Among the many mitzvot of purity, holiness, and loving-kindness in this week’s double parsha, one stands out in my mind as paradigmatic of the whole – the mitzvah of pe’ah, of the “corner” – the command to leave the corners of one’s fields unharvested for the needy to collect.
This is a mitzvah of giving, of generosity; one is essentially giving over a certain portion of one’s earnings to the poor. But the mitzvah is not done in the form of giving – I have a basket of produce and I bring it over to you – but in the form of holding oneself back . Generosity appears in the form of self-restraint, retreat from what is officially “mine.” I give to others by refraining from consuming the whole field, by holding myself back from taking over the entirety.
That is also, according to Kabbalistic notions, how God created the world, the ultimate act of generosity. It was only through a process of divine self-withdrawal and contraction known as tzimtzum that there could be enough of a vacuum to allow for the creation of the world.
We are like God, created in His image, containing within us that spark of divinity which is infinite, a microcosm of the entirety of creation. If we let ourselves, we could take over the whole field, the whole world. And so the act of generosity is first and foremost an act of self-contraction, of holding oneself back, of making room in the field for others.
The ultimate image of generosity is of an open hand, God’s open hand. An open hand is empty space. Being generous is about creating open spaces for others to enter into.
I think about this as I go through my day, and watch how my words interrupt the speech of others. Sometimes if I hang back and wait a moment, I have the privilege of watching another person blossom. To give, to be generous, is not just to hold forth, but also to hold back, to make room.
Perhaps that is why this positive morality – the concept of hesed, loving-kindness, of giving generously to another – is framed in the Torah by negative morality, by all the negative commandments about what not to do – forbidden foods and forbidden relations. They share a common underlying habit of mind and practice – self-restraint, the ability to hold oneself back from consuming the entire field, the ability to take make room in the world for others, as God did for us.
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Great.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how to apply this idea in the world of commerce, where there are many who will pounce on your open hand, and it will not fall to the poor. The alternative seems to be aggression and greed. So, does it translate?
I think it does -- but not without sometimes significant cost. It may well be that only someone steeped in these concepts in their religious life can actually effect them in business. This is an interesting and challenging idea though.
Thanks,
M
Beautiful piece, Rachel, thanks for sharing these thoughts with us. Rabbi Don Seeman has done a lot of thinking/writing on the topic of kavod. He's taught me that kavod is about the unbearable "weightiness" of being. That is to say that each person has a certain weightiness, they take up space in this world. To honor them, to give them kavod, means making space for them. Then "holding yourself back," as you describe it beautifully, is not just about making room for the other person, it is about showing them honor.
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