Isaac Finding Joy in His Yetzer HaTov

Someone wishing to convert to Judaism asked Rabbi Hillel to summarize Judaism on one foot and he responded, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary. Now go and learn!” When Rabbi Menachem Mendel Leffin of Satnov wrote Cheshbon HaNefesh, the Accounting of the Soul, he used “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor” as the remez, the one-sentence summary, for the middah (soul-trait) Tzedek, or Right Action.

A perfect example of how NOT to fulfill this middah appears in this week’s parsha, Toldot. Isaac and Rebecca move to Gerar and Isaac is afraid that people will kill him on account of his wife Rebecca, because she is beautiful, and so he lies and says she is his sister. This is a perfect example of how our yetzer hara, our tendency to selfishness, is activated. First, Isaac is afraid and acts out of his fear. This is very often the case when our yetzer hara is activated – we are afraid of something. Sometimes, this fear is justified – and this is why G!d created us with a yetzer hara in the first place. However, much more often for most of us, it is not, and our fearful action is the wrong action.

Second, his yetzer hara distorts his relationships to others. He lies about Rebecca, claiming she is his sister rather than his wife. He has a distorted – and, as it turns out, inaccurate – view of the inhabitants of Gerar and its king, Avimelech. His concern with his own well-being to the exclusion of others causes him to not be able to see the others for who they really are.

Avimelech then looks out the window and is upset to see Isaac engaging in an activity with Rebecca that spouses engage in but siblings do not. The 1917 JPS translation says “Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife” while the Kehot (Chabad) translation has “gladdening” – this being a discussion of Tzedek and not Tznius, I’ll leave it at that. But the Hebrew is very interesting – Yitzchok metzachek et Rivkah ishto. Yitzchok and metzachek are from the same root, meaning to laugh or play. This pun speaks to the fact that Isaac in this moment is bringing his full self in his yetzer hatov in his love of Rebecca – who here is called his wife, seeing and acknowledging who she really is. It could be translated as “Isaac was Isaacing with Rebeccas his wife.”

The grammar teaches us even more. Yitzchok is in the imperfect tense – in modern Hebrew, the future – “he will laugh/sport/gladden” – that is, he is potentially who he is meant to be but not yet actualized. Metzachek is the participle – in modern Hebrew the present – and so in this moment, acting out of his yetzer hatov, his concern for and participation in the well-being of the other, in this case his wife Rebecca, the potential becomes the actual and he is in this moment actually who he is meant to be, not merely potentially. Furthermore, metzachek is the Pi’el participle, which has the added meaning of being emphatic – thus, the phrase could be translated as “Isaac was REALLY Isaacing with Rebecca his wife” – so he is very vibrantly and emphatically in that moment who he is meant to be – who he is at his core. Also, as my friend Rabbi Geoff Basik pointed out to me, living in his yetzer hatov and being vibrantly himself brings great joy to both himself and Rebecca.

And that is the contrast between the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov – fear vs. joy – distortion vs. truth – constriction vs. expansiveness.

Of course, this story appears two other time in the book of Genesis. In parshat Lech Lecha, Abraham has the same fear for his life and tells the same lie about Sarah his wife – and Pharaoh takes Sarah but is unable to do anything due to a plague. Again, in parshat Vayera, Abraham tells the same lie about Sarah – this time to Avimelech, who is warned in a dream that they are actually spouses. (Avimelech means “my father the king” and is a title rather than a name, and the Avimelech Isaac encounters is almost certainly the son of the one his father encounters.)

This teaches us that often, our fearfulness and distortion of the truth come for our upbringing – our parents, our extended family and community, our country. I say this not to blame these people who passed along their fears and distortions – but to point out how difficult it is for us to even notice and see them. However, this difficulty does not absolve us of the responsibility to see them and heal from them. In healing them, we can cease from doing that which is hateful to us to our neighbor.

May we, in the merit of Isaac becoming himself in laughter, in sport, in gladdening, overcome our fears, our distortions, our lies – our selfish yetzer hara – and embrace the joy of serving others and living in joy through our yetzer hatov.

My Thoughts About the Akedah – 5785

As many people know, I have been obsessed with the Akedah for decades. I even chose Yitzchok as half of my Hebrew name as a direct result. My thinking about it has evolved, and I am sharing  my current reading of the Akedah. I emphasize that a proper understanding of Torah allows for a variety of readings, even contradictory readings – as the sages say, there are 70 faces of Torah – and if, in matters of halachah, opinions of both Hillel and Shammai are preserved because “these and these are the words of the living G!d” even as the rulings of Beit Hillel are usually followed, then how much more must this be true for Aggadah, about which the Or HaChaim HaKodesh has said that we are free to come up with new interpretations even when they contradict those of Chazal!

It is not difficult to understand why the Akedah speaks so powerfully to me – my parents were married for twenty years without being able to have a child. One child died at birth and there were at least a couple of miscarriages. My mother didn’t even recognize the signs of pregnancy when she became pregnant with me! My father was nearly 50 and my mother 41 when I was born, a much less common occurrence in the 1960s than today. Deeply religious, my father a Southern Baptist minister, my parents offered me to G!d before I was born and held a dedication service for me, almost unheard of in Southern Baptist churches at that point (it smacked too much of infant baptism), although it has become more common in the intervening years. My father had very serious unaddressed mental health issues that unfortunately were exacerbated by his religious views. He was fired by four churches when I was between five and twelve years old and his beliefs in faith healing, miracles, and the prosperity gospel as well as in his own special calling led to abusive and negligent parenting. In many ways, it felt like I, or at least my childhood, was metaphorically sacrificed to my father’s understanding of what G!d asked from him.

Given that background, for many years, I followed the approach of many who hold that Avraham failed the test – that G!d wanted him to do the ethical thing and reject G!d’s demand – after all, he had argued with G!d about destroying Sodom and Gomorrah – why could he not argue with G!d about his own son? And I still see this as a very valid reading of the Akedah. It was very important to me that G!d be exonerated from wrongdoing and Avraham be condemned for his action or lack thereof. I noted that neither G!d nor Yitzchok ever spoke to Avraham again – surely this was a divine consequence of Avraham’s action. I also failed to find convincing the rabbis’ view that Yitzchok was thirty-seven years old – it made sense to me that he was perhaps around thirteen years old.

A couple of years ago, a friend confided in me on Shabbat Vayera that she had concluded, when hearing the Akedah read on Rosh Hashanah, that G!d was the villain of the story. And thanks to that and reading feminist critiques focusing on Sarah’s grief that led to her death after Yitzchok failed to return, I began to read the Akedah with Avraham banished from the position of protagonist, replace by Yitzchok (and I believe readings with G!d, Sarah, the ram, and others as protagonist are also very valuable). I also read Rabbi Ben Greenfield’s essay “Hesed, Gevurah, and Emet: Do These Attributes Actually Describe our Forefathers?” (https://thelehrhaus.com/tanakh/hesed-gevurah-and-emet-do-these-attributes-actually-describe-our-forefathers/), in which he argues that these attributes are given respectively to Avraham, Yitzchok, and Yaakov because they lacked them and needed them, which helped me to see that Yitzchok, as an adult survivor of trauma (such as his half-brother Yishmael being sent away), could quite easily have been thirty-seven years old. Rabbi Goldie Guy, in a wonderful class on Rebbe Nachman’s teachings, introduced me to his idea that “Ayeh?” “Where?” – referring to a question about where G!d is while in the place furthest from G!d – becomes the place of G!d’s greatest closeness – when applied to Yitzchok’s question “Ayeh ha-seh l’olah?” “Where is the lamb for the burnt-offering?” is transformed into the proclamation “[The question] ‘Where?’ is the lamb/means for the ascent!”

With all of this in mind, this is how I read the Akedah today – not as a story of G!d testing Avraham, but rather of Yitzchok finding the courage and the gevurah – the strength – to leave an abusive situation and find a life of meaning.

While it is obvious that Avraham is going to sacrifice Yitzchok, Yitzchok nonetheless chooses to deny it and remain oblivious and accompany his father, the young men, and the donkey (chamor) to the mountain. Once they leave the two young men and the donkey behind, he begins to get a glimpse of what is going on and notes the fire and the wood when asking his father where the lamb is. Notably, he leaves out mention of the knife, which is the instrument which would be used to kill him – he has begun to awaken, but still cannot fully fathom the horror of his father’s intention to murder him. He ends up being bound and placed on the altar and his father has taken in hand the knife to kill him when the angel intervenes.

After the angel (not G!d, the angel) talks to his father, the text notes that Avraham returns to the young men. As rabbinic commentators note, Yitzchok is not mentioned, and they speculate that he did not return with Avraham, perhaps going to Gan Eden to heal from being actually wounded or even killed, perhaps going to yeshiva to learn Torah, or perhaps going to rejoin his brother Yishmael. What very few note is that the donkey is also not mentioned.

I believe Yitzchok ran back to the young men and took the donkey and rode it into the rest of his life, a life free of his abusive and murderous father. I read chamor (donkey) as chumrah – stringency – the same three-letter root (Hebrew linguists might quibble and insist they are, in fact, different roots that share the same three letters – but I choose to read this in a midrashic and Chasidic way) – the stringency that is a demonstration of the gevurah that he is able to access to make this bold journey. G!d says “Lech lecha” – “go forth” – or “go to yourself” – to Avraham at the beginning of this story – as he did in his first words to Avraham – but perhaps THIS lech lecha was meant for Yitzchok, not Avraham – to find the gevurah to go and find himself.

But the story does not end with his escaping the abuse. Later one, we read that Yitzchok was meditating in the field toward evening (the institution of the afternoon prayer of Mincha, according to the rabbis) and he looks up and sees camels coming – which bore his soon-to-be wife Rivkah. Again, I read camels – g’malim – not only as g’malim but as g’milut chasadim – acts of lovingkindness. He is able to transcend his trauma and embrace acts of lovingkindness and live a life of meaning and purpose. After his father dies, we read that G!d blessed him – the Chizkuni and others say that Avraham failed to bless him and therefore G!d blessed him with the blessing Avraham was meant to give him – and he settles near Beer-Lachai-Roi, the well Hagar is shown when she is expelled while pregnant by Avraham at the insistence of Sarah.

This is a redemptive reading for me. Yes, Avraham inflicted horrible abuse on Yitzchok given his understanding of what G!d wanted. Yes, it is an extremely problematic story. But, for me, the Akedah now represents Yitzchok’s finding the strength to make his exodus from this horrific situation for a life of meaning and purpose, a life blessed by G!d.

So may all of us merit such a redemption. Amen.

 

 

Yom Kippur 5785

As we prepare to begin Yom Kippur, I'm thinking about the last three verses of the Haftarah for Mincha, Micah 7:18-20, added on to the book of Jonah:

Who is a G!d like unto You, that pardons the iniquity, And passes by the transgression of the remnant of G!d's heritage? G!d retains not G!d's anger for ever, Because G!d delights in mercy.

G!d will again have compassion upon us; G!d will subdue our iniquities; And You wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. You will give truth to Jacob, lovingkindness to Abraham, As You have sworn unto our ancestors from the days of old.

In the opening words of Tomer Devorah, Rabbi Moshe Cordevero makes the point that because we are made in the image and likeness of G!d, our actions must imitate G!d's actions as well. He goes on, in the first chapter of that work, to expound the Thirteen Supernal Attributes of Mercy contained in these three verses and consider how we might imitate them.

May we, on this Yom Kippur, reflect on how we have fallen short from imitating G!d's attributes in all of our actions and may we be given the strength to let these attributes shine forth in all of our deeds in the coming year.

G'mar chatimah tovah!

The Golden Calf, Kashrut, and You

The mitzvah not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk appears three times in the Torah – and from this, the rabbis derive that one is prohibited not to eat milk with meat, not to cook them together, and not to benefit from the mixture. One of the times the commandment is given occurs shortly after Moses goes up the mountain a second time with a second set of tablets and G!d reveals the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy and Moses is only allowed to see G!d’s backside (or the knot at the back of the tefillin G!d wears on the head according to midrash). (This appears in Exodus 34, with the commandment about boiling the kid in its mother’s milk in verse 26.) These events occur after the sin of the golden calf.

I believe this mitzvah and the incident of the golden calf are related.

The golden calf bears no actual resemblance to a real calf. Having grown up in small towns and rural areas, I encountered cows and their calves. They are smelly, they are stubborn, and they don’t care where they go to the bathroom. They are not perfect. We keep them to serve our needs, but they live their own lives and don’t really care about our wellbeing apart from our role in feeding them and giving them shelter.

The idol of the golden calf, in contrast, is an idealized perfect image of a calf that bears no actual resemblance to a real calf. Aaron tells the people, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:8) Not only is this false – the one living G!d actually brought them up – thus creating an idol in place of G!d – but it distorts the relationship to the calf, attributing to it a miracle it did not do – but also making the calf exist only in relationship to the people, only existing to meet our needs, erasing its existence as a being independent of humans with its own life. The idol is a false image of both G!d and the calf.

I would like to suggest that one reason this commandment against boiling the kid in its mother’s milk, which is seen by rabbinic Judaism as a prohibition against mixing meat and milk of any kind, is to give us a constant reminder to recognize that the animals we use for food are creatures independent of us – the calf or kid has a relationship with its mother – and that we must be grateful to it and to G!d, recognizing we are not the center of a universe that revolves around us. Even vegans can use this mitzvah to recall that the plants, too, have existence separate from us, creatures in their own right.

May we merit to remember at every meal that G!d is G!d, we are creatures, and we share that trait with all living beings apart from G!d who have ever existed, who exist now, or ever will exist.

Sarah's Paradox

Sarah hated Hagar and sent her away both when she was pregnant with Yishmael and when Yishmael laughed/played at Yitzchok's weaning - Yitzchok being Sarah's son.

But the gematria (mathematical value of the letters) of Hagar is 208 - and the gematria of Yitzchok is . . . also 208.

So what she hated and rejected in Hagar came to her as Yitzchok and she loved him - but he was taken away from her as well through the Akedah - or so she thought - and she died.

Perhaps had she loved and embraced Hagar, she would not have lost Yitzchok.

The Essence of Geirus - Conversion to Judaism

Written in response to Judaism Unbound's new conversion program. 

I am a convert to Judaism. I think that the validity and legitimacy of any conversion program must be judged on six criteria – which are laid out in Ruth 1:16-17 – “whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.” There is a standard interpretation in Yevamot 47b, which I don’t find compelling, so I will provide my own.

First – ALL of these tie the actions of the ger, the convert, to the people born Jewish – the actions of the ger MUST be conformed to those of the Jewish people. There is a place for individual expression in religious ritual – but conversion to Judaism is not that place. The only real individual expression in the geirut rituals is the choice of a Hebrew name – and even that must be within the limits of the canon of Jewish names.

As for each of the six requirements – 1. Going is the same root as halacha – a convert MUST take on the mitzvot – and, perhaps more centrally, the concept of commandedness and obligation – a Jew’s actions must be governed by G!d’s desires and instructions – different movements have different understandings of what are the content and interpretation of those mitzvot, which is fine – but one CANNOT do away with them and call what remains “Judaism” in any authentic way. 2. Lodging – one MUST remain in genuine community with Jews in a significant way. Judaism is not and cannot be a primarily solitary path. 3. Peoplehood – being Jewish is not just a religion, it’s a peoplehood – geirut is as much naturalization as it is conversion and one must take on Jewish peoplehood as at least one central aspect of one’s primary identity. 4. G!d – yeah, gonna make enemies here – there is much latitude in how one conceives of G!d – but Judaism without G!d is pointless and geirut that does not seek for the ger to be in new relationship with the Divine is not a real geirut. 5. Death – it’s a lifelong commitment and that’s why most conversion programs are – and should! – be lengthy and rigorous. (Full disclosure – mine was only four months – but it was also forty-two years from first synagogue visit (1981) until mikveh (2023), I majored in Judaic studies with a minor in Hebrew in the 80s (and attended my first RH & YK services and Pesach seder prior to the birth of my Orthodox sponsoring rabbi and two of the three beis din rabbis – the third being a toddler at the time), took many Jewish studies courses in divinity school (three with a Chasidic rebbe), and was a member of two synagogues for nearly three years before converting – so there is room for customizing the process – but one must be aware of the gravity of the commitment one makes. 6. Burial – one’s legacy after death must include one’s Jewish identity as central to one’s identity (to the extent that one can determine one’s posthumous legacy).

If your conversion process includes these six things, great, may you have much hatzlacha. If not, you need to return to the drawing board.

 

Open my heart in your Torah

I had a thought while davening – P’tach libi b’toratecha – open my heart in your Torah – lev, heart, contains the last and first letters of the Torah. Perhaps this line in the prayer at the end of the Amidah is asking G!d to open our own Torah, that Torah given to us as our beating heart of our soul’s life, into the Torah as a whole – we nurture the Torah that is our heart and add that Torah – our letter – to the Torah to nurture others – even as we are nurtured by the Torah we are given by others – the letters they contribute.