Noah and the Ways of the Divine Image

 

In the Bible, the foundational verse that defines the relationship between God and humanity is found in the Torah from last week; “Let us make humankind in our image (b’tzelem), after our likeness (d’mot)” from Genesis 1:26.  There is another word similar to image and likeness that we need to dismiss and that is shape (tay’ayr), as we read in Genesis 39:6, “Now Joseph was well shaped (tay’ayr) and handsome.”  The idea of image and likeness in Jewish tradition is not physical (i.e. Gen. 36:9), so we call on the teaching of Maimonides from his “Guide of the Perplexed.”  Maimonides teaches that “no other creature on earth possesses” the divine image, further adding that people have the “intellectual perception, in the exercise of which is employed via the senses, [something that is “similar” to the likeness of the] Divine Intellect with which humans have been endowed.”  All that to say that God fashioned humanity to be in the likeness of the Divine and humanity has the free-will to inculcate the inner divine likeness into how life is lived.      

Turning to the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z''l, he points to the failures in the lives of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and this week Noah, in connection to their own divine image. In this case when Adam and Eve met God in the garden after they ate the forbidden fruit, they failed in their personal responsibility; more so for their denials (Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake) of what they did wrong, resulting in the consequences of being removed from the garden.  When Cain was upset that his sacrifice was not accepted by God and Abel’s was, Cain killed his brother Able and failed in his moral responsibility since murder is not an emanation of the divine image within. Can you only imagine how the course of humankind might be different if Cain was happy for his brothers blessing and rejoiced with him (and we did that with each other?).  Instead, like his father and mother who were banished from the garden Cain was banished to a foreign land forever apart from his family and friends.

We see this with Noah as well.  In Noah’s case it was about collective responsibility, something that he did not achieve and therefore failed in doing so.  When Abraham stood before God over Sodom and Gomorrah he bargained for the lives in those cities, asking God to spare them from destruction even if there were as little as only 10 righteous people, something that Noah did not do.  Noah failed because he only worried about his immediate family given the ensuing flood as opposed to saving others who perhaps did not deserve their fate.  The Kabbalah address this failure of Noah, not as failure, but as process to assume the image and likeness of God.  You see Abraham had ascended to a level of connection with the Divine that endowed him with the importance of collective responsibility whereas Noah had not reached that level of righteousness yet.  One of my teachers, Cantor Lee Greenberg, calls upon a teaching by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin who notes that the rainbow here in parasha Noach is only half a circle, like half a picture and requires another half to complete its image or story.  In this case while God promised not to destroy humanity as evidenced with the sign of the rainbow, seen with the human eye, God did not guarantee that humanity would not destroy itself, the part that we do not see.  Collective responsibility is a way to make that circle whole, something that people do, not God. 

While I would prefer saying “divine character traits” as opposed to “responsibility,” per Rabbi Sacks, looking at Noah I want pose the following question: how much better would our lives be, not to mention the world, if the collective concern for the whole that is birthed out of our “divine character traits” operated more than it does?  You just cannot escape the social, political and even religious discord that is all around us, the anti-Semitism and senseless killings and hate, just to name a few.  Our systemic lack of concern for our “fellow” stands directly opposed for Torah to the divine image within. You know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but since we are fashioned according to the divine image, our “divine character traits” can transcend the brokenness around us - if choose to do so - each doing our part to help in what Rabbi Sacks calls the “collective responsibility.”  Let’s all strive to make this world a little better today than it was yesterday.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Adam  

Here we go Again - another opportunity before us!

Here we are, back at the start of our Torah reading once again.  A Story, which always comes to mind when we reach full circle and begin the journey in Bereshit (Genesis), is about a King who elects his court jester to replace him because he has no family to do so.  After the jester ascended his role as king a cabinet member of the new king’s court quickly recognizes that every day around 2:00PM the king descended into the basement of the palace and went into a particular room only to close the door behind him; this would last an hour before the king would go back upstairs to his throne.

One day, when the new king went downstairs into the basement he entered the room as usual but left the door open just a crack, enough for his cabinet member to peer in, and was he surprised to say the least.  The king had removed his royal cloths and replaced them with his old jester outfit. The king, dressed as the jester, would stand in front of a mirror where he would dance, sing and laugh, but also he would cry, sit quietly and act almost childlike.  When the king had finished and began putting his royal cloths back on, his cabinet member made his way back upstairs so the king would not notice.

One day the cabinet member mustered up enough nerve to question the king about his daily but strange habit.  The king looks at him and lowers his head with a big sigh only to say … “you see when I became king I realized what that meant and I did not want to lose who I was.  I need to recall my humanity and personality, not to mention my need to care for others and support them for who they are.  So every day I go down into that room and put on my old cloths to remember who I am and where I came from; I become a jester to recall and relive my humble beginnings so I can serve my community as the best king as possible."  So when we begin Torah again this is what we are doing: we stand in front of the mirror of our humanity once more to engage in another year of growth.

The very first story in the Torah, after the initial what is called the creation narrative, is about Adam, Eve and their family.  It’s not a pretty story of pomp and circumstance or wealth and processions, but it’s about normal people who are flawed and have to navigate the brokenness of life.   Great, I mean really, the first story of the bible asks us to look at flowed humanity and a broken world!  So as the story goes, one that must of us know regardless of our religious tradition, Adam is urged by Eve his wife to eat the fruit from one particular tree, we tend to call that fruit an apple, which they were not supposed to consume although they could have everything else.  As a result, their eyes are open and all of sudden they see each other’s nakedness and our ashamed, pure life is now dirty, and each sees the others flaws and are so embarrassed they cannot even stand before God to be transparent as they once were.

The famous line, God walks through the garden, comes to Adam and says “Where are you?” Sfrono, the 16^th century Rabbi, says this, “Why do you not show yourselves openly as before?” not just per their location but their human transparency? Ah, so another way of understanding that question, “Where are you”  is not about geographical location but prevailing mindset, so I read that question as; “where are you now that you see different than before, how are you now, how will you react to what happened,” it is much bigger than just where are you location wise!  The story goes onto tell us that Adam and Eve’s actions got them kicked out of the garden, but what actions?  Yes the text says they were banished from the garden for what they did, but what did they do?  But this is not just Adam and Eve, but all Israel, as it says in the Midrash, Genesis Rabbah 19:1. Here, all Israel would go into exile for transgressing God’s commandments as well. But is that it, we make an error and we are kicked out?

I want to suggest that what got Adam and Eve, as well as all Israel kicked out so to speak, was not what they did but what they did next.  How different the world of the bible would look if Adam and Eve simply owned what they did instead of blaming others (Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent).  I think they lost their place in the garden because they refused to take responsibility for what they did, and how can denial and rightness live in the same place?  Think about that for as moment.

We too are flawed and live in a broken world – just look around - but what we learn from this parasha is not about what we do in the moment but what we do next?   How much different would our lives be if we owned something and took responsibility for our actions?  How much different would life be if others who did to us owned something and took responsibility for their actions?   That is the first thing we learn in Torah, the nature of humanity responsibility, accountability and need for humility. When we look into the mirror of our return this is one of  the first reflections we see.  Shabbat Shalom and safe travels. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Adam           

Rediscovering the Divine Image Within

There is a popular Midrash where the heavenly angels object to God giving the Torah to Moses, thus it says, “The Torah is too holy to be given to mortals who will not appreciate it and revere it. Let the Torah remain here, among us.” You see the angels themselves made their comments because they had skin in the game if you will as it says in Genesis; “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness.”  They too (meaning the angles) were invested in the creation of humankind; after all, they had a reputation to maintain and the last thing they wanted was people messing up a good thing.  Looking to the teaching of my Rabbi and Teacher from Los Angeles, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, he tells a story based on this Midrash that I would like to expand a bit.

The giving of the Torah, a special gift that comes from God, actually took a back seat to a bigger issue for the Angels; people were to be created in the divine image. For the Angels that meant; people will think as God thinks, [people] feel as God feels, and [people] create as God creates.  Yet since people are flawed, the Angels also reasoned, if God rules so too people will rule, but instead of doing so with benevolence and justice, they possibility will rule in tyranny and egotism, traits that people have ascribed to God, traits that we see around us in the world today both here and abroad, traits that we have personally encountered in our own lives, let alone we may have perpetrated ourselves at one time or another.  The Angels went on to further say that Human beings will feel that they have the right to be worshipped, although we might call it admired or respected, perhaps they will think they have a false dominion over creation only to destroy the world which God has created, let alone abuse the divine image – using it to hurt others as well as themselves.  The Angels therefore decided; “we cannot let that happen.”  The Angels clearly felt that people were spiritually bankrupt, not capable of appreciating the value of the Torah let alone being representatives of the divine image in the world.

As the Angels gathered to discuss their concerns they agreed that they needed to hide the divine image so humans could not find it.  One angel said “lets hide it on top of the mountain,” to which another responded, “but when they learn how to climb mountains they will find it.”  Another Angel said, “Let’s put it at the bottom of the sea,” to which an Angel said, “one day they will find a way to plumb the bottom of the seas so that will not work either.”  Finally, yet another Angel suggested, “let’s place it in the depth of the farthest forest,” yet another Angel retorted, “No, one day they will learn to transverse the wilderness and find it there as well.”

After rejecting other suggestions they came to an agreement and presented it to God.  The Angels said to God that they we would like to put the divine image deep within the human heart and deep within the human soul, places they thought people would never think to look!   After a moment of consideration God agreed and it was so: the divine image would be embedded deep within our humanity, making it available but harder to discover.

The Angles understood the following. Life would get in the way, the toil of life and the disappointments that come with it; the veneer of hardness and disillusionment, hopelessness and distain, hurt and the human response, the flawed human ego and sense of self-sustainment and preservation as well as the power of anger and fear to have a hand in helping mold human character, all like layers of an onion, the Angels sadly knew that such things would affect the human heart and further hide the divine image from people who might to try to look for it.

You see in order to grasp the divine image within where the human middot (soul character traits) will reflect love and mercy, graciousness and compassion, justice and forgiveness, truth, kindness and the like within a person, negative traits must be conquered first in order to be shaped by the purity of the divine image itself; something that seemingly gets harder as the years go by, although not impossible to reverse.  The Angels wanted to make the divine image something people could make their own, but they did not want it to be easy to find either on account of those who might miss use and/or disrespect it.

God wanted to make sure that each and every person would have the opportunity to find the divine image within so a plan was made called the Yamim Nora’im, the days of Awe.  The beginning of the Yamim Nora’im is when the gates of heaven open at Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur will close again till next year per Jewish tradition.  God reasoned, well, the Angels have a good complaint against humanity, but I want to have a solution, so I will give people a 10 day period to do what they normally do not do during the rest of the year, and that is to look for the divine image within.

The divine image would remind those who sought after it of life’s possibilities and the hopes that are before them, to be reminded of their better selves, not allowing the imperfections found in the world to interfere with the light that shines inside, for self and others, allowing goodness and kindness to no longer be the prisoner that it has become.  On Yom Kippur T’shuvah (return) is needed, not only to find the divine image within, but also to return to how it was intended to be used, emulating God’s image in the way people think, feel and create, let alone have dominion over the creation, receiving and giving love to others, passing those values to the next generation and the ones that will follow after that.

I think it is too easy to see Yom Kippur as a day we stand before God and get judged for our sins, hoping that we are forgiven and have another year ahead of us (for some in might cause more fear).  Well, we do stand before God and we are judged for how we have used the divine image within, connecting us to a Holy God, which is true, but there is more.  The Holiday prayers remind us that life and death happen and we just might not make it to next year, which is the reality of the human condition, “a time to be born and a time to die.”  So when we say the Shehecheyanu, we are reminded that we are fortunate to reach this special time and season to have yet another opportunity to find and respond to the divine image within that helps us become the people we want to be.

The message of Yom Kippur: return to the better self,  because good human life cannot grow in the soil of brokenness, hurt, anger or un-forgiveness. We must therefore return to the soil of the divine image within, our holy spark that produces the traits of love, a desire to heal, repair, and the embrace of life that will shine its light where it is needed.  This might sound like a big task, but until you and I leave this earth this is part of our purpose.  Yeah there are a lot of places to begin with, family, friends and acquaintances, but it begins with ourselves and that is what Yom Kippur wants to remind us of. 

Gmar Chatima Tovah, May you be Sealed in the Book of Life!

Rabbi Adam