Erev Rosh HaShanah 5784: Sparking our Flames

 A version of this sermon was delivered on Erev Rosh HaShanah, 5784 at Temple B'nai Torah in Wantagh, NY.

            Many, if not most of you, may by now know that I spent a large part of my sabbatical time this past summer in the Pacific Northwest, traveling around, learning, seeing beautiful things, and then attending Glass Blowing School for 12 days at the renowned Pilchuk Glass School.  Over these next weeks, and probably longer, I’ll be excited to share about my experiences there and while traveling around that part of the world.  The experience was and continues to be inspiring for me.  I’m grateful to this community and Cantor Timman for affording me the time to be away.

            The Pilchuck Glass School was started in the 1970s by Dale Chihuly and his friends, setting up their temporary shop in the middle of a tree farm about 90 minutes north of Seattle.  This photo, taken by a classmate, Alyssa Miller, shows the sunsetting over the hotshop, whose furnaces never extinguish.  Each year over the summer, the school hosts a series of sessions with various classes offered in different glass disciplines. Here’s my class.  That’s me in the back.  There was glass casting, stained glass, and I was placed in a flameworking class, which is not the large-scale furnaces in a hot shop you may be familiar with.  Of course, they had quite the hot shop as well.  Flamework involves an individual flame in front of you which you use to melt, shape, and blow glass.  Here’s a photo of me at work at the flame, wearing special glasses to protect my eyes from its brightness. 

In order to flamework glass, you need two things…glass and a flame.  You light the flame, you introduce the glass, you keep it moving, and you melt, shape, form, combine, and stretch the glass.  Now this is not just any old flame in front of you.  For the glass that we are using, which is borosilicate or true PYREX glass, you need a lot of heat to get it to melt.  To get a flame that hot, you mix propane and oxygen. 

Now these torches we were using had inputs for both gases, and two knobs for each one, so that you could adjust the flame as needed to create differing flames of differing strengths to accomplish different tasks.  If, for example, you’re working on a small detail, you want a small, pointed flame.  If you need to melt a large gather of glass to molten, you need a dense, wide flame.  It’s a constant adjustment of flame size and composition.

In addition to the gas, of course, you need something to spark the flame.  You can use either a sparker that you squeeze, like you may recall from high school science and your Bunsen burner, or you can use a lighter.  Either way, there’s a correct order to lighting the gases and a real finesse to getting the mixture right.

But the sparks from the lighters were not the only sparks that were impactful to me.  There were other sparks, equally important for the many artists who spend their summer at Pilchuck.  Each night, the entire session gathered together for dinner.  Dinner was followed by slides and presentations by the visiting artists, teachers, and TAs, showing off their work and explaining their inspiration.  Almost without fail, each presentation included a description of the moment that the artist first saw glass art or a demonstration that sparked their passion for glass.  In order to devote your life to this art, which is expensive, time consuming, fickle, and dangerous, you have to have the passion for it, and that passion requires that spark.  As in glass, as in life.

Being surrounded by folks with such a passion for their art was inspiring in itself.  For some of these artists, both aspiring and established, everything, every aspect of their being has to go into the art: their hearts, their souls, and their might.  They are always thinking about it, feeling it deep within themselves.  They are guided by their desire to make this art because ever since that spark, they haven’t been able to put out the internal flame.  Even when their lives are hard and unpredictable, they choose not to leave it behind because they love it so deeply.

What is passion if not a deep love for something?  A love that encompasses all we are and all our decisions.  Passion means to love something entirely, with heart, soul, and might.  And as Jews we are commanded to be passionate.  We are commanded to summon our hearts, souls, and strength—our passion—to love God.  V’ahavta et Adonai eloheicha,[1] we chanted together a little while ago.  You shall love Adonai your God bechol levavcha, uv’chol nafshecha, uv’chol me’odecha.  We are supposed to be passionate about loving God.  It may sound redundant, that we’re supposed to love loving God.  Isn’t loving God enough?  Our tradition would seem to say no.  You might think v’ahavta et Adonai eloheicha would be enough.  The Torah comes to tell us that there’s more to it.

            What does our tradition understand this command to mean?  What does it mean to love God as a Jew, and what does it mean to do so with all our heart, soul, and might?  With the entirety of ourselves?

            “But wait, Rabbi, I’m not sure I even believe in God.  Have you looked at the world lately?”  That’s ok.  Because no matter how elusive God may be, love is less so for us.  So, if we’re having a problem with God, let’s start with love: v’ahavta.  It’s a seemingly simple command, yet can we command the love of another?  Isn’t love supposed to grow organically?  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches that many other nations in the ancient world had systems of justice like the Israelites, but it is the Torah which originates the idea of love as a moral imperative.  We are commanded to love our neighbors and to love the stranger at the same time as we are commanded to love God.  Perhaps the focus here is indeed not on God, or the stranger, or the neighbor, but on the action, on the love. 

            Maimonides[2] explains that to love means to be obsessed, lovesick, so that all the time, no matter what we’re doing, we’re thinking, acting, and living with our beloved on our minds.  When love refers to God, Maimonides means that every action of our day, from waking in the morning to lying down at night, ought to be done with God on our minds.  With a sense that what we are doing in each moment serves to spread light, peace, mercy, and justice.  If we strive in every moment to live a life dedicated to morality and Jewish values, we’re loving God every moment.  It means we’ve become passionate for God.

You’d probably be less than surprised to learn that there’s some disagreement on how to understand the second half of our verse, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. 

B’chol levavcha, with all your heart.  Rashi says that this means that you are to love God without division, such that what we do is not at odds with what God wants.  Ibn Ezra says that heart means knowledge.  Ramban says that hearts means the power of desire. So, while Rashi tells us it’s about listening to God, Ramban and Ibn Ezra disagree with each other on what the heart represents.[3]

            B’chol Nafshecha, with all your soul.  Here, Ramban and Ibn Ezra disagree again.  Now, Ibn Ezra says that this is the spirit within, your nefesh, your divinely given breath and soul.  Ramban says that this is the intellectual capacity.  But they do both agree that within these two commands is a combination of mind and spirit.  So, we are to love God with all aspects of ourselves, our mind and our spirit.

            And then we get to b’chol me’odecha, with all your might.  Here, we find some agreement.  First, Rashi says that we have to love God no matter whether God sends us the good or the bad.  And then Ibn Ezra and Ramban agree that with all your might actually just means very, very much.  They pick up on me’odecha and hear in it me’od, very, like tov me’od, very good, as God calls creation in Genesis.  They both explain that the love must be fervent.  It must be passionate.

            But there’s an additional wrinkle to this last one because earlier than all these commentators, the Mishnah[4] suggests that with all your might should actually be rendered as “with all your wealth; [explaining that we are to] put our resources toward good purposes and to serve the Most High with everything we possess.”  Nineteen hundred years later, Rav Kook goes on to explain that this doesn’t mean that we are supposed to reject material things and comfort.  Rather, we are supposed to use these things we have to live fully, to cherish the world and its treasures in order to achieve a full measure of love which will then allow your heart to expand, which will in turn make you more giving as a person.[5]

We have to love God with our bodies, our spirits, our minds, and with great passion.  We have to love God by loving the life that God gave us.  And, like the gas in the flameworking torch, we often have to adjust to achieve the right balance. Sometimes we may need more heart than mind, and sometimes we may need more passion than spirit.  Each moment of every day requires a different combination of loving God, and I promise you, if my experience with the flame can be your guide, sometimes the mixture will just be wrong.  And it will take practice to get it right more often than not.  And that’s ok, even helpful, because the effort of loving God, according to Rabbi Adin Stensaltz[6], will be enough to lead you to where you need to be.  Striving for love leads to love.  This is why it’s not enough to love God.  We have to love loving God.

But to light that flame, we also need that spark.  And so, as we embark on this new year, let us all ask ourselves, what will spark our passion in 5784?  Will it be prayer or meditation?  Do you need to turn up the knob on your spiritual self?  Will it be study?  Do you need to increase the amount of Torah in your life?  Will it be spreading tzedek, justice?  We could all turn up that knob more often.  No matter what it is, your temple is here to help.  Seek out your flame with us this year. 

Kindling a flame ushers in the holy days.  Kindling our personal flames ushers holiness into our lives.  As we add our hearts, our souls, and our mights, our flames of love grow stronger until we cannot help but fulfill those commandments.  May our flames burn strong this year.  May 5784 be a shanah tovah and a shanah shel ahavah.  A good year, and a year of love.

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[1] Deut 6:5ff

[2] MT, Laws of Repentance 10:3

[3] Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Ramban on Deut 6:5

[4] Berachot 9:5 referenced in Mishkan HaNefesh for YK p 31

[5] Referenced in MHN for YK p 31

[6] Pebbles of Wisdom

Rosh HaShanah 5784: The Mountain is Out!

A version of this sermon was delivered on Rosh HaShanah Morning, 5784, at Temple B'nai Torah in Wantagh, NY

The Mountain is Out!

            While I was in Seattle this summer, I had the joy of being taken around by my old friend Julie, whom I hadn’t seen since some time in the last century, when we taught together at a Hebrew School in the Chicago suburbs.  Julie took a friend and me around to parts of Seattle we couldn’t see without a car, and we spent a glorious day together with a local.  Here’s Julie and me at the locks.

            Two nights later, we happened to be having dinner at an adjacent restaurant to where Julie was eating, and when we ran into each other, Julie asked what we had done that day.  We told her about our wonderful trip to Bainbridge Island, how we took the ferry, and how we saw great views of Mt. Rainier, or Tahoma, in the distance on the way back.  It was far away, and we had to zoom in, but there it was.  When we told her about our view, her response puzzled and intrigued me: “Oh,” she said, “the mountain was out today!”  The mountain was out...  What does that mean?  Growing up in Illinois, and living on Long Island, there’s not a lot of mountain talk… 

            Though I barely experienced it this summer, the Pacific Northwest is known for dreary, rainy, overcast days.  Many days of the year, you can’t see Mt. Rainier from the cities.  The haze, the light, the angles of the other mountains, the weather, all of these occlude the mountain from view.  So, when you can see it, the locals take to saying, “The mountain is out today.”  There’s a website where you can check to see if it’s out. 

But that’s not all, because in addition to that, and probably because, on average, the mountain is out somewhere between 80-100 days a year, the folks in Tahoma’s shadow also say that everyone should live every day as if the mountain is out.  In other words, live each day, no matter the weather, like the skies are clear and like the light is right and like you can see far into the distance, to the giant volcanic edifice towering over the horizon.  Even on days when the mountain is lost in the fog, on days when the mountain is hidden from sight though we know it’s there, we ought to still live our lives as if we can see it clearly.

            Today is Rosh HaShanah.  The mountain is out today. 

            What is it about mountains that so calls us to attention?  What is it about these high places that so much over the course of history called humans to something bigger?  “Esa einai el heharim.  I lift my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come?” sang the Psalmist.[1]  A little while ago, our choir sang other words of the Psalms: Romemu Adonai Eloheinu v’histachavu l’har kodsho, Exalt Adonai our God, and let us bow toward the mountain of God’s holiness.[2]  In moments of desperation, we look up.  In moments of exaltation, we look to the mountain.  The Psalmist understood that it was not the mountain, but God who will serve as their help; not the mountain, but God whom we exalt.  The sense of God’s presence comes by looking up to the mountain.  Like getting into Mountain Pose, we are pulled upward as if by our spines.

Olympus, Fuji, Sinai.  Is it their size?  Is it that they are tall and draw our gaze upward?  Is it how they occlude the horizon?  Is it that their peaks are shrouded in clouds, their apex hidden from view? 

            Today is Rosh HaShanah.  And, the mountain is out today!

            A few moments ago, we heard expertly chanted by so many of our congregants in beautiful High Holy Day trope, the difficult story of the binding of Isaac.  I’m sure Rabbi Lowenberg’s introduction covered most of it, so let me just recap.  God tells Abraham to take his son Isaac to Moriah, as a sacrifice, on one of the peaks that God will show him.  Why does God have to show him?  Shouldn’t Abraham just be able to see it?  Perhaps.  But Abraham is accustomed to going in the general direction when God commands.  “Go to the land that I will show you, and you shall be a blessing.”[3]  It seemed to work out the first time, so why not also now? 

It was a three-day walk for Abraham to get there, and one can imagine the mountain rising in the distance as “he looked up and saw the place from afar,”[4] walking through the valleys, his son and two servants alongside him.

            Looking up, Abraham sees a cloud on Moriah[5] and he knows that is the mountain God is sending him to.  Isaac, too, sees that cloud, and the two go on together.[6]

Abraham takes Isaac up that mountain with the wood, the fire, and the knife.  Abraham ties his son up.  And at the moment he is ready to plunge that knife down, the Torah tells us: “Then, a messenger of Adonai called to him from heaven:…‘Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.’”[7]

            The mountain is out today!  Mount Moriah emerges over us as we hear this story.  Tradition tells us that Moriah was always a place of sacrifice.  Adam, Noah, David, Solomon: all of them set up altars there.[8]  Only Abraham and Isaac’s story at Moriah is shared on this day.  And on this mountain before us, the Jewish people survive.  On this mountain, faith in God seems paramount, but faith in the future is the lesson.  The mountain is out, and it calls us to a future of life and trusting in a God that prefers life and blessing, even when it seems like everything is stacked against us.  Abraham was tested so that we wouldn’t have to be and so that would learn from his lesson.  Put down that knife.  Do not raise your hand to the boy.  The mountain is out and Moriah calls us to life.

            Why is Moriah out today?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to be called to Sinai on this day?  To be inspired to the moment of theodicy today?  I mean look at it.  It’s also covered in clouds.  It’s also tall and imposing.  It’s also a place of divine interaction.  Why not Sinai?  Why is the mountain of sacrifice out but not the mountain of commandment?

            Rabbi David Guttman quotes Rabbi Hayim of Sanz: “At Sinai, we, the Jewish people were receivers.  At Moriah, we became givers…At Sinai God came down, at Moriah, [hu]man[ity] went up.  At Sinai, the voice of God was dominant.  At Moriah, the response of [hu]man[ity] was dominant.  At Sinai, God was the principal actor.  At Moriah, [hu]man[ity] was…Moriah is the priority mountain…At Moriah we ascend – and it becomes holy.”[9]

            Moriah calls us to action.  Moriah calls us to more than just blindly listening to God.  It was on Moriah that God’s promises all came true, but only after human action.  It was at the moment of the binding of Isaac that Abraham’s promise of progeny is sealed.  It is on Moriah where David builds his city and Solomon builds his Temple.  It was to Moriah where our ancestors made pilgrimage and offered their first fruits and the first of their flocks as thanks and praise to God for their great redemption.  At Sinai we listened.  At Moriah we acted.  What kind of year does Moriah call us to?  It calls us to a year of action.  A year of giving and a year of service to God, not through the work of sacrifice, but through the work of covenant, relationship, generosity, and love.  The mountain calls us to our best instincts today, it calls us to our most divine selves.

            But we don’t have to go to the mountain.  We can bring the mountain to us.  We can call the mountain out!

            When Jacob flees from his impulsive brother’s wrath and heads to his mother’s family in Haran, he stops along the way in the wilderness.  Famously, he has the vision of the ladder reaching to the heavens and, in response, he offers a prayer.  According to tradition, this is the origin of Ma’ariv, the evening prayer service.  And, hidden in this moment, according to the sages, is the power Jacob has to bring God’s mountain closer to him. 

            According to the sage Rashi, when Jacob stops in the wilderness to pray, much more happens.  Rashi picks up on the language of the verse: “Vayifga bamakom, he came upon a certain place.”[10]  The place, according to Rashi[11] is Mt. Moriah, even though Jacob is nowhere near it.  But it’s the verb that stands out to Rashi, who explains that this verb, vayifga, seems to imply happenstance, like Jacob stumbled upon or accidentally ran into the place.  And if that’s the case, how did he do that?  How could Jacob have stumbled into Moriah?  Rashi explains that Moriah uproots itself and comes to Jacob at Beth El.

            The Sfat Emet[12] explains Rashi’s comment: “The will of a person is undoubtedly capable of arousing the holiness of God anywhere.  And so, when Rashi states that Mount Moriah uprooted itself and came here [to Jacob] – that’s because Jacob had a great desire to come to Mount Moriah, and so even though this place [Beth El] was very distant, Mount Moriah jumped right over.”  Even in this moment of difficulty for Jacob, with his family left behind and an uncertain future ahead, he calls the mountain to him and, in so doing, brings with it God’s promise of life and a powerful future.

            We can call the mountain to us.  We can call Moriah, with its promise of life and future and blessing.  We can summon the mountain if only we summon our will to be near it. 

            The mountain is out today!  And the mountain is out because we call for it to be!

            Being called to the mountain is powerful.  Calling the mountain to us is powerful. 

            But it’s not enough for the mountain to be out on this one day.  Rabbi David Wolpe, quoting Menachem Mendel of Kotzk,[13] teaches that for Abraham, the hardest part of the Akedah was not the three days’ walk.  It wasn’t the climb up the mountain.  It wasn’t binding his son.  It wasn’t sacrificing the ram.  It was coming down the mountain.  It was what happens after.  The mountain is on our minds today.  What about two months from now?  Four?  Eight?  This day, when the mountain is out, is meant to serve as the model for every day of the rest of 5784.  We don’t always have the words of Torah so imminent.  We don’t always have the mountain looming over us.

            The mountain is out today.  We are here in the synagogue.  We’ve said the prayers we need to say, and in a few moments we’ll hear the shofar and another year will be ushered in.  The mountain is surely out today.  It is our choice to live every day of 5784 like the mountain is out.  For when we make that choice, when we choose blessing and life, when we choose to look to the future with hope and anticipation, when we choose to exalt God by lifting our eyes toward the heavens to the peak of the mountain, when we make these choices, the mountain can be out every day!  And then, when the mountain is out every day, it will truly be a year of blessing and goodness for us all.

            Shanah Tovah. 

                        

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[1] Psalm 121:1

[2] Psalm 99:9

[3] Gen 12:1

[4] Gen 22:4

[5] See Rashi and others on Gen 22:4

[6] After Midrash Tanchuma Vayera 23:1

[7] Gen 22:11-12

[8] Based on MT Chosen Temple 2:2

[9] Guttman, Rabbi David, in Elkins, Dov Peretz Ed. Rosh HaShanah Readings p 143

[10] Gen 28:11

[11] Based on Rashi to Gen 28:11

[12] Sfat Emet Vayetze 2:6

[13] Wolpe, Rabbi David, as quoted in Elkins, Dov Peretz, Rosh HaShanah Readings, p 133

Vaera 5780: An Overabundance of Evidence

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B’nai Torah – A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY on Shabbat Va’era 5780/2020

There are certain perennial questions we have as Jews.  At Passover we ask five of them.  The four in the Hagaddah and then "When do we eat!?"  That question by the way is also the question asked every Yom Kippur!  So, each year when we get to the Torah portions that describe the famous story of the plagues, the Passover, and the Exodus, a series of questions always seem to come up.  Each year, we ask why it is that we read about Passover well before the Holiday falls.  That has to do with the Torah cycle and the holiday cycle.  And that's where we are in the Torah right now.  Another question that arises as we reach this week’s portion, Parshat Va’era, is the question of why it is that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart.  After all, if God wanted to change Pharaoh’s mind, why prevent it from happening?  It seems counter-intuitive that God would prevent the Pharaoh from being moved to change or act in response to Moses’s pleas and God’s signs and wonders.

Toward the beginning of the portion, we read that God sends Moses to speak to the people Israel, to announce that the God of their ancestors will redeem them.  Even though Moses follows God’s instructions about how to introduce himself to the people, they don’t believe him.  The Torah tells us why: “their spirits [are] crushed by hard labor.” (Ex. 6:9)  They are so despondent in their situation that they cannot imagine that redemption is possible.  They don’t have the capacity or vocabulary to understand God, and sadly, we know, the slave generation will never fully commit to God, with but a few exceptions.

When the Israelites don’t listen, God then sends Moses to speak with Pharaoh.  Moses responds to God: If the people won’t listen to me, then how is it that you think Pharaoh is going to listen to me?

We read: “The Eternal replied to Moses, ‘See, I place you in the role of God to Pharaoh, with your brother Aaron as your prophet. You shall repeat all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh to let the Israelites depart from his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt.’” (Ex. 7:1-3)

Now, there is an interesting parallel in the Hebrew.  The people’s spirits are crushed by what the Torah calls avodah kashah, hard labor.  God says that God will “ekasheh et lev Paroh” harden the heart of Pharaoh.  Already we see that God’s response to Pharaoh will be to turn the tables on him, to dole out to Pharaoh what Pharaoh has done to the Israelites.  God will show that God’s power supersedes that of Pharaoh, or that of any of the gods of Egypt.  “You made the people’s labor kasheh,” God is saying, “So, I will make your heart kasheh, and you will pay for it.”

The plagues are meant as much for the Israelites as the Egyptians.  The Israelites’ hearts and spirits are hardened beneath their labors.  Their hearts will need to soften in order to finally be a free people.  But the Egyptians, up until this point, don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, at least we don’t have any indication that they think the way they’re treating the Israelites is wrong.  We don’t hear from anyone but the Pharaoh.  And we know that it is his own obstinacy in the face of overwhelming evidence that ultimately leads to his downfall.  That Pharaoh’s heart hardens after each of the first five plagues is his own doing.  The Torah tells us after the plague of blood in the Nile: “when the Egyptian magicians did the same with their spells, Pharaoh’s heart stiffened and he did not heed [Moses and Aaron]. (Ex. 7:22)  We read similar indications after each of the first five plagues. 

As each of the first five plagues strike Egypt, the evidence mounts before Pharaoh, that God is not pleased and that he ought to pay attention. 

After the frogs, his heart hardens when the relief comes.  After the lice, the Egyptian magicians can no longer recreate the plagues, and they say to Pharaoh, this is the finger of the God! Yet, his heart hardens.  After the insects, we read: “But Pharaoh became stubborn this time also, gam bapa’am hazeh.”(Ex. 8:28)  The inclusion of “this time also” shows that even the Torah narrative seems to be confounded by Pharaoh’s stubbornness and inability to learn.

Each of these plagues is evidence of the Egyptians’ wrongdoing.  Rabbi Tali Adler of Machon Hadar makes this point explicit about the first two plagues as she teaches:  

Both of the first two plagues begin in the Nile where Jewish boys were drowned. The first, blood, makes it clear that the Nile, the source of life for the Egyptian people—the place where even Bat Paroah, the woman who saved Moshe bathed—is actually a site of mass murder. All of Egypt, suddenly, is forced to confront the truth that what is life-giving and sustaining for them has been the locus of unbearable suffering for the people they oppress.

The second plague, the frogs, exposes the horror even more explicitly. The frogs, we are told, emerge from the Nile itself—still, presumably, filled with blood. In picturing the image of the frogs—small, slimy creatures crawling out of the river used as a mass infant grave—it is easy to imagine that as the frogs started to emerge, people thought that they were seeing thousands of ghosts emerge from their watery graves.

It’s not until after the 6^th plague, the skin inflammation, that we read that the Eternal stiffened the heart of Pharaoh.  Why does God take over here?  Rashi (to Ex. 7:3) says it’s as punishment.  Since Pharaoh’s heart hardened 5 times on its own, and he didn’t heed God, now God will show Pharaoh what it means not to heed God.  The evidence is mounting.  The proof of the Egyptians’ crimes is public and known, and still, Pharaoh will not let the people go. 

But… we just learned that for plagues 6-10, it is God that hardens Pharaoh’s heart.  So, is the Pharaoh even to blame?  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says yes, pulling from a Renaissance Italian commentary by Rabbi Ovadia Sforno:

“God hardened Pharaoh's heart precisely to restore his free will. After the succession of plagues that had devastated the land, Pharaoh was under overwhelming pressure to let the Israelites go. Had he done so, it would not have been out of free choice, but rather under force majeure. God therefore strengthened Pharaoh's heart so that even after the first five plagues he was genuinely free to say Yes or No.” [1]

This makes sense especially when we recognize that the Hebrew word for what happens to Pharaoh’s heart changes.  It moves from kasheh, meaning harden as we heard earlier, to chazak, meaning stiffen or strengthen.  In this interpretation, God makes Pharaoh’s heart stronger, so that he can make up his own mind in the face of the evidence before him.  But will he be convinced by evidence, or is the verdict already decided in his head?

            God wants Pharaoh to make his decision based not on pressure from others or based on something out of his control, but rather based on a true recognition that what he had been doing, how he had enslaved the Israelites was indeed not ok, that his rule, and the kingdom of Egypt had become corrupt, cruel, chaotic, and focused on an Egyptian supremacist attitude.

            The end of this week’s portion leaves no question as to the corrupt nature of the Egyptian government:  “when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he became stubborn and reverted to his guilty ways, as did his courtiers.  So Pharaoh’s heart stiffened and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the Eternal had foretold through Moses” (Ex. 9:34-35).  After every plague, the Pharaoh reverts to his default position, that he and Egypt can outlast God’s punishments.  Next week’s portion will dissuade him of that.

Ultimately, we know that Pharaoh never truly heeds the lesson that God is trying to teach him.  He will let the people go, but then he will change his mind and chase after them.  Not listening to the evidence presented to him over and over again destroys Egypt.  According to the Torah narrative, the crops and herds are destroyed by locust and disease, the Nile is putrid, the people who are still alive are inflicted with lice and disease, and his army is ultimately drowned at the Sea of Reeds.  All that his nation had been crumbles around him. He leads his nation to destruction because his heart is hardened, and he can’t find a way to soften it enough to heed the warning and listen to the evidence of what has been laid out before him.

When evidence mounts before us, will it be heeded?  When God sends a message, will it be heard?  Let us strive to live our lives as the antithesis to Pharaoh, with our hearts pliable, open to change, to compassion, to loving the other as ourselves.  Let our hearts be light, not weighed down by the heaviness of sin, indifference, or lust for power.  Let our hearts be loose, willing to accept the evidence we see before us, so that we may always make a choice for the good. 

Shabbat Shalom

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[1] Sacks, Lord Rabbi Jonathan: The Weighing of the Heart: Vaera 5780

Korach 5779 - When We Feel Like Falling on Our Faces

A version of this sermon was delivered on Shabbat Korach, 5779 at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation in Wantagh, NY.

This week’s Torah portion begins:

“Now Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, betook himself, along with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth—descendants of Reuben—to rise up against Moses, together with two hundred and fifty Israelites, chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute.  They combined against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Eternal is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Eternal’s congregation?”  When Moses heard this, he fell on his face.”[1]

Korach, the namesake of the Torah portion, is known for the rebellion and the aftermath in which he and his band of rebels are swallowed alive by the earth and sent down to Sheol, a sort of Hades of the ancient Hebrews.  Korach challenges Moses’s authority and his humility, calling Moses arrogant.  Aren’t we all holy, he argues?  Didn’t God make us a nation of priests and say that we are all allowed to partake in kedushah?  Why do you raise yourself above this community, Korach demands of Moses?  What makes you think you’re so special!?  Why not us?  Why do we have to follow the rules and morals of this society? 

Korach doesn’t agree with the way things are being done.  He doesn’t like the direction the nation is going.  He thinks it’s time to take drastic action for the safety and security of the people.  He thinks it’s time to upend the still new and untested rules, which not only stipulate the laws of the people, but their morality as well.

Moses hears Korach’s challenge and he doesn’t know what to do.  He is seemingly embarrassed by their actions.  Korach’s complaint flies in the face of everything Moses has tried to teach the people about how things are supposed to run in the Israelite camp and society.  He doesn’t know how to respond.  It’s in this moment, when he just doesn’t know what to do, that we read that Moses falls on his face.[2] 

            Rashi explains that this moment, Moses falling on his face, is because this is the 4^th time that the people have risen against him, the golden calf, the demand for quail, and the incident with the spies all precede this moment.  It also won’t be the last time the people rise against him.  Moses and Aaron will fall on their faces again in a few chapters when the people complain they are hungry and thirsty and demand to go back to Egypt.

Rashi goes on to describe Moses in this scene as finally coming to a sense of powerlessness, and he explains his point with a parable from the Midrash: This may be compared to the case of a prince who sinned against his father and for whom the father’s friend gained forgiveness once, twice, three times. When he offended for the fourth time the friend felt himself powerless, for he said, “How long can I trouble the king? Perhaps he will not again accept advocacy from me!”

Chizkuni, a rabbi who lived and worked in France a couple generations after Rashi, describes Moses as: so ashamed he put his face on the ground in order to offer a prayer. Moses had hoped to receive a revelation from God how to confront this challenge.  But he doesn’t get instruction from God.  He doesn’t wait for God to come fix the evil he sees around him. 

Rather, unlike in other instances of face-falling, when we hear God’s suggestion, this time Moses doesn’t fall on his face before God; he doesn’t fall on his face before the Tent of Meeting.  He just falls.  And then, we assume, he gets up, and he challenges Korach to a test to see who truly knows how things are supposed to run.  You put your incense on the fire pan and Aaron will do the same and we’ll see who God chooses! 

Moses is caught in a destructive pattern with the Israelites.  What should be a proud march toward the Promised Land has, time and again, turned away from the ideals of the nation and the ideals of the society.  All Moses can do is turn his face down and pray for an answer.

            He doesn’t get that answer from God.  Rather, he devises the test.  He doesn’t wait for someone else to do something about it; he acts.  And the Torah makes this explicit because later we read that Moses has to tell God not to accept the incense they offer.  Moses takes this issue of upending societal norms into his own hands, establishing and administering the test.  God will dole out the punishment, but Moses sets the terms.

            What are we to do when the norms of our society are trampled on?  How are we to react when, as we celebrate the anniversary of this nation’s independence, the land of the free, we see image after image and report after report of children, separated from their parents, caged in inhumane conditions, without medical care.  Without running water.  Without adequate place to sleep.  Without toilets.  Without tissues, soap, toothpaste, diapers.  Without compassion.  Without humanity. 

These children are living in Sheol, and it is happening in our name and in our nation.

The images cry out to us, as if challenging the joyous fireworks and bbqs, asking what makes this country so special?  What makes us think that we’re any better than anywhere else?  What makes us think we have the market cornered on life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness?  Why does this country raise itself above others?

            It feels as if all we can do is fall on our faces and maybe pray to God, embarrassed by the behavior of the leadership of our country, shocked by the pictures we see of fathers and daughters drowned alongside each other.  Resigned that we may never live up to our ideals, if we ever have. 

If we fall on our faces, and turn our eyes away, and pray to God to fix this mess, we abdicate our responsibility.  Moses understands that he cannot allow this to continue.  The nation will be irrevocably lost if Korach is permitted to offer his incense to God.

We are a nation of immigrants who fled persecution, economic hardship, danger, and lack of opportunities over the centuries.  What are we going to do to ensure that the norms of this nation, of welcoming, of promising liberty, of standing up for humanity are maintained?  What are we as Jews going to do to ensure that we live up to our sacred norms, of welcoming the stranger because we were strangers? 

What arrogance we must have to not remember where we came from, how we got here, how many of our families died because they couldn’t reach these shores or were not permitted to do so.  What idolatry we traffic in when we see the stranger suffering and we do nothing to alleviate it, when we see images of humans detained in camps and we choose to argue over what to call them rather than how to liberate them. 

What test must we devise so that those who would ask us to upend our norms, our morality, our humanity, will know that we are not willing to do so? 

We are supposed to learn from our past, not repeat its mistakes.  After Korah is swallowed by the ground, his firepans, now sacred, are used as plating for the altar, for all to see, to remind the Israelites that there are boundaries of behavior that are not acceptable to cross. The people don’t quite listen. 

Our nation’s history is replete with examples we have not learned from.  May this not be one of them.  May this nation finally learn to live up to its highest ideals such that in future years, when we celebrate independence, we do so knowing that the project of freedom, of self-governance, of unalienable rights, has been extended to all who would be a part of it.

I close tonight with a prayer, For Children at Our Borders, by Alden Solovy:

God of mothers and fathers,
God of babies and children,
Youth and teens,
The voice of agony echoes across the land,
As children are taken from their parents,
Perverting our history as a nation of immigrants,
Perverting our values,
Perverting the ways of justice and peace.
These children
Wait in misery
To be reunited with their families
So that a few may reap the political rewards
Of their suffering
By playing tough at our borders.

Source of grace,
Creator of kindness and goodness,
You call upon us to stand in the name of justice and fairness,
To witness against this abuse of power,
To battle the systematic assault on human beings,
To speak out against their suffering.

Bless those who rise up against this horror.
Give them courage and determination.
Bless those who plead on behalf of the oppressed and the subjugated
Before the seats of power.
May the work of their hands never falter
Nor despair deter them from this holy calling.

Bless those now in bondage at the hand of the U.S. government.
Grant them shelter and solace,
Comfort and consolation,
Blessing and renewal.
Release them. Free them. Heal them from trauma.
Reunite them with their families.
Hasten the day of their reunion.

Blessed are You, God of All Being,
Who summons us to oppose violence, oppression, slavery and injustice.

Amen.

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[1] Numbers 16:1-3

[2] Ibid. 16:4