Parashat T'rumah - Values and Motivations

רפואה מן התורה

Healing from the Torah

Parashat T'rumah

Exodus 25:1-27:19

By Adam Ruditsky

     Last week in Mishpatim Israel encountered laws of behavior, and this week in T’rumah, they are being asked to consider their values and motivations when they do them.  In particular, Israel is being encouraged to consider the reasons for giving the gifts (תרומה, t'rumah) of their possessions in order to help build the Mishkan in the wilderness.  More than that, it hits the sensitive area of personal finances and how they are allocated, something that speaks just as loudly to us today as it did back then.
     For our drash, the main flow of T’rumah is about a people who are asked to build a physical location to connect with their God (1) with the right motivation of heart to do so by (2) giving of their material resources.  Keep in mind that until this point Abraham met God on a mountain, Rebecca met God in her tent, Jacob wrestled with an angel of God at the river of Jabbok and Moses met God at a bush in the land of Midian; so why build a physical location to connect with God?  The Mishkan served Israel by providing away for the entire community to meet with God while at the same time allowing each individual to ritualize an encounter with their own sense of the Divine.  But why does Israel need to limit God to a Mishkan when their ancestors did not?  Rabbi Sharon Sobel in the Women’s Torah Commentary teaches that the physical nature of the Mishkan (and later the Temple) was a place for sacred rituals, sacrifice and prayer, not for God mind you, but it was “a concession to humankind and provides a visible focus for the idea of God’s indwelling.”  Making meaning of something that no longer exists can be found in the Talmud itself when Rava teaches that the symbolism of the Ark, which was in the Mishkan to hold the Ten commandments, was covered by gold “inside and outside” to teach that the inside of a Sage’s wisdom was to be reflected outwardly (B Talmud, Yoma 72b).  The beauty of the inside and the outside of the Ark in the Mishkan can symbolically reflect our inside nature that manifests its fruits in how we live outwardly.
     This inside and outside approach to T’rumah foundationally is a matter of free-will that has everything to do with the values and motivations pertaining to the choices of behavior.  So, when Moses speaks to Israel about giving their gifts (or behavior) of material possessions and/or wealth (values) to help build the Mishkan (motivation), he further says it should be done יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ (yid’d’vehnu libo), or by “whose heart will motivate” a person to do so.  Rashi says that this is speaking about a person’s “expression of good will,” whereas Mussar Rabbi Joseph Meszler writes that this is about being “generous of heart,” and just not a heart that is simply “motivated.”  Yet how might we understand יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבוֹ (yid’d’vehnu libo) and the place of the heart?  In Jeremiah we read two connected concerns about the heart of a person.  In Jeremiah 4:4 we read “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart,” and in Jeremiah 17:9 we also read, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceeding weak--who can know it?”  A person’s middah (character) is given health by the heart, which Jeremiah wants his readers to know can be deceitful if not circumcised spiritually to fulfill its goodness, something that has to do with choice.  Just as the Mishkan served the entire community and the individual so too does the idea of a circumcised heart (cf. Deut. 10:16 and 30:6).  This circumcision however is gender neutral/spiritual, which is why Jeffrey Tigay from the JPS Commentary on Deuteronomy writes, this “blockage” of heart (see Rashi) is circumcised in order to “remove impediments that prevent Israel from voluntarily following God’s teachings.”  Impediments can be many but they are internally driven; fear, anger, lack of forgiveness or greed, yet in a positive way the tearing away of those impediments will produce thankfulness, generosity, forgiveness or compassion.  Therefore, in the Aramaic Targum Jonathan, the interpretation of יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ (yid’d’vehnu libo) from Exodus 25:2 says, “of every one whose heart is willing, but not by constraint,” meaning by control or limitation.  In the Talmud, Bava Batra 8b, the Gemara says that a person may not be “coerced” into giving, and in the Tosafot of Cullin 110b, we further read that a Rabbinical court cannot use physical means to “enforce” the positive commandment of charity from the Torah.  All that to say that a “person’s expression of good will” reflects the good nature of a person’s free-will to give based on motivations that supports their values.  In Torah, the heart is the seat of both.
     Let me ask a question;  Is it a wrong, or a bad motivation, to give a substantial donation to a cancer wing of a hospital for the primary purpose of a tax benefit as opposed to the patients themselves?  This is a question about a givers choice that is based on the idea of values and motivations.  The fact is that the above question is not an either/or but a both/and, and it is a good thing to personally benefit from a good deed that blesses others.  This is what Perkei Avot 4:17 can be interpreted to mean when it says the crown that is greater than money and accomplishments is that of  “a good name,” which in Torah language reflects a good heart.   Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes that “the Temple was intended to stand as the heart, geographical and spiritual, of a nation that had been taken by God from slavery to freedom.”   The motivations of these former slaves was to be based on their values of freedom, and when they were asked to give, it was to be from a heart of free choice to erect in their midst what was of value to them.  I think T’rumah is asking us to also consider our values and motivations of our heart when as people we are asked to give or lend assistance, albeit via our money or our time.  Such is the words of Proverbs that says, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.”

Shabbat Shalom!

Parashat Mishpatim - Hearing what cannot be Seen

רפואה מן התורה

Healing from the Torah

Parashat Mishpatim

Exodus 21:1-24:8

By Adam Ruditsky

     

    Rabbi Jonathan Sacks refers to this parsha, Mishpatim, as Israel meeting with “God in the details” of the commandments they received at Mt. Sinai in Yitro.  Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz teaches this parsha is also an outgrowth of Mt. Sinai that is about מנוחת הנפש, m’nuchat hanefesh,  translated to mean “equanimity,” or the balance of character within one’s self.  The relationship between Yitro and Mishpatim for Rashi is אף אלו מסיני, or “so these too, are from Sinai,” making them mutually related.  Per last week, this is the other side of the mountain, which begins with giving laws about behavior.
     Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz writes that the laws of Mishpatim include “all sorts of human ills and remedies,” laws that cover the areas of “murder, property damage, theft, self-defense, loans, judicial process, and more.”  While sure those laws reflect the story of Jews from another age, with the values of their time, they are applicable for us simply because law governs society, or we have chaos.  But for Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer it is not just about law, but “the central laws and judgments that are required of the Jewish people are not presented in a biblical book called ‘Laws,’ but rather they appear as an integral part of the story about the departure of Egypt,” which are in a book called “Shemot,” or names, making it about people.  There are a few laws that are not included in this section of Torah that would seem even more central in defining a person’s behavior.  From Leviticus 19 we read, “Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD” (cf. Lev. 19:18); or, “Thou shalt rise up before the silver head, and honor the face of the old man, and thou shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD (cf. Lev. 19:32).  Can we really say that the laws of Mishpatim are about do’s and don’ts whereas the laws of Leviticus are about the ethics of a person’s middah, or their innate character, in the treatment of others?
     In Mishpatim we read a ‘do and do not’ law that says, “And a stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (cf. Ex. 22:20).  Turning back to the “ethical character” laws of Leviticus 19 we further read, “The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (cf. Lev. 19:34).  In this case while the laws of Mishpatim are more so about do’s and don’ts, the above verse about strangers from Leviticus can teach us that do’s and don’ts themselves are rooted in the ethical nature of character.  In the Talmud, Berachot 33b, we read that having compassion in prayer is like having mercy for the bird’s nest, the nest representing lives that should be preserved.  If caring for the stranger is merely a matter of law above the ethical character of mercy then the law itself is ineffectual. We see this today, whether on the southern border of the United Sates or immigration laws for particular select countries, hence law’s that are not tempered with mercy as well as order can lead to dire circumstances.
     Appealing to the Talmud once more, in this case Bava Metzia 59a, we read “It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Eliezer the Great says: For what reason did the Torah issue warnings in thirty-six places, and some say in forty-six places, with regard to causing any distress to a convert?”  We can glean from this that in Mishpatim a people freed from tyranny need to be reminded of their freedom from slavery, or perhaps they would return to a slave-like-behavior mentality in their treatment of others who are now strangers in their midst.  Tikkun HaMiddot, or the fixing of characters, needs laws, but law without mercy is like slavery all over again.  Here in Mishpatim when we read, “a stranger shalt thou not oppress; for ye know the heart of a stranger,” is that so?  Do we recall being oppressed (whatever that means to you) when we treat others that way, allowing our treatment of another to be no more than words on a page?  Don’t hear that wrong, the law is the law and words on a page are important.  Yet, Torah based law is not just about adherence out of obligation, but ultimately it illuminates ones middah that will reflect the nature of their good character; the opposite being that without a moral or ethical law it also illuminates ones middah but in a negative way.
     To end, I want to quote Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer once again who says, “many of the things that happen to us in life are not optional, but we do get to choose whether we want to remember them.”  Here, we remember law as opposed to chaos, freedom of will as opposed to the slavery of being, and a character that treats others in a way that we want to be treated ourselves.  R’Yanklowitz said that Mishpatim in relationship to Yitro is about מנוחת הנפש (m’nuchat hanefesh) in order to achieve “balance” of middah, a balance that is also between our encounter with the sacred and our daily behavior.   In so doing we learn to hear the inner voice of our middah that cannot be seen, but its impact to self and others will be felt, both for the good but if neglected for the bad.

Shabbat Shalom!           

Parashat Yitro - The Mystery of the Mountain

     

רפואה מן התורה

Healing from the Torah

Parashat Yitro

Exodus 18:1-20:36

By Adam Ruditsky

     Although a little longer than normal, I would like to approach this week’s Torah parsha, Yitro, differently.  In this case, I want to look beyond the words, and in particular connect with the image of Mt. Sinai.  In the Zohar we read that when Moses approached Mt. Sinai he knew that it was the mountain of God and was subsequently drawn to it.  In fact, Rav Yosi taught that Moses and the mountain had been prepared for each other at creation; the mountain was the place where Moses would see God and where God would meet with Moses (Zohar, Yitro 14:247-252).  What is the lesson of the mountain today?  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks talking about that very mountain wrote, “With the revelation at Sinai, something unprecedented entered the human horizon, though it would take centuries, millennia, before its full implications were understood. At Sinai, the politics of freedom was born.”  Let’s explore that a bit.
     In Mishnah Pesachim 10 we read, “[God] brought us out from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festival, from darkness to great light, and from servitude to redemption [therefore] let us say before Him, Halleluyah.”  Surely, this is for us who during our Passover Seders are admonished to identify with our ancestors captivity and release.  The former slaves who came out of Egypt could not be expected after a mere three months to say whole-heartily, “Halleluyah.”  Therefore, are the words “from slavery to freedom,” really the case?  Isn’t more accurate to say from slavery to the wilderness?   Of course the oppression of slavery had ended, no longer are these former slaves beholden to Pharaoh’s control, but have they really found freedom?  The fact is they now needed to deal with this new phenomenon, yet while Israel left their slavery in Egypt, did the slavery of Egypt truly leave Israel?
     Keep in mind that in B’shallach God did not lead Israel through the land of the Philistines because war of any kind may have caused them to return to the false security of Egypt.  So when Israel arrived at Mt. Sinai they easily, and understandably, proclaimed their new servitude to God as opposed to Pharaoh (Ex. 19:5).  When they responded to Moses by saying, “All that the LORD hath spoken we will do,” did they know what that meant? (Ex. 19:8).  The mountain they approached that day would be more than a place where they received the Ten Commandments, but it was a place where the transformation from slavery to freedom would begin.  Rabbi Dan Fink in his article on Shavuot from the book “Ecology and the Jewish Spirit” writes, “The covenant with God and the Jewish people may have commenced with Abraham and Sarah … but the relationship was not sealed until the first Shavuot when the Israelite's received the Torah from the summit of Mount Sinai.”  Rabbi Fink wrote this after he had hiked the Appalachian Trail that changed him.  In this case, the transformative power of the mountains and the nature that he engaged contained a revelation for his own life and appreciation of God.  In that spirit I do not think it was an accident that upon Israel’s journey the first significant place where they would set up camp was at a mountain.
     We read that Mt. Sinai was a place where ”there was thunder and lightning and a heavy cloud on the mountain,” which announced the presence of God to the community (Ex. 19:16).  We also read that when Moses presents the commandments to Israel it did not say, “I am the Lord your God” who created the world and am more powerful than all other gods … but, “I am the Lord your God that brought you out of Egypt,” so one day you may be free.  In Exodus 19:20 we read, וַיֵּרֶד יְהוָה עַל-הַר סִינַי,אֶל-רֹאשׁ הָהָר, “And the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, to the top of the mount,” meaning that God came to meet with Israel on their level.  Upon Moses’s ascent of Mt. Sinai the Ohr HaChaim writes, “as soon as God noticed Moses was ascending, God called out to him,” meaning that Moses’s pursuit of God drew a like replay.  This is what the Zohar meant by saying that Moses and the mountain had been prepared for each other at creation.  But it was not the God of creation who judges the earth that Moses contended with, but the Lord who identified as, אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, “I am the Lord your God,” reflecting the Lord of covenant and relationship.  Surely then, God must have spoken to Moses with the soft and gentile voice of a friend.
     We actually see this play out with Elijah in 1 Kings 19 who is led by an angel to the Mountain of Horeb (i.e. Mt. Sinai) where he is greeted by a mighty wind, splitting mountains, shattering of rocks, an earthquake and fire; the power of a God who judges the world just as it was at Mt. Sinai.  Yet, God was in none of those powerful manifestations. The voice that Elijah sought was in the wind, something that was described as a “soft murmuring sound.”  This God was also identified as Lord, the same Lord-God of compassion and mercy, who previously spoke to Moses with the same soft and gentile voice (cf. 1 Kings 19:11-12).  Those who know me have heard me talk about the mountain of Psalm 121 where it says, אֶשָּׂא עֵינַי, אֶל-הֶהָרִים-מֵאַיִן,יָבֹא עֶזְרִי, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: from whence shall my help come?”  A mountain is powerful, majestic, opposing, jagged and towering just to name a few.  But when we look we see that a mountain is something else, it's impermeable, so while we cannot see through it to the other side we surely know that there is another side.  Compare that with the Mountain of Moses and Elijah, thus as they encountered a mountain of power and might, they also found something else - but that had to look for it.  The mountain for Israel contained another side as well, that other side per R’Sacks included a “politics of freedom.”
     Freedom is not just given, it is taken, not a revelation but a revolution.  Michael Walzer in his book “Exodus and Revolution” writes about the redemptive power of God from Egypt, yet he further says that its lasting results are found in “the long-term work required to make deliverance permanent.”  Since we all traverse our own mountains each of us gets to embrace this as we need, but leaving Egypt was freedom part-one, and slavery to freedom was (and is) a journey with the mountain being a place that contains a message on the other side.  We know that the first generation did not make it, they failed to find freedom, but the mystery of the mountain that is transformative says freedom when sought can always be found.  From slavery, to the wilderness, to freedom.

Shabbat Shalom!           

Parashat B'shalach - Making Meaning or Reading Madness

     רפואה מן התורה

Healing from the Torah

Parashat B'shalach

Exodus 13:17-17:16

By Adam Ruditsky

     In our last two parshiyot, Va’ayra and Bo, we were greeted with the human journey of the Hebrews in the backdrop of some really amazing wonders to behold.  At the beginning of B’shalach we read about Pharaoh’s response to what happened; ויהי בשלח פרעה את העם, “and it happened that Pharaoh sent the people” to go into the wilderness and worship their God.  It would only be a short time after their release that Pharaoh would also say, “What is this that we have done that we have sent away Israel from serving us?”  Pharaoh responded to what he had encountered in the same way he had before, with God giving him over to the hardness of his heart.  As Pharaoh sought to give meaning to what he experienced, which concluded with the death of his own son (and in their myth a generational son of Ra the sun god), Pharaoh would once again lead his people down a destructive path.
     Moses, like Pharaoh, responds to the act of God at the splitting of the Red Sea although in song, thus we read, אז ישיר משה ובנ ישראל השירה הזות ליהוה, “then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord;” something that seems to be contrary to what we learned last week from Proverbs 44:10 that says “if your enemy falls, do not exult.”  Rashi wants to make meaning to how Moses reacted saying it was to the miracle itself (as opposed to the deaths), hence Rashi teaches us that the exaltation by Moses and Israel “applies to anything that cannot be done by another,” or other gods.  Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell comments on Miriam’s response to the miracle of the sea by saying that her strength should be understood in the backdrop of “the Near Eastern tradition of woman warriors,” yet her voice is the same prophetic voice that convinced her parents regarding Moses despite Pharaoh’s decree to kill all newborn males (cf. Mid.Exodus R. 1:13).  The future guided her and was the basis of why she responded in song.
     While Moses and Miriam may have had positive reactions to what they had experienced, the rest of the people are another matter.  There are 6 bewonderment acts of God in this parsha; (1) the pillars of cloud and fire, (2) the splitting of the waters, (3) the waters of Marah turn sweet from their bitterness, (4) the mana from heaven, (5) water from a rock and (6) Moses’ raised arms help to defeat Amalek.   In each case the people respond with the same negativity, thus after the pillars of cloud and fire lead them in the wilderness, they still responded to Moses by saying “Is it because there are not - enough graves in Egypt - that you brought us to die in the wilderness?”  They did the same after the parting of the sea itself.  Three days later they needed water, yet after they had experienced the pillars of cloud and fire that led them to the very parting of the Sea of Reeds, it says; “the people complained against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?”  The story tells us that Moses threw a particular tree into the bitter waters and they became sweet, hence the people were nourished although conspicuously missing was any type of graduate or thanksgiving.  What made the redactors of these texts write about these big moments?  Whatever they experienced they then communicated in a way that spoke to the reality of their world.
     After Israel walked through the dry sea floor they sang in their song, ימינך יהוה נאדרי בכח ימינך יהוה תרעץ אויב, “Your right hand, Oh God, is majestic in might, your right hand, Oh God, crushes the enemy.”  Israel could not sustain this response and I am sure the up and down reactions in part caused our tradition to look beyond the plain meaning of the text.  As such, the Rabbis concerned themselves not with what necessarily happened, but gave the texts new meaning.  In Bava Kamma 82a we read that the waters that were made sweet alluded to the Torah, thus we cannot go more than three days without being nourished by Torah, which is why we read Torah on Mondays, Thursdays and Shabbat.  Yet what about the miracles that were always followed by doubts.  The Talmud picked up on this as well, hence “the provision of one’s daily bread is as difficult as the splitting of the Sea of Reeds” (BT. Pesachim 118a).  Here, the issue is not the miracles themselves but how the people reacted to a God that they could not see.  Rabbi Alison Wissot looks at this through the eyes of בטחון, or trust.  Yet for Rabbi Wissot this type of trust does not just come because of a miracle seen, it is a trust of choice. We live in a world of uncertainty, mystery and doubts, so belief in God does not inevitably translate to a person’s ability to trust.  In Israel’s case regarding the Exodus, their inability to trust God was rooted in fear and doubt, something that received too more power in the end.
     As we interact with these texts we are also being asked to give them meaning.  In a couple of months we will read these stories again during Passover where we are admonished to walk in our ancestors’ footsteps as we encounter their slavery as our own.  Really?  How many of us have experienced that type of slavery, yet, we all have our own Egypt.  The Passover Seder asks us to give meaning to someone else’s history, and that is what our Torah parsha is also asking us to do. What is the same, however, are the fears and doubts that we all embrace even though our stories and big moments will differ.  How can making meaning out of what we encounter speak to the madness that may surround it?  I think that is something our text is asking us to think about by looking within and beyond as well as on the surface and down deep.  Without meaning it's hard to make our way forward, and sometimes, meaning has to be discovered or even rediscovered.

Shabbat Shalom!