REMOVING THE SEVERITY OF THE DECREE WITH ISAAC THROUGH REPENTANCE AND PRAYER AND TZEDAKAH Shabbat Shuvah, 5787 – R Timothy Tomer Yitzchok Cravens

Repentance and Prayer and Tzedakah remove the severity of the decree. Powerful words sung as part of the U’netaneh tokef prayer on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

There are many ways to read the Akedah, which we read earlier this week on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. I’m going to propose that one way of reading it is a journey of teshuvah, return, for Isaac.

At the beginning of the story, G!d tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Traditionally, Isaac is believed to have been 37 years old at the time, since he was born when Sarah was 90 and she dies at age 127 in the immediate aftermath of the Akedah. If this is true, he must have known what was going on and lacked the wherewithal to resist being sacrificed. He goes along with Abraham, seemingly willing to be sacrificed. Or perhaps he was not aware that he was going to be sacrificed but was unable to see what was obvious: his father Abraham had a nasty habit of rejecting family members that Sarah and G!d were happy to get out of the way. The text says that Abraham got up early in the morning to take Isaac to sacrifice – the text also says that Abraham got up early in the morning to send Hagar and Ishmael away.

At a certain point, however, Isaac wakes up. He is carrying the wood for the sacrifice while his father carries the knife and the fire. Isaac wakes up to the fact that there is no sheep to be sacrificed. He asks his father, “Ayeh haseh l’olah/where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” He wakes up to the fact the he, Isaac, is that sheep. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov has a teaching about the word Ayeh/Where that when we are in the place of greatest distance from G!d and cry out “Where??” that G!d becomes most close to us. He reads Isaac’s question as a statement: “’Where?’ is the sheep for ascent.” Reaching that point of distance, where one realizes that one’s soul is in danger of extinction, and crying out “Where?!” leads to G!d coming to one’s assistance.

Abraham tries to sacrifice Isaac and the angel of Hashem intervenes. Then Abraham returns to the two young men that had accompanied him. Rabbis notice that Isaac is not mentioned and assume that he went elsewhere – perhaps to Gan Eden to heal from his wounds (or possibly be resurrected from actually being sacrificed), perhaps to the yeshiva of his ancestor Shem to learn Torah, or perhaps to reunite with his beloved brother Ishmael. Regardless of the outer destination, his inner destination is himself. But how?

Most commentators do not notice that Isaac is not the only one missing from the verse. Abraham had told the two young men to stay with the donkey until he and Isaac returned. But Abraham returns to the two young men, but the donkey is nowhere to be found.

I believe that Isaac rode the donkey to his next destination, returning to his most authentic self, and that the donkey was an essential part of that journey. Donkey is chamor in Hebrew. A related word is chumrah, stringency. Isaac is held up as the embodiment of gevurah, or strength, often associated with restriction and setting boundaries. I believe the chamor is chumrah – the stringency Isaac exercised in strength to depart a situation that threatened his life. And the key to teshuvah is this donkey of stringency, leaving and rejecting situations that oppose our highest and deepest authentic self to be able to return to who we are, to who G!d creates us to be.

Repentance and Prayer and Tzedakah remove the severity of the decree.

Each of the three patriarchs is credited with instituting one of the three required daily liturgical prayers. Abraham institutes Shacharit, the morning prayer. Jacob institutes Maariv, the evening prayer. And Isaac institutes the afternoon prayer of Minchah, which means Offering.

We read that Isaac went out into the field to meditate before evening. Prayer is not necessarily easy at any time of the day, but at least in the morning and at night, most of us are not in the middle of the busyness of our day. To take time in the middle of the day to reflect, to pray, to turn toward G!d is more difficult. But Isaac is able to do this.

Rebbe Nachman urged his followers to engage in hitbodedut, a form of very personal prayer in which one pours out one’s most innermost thoughts and feelings and self to G!d. He urged them to go out into nature to do so. It is interesting that, at least on most weekdays when the Torah is not read in the afternoon, Minchah is the shortest of the three daily prayers. Perhaps this is to give us more space to bring who we are, in the middle of our day, to G!d.

It is even possible, in the midst of working, to do so with an awareness of the presence of G!d and to make all of one’s work a prayer. The pause for Minchah is good, but so is making all of one’s day of work the Minchah, the Offering.

Repentance and Prayer and Tzedakah remove the severity of the decree.

As Isaac is meditating, he looks up and sees camels coming. In Hebrew, the word is gemalim. The gemalim are gemilut chasadim, acts of lovingkindness.

It would have been easy for Isaac to become bitter after his ordeal of nearly being killed by his father. But he is able to heal to the point where he is able to see opportunities to do acts of lovingkindness.

And the acts of lovingkindness, acts of charity or giving tzedakah, grow directly out of his prayer, his meditation, his offering. Prayer connects us intimately with G!d, but just at G!d loves all of the creation G!d so lovingly made, so being in the presence of G!d and making our lives an offering to G!d necessarily leads us to make our life an offering for others, for those whom G!d has created.

As we prepare, on this Shabbat Shuvah, this Shabbat of Return, for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, may we follow Isaac on the donkey in returning to our most authentic self, in the field meditating and making our whole lives an offering to G!d, and in seeing the camels of acts of lovingkindness and tzedakah and making our whole lives also an offering to those whom G!d has created and deeply loves.

Repentance and Prayer and Tzedakah remove the severity of the decree.

 

 

 

Tisha B'Av Thoughts 5786

Tisha B’Av is one of the most powerful days on the Jewish calendar for me. I think it is very spiritually and emotionally healthy to set aside a day where there is an obligation to be sad and confront grief and brokenness: one’s own, the Jewish people’s, the entire world’s. And I hasten to add that there are also days where one is commanded to be joyful! The welcoming of one’s whole emotional life into one’s spiritual life is necessary and the Jewish tradition does it well.

Certainly, the Christian liturgical calendar also offers opportunities to engage with different emotions. However, growing up in non-liturgical traditions, I only discovered that as a teenager. During the Pentecostal/charismatic portion of my childhood, my father was quite taken with the prosperity gospel teaching which prohibited acknowledging ill health or poverty or other problems – if one had enough faith, one could be healed/wealthy/etc. One had to pretend that everything was wonderful and ignore problems or one was showing a lack of faith. It was abusive.

I am grateful for this day when we can be sad and angry and mourn – because it is only when we welcome our sadness, our anger, our grief, and our other unpleasant emotions that we can begin to rebuild and come out of these narrow places to redemption.

May you have a meaningful Tisha B’Av.

Shabbat HaGadol D'var Torah 5786

Early in the maggid section of the Haggadah, there is a discussion of what the verse in Deuteronomy 16:3 means when it says “in order that you may remember the day you went out from  Egypt/Mitzrayim all the days of your life.” Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah cites Ben Zoma in saying that the addition of “all” means nights as well as days, whereas the Sages say that it means both this world and the days of Moshiach. This is indeed seen as a mitzvah. This verse is the first of the Six (or Ten) Remembrances recited by many after Shacharis (and by Lubavitchers while wearing Rabbenu Tam tefillin) and many siddurim include an instruction with the last verse of the Shema to concentrate on remembering the Exodus to fulfill this mitzvah. (There are, of course, other texts related to this in the daily liturgy, such as the blessing after the Shema that culminates in verses from the Song at the Sea as well as the two additional Torah paragraphs outside of the Shema mentioning tefillin which are also recited while wearing tefillin – Rabbenu Tam tefillin in the case of Lubavitchers.) 

A few paragraphs later, there is a discussion of why the discussion of the Exodus at the Seder is only commanded when the first night of Pesach arrives. Clearly, these are two related yet distinct mitzvot. I wonder if the twice-daily remembrance of the Exodus is meant to be enriched by the yearly special telling and vice versa. 

This last verse of the Shema (Numbers 15:41) for which one is instructed to have the kavannah of remembering the Exodus is fascinating in its construction:

 

I am Hashem your G!d,

who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God:

I am Hashem your G!d.

 

Why does “I am Hashem your G!d” appear both at the beginning and the end of the verse?

Of the traditional commentaries that I consulted, the most satisfying explanation comes from the Chasidic commentary Kedushas Levi, who says that whatever we do or even think has an echo in the celestial spheres, so thinking about Hashem being our G!d results in that echo, helping to keep us on the path. And this comes at the end of the Shema, which we recite daily to reaffirm our taking upon ourselves the yoke of Torah, so it reinforces this.

Rashi states that the name Hashem (the Tetragrammaton) refers to G!d giving reward and G!d (Elokim) to G!d’s punishment of sin. This fits well with his comment on Genesis 8:1 that G!d originally created the world with Din, judgment, but creation could not be sustained so G!d had also to bring in Rachamim, associated with Hashem, to mix the two so the world could persist.

As I pray with this verse at least twice a day, this is how I have come to understand the repetition.

Before we are brought out of Egypt – or Mitzrayim, the narrow places – Hashem is our G!d. Hashem is there in mercy/rachamim to lead us out of our bondage before we are even aware that we are in bondage and in need of redemption. G!d is there in din/judgment to exercise the gevurah/strength to help us separate ourselves from bondage and impurity to be ready for redemption.

The whole purpose of redemption is mentioned in the middle phrase – G!d brings us out of our narrow places in order to be our G!d. We are redeemed to be a holy people who follows G!d’s will in order to bring creation to its fulfillment and create a dwelling place for G!d. It is interesting that here, G!d is only given the name Elokim/Din/Judgment. While redemption is the ultimate act of mercy/rachamim, G!d must make a division between us and our previous life of bondage in order for us to be free. In the story of the Exodus, there are three verses of 72 verses each which are believed, with permutations, to make up the 216-letter, 72-word hidden name of G!d. The middle verse (Exodus 14:20) makes this act of separation clear:

And it [pillar of cloud/visible sign of G!d’s Presence] came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; and there was the cloud and the darkness here, yet gave it light by night there; and the one came not near the other all the night.

Redemption separates us from those narrow places and all that binds us. We must have a time of separation, not coming near those narrow places, until we are able to heal and be strengthened.

Then, after we are redeemed, G!d is once again Hashem our G!d – Rachamim and Din – and I believe it points to the fact that redemption can come both dramatically and suddenly, as it did with the Exodus from Egypt, and gradually day by day as we find new narrow places/Mitzrayim/Egypt from which we need to be redeemed. The process is cyclical.

A few years ago, after leaving an unhealthy situation that was detrimental to my spiritual health, I was at a Seder at the home of friends. They are machmir about consuming the kazayis of matzah, half of a hand-baked shmurah matzah, in a short period of time. As I ate, I had this profound sense of having been truly redeemed, having been brought out of a narrow place that was so constricting and destructive to my soul – a feeling of gratitude and relief and compassion for myself.

But I try to remember that wave of feelings I felt as I consumed the matzah (perhaps the most powerful Seder experience I’ve had – and I find the Seder very powerful to begin with) in my daily life, in slightly narrow places that are not so much destructive to my soul but nonetheless diminish it – and ask G!d – Hashem – how to exit those so that I may serve G!d better.

My bracha, my blessing, for all of you reading this is that you may have a powerful experience of redemption and freedom this Pesach that continues to increase throughout the coming year. May we all experience complete geulah, complete redemption, speedily in our days.

Wishing you a Chag Pesach Kasher v’Sameach!

Shabbat Shuvah 5786

I dedicate this d’var Torah to the memory of Carol Daniels, zt”l, my Mussar teacher who opened up to me a new way of understanding human nature and how best to live through the lens of the Jewish Mussar tradition. She passed away on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, but her legacy lives on through her students.

There are a number of texts that get repeated throughout the High Holiday liturgy that help frame for us the meaning of the days. Avinu Malkeinu with its several haunting melodies. The viduy with the alphabetical list of sins that we have committed. The solemn and terrifying words of the U’netaneh Tokef that remind us of our mortality.

One of my favorite texts that gets repeated is the last section, three verses, of the book of the prophet Micah. It is the final section of the Haftarah not only for Shabbat Shuvah but also of Yom Kippur Minchah, being added onto the end of the book of Jonah. Not only is it usually recited at Tashlich, the custom of reciting prayers near a body of water, usually on Rosh Hashanah but permitted through Hoshanah Rabba, but the word tashlich, “you shall cast,” is taken from these verses.

Here are the words, in the majestic language of the 1917 JPS translation, slightly altered:

“Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth the iniquity, And passeth by the transgression of the remnant of G!d’s heritage? G!d retaineth not G!d’s anger for ever, Because G!d delighteth in mercy. G!d will again have compassion upon us; G!d will subdue our iniquities; And Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt show faithfulness to Jacob, mercy to Abraham, As Thou hast sworn unto our ancestors from the days of old.”

Another text we recite multiple times during the High Holidays is the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy from Exodus 34. This text from Micah provides a higher version of them, the Thirteen Supernal Attributes of Mercy. The amazing work of Mussar and Kabbalah, Tomer Devorach, written by the sixteenth-century kabbalist from Tzfat, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, the Ramak, expounds these Thirteen Supernal Attributes in its first chapter.

However, this exposition is not just theological speculation about the nature of G!d – rather, as he states in the introduction to the chapter,

“That it is fitting for a person to resemble their Creator: It is fitting for a person to resemble their Creator and then they will be [configured] in the secret of the Highest Form, [both] in image and likeness. As if they are alike in their body but not in their actions, they betray the Form; and others will say about them, "A lovely form, but ugly deeds." As behold, the essence of the Highest Image and Likeness is G!d’s actions. And what will it benefit them to have the structure of their limbs like the Highest Form, but not resemble their Creator in their actions? Therefore it is fitting that they should [make their actions] resemble the actions of the Crown (Keter), which are the thirteen highest traits of mercy. And they are hinted to in the secret of the verses (Michah 7:18-20), "Who is a power like You; G!d will again have mercy on us; You shall give truth." If so, it is fitting that these thirteen traits [also] be found in human beings. And now we will explain these thirteen actions that are fitting to be with them.”

Drawing on the teaching of the creation story in Genesis that we are made in the image and likeness of G!d, the Ramak connects G!d’s Supernal Attributes to the middot, the character traits, we are to develop within ourselves so that our deeds can resemble G!d’s.

But here’s the interesting things, when you go through the chapter – much of what he teaches is about developing inward shifts in how we see other people, so that we can see them with compassion and then act compassionately and mercifully toward them in ways that draw from this new way of seeing. In one place, he suggests that for those whose deeds are very wicked, we go back and see them as a baby, innocent, before they began their troubling behavior. In another place, he even suggests that G!d – and we – treat evildoers with mercy based on their ancestors’ merits.

What the Ramak is teaching us through his magnificent exposition of these verses is to try to see others in the way that G!d their creator sees them, which will then change how we interact with them. We will see them with love. With mercy. With compassion.

Now, this is not easy to do. People will continue to do bad things. Created as we are in the image and likeness of G!d, we are still frail humans with limits. And even G!d gets angry – as it says in Psalm 7, G!d is provoked every day. However, it says in Psalm 30, G!d’s anger lasts only for a moment, but G!d’s favor for life. This section of Micah says “You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” – and Psalm 51 says “Do not cast me away from your presence.” Tashlich – Al tashlicheni. We are called to separate our anger at bad deeds from our anger at a person.

Of course, we are also obligated to care for ourselves, and none of this – heaven forbid – should be taken as advice to stay in unhealthy and abusive situations.

Nevertheless, our job is to find a way to see the outline of G!d’s image and likeness in everyone, even those we cannot be around, even in those who hurt us, even in those who have done destructive deeds. We are angry and reject their deeds, but we continue to hope and pray that, just as we are afforded the opportunity for teshuvah, for repentance, so they will be afforded that opportunity – and will take it. It is difficult work – I have certainly not mastered this and it will be a work in progress for the rest of my life – but it is work we are called to do.

Carol Daniels embodied the attributes taught in Tomer Devorah, which the Center for Contemporary Mussar describes as Tikkun Middot – middot which repair and expand the Tov, the Good, in our broken world as we bear the burden of the Other. My life is much better for having known her and learned from her. It is my brachah – my blessing – that all of us, in the coming year, work to emulate these middot – and our Creator – to build a better version of our world in partnership with G!d. Shanah tovah.

Why I Mourn the Loss of the Temple

As we go through the Nine Days preparing to mourn the loss of the Beit HaMikdash, the Temple, on Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, many are sharing what the loss means to them. I have decided to do so as well.

As a small child, I was fascinated by maps and floor plans (which I called “house maps”). My parents had subscribed to National Geographic for years and even before I could read, I would spread out the maps on the floor and pore over them – my mother said that instead of wall-to-wall carpeting, we had wall-to-wall maps. One place we lived, when I was in third and fourth grade, the Sunday paper featured a floor plan as part of a spotlight on a particular house and my mother would carefully cut out the floor plan for me once my parents were finished with the newspaper. I would spread them out in neighborhoods with my Matchbox cars in front of them.

I was raised evangelical – Southern Baptist and Assemblies of God. Evangelical Bibles usually have maps in the back, including floor plans of the Mishkan and Beit HaMikdash (Tabernacle and Temple as they call them) and I could draw the floor plan of the Mishkan with the altars, laver, table, candlestick, and Ark by the time I was nine. There was something about that holy floor plan that spoke very deeply to me. There was a neo-Pentecostal minister my father liked to listen to and he got his sermons on cassette tape. One series was about the Mishkan and there was an accompanying small booklet that I liked to look at. He saw the Mishkan as a model of the human soul.

It turns out that this idea was not original to him – kabbalistic and chasidish rabbis before him also see the Mishkan/Beit HaMikdash as the model of the human soul, the Jewish people’s collective soul, and indeed, the soul of all creation. I find this model very comforting and illuminative. The Ark with the tablets inside – both the broken pieces of the first set and the whole second set – this speaks to what is in the innermost depths of my own soul. The cherubim who face one another in times of harmony and face away from each other in times of strife.

The traditional understanding is that G!d has been exiled from the world after the destruction of the Temple, with the Jewish people then exiled from G!d as well. However, we know G!d is everywhere and, as Psalm 139 so beautifully teaches, G!d is closer to us that we are to ourselves. This has not changed – even if our perception of G!d’s presence is different.

The real exile is from our own souls. We no longer have the physical replica of our soul with us – it has been destroyed – and we are in exile, unable to understand who we are meant to be – unable to actualize our purpose, with the Ark of our covenant with G!d – both our collective Jewish covenant and the individual covenant each person has with Hashem – misplaced. The light of the seven-branched menorah illuminating our actions, the bread of the Presence sustaining us, the sweet incense bringing our prayers sweetly to the Divine – absent. The korbanos – the sacrifices of drawing near –to G!d and to ourselves and to one another– and the cleansing of the laver – we don’t have them and must find other ways to draw close.

It is this excruciating pain of being in exile from our own souls that is the real pain of Tisha B’Av. It is this journey back to our soul – the return – the teshuvah – that is the geulah we seek. But we cannot begin the journey until we feel this loss – this ultimate alienation – very deeply in our very bones. Until we come to desire the restoration of the Temple of our souls more deeply than any other desire.

May we feel this loss so keenly that we may set out on and complete this journey – with G!d and each other as our traveling companions – and experience geulah shleimah – complete redemption.

Pinchas and Beruriah

This past Shabbos, when Parshat Pinchas was read, I was walking to shul in the afternoon and realized that the gematria for Zimri, from the tribe of Shimon, murdered by Pinchas, has a gematria of 257 – 49 more than the gematria for Pinchas. My interpretation is that by this murder, Pinchas brought the people down 49 levels of the 50 levels of impurity – the same 49 levels of impurity the Jewish people had gone down in Egypt and had left behind in the redemption. Kozbi, the Midianite woman also murdered, has the gematria of 39 – the same number of categories of work, melachot, used in constructing the Mishkan and prohibited on Shabbat – thereby destroying the holiness of both the Mishkan and Shabbat. The command to keep Shabbat includes the command to work - what work are we commanded to do? - the 39 malachot that we don't do on Shabbat - the things we do to build the mishkan. I would argue that we are commanded implicitly to build a dwelling-place for Hashem on earth (the Alter Rebbe talks about this) - and any work that does this counts metaphorically. Pinchas, through killing them, rather than building/caring for/doing the service in the Mishkan, is in fact destroying it through a zealous act of killing.

To be clear, they were sinning – but murder was not the correct response but helping them to teshuvah – the murder was far, far, far worse. Pinchas destroyed two people created in the image of G!d. When Rabbi Meir was mugged by bandits, he prayed for G!d to cause them to die in retribution. His wife, the sage Beruriah, interpreting the last verse of Psalm 104 to read “Let SINS (rather than sinners, as it is commonly translated) cease from the earth, and the wicked will be no more [because they are now righteous, having repented]. Rabbi Meir did pray for their repentance – their teshuvah – instead, and indeed, they did!

The verse ends with “My soul bless Hashem, Hallelukah!” I would add to Beruriah’s interpretation that this part of the verse acknowledgess, by saying “my” soul, that all of us have also sinned and need to do teshuvah – and, not only need to do teshuvah, but are capable of doing teshuvah. This psalm is read on Rosh Chodesh, the new moon. The first commandment given to the Jewish people is to make the month of Nisan the first month of the year. The Jewish people are associated with the moon, as the rabbis have taught. One of the most fundamental aspects of being Jewish is the hope that, just as the moon that has waned will wax again, so when we do teshuvah, when we repent by turning from sin and returning to be the people G!d created us to be, G!d will forgive us and restore us even higher. As the rabbis teach, the sinner who repents is in a higher state than the one who never sinned. There is even a midrash that explains the curious commandment to bring a sin-offering FOR G!d on Rosh Chodesh by saying that after G!d created the two great lights, G!d then diminished the moon, and the sin-offering is to atone for this. G!d can do teshuvah, we are taught.

But Pinchas, in his zealotry, cannot place himself with the sinners – he cannot acknowledge his fallibility – he cannot add his “MY soul will bless Hashem” to the prayer for sins to leave the world so the sinners repent and become righteous. He cannot pray for their restoration. Instead, he kills two people made in the image of G!d, believing himself to be pure and perfect. If only he had followed in Beruriah’s footsteps and prayed for their repentance, rather than killing them, the story would have been so much more powerful.

In a world of Pinchases, may we be given strength by G!d to be Beruriahs instead.

The Broken Peace Pieces of Pinchas

At the end of Parshat Balak, Pinchas, in a fit of zealotry, thrusts a spear through an Israelite man making love to a Midianite woman. At the beginning of Parshat Pinchas, G!d seems to praise him and bestows upon him a covenant of shalom – of peace.

But – here’s the thing. As I learned from my wise friend Joey Eisman, the vav in shalom (the vav is a long mostly straight letter in Hebrew) is broken in the middle. It is not whole. The word shalom comes from the root for whole/complete – shleimut, a related word, is the Hebrew word for wholeness. So the brit shalom is not really shalom – not whole – it is broken. Some covenant to be given! 

The two most central parts of the Jewish liturgy are the Shema and the Amidah. The Shema proclaims that Hashem is our G!d and that Hashem is One. The blessing before the Shema proclaims G!d’s ahavah, love, for Israel – and the first paragraph of the Shema, after the first line, commands us to love G!d. The gematria for ahavah is 13 – and so is the gematria for echad, the word “one.” A broken peace – a peace that is pieces – cannot, therefore, be a peace that is from G!d. It lacks unity – it lacks love – and it is a false peace.

The Amidah, the central prayer, always ends with the blessing for peace. Our prayer must, to be kosher, end in a prayer for peace – for wholeness – for oneness. Again, the brit shalom is not this but the opposite. In effect, three times a day – four on Shabbat and chagim – five on Yom Kippur – we pray, ultimately, to NOT be like Pinchas. But perhaps we can pray that he found his way to teshuvah – that the vav was, at some point, completed as he repented of destroying the image of G!d in the two people he murdered.