperative of social justice for living in community and the urgency of teaching the next generation. I have scribbled notes in my Etz Hayyim humash, over the years, about our role in serving as a positive example; about the moment of the covenant transcending generations; about going even beyond the mitzvot to “do what is right and good” (Deut. 6:18); and of course about the inclusion of the Decalogue and the Shema.

But when I turned to Va-etḥannan this year, these are the passages that stood out:

You saw with your own eyes what Adonai did in the matter of Baal-peor, that Adonai your God wiped out from among you every person who followed Baal-peor; while you, who held fast to Adonai your God, are all alive today. (Deut. 4:3-4)

Take care, then, not to forget the covenant that Adonai your God concluded with you…. For Adonai your God is a consuming fire, an impassioned God. (Deut. 4:23-24)

For I Adonai your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Deut. 5:9-10)

Do not follow other gods, any gods of the people about you—for Adonai your God in your midst is an impassioned God—lest the anger of Adonai your God blaze forth against you and God wipe you off the face of the earth. (Deut 6:14-15)

Why is this how I am experiencing the text? The answer came to me last weekend while reading the novel The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton. It’s about five young women who form a tight bond while living in Palo Alto, California, in the 60s and 70s. One, Ally, is a white woman who married an Indian man and faced discrimination from many fronts. Here’s a passage:

Ally couldn’t say when, exactly, she’d fallen in love with Jim. Maybe that first moment she’d heard his lyrical voice—“excuse me, ma’am”—before she’d even looked up to see his face.

She knew her parents might be reluctant, that they’d worry about the problems she and Jim and their children would face. But she never imagined they would refuse to have Jim in their home, even to meet him. She never imagined that her father wouldn’t walk her down the aisle in the end, that she’d be married by a justice of the peace in Ann Arbor, in a dress she’d owned for years.

“I was sure my mom and dad would embrace Jim eventually,” she would tell us later. “You can’t know Jim and not love him. I never imagined they never would come to know him, that when I told them we were married they’d hide their goddamned prejudice behind the excuse that Jim wasn’t Christian.”

And while we were blinking at that—at Ally swearing and meaning it—she would say, “’For I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.’ Those were the last words my mother said to me, the last time she acknowledged I was alive. A quote from the goddamned Bible, from Exodus, for Christ goddamned sake.”

The quote is indeed from Exodus—Chapter 20, verse 5. And Va-etḥannan echoes it.

Ally’s late 1960s fictional mother cites religious belief to justify hate and quotes biblical text to validate turning against her own daughter. In 2018, real-life figures are similarly misappropriating sacred text. I believe most of us recall that last month Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended Administration immigration policy that led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents by saying, “I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.”

A June 15 article in Slate pointed out that the same Christian bible passage was used to defend slavery in the United States by arguing that it mandated obedience to the Fugitive Slave Act, that some European church leaders quoted it to promote submission to Hitler, and that it was cited to defend the status quo in Apartheid South Africa. Yet, Slate reports, theologians consider this a corruption of the passage that “places God as the appointer of authorities, but not the appointer of specific laws,” with the understanding that no one should respect or comply with the orders of those authorities if those orders are evil or unjust.

On March 19, Marco Rubio tweeted:

I will place boys as their princes; the fickle will govern them & the people will oppress one another, yes, each one the neighbor. The child will be insolent toward the elder & the base toward the honorable. Isaiah 3:4-5

His intent was to scold the youth who emerged as leaders in advocating for gun control because they didn’t trust elected officials to take action. Yet the full passage actually describes a world of chaos in which “People will oppress each other—man against man, neighbor against neighbor” and the children rise up because the elders are unable to lead, incapable of acting in their honored roles.

It’s a form of bullying—this misuse of holy text to justify controversial policy or condemnation of another's views. People in positions of power are yielding a literary tool of authority (however ineptly) to bludgeon their adversaries and hold sway over their followers.

Is it surprising that politicians usurp the bible to play the bully, when the God that emerges in Va-etḥannan could readily serve as a model for bullying? They might learn from the example of God’s actions against Baal-peor to frighten us into submission. Or from the image of a fire consuming those who fail to honor a covenant. Or from forcing a choice between future generations suffering guilt or experiencing kindness, that loyalty might be coerced rather than earned. Or from the potential to be wiped off the earth should that loyalty ever wander.

This reminds me that we have heard a lot about demands for loyalty in the current administration—loyalty to a single authority figure rather than to principle or to the responsibilities of a position. Turning back to The Wednesday Sisters, our current situation has parallels to the era in which the novel is set. The narrator explores her ambivalence about the anti-war protests, saying:

I believed—most American’s believed—that the spread of communism would be loss of freedom and torture and death, and perhaps even nuclear war. We never imagined the communist world would just collapse as it did in the Soviet Union years later. We thought the only way to preserve our lifestyle was to fight theirs. And we couldn’t, truthfully, imagine that America might be wrong. We didn’t like to imagine that what we were doing as a country could be imperialist or illegal or just plain immoral any more than we liked to imagine an America that could be defeated by a small country of small people we thought of as less intelligent and less compassionate and less worthy than we were. So we just didn’t imagine it.

How current this sounds—the incapacity to stand up against immoral government action, the acceptance when those different from us are portrayed as less important, intelligent, decent or worthy, because it’s all so beyond what we can let ourselves imagine. This mindset—in which we so want to believe good of our country and by extension its elected officials—has left us particularly vulnerable to those who will bully us into, if not full fealty, at least inaction.

And this doesn’t apply only to political leaders. We have seen many other examples in which holding positions of authority can open the door to bullying, predatory and harassing behavior. We want to believe the best of our companies, our bosses, our teachers…and we want them to think the best of us. The #MeToo movement has woken us up to the danger of this power dynamic and emboldened many women to speak up about our experiences. But this progress toward awareness in one dimension seems to brush aside the broader issue, as I repeatedly see people calling for gender diversity in work groups and conference panels without even taking notice that everyone in the room is white.

Does the example of the jealous, impassioned, easily angered, punishing aspect of God—the one who demands loyalty yet can confer great kindness and rewards—model, reinforce and serve to justify the bullying behaviors of political and other authorities? Or does monotheism guard against this because only God’s self holds the true role of authority, as exemplified in the parashah by Moses ascribing all that he describes to God—with his impending death resulting from the moment when he acted outside God’s authority? Or does our belief that we are created in God’s image communicate to some that they can seize authority through authoritarianism?

It really doesn’t matter whether I like God in this parashah. After all, God is…God.  Most religious constructs establish that there are beings—or as in our case a singular being—whose actions and decisions we may not understand but we accept as having purpose and reason.

But the rest of us are not God. Much of what Moses rails against here—what earns the threat of God's wrath in his oratory—is the setting up of false Gods. Let's not imagine that the sin of idolatry is limited to the graven image.  At every instance we must call out, speak against and bring down those who set themselves up as false...and bullying...gods.

Which brings us to the most important question I ask today: what is our responsibility, as students, interpreters and custodians of these sacred texts, to eradicate the oppression perpetrated by the bullies?

~~~

Postscript:

I ended my d'var Torah with a question. But here, I'd like to offer some possible answers. 

1. I reject the notion I hear in many circles that rabbis should not preach political position from the pulpit.  That is so forceful in the Christian right and we just forfeit it for the most part. Anyone--particularly a community leader--who believes our political environment poses a critical threat to our humanity should use the tools she or he has to address that threat.
2. When we cannot trust the Federal government to function within the conceit of a Democracy or for the best interests of the people, we must organize and act on a local and regional level and develop a deliberate structure of linkages among those local and regional efforts (which I believe large, systemic, humane nonprofits can help facilitate), so we end up with a national network strong enough to serve the nation and facile enough to serve localities in a manner that meets human needs and fights the injustices from the Administration. I believe even synagogues can have a role in that, our linkages with other local organizations can be a start of this network, and the larger Jewish governance bodies and foundations can further it.

I hope this is the start of a dialogue that helps us find our way to actively repairing our world. Please use the comments section to offer your answers.

Legacy

I delivered this d'var Torah ("word of Torah," or sermon) at Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA on Saturday, August 5, 2017.

*** 

My father, Bernard Wolfman

Next Shabbat will be my father’s yahrzeit, and each year I like to honor his memory by delivering a d’var Torah around this time.

Va-etḥannan seems like an appropriate parashah for recalling my father. I won’t suggest that he was a modern-day Moses, but my father was called teacher by many. His role as an educator—professionally and as a parent—was a tremendous source of satisfaction for him and a great benefit to all of us on the receiving end. Just as Moses is facing the end of his life by recounting to the Israelites the substance and meaning of the exceptional journey they have lived together and its implications for their future, as my father neared the end of his life he reflected on our family. There was one remarkable night when I sat by him and he narrated to me the emotional histories of each of his children, clarifying for me how closely he had paid attention throughout our lives and bequeathing to me his insights and the opportunity to build from them even in his absence.

One legacy my father left with all of us was his uncompromising commitment to social justice. This quite simply was woven into our family story—not only in what he told us, but in what we saw every day in how he lived and worked. Social justice also runs through the fabric of Moses’s narrative in Va-etḥannan.

From the opening, Moses essentially is saying “I won’t be there with you, much as I want and pleaded. So hear me because my words, and all we have seen together, are all I can give you; and what you take from them are what you can take with you.”

After recounting that he had not been worthy to live to enter the land, he nonetheless is prepared to provide the instructions that—if followed—will ensure the Israelites are worthy to do so. His personal story is instructive. As Moshe Rabbeinu, he teaches even through his frailties by demonstrating what not to do. And then he declares that this responsibility to serve as a model for others extends to all of Israel. “Observe them faithfully,” he says of the laws, “for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples.” (ch 4:vs 6) 

This brings to mind the Aleinu, which says first that we bow down and then—from our example—that all the world’s inhabitants will know to do so.

Just after this, (ch 4:vs8), the theme of social justice is emerging.  “What great nation has laws and rules as perfect as all this Teaching that I set before you this day?” Moses asks. But the notes in Etz Hayyim point out that the Hebrew says tzadekim, which better translates as “just” than “perfect.” So the message really is that the laws and teaching are uniquely just.

Interwoven with this is a theme of seeing, hearing and remembering. There is great emphasis on truly seeing and hearing, so one can learn, so these just laws are seared into memory and guide how one functions in the world—and into future generations. “Do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes…so that they do not fade from your mind,” he exhorts, adding, “And make them known to your children and to your children’s children.” He recalls that God said to him at Mount Horeb, “Gather the people to Me that I may let them hear My words, in order that they may learn…and may so teach their children.”

Moses goes on to exquisitely evoke revelation as a mystically visual and concretely hearing experience. “The mountain was ablaze with flames.” “[Y]ou heard the sound of words but perceived no shape—nothing but a voice.”

Continuing with the themes of seeing and hearing, the injunction against sculptured images of God characterizes idols as precisely the opposite of God’s appearance at Mount Horeb—they are concrete to see, and nothing to hear.  And they themselves “cannot see or hear or eat or smell.” (ch.4: vs.35-37) He goes on, “It has clearly been demonstrated to you that the Lord alone is God; there is none beside him. From the heavens He let you hear His voice to discipline you; on earth he let you see His great fire; and from amidst that fire you heard His words. And because he loved your fathers, He chose their heirs after them….” Again: hearing, seeing, and passing to future generations.

After this extraordinary justification for following the laws, and before giving them, we have a seemingly incongruous moment of social justice: (ch.4: vs.41-43) “Then Moses set aside three cities on the east side of the Jordan to which a manslayer could escape, one who unwittingly slew a fellow man without having been hostile to him in the past; he could flee to one of these cities and live.” This comes from the narrative voice, not Moses’s, and the reason for its appearance here is a little unclear. Maybe it’s a bit of unfinished business, and Moses worries that – once he delivers the laws—it will be time for him to die. So perhaps he believes that this is his last chance to create this protection for those who may accidentally commit manslaughter in the chaos that could ensue as they enter and battle for the land.

Whatever the reason for it to appear here, I find it compelling that the theme of social justice enters so strongly, just as we are about to enter the Decalogue. The ten commandments, as we know, move from laws about our relationship with God to those about our relationship with each other. We might therefore expect that social justice would enter into those later commandments. But in fact they start earlier.

The laws that address our relationship with God are punctuated with exhortations for social justice among people. “You shall not swear falsely by the name of the Lord your God; for the Lord will not clear one who swears falsely by His name.”—this may dictate how we invoke God, but it also forbids us from sworn false accusations against each other. And the requirement to observe Shabbat also addresses treatment of slaves, equality between men and women, and fair treatment of animals. Embedded in our relationship with God is an expectation of social justice.

Once we exit the Decalogue, the focus on hearing and seeing returns, again with the visual on the mystical and even overwhelmingly frightening end of the spectrum, with “the mountain…ablaze with fire,” and the aural at the firmly human end, with Moses as the intermediary through which the Israelites will hear “the laws and the rules.” Hearing, as a theme, reaches its apex with the words of the shema (ch6:vs4), succinctly charting the path from hearing to conviction to behavior and to teaching future generations. “Shema Yisrael Adonai elohenu, Adonau ehad…” “Hear, O Israel! Adonai is our God, Adonai alone. You shall love Adonai with all our heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children.”

Now, it gets complicated.

As we enter and take possession of the land and its many assets, we must do so with the humility of recognizing that we developed none of them. Such humility can be a key element of effectively pursuing social justice. We must “take heed that [we] do not forget the Lord who freed [us] from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage,” a reminder that often is coupled with specific social justice obligations, such as our responsibilities to strangers. And we are to “do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord,” another line that might lead us to a mindset of righteousness.

But instead, we are told to destroy the nations in the land without mercy, and that we must do so because we are God’s “treasured people”—chosen, despite being a small band, on the strength of an oath God made to our ancestors.

As I said, it’s complicated.

But today I’m taking from this parashah the elements that foster clarity. Truly hearing in a manner that brings understanding. The majesty of what we see in the world and how it manifests our experience of God, or spirituality, or mysticism—however we define it. The imperative of social justice for living in community. And the urgency of teaching the next generation. Moses shows us all, and my father certainly demonstrated to me, that these are brought into particularly sharp focus when we close in on the end of life.

I wish for all of us—wherever we are in the course of our lives— that we hear, that we see, that we learn, that we teach, that we foster social justice in all we do, and that we help ensure the same for the generations that follow us.

Shabbat Shalom.

For my grandson

I think often of tikkun olam—repairing the world.  There are some big, sweeping, important ideas related to this Jewish precept.  Such as social justice and caring for the earth, as just a couple examples.  My personal commitment to tikkun olam, however, is on a smaller scale: a daily, analytical decision-making approach to the options that face us each day, whether discreet or far-reaching. I suppose that I can measure success in my personal pursuit of tikkun olam by the frequency with which I consciously go through this process when the opportunity arises.  As I recently said to some colleagues, deciding on the right thing isn’t just about whether our reputation is at stake, or whether others ever will know the ramifications of our choices.  What defines me is what I know about myself and the decisions I’ve made.

In Judaism’s 10 Best Ideas, Arthur Greene points out in his chapter on tikkun olam: “The account of creation in Genesis reaches its climax when God sanctifies the Sabbath. That passage ends with a verse that says, if read literally, ‘God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, for in it God rested from all the labor that God created to do’ (Gen. 2:3).”  This suggests to me that God’s work was not simply to create the world, but to create a world in which we would have a creative role.  For that creative role to have meaning, the world as “finished” by God must be imperfect. Hanging out there is the notion of the future messianic era, but it is not for us to await such perfection—rather, it is our responsibility to move the world ever closer with our restorative contributions.  This is tikkun olam.

In a discussion about Greene’s chapter, a member of my congregation talked about tikkun olam in connection with the legacy each of us passes down and leaves behind. This put me in mind of a recent dialogue on Facebook.  My daughter Audrey wrote:

While I'm so thrilled by the news in NY re: fracking ban and what it might mean as a precedent for environmental justice, my emotions are conflicted. It is hard to reconcile the joys of local sustainability victories with the sorrows of far-off tragedies... to care about future generations close to home without equal care for distant populations. I realize nobody can tend to the whole world or place it all on his shoulders, but I can't help thinking of the mothers of those young children in Pakistan when I see all the celebratory talk about the fracking decision, since they're both bombarding my digital world at the same moment in time.

Audrey is pregnant, her due date just nine days from when I am writing this.  She was recognizing the tension between joy and sorrow, the chasm that often yawns between our personal priorities and the world condition, and the questions tragedies raise about the world into which we choose to bring a new generation.  I responded to her:

It is an extraordinary blessing to be able to find joy in our lives even while we feel and cry for the deep sadness that may be at the same time in our own lives and in others'. Last night, I wanted joyfully to watch the news over and over to see the images of … Alan [Gross, my good friend Estelle’s cousin] finally being released from captivity in Cuba, and yet that interspersed with the excruciating news and images--from which we cannot and should not hide--in Pakistan. When we are expectant parents, we can't help but ask ourselves: what kind of world are we bringing this child into? The answer is--has always been--both kinds, and we have the opportunity to raise one more child to add to the vast majority of people who are so very good and, we can only hope and teach, to do his part to make it better.

Yesterday, my daughter told me of the exhaustingly busy day she’d had making the final preparations for the baby.  Cleaning, organizing, putting the car seat into place, packing the hospital bag, buying the last basics.  The next day, she said, she would rest.  How very much that sounds like “God rested from all the labor that God created to do.” Just substitute “parent” for “God.”  She was finishing with the act of creation that would come before the ongoing creation there will be to do, in the birth and raising of this new human being.  And all day, Audrey told me, as she accomplished these things she could not get out of her head the traditional tune of Adon Olam, the closing prayer of the Shabbat morning service.

Audrey did not have the words in mind, but these are the first stanzas of Adon Olam:

Before creation shaped the world, eternally God reigned alone;

but only with creation done could God as sovereign be known.

When all is ended, God alone will reign in awesome majesty.

(Translation from  Siddur Sim Shalom, The Rabbinical Assembly, fourth printing, 1999)

Adon Olam (sovereign of the world) defines, by calling attention to them, the gap that falls between these states of God's singular existence, which we collectively must fill with tikkun olam (repair of the world). This is how we ensure that “God… [is] known.”  I can think of no better tune for Audrey to have had running through her mind as she took care of the last details before that ultimate moment of legacy—bringing one more person into an imperfect world to help with the work of making it better.

This essay was inspired by a discussion and learning session, led by Rabbi David Finkelstein, at Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA.

My First Prayer

During the synagogue service, after reading to myself the silent Amidah, the central prayer, I take a few moments for personal reflection.  Never has this individualized prayer taken the form of words.  As comfortable as I usually am in the realm of written and spoken language, the idea of developing my own prayer--whether in my head, on paper or aloud--has made me decidedly uncomfortable.  Instead, during that personal prayer time I pull images of people into my thoughts, and this is the closest I come to saying, in my prayer, "She needs help right now," "I hope he'll have strength during this tough week he's facing."  When I have contemplated talking to God (as opposed to ritually repeating what others once wrote or said to God), the idea has seemed at once arrogant and naive.

This Friday evening, before Shabbat set in, my congregation hosted a prayer writing workshop.  Despite, or because of, my hesitation about the topic I felt drawn to attend.  Despite, or because of, my struggles with this type of writing I questioned my desire to attend.  It took me until the deadline to register.

Writer and teacher Janet Judith Falon gave us examples of prayer writing in various forms: poetry, prose, haiku, acrostic, epistolary. We even glanced at Facebook and Twitter examples.

Most effective, she gave us an exercise to prepare for writing prayers.  Janet presented eight questions and asked that each of us draft a private list in response to at least one of them.  I chose three:

• What are your dependable joys?
• What would be the chapters in your spiritual autobiography? (This is a cheat category--I simply jotted down "The chapters in Creative License," the book of my collected sermons.)
• What resources do you have to do good in the world?

From this, each of us was to find inspiration, choose a form, and write a prayer.  And we did.  And I did. 

Here is my first prayer:

As we hiked Hawk Mountain,
Brad and I on one of our small adventures,
Light thrust through the heavy canopy
A dramatic shaft cutting a path
Through the clouds and leaves
To direct a path before us
From the sun yet I am not sure where, but
I knew your presence in that brief moment.
I gasped
With the weight and the light
And the lightness, all at once.

In adventures since, a sliver of
That day, that instant of you,
Continues to rain down light.