Parashat Ekev: What was Hard about the Manna

Why is the man (manna) that we ate in the desert viewed as a nisayon, a test or a challenge? What was so hard about eating food that God provided each day?

I think the key to the challenge lies in the description of the man as a substance asher lo yadata, “which you didn’t know,” and, the Torah goes on to say, “which your ancestors didn’t know” either.

What was difficult about the man experience, what made it a nisayon, is that it was new, unfamiliar, something no one had ever encountered before.

New things are hard for us. The children started school this week and the first week is always a bit stressful. Taking a new job, entering a new school, moving to a new city, even driving to a new place can be a challenge.

Why? I think part of it is that new experiences make us feel insecure. We don’t know for sure the outcome. When we enter a new situation, the burning question is: will it work out? Will I make friends in this new place? Will I have enough to eat? Will I have enough time to do the work? Will I be successful? When we have been in that situation before, we know from past experience that it does work out and so we can relax. But in a new situation, we doubt—maybe that road doesn’t actually go to that place; maybe I can’t do this work -- we worry, we lack trust.

For the Israelites in the desert, the man was a challenge because they were used to normal food – you grow it, you fish it, you hunt it, you buy it from someone else who did one of those things. And then you cook it and eat it and you can rely on it to sustain you. But this new thing that appears with the morning dew – can it be relied on in the same way? Will it nourish us in the same way, help our children grow, keep us properly nourished? How do we know it will work out? How do we know it will continue, keep coming each morning, when we have no historical knowledge to rely on and we are not involved in the planting? How do we know that all will be well?

How do we ever know? The truth is that even in normal situations, which are not “new” to us, change happens and we cannot really rely on the predictability and stability of life remaining static. We took a vacation this year next to a river in West Virginia and I was struck by the constancy of the river flow. The water, the current, is always moving – sometimes slower, sometimes faster – but always moving. Change, new things, are actually the norm.

So how do we approach the river of life? How do we encounter the changes, the new situations? They are indeed a nisayon, a challenge, and I think a challenge that asks us, like the Israelites in the desert, to continually develop a greater level of bitahon, trust in God. Trust is the antidote to insecurity; trust provides the balance to ride through the rapids. It is a moment of complete relaxation; the ground will hold us; we do not need to struggle and fight to make it happen; we can trust that each morning we will wake up and find the man, find what we need in this world. In a new situation, we may not know how things will work out, but trusting means having faith that they will work out in the way that they are meant to work out and we can relax and do our best, not out of a sense of frenzied anxiety or insecurity, but out of a sense of joy and trust that it is right to do our part and the world is in good hands.

Parashat VaEthanan: On Places of Refuge

Among many other remarkable parts of this week’s parsha (including the Shma and the second recounting of the Ten Commandments), the Torah reports that Moshe took the time to designate three Cities of Refuge on the eastern side of the Jordan. Moshe has just told the people that he begged to go into the land but was not allowed to do so. Since he cannot cross the Jordan, he took the opportunity to do the mitzvah of separating and designating at least these three Cities of Refuge on this side of the border.

What are the Arei Miklat, the Cities of Refuge? They were 6 levitical cities designated for the absorption and protection of unintentional murderers. Someone who killed another person accidentally could run to these cities and receive sanctuary so that blood avengers from the victim’s family could not pursue them.

The Torah mentions these cities of refuge on a number of occasions, here and in Parashat Masei and again later in Devarim. Here they seem particularly highlighted as something important to Moshe, something he felt he needed to take part in despite his inability to enter the land, an act he needed to perform in order to ensure the proper functioning of Israelite society in the land.

Why are these cities so important?

I think they represent the importance of mercy and forgiveness in society. From the perspective of the sinner, they represent in spatial terms what the High Holiday season represents in time – a place where we can admit we are, by nature, flawed, and have hurt others irreparably, and can nonetheless receive absolution and forgiveness. We need such sanctuaries in life in order to continue to function. Otherwise the weight of needing to be perfect would stop us from ever acting at all. We need to know that as long as we have good intentions, even if we end up hurting people and doing the wrong thing, there is a place we can go to be absolved, there is a sanctuary, a safe haven, a place of refuge which will hold us until we have the strength to act again (actually for the murderer in the City of Refuge, it was until the High Priest died). Without such a pocket of assurance in life, we would be paralyzed by fear of misaction.

And from the perspective of the goel hadam, the family blood avenger, this space is equally important. We are all both sinners and avengers. We hurt others and are ourselves (or our family members) the victims of others. The question that comes up this season is not just: what will we do with our own impossible imperfections but also: what will we do with that of others around us? How will we learn to forgive and to let go, not to take revenge, not to hold a grudge in our hearts for all the little misdeeds of our fellows. This is a difficult emotional task and I think Moshe understood its importance in creating those Cities of Refuge. Those cities represent the end of a cycle of violence. They represent the ability to say: Yes, he hurt me, but it will end here. I will not carry this grudge into the next generation and perpetuate the hatred and ill-will. I will let it go at the borders of the City of Refuge. Why? Not just for the sake of the perpetrator, who needs our mercy, but also for my own sake – for the sake of the sanity of those who are hurt. Revenge eats a person up inside. On top of the injury itself, we end up hurting ourselves with layers of hatred and mean-spiritedness. The City of Refuge teaches release.

As we approach the month of Elul, with its call to repentance and forgiveness, may we feel the power of the Cities of Refuge, both as a place to rest our weary flawed selves as sinners and as a place to let go and forgive those who have hurt us.

Parashat Hukat: Can the Small Contain the Large?

Can something small contain something large? Can a small amount of space contain a large number of people, beyond the normal capacity of the space?

Famously, this was said to be the case for the Temple in Jerusalem. “People, when standing, would be crowded, and when bowing down, would have plenty of room.” The space somehow expanded to meet the needs of the crowd.

This theme comes up in this week’s parsha, too. The people are thirsty and complain to Moshe and Aharon. God tells Moshe to get the rod and gather the people and speak to the rock. Moshe gets the rod, and, the Torah tells us, when he and Aharon go to gather the people, they gather the entire congregation in front of this one rock. Rashi comments: “This is one of the places where the small contains the large.” In other words, even though the space around the rock was small, it miraculously accommodated the entire people of Israel.

The ability of the small to contain the large is a miracle, and I would like to believe that it is possible in all areas of life. I would like to believe that it is possible to fit more guests around the dining room table than you had anticipated, that the food and the space and our ability to interact and be social are all larger than they seemed. I would like to believe especially that time can expand, that even when there are more tasks, they will somehow fit into the time we have to do them, that our stress in the face of seemingly endless tasks is a kind of faithlessness and could be replaced by a mindset that does not see the limitations of a small box but trusts in the expansiveness of the widening Temple floor.

Sometimes, of course, we do hit limits, physical limits of time and fatigue and yes, space, and surely these also play their role; they force us to make our priorities clear in deciding what we will spend our limited resources on and they also keep us humble, reminding us of our finitude and mortality and very limited capacity in relation to the Endless One.

And yet, at the same time, there is a touch of the divine in all of us and in everything around us and so there is also a sense of infinitude, of endless capacity in the world as we know it. We certainly have an endless capacity for love, and I think it is often out of this endless flow of love that we do feel an inkling of this sense of space or time expanding, the sense that actually all is really possible with faith, that there is no reason a small container cannot contain a large amount, that all those imagined limits are false. Though hard-nosed realism is necessary in this physical world of ours, there is also a place, and especially a religious place, for broad-minded dreaming and I wish I had more of it.

I think the Israelites, too, could have used more of it. The desert experience was an experience of endless time and space in one regard, but also an experience of severe physical limitations with very limited food and water resources. Their constant complaints were an expression of their lack of faith that these limitations could be overcome, that the God who created and inhabited the endless desert could certainly eke out of the limited physical environment a great abundance of food and water, that what seemed scarce need not be so if one had faith.

On Shabbat we are touched by both of these sensations at once. On the one hand, we have a sense of our own limitations; we are no longer productive creatures in the world, but exist in a world created by someone else and so very small and limited ourselves. And on the other hand, it is a time that is considered me’eyn olam haba, “like the world to come.” We are privileged to move beyond our weekday limitations and touch the world of infinity and eternity.

May we feel the reality of this limitless infinity around us and really believe that the small can contain the large.

Parashat Shelakh: We Can't Do It Alone

How did the two “good” spies, Yehoshua and Kalev, manage to escape the fate of the other 10? We are all constantly confronted with choices, places where we have to decide whether we are going to go along with the “10,” with the dominant culture, with our peers, with whatever the prevailing wisdom is. And our children are constantly confronted by these choices, too. How do we stand strong on those occasions where the right thing is not to follow the crowd and how do we help our children stand strong? Yehoshua and Kalev each has a strategy to teach.

Yehoshua carries God with him wherever he goes. The Torah says that Moshe, prior to sending him off on the mission, changed his name from Hoshea to Yehoshua. Rashi explains that Moshe was praying on his behalf Yah yoshiakha me’atzat meraglim. “May God save you (playing on Yehoshua’s name) from the counsel of the spies.” It isn’t that Yehoshua was a much stronger or wiser person than the others. What saved him was that he had Moshe’s divine blessing with him. He carried in his name, wherever he went, a reminder of God’s help. He didn’t do it alone. We often feel that the challenges we face in life are beyond us, but if we admit this and ask God to stay with us and help us through it, we can do more than we thought we could. Yehoshua came through because he was never alone.

We should note that here it is Moshe who prays on behalf of Yehoshua, his younger assistant. The goal is not just to feel that God assists us but to learn to spread that blessing around us, to pray that others, too, feel God’s aid and protection.

Kalev does not receive this assistance from Moshe -- sometimes in life it doesn't just come to us -- but he goes about getting it for himself, also from an older generation. When the Torah uses the singular vayavo to describe the spies’ entrance to Hevron, Rashi explains that Kalev came alone to this city of ancestors and laid himself across the graves of the patriarchs and prayed for assistance in not succumbing to the dominant spies’ plans. Once again, Kalev knew that he could not fight the battle alone. He was perhaps no stronger or wiser than the others, but there was one difference – he knew when to ask for help, he knew that this was a moment of difficulty for him and prayed for assistance.

Assistance from ancestors is not something we talk much about, but I think that many of us feel it daily, feel how we carry our deceased parents and grandparents around inside our hearts and can rely on them for wisdom, counsel, and most of all, strength to persevere. We also have our communal ancestors to rely on. Perhaps this is why we start the Amidah with them – Elokei Avraham, . . . -- because we know we need help to pray, to open our mouths and hearts, and we turn to their strength and their example to guide us as we begin. When we walk through life, too, we can at any moment tap into their strength. We can feel their blood running through our veins and know once again that we are not alone.

May God and our ancestors help each of us be strong in the face of our particular pressures.

Parashat Beha'aolotekha: Two Thoughts

Two points strike me about the parsha this year:

1) God cares about hurt feelings. This week’s parsha begins with instructions to Aharon on lighting the menorah. Rashi says that the reason these instructions are juxtaposed to the description of the tribal chieftains’ gifts to the Tabernacle in last week’s parsha is that Aharon was feeling bad about those gifts. Aharon saw how all the tribes except his, the tribe of Levi, had brought gifts and he felt insecure about his place – why hadn’t he brought gifts, too, like all the other chieftains? God saw his hurt and came to comfort him and tell him – look at what a special gift you have – you are the one who will light the menorah each day! You have a special place with Me and My Tabernacle.

God cares about our very human vulnerabilities and insecurities, those small feelings of hurt which come up all the time for all of us. God cares, and, since we are God’s agents on this earth, we need to care, too, to pay attention to the one who might feel left out or insecure in a particular situation and make sure they know that they are wanted and that they play a special part in the group effort of bringing God’s presence down to earth.

2) To be a true leader is to spread the wealth. Eldad and Medad are found prophesying in an unauthorized way within the camp and Yehoshua wishes to have them imprisoned. Moshe’s reaction is: If only the whole nation were prophets! Moshe truly desires for others to receive God’s spirit. He does not need to hold the Torah or hold God to himself but wants everyone to have a part. This may be part of what it means when it says, a few pesukim later, that he is the most humble person on this earth. To be humble is to recognize that we do not own truth; we do not own greatness or Torah or wisdom, that they are gifts to be shared by all. To be humble is not to be threatened, but to rejoice at others’ success in these endeavors because we are all part of the same team, God’s team.

Parashat Naso and Hitlamdut: Learning from Everyone

Hitlamdut -- taking a stance of continual openness to learning from everyone and everything around you. This is a mussar concept I have been thinking about based on the Tikkun Middot Program curriculum of Rabbi David Jaffe and the work of 20th century mussar teacher Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe.

According to Rabbi Wolbe, hitlamdut is the starting point for all personal change. One must be open to learning, open to changing, think of oneself not as a finished product but primarily as a continual learner, open to what texts, people and life experiences have to teach you. This means that we admit that we are not perfect and do not yet know it all and never will but are forever being taught by life.

One example that is given in the Torah of this stance is from this week’s parsha. Rashi explains that the reason that the nazir – the Nazirite who takes special vows of ascetic sanctity – comes after the sotah – the woman who is accused of adultery – in our parsha is that the Nazirite learns from the experience of the sotah. He looks at her and thinks how he can avoid falling into such a trap and vows to stay away from anything, like wine, which might lead him in that direction.

This is a form of negative learning and we have plenty of opportunities to do it, to look around us and say – hey, I don’t want to end up like that person, not out of a stance of arrogance but out of a stance of humility – the knowledge that we are all essentially the same and therefore I, too, am capable of falling into that trap and need to learn how not to.

In Pirke Avot, which we just completed, Ben Zoma also famously tells us that if you want to be wise, the way to do so is to learn from every person. He does not say to learn from every wise person, but from every person. Every person in this world has something to teach us if we can see it and are open to it. I think often what stops us from learning from others is judgment on the one hand and a kind of insecurity on the other. We either think we are better than them or we think we are worse. Either way, we close ourselves from learning, either because we think they have nothing to teach us or because we feel threatened by their goodness. We see the beautiful way they live and we feel small in comparison and shut ourselves off from learning or growing. To take a stance of hitlamdut is to understand that we are all in the same boat, all struggling with similar issues so that we can help each other learn to live.

When I looked back on my encounters with others in the past few days, I found I could learn something from many people (including children) – it was as if they were all sent to be role models for me in different areas of life which I find difficult. The generosity of one and the calm and sense of sanctity of another and the simple practice of davening before anything else in the morning of another and strangely, in another friend, the ability to ask for favors in a way that includes others and makes them feel intimate. If I can take a stance of hitlamdut, then I begin to see each person as an angel sent to enlighten me in some way.

Parashat Emor: On Wholeness

In this week’s parsha, the same word is used to describe the physical requirements for an animal to be sacrificed, tamim, and the nature of the 7 weeks we count between Pesach and Shavuot at this time of year – temimot. In relation to the animal, the word means something like “unblemished” or “perfect,” and in relation to the weeks it means “complete” -- count the full 7 weeks and no less.

What is the connection between these two uses of the same word in the same parsha? Perhaps the point is to emphasize wholeness. What one needs to be presentable to God – as a sacrifice, as a priest (also discussed in this week’s parsha) and as a person about to receive the Torah on Shavuot – what one needs is primarily wholeness. Just as the sacrifice and the priest may not be missing any limbs, so any person, in preparation for Shavuot, should try to be whole-hearted, not to leave any piece of oneself behind, not to be distracted and half-hearted or divided in one’s commitments, but to bring one's total self into service.

That is the nature of the sacrifice – it is a total gift to God, which, because it comes at some cost, requires some “sacrifice” on the part of the giver and therefore shows his total commitment and devotion.

Are we as whole-hearted and committed, as tamim, as we could be? We live in a world where distraction and multi-tasking are the norm so that we often feel pulled in many directions at once. I think it would be a relief to feel that all of this whirling active life is somehow tied together in one single pursuit, that we are, under it all, tamim – pure and simple and whole-hearted – in our most fundamental commitment to God.

Amidst all this play on the word tamim, there is another similar word which appears – tamid -- eternal or always, referring to the ner tamid, the light that burned continuously (or at least from night to night) in the Tabernacle. Perhaps there is a connection here, too – what it means to be tamim, “whole-hearted,” is also to be tamid – constant and reliable, never wavering, steady and committed, "whole," in one's devotion.