רפואה מן התורה
Healing from the Torah
By Rabbi Adam Ruditsky
In a 1978 move called, “The Same Time Next Year,” George (Alan Alda) and
Doris (Ellen Burstyn) met by chance in California where they both visit yearly
for different reasons. Over the next 26
years they have a yearly affair in the same location although in the movie they
are shown meeting every 5 years from the 50s through the 70s. One particular scene, sometime in early 1965,
Lyndon Johnson (D) had just defeated Barry Goldwater (R) for the presidency. During that scene George showed up dressed
like a wall street businessman, whereas Ellen arrived in a VW van with flowers
on it, dressed like a hippie. As they
talked George said, “I voted for Goldwater,” and Doris was livid! In response George said, “Goldwater promised
he would stop the war,” and when she responds in astonishment George bursts out,
“because Michael (his son in the movie) was killed in Vietnam.” Doris is speechless, she puts her arms around George
and they cry together. Okay it’s Hollywood, but in the end Doris heard George
who had his reasons why he voted that way he did, putting their relationship
above their heated disagreement.
While my intent is to talk about
quarreling, I guess the movie is incredibly relevant to our own political
situation. Even with some of my own
family political conversations are off the table as we tiptoe around the 800
pound Elephant in the room in order to avoid arguing or perhaps worse. Yeah I struggle with that, and don’t always
handle it the best way, but for me it’s not about the differences more so than
we cannot negotiate differing viewpoints.
I know it’s not that simple, yet it makes me think of the statement
regarding the disagreement between Hillel and Shamai in the Talmud from Eruvin
13b where it says, שֶׁאֵלּוּ
וָאֵלּוּ דִּבְרֵי אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים (sheaylu
va’aylu divrai Elohim chayim) “these and those or the words of the living
God.” There are two ways to read that;
everything is truth or there is truth everything. The School of Hillel won the day because they
considered the truth of both sides of the argument and just not their own,
Rabbi Isaiah HaLevi Horovitz (c.1555-1630)
teaching in Shenei Luchot HaBerit says that reflects the middah
(soul-trait) of anavah, or humility. I think we see this very thing at work in this
week’s Torah parsha, Lech Lecha. In particular I want to look at the
interchange between Abram and Lot, his nephew.
In Genesis 13 we read about a
problem over land management in order to support all that the two relatives
possessed. Tradition teaches that Lot’s
farmhands allowed their cattle to graze on Abram’s share of the land, and while
I do not think they were wicked as Rashi calls them, they certainly had another
idea of truth regarding that land. At
that time, the land belonged to the Canaanites and the Perizzites, and Abram
had not yet “come into procession of it” (See Rashi on Gen. 13:7 and Gen. R
41:5). Abram went to Lot in anavah
and said, “Let there please be no
strife between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we
are brothers.” Nachum Sarna in the JPS commentary writes
that Abram shows great “nobility of character” with regards to what was happening,
Robert Alter calling Abram the “reasonable peacemaker … a man conscious of
family bonds in alien surroundings.”
Rabbi Raphael Samson Hirsch points out that when Abram said, בֵּינִי וּבֵינֶךָ (bayni u’vay’necha),
“between me and you,” it was about a “mutual” separation as opposed to
an argumentative posture of personal rights.
Why? Again looking to Rabbi Isaiah
HaLevi Horovitz he writes, “One
must make great efforts to avoid personal strife. If a quarrel is in the
offing, one must immediately strive to remove the cause of such quarrel.” R’Horovitz went on to teach, regarding the
word to quarrel (רִיב,
reiv), that the Torah “used the female form of the word רִיב (see Gen. 13:7), מְרִיבָה (m’reivah, see Gen. 13:8), in order
to allude to the peculiarity of quarrels which keep increasing.” He viewed רִיב as something
masculine, “unable to give birth.”
Interestingly, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik takes the
view that Abram sought to stop the escalation of the argument because Lot did
not desire “righteousness and justice” and preferred idolatry over faith in
God, Abram therefore wanted to stop this rift and part company. But that is not what Robert Alter suggested
about Abram who valued “family bonds in alien surroundings.” I just do not share R’ Soloveitchik’s view of the text, but
I do share the view of Alter as well as Sarna.
If anything, Abram’s main aim was not only to
decrease the quarreling (opposite of מְרִיבָה,
m’reivah)
with his uncle, but also to work it out mutually. Sure Abram could have stood upon his family
seniority, moral high ground or attempted to convince Lot that the land he
wanted was not safe, but it was not about needing to be right, yet as Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks teaches in the end Abram watched as Lot chose a “good land with
evil inhabitants.” We know this from
Genesis 13:10 that refers to Sodom and Gomorrah as a place of beauty “before
the Lord destroyed” those lands, Nachum Sarna adding, “Lot’s presumptuous
cupidity (selfishness) turns out to be ruinous for him in the long run.” Abram stopped this potential disagreement from
getting out of hand by effectively giving his nephew what he wanted. Lot wanted to have his way, and even though
his uncle would have preferred to resolve the issue, Abram understood that Lot
needed to go discover his own answers.
Later in chapter 19 of Genesis (next
week’s parsha) things go bad for Lot and his family, and guess who comes
to his rescue? Could have Abram said, ‘Hey
Lot, you self-righteous ungrateful nephew, you had to be right and not work it
out, you made your bed now lay in it, so good luck!’ Well yeah, he could have said that, but he
didn’t, and either should we when someone is proven wrong; let alone if that is either you or I. Who then is the person that cannot be engaged
in a healthy argument? What stops others
from listening to those who they disagree with?
Sefer Orchot Tzadikim, the Ways of
the Righteous, says it is those who are guided by pride, anger or
arrogance, further teaching “one who is arrogant piles up heaps of transgression
and still considers themselves righteous,” thus we cannot reason with a person
who thinks they are always right and others are always wrong. Jewish tradition recognizes arguments for a
greater purpose, they are called a machlochet, dealing with issues of
life; just not for the sake of heaven but also for ourselves. If you and
I disagree to the point where our quarreling turns hateful and destructive, where
is the value? Abram understood that when
he spoke with Lot. When it breaks up
families and friends and we don’t say, hey wait something has to change, we
lose. Doris and George rose above their
differences even though they fiercely disagreed: I want to believe that just
does not happen in the movies.
Shabbat
Shalom
No comments:
Post a Comment