Law and Love

Can we obey commands we don't understand? And if we do, is it a loss of independence, or is it a sign of love? 

What is a chok?

The Torah portion we read on this past Shabbat, Parshat Bechukotai, begins like this:

אִם־בְּחֻקֹּתַ֖י תֵּלֵ֑כוּ וְאֶת־מִצְוֺתַ֣י תִּשְׁמְר֔וּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָֽם׃

If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, 

 

The word for "commandments" is mitzvot, and Jews are pretty familiar with the concept of a mitzvah. The word for "laws" is chukot, and that is not so familiar. What is a chok? And why is it such a challenge to follow the chukot (more often pluralized as chukim)?

We often see this word in Torah in combination, chukim u' mishpatim : "laws and judgments." Judgments are based on principles of justice, and they are logically justified when we understand the situation. As Rabbi Menachem Leibtag states, however, "a CHOK can be logical, but it doesn't have to be!" It is binding, and lasting, whether or not a reason is given, or can be deduced. We have to follow it whether or not there is a reason or not. Because God said so.

"Because God said so"? What kind of reason is that?

For some thinkers, notably Soren Kierkegaard, obeying God's commandments when they don't make any sense is the most meritorious thing we can do. It shows a higher level of faith than carrying out instructions that make rational sense. Faith is much more of a Christian or Muslim thing than a Jewish one, however, and even those Jewish thinkers who stress faith also value applying human reason to our texts. In fact, their faith requires that they do so!

And let's be real: we are living in the 21st century. We have inherited the modern understanding that using one's intelligence is a good thing, a necessary thing, part of being a dignified and independent human being. Irrationality can be seen as threatening: a gateway to fascism. Unquestioning obedience can be seen as a throwback to a premodern age. 

Even the main body of our parshah, the tochecha or warning about what happens when we don't obey, can sound dictatorial--or like a parent threatening a child with consequences. "Because I said so"? As the Jewish people, and as adults, haven't we outgrown messages like this? Why should we even study the chukim in Parshat Be'chukotai?

I suppose it depends on our understanding of what a parent is like.

My parents taught me to question

In 2024. the yahrzeit, or anniversary of death, for my father, Mel Fischman was the week before this parshah was read. My mother's birthday will be the following week, and Faye Fischman would have been 90 years old. 

My parents were the generation that demanded reasons for everything. They were a puzzle to their hard-working immigrant parents, who may not have been able to keep from working on Shabbat--they were poor, and they had to make a living--but they knew that's what they were supposed to do. They kept kosher. They hosted the Passover Seder. And their children said to them, "If you can't explain it, we're not going to do it."

Still, my parents had very strong Jewish identities, including the Jewish cultural emphasis on education. They sent us to Hebrew school beginning around age nine or ten. Just as, when we got home from secular school in the afternoon, they asked, "Okay, kids, what did you learn today?", so did they ask the same question about Hebrew school. We learned together that some questions about Judaism do have logical answers! We began adding practices that made sense to us: first home rituals like getting together without fail for Friday dinner, then synagogue...which ultimately led to my being at Temple B'nai Brith and giving this d'var torah!

A God of Love

My parents taught me to question everything, even if they sometimes chafed at being the ones we interrogated. I think God does that too.

You might laugh. You might think Dennis is projecting Mel and Faye onto God, in some kind of Freudian sense. I admit the possibility. But I think it's the reverse. Mel and Faye learned what it mean to be a good parent from Judaism. They learned that questioning is a central part of the Jewish tradition, and they passed that value onto us.

Because of that, when my parents said, "Do it because I said so," it was so exceptional that I heard it in the context of all the times they had encouraged me to question. When they said, "Do this right now," I trusted that they understood my situation, and that they had my good in mind. Sure, like any adolescent I rebelled in major ways, and I used their authorization to question everything as my license to decide and act independently. When I did obey them, however, it was an act of love. And remembering the times when I obeyed them helps keep their love alive, even when they are no longer an imminent presence in my life.

Remembering God's "Because I said so," the chukim, can do the same, if we allow it. It can remind us of times in our biography, or periods in our communal history, when God seemed like a member of the household, and when we could trust God to remember us for good. We need those reminders.

In some ways, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, the Velveteen Rabbi, says it better than I can. As she paraphrases Parshat Bechukotai in her poem "Either/Or," in 70 Faces: Torah Poems:

If you will follow my laws

and observe my commandments

I will grant you rain in its season

you will eat your fill

I will live in your midst.

I will untie your tangles.

Where there is rye bread

there will always be pastrami.

You and your mother will remain

on good terms, no matter what.

But if you do not obey

if you break my laws and spurn my rules

if you break my covenant

I will set my face against you

I will shatter all your glory.

I will leave your boat becalmed.

You will never find 

a good parking space again.

You will poison the skies

and your fields will not feed you.

I can be infinitely more hostile

than you, but I won't be.

In the end you'll realize

I was here all along,

waiting for you.

 

Letting God In: Parshat T'rumah

 

 

When you long for God, what's the relationship between failing and succeeding? This past week's parshah, T'rumah, offers an answer.

"And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell [shachanti] among them. Exactly as I show you--the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings--so shall you make it." (Exodus 25: 8-9)

The Mishkan is what often gets called the Tabernacle, which (besides being a swear word in French!) is a wholly inadequate translation of an amazing concept. Mishkan is from the same root as Shekhinah, and that root means to be present, to dwell...even, to be a neighbor. 

The Shekhinah is God's indwelling presence on Earth. The Mishkan is its mailing address.

But the people of Israel sent a letter to the wrong address before!

Golden Calves and Golden Earrings Cannot Mend This Love of Mine

According to Rashi, the great medieval Biblical scholar, the story of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32) is out of chronological order in the text. It actually occurred before this week's instructions on how to build the Mishkan. In some ways, it's a failed attempt to do the same thing.

Why did the Israelites build the Golden Calf? 

Not because they had suddenly become idol worshippers! They didn't think God was the statue, or was captured in the statue. Rather, they build the Calf as a throne for God's presence to descend upon and live among them. 

(Building, as my friends in #ParshaChat on Twitter have pointed out, is what Israelites do. In Egypt, they built entire store cities for Pharaoh. It's tribute, and it's putting their talents into action.)

And why did they need reassurance that God was in their midst?  

Because after Sinai, they had been overawed by God's voice, to the point where they implored Moses to listen to God for them and bring back the message. And at this point in the story, Moses had gone up Mount Sinai and hadn't been seen for forty days and forty nights (the biblical expresssion for "it seemed like forever").

So, on this reading, the Israelites built the Golden Calf out of the same longing for God that would later lead to their building the Mishkan. What's more they build it out of one of the key ingredients called for in this week's parshah: gold, taken out of Egypt. In their eagerness to feel God's presence among them, they rip off their gold earrings and tell Aaron to melt them down to make a place for God.

It doesn't work. It's a disaster. Moses, when he comes back down the mountain, ends up grinding the Golden Calf to powder and making them drink it--like a colonoscopy prep--to flush the impulse out of their system.

No Calf, No Mishkan?

Why does Rashi rearrange the order of the stories? It's not necessary: as Avivah Zornberg points out, other commentators like Nachmanides see the sequence in the text as just right. What's the point of saying that first the Israelites built the Calf and only later the Mishkan?

Sometimes, it seems, it's necessary to try what doesn't work in order to attempt what does.

Sometimes, we aim to slake our longings by having a Lover we can control, who will always be there for us even when we are not ecstatic about them. We build the image of our Lover out of our own imaginings and not what pleases them. But that is self-love, born of fear, and we grow up: we learn better.

A wonderful midrash says that when God commands "And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them," those words among them don't mean in the midst of the camp. The words mean in the midst of each person. 

Building the Mishkan according to instructions means taking the same longing for God and fulfilling it in a way that doesn't try to keep God there, but rather, lets God in.

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I'm reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights. To keep on track, I will post at least one insight weekly between now and mid-March, when (God willing) I finish the book.

Taking Pharaoh to Heart

 

Pharaoh is no bleeding heart.

Throughout the story of the ten plagues (last week's Torah portion and this week's), Pharaoh and the country over which he rules get hit with catastrophic punishments. Pharaoh promises Moses to let the Israelites go off into the desert to worship God, if only the plague goes away. The plague ends, and Pharaoh changes his mind--or, in Biblical parlance, his heart is hardened.

Sometimes the Torah narrative says God hardens Pharaoh's heart. Sometimes, especially toward the end of the story, Pharaoh does it to himself. 

I'm not going to get into the much-discussed question of how God can hold Pharaoh accountable for his actions when God is pushing those actions in a particular direction. Others have explored that in depth. 

Instead, I want to ask: is a hard heart necessarily a bad thing? From the Hebrew, it seems like an open question.

Hearts: Hard, Strong, or Heavy?

The first thing to understand about hearts in Hebrew is that they are neither blood pumps nor valentines. In the Torah, a heart (lev) is not sentimental; it's the organ of understanding. 

Yes, we understand with our emotions as well as our intellect. That kind of understanding is called a heart of wisdom. But it's important to know that whatever happens to Pharaoh's heart, it's not simply a feeling: it affects his calculations and his actions, too.

A hard term to translate

What does happen to Pharaoh's heart? One verb that describes it is the root ch-z-k. It's conventionally translated in Exodus as "harden," but it's not hard in the sense of difficult--there's a different word for that. 

It's not hard in the sense of stiff and unyielding, either. At least, in many other contexts it's not used that way, and there are alternative words for rigidity that the text could have used. So, why this one?

The most natural translation for words using ch-z-k is "strong." But there's a problem with that translation, which is that "strong" is usually a positive! 

* When Jews get to the end of reading the Book of Exodus (or any of the Five Books of Moses) in shul, we rise and say Chazak, chazak v'nit-chazek: "Strong, strong, and let's strengthen each other."

* When Moses passes the leadership on to Joshua, he wishes him Chazak v'ematz: "Be strong and of good courage."

* At the end of Psalm 31, we read a similar phrase, only in the plural. Chizku v'ya'ametz l'vavchem: "Be strong and let your heart take courage...." (Is it significant that "heart" is mentioned here, too?)

So many other times, ch-z-k means "strong," and it's said with approval. So, what does it mean that Pharaoh's heart is strengthened--and why is it a bad thing?

 

A heavy thought

Here's an even more puzzling version of what happens to Pharaoh's heart as the ten plagues progress. In Exodus 9:7 (after the cattle die and before the Egyptians get stricken with boils), it's the first time that Pharaoh apparently hardens his own heart, without divine intervention. (I learned this from Aviva Zornberg's interview by Krista Tippett.) 

But the Hebrew this time is not ch-z-k, or strong. It's ch-v-d, or heavy.

Va-yichvad lev Par'oh, v'lo shilach et ha-am.  

In English: Pharaoh's heart becomes heavy, and he doesn't send out the people (or let the people go, as the familiar song says).

Clearly, this Hebrew phrase is not the English-language idiom "a heavy heart." Pharaoh is not becoming sad. That is not why he reneges on his promise to Moses. Heaviness here implies weightiness, severity, and even immobility. Pharaoh weights himself down and refuses to budge from his supreme authority, over Egypt and over the Israelites.

Again, the problem is that ch-v-d has many positive connotations. In fact, it's the same root as the word for "glory"...which we most commonly hear associated with God!

What's wrong with Pharaoh's heart?

A strong heart, a glorious heart--in English, we might say a stout heart. Wouldn't we praise these qualities in our friends and allies? Then, why is hard-heartedness so terrible in the Egyptian leader?

I have to admit, I do not have a good answer yet.

Here's one traditional answer, from the text: God needs Pharaoh to keep on refusing so that God can show the Egyptians, and the world, that Pharaoh is not a god. 

The repeated cycle of plague from God, pleading from Pharaoh, and reprieve from God shows that it's not just a one-time event. This God (whom Pharaoh says, at the beginning of the story, "I do not know") can control the world at will. It's Pharaoh's weighty heart (vay-yichbad lev) against God's glory (kavod). Guess which one wins?

This answer makes sense in context, but I don't like it. It poses the question of why an almighty God needs to impress mere human beings with his power. It seems like a cosmic pissing context between two swaggering men. (I miss the women from the first portion of Exodus!)

Here's another answer from a friend in the #ParshaChat: God actually makes Pharaoh's heart stronger--that is, more capable of compassion.

On this reading, ch-z-k is positive here, as it usually is. God makes Pharaoh's ability to understand the situation rightly, and to have compassion, stronger. The terrible thing is that Pharaoh refuses to use his improved ability, his stronger heart. He sticks with his position of power instead.

I like this reading, but I don't think it works with the plain meaning of the Torah. What's more, I can think of times when a misplaced compassion is injustice and times when a refusal to bend is a virtue. (Remember "Nevertheless, she persisted"?)

So, I invite you to help me take this Torah portion to heart. How would you make sense of the positive and the negative, the strong and the stubborn, the hard and heavy heart vs. the courageous and glorious? What is really going on here?

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I'm reading through Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's amazing commentary on the biblical Book of Exodus, The Particulars of Rapture. Each chapter expounds one of the portions we read in the synagogue weekly. It's slow going because it is so rich with insights. To keep on track, I will post at least one insight weekly between now and mid-March, when (God willing) I finish the book.

Joseph: Brat, Brother, Authoritarian, All Too Human

My teacher, Julius Lester, was appalled. "Joseph was not a brat," he stated.

It was the 1980's, and I had met Julius at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where (as a graduate student) I'd taken his course Blacks and Jews: A Study in Comparative Oppressions. 

But we were not in the classroom: we were at the synagogue where I taught, and he sometimes led services, and we were in the middle of the Torah discussion--sometime about this time of year. The Torah portion was part of the Joseph saga.

I never found out why Julius was so outraged at my statement about Joseph. Was it pure piety? Joseph was a man who could resist seduction by Potiphar's wife, who could interpret dreams and give all the credit for the interpretation to God. He could rise from prison to the palace, save the land of Egypt from starvation, rescue his family, and forgive them for having sold him into slavery. How could a man like that be less than a saint (or as we would say, a tzaddik)?

I don't know if that's why Julius was shocked at me. But here's why I thought Joseph was a brat.

The obnoxious little brother

Joseph was his father Jacob's favorite son--and he knew it.

 

Joseph's mother, Rachel, was the woman his father fell in love with and worked seven years to marry. The other women his father married were an afterthought. His father gave him the coat of many colors, a sign that Joseph was his designated heir.  

 

Then Joseph had two dreams that both signified he would someday rule over his whole family. Did he keep his dreams to himself? No. Did he tell his father privately? No. He told his whole family. How did he imagine his brothers were going to react?

 

The brat in power

Joseph seems to have had a blind spot for other people's emotions. Only if they had power over his life did he seem to care about them.  

 

* He refused to sleep with Potiphar's wife because of the loyalty he owed his master, not for any other stated reason. 

 

* He sucked up to Pharaoh's cupbearer in the prison to try to get himself out of jail, but once he was appointed to high office by Pharaoh, the cupbearer is never mentioned again. 

 

* True, he kept the people of Egypt from starvation, but the price they paid was turning over all their land and becoming serfs to Pharaoh. Can you say "authoritarian personality"?

 

A different way of understanding Joseph

Just this week, however, I learned a different way of looking at Joseph, one that makes me feel more sympathetic to him. (I give all the credit to participants in Rabbi Ruti Regan's #ParshaChat on Twitter.)

What if, instead of feeling superior as a child, Joseph just felt singled out?

It could not have been easy, being the youngest brother (because his mother had not yet given birth to Benjamin), and the half-brother of all these grown men, and being put on a pedestal by his father. Even if he sensed he had some kind of destiny awaiting him, he could not ignore the way it made his brothers hate him, right there, right then.

What if telling his dreams was not oblivious, not a power play, but a plea for understanding? 

It's not just Dad who thinks I'm special, he might be saying. It's not just me putting on airs. Look, there's a sign from God that I have a role to play. Can you please stop blaming me now?

But they can't. They throw him into a pit. Then, they sell him as a slave.

What Joseph learns, and what he never grasps

If this interpretation is right, it would explain why, in Egypt, Joseph takes care to attribute his dream-interpretations to God and not to himself. Raising yourself in other people's eyes is a dangerous business!

If this interpretation is correct, it would explain why Joseph takes an Egyptian name and an Egyptian wife and tries to forget the painful scenes with his family. He did everything he knew how to do to keep his father's love without incurring his brothers' hatred, and nothing worked. Now, as second to Pharaoh, he is competent and powerful.

If this interpretation holds water, it also contains new insights into why Joseph apparently torments his brothers when they come looking for food during a famine. Joseph may be testing them, to see if they've changed, but at the same time he is learning that he has changed, too. He has learned that other people have feelings too (especially Judah, who reveals his love for their father and his guilt for the way they treated Joseph in an eloquent speech). 

And he has learned there is an alternative to dominating or being dominated--and that is forgiveness.

Sadly, Joseph seems to have learned about forgiveness and love only in relation to his own family. He still wields power over the enslaved Egyptians in a way that foreshadows how the Egyptians will eventually exploit the enslaved Israelites. 

So, he is not entirely a brat, entirely a tzaddik, or entirely a reformed character who has learned from experience. Joseph is a complicated human being. That may be why, thousands of years later, we still read and reinterpret his story.