Being Abraham’s Child in a time of Human Darkness

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Text and the City | Lech Lecha 2015

“Suddenly, from Ur Kasdim / the Father of Multitudes

Shined forth like a star / to illuminate the darkness.

You deferred Your anger / When you surveyed his deeds."

(Poem for Yom Kippur Avodah service, 7^th Century)

As the children of Abraham continue to find themselves killing eachother this week, from his birth place in Ur Kasdim, through his chosen home Beer Sheva and all the way to his final rest place in Hevron; as droves of his children are forced leave their homeland, making their way to Europe in tents and encountering his other children in their steady homes; I’m asking myself what it means to be a child of Abraham in our generation.

Meir Pichadze, Georgia-Israel

Many Abrahams

Tell me who your Abraham is and I’ll tell you what kind of Jew you are. Or Christian, or Muslim…

Is your Abraham the knight of faith, who binds rationality and morality on the altar of God’s love? Is your Abraham (and Sarah!) the generous host of a tent open to all four corners of the world, or the aged traveler who has taken upon himself to wash the feet of all weary travelers? Perhaps your Abraham is Maimonides’ Socratic philosopher, seeking the truth until he finds the One God? Or is he the moral prophetic voice who was chosen in order to “teach his children… paths of justice and compassion”? Is your Abraham the blinded visionary, manipulated by competing loves to wives, God and children? Or is Abraham the meticulous Halakhic man, who intuited Jewish law long before the Torah was given at Sinai?

Like Alexander the Great’s empire, Abraham’s legacy is too great to be inherited by any one person or position. It is forever divvied up into competing lands. God’s name for him has proven true: Abraham is not just Av-Ram (Great Father), but Av-RaHam - אב המון גויים – the father of a multitude of nations. Indeed, in his personality and lore he himself is multitudes. The gift of the Hebrew vowel, ה"א, in his name is the gift of multitudity (new word?). Perhaps we all are multitudes, we simply haven’t been given as many tests (opportunities) as Grandpe Abe to allow our multitudes to shine.

In Me’a Shearim one can buy children’s books about Abraham according to your Ultra Orthodox sect. In one Abraham is dressed as a Lithuanian yeshiva student, in another he dons the garb of a devout Hassid. In the PJ Library version he looks somewhat suburban (somewhat less popular in Me’a Shearim). One can scoff at the anachronisms of Abraham’s portrayal, but I believe being Jewish means telling about myself a story that begins with Abraham, and that portrays my life values and dilemmas as illuminated by Abraham and Sarah’s lives (and, like real family, without covering their blemishes either). Retelling our parent’s stories as a way of uncovering our own.

The great thing about Abraham’s story is, it has no clear beginning. No one knows what caused God to appear to him one day and command: Lech Lecha, “go forth”, or “go to yourself” as the Zohar reads literally. Is this proof that God’s grace is random, falling on a person without prior warning, as Paul described it. Or is there a backstory that the Torah leaves out, leaving us to imagine, retell, fabricate – and through the work of midrash to weave ourselves into the fabric of Torah.

Human Darkness

Thank God, the Torah does not begin with Abraham. Our story begins with the birth of the world, and of humanity, and while this week we begin zooming in to the narrow story of Abraham’s family, a Jewish posture in the world must always be rooted in the larger human story. The sad news is the early chapters of Genesis reveal humanity in our bleakest vulnerability and violence.

In this reading, I’ll be following a 7^th century Hebrew poem, called “You Established,” אתה כוננת. The poem, which is included at the bottom, is repeated today in the Sephardic Avodah service for Yom Kippur.

You established the world
from the beginningYou founded the earth
and formed creatures. […]But they broke the yoke
and said to God “Go Away!”Then You took away your hand
and they withered instantly like grass.

From Adam to Cain, from Nimrod to Noah’s generation, humanity breaks away from God and his word, breaking the yoke and yelling: “Go away!” I used to read this as a moralistic tale telling me that I as a Son of Adam am weak and insubordinate – and must therefore bend my will to my teacher and whatever book of religious law she was making me feel guilty for not keeping. But hidden among the lines of the narrative is an opposite reading of the story. Yes, human beings ARE prone to violence and insubordination, but God was complicit here. When they yelled “Go away!, he indeed left them. “You took away your hand / and they withered instantly like grass.”

Human and Soil: Adam and Adamah

For ten generation, from Adam to Noah, the soil is damned and infertile. Apres deluge God declares: “I will never curse the soil again on humankind’s account; since what the human heart forms is evil from its youth.” The soil is freed from paying the price for Humanity’s mistakes (until the industrial revolution, I guess) and Noah becomes the “first man of the soil”. Grapes grow for the first time since Eden, but God does not return to humanity. Like a parent livid with his children’s behavior, God decides to stop tearing the house down on their account, but never calls them again. No one really expects human beings to behave otherwise, so what good would consequences have. “Go away, you say? Fine!” And so for another ten generation, a god-less world.

It could have remained that way forever, until –

Suddenly, from Ur Kasdim / The Father of multitudes

Shined forth like a star/ to illuminate in the darkness.

יָחִיד אַב הֲמוֹן פִּתְאֹם כְּכוֹכָב  

זָרַח מֵאוּר כַּשְׂדִּים לְהָאִיר בַּחשֶׁךְ

כַּעַסְךָ הֵפַרְתָּ  בְּשׁוּרְךָ פָעֳלוֹ

What did Avraham do that was so sudden, so illuminating? How was this star born, and what light did he bring forth? The Torah never tells us. We’re left to our own midrashic devices – smashing idols, philosophizing in the marketplace, generously hosting, fervently believing, building a powerful couplehood with Sarah despite barrenness, or perhaps going on the journey even before being called to do so.

Whatever it is, it got God to pay attention. You deferred Your anger when you surveyed his deeds. We don’t know if Avraham was even trying to get God’s attention. I’d like to believe he was just doing it in order to illuminate the darkness he found himself living in. That’s how starts usually begin to glow. Whatever it was, it soothed God’s anger. It allowed God to believe in human beings once again.

Here then is a vision for Abrahamic religion: shaping people and communities that inspire God to believe in human beings anew. How far we are from this vision. Being a child of Avraham is acting in a way that gets God to believe in us again. Being Avraham’s child is acting in a way that gets human beings to believe in themselves again. Not waiting for God’s cues, or anyone else’s for that matter. Simply taking action and alleviating the darkness, the dryness. From Ur Kasdim to Beer Sheva, from Jerusalem to California.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mishael

You established the world from the beginning You founded the earth and formed creatures. When you surveyed the world of chaos and confusion You banished gloom and put light in its place. You formed from the earth a lump of soil in Your image And commanded him concerning the tree of life He forsook Your word and he was forsaked from Eden But You did not destroy him for the sake of the work of Your hands. You increased his fruit and blessed his seed And let them flourish in Your goodness and live in quiet. But they broke the yoke and said to God “Go Away!” Then You took away your hand and they withered instantly like grass. You remembered your covenant With the one who was blamesless in his generation (Noah) And as a reward You made him a remanant forever. You made a permanent covenant of the rainbow for his sake And in Your love for his fragrant offering You blessed his children. Suddenly, from Ur Kasdim The Father of multitudes Shined forth like a star to illuminate in the darkness. You deferred Your anger When you surveyed his deeds. And when he was old You looked into his heart. (אתה כוננת, “You Established” Poem for Yom Kippur Avodah service, 7th Century, translation Swartz and Yahalom edition, pg 70)

אַתָּה כּוֹנַנְתָּ עוֹלָם מֵרֹאשׁ יָסַדְתָּ תֵבֵל וּבְרִיּוֹת יָצַרְתָּ בְּשׁוּרְךָ עוֹלָם תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ גֵּרַשְׁתָּ אֹפֶל וְהִצַּבְתָּ נֹגַהּ גֹּלֶם תַּבְנִיתְךָ מִן הָאֲדָמָה יָצַרְתָּ וְעַל עֵץ הַדַּעַת אוֹתוֹ הִפְקַדְתָּ דְּבָרְךָ זָנַח וְנִזְנַח מֵעֵדֶן וְלֹא כִלִּיתוֹ לְמַעַן יְגִיעַ כַּפֶּיךָ הִגְדַּלְתָּ פִרְיוֹ וּבֵרַכְתָּ זַרְעוֹ וְהִפְרִיתָם בְּטוּבְךָ וְהוֹשַׁבְתָּם שָׁקֶט וַיִּפְרְקוּ עֹל וַיֹּאמְרוּ לָאֵל סוּר מִמֶּנּוּ וַהֲסִירוֹתָ יָד כְּרֶגַע כֶּחָצִיר אֻמְלָלוּ זָכַרְתָּ בְרִית לְתָמִים בְּדוֹרוֹ וּבִזְכוּתוֹ שַׂמְתָּ לְעוֹלָם שְׁאֵרִית חֹק בְּרִית קֶשֶׁת לְמַעֲנוֹ כָרַתָּ וּבְאַהֲבַת נִיחֹחוֹ בָּנָיו בֵּרַכְתָּ טָעוּ בְעָשְׁרָם וּבָנוּ מִגְדָּל וַיֹּאמְרוּ נַבְקִיעַ הָרָקִיעַ לְהִלָּחֶם בּוֹ יָחִיד אַב הֲמוֹן פִּתְאֹם כְּכוֹכָב זָרַח מֵאוּר כַּשְׂדִּים לְהָאִיר בַּחשֶׁךְ כַּעַסְךָ הֵפַרְתָּ בְּשׁוּרְךָ פָעֳלוֹ וּלְעֵת שֵׂבָתוֹ לְבָבוֹ חָקַרְתָּ

Returning to our Senses #3: Ears

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Text and the City | Shabbat Teshuva 2015

This High Holiday season I am exploring texts and inspirations about our sensory organs, as a path to approaching Teshuva. Returning to our senses. This piece reflects on the ears. (Check out previous installments: the Eyes and the Mouth).

You have heard my voice:

Do not hide your ear at my breathing,

at my cry. (Lamentations 3:56)

קוֹלִי שָׁמָעְתָּ, אַל תַּעְלֵם אָזְנְךָ לְרַוְחָתִי לְשַׁוְעָתִי (איכה ג:נו)

Yom Kippur is the time of  the ear. On the day in which we refrain from putting food in our mouths, keep our hands to ourselves, and direct our eyes inwards - our ears perk up, ready to do some work.

***

The first day of Rabbinical School. My teacher in pastoral counseling (and life) Dr. Michelle Friedman tells us sharply: “You might think you’re here to learn what to say to people, to acquire the Halakhic answers, the teshuvot. In fact you are here to learn how to listen. When people turn to Rabbis, they are rarely actually seeking advice. They are seeking to be heard. You are here to learn how to listen to people. You’re here to grow a pair of ears.”

Ears are quite awkward. Protruding, strangely shaped, and – unlike the ears and mouth – lacking a proper cover. What is the spiritual work of the ear?

The school of Rabbi Ishmael taught: Why is the ear made of stiff parts, but the ear lobe soft? So that if a person hears something improper, they can fold the lobe into the ear. (Talmud Bavli Ketubot 5a)

Before a trend of folded-lobes becomes a big thing, it is worth giving some depth to this idea. At first glance it is yet another knee jerk moralism, blocking out what the world has to offer in an act of self-ghettoization. But for Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, in his 16^th century ethical-anatomical treatise “The Palm of Devorah”, it is about learning to hear the universe the way God does:

One ears should be ever open to hear only the good. Evil speech and ugly rumor should be barred from entering the ears, just as the Divine ears do not allow any cry of criticism or evil talk enter them. So too, a person should listen for the good and useful things; and anything which is angering - should receive no hearing whatsoever. (Tomer Devorah Chapter Two)

Yet filtering out the bad and hearing only the good is just the first level. Psychologists and Philosophers of Language have taught us just how hard it is to truly hear the other, to hear beyond hearing. This begins with differentiating between what I am hearing and what is being said to me. Our auditory input is experienced through veils of our own projections and interpretations, anxieties and concerns. Can we ever hear beyond all the veils?

Hearing beyond hearing begins with being attuned to oneself – so that all of my projections and anxieties can be set aside, in a pile of their own. Next, we seek to listen beyond the speaker’s own projections towards us, their reactions and messiness, to that which is at the heart of the matter. I am continuously jealous of a good therapist’s ability to say: “Here is what they are actually asking when they are saying this…”

Hearing beyond hearing should not be misconstrued as a dismissal of the express content of the statement. I still vividly remember my frustration when – as a child – I would have a tantrum and my parents would say: “You’re not angry about X, you’re simply tired”. If I wasn’t angry until then, I became angry once that was said (I now clumsily make the same mistakes with my children…).

Similar to the way every musical frequency creates multiple overtones without negating the fundamental tone, thus refining our hearing involves being able to hear and differentiate the various fundamental tones, overtones and harmonies created within what is being said – and registering each of them independently.

Hearing the Overtones

The ability to hear the overtones of all people is how Rabbi David Cohen, the Nazirite Rabbi, understands Avraham. He interprets Avraham’s name – Av Hamon Goyim – the father of many (hamon) nations, to derive from the Hebrew word המייה (hem-ya) which means song or harmony. Thus Avraham: Father who understands the harmonies of people. Abraham could hear both the individual tones and the overtones, truly hearing the yearning of the heart of each person and nation. And it is in the overtones where people who seem to be singing different notes are actually aligned and harmonious. To be Jewish, a child of Abraham, is to hear the music surging forth from every human being.

R. David Cohen, The "Nazirite"

For Cohen, Judaism is all about ears. His masterpiece, titled “The Hebraic Auditory Logic”, claims that while Western logic is based on the primacy of the visual, that which can be seen and contemplated, Judaism is all about the auditory. Just as the English language continues to encode the assumption that eyesight is the path to truth (“Seeing is believing”, “seeing the light”, “world-view”, “I see” refers to comprehension, etc.) thus Judaism espouses an “auditory logic”: truth is achieved through the ears. Hear O Israel is much more central than See. God cannot be seen, but is achieved by hearing. To hear God means to obey him, thus the centrality of Halakha and actions in Judaism. According to Talmudic Damages, if one deafens the other, they must pays damages as if they took their entire life away. Functional ears are what make life worth living.

Between Hearing and Obeying

I am in synagogue, the Yom Kippur prior to my Bar Mitzva, reciting the viduy confessional of sins. Apparently beating my chest quite enthusiastically in the process. A compassionate face turns around and says: “You know, beating on the chest is not a form of self-punishment. We are simply knocking on our hearts. Hopefully it will hear the knocking and open up.”

**

At first glance, Yom Kippur is a day in which we account for whether we heard God in the past year. We confess – sounding to our ears all the ways in which we failed to fulfill Gods word, lishmoa be’kolo, to follow his voice. But keeping Yom Kippur as a test of obedience is missing the point. To obey refers to a power dynamic, while to hear is first and foremost a relational category. Perhaps we didn’t always obey – but did we hear God nevertheless?

Not that hearing is any easier. Obeying can be done from a distance. Hearing God assumes proximity. It is a much scarier affair. Adam and Eve, having failed to fulfill God’s commandments, reflect this first:

“God called to the human and said to him: Where are you? Ayekah?

He answered: I heard the sound of You in the garden,

and I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid myself” (Genesis 3:9-10)

According to the Midrash, God’s voice continues to call out, asking humans “Where are you? Ayekah?” Avraham was not the first human that God spoke to. He was simply the first who heard… and didn’t run the other way. He heard… and fulfilled.

During Mussaf of Yom Kippur, we retell the story of the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies. At the experiential center of the retelling is the moment in which the High Priest, as part of his confession on our behalf, recites God’s explicit name, the shem hameforash. When the Israelites in the Temple, and respectively when we in synagogue, hear this recitation, we fall to the ground. The ripples of hearing God’s explicitness in this world is such a visceral auditory experience that it makes us become embryonic once more. We turn hearing from a passive experience into a full body dance, repeated multiple times.

Yom Kippur is the day in which we reflect on our hearing God in the world. The externalities of it refer to obeying, but the internality relates to the ability to hear God’s call to humanity. We knock on our heart and ask: Where are you?

To hear the question - and not hide.

God, Hear Us

Neillah at the small and crazy Yom Kippur minyan I pray at in Jerusalem. The fast is all but over, most other synagogues breaking out the refreshments, the supernal gate about to be locked. But we’re still singing: we’ve got our foot in the door, preventing the gate from closing. We cry out: “Hear our voice, God. Don’t let your ear ignore our call, our cry. We ain’t leaving until you do…”

**

Like good Jews, we answer God’s Yom Kippur question with a question. Time and again on this day, we open the ark and ask: Can you hear us? We demand:  שמע קולנו, Hear our voice! We cajole: You have heard my voice: Do not hide your ear!

The ark becomes God’s ear, and we rise to meet it and to call out: Hear our voice. Make our lives matter. Don’t ignore us.

At the end of the day, the sharp sound of the Shofar clears our ears - and God’s. In the newborn year, may our ears be open – to God’s question, to our own, to others.

Gmar Hatima Tova,

Mishael

Returning to our Senses #2: Mouth

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Text and the City | Rosh haShana 2015

Exploring texts and inspirations about our sensory organs, as a path to approaching Teshuva. This second piece reflects on the mouth. (Check out #1: Eyes).

Death and Life are in the hand of the tongue,

and those who love it will eat its fruit. (Proverbs 18:21)

מָוֶת וְחַיִּים בְּיַד לָשׁוֹן, וְאֹהֲבֶיהָ יֹאכַל פִּרְיה. (משלי יח:כא)

Our mouth is a most curious anatomical beast: a vacancy, a receptacle holding lips, teeth and tongue. It is rare among our organs in being both an input and an output mechanism. Eat-speak-interiorize, as Derrida puts it. It is the gatekeeper of the body, the primary organ through which foreign objects are allowed to become part of our selves. From the baby’s initial cry, to its subsequent suck, mammals experience the world through mouth before anything else. As the locus of eat-speak-interiorize Psychoanalysts saw the mouth as metonymic of the ego. As Jean Luc Nancy put it:

There is – there once was – a mouth that opens and says: I write, I mask myself, I fabulate, I am my body, I am a man – always inextricably uttering: I take refuge in myself or I distinguish myself. The ego says: neither the presence nor the absence; neither the structure, not the feign of the subject – but the utterly singular experience of the mouth that opens and closes [itself] at once. A tongue moves there. (Jean Luc Nancy, Ego Sum)

The Talmud placed enormous on the mouth, as one would expect from the creators of the “Torah on the Mouth”, תורה שבעל פה. Often the tongue is described as an uncontrollable fiend, a loose and ferocious dagger which needs to be encased behind tooth and lip, lock and key:

R. Yohanan said: The Blessed Holy One said to the Tongue:

All members of the human body are tense, while you lie loosely;

all members of the human body are outside, while you are guarded inside;

not only that, but I surrounded you with two walls, one of bone and one of flesh; thus it says:

“What shall I do to you, and what more can I give you, O deceitful tongue?”

 (Talmud Arakhin 16 quoting Psalms 120:3)

While the midrash focuses on speech, this could easily be said of eating too. The eating is by definition insatiable – for while the stomach that can be satiated, but never the mouth or tongue. The mouth is the locus of consumption, and on its own knows no limits. Indeed, as we’ve lost the effort that procuring and creating food once required - and with it all but lost the rituals of mindful eating – the mouth can easily be framed as the symbol of our consumerist selves.

But the claim that the body, mouth or tongue is inherently the enemy of the good doesn’t hold in most corners of Jewish tradition. Rather, the mouth is the primary site through which the self will show whether it chooses good or bad, life or death. As Rava puts it: When we seeks life – we do it with our mouth. When we seek death – we do it with our mouth. (Talmud Arakhin 15b).

Fittingly, Rosh haShana offers us many rituals of the mouth. Through eating, speech and sound, the mouth is placed at the center, inviting us to return to this most primal of organs, where our selfhood, indeed our very humanity, are epitomized.

Simanim: Rituals of Mindful Eating

In the documentary film “Unknown White Male,” the protagonist loses his memory while on the subway, waking up in Coney Island without any recollections. In one scene two friends take him out to dinner, to eat all the things he never knew existed. Cheesecake, strawberries, sushi and steak ensue. Mango – who knew! I’ve always been jealous of the concept of being reintroduced to taste in such a manner.

Sitting around the Rosh haShana table, we place symbolic foods ripe with blessings for the new year. In a deliberate process, we taste the foods and bless the new year in their symbolism. Traditionally the site of numerous Hebrew puns, our family tradition has become to have guests bring an object – edible or not – with which to bless the new year. But beyond punning carrots and honey coated toddlers, there is an opportunity here to allow the first eating of the new year to help us reset the way we will eat this year. Hitting the reset button on ourselves begins with hitting the reset button on our mouths. Returning to the primacy of taste – sweet, sour, bitter – we make the tongue alive again, as if it was created anew today. Hopefully our own renewal will ensure.

Creation: Bridging the Chasm Between Speech and Action

Before creation, there was speech. God, in the Biblical story created the world through speech: “And God said let there be Light – and there was light”. This aspect was intensified by the Rabbis, becoming a key characteristic of God’s praiseworthiness: “Blessed is he who said – and the world was created” ברוך שאמר – והיה העולם. For the Rabbis the world was described as constructed of strings of words and letters, God’s speech projected eternally out into the cosmos, keeping all of creation in place.

If God is God in the aspect that his speech is his action, and his action is speech, what does that say about us? While we humans are differentiated from the animal kingdom thanks to our ability to speak, the fact that we are not yet Gods emanates from the all-too-human chasm between our speech and our action.

As we pour mountains of words about the new year we hope to enter, we are invited to ponder the gap between our statements and our actions. Seeking to walk in God’s path includes trying to better bridge the chasm between our speech and our actions. As creation by speech becomes renewed this Rosh haShana, we can pray to become renewed ourselves in the way our speech and our action correlate.

Shofar: Returning to the first voice

Before speech, there was voice. Speech is defined, but voice, like the cry of the newborn baby, says it all without reducing it to specifics. Returning to who we really are means trying to reach back to a place before words and vowels. Rosh haShana is called Yom Truah, יום תרועה, the day of Wail – usually understood as the wail of the Shofar. But the Torah also strangely calls it a day of Zichron Truah, זכרון תרועה – the memory of a wail. What is the wail stored in our memory above all? Perhaps it is that moment in which we were all mouth, emitting the vulnerable wail, full of potential. Zichron Truah, the moment in which we became an ego, yet also so dependent on mother (parent!) and world that we were truly “part of” more than autonomous egos. One hundred voices, one hundred wails. Will it be enough to bring us back to that initial moment, full of promise? Will it be enough for us to see others from that perspective, as creations who were once just mouth, a vulnerable wail? Will it be enough to remind the Creator that at our core, we are but vulnerable wailers, mouths calling out to reconnect to the source of good? As we lift the shofar to our mouths, lets pray it is.

Shana Tova,

Mishael

Returning to our Senses #1: Eyes

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Text and the City | Elul 2015

Three organs are under a person’s control:

the mouth, the hands, and the feet.

Three are not under one’s control:

the eyes, the ears, and the nose.

Midrash Tanhuma, Toledot #12

This summer I studied with the 2015 Bronfman Fellows about various commandments relating to our senses and organs. Our focus was commandments of the Mouth: eating, gossiping, rebuking and praying. But the text that seemed to spark the most amount of thought and debate was the quote above from the Tanhuma. Are our organs under our control? Do we want them to be? Inspired by these questions, I’ve been using Elul, with its invitation for reflection and returning, to try to “come to my senses”. Focusing on how I control my sensory organs - and how they control me. Between now and Yom Kippur I hope to share texts and inspirations on those organs that are under our control (according to the Midrash), and those that aren’t. 

This first piece reflects on the eyes.

***

גַּל עֵינַי וְאַבִּיטָה (תהלים קיט:יח)

Uncover my eyes / So I can see (Psalms 119:18)

THIS has been a troubling week for our eyes. A human crises of global magnitude, brewing for years, crashed upon our eyes with one poignant, painful image. What the eyes have taken in cannot be erased. Cover my eyes, the online world begged. In our usual human weakness, it was not until the eyes SAW that we were shocked into realization, and empathy set in. Will action follow? "Uncover my eyes / so I can see."

Our eyes can be a wonderful moral actor, allowing us to go beyond ourselves and see the Other. And yet they are also our biggest adulterers. Our eyes are always somewhere other than where we are. Always hungry, on the prowl, never satiated. Beyond our control, says the Tanhuma and gives up. Yet a deeper look teaches that it is not simply about what we see, but what kind of gaze we embrace; what kind of eyes we develop.

Slit Eyed Looks

“Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai said to his students:

Go out and see – what is the key to the straight path a person should choose?

Rabbi Eliezer said: A good eye.” (Mishna Avot 2:9)

“We have sinned before you in narrow eyes

We have sinned before you in conspiratorial eyes,

We have sinned before you in proud eyes,

We have sinned before you in baseless hatred.” (From the Yom Kippur confessional)

עַל חֵטְא שֶׁחָטָאנוּ לְפָנֶיךָ בצרות עין... בשקור עין... בעיניים רמות... בשנאת חינם

IN the Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides writes that 90% of all evil in the world is caused by man (the rest by the laws of nature, by the way, not by God, God forbid). The reason for human evil – is that Man experiences the worlds resources as a zero sum game. If you have something, it means there is less for me. The crucial resources are not just land, money, belongings, but eventually – love. Is there enough love for me too? That essential question of sibling rivalry, epitomized by what Cain felt that morning when God paid attention to Abel’s offering, and not to his. This town isn’t big enough for the both of us.

“Narrow eyes” refer to employing a zero sum game view of the world. “What you have – I want. The fact that you have it and I don’t makes it impossible for me to be happy for you”. I cannot look at the Other without immediately comparing to my own state. Narrow eyes engender conspiratorial eyes: “How can I get that for myself”. Both reflect an inability to see the Other on their own terms. The narrow glance – unwilling to be satiated with my own share – is the root of our betrayal of the Other, and of ourselves. Faith, says Rav Shneur Zalman of Liady, is about believing that “there is enough”, that the world is not a zero sum game. Turning from a materialistic world view to a spiritual one. What Rabbi Eliezer called: “Having a good eye”. Narrow eyes at their core are heretical – they claim that God does not have enough love in the world for everyone.

Eye to Eye, Face to Face

It is striking that the Yom Kippur confession focuses not on the actual transgressions against others, but on the distortions of our consciousness which led (or even just potentially might lead) to harming others. Rav Shagar (Shimon Gershon Rosenberg) connects narrow eyes to the next sin on the list: baseless hatred.

“The distortions of Narrow eyes and Conspiratorial Eyes are intertwined and cause the third and gravest sin: Baseless Hatred. Hasidism interpreted Baseless Hatred (Sinat Hinam) as hatred that emanates from the basic existence of the Other. The very fact that he exists irritates and burdens me. He burdens me because his very gaze causes me to lose my freedom, and from there a deep hatred rages forth, seeking to eliminate them.

This sin is the source of shame – we can no longer look eachother in the eye, face to face. Standing “face to face” represents a sphere in which we can treat eachother favorably, celebrate in the others existence. Kabbalah describes the mythical process of the High Holidays as generating a return of the divine faces back to being “face to face “, bringing back the simplicity, the warmth and the trust to relationships.” (“At the Door”, Rav Shagar Sermons for the High Holidays, 2001).

Breaking the Gaze

Within the writings of the great Teshuva movement called Gender studies, Laura Mulvey has taught us to see the male gaze employed all around us. Her call for Teshuva focused on the film industry, the way the camera lingers over the curves of a woman's body, putting the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. She’s allowed us to see how from “high” western art to street billboards to HBO, we’re constantly invited to internalize a sexualized gaze. In my dreams I envision a coming together of feminist theory about the male gaze and halakhic moralisms about keeping of the eyes (shmirat ha-eiynayim). In one respect this is the most patriarchal of Halakhot: don’t gaze at women says the Shulkhan Arukh (Even haEzer 21). Any flight between New York and Tel Aviv invites an encounter with an Ultra Orthodox man lowering his eyes when confronted with a women (then asked to be moved to a different seat on the plane…). The most jarring move of modern “modesty” discourse across religions has been the externalizing of the male gaze: instead of men being required to control their gaze, women are required to dress in a way that keeps the eyes of those men for them. The internal moral move of changing our gaze has become an external – and immoral - demand from others.

Can we get Shmirat haeiynayim to “do Teshuva”, returning to its source as a conjunction against applying the sexualized male gaze towards other people? One good place to start is with the Shulkhan Arukh’s commentator the Magen Avraham, who explains that the prohibition on looking at women is not about mere looking but about embracing a certain kind of gaze. Just as we are prohibited from “feeding our eyes” off the Priests when they offer Birkat Kohanim (the Priestly Benediction), he explains, so we must not “feed our eyes” off of people in a sexualized look. Helping our world wean itself off of the sexualized male gaze – and the fundamentalist response to it – could be a wonderful joint agenda of Feminists and Halakhists.

Eyes of Beauty, Eyes of Praise

So how should we look? Where does having a good eye start? Our technological age allows our eyes to see anything and everything in the world. We have seen it all before, on some google search somewhere. This spring I travelled to Arizona, encountering with my eyes some of the most beautiful views I had ever seen. Yet at first the redness of the rocks did not influence me – I had already seen it on my beautiful HD computer screen. The 2D HD image in my memory prevented me from truly seeing, from making room for a new, full gaze, of the beauty I had around me. My eyes were weary, cynical and unappreciative. It took several hours, days, until I could truly see what was right in front of me. And if it is so for radical beauty – how much more so for mundanity.

"I want to always have eyes to see / the beauty of the world and to praise” wrote Natan Zach, begging to "never become blind to the beauty of the world". As Rosh haShana celebrates the birth of the world, it’s a time to turn weary eyes into fresh eyes, to appreciate the beauty of creation, to embrace eyes that seek it out. Taking Rosh haShana as an eye-cleanse – from screens, from cynicism, for mundanity – to eyes that see so much beauty it makes us burst into praise. When our eyes dwell on beauty, forcing us to appreciate the inherent beauty found in the mundane – we can see the world, others and ourselves anew, and believe the world is not a zero sum game after all.

Moonshine Shavuot: In Search of Obligation: Robert Cover and the Talmud

Rabbi Mishael Zion | Moonshine Sivan | Shavuot 2015

If you believe in mythical time, on this coming Saturday night the Torah will be given to you. Again. Shavuot doesn’t celebrate a historical event from the past, but rather a real occurrence that is about to take place. You don’t want to be caught off guard.

So we stay up all night and study Torah. Or at least we make a point, on this coming Saturday night, to study something. With a hevruta, teacher, child - or on our own. Mythical or not, we thus signify to ourselves that we are part of this thing called Torah, given to us anew each year.

This month’s Moonshine, dedicated to Shavuot and the month of Sivan, offers a Talmudic discussion and an article by a legal theorist, on the themes of Choice and Obligations, Rights and Commandments. Like all good learning, it’s psychology, political science, history and current events all rolled into one, if you take it there...

In case you haven’t yet made other arrangements, this might make a fine offering for Shavuot night learning.

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What was given on Shavuot? What does “receiving Torah” mean?

In one reading, it is about mitzvah, being commanded. On Shavuot we celebrate being part of a path and destiny which is larger than ourselves. We bow our head to the authority on the mountain which has chosen us as their tool. We shall obey and we shall hear.

In another reading, though, on Shavuot we received Text. With Divine Text came Human Interpretation: questioning, understanding, misinterpretation, debate. Text invites our full autonomous self to engage, study, challenge – as a way of seeking (divine) truth. The authority of the text does not undermine my own authority, in fact it recognizes my autonomy, requires it, albeit challenging me to redeem myself from the vain and mundane. At its core lies a moment of personal choice.

These two readings play out – famously – in the Talmud (Shabbat 88), a text worth returning to each Sahvuot. The first opinion is that of Rav Avdimi. Mount Sinai hovering over my head, I have no choice. Accept the Torah – or die. Generations later, I might never have stood at Sinai, but that is the whole point: it isn’t about me. I am obligated.

Rava is having none of it though. “If that is the case,” says Rava, “then the binding nature of the Torah is like that of a contract signed under coercion – unenforcable.” Since God gave us text and law to study, we have developed based on it a self understaning of the importance of choice in the legal process. The Torah is a contract like any other – and must abide by the (human) rules set for it.

(There’s a third opinion, but that would take us to a whole other holiday. Study the full text here).

This classic discussion is played out in the essay “Obligation: A Jewish Jurisprudence of the Social Order” by the late and great Yale legal theorist Robert Cover. What is described about as an internal Talmudic debate, Cover takes as the basic difference between the “fundamental word” of the Western political tradition - “rights” - to that of Jewish law - “obligation”. Cover begins by playing out the two fundamental words of each tradition and the myths that fuel them:

Social movements in the United States organize around rights. When there is some urgently felt need to change the law or keep it in one way or another a “Rights” movement is started. The story behind the term “rights” is the story of social contract… making the collective arrangement the product of individual choice and thus secondary to the individual.
In Jewish law an entitlement without an obligation is a sad, almost pathetic thing… A child does not become emancipated or “free” when he or she reaches maturity, rather the child becomes bar or bat mitzvah – literally, one who is of the obligations” The basic word of Judaism is obligation or mitzvah. It is intrinsically bound up in the myth of Sinai, a myth of heteronomy. The experience at Sinai is not chosen.

When I first read this, I thought Cover was positing the power of Obligation as a traditionalist Jewish apologetic or as a conservative’s yearning for a lost past. Yet as he deepens the discussion, it becomes clear that he is expressing the yearning of the Liberal to obligate himself and his society in distributive justice:

A jurisprudence of rights naturally solves certain problems while stumbling over others. It has proved singularly weak in providing for the material guarantees of life and dignity flowing from the community to the individual. While we make talk of a right to medical care, the right to subsistence, the right to an education, we are constantly met by the realization that such rhetorical tropes are empty in a way that the right to freedom of expression or the right to due process are not… The “right to an education” is not even an intelligible principle unless we know to whom it is addressed. Taken alone it only speaks to a need. A distributional premise is missing which can only be supplied through a principle of “obligation”.
I believe that every child has a right to decent education and shelter, food and medical care; I believe that refugees from political oppression have a right to a haven in a free land… I do believe and affirm the social contract that grounds those rights. But more to the point I also believe that I am commanded – that we are obligated – to realize those rights.

Cover invites us to seek out this Shavuot how we can reclaim commandedness and obligation in service of the projects we believe in. The language of rights is powerful, but insufficient (as is the language of Obligation). It is an American question, and a Jewish one. No one likes being commanded, and yet we seek to be obligated to the things that matter most. Otherwise we'll never make it from the foot of the mountain to the promised land.

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Dedicated to a theme in the Jewish month, Moonshine is a combination Dvar Torah and springboard for learning in the coming 30 days. Moonshine - in honor of the Hebrew month’s commitment to the lunar cycle, with a hint of distilling fine spirits off the beaten track and - perhaps - intoxication.