Parashat Emor: Rabbi Yochanan and the Power of Presence

This week everything seems to point to Presence.

In my Talmud Bet Midrash we read a story (Brachot 5b): Rabbi Yochanan visits the ailing Rabbi Hiyya and manages to “lift him up” by asking him about his suffering and then asking him for his hand. Rabbi Yochanan is present for Rabbi Hiyya, is with him in his suffering, and this has the effect of “lifting him up.” In class, we role-played this scene and when, after I described my misery, my partner said to me the simple words: “I am here with you. Give me your hand,” I felt an immediate lifting of trouble from my heart.

The opposite of joy is not sadness but alienation, my brother-in-law said to me this week. How true. Sadness often comes as part of a relationship – the heart aches over someone who is missing or gone – and so, in that sadness, there is still some sense of the comfort of connection. Alienation, isolation has no bittersweetness to it. When one suffers alone, without the “presence” of another, there is truly no joy.

Presence is the answer, then. We can’t prevent suffering or sadness or tragedy. But we can be present with each other during those moments, and, like Rabbi Yochanan, simply sit and hold each other’s hands.

The story of Rabbi Yochanan appears in the Talmud right after a discussion about yesurin shel ahavah, “sufferings of love,” meaning sufferings that can be viewed as a sign of God’s love in some way. Our first thought was that the story goes against the grain of the previous discussion, that R. Yochanan’s act, in simply sitting and holding hands, was meant as a foil for the theology of “sufferings of love”; when it comes down to real life suffering, you can’t explain it theologically and it is often offensive to do so.

Our second thought, though, was that actually R. Yochanan was enacting a theology, a version of “sufferings of love,” perhaps “sufferings with love” -- he was the human conduit for God’s love and Presence in the suffering of another. People often say in reaction to tragedy: But where is God in all this? Where is God? God is present in that human holding of hands.

But not only in the human holding of hands. Rabbi Yochanan’s act could also be understood as a parable for the type of comfort that God’s Presence itself can provide. Someone in our Talmud group once described one of the lowest points she had experienced in her life and how, suddenly, alone and sad, she had felt a Presence surrounding her, enveloping her with a sense of love. Cultivating an awareness of that Presence is part of the goal of a Torah life.

This notion of Presence is particularly relevant to the book of Vayikra (Leviticus) that we are in the midst of reading. The point of all those rules of holiness -- of the Tabernacle and the priests who preside in it -- the point of it all is very simply to create a space that can contain God’s Presence in the world, to bring that Presence into the word and cultivate an awareness of it. This is the central book of the Torah and this is the Torah’s central message – to participate in bringing the Presence of God to earth, whether through sacrifice, or as in last week’s portion, through “loving one’s neighbor as oneself” or, as R. Yochanan did, by holding the hands of those who suffer around us.

May we learn to be the Presence and may we learn to feel the Presence, both in joy and in suffering.

Parashat Aharei Mot-Kedoshim: On Holding Back

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.

Parashat Tazria-Metzora: On Extracting the Negative from the Whole

The rabbis read the word Metzora -- the name of the second of this week’s two parshiyyot, which literally means “one who has leprosy” – as a play on the phrase, Motzi Shem Ra, “one who gossips,” or literally, “one who puts out a bad name.” This is the classic notion that skin disease is linked to a tendency to gossip or speak ill of others.

The problem here, says the Sefat Emet, is that people are being Motzi Ra, “pulling out the negative,” from the mix. In every single thing and every single creature, including all humans, there is both ra and tov, bad and good, says the Sefat Emet. That is the way God created the world and us and, when He looked at it and said it was tov me’od, “very good,” that, according to the midrash, meant both the good and bad together. When they are all together, then the bad can be subservient, can be used as a tool for the good. The only problem with evil, ra, is when you pull it out – motzi ra – from the whole.

We need not erase or deny the negative in ourselves or in others. We just need to make it a part of the whole. In the Shma, we say that one should love God bekhol levavekha, “with all your heart.” The rabbis interpret the double letter bet in “heart” as an indication that the Torah means “with both your hearts,” with both your negative and positive capacities. The idea is to use all parts of yourself in the service of God and the Torah.

“Pulling out the bad” is an apt description of gossip. It’s not that these things we say aren’t true; it’s just that they’re not the whole measure of a person. By taking out the negative for special focus and examination, we haven’t let it be part of the whole. That person is disorganized and loud-mouthed. Yes, but he’s also enthusiastic and good-natured. People are a package deal. If you took out the salt from the food, the salt on its own wouldn’t taste good, but as part of the whole, it fits and enhances the general flavor.

When you take the negative out from the whole in describing another person, you do more than damage that person. You damage yourself in the process. The salt doesn’t taste good on its own; when we gossip, we feel badly ourselves. We are participating in the process of extracting the bad from the whole and that is not a pleasant process. The negative wears off on us and we feel negative about ourselves and the world as well. That is the logic of the connection between speaking ill of others and finding yourself afflicted with a skin disease. You have outed the negative in another and in so doing you have caused your own negative parts also to be externalized in the form of a public skin malady. As the saying goes, when you point one finger at someone else, you are pointing three fingers back at yourself. The goal is to bring the negative back into the whole, to make it serve the purposes of the good, so that if you want to “pull out” anything, you can pull out the good that is in all creatures.

On Passover and Togetherness

I think the theme of Passover is togetherness.

According to the Mishnah (Pesahim 10:1), one should not eat on the afternoon before Passover. In fact, the Mishnah says, even the poorest person in Israel should not eat then. It goes on to say that once we arrive at the Seder even the poor should be provided with a full four cups of wine.

Why don’t we eat on the afternoon before the Seder? The Mishnah hints at the reason through its discussion of the poor --- the point is to feel the everyday suffering of the poor, to create a situation where all of Israel joins in the suffering of the hungry for one afternoon. We begin our Seder hungry – all of us, the wealthy, the poor, the fortunate and the unfortunate – as a way of indicating that we are all in this together. No one suffers alone on this night. We suffer together.

By the same token, when it comes to the wine, to rejoicing and celebration, no one should be left out either. The Talmud points out that normally poor people may have some resistance to accepting help, and would prefer to dine simply rather than accept charity. Not so on Passover, the Talmud ordains. On Passover, everyone must be equally well-dined – with a full 4 cups of wine -- and if this requires charity, so be it. Just as we suffer together, so we celebrate together. Today we are all poor, today we are all slaves, and today we are also all wealthy, also all free. Today we are together.

Perhaps that sense of connectedness is true freedom. We speak of being brought out of Mitzrayim, literally, “the narrow spaces.” What is narrower, more constraining than the confines of the individual self, the ego that holds us separate from others? Today we declare ourselves free of such confines, today we suffer together, and today we celebrate together. On Rosh HaShanah the world was created and human beings are born as individuals, but on Passover, the nation – the notion of a collective identity – is born. Today we celebrate togetherness.

This is a broad notion of togetherness, as broad as the straits of “Mitzrayim” are narrow – it stretches out not just horizontally, but also vertically – throughout time. Again and again, we say bekhol dor vador, “In every generation.” The Haggadah is a patchwork of voices from different eras of Jewish history. We go all the way back to Egypt in our suffering, but we can’t help but also think of the Crusades, pogroms, the Holocaust. This is a moment of connections across time and space.

And this togetherness strengthens us. Suffering alone is slavery. Suffering together marks the beginning of redemption and freedom, so that when we enter the celebratory side of the holiday, and the celebratory side of history, we do it together.

On Passover: From Shame to Praise?

“He begins with shame and concludes with praise.” That is how the Mishnah describes the movement of the Haggadah, from shame – the shame of slavery and idolatry-- to praise – praising God for redeeming us from slavery and for providing us with a new religious structure.

From shame to praise. There is something unequal about this dichotomy. The opposite of shame is not praise, but pride. The Sefat Emet must have been picking up on this in his comment to this phrase: “He who wants to talk about shame, should shame himself, and he who wants to praise, should praise the Creator.” Shame and praise are indeed not on the same continuum. They have different subjects. The subject of shame is humanity. The subject of praise is God.

The movement of the Passover Haggadah, then, is not just a movement from slavery to freedom, from a humble state to an exalted one, from national shame to national pride. No, the movement is from one scheme, one way of thinking about things to a totally different one, from a human-centered perspective to a God-centered one.

Both shame and pride are problematic. They are two sides of the same coin – the coin that claims that it’s all about us and our egos, that we should reflect on our own worth based on what happens to us, how people treat us or even what we achieve in the world.

On Passover we declare a freedom from such self-referential thinking. It is not about shame or pride or any other ego-driven emotion. The point is to let go of self, of ego, and simply praise God – feel the smallness of our selves and the largeness of the world and the One who created it. Such a movement is indeed a movement from the constriction of Mitzrayim, the narrow straits of ego, to a broader space. Praise is nothing if not large. That is the feeling of the song of Dayenu – we well up with praise like fruit out of a cornucopia -- we are so blessed, so grateful -- there is no limit. This is the feeling we are working toward. We end the Seder with the prayer, Nishmat – the ultimate expression of limitless gratitude. “If our lips were full of song like the sea, . . . we could not express the full measure of our gratitude.”

From shame to praise. From self-reference to God-reference. From a constricted place to a broad place of open seas and flying eagles. May we be open to it.

On Passover and Vayikra: Clearing the Way

Sometimes it feels like there is a huge amount of junk blocking the truth in our minds and our souls. There is a restless swirl of things to do, worries, and ego protections constantly flooding the brain, leaving no space for the stillness of truth, the divine, eternity.

The way forward requires clearing the path. The Piasetzner Rebbe taught a technique for sensing the divine which is called hashkatah, “quieting.” It involves a gradual clearing of the brain until it lies quiet and unperturbed, and then is ready for a single holy thought. I imagine my mind as a box full of junk and I imagine myself throwing out pieces, one after another, until the box sits empty, open to being filled from above.

That is what we are doing now in preparing for Passover – emptying our cabinets to make room for something fresh and pure. The principal task of preparing for a divine encounter is a removal of obstacles. Hametz symbolizes such obstacles – the things that slow us down normally, that occupy our time like the process of bread-baking, the process of puffing ourselves up, creating an image of ourselves that is large and expansive.

But on Passover we shrink down, we empty out, and we therefore open up to something, become, as the Hasidic masters say, a kli, an open vessel for divine overflow.

This week’s parsha, Vayikra, deals with korbanot, a word that is translated as “sacrifices” but also means “things that bring you karov, close.” Perhaps what brings you close – to God, to truth, to a web of connectedness -- are precisely sacrifices – things that you give up about yourself in order to become open to something else. There has to be some shedding of self, of the klipah, the “outer shell,” to make room for others and for Another.

Last week’s parsha ended with the statement that Moshe was not able to come into the Tent of Meeting when the cloud of God’s presence covered it, and this week’s parsha begins with God’s call to Moshe to come in --- Vayikra el Moshe. The Sefat Emet says that the two are linked -- Moshe’s humility in last week’s parsha, his ability to step backward, to put himself behind the scenes, was precisely what brought him close enough to have God invite him inside in this week’s parsha. Like the way we start our Amidah prayer, a step backwards, a shedding of self, is required before the next step forward.

As we prepare for Passover, we, too, take a step back, shed something, go back to some simple essential self. Maybe we can throw out, along with the crackers, some of the clutter in our heads that blocks the way to closer connections -- to our family and friends at the Seder, and to the Eternal Presence that provides redemption in every generation.

Parashat Vaykhel-Pekudei: On Generosity and Gratitude

How do you turn complainers into active participating members of a community? Create a space for them to give. People like to give, like to be part of things. The very same Israelites who complain incessantly throughout their years in the desert -- we don’t have enough water and food, we want watermelon and meat – those same Israelites jump over one another to bring precious metals and stones and fabrics and their own creativity and expertise to the building of the Tabernacle here in our parsha. People actually want to give – it makes us feel good to be part of something larger than ourselves.

When we are giving, we don’t complain. Giving makes us feel rich and generous. There is bounty – the Israelites gave dayam ve’hoter, “enough and even more.” One can sense the excitement in the air – the whole community was rallying around this one project, each person contributing in her own way, feeling needed and a part of things. People want and need a communal space to bring their material wealth, their talents, and also their hearts (the Torah emphasizes again and again that the contributors were moved by the upsurging of their hearts – me’et kol ish asher nesa’o libo).

The Golden Calf was also a communal giving project, and it proved the need for such a project and the people’s willingness to give to it. Aaron said – get gold, and two second later, presto, there was enough gold to make a calf. People want to give. But to what end? The Golden Calf was simply a glorification of the gold itself – a celebration of the people’s egos – look at how beautiful our gold looks!

But the Tabernacle takes giving to another level. It creates a space where the giving that is done is in the service of God, and so becomes a way to acknowledge our appreciation of and our continued dependence on God. It creates a space where generosity is linked to gratitude. Generosity is easier for us than gratitude, because when we give, we feel good about ourselves, whereas gratitude involves a retreat of the ego, an admission that we are not self-contained, but very much dependent on others. The Tabernacle is where generosity and gratitude meet – where one can turn the natural inclination to want to give and participate not into a glorification of the self but into an acknowledgement of the self’s limitations, its interdependence on others and the Other.

Shabbat again helps to create this balance, to ensure that the contributions – the gold we give and the tapestries we weave in this world – are not ultimately aimed at self-glorification, but are tempered, even fueled, by an awareness that God created the world and us.