Naso -- 5775

Love is turtle doves and sunset strolls … but only in the movies.  In real life, love is enthralling and uplifting but also frustrating and disappointing.  Mature love withstands these and goes on loving anyway.  As it is between people, so it is with the Torah.

Parshat Naso describes a ritual to determine a wife’s fidelity.  If her husband accuses her of cheating but has no witness, he can force her to drink a noxious potion in sight of the priest.  If she has had sex with a man other than her husband, the reaction will be painful:  “her body shall distend and her thigh shall sag; and the wife shall become a curse among her people” (Numbers 5:27).  If she hasn’t, she will be unharmed.

The ordeal outlined this week relies on superstition and psychology.  More than this, it is patriarchal and painful.  “The unequal application of the ritual to women and not men, the lack of due process, the physical and emotional humiliation – all of these combine to make this passage a challenging place in which to find meaning,” Lisa J. Grushcow observes in The Torah:  Women’s Torah Commentary.

True love means speaking up when we’re upset.  True love means giving the gentle rebuke.  Otherwise it’s not love, but a false friendliness that melts like paper in the rain.  Honesty is scary, but also necessary for love.

And so I must declare that Parshat Naso is the painful practice of another time and place.  Even the Talmud’s declaration that the ordeal was an “unusual and infrequent event” (Sotah 1:1) is not enough to mitigate its hatefulness.

I understand the Torah to be profound and beautiful and instructive.  It is infinitely meaningful.  I also understand that it sometimes fails to meet basic ethical standards.  The ordeal of the sotah ordeal is one of these times.

We modern Jews need not chose only between the extremes of swallowing the Torah whole or spitting it out altogether.  While we could use this passage as a basis to reject the entire Torah, it would be far more productive to use it as a prompt for study and action – to understand the psychology of spousal abuse, for example, or to help out in a shelter.

It is no rejection to point out a failure.  If we do not decry, we do not love.

Shavuot -- 5775

 The call went forth in fire and thunder:  I AM.  The people trembled in awe.  All the souls of all the people who would ever be Jewish gathered in awe.  At the mountain’s summit, Moses transcribed furiously.  Thus did the Torah come into the world.

The tale of the giving of Torah by God to Moses at Mt. Sinai is tremendous.  It serves to enforce the text’s sanctity and the eternal bond between God and the Jewish people.  We reenact this story every time the Torah is taken from the ark to be read.  We revel in this account of revelation even though we know that the reality of the Torah’s creation was likely far more prosaic.

The Torah symbolizes the love shared between God and the Jewish People.  Because the festival of Shavuot marks the night that symbol was given (this year, May 23), the Kabbalists taught that Shavuot is our marriage night as well.  We study into the night to achieve a mystical union with God.  Just as Ruth bound herself to Naomi and her tribe, so do we bind ourselves, over and over again, to our God and our Torah.  This is precisely what converts to Judaism do through the choices of their lives, and we honor and learn from their commitment.

For most of us, the idea that God can “marry” a human being or group is bizarre.  It is, I think, actually metaphorical, expressing that we mere mortals can bind ourselves to a Truth that’s larger than ourselves.  We can locate ourselves within a story that makes sense out of a complex mélange of personal feelings and experiences.  The image of marriage declares that we, as individuals, find ourselves within the nation’s sweeping narrative, and that our people’s ongoing story is inherently holy.  No matter how we became Jewish, we see ourselves in the Torah, and declare it to be our story, too.

Behar/Bechukotai -- 5775

Shmitah -- Release.  This year is the final in the seven year cycle of the land, during which time it is not to be worked.  It is a Shabbat for the land.  “Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield.  But in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, a Sabbath of the Eternal:  you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.  …  It shall be a year of complete rest for the land” (Leviticus 25:3-5).

If seeds aren’t sown and weeds aren’t pulled, what are we to eat?  The land, actually, continues to produce even without human industry.  Seeds are scattered by the wind; crops drink rain when they can.  Yields may be smaller, but they are still enough.  And we can save during the sixth year to protect against any shortfall.

Since food is a fundamental need, releasing our control over its production calls us to have powerful faith.  Somehow, God willing, it will all work out.

I so often see people trying to muscle their way through life:  admission to the right college hinges on each test, the bar mitzvah center pieces have to be just so, we slave to buy a home with the right address.  They have a plan for their lives and they make it come true.

Industry is good; we create the lives we lead.  At the same time, some of us place ourselves under extraordinary stress that harms our health without actually bettering our lives.

What would happen, I wonder, if we relaxed our grips just a little bit?  What would it be like if we weren’t so very attached to a particular outcome, but instead let things happen in the easiest possible way?  What if we valued grace over strength? 

If we allow life to unfurl as it will, at least 1/7^th of the time, we might experience even greater wonder than what we had planned.

Emor -- 5775

Who mourns a death?

The rabbis of the Talmud answered by applying the injunction of Leviticus 21:1-4:  A priest may not come into contact with corpses except for certain close relatives.  These are his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, his brother, and his unmarried sister.  Therefore, they concluded, these are the relationships of mourners, adding wives and married sisters to the list (BT Mo’ed Katan 20b).

In modern custom, this means that only these relatives wear the black kriyah ribbon of mourning and recite Mourner’s Kaddish.  Only these observe the full period of mourning; others are comforters rather than mourners.  Mourners don’t attend parties, celebrations, or shows, and don’t get haircuts.

Our tradition understands mourning, or “avelut,” as an official state, designated by relationship to the deceased, and time – it begins with burial and concludes thirty days later, except for the death of parents.  When a parent dies, the period of Avelut lasts an entire year.  Certainly, our grief may extend far longer.  But the formal period of mourning is finite, reminding us that we must, eventually, return to life.  The family of the deceased is not permitted to continue formal mourning after Avelut is completed.

Avelut does not begin with the death of a relative, but rather with his or her burial.  When a close relative dies, the survivors’ state is called Aninut.  Anunut is the time of intense shock, confusion, and limbo.  The deceased is dead but not gone, and we feel that “neither/nor-ness.”  Those in Aninut are except from most obligations.  We just let them be.  Jews bury as promptly as possible out of respect for the deceased, and also to assist the family to move from Aninut to Avelut.

That’s what the tradition holds, but both Reform Judaism and I are more expansive.  I well remember my best friend’s death, and how his family included me as one of the mourners.  It allowed me to grieve more powerfully, and to heal more completely.  When I officiate at a funeral, I certainly allow all those who wish to wear a kriyah ribbon to do so, as an external sign of their internal state.  At Temple Emanuel, we invite all who wish to stand and recite Kaddish Yatom.  It is emotionally satisfying, and it demonstrates community support.

But I also believe that mourning must conclude at some point.  Although we may feel intense loss, sadness, and even anguish, the time comes for us to return to life – to the people around us, to good works, to beauty, to self-care.  Otherwise, we make a shrine of death, and that’s undoubtedly unhealthy.

The Jewish mourning customs are psychologically sound.  They create a structure within which we can feel our feelings.  It would be my honor to discuss them with you, if you would like.